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5:20 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
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.
RELATED:
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 …
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 …
RELATED:
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.  Led Zeppelin, having already sold its wretched soul to Cadillac, has now thrown in the last shreds of the towel, agreeing to allow its monstrous headstomping slabs of metalwork to be shrunk down to tiny-whiny ringtones and MP3 files.
Mathew / mathewingram.com/work:
Zeppelin: This Interweb thing is cool
Discussion: The Globe and Mail and Gizmodo
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
Marguerite Reardon / CNET News.com:
Broadcom introduces 3G on chip  —  Chipmaker Broadcom said Monday that it has developed a new processor that integrates all key 3G cellular and mobile technologies onto a single chip.  —  The processor that operates at extremely low powers will enable cell phone makers to build new 3G phones …
Discussion: eWEEK.com
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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".
Will / New Scientist Invention Blog:
Microsoft mind reading  —  Not content with running your computer, Microsoft now wants to read your mind too.  —  The company says that it is hard to properly evaluate the way people interact with computers since questioning them at the time is distracting and asking questions later may not produce reliable answers.
Discussion: Rough Type, Valleywag and Boing Boing
RELATED:
Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:   Could EEGs have prevented Clippy?  Microsoft taps brain scan for UI work
Tom Spring / Today @ PC World:
Porn Spammers Get Five Years  —  Two words "porn" and "spam" have been forever linked ever since e-mail became a mainstay in our digital lives.  Now let's hope the two phrases "porn spam" and "jail time" become forever tied.  Two spammers were prosecuted under the U.S. anti-spam law …
Discussion: Slashdot
RELATED:
Mike Sakal / East Valley Tribune:
P.V. man sentenced in porn spam case
Discussion: Salon and Digital Media Wire
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
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 …
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 …
Eric Eldon / VentureBeat:
Google's sneak attack?  Adsense for Facebook  —  Is Google-the-Goliath sneaking into the Facebook building — via the basement?  —  Google is actively recruiting third-party developers with applications on Facebook to run Adsense ads within applications pages, VentureBeat has learned.
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.
Nokia:
"Ship Me!" says the Nokia N95 8GB  —  Power-packed multimedia computer starts shipping  —  Espoo, Finland - The stunning Nokia N95 8GB made its debut global shipments today, and will be hitting a store near you soon.  The Nokia N95 8GB is the memory-packed big brother of the Nokia N95 multimedia computer.
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 …
 
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 More Items: 
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!
Marshall Kirkpatrick / Read/WriteWeb:
AdBrite: Full Page "Skip This Ad" Units Now Available for Everyone
Discussion: Sam Harrelson
Om Malik / GigaOM:
How to Use Tokbox and Spam Your Friends
Charles Cooper / ZDNet:
Debating the morality behind software development
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
 Earlier Items: 
Charlie White / Gizmodo:
Cellphones: Hyundai W-100 Wrist Phone Most Feature-Rich Yet, and Now It's Real
Discussion: Crave and Boing Boing Gadgets
Erica Ogg / CNET News.com:
False starts in race to future of DVDs
Discussion: Macsimum News
Anne Broache / CNET News.com:
Supreme Court dumps Microsoft, Best Buy appeal
AMD:
AMD Introduces New Tuner Products to Deliver Exceptional HDTV on PCs
Brian Stelter / New York Times:
Celebrities Off Guard? 'TMZ' Is a Hit
Discussion: Ted's Take
Oliver Starr / blognation:
Jiglu is a Smarter Way to Tag Your Content
John Markoff / Bits:
Bill Gates Presents the One (Really Big) Ringy Dingy
 

 
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

Lauren Forristal / TechCrunch:
Tubi launches Scenes, a mobile feature that lets viewers watch 60-to-90-second trailer-style clips from its library to help with content discovery

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

 
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