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5:15 PM ET, October 14, 2008

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Joshua Topolsky / Engadget:
Live from Apple's “spotlight turns to notebooks” event  —  9:08AM PT - We've got a little less than an hour to go, so we'll just kind of be loitering outside Apple Town Hall, waiting to spot Steve and the unicorn that is his new MacBook Pro.  —  We're at Apple HQ!
RELATED:
Paul Miller / Engadget:
Apple's all-new MacBook Pro packs new NVIDIA GPUs, glass trackpad  —  Oh, don't act so surprised.  A refresh of Apple's long-in-the-tooth MacBook Pro line was pretty much the only sure thing slated for today's event, and Apple certainly delivered.  As for looks, you probably know the score by now …
Between the Lines:
Apple's new MacBook line: Affordable enough?  —  Apple on Tuesday moved to address a weakened consumer and its statement on a its refreshed MacBook lineup is telling.  Since when does a premium brand like Apple worry about price and making its notebooks “far more affordable?”
John Mahoney / Gizmodo:
Next-Generation MacBook Ditches the Plastic, Becomes MacBook Pro Mini  —  Joining the MacBook Pro, Apple's MacBooks, their best-selling mac ever, also received a complete hardware re-tooling today, with rejuvenated hardware packed inside a brand-new aluminum case, thus putting one of the final stakes …
Darren Murph / Engadget:
Apple finally refreshes Cinema Display: 24-inch, LED backlit, $899  —  Another rumor to tick off the list, Apple just announced the 24-inch Cinema Display.  LED-backlit, check; Mini DisplayPort, check; $899 list price, check; MagSafe adapter, check.  In fact, it has a tri-pronged cable that also includes USB .
Jacqui Cheng / Infinite Loop:
Answers about the new buttonless MacBook trackpad  —  We have spent some time messing around with the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros, and the number one question we're getting so far is, “How in the world do you use the buttonless trackpad?”  —  Let me just say first that if you're already used …
Discussion: AppleInsider and Gizmodo
Janette Barrios / Apple:
New MacBook Family Redefines Notebook Design  —  Industry's Greenest Notebooks  —  Apple® today unveiled an all new MacBook® family that redefines notebook design, and at the same time dramatically lowers the entry price for advanced notebook features including all-metal enclosures …
Clint Ecker / Infinite Loop:   Hands on with the Macbook/Pro's removable hard drive
Joshua Topolsky / Engadget:
MacBook Pro first hands-on!
Discussion: Switched
Adam Frucci / Gizmodo:
New MacBooks Get Glass Trackpad with New Multitouch Gestures, No Buttons
Electronista:
Apple updates MacBook Air
Discussion: Reuters, Crave and Gizmodo
Ben Jones / TorrentFreak:
Bush Signs Draconian Anti-Piracy Law  —  Over in California, champagne corks are popping.  In the offices of the MPAA and RIAA, lawyers turned lobbyists are dancing jigs.  In houses all around the US however, people are left dumbfounded by the passage of a bill based on appeasement to big money …
RELATED:
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Bush's New Copyright Czar Is Going To Do About As Much Good As His Drug Czar
Discussion: ZDNet Government and Techdirt
Fawn Johnson / Wall Street Journal:
Bush Signs Anti-Piracy Bill
Discussion: ReadWriteWeb, White House and Salon
Yahoo! Search Blog:
Yahoo! Search Hits the Airwaves  —  A little over four years ago, we launched our own search engine and became a principal in the search business.  Our focus since then has been the same - building the best search experience to give users a fast, easy and intuitive way to get straight to their answers.
Chris Ziegler / Engadget:
AT&T goes wild with texting, announces four QWERTY phones  —  If you're into that whole SMS craze and you're on AT&T, you're in luck — four times over.  The carrier's gone ahead and announced not one, not two, but four QWERTY-equipped dumphones today, including a dual slider and a Pantech being billed as …
RELATED:
AndroidGuys:
Motorola Recruiting for “Android Social Networking SmartPhone” Project  —  An innocuous posting on Coroflot might be indication of Motorola's plans for implementing Android into their hardware lineup.  One of our readers sent us a link to a job posting for the Interaction Design Team at Motorola.
Eric Eldon / VentureBeat:
Ex-Google, Yahoo, Facebook employees snub recession, launch Hadoop startup  —  Recession be damned, a group of top Silicon Valley engineers have come together to launch an interesting startup called Cloudera.  Not yet launched, it intends to help other companies adopt a promising software platform called Hadoop.
Matt Marshall / VentureBeat:
JS-Kit, the widget company for dummies, gets boost  —  JS-Kit, the Silicon Valley company that makes it easy for bloggers to add comments, polls, product reviews or ratings system to their website, has gotten a boost when it most needs it.  —  It has raised $3.6 million in a second round …
Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:
AOL - Yahoo Merger NOT A Done Deal, Says Time Warner Source*  —  A source close to AOL told us earlier that Yahoo's acquisition of AOL was a done deal.  However, another senior source at Time Warner emphatically denied this.  We apologize for the head-fake.
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Angel Investor Ron Conway Speaks (About His Wise-Up-Silicon-Valley Missive)  —  Of course, the stock market had to come roaring back and it had to be extra sunny on the very day I was scheduled to have lunch with well-known Silicon Valley investor Ron Conway to talk about the worrisome state of the digital sector.
Discussion: The Drama 2.0 Show
Vishesh Kumar / Wall Street Journal:
Economic Woes Hit HDTV Sales  —  Satellite, Cable Providers Could Suffer as Consumers Scale Back on Pricey Purchases  —  Reeling from a stock-market crash and a looming recession, consumers may finally be putting the brakes on the purchase of pricey luxury items like high-definition televisions.
Discussion: NewTeeVee
Rafe Needleman / Webware.com:
Quicken Online is finally free  —  Intuit has finally dropped the subscription fee on Quicken Online, its Web-based financial software that competes with Mint, Geezeo, Buxfer, and Wesabe.  The company is still selling, as completely separate products, software versions of Quicken.
Yun-Hee Kim / Wall Street Journal:
Samsung Plans to Tackle U.S. PC Market  —  HONG KONG — Samsung Electronics Co. is making a foray into the U.S. notebook PC market, taking on established players such as Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Apple Inc.  —  The South Korean company, more well-known in overseas markets …
Long Zheng / istartedsomething:
Microsoft survey teases “Oahu”: affordable consumer-version of the Surface computer, hypothetically  —  Would you like your own Microsoft Surface computer but don't own a hotel chain, telephone company, Las Vegas casino, television network or themepark?  If so, you need to sign yourself up for some Microsoft market research.
Discussion: All about Microsoft
Steve O'Hear / The Social Web:
Top Digger helps launch Tip'd, a Digg clone for financial news  —  Tip'd, which launched today, describes itself as “a place for investors... to meet, share, discuss, comment, and vote on what's happening on both Wall Street and Main Street.”  Essentially, it's another Digg clone targeting a particular vertical.
Discussion: Search Engine Land and Mashable!
Michael Masnick / Techdirt:
McCain Campaign Sends Letter To YouTube Defending Fair Use  —  from the what-the...?  dept  —  This is impressive, and somewhat unexpected.  It's rather rare to see politicians (other than maginal ones, at least) showing any sort of recognition of fair use.
Discussion: NewTeeVee and Lessig Blog
John Leyden / The Register:
Storm botnet blows itself out  —  But will the zombie network rise again?  —  Security watchers Marshal claim the infamous Storm botnet is no more, after waning spam emails finally dried up altogether last month.  —  Other security researchers have noted a similar decline …
David Kaplan / paidContent.org:
Eco-Friendly Sites On The Wane; ‘Thinking Green’ Means Something Different These Days  —  Just a year ago, when the economic outlook was a lot brighter, web publishers began jumping on the eco-friendly bandwagon.  A Mediaweek piece checks in now that things appear a bit bleaker and finds that some of the major sites are wilting.
Discussion: Mediaweek
 
