Check out Mini-Techmeme for simple mobiles or Techmeme Mobile for modern smartphones.
12:15 PM ET, August 2, 2008

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Matt Richtel / New York Times:
Don't Want to Talk About It?  Order a Missed Call  —  When Alexis Gorman, 26, wanted to tell a man she had been dating that the courtship was over, she felt sending a Dear John text message was too impersonal.  But she worried that if she called the man, she would face an awkward conversation or a confrontation.
Jeremiah Owyang / Web Strategy:
How “Janet” Fooled the Twittersphere She's the Voice of Exxon Mobil  —  The game is up, “Janet” is not an official Exxon representative  —  A few days ago, the Twittersphere was curious, interested, and excited to see a member of Exxon Mobil's employee ranks to join the twitter conversation …
RELATED:
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
What Should Exxon Do About Twitter?  Absolutely Nothing  —  Energy giant Exxon Mobil fell victim to a Twitter user spoofing official use of an account named ExxonMobilCorp, it was discovered yesterday, and now a discussion is unfolding among social media advocates about what the company should do.
Leslie Cauley / USA Today:
AT&T: 'We're all about wireless'  —  DALLAS — Wonder why the smoking-hot 3G Apple iPhone only costs $199, less than half the price of the original?  Here's a two-word hint: Randall Stephenson.  —  Stephenson, who became AT&T's (T) chairman and CEO a year ago, championed the idea of paying Apple …
RELATED:
MG Siegler / VentureBeat:
AT&T iPhone deal extended to 2010.  Did Apple mortgage its future for a subsidy?
Frederic Lardinois / ReadWriteWeb:
AOL is Getting Serious About Lifestreaming: Buys SocialThing  —  SocialThing, a lifestreaming/social aggregation site, has been acquired by AOL.  We currently have no information about the final price of the acquisition, but given that SocialThing was still in private beta, we assume that it was relatively low.
Discussion: Startup Meme
RELATED:
Cade Metz / The Register:
Privacy watchdog hoists Google by its own petard  —  Spews Street View pics of Larry Page Lexus  —  In an effort to prove that Google is a serious threat to the personal privacy of people everywhere, the National Legal and Policy Center has exposed countless Google Street View pics that detail …
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Mobile Web Wars Videos: Does Anybody Care About Android?  —  A week ago, I put together a roundtable about the upcoming mobile platform wars between the iPhone, Google's Android, and older platforms like Nokia's.  One thing I discovered as I was organizing the event was that it was really hard …
Josh Lowensohn / Webware.com:
Facebook's auto-tagging feature could be tip of tagging iceberg  —  One of my favorite Facebook features is auto-tagging.  It happened to me last night by accident and ended up being one of those very rare moments of using a product where I got a big grin on my face.
The Technium:
People Want To Pay  —  Yes, everything will be free, but in my experience people want to pay.  They really do!  People, mobs of them, will grab stuff that is free.  They will try stuff for free that they would never touch if they had to pay.  They will always gravitate, on average, to the lowest price, and what is lower than free?
Peter Whoriskey / Washington Post:
Instant-Messagers Really Are About Six Degrees from Kevin Bacon  —  Big Microsoft Study Supports Small World Theory  —  Turns out, it is a small world.  —  The so-called small world theory, embodied in the old saw that there are just “six degrees of separation” between any two strangers on Earth …
Discussion: Smart Mobs
Rob Cottingham / ReadWriteWeb:
Tag Clouds R.I.P.?  —  I loved tag clouds from the moment I saw them, and I still do.  Two years ago, they roamed the social web like buffalo on the pre-Columbian plains of North America... huge, thundering herds of keywords of all shades and sizes.  And you'll see them to this day on many …
Discussion: HighTouch
Fred / A VC:
The Lazy and Smarter Web  —  If you spend a lot of time reading web/tech blogs, you'll be familiar with the concept of the “lazy web”.  The idea is instead of doing a lot of work researching/googling, you just ping/spam your social net with a question and get them to do the work for you.
Discussion: VCMike's Blog
Duncan Riley / The Inquisitr:
Site Meter causing Internet Explorer failure  —  Traffic measuring tool Sitemeter is blocking users of Internet Explorer from accessing sites using the service.  —  According to a tip to The Inquisitr, the problem happens when anybody using Internet Explorer tries to open any sites …
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Yahoo Shareholder Vote: Old Board Stays Put (While AOL Makes Another Boneheaded Move!)  —  After its annual meeting today, as its board members had lunch together, Yahoo released the results of its shareholder vote and it seems we will still have CEO Jerry Yang to kick around some more.
RELATED:
Richard Bennett / CircleID:
FCC's Comcast Ruling Inconsistent and Incoherent  —  After voting on the Comcast order today, Kevin Martin and his Democratic Party colleagues issued press releases telling us how they saved the Internet from Comcast's discriminatory practices, but they've failed to release the actual order they adopted and subsequently re-wrote.
RELATED:
Comcast:
Comcast Statement on FCC Internet Regulation Decision
 
