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11:40 AM ET, October 17, 2008

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Paul Graham:
Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy  —  The economic situation is apparently so grim that some experts fear we may be in for a stretch as bad as the mid seventies.  —  When Microsoft and Apple were founded.  —  As those examples suggest, a recession may not be such a bad time to start a startup.
Brian Garrity / New York Post:
FRIENDS OF THE BAND  —  ZUCKERBERG PONDERS FACEBOOK MUSIC BIZ  —  Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg is plotting a possible push into the digital-music business in the wake of MySpace's launch of MySpace Music last month.  —  The surging social-networking giant is talking to a number …
RELATED:
Kelly Fiveash / The Register:
Zuckerberg flirts with record labels, eyes digital music biz
Discussion: Reuters
InfoWorld:
Ballmer: Windows 7 is Vista, just ‘a lot better’  —  Windows 7 will be like Windows Vista , but more so, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said Thursday as he defended the first two years of Vista and claimed its successor will be a major release.  —  “[Windows 7], it's Windows Vista, a lot better …
RELATED:
Juan Carlos Perez / Computerworld:
Extended Gmail outage hits Apps admins  —  E-mail service expected to be down for 24 hours  —  IDG News Service) A prolonged, ongoing Gmail outage has some Google Apps administrators pulling their hair out as their end users, including high-ranking executives, complain loudly while they wait for service to be restored.
Allen Stern / CenterNetworks:
Vimeo Launches Vimeo Plus - Annual Paid Plans  —  NY-based video sharing service Vimeo has announced the launch of Vimeo Plus today.  Vimeo Plus is a paid service that offers additional benefits over the free service.  NewTeeVee has a good overview of all of the features of Vimeo Plus which include …
RELATED:
Chris Albrecht / NewTeeVee:
Vimeo Lanches Vimeo Plus Paid Service
Discussion: ReadWriteWeb
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Google Asking Their Advertisers To Publicly Support Yahoo Search Deal  —  A reader, Darrin (from ReverseMortgageGuides), who says he spends about $100,000/month on Google adwords received a voicemail from a Cleary Gottlieb lawyer named Donald Burke.  Burke says he's representing Google in the Yahoo advertising deal.
Kevin C. Tofel / jkOnTheRun:
Asus breaks sub-$300 price barrier with Eee PC 900A at Best Buy  —  Let's get the sub-$300 netbook party started!  Pereira just pinged me to share this Best Buy link which shows the white Asus Eee PC 900A available for $299.  This is basically the same model as the 900, but the “A” stands for Atom.
Clint Ecker / Infinite Loop:
New MacBook Pro's got game: compelling new gaming benchmarks  —  It has been a long-running joke amongst gamers that Mac users tend to wallow in a dearth of gaming options.  While that perception may have been true in the past, the tides are definitely turning for the gaming Mac user.
Discussion: MacRumors, MacUser and Gadget Lab
Devin Leonard / Fortune:
Shazam comes out of the shadows  —  The British tech firm can thank Steve Jobs.  Its music search is one of the most popular apps for Apple's iPhone.  —  NEW YORK (Fortune) — Have you ever been out with friends at a bar and heard one of those seventies songs like “Play That Funky Music …
Ars Technica:
Benchmarking Flash Player 10 (Updated)  —  The web collectively got a bit shinier this week with Adobe's release of Flash Player 10.  The new version offers designers a compelling set of new features including support for rich 3D visual effects, a new antialiasing engine, an improved drawing API …
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Adult Startup Zivity Cuts 1/3 Of Staff  —  Zivity, the adult social network and media site that describes itself as a “community-powered showcase of female beauty”, has laid off 1/3 of its staff, cutting back from 22 employees to 14.  (Again, 1/3 seems to be the magic number …
Matt Marshall / VentureBeat:
MySpace on target to do $1B in sales this year, defies downturn  —  We're hearing from sources close to social networking company MySpace that it expects to hit $1 billion in revenue this year, or at worst be within a hair's breadth of that number.  Meanwhile, MySpace executives …
Discussion: WebProNews
Paul Miller / The Semantