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3:00 PM ET, November 4, 2007

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
John Markoff / New York Times:
I, Robot: The Man Behind the Google Phone  —  A RETINAL scanner emitting a blue glow monitors the entrance to Andy Rubin's home in the foothills overlooking Silicon Valley.  If the scanner recognizes you, the door unlocks automatically.  (The system makes it easier to deal with former girlfriends, Mr. Rubin likes to joke.
T3:
It's official: iPhone 1.1.2  —  We get some hands-on time with version 1.1.2 of the Apple iPhone firmware, courtesy of our UK iPhone.  —  In the UK, November 9th is D-day for everything iPhone.  One detail about this date strikes the fear of god into iPhone hackers, however …
Discussion: Gadget Lab, Gizmodo, Gadgetell, WinBeta and Digg
RELATED:
Thomas Ricker / Engadget:
iPhone v1.1.2 breaks jailbreak — coming to the UK on Friday  —  When we first got our hands on the UK iPhone back in September, it was already running the 1.1.1 firmware.  The same firmware which helpfully bricked a number of hacked iPhones Stateside upon later release.
Discussion: 9 to 5 Mac
Hiroko Tabuchi / Associated Press:
PCs being pushed aside in Japan  —  TOKYO - Masaya Igarashi wants $200 headphones for his new iPod Touch, and he's torn between Nintendo Co.'s Wii and Sony's PlayStation 3 game consoles.  When he has saved up again, he plans to splurge on a digital camera or flat-screen TV.
Matt Richtel / New York Times:
Devices Enforce Cellular Silence, Sweet but Illegal  —  One afternoon in early September, an architect boarded his commuter train and became a cellphone vigilante.  He sat down next to a 20-something woman who he said was "blabbing away" into her phone.  —  "She was using the word 'like' all the time.
Randall Stross / New York Times:
Why Google Turned Into a Social Butterfly  —  FACEBOOK is an island.  A most convivial island, with one's classmates, friends, workmates and family members close at hand.  An island that since May has been enlivened with entertaining fauna and flora in the form of minisoftware applications.
Discussion: Social Media
Dick / Burning Questions:
Saturday Subscriber Count Drop?  —  If you saw your subscriber count drop precipitously in your Saturday, November 3rd summary from FeedBurner, the reason is that specific subscriber stats from Google Feedfetcher were offline because this service was apparently out late with friends on Friday night …
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
NYTimes Blogrunner v. TechMeme  —  On Thursday we covered the official launch of the NY Times Blogrunner product.  Blogrunner was specifically positioned as a Techmeme-like blog news aggregator, albeit with a human touch to help pick good stories when the algorithm isn't quite up to the task (Techmeme is 100% algorithm based news).
Andy Plesser / Beet.TV:
New Media Investor Alan Patricof: "This old guy can pick 'em," Fortune  —  Earlier this week, I interviewed venture capitalist and longtime media investor Alan Patricof at the paidContent future of business media conference at the Waldorf.  —  Alan is paidContent's sole investor.
Discussion: paidContent.org
Suzanne Nam / Forbes:
The Jonney Machine  —  Intel pushed and prodded.  Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) came in right at the end.  How Taiwan's Asustek built its cheap laptop for grown-ups.  —  A year ago Jonney Shih was searching for a breakthrough.  The Taiwan company he has run since 1994 …
John Timmer / Ars Technica:
Graffiti as password: secure and memorable  —  One of the largest security challenges many organizations face come from the most basic aspect of security: user passwords.  Humans simply have a limited capacity to remember otherwise insignificant streams of letters and digits; as a result …
Micro PC Talk:
VAIO UX490 (finally) announced and on sale  —  More than a month after Amazon debunked rumors surrounding the release of a new UX, Sony has finally put the much awaited UX490 up on their site for sale.  It actually looks like a great deal too.  As previously mentioned …
Juan Carlos Perez / Computerworld:
Google to unveil mobile platform; target: iPhone?  —  Negotiators continued to hammer our deals over the weekend  —  Google negotiators this weekend continue to hammer out agreements with wireless carriers, handset makers, software developers and hardware providers, as the company prepares …
Sean Michael Kerner / internetnews.com:
Microsoft Denies Nigerian Linux Scam  —  Microsoft is a tremendous competitor in every market in the world.  And according to a letter written by Mandriva Linux CEO Francois Bancilhon, it's so bent on winning that it undercut a deal between the Nigerian government and the Linux vendor.
Discussion: The Open Road and Slashdot
strategis.ic.gc.ca:
The Impact of Music Downloads and P2P File-Sharing on the Purchase of Music: A Study for Industry Canada  —  Description: Industry Canada undertook a music file sharing study during 2006-07 to measure the extent to which music downloads over peer-to-peer file sharing networks …
RELATED:
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
Canadian Study: Piracy Boosts CD Sales
 
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 More Items: 
Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life:
Google OpenSocial: Technical Overview and Critique
Antone Gonsalves / TechWeb:
LCD, Plasma TVs Found Highly Reliable
Discussion: Engadget and Gizmodo
Dan Goodin / The Register:
Masked thieves storm into Chicago colocation (again!)
Andy / AndyDickinson.net:
Video Workload survey results
 Earlier Items: 
Jean Yung / Online Journalism Review:
Painting with the palette of the Web: a pointillistic approach to storytelling
ClickZ:
CEO and Three Top Execs Ousted at WebTrends
Brandon Hill / DailyTech:
Best Buy Replaces Backordered $99 Toshiba HD-A2s with HD-A3s
Discussion: Neowin.net
Ashlee Vance / The Register:
Living with robots: The $3.5m DARPA Urban Challenge
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Dominic Ponsford / Press Gazette:
Jason Cowley, the editor-in-chief of UK magazine the New Statesman, is stepping down from the position at the end of December after 16 years

The New York Times Company:
The New York Times names Dick Stevenson as Washington bureau chief; Stevenson has been at the paper for nearly 40 years and Washington editor since 2021

Ayodeji Rotinwa / Columbia Journalism Review:
A look at the Agora Center for Research, a Ugandan newsroom sitting between activism and investigative reporting, posting its work on various social media sites

 
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