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12:50 PM ET, August 13, 2008

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Slash Lane / AppleInsider:
Three-alarm fire scorches key building on Apple campus  —  A three-alarm fire burned for more than three hours late Tuesday night at Apple's Cupertino headquarters before firefighters were able to fully extinguish the blaze.  —  The Santa Clara County Fire Department said it received reports …
RELATED:
Associated Press:
Fire burns building at Apple HQ in California  —  Firefighters have put out a blaze that burned for more than three hours at the headquarters of computer maker Apple.  —  The Santa Clara County Fire Department says the three-alarm fire scorched the roof and the second level at one of the six buildings …
Peter Svensson / Associated Press:
Best Buy becomes first independent iPhone retailer  —  NEW YORK - Best Buy Co. will start selling the iPhone on Sept. 7, becoming first U.S. chain to do so outside of Apple Inc.'s and AT&T Inc.'s own stores.  —  The announcement by Best Buy expands the availability of Apple's vaunted phone …
RELATED:
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:   Analyst: Apple will sell at least 4.47 million iPhones this quarter
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Apple 2.0:
Analyst: Apple will sell 4.47 million iPhones this quarter
Discussion: dailywireless.org
Owen Thomas / Valleywag:
Spot Runner lays off 100  —  Nick Grouf once told me he started his online-advertising agency, Spot Runner, in Los Angeles, not Silicon Valley, for one reason: The video-production talent he needed to customize television ads en masse was down south.  Now, a laid-off employee tells us Spot Runner …
RELATED:
Rafat Ali / paidContent.org:
Online And TV Ad Firm Spot Runner Lays Off 50 Employees, But Adding 40 More
Discussion: Screenwerk and WebProNews
Liz Gannes / NewTeeVee:
Spot Runner Lays Off 50 in Realignment
Discussion: VentureBeat
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Does Good Tech Need PR?  —  Behind the scenes of many tech blogs these days, there's a rat race for attention, with PR agents struggling to overcome the noise of feeds, news sites and other agents in order to get coverage for their clients.  Tiny web tech companies pay $5k …
RELATED:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
The PR Roadblock On The Road To Blissful Blogging
Yahoo!:
Yahoo! Launches Fire Eagle  —  New Platform Enables Users to Easily Update and Manage Their  —  Location Information Across the Web  —  Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO), a leading global Internet company, today announced the general availability of Fire Eagle (http://fireeagle.yahoo.net) …
RELATED:
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Yahoo launches Fire Eagle: Gauging my personal ROI  —  Yahoo has launched Fire Eagle, a location management service that is the latest step in the company's effort to add social networking features to its portfolio of sites and open its platform.  —  The company describes Fire Eagle as a way …
Discussion: eWeek
Kontra / counternotions:
Why Apple doesn't do “Concept Products”  —  Everyone has a favorite “concept car.”  Whether it's the '54 Firebird, '64 Stiletto, '80 Epcot or '88 Sunraycer, these “flights of imagination” all have one thing in common: they weren't for real.  —  General Motors had no intention of selling these cars …
Discussion: TomsTechBlog.com
Richard Shears / Daily Mail:
Google's Street View captures the moment a drunken Aussie keeled over outside his home  —  A man who fell asleep in a drunken stupor on the grass outside his home was horrified to find his embarrassment posted on the internet.  —  He had been drowning his sorrows over the death of a friend and collapsed after climbing out of a taxi.
Tom Espiner / CNET News.com:
VMware: Don't shut down that virtual machine  —  Update at 8:35 a.m. PT on Wednesday: Since ZDNet UK published this article, a patch for the flaw has been posted to VMware's Web site.  —  VMware virtual machines on all hosts with the company's latest hypervisor, ESX 3.5 Update 2 …
RELATED:
Kelly Fiveash / The Register:
VMware admits ‘time bomb’ rolled past quality control
Discussion: The Console and Virtualization.com
The Boy Genius / Boy Genius Report:
Sprint's '08-'09 roadmap: BlackBerry 8350i, Motorola i576, Motorola i950, and a lot more!  —  What would the world do without BGR?  Well, you'd probably have a lot less broken AVAYA phones, less screaming, and just all around happier wireless executives.  Oh well.
Liam Tung / ZDNet.com.au:
HSBC could order 200,000 iPhones  —  Global banking giant HSBC is considering ditching the BlackBerry and adopting Apple's iPhone as its standard staff mobile device, a move that could result in an order for some 200,000 iPhones.  —  “We are actually reviewing iPhones from a HSBC Group perspective …
Discussion: 9 to 5 Mac and Macsimum News
Amy Gilroy / TWICE:
Car Internet Debuts From Chrysler  —  Auburn Hills, Mich. — Chrysler will become the first car maker to offer Internet capability Aug. 25, when its parts division begins selling a Mopar car cellular/Wi-Fi hot spot, expected to be the first of many Internet offerings from the car companies.
RELATED:
Doug Aamoth / CrunchGear:
Chrysler to offer $499 EVDO car routers
Discussion: Engadget and Gizmodo
Between the Lines:
Nvidia: We underestimated AMD  —  Nvidia had one ugly second quarter.  It lost money.  It took a charge for defective chips.  And it's stuck with low-margin inventory it has to burn off.  Amazing how a little price competition from AMD's ATI can magnify poor execution at Nvidia.
Discussion: Seeking Alpha and GigaOM
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Lehman's Online U.S. Advertising Forecast: Another $20 Billion In Growth By 2012 And Online Video Takes Off  —  I was (digitally) leafing through the latest Lehman Brothers Internet Data Book for August this morning, and came across these forecasts for total U.S. Internet online ad spending and online video ad spending.
Discussion: ChasNote
Catherine Holahan / Business Week:
Facebook: No. 1 Globally  —  The social network site has vaulted over rival MySpace in worldwide audience growth, thanks to tools that translate content into many languages  —  When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants to illustrate the impact of his social network, he tells a story …
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Facebook Users Get More Control Over Feeds  —  Facebook will tweak the user profile sometime tonight to let users fine tune the news items delivered to them on their home page.  Currently users can filter news items to see top items, status updates, new photos and posted items from friends.
Dave Barth / Google LatLong:
Where is Georgia on Google Maps?  —  The recent conflict in Georgia has raised some questions about how Google Maps has handled mapping in that part of the world.  The most obvious question is, why doesn't Google Maps show any cities or roads for Georgia, or its neighbors Armenia and Azerbaijan?
 
