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3:40 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:
Don Reisinger / CNET News.com:
Blockbuster's pending acquisition of Circuit City is laughable
Reuters:   Blockbuster offers up to $1.3 bln for Circuit City
Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:
Crazy Blockbuster Circuit City Bid Great News For Netflix
Discussion: Portfolio.com and paidContent.org
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:
RELATED:
Owen Thomas / Valleywag:
Nick “The Slasher” Denton cuts loose three blogs: Gridskipper …
Discussion: paidContent.org and WebProNews
Stephen Shankland / CNET News.com:
Google mapping spec now an industry standard  —  Members of an industry group called the Open Geospatial Consortium have approved Google's KML technology as an open standard for describing some geographic data.  —  KML is used to manage the display of geospatial information in Google Earth …
RELATED:
Michael Weiss-Malik / Google LatLong:
KML: A new standard for sharing maps
Discussion: Official Google Blog
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 …
RELATED:
Werner Vogels / All Things Distributed:
Persistent Storage for Amazon EC2
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.
RELATED:
Official Google Blog:
Salesforce for Google Apps
Discussion: Official Google … and CRM FYI
Mike Butcher / TechCrunch UK:
With Highfield gone, the BBC must now open up  —  As Ashley Highfield leaves the post of the BBC's director of future media and technology to head up Project Kangaroo (the joint online video platform for the BBC, ITV and Channel 4) one wonders what a startup - or even several startups …
RELATED:
Rafat Ali / paidContent.org:
CBS Interactive Opening Menlo Park Office; Big Acquisition Needed?  —  CBS Interactive (NYSE: CBS), the digital media arm of CBS, is finally opening up a fully staffed office in Menlo Park, CA, in an apparent attempt stir innovation and content development...this comes about 18 months …
Discussion: Valleywag
RELATED:
Brian Stelter / New York Times:
At CBS, Bad News Doesn't End at 7
Katie Marsal / AppleInsider:
Apple acknowledges graphics glitch with latest notebooks  —  Apple is investigating problems with its new Penryn-based Intel notebooks that cause flickering and graphics corruption during media playback and web browsing.  —  The two issues have been widely reported by users …
Discussion: Infinite Loop and Macsimum News
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.
Xssniper / Billy (BK) Rios:
Google XSS  —  Now, normally when I find an XSS vulnerability on a popular domain I just report it to the appropriate security team and move on, but this one is interesting...  By taking advantage of the content-type returned by spreadsheets.google.com (and a caching flaw on the part of Google) …
Discussion: Netcraft and Security Watch
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.
The Boy Genius Report:
Sony KDL-XBR6, KDL-XBR7, and KDL-XBR8 specs, and release dates!  —  What could possibly be better than your 52 inch Sony XBR5 TV?  The XBR6, XBR7, and XBR8, of course!  If there was any doubt about Sony's seriousness with the XBR line, we can safely put that to rest right now.
Dan Primack / PE Hub Blog:
That's Rich: FM Publishing Gets Big Valuation  —  Federated Media Publishing has raised between $40 million in $50 million in Series C funding at a $200 million pre-money valuation, peHUB has learned.  Oak Investment Partners led the round, with return backers like Omidyar Network also participating.
 
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 More Items: 
Michael Kanellos / CNET News.com:
GE confirms that wind turbine supply is getting worse
Reid J. Epstein / Newsday:
LI's wireless Internet project seems less likely
Tom Allard / Sydney Morning Herald:
Bosses' power to check email
Discussion: Ars Technica and Slashdot
InfoWorld:
Qualcomm missing in industry pact on LTE patent costs
Discussion: GigaOM, eWeek and Computerworld
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Here Comes More HD Video On the Web—Move Networks Raises $46 Million in C Round
Times of India:
UAE releases one of the ships impounded for cable damage
Discussion: Gizmodo and Engadget
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
Keeping pace? Torrents of traffic and the Internet backbone
 Earlier Items: 
Anne Helmond / The Blog Herald:
Do You Care Where Your Comments Are?  —  The discussion surrounding …
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
Thomas Ricker / Engadget:
Willcom's D4 MID pumps Vista on Intel Atom, into our hearts
Marguerite Reardon / CNET News.com:
T-Mobile betting on 3G to close on high-speed competitors
Discussion: dailywireless.org and eWeek
Philipp Lenssen / Google Blogoscoped:
Third-Party Gmail Redesign Style
Discussion: CyberNet and Mashable!
BBC:
Hackers exploit poor website code