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1:55 PM ET, April 14, 2008

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
b2i.us:
Blockbuster Proposes Combination With Circuit City  —  Blockbuster Inc. (NYSE: BBI) today announced that it has offered to acquire Circuit City Stores, Inc. (NYSE: CC) for at least $6.00 per share in cash, subject to due diligence.  The offer was made in a letter sent to Circuit City Chairman …
RELATED:
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Blockbuster sees media convergence; Offers to buy Circuit City  —  Updated: Here's a deal where 1 + 1 = 0.5: Blockbuster is offering to acquire Circuit City for “a least $6 a share.”  —  Blockbuster went public on Monday (statement) with an offer to buy Circuit City.
Don Reisinger / CNET News.com:
Blockbuster's pending acquisition of Circuit City is laughable  —  Reuters is reporting that Blockbuster has offered Circuit City between $1 billion to $1.3 billion to acquire the floundering electronics retailer.  And now, all that's left for us to do is laugh.
Marcus Yam / DailyTech:   Blockbuster Makes Public Offer to Buy Circuit City
Joseph Weisenthal / paidContent.org:
Circuit City: Haven't We Seen This Before?
Discussion: Valleywag
Bloomberg:
Blockbuster Bids Up to $1.35 Billion for Circuit City
Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:   Crazy Blockbuster Circuit City Bid Great News For Netflix
Luigi Lugmayr / I4U News:   Blockbuster tries to buy Circuit City
Peter Kafka / Silicon Alley Insider:
Blockbuster: Carl Icahn Loves Our Circuit City Bid. Really (BBI)
Discussion: Portfolio.com
Arnold Kim / MacRumors:
‘OpenMac’ Promises $399 Headless Mac... But Not From Apple  —  A company called Psystar has started advertising a $399 computer called “OpenMac” which claims to be a Leopard compatible Mac built from standard PC-parts.  For $399, you get a tower computer with the following specs:  — 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
RELATED:
Charles Jade / Infinite Loop:
Company claims to sell Mac clone for $399  —  Source: Psytar (at least until Apple Legal has their morning coffee)  —  Personal technology enthusiasts yearning for the Mac Experience without the Apple Tax—that huge markup that Mac users pay for off-the-shelf PC hardware with OS X—your days of gnashing teeth may be over.
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Apple 2.0:
What's wrong with a $399 Mac?  —  It's been almost a decade since Steve Jobs drove the last of the licensed Mac clones out of business, but that hasn't stopped bargain hunting users from trying to get the Mac experience without feeding Apple's hefty profit margins.  —  Persuading a generic PC to run OS X isn't that hard to do.
Peter Kafka / Silicon Alley Insider:
Nick Denton “Pruning” Gawker Media, Ditching Three Sites  —  Gawker Media boss Nick Denton is “rationalizing” his blog business by spinning off three underperforming sites: Wonkette, Gridskipper and Idolator.  The sites will find new homes/owners as follows:
Scott Holden / The Official Salesforce Blog:
Introducing Salesforce for Google Apps  —  Today we are excited to announce that we have expanded our partnership with Google and together have delivered an industry-changing new product called Salesforce for Google Apps.  It went live last night at 11pm PST to all salesforce.com customers.
Discussion: Digital Daily, CRM FYI and Changing Way
RELATED:
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
More Details On The Google-Salesforce “Enemy Of My Enemy Is My Friend” Alliance
Amazon Web Services Blog:
Storage Space, The Final Frontier  —  Developers who have found our cloud computing model attractive have been asking us to be a little bit more open about what we are planning to do in the future.  To date we've simply announced new additions to the Amazon Web Services lineup …
RELATED:
RightScale Blog:
Amazon takes EC2 to the next level with persistent storage volumes
Werner Vogels / All Things Distributed:
Persistent Storage for Amazon EC2
Verizon:
Verizon Wireless Offers Smartphone Users Unlimited Web Browsing And Access To Favorite E-mail Accounts  —  For customer inquiries, please call 800-922-0204 or go to  —  BASKING RIDGE, NJ — Multi-tasking moms, tech savvy young professionals, and entrepreneurs will be able to access e-mail …
Thomas Ricker / Engadget:
Willcom's D4 MID pumps Vista on Intel Atom, into our hearts  —  Check it out, 'cause you're looking at what must be the world's smallest QWERTY device capable of running Windows Vista Home Premium SP1.  At least it will be when it makes its debut in Japan come June.
Virtual Earth:
Live Maps is back in the UK!  —  Before I get into the background of what has happened in the last 48 hours with Live Maps in the UK, I should clear up what you are here to find out - For our customers in the UK, http://maps.live.com no longer redirects and will take you straight to Live Maps.
Jeff Jarvis / BuzzMachine:
The press becomes the press-sphere  —  One problem I've had with much discussion about the future of news lately is that it's too press-centric.  It focuses on the press as if it were at the center of the world, as if it owned news, as if news depended on it, as if solving the press' problems solves news.
Richard MacManus / ReadWriteWeb:
TwitLinks: The Techmeme of Twitter?  —  Just launched today is a new Twitter mashup called Twitlinks.  This one aggregates the latest links posted to Twitter by tech industry pundits.  The end result is a homepage that kind of resembles Techmeme, only without the threading of topics.
Discussion: Download Squad
 
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 More Items: 
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
Keeping pace? Torrents of traffic and the Internet backbone
Anne Helmond / The Blog Herald:
Do You Care Where Your Comments Are?  —  The discussion surrounding …
The Boy Genius Report:
Sony KDL-XBR6, KDL-XBR7, and KDL-XBR8 specs, and release dates!
Brian Stelter / New York Times:
At CBS, Bad News Doesn't End at 7
Greg Sandoval / CNET News.com:
NAB: Will DVRs thwart rise of online TV shows?
Martin LaMonica / CNET News.com:
Microsoft touts media business gains with Silverlight
Dan Primack / PE Hub Blog:
That's Rich: FM Publishing Gets Big Valuation
 Earlier Items: 
Mike Yamamoto / Crave: The gadget blog:
When one headset just isn't enough  —  Another case of life imitating art.
Todd Bishop / San Francisco Chronicle:
Young tech giants give to Obama
N'Gai Croal / Level Up:
Scoop: Kaplan Teams Up With Aspyr Media to Create an SAT Test …
Marguerite Reardon / CNET News.com:
T-Mobile betting on 3G to close on high-speed competitors
Discussion: eWeek and DSLreports
Philipp Lenssen / Google Blogoscoped:
Third-Party Gmail Redesign Style
Discussion: Mashable!
BBC:
Hackers exploit poor website code
Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:
3G iPhone: What we know and what we don't
Justin Smith / Inside Facebook:
Facebook Profile redesign pushed back several weeks
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Caitlin Huston / The Hollywood Reporter:
Internal memo: Hearst Magazines president announces layoffs as part of a decision to “reallocate resources” to “continue our focus on digital innovation”

Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announced she will leave the agency on January 20; she was the first woman to be confirmed to lead the agency

Lachlan Cartwright / The Ankler:
Sources: MSNBC renewed Rachel Maddow's contract early this fall, but with a pay cut; MSNBC bosses' plan to shake up daytime and weekend programming

 
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