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 More Items: 
Emma Thelwell / Telegraph:
CD sales tumble as Apple's iTunes dominates
Discussion: Infinite Loop and MacUser
Nathania Johnson / Search Engine Watch Blog:
Yahoo Adds Speed, Smarts, and Languages to Safari Plug-In, Inquisitor
Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Roundtable:
Google Shuts Down FeedBurner's Ad Network (FAN)
Discussion: The Next Web
Robert Vamosi / CNET News.com:
Kids, not Russian government, attacking Georgia's Net, says researcher
Matt Buchanan / Gizmodo:
Shocker: iPhone 3G Faster, Stronger, Better in Ad Than In Real Life
Discussion: Gadget Lab and TUAW
Erant / HackMii:
libdi and the DVDX installer.
Discussion: Engadget and Gizmodo
Google Analytics Blog:
Streamlined Login to Google Analytics
Peter Bright / Ars Technica:
Storms in the clouds leave users up creek without a paddle
Discussion: Pulse 2.0
 Earlier Items: 
TechCrunch UK:
Taking the shine off: Why blog publishing ‘failed’ …
Rory Cellan-Jones / BBC NEWS:
US media's crimes against Web 2.0
Discussion: editorsweblog
Business Wire:
Disney Launches Global Research & Development Labs with Carnegie …
Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land:
What Are Search Blogs Talking About?
David Chartier / Ars Technica:
Movable Type Pro to meld blogging and social networking
Discussion: AppScout
Darren Murph / Engadget:
VUDU announces $0.99 extended rentals, “99 for 99” movie channel
Discussion: last100, Gearlog, Electronista and Crave
Gavin Clarke / The Register:
OpenGL 3.1 promise follows gamer revolt
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Jonathan Stempel / Reuters:
A New York judge finds Sirius XM liable for a difficult subscription cancellation process; Sirius says it will appeal but abide by a new “click-to-cancel” rule

Ashley Carman / Bloomberg:
A growing number of podcasters, including Tim Ferriss, are moving away from interviews to monologues or co-hosts, as some well-known guests can be overexposed

Matthew Keys / The Desk:
DirecTV terminates its Dish acquisition after a group of Dish creditors rejected a modified bond exchange offer

 
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