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4:25 AM ET, February 16, 2008

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Amazon Web Services Goes Down, Takes Many Startup Sites With It  —  Amazon Web Services suffered a major outage this morning, affecting the thousands of Websites that rely on its storage (S3) and cloud computing (EC2) services.  Startups including Twitter, SmugMug, 37Signals, and AdaptiveBlue …
RELATED:
Nick / Rough Type:
Crash: Amazon's S3 utility goes down  —  There are reports that Amazon's Simple Storage Service - called S3 - suffered a “massive” outage this morning, beginning at about 7:30 am eastern time.  At 9:03, an Amazon official posted a note in the service's customer forum, saying, “We can confirm the high error rate you're experiencing.
Ashlee Vance / The Register:
Sun turns to Neil Diamond for Amazon utility ‘killer’  —  Here's Sun Microsystems.  Ahead of the curve with utility computing?  Check.  Interested in gaining the business of today's internet companies?  Big check.  Full of server-side software skills?  Check.
Dylan Tweney / Epicenter:
Wired.com CTO Still Bullish on Amazon S3, Despite Service Failure
Adam / Xobni:
Jeff Bonforte Joins Xobni as CEO  —  Matt and I have hired a new CEO to help us build Xobni.  As those close to Xobni know, we were not actively looking for a CEO.  Nevertheless, when we met Jeff Bonforte several months ago we said We've got to get this guy on our team.
Discussion: Gabor's Blog
RELATED:
David A. Utter / WebProNews:
Yahoo Layoffs Could Cost $25M  —  Most of the charge will hit Yahoo's first quarter numbers  —  The reorganization at Yahoo that resulted in hundreds of layoffs will cost the company millions in related costs.  —  Sending employees out the door of its California offices triggered mass layoff provisions in the state's labor laws.
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:   Another Vice President Parachutes From Yahoo, Lands as CEO of Xobni
Susan / Check Out Blog:
Wal-Mart Chooses a Hi Def Platform  —  Back in December I posted a Blog that said “HD or BD - Does Anyone Care.”  I only received one response, I was very disappointed. :( But following the news from Best Buy and Netflix, everyone's asking “what about Wal-Mart?”  —  Ok, so are you ready...Wal-Mart is going Blu.
RELATED:
Nicholas Carlson / Valleywag:
Screenshots of Yahoo Buzz, a Digg competitor  —  The pace of of product launches from Yahoo is breathless — and with a whiff of desperation.  On February 26, Yahoo plans to beta launch Yahoo Buzz as a competitor to Digg, and a tipster supplied Valleywag with screenshots.
Avram Piltch / LAPTOP Magazine:
CloudBook Unboxing and Very First Impressions  —  Our CloudBook just arrived and we've taken it out of the box and snapped a few photos.  Editor-in-Chief Mark Spoonauer is working on a hands-on post right now, and already we've encountered two significant problems:
RELATED:
Jason Chen / Gizmodo:
Everex Cloudbook Unboxed, Fondled, Declared Horrible So Far
Mark Spoonauer / LAPTOP Magazine:
Everex CloudBook Mini Review Verdict: Needs More Time in the Oven
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
BitTorrent Developers Introduce Comcast Busting Encryption  —  Several BitTorrent developers have joined forces to propose a new protocol extension with the ability to bypass the BitTorrent interfering techniques used by Comcast and other ISPs.  This new form of encryption will be implemented …
New York Post:
BOARD BUCKS YANG  —  YAHOO! DEAL CONCERN  —  While Yahoo! chief Jerry Yang desperately seeks an alternative to Microsoft's $44.6 billion hostile takeover, an independent group of Yahoo!'s board members are taking the lead in shaping the company's future.  —  The informal group is being led by Yahoo! …
RELATED:
Peter Kafka / Silicon Alley Insider:   Jerry Yang's Consolation Prize: $200+ Million Or More
I, Cringely . The Pulpit | PBS:
Plan B  —  Last week I presented my best guess why Microsoft would want to buy Yahoo.  What was it that made Yahoo worth $44.6 billion to Bill Gates?  Based on what I believe is a pretty profound understanding of the innards of each company, I said it came down less to competing with Google …
Discussion: WinExtra
Michael Masnick / Techdirt:
Patentability Of Business Model And Software Patents Comes Under Court Scrutiny  —  Nearly ten years ago, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) made its ruling in the State Street Bank case, effectively allowing patents on business models and greatly expanding the scope of software patents in one single move.