 Archived Page Info: 
This is a snapshot of Techmeme at 12:15 PM ET, August 2, 2008.

View the current page or another snapshot:


Page version:
 
 Techmeme Sponsor Posts: 
TELUS Digital:
Are you ready for the era of agentic AI?  —  Tech leaders are always talking about what's next, and right now, agentic AI is dominating the discourse.  Equip yourself with the info you need in this recorded webinar.
Tribe AI:
State of AI: Adoption, Challenges and Recommendations  —  Examining the current state of AI, the key challenges organizations face, and practical recommendations for utilizing AI integration alongside other best practices.
Zoho:
Everything new in the Zoho Sign Android mobile app  —  With a 4.5 star user rating in the Google Play Store, Zoho Sign's native mobile app for Android is a must-have for secure, swift, and hassle-free paperwork management.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.
Sponsor Techmeme
 
 See Also: 
Techmeme: site main
Techmeme River: reverse chronological Techmeme
Techmeme Mobile: for phones
Techmeme Leaderboard: Techmeme's top sources
 
 Subscribe: 
Techmeme RSS feed
Techmeme on X
Techmeme on Mastodon
 
 
 More Items: 
Nilay Patel / Engadget:
Netshare iPhone tethering app reappears in the App Store.
Yahoo!:
Yahoo! Announces Results of 2008 Annual Stockholder Meeting
Josh Catone / SitePoint Blogs:
Advice: Microsoft Should Invest Y Combinator-style
Discussion: HipMojo.com and blist
Deborah Jian Lee / Reuters:
NYPD calls on citizens for amateur video evidence
Robert McMillan / Computerworld:
Apple bails on Black Hat talk
Daniel Shen / DigiTimes:
HTC to begin shipping Android-based handsets in 4Q08 as scheduled
Discussion: last100, IntoMobile and jkOnTheRun
Industry Standard:
Dell tries to trademark “cloud computing”
Discussion: WebGuild and CenterNetworks
Doug Aamoth / CrunchGear:
Asus still sticking with the whole 7-inch screen thing
Discussion: Gadgetell and Engadget
 Earlier Items: 
PBS:
The Eyes Have It  —  So little real information leaks out of Apple …
Ben Jones / TorrentFreak:
EFF Tool Hunts BitTorrent Throttling ISPs
David Kravets / Threat Level:
RIAA's Lawsuit Strategy in the Balance at Jammie Thomas Hearing Monday
Discussion: MarketingShift and Slashdot
Josh Lowensohn / Webware.com:
Resnooze puts helpful nags in your e-mail
Discussion: WebWorkerDaily
Ben Kuchera / Opposable Thumbs:
Mole attack: 360 price cuts on all hardware in September
Elinor Mills / CNET News.com:
New worm targets Facebook, MySpace
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
We Know How Many Kindles Amazon Has Sold: 240,000
Katie Marsal / AppleInsider:
Carmack: iPhone more powerful than Nintendo DS, PSP combined
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Justin Sink / Bloomberg:
The White House is eliminating the traditional press pool access for wire services after a court ordered the administration to lift its restrictions on the AP

Sewell Chan / Columbia Journalism Review:
Houston Landing, a nonprofit that launched in 2023 with $20M+ in philanthropic funding, says it is shutting down mid-May and laying off its 43 employees

Financial Times:
CNN CEO Mark Thompson says the company plans to roll out a “suite” of digital subscription services, including at least one in 2025, to combat TV's decline

 
Sister Sites:

Mediagazer
 Top news and commentary for media professionals from all around the web
memeorandum
 What US political commentators are discussing online right now
WeSmirch
 The top celebrity news from all around the web on a single page