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5:30 PM ET, March 21, 2008

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Paul Miller / Engadget:
Sony hates you, offers $50 “Fresh Start” option to build your laptop crapware-free  —  Sony has quite the history of crippling excellent, beautiful hardware with horrible, useless software.  The company's UX UMPC bluescreened on us the first time we turned it on, and crashed the first time we tried …
RELATED:
Tom Krazit / One More Thing:
Think before you install  —  Look, people, it's 2008: You're responsible for what you install on your PC.  —  The outrage is spewing forth over Apple's move to include Safari 3.1 as part of its Software Update program.  The new twist is that Windows users who never had installed Safari …
RELATED:
Computerworld:
Apple pushes Windows Safari via iTunes updater  —  Windows users can now get more than just songs through iTunes; Apple is using a software updater in the Windows version of the app to push out its Safari Web browser to users of XP and Vista.  —  SECURITY / more stories...
Matt Buchanan / Gizmodo:
Apple Really Wants Windows Drones to Use Safari  —  Apple Really Wants Windows Users to Get Safari  —  If you pop open Apple Software Update in Windows, you'll see a fresh item in there today: Safari 3.1.  Even if you don't already have it installed.  Before, it worked eponymously …
Discussion: Geek News Central
Mike Schramm / The Unofficial Apple Weblog:
Is Apple pushing Safari 3.1 on Windows users?
Discussion: Gizmodo, Apple Gazette and CyberNet
Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:
Facebook Toast?  Hot Today, Dead Tomorrow—Like AOL?  —  For now, Facebook continues to take over the world.  Its global traffic is about to blow past MySpace's, its image (and Mark Zuckerberg's) has recovered from the Beacon fiasco, and it has raised a big enough cash pile that it should be able to power through any downturn.
Farhad Manjoo / Salon:
The Wall Street Journal's Web site is already (secretly) free  —  Late in January, Rupert Murdoch put an end to speculation that he would set free the Wall Street Journal's subscription-only Web site.  —  While he planned to “expand” the site's free offerings, “the really special things …
Stefanie Olsen / CNET News.com:
Q&A: Battelle talks blog roll-ups, Google, and Federated Media's future  —  John Battelle knows tech booms and busts.  He's been at the forefront of them for nearly two decades.  —  In 1993, he co-founded Wired, a print magazine that set a standard in technology coverage and spawned popular sites …
RELATED:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:   Federated Media's Battelle Slams Rival, Hints At Investing In Publishers
Giveaway of the Day:
Capture and find anything!  —  Evernote Beta lets you capture any information from your real and digital life and then find it all easily anytime.  —  The latest version of Evernote, currently an invitation-only beta, gives users more options than ever before to create and find their memories …
RELATED:
Brad Linder / Download Squad:
Signup for Evernote for free - today only
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
CBS Sports Facing March Madness Backlash on Facebook.  “This App Blows.”  —  Don't mess with March Madness.  CBS Sports is learning that lesson the hard way on Facebook, where a major backlash is happening over its NCAA basketball bracket application.  Yes, this is the same application …
Sarah Lai Stirland / Threat Level:
Stanford Law Professor Larry Lessig Bets ‘Wikipedia’ Approach Will Transform Congress  —  Stanford law professor Larry Lessig plans to use collaborative software to change Congress.  —  Courtesy Larry Lessig  —  A prominent Stanford law professor on Thursday launched an ambitious project …
RELATED:
Danis Dayanov / The LinkedIn Blog:
The Engineering component |  LinkedIn Company Profiles  —  Over the course of the last years there were several important features that we've brought to you.  The past few months in particular has seen the rapid deployment of features such as these: Profile photos, Redesigned Homepage …
RELATED:
Mark Hendrickson / TechCrunch:
LinkedIn, Now For Companies  —  LinkedIn, the boring social network …
Doug Aamoth / CrunchGear:
Firefox 3: So easy a caveman could do it  —  Firefox 3 won't be out of beta until the end of June but Mozilla told Reuters yesterday that anyone can go ahead and download the most recent version and run it without worrying too much.  It's now stable enough for everyone, not just developers.
RELATED:
Jim Finkle / Reuters:
Firefox 3 Ready for Prime Time
Discussion: Geek News Central
Caroline McCarthy / CNET News.com:
Gibson turns volume up to 11 with new ‘Guitar Hero’ lawsuit  —  Legendary guitar manufacturer Gibson Guitar has sued six major retailers—Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Target, Amazon.com, Gamestop, and Toys-R-Us—for selling Activision's Guitar Hero video game series, MarketWatch reported Friday.
Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:
Report: 95% of Internet video stuck looking longingly at TV  —  Video content online may be growing in popularity, but the vast majority isn't getting anywhere near a TV screen.  New survey results from Macrovision (commissioned by Harris Interactive) say that only a small number of adults …
Philipp Lenssen / Google Blogoscoped:
Creating a Googleshare Map With Google Spreadsheets  —  The new gadget feature of Google Spreadsheets makes it easy to add heat maps.  This can be used to create a world map illustrating the Googleshare for a given keyword across different countries; now-Google employee Douwe Osinga called this “Land Geist” a couple of years ago.
Nivi / Venture Hacks:
Getting Recommended … On April 1st, we started publishing the best damn term sheet hacks we could find.  Why?  Because a lot of entrepreneurs ask the same question: … We're trying to make everything we've learned—from other entrepreneurs, investors, and lawyers—readily available.
 
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 More Items: 
Philipp Lenssen / Google Blogoscoped:
Google Analytics Benchmarking Live
Om Malik / GigaOM:
For Bloggers, Legit News Photos For Free
Discussion: Mashable!
Washington Post:
FBI Opens Probe of China-Based Hackers
Discussion: Mashable!
Nicholas Deleon / CrunchGear:
Emirates becomes first airline to allow cellphone calls while in flight
David Thier / Wired News:
World of Warcraft Shines Light on Terror Tactics
Discussion: Destructoid, Kotaku, Massively and Digg
Zach Epstein / The Boy Genius Report:
T-Mobile BlackBerry 8120 & 8820 Roll Out Details and Schedule
Discussion: CrunchGear, Gizmodo and Ubergizmo
Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
Swotti - A Semantic Opinions Aggregator
Fred / A VC:
Working On Vacation  —  The title of this post sounds like an oxymoron.
Discussion: Valleywag
 Earlier Items: 
Jacqui Cheng / Infinite Loop:
Buy a refurb iPod nano, get $15 on the iTunes Store
Charles Cooper / Coop's Corner:
Twitter's political coming of age?
Steve O'Hear / last100:
Don't turn off the life support just yet: Joost coming to the browser
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Do you have to be in every conversation?
Eric Bangeman / Ars Technica:
DirecTV DVR clampdown: a sober reminder of DRM suckitude
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Breaking: FCC Confirms that Big Winner in Spectrum Auction is Verizon.
Paul Boutin / New York Times:
So You Want to Be a Blogging Star?
Discussion: The Social Times and Valleywag
Thomas Ricker / Engadget:
Little old lady suing Sony, Samsung, Nokia and everyone else …
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Andrew Goudsward / Reuters:
A US judge orders the White House to lift access restrictions imposed on the AP while the AP's lawsuit moves forward

Alex Mahadevan / Poynter:
A survey of 1,128 US adults: 49% have no interest in using an AI chatbot to get info from news outlets, and 27% believe outlets often use AI to write articles

Michael M. Grynbaum / New York Times:
Some senior Trump press aides have refused to engage with reporters' questions because the journalists listed identifying pronouns in their email signatures

 
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