RELATED:
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Comparing Six Ways to Identify Top Blogs in Any Niche  —  In the early days of blogging you could go to the Technorati Blog Index, enter some identifying terms for a particular niche topic and discover what the top blogs were in the field.  —  Identifying top niche blogs is invaluable knowledge …
Discussion: Maple Leaf 2.0 and Jaffe Juice
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols / eWeek:
What's Behind the SCO Buyout  —  What's Behind the SCO Buyout  —  Why would anyone pay $100 million for a company in bankruptcy and with a collapsing business and a total worth, including selling the furniture, of about $5 million?  —  If I had a $100 million lying around …
RELATED:
Ryan Paul / Ars Technica:
Private equity firm pours $100 million into SCO money pit
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
China Mobile: 400,000 Unlocked iPhones On Our Network (AAPL)  —  An eye-opening stat we hadn't seen until today: China Mobile, the biggest wireless carrier in China, said there were 400,000 unlocked iPhones operating on its network at the end of 2007.  —  If true, that represents more than 10% …
Stephen J. Dubner / Freakonomics:
Is MySpace Good for Society?  A Freakonomics Quorum  —  Two little words — “social networking” — have become a giant buzzphrase over the past couple of years, what with the worldwide march of Facebook and headline-ready stories about Web-assisted suicides.  So what's the net effect of social networking?
Discussion: Unit Structures
InfoWorld:
Google finds evil all over the Web  —  The Web is scarier than most people realize, according to research published recently by Google.  —  The search engine giant trained its Web crawling software on billions of Web addresses over the past year looking for malicious pages that tried to attack their visitors.
Greg Linden / Geeking with Greg:
Ranking using Indiana University's user traffic  —  Mark Meiss gave an great talk at WSDM 2008 on a fascinating project where they tapped and anonymized all traffic into and out of Indiana University, then analyzed the behavior of search users.  Their paper, “Ranking Web Sites with Real User Traffic” …
 
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 More Items: 
Nick Booth / Inquirer:
Swedish boffin turns mobile phone into electrocardiogram
Discussion: textually.org and Gizmodo
Duncan Riley / TechCrunch:
stickK Allows You To Put A Contract On Yourself
Elinor Mills / CNET News.com:
Lawsuit claims Google stole idea for Sky layer in Earth
Discussion: TechSpot News
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Facebook Group Wants to Draft Lessig For Congress
Heather Hopkins / Hitwise Intelligence:
Yahoo! Search Draws Younger Audience; Google Users Big Spenders Online
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:
Don't cry for the open-source heroes
gpsdaily.com:
US Marines Select Rockwell Collins ParaNav
Discussion: Gizmodo and Engadget
 Earlier Items: 
Staci D. Kramer / paidContent.org:
News Corp. Working On Music ‘Hulu’ For MySpace
Tiernan Ray / Tech Trader Daily:
Report: Yahoo-Microsoft Investor Overlap Supports A Deal
Jason Chen / Gizmodo:
Dealzmodo: T-Mobile Waives Activation Fee This President's Day Weekend
Todd Bishop / Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
Sales of PlayStation 3 top Xbox 360 in January
Chris Albrecht / NewTeeVee:
Yahoo's New Video Effort Symbolic of Its Troubles
Bryan Gardiner / Wired News:
Want iPhone Apps? Get Ready to Shop in iTunes
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
An Outsider's Flawed View Of Silicon Valley