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 More Items: 
David Kravets / Threat Level:
Google Profiting From Typo Squatting, Report Charges
Discussion: CircleID
ChinaTechNews.com:
Virus Alert: ASUS Recalls Eee Box PCs In Japan
Discussion: CNET News
Microsoft:
Microsoft Security Bulletin MS08-058 - Critical
Discussion: PC World
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Cisco's Chambers sees collaboration fueling productivity gains …
Discussion: eWeek
Ben Kuchera / Ars Technica:
Microsoft undercuts Wii value with $20 Xbox 360 HDD promo
Discussion: Obsessable
Kevin Poulsen / Threat Level:
Cybercrime Supersite ‘DarkMarket’ Was FBI Sting, Documents Confirm
Discussion: SC Magazine US
beu blog:
2009 Google Flash SEO
Discussion: Search Engine Land
 Earlier Items: 
Clint Boulton / eWeek:
Brightcove 3 SAAS Video Platform Wins Endorsement from Sun Microsystems
Discussion: Contentinople and CloudAve
BlackBerry Storm Mobile Phone Reviews:
Video Of The BlackBerry Storm 9500 Mobile Phone In Action
Discussion: Boy Genius Report
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
BillShrink Grows By $8 Million With Plans To Expand To New Markets
Discussion: Webware.com and VentureBeat
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Mint Leaves Beta, Brings A Bunch Of New Features With It
 

 
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

Charlie Savage / New York Times:
Trump says Republicans must kill the PRESS Act, which would protect journalists' records and sources from the US government; the bill is stalled in the Senate

 
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