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11:45 PM ET, February 19, 2008

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Owen Van Natta to Leave Facebook  —  One of the earliest executives at Facebook, Owen Van Natta (pictured here), will be transitioning out of the social-networking company in the next few weeks.  —  Van Natta played a key role in important negotiations related to Facebook's early lucrative ad deal …
Ryan Block / Engadget:
Top ten things to do with your now-defunct HD DVD player  —  Finally, HD DVD users now have the empirical evidence they've been looking for to prove that the universe really is conspiring against them.  We figured we'd make ourselves useful over here and give you a list of things you can do with your poor …
RELATED:
Bryan Gardiner / Epicenter:
Is Apple Ready to Bust a Blu-ray Move?
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
CNET Changes Quarterbacks: Dan Farber Takes Over As Editor In Chief  —  Big news at CNET today - editor in chief Jai Singh is out, and Dan Farber, most recently the editor in chief of CNET-owned ZDNet, is taking over.  In his new role, Dan will oversee the editorial content and user experience for CNET News.
RELATED:
Dan Farber / Between the Lines:
Transition time at ZDNet  —  This will be my last post on Between the Lines and ZDNet for a while.  I am moving over to head up our sister CNET Networks site News.com starting today.  My talented, experienced, incisive and prolific BTL partner Larry Dignan will become Editor in Chief …
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Now AT&T Is Offering An Unlimited Plan For $99  —  OK we're not even done with the Verizon flat-rate phone plans news announcement and here comes Ma Bell with its own $99-a-month unlimited offer. … By the way, this unlimited plan is for voice only.  No changes on data and SMS pricing, which still cost an arm and a leg.
RELATED:
Peter Svensson / Associated Press:
3 cell carriers in price battle  —  NEW YORK - Verizon Wireless introduced an unlimited calling plan $99.99 a month on Tuesday, a move that was quickly matched by AT&T Mobility and T-Mobile USA and weighed down stock prices for all U.S. mobile carriers.  —  Verizon Wireless was apparently …
Alertbox:
Top-10 Application-Design Mistakes … It's hard to write a general article about application design mistakes because the very worst mistakes are domain-specific and idiosyncratic.  Usually, applications fail because they (a) solve the wrong problem, (b) have the wrong features for the right problem …
Katie Marsal / AppleInsider:
Apple taps Linkin Park to perform at “secret” NYC event  —  Apple has enlisted the services of popular alternative rock band Linkin Park to perform at an unannounced company event due to take place in New York City, AppleInsider has been informed.  —  Mike Shinoda, front-man …
Brad Linder / Download Squad:
Is Newspond a Techmeme killer?  —  Ever wonder what you would get if you crossed Digg with Techmeme and gave the new site a slick Web 2.0 style theme?  Yeah, neither did we, but that's a half decent description of Newspond, a news aggregation site that launched today.  —  Newspond is not a social news site like Digg.
Discussion: TechCrunch and Mashable!
Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:
doubleTwist makes DRM-stripping, sharing easy as pie  —  DVD Jon is growing up.  He's no longer helping geeks free their media from DRM—he wants to make it easy enough for our parents to use, too.  Through a new venture called doubleTwist, DVD Jon (Jon Lech Johansen) and partner Monique Farantzos …
RELATED:
BBC:   ‘Hacker’ launches iTunes copying
DealBook:
Microsoft to Authorize Proxy Fight at Yahoo  —  In an escalation of its fight for Yahoo, Microsoft will authorize a proxy fight at the Internet company this week, people briefed on the matter told DealBook.  —  The move, expected to cost about $20 million to $30 million …
RELATED:
Intel:
Intel Delivers ‘Hard-Core’ Eight-Core Platform for PC Performance Aficionados  —  'Skulltrail'-Based Desktop PCs Lead to 3-D, Hi-Definition Media and Gaming Bliss  —  GAME DEVELOPERS CONFERENCE, San Francisco, Feb. 19, 2008 - For those who crave more performance than what four processing cores …
RELATED:
Doug Aamoth / CrunchGear:
Intel offers up eight cores for gamers, video editors
Discussion: Computerworld
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Microsoft: Bill Gates Comes To Stanford  —  Microsoft (MSFT) Chairman Bill Gates is giving a talk at Stanford University's Memorial Auditorium this afternoon.  The talk is called “On Software, Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Giving Back.”  The company has already pre-announced the one official bit of news …
Discussion: Epicenter, eWeek, PR Newswire and GigaOM
James Lewin / Podcasting News:
HandBrake 0.9.2 Released  —  A new version of HandBrake - the free, open-source DVD to MPEG converter - is now available.  —  HandBrake 0.9.2 incorporates many changes, including full support for the AppleTV Take 2 and the latest iPhone/iPod Touch firmware.  —  Download it now.  —  Features for Apple fans:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Feedburner - Kickin It Old School  —  It's always fun to get the monthly Feedburner check for advertising they insert into the RSS feed.  The actual dollar amount is still next to nothing, but I love the fact that, even with nearly 800,000 publishers, 1.4 million managed feeds …
Blake / Inside AdWords:
An update to display URL policy  —  We'd like to give you advance notice of an update to our display URL policy, which will take effect on April 1st.  While the majority of advertisers will not be affected at all, action will be required from those who are.
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
SGN Starts to Look Like a “Real Company.”  Adds Jetman To Its Gaming Platform, About to Raise $10 Million  —  It was only last week that the Social Gaming Network (SGN) and Zynga announced their respective developer platforms for games on Facebook and other social networks.
Discussion: Mashable! and The Social Times
Joe Wilcox / Microsoft Watch:
Microsoft Pulls Troubled Vista Update … Microsoft TechNet forums started to buzz with trouble late last week, after update KB937287 caused some Vista PCs to either fail to properly boot up or enter an endless boot up loop.  —  I got zapped by the update on Friday.
 
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 More Items: 
Karoli / odd time signatures:
EBay Users, Take Note
Lessig Blog:
Two announcements
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:
Microsoft releases February test build of SQL Server 2008
Discussion: eWeek
Matt Hickey / CrunchGear:
Hitachi creates UTHDTVs with wireless HDMI-compatible video
Discussion: Ubergizmo
Nilay Patel / Engadget:
Alienware takes the Area-51 m15x lappy to Penryn town
Discussion: Business Wire and Ubergizmo
Develop:
Rein: “$1bn? We're not that cheap”
Dawn Kawamoto / CNET News.com:
Yahoo outlines golden parachutes for employees
Scott Gu / ScottGu's Blog:
.NET 3.5 Client Product Roadmap
 Earlier Items: 
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
More on Retention Packages and Enhanced Severance at Yahoo
Long Zheng / istartedsomething:
Sneak peek: Microsoft Wireless Laser Keyboard 7000
Discussion: Gizmodo and Engadget
Richard MacManus / ReadWriteWeb:
Digg Gets More Mainstream; But Are Their News Sources Too Narrow Now?
Discussion: CenterNetworks
Ryan Paul / Ars Technica:
Google intoxicates Linux users with Wine improvements
Mitchell Ashley / The Converging Network:
Fail Early, Fail Often
Hadoop and Distributed Computing at Yahoo!:
Yahoo! Launches World's Largest Hadoop Production Application