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4:10 PM ET, May 20, 2008

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Jesusdiaz / Gizmodo:
iPhone 3G Launch Date Confirmed  —  We all suspected it, but now it is confirmed: someone very, very close to the 3G iPhone launch has told me that Apple will announce their new model at the WWDC Keynote on June 9th.  The second-generation iPhone will be available worldwide right after the launch …
Joanna Stern / LAPTOP Magazine:
First Look: OLPC XO Generation 2.0  —  I am here this morning in Cambridge, Mass., at OLPC's Global Country Workshop.  Opening the conference this morning was OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte, who announced the second generation of the OLPC XO laptop.  —  Negroponte didn't share many details …
RELATED:
Wade Roush / Xconomy:
Negroponte Unveils 2nd Generation OLPC Laptop: It's an E-Book  —  Wade Roush wrote:  —  I'm “live blogging” from the One Laptop Per Child Foundation's day-long media event at the MIT Media Lab.  The big news is that OLPC founder Nicholas Negrponte has just unveiled the design …
Discussion: Guardian Unlimited and Slashdot
Matt Buchanan / Gizmodo:
OLPC XO Laptop 2.0 Has Dual Touchscreens, Looks Amazing and Future-y
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Investing legends circle Yahoo; Does a breakup make sense?  —  The Microhoo saga has attracted a who's who list of investors to Yahoo in a big bet that Carl Icahn will force some sort of “shareholder value.”  —  The latest investing star to enter the Microhoo sweepstakes is T. Boone Pickens …
Discussion: Deal Journal
RELATED:
Linda Rosencrance / PC World:
Report: Google Holds Meeting on Revived Microsoft-Yahoo Deal
Discussion: Valleywag and InfoWorld
Times of London:
Google in urgent talks over Microsoft-Yahoo!
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
TechMeme Finally Adds Search  —  Tech news site TechMeme launched on September 12, 2005.  It was an immediate hit and remains the most important blog news aggregator: Dan Farber wrote perhaps the best description of the site to date, back in 2007: “TechMeme provides a one-page, aggregated …
RELATED:
Techmeme News:
Techmeme listens: 32 months in the making, search arrives!  —  Hours after Techmeme launched in 2005, search uberblogger Danny Sullivan remarked “there's no keyword search facility that I can see.  I want that, and soon!”  Nobody wants to let Danny down, so I got right to work and 32 months later, a search box now sits atop the site.
Discussion: Mashable! and bub.blicio.us
Slash Lane / AppleInsider:
Apple's Mac sales up 50 percent in April  —  The blistering success of Apple's personal computer business continues to turn heads, with Mac unit sales growing 50 percent year-over-year for the month of April compared to just 17 percent growth by the broader market.
Ionut Alex Chitu / Google Operating System:
Videos Taken Down From YouTube  —  YouTomb is an interesting project by MIT Free Culture that collects YouTube videos taken down because of copyright infringements.  “More specifically, YouTomb continually monitors the most popular videos on YouTube for copyright-related takedowns.
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Netflix Roku: Free Is Such A Beautiful Word  —  Netflix made a big splash today with their announcement of a $100 set top box, built by a California startup called Roku, that streams free movies (for Netflix subscribers) to the living room.  —  Good for them.
RELATED:
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Apple 2.0:
Apple vs. Netflix: How do they stack up?
Discussion: Ars Technica, PC World and Techland
Zach Epstein / The Boy Genius Report:
AT&T Launching Free WiFi for Laptop Connect; All Smartphones Later in 2008  —  Here we go again!  AT&T will be doing the free WiFi dance that we've all become familiar with, but this time it has nothing to do with iPhones.  Starting tomorrow, Tuesday May 20th, all Laptop Connect customers …
Discussion: jkOnTheRun and Mobility Site
RELATED:
Josh Catone / ReadWriteWeb:
Report: The Mobile Web is the New Hangout  —  According to Opera's survey of the more 11.9 million Opera Mini users in March, almost 41% of mobile traffic now goes to social networking — up to 60% in some countries, including the US.  Compare that to about 6% of total web traffic for social networks outside of the mobile web.
Discussion: The Social Times
RELATED:
Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
How to Make Facebook Useful Again  —  Oh the heels of some of Facebook's missteps (ahem, Beacon) and the proliferation of a myriad of useless, silly, and time-wasting apps, some former Facebook users decided to quit the site for good this year.  However, a handful of early adopter angst doesn't have Facebook worried.
Discussion: Marc's Voice and AppScout
Adam Ostrow / Mashable!:
Bubble Alert: Facebook Traffic Declines 10% in April  —  The latest stats from Nielsen Online show a significant decline in month-over-month unique visitors to Facebook in the US.  In April, traffic fell to 22.4M uniques, down from the 24.9M reported in March.
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Memo to Mark Zuckerberg: The Chicken or the Egg (or the Golden Ticket)  —  Maybe it would be easier to sell Facebook to Microsoft for billions and billions, even though it is not likely you will.  —  But, for the sake of argument, let's take the opposing position about the best future for the hot social-networking site.
Caroline McCarthy / The Social:
Nielsen: MySpace, Club Penguin growth static, LinkedIn soaring  —  The April 2008 iteration of those numbers that Nielsen releases each month about social-networking site activity indicate that growth on News Corp.'s MySpace continues to slow, and that kiddie virtual world Club Penguin …
Mark Hendrickson / TechCrunch:
Hulu Shares Usage Stats, Expands Distribution Network  —  Hulu, the online joint video venture between NBC and News Corp that officially launched two months ago, is sharing some stats on its viewership.  —  According to the Nielsen Net Ratings, Hulu led all network sites in total video streams and overall engagement time in April.
Discussion: VentureBeat and Mashable!
Peter Sanders / Wall Street Journal:
Fans Resist End of Virtual Disneyland  —  Created to Celebrate 50th Anniversary, Free Game to Shut  —  For Walt Disney Co., the task of opening a virtual version of Disneyland on the Web was relatively easy.  Closing it, though, is proving to be quite a bit more difficult …
Philipp Lenssen / Google Blogoscoped:
The Internet FAQ from 2085  —  What was the internet?  —  The internet and the world web was a computing system to transfer human information.  Scientists have based its beginning to the years 1920 to 1940.  —  What was electromail?  —  Electromail was another transport protocol …
 
