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12:45 PM ET, September 17, 2008

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Charlie Demerjian / Inquirer:
Google to buy Valve  —  Austin GDC 2008 Steaming away  —  WELL PLACED SOURCES tell us that Google is going to be buying Valve any second now.  If you have to stop and think about why, you probably are not aware of Steam, Valve's amazing content distribution platform.
RELATED:
Karl Bode / DSLreports:
Google To Buy Valve?  - Rumors surface...  Google To Buy Valve?  —  The Inquirer is reporting that search giant Google will soon be purchasing video game developer Valve, which you might consider a strange purchase unless you're familiar with Valve's broadband game distribution platform, Steam.
Discussion: VentureBeat, Electronista and Kotaku
Chris / LiveSide:
New Windows Live Betas - Download Wave 3 Now!  (Updated With International Goodness)  —  With the Windows Live Wave 3 beta due to start today, we thought we'd provide our readers with a small headstart on the rest of the world.  Here's the download links for the new Wave 3 suite of applications …
Joshua Goldman / Crave: The gadget blog:
Popular Canon SD870 IS gets fresh  —  The most exciting thing about the new Canon PowerShot SD880 IS Digital ELPH camera is that it's an update to the really popular SD870 IS.  However, that doesn't mean Canon didn't try to improve on its past success.  —  The new model features …
Discussion: Canon U.S.A, Electronista and Gizmodo
RELATED:
Matt Burns / CrunchGear:
Canon PowerShot SD990 IS and SD880 IS: Point and shoot cams for the masses
Discussion: Crave
Wall Street Journal:
Tech Guru Riles the Industry By Seeking Huge Patent Fees  —  Millionaire Nathan Myhrvold, renowned in the computer industry as a Renaissance man, has a less lofty message for tech companies these days: Pay up.  —  Over the past few years, the former Microsoft Corp. executive has quietly amassed …
James Lewin / Podcasting News:
Want To Know Why Apple TV Is Still Steve Jobs' “Hobby”?  —  Want to know why Steve Jobs is still calling Apple TV his “hobby”?  —  New research by The NPD Group offers an explanation:  — 41 percent of dollars budgeted for movies and video is spent on DVD movie purchases;
RELATED:
npd.com:
The NPD Group: DVD Sales Flattening, But Don't Blame Digital Downloading
Discussion: NewTeeVee and Contentinople
Don Reisinger / TechCrunch:
Google Launches Audio Indexing  —  As the Web becomes more sophisticated and audio and video becomes a more important part of our online lives, we need something that will help us sift through the junk and find what we're looking for in all that content.  To address that, Google announced Wednesday …
Discussion: bit-tech.net
RELATED:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Google's 12 Hour (and counting) Custom Search Outage
Arnaud Sahuguet / The Official Google Blog:
Google Audio Indexing now on Google Labs
Discussion: Webware.com
Guardian:
Peter Moore Interview: Part Three  —  Why Rare are a spent creative force... and other shocks from the Xbox backroom...  Yesterday, we followed Moore from Dreamcast to Xbox 360.  Today, there's more from the Microsoft years, including a damning indictment of UK developer, Rare.
Discussion: Edge Online, Destructoid and Kotaku
RELATED:
Joshua Topolsky / Engadget:
Mysterious new 4GB iPod nano 4Gs begin appearing on store shelves  —  Now this is an interesting development.  According to two separate tipsters (with two sets of photos) Apple has released a third version of the new multi-hued iPod nano to the world — a 4GB model.
Marc Flores / Boy Genius Report:
Verizon Wireless Going Contract-Free?  —  According to an inside source, it looks like Verizon Wireless will be offering contract-free services as of September 21.  Much like T-Mobile's FlexPay, the option will be available to those who pay full, unsubsidized prices for phones or for folks who want to bring in their own devices.
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Nortel Shrs Plunge On Lower '08 Outlook; Blames Carriers  —  Nortel Networks (NT) this morning reduced its outlook for 2008 revenues, noting that carriers are cutting their capital spending further than previously expected, and enterprise and metro customers defer new IT and optical investments.
Discussion: Mark Evans and The Register
RELATED:
Eric Eldon / VentureBeat:
T-Mobile Android phone to hit stores on Oct 17, Sprint Android phone coming next year  —  Android, Google's new operating system for devices, will be officially unveiled as part of the HTC “Dream” phone launch on T-Mobile on September 23rd, at a press conference in New York.
MG Siegler / VentureBeat:
iPhone apps like Whrrl preview the power of location, but there is far greater potential  —  With a global positioning system (GPS) chip now in the iPhone 3G, location services are becoming important to many mobile application developers.  Each day, we're seeing new iPhone apps launch which …
LinuxDevices.com:
Open set-top box ships  —  Neuros Technology has started shipping its second open set-top box, which targets both consumers and product companies.  The high-definition capable “Open Source Device 2.0” (OSD 2.0) runs several open Linux stacks on a tiny TI Davinci-based CPU module delivered with a mini-ITX I/O board and enclosure.
Discussion: CrunchGear, Gizmodo and Engadget HD
louisgray.com:
Bret Taylor on FriendFeed's Road to Monetization, Early Surprises  —  This evening, at a panel on lifestreaming put on by the MIT/Stanford Venture Lab, FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor spoke about the popular aggregation and lifestreaming service's early months, explained what he and the team …
Discussion: BoomTown and Sexy Widget
Peter Kafka / Silicon Alley Insider:
Murdoch: “Hard Times Are Good For Big Companies” - And I Don't Want To Buy The New York Times (NWS)  —  Like he has in the past, Rupert Murdoch declares that his newspaper and local TV ad businesses are doing terribly, but that the rest of the company is growing great guns.  Or at least enough to ride out a downturn.
 
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 More Items: 
Michael Learmonth / Silicon Alley Insider:
The Mystery Of The Incredible Shrinking Video Sites: What Gives?
Discussion: HipMojo.com
OLED-TV Display/Monitor Technology News:
Kodak announces world's first AM-OLED digital frame
Discussion: Maximum PC all and Engadget
Chris Anderson / The Long Tail:
A PASSIONATE AMATEUR ALMOST ALWAYS BEATS A BORED PROFESSIONAL
Joseph Weisenthal / paidContent.org:
Communacopia: Barry Diller: Spin Not An Outcome, But A Beginning …
Discussion: Valleywag
Reuters:
UK's “Stuff” names iPhone 3G gadget of the year
Discussion: InformationWeek
Prince McLean / AppleInsider:
Adobe Creative Suite 4 details emerge
Discussion: TG Daily
 Earlier Items: 
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Yahoo Loses Search Monkey Product Manager
James Sherwood / The Register:
HTC's Touch Diamond is all-white
Discussion: Boy Genius Report
Matt Buchanan / Gizmodo:
Review: EFiX Dongle Perfectly Transforms PC to Mac
Kristin Kalning / MSNBC:
Can games make your kid a better citizen?
Discussion: Negative Approach
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Two New Visual Tools To Make Craigslist Even Better
Discussion: Lifehacker and PSFK
GamesIndustry.biz:
Google opening Lively to game developers
Discussion: videogaming247
 

 
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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