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5:50 PM ET, October 15, 2007

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
AOL Layoffs Letter From CEO Randy Falco  —  More to come on this story, but AOL will lay off 2,000 employees.  Here is the letter to AOL employees that went out at 11 a.m. EDT today from CEO Randy Falco:  —  Dear AOL colleague,  —  Just over a year ago, AOL embarked on an incredibly complex …
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Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:
Confirmed: AOL Laying Off 2,000: Randy Falco Email  —  AOL has confirmed the mass layoffs we have been writing about for the last month.  In a company-wide email sent at 11am this morning, AOL president Randy Falco said the "realignment" would include a reduction in force of 2,000 AOLers.
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
AOL to cut 2,000 jobs
Discussion: Bloomberg and PDA
Reuters:
Led Zeppelin to sell music online  —  LONDON (Reuters) - British rockers Led Zeppelin will offer their music online for the first time next month, they said on Monday.  —  The band, whose reunion gig in London in November prompted more than a million fans to apply for 10,000 available tickets …
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Jeff Leeds / New York Times:
Led Zeppelin to Make Its Songs Available Digitally  —  It's been a long time, but Led Zeppelin, one of the last superstar acts to refrain from selling its music online, is finally offering its catalog to digital-music fans.  —  The shift by Led Zeppelin, whose reunion concert in London next month …
Nick / Rough Type:   What is and what should never be  —  It's over, rock fans.
Mathew / mathewingram.com/work:
Zeppelin: This Interweb thing is cool
Discussion: The Globe and Mail and Gizmodo
Pete Cashmore / Mashable!:
Google Reader Stats are Bulls**t (With Proof)  —  Google Reader stats, in case you don't know, are bulls**t.  In fact, all Feedburner stats for most top blogs are bulls**t due to the effect of default feeds.  Want 80,000 free subscribers?  How about 200K or more?  Read on.
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Google Tops Feed Reader and Social Bookmark Rankings  —  Some interesting audience-engagement data just came out from AddThis.com, which ranks the top feed readers and bookmarking services by how actively they are used.  These rankings are based on how many times people across the Web add …
RELATED:
Nick / Rough Type:
Caterpillar: Web 2.0 giant  —  There may well be a time when Facebook, YouTube, Digg, and the other Web 2.0 fashion plates make some real money, but for the moment their results pale in comparison to those of the most unexpected beneficiary of the web's recent evolution, the industrial-age stalwart Caterpillar.
USA Today:
Google's GPhone strategy could keep user costs low  —  SEATTLE - Google's (GOOG)widely anticipated - and top secret - GPhone mobile phone project could trump Apple's (APPL) glitzy iPhone - by going low cost and low tech, tech analysts say.  —  That scenario gained credence last week …
Discussion: Gizmodo and textually.org
Marshall Kirkpatrick / Read/WriteWeb:
Attention - NewsGator and Bloglines Join APML Workgroup  —  Web users interested in personalization, privacy and increasing sophistication in their applications take note: the Attention Data spec APML (Attention Profiling Markup Language) gained substantial momentum today with the announcement …
RELATED:
Nick Bradbury:   FeedDemon, NetNewsWire and NewsGator Inbox to Support APML
PR Newswire:
Broadcom Leaps Ahead of the Competition with the World's First '3G Phone on a Chip' Solution  —  Over a Year Ahead of Competitors, Broadcom Introduces Single-Chip HSUPA Processor  —  BCM21551 Features Full CMOS RF, Rich Multimedia, Bluetooth(R), FM Radio, FM Transmitter and More …
RELATED:
Marguerite Reardon / CNET News.com:
Broadcom introduces 3G on chip
Discussion: eWEEK.com
Allen Stern / CenterNetworks:
Is Scribd a Porn Document Network?  —  Please note that this post is NOT SAFE FOR WORK (NSFW).  While I have not embedded any offending images, some of the content and links is objectionable.  —  One of the most popular services for bloggers is called Scribd, a so-called "YouTube for Documents".
Mike Sakal / East Valley Tribune:
P.V. man sentenced in porn spam case  —  In what federal officials call the nation's first case to convict spammers, two men involved in an international pornographic spamming business, including one from Paradise Valley, were sentenced to more than five years in prison, the Justice Department announced Friday.
Discussion: Salon and Digital Media Wire
RELATED:
Tom Spring / Today @ PC World:
Porn Spammers Get Five Years
Discussion: Slashdot
Rob Mead / Tech.co.uk:
Pirates take over anti-piracy website  —  The Pirate Bay scores another victory over the music biz  —  Software pirates have launched an astonishing smash 'n' grab raid on the music biz, stealing the domain name of one of its foremost anti-piracy bodies.  —  The Pirate Bay has now taken …
Salon:
Hitachi hatches a humongous hard drive  —  It's Monday morning and you, like me, are wondering, What, no news from the Perpendicular Magnetic Recording Conference taking place in Tokyo next week?  —  No worries, I've got you covered.  Word today is that next week's confab of hard drive technologists …
Matthew Karnitschnig / Wall Street Journal:
Discovery Plans to Buy Web Site  —  Discovery Communications Inc., looking to jump-start a stalled Internet strategy, plans to acquire the HowStuffWorks.com Web site for $250 million.  —  Discovery, owner of cable channels such as Discovery Channel and Animal Planet, said it will use the site …
John Markoff / Bits:
Bill Gates Presents the One (Really Big) Ringy Dingy  —  For Cisco, Nortel, Avaya and the other companies that make telecommunications equipment, this Tuesday is a sort of D-Day.  —  That day, Bill Gates plans to introduce Microsoft's invasion into their business, with a new line of software …
Declan McCullagh / CNET News.com:
Secret manual shows Comcast (gasp!) protects customers' privacy  —  Comcast's confidential "Law Enforcement Handbook" was publicly disclosed today.  —  It turns out to be a 35-page manual dated September 2007 for police and intelligence agencies to use when they're trying to extract information out of Comcast about their subscribers.
Discussion: DSLreports
Greenpeace News:
iPhone's hazardous chemicals  —  When will promises of a greener Apple bear fruit?  —  International — Scientific tests, arranged by Greenpeace, reveal that Apple's iPhone contains hazardous chemicals.  The tests uncovered two types of hazardous substances, some of which have already been eliminated by other mobile phone makers.
 
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 More Items: 
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Tipsheet: Information security on the cheap
Leo Lewis / Times of London:
SAP rules out BEA bid
Will / New Scientist Invention Blog:
Microsoft mind reading
Ryan Naraine / Ryan Naraine's Zero Day:
Storm Worm botnet partitions for sale
Discussion: The Register
Phil Windley / Between the Lines:
Twitter: show me the money!
Eric Eldon / VentureBeat:
Google's sneak attack? Adsense for Facebook
Marshall Kirkpatrick / Read/WriteWeb:
AdBrite: Full Page "Skip This Ad" Units Now Available for Everyone
Discussion: Sam Harrelson
 Earlier Items: 
Ed Burnette / Ed Burnette's Dev Connection:
Yet another Ajax toolkit: Eclipse RAP 1.0
Richard MacManus / Read/WriteWeb:
Taptu Launches New Type of Mobile Search
Discussion: Wap Review and Searchviews
Jason Lee Miller / WebProNews:
Strangers A 'Cost of Doing Business' On MySpace
Discussion: Ars Technica
Charlie White / Gizmodo:
Cellphones: Hyundai W-100 Wrist Phone Most Feature-Rich Yet, and Now It's Real
Discussion: Crave and Boing Boing Gadgets
Anne Broache / CNET News.com:
Supreme Court dumps Microsoft, Best Buy appeal
AMD:
AMD Introduces New Tuner Products to Deliver Exceptional HDTV on PCs
Oliver Starr / blognation:
Jiglu is a Smarter Way to Tag Your Content
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Alex Sherman / CNBC:
Analyzing Comcast's spinoff of cable networks, purposefully structured with low debt: the move might be a signal to the industry that it's time to consolidate

Daniel Thomas / Financial Times:
James Harding says the Tortoise-Observer deal could create a profitable media group and there isn't a guaranteed future for the Observer with the Guardian

John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
Substack, very deliberately, tries to have it both ways by saying publications on their platform are independent while presenting them all as parts of Substack

 
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