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 More Items: 
Jason Hiner / Tech Sanity Check:
Nortel claims that it is siphoning network customers away from Cisco
The Star Online:
Bill Gates makes virtual appearance
Discussion: Gizmodo, Engadget and Bink.nu
David Carnoy / CNET News.com:
Is ESPN's new Wi-Fi universal remote the ultimate?
Discussion: Electronista
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:
Windows 7: The information lockdown continues
Scott Ferguson / eWeek:
HP, Wyse Roll Out Thin-Client Notebooks
Matt Asay / CNET News.com:
Apple and MySpace win at Microsoft's expense
Discussion: O'Reilly Radar and Slashdot
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:
Microsoft's $300 million makeover
Jonathan M. Gitlin / Ars Technica:
Modeling the effects of climate change using Google Earth
 Earlier Items: 
The Independent:
Claire Beale on Advertising
Discussion: Gizmodo, MacUser and PSFK
Amy Schatz / Wall Street Journal:
Exclusive Phone Deals Assailed
Darren Waters / BBC NEWS | dot.life:
DRM is dead, long live DRM
Joseph Weisenthal / paidContent.org:
IAC Acquires GirlSense.com Parent StarNet; Targeting Tweens
Karl / DSLreports:
Sprint To Impose 5GB Monthly EVDO Cap …
Reuters:
T-Mobile to keep iPhone exclusivity in Germany
Richard Ford / Times of London:
‘Big Brother’ database for phones and e-mails
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Google Backers Back Aster Data Systems. It's All About The Clusters.
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Alex Sherman / CNBC:
Analyzing Comcast's spinoff of cable networks, purposefully structured with low debt: the move might be a signal to the industry that it's time to consolidate

Daniel Thomas / Financial Times:
James Harding says the Tortoise-Observer deal could create a profitable media group and there isn't a guaranteed future for the Observer with the Guardian

John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
Substack, very deliberately, tries to have it both ways by saying publications on their platform are independent while presenting them all as parts of Substack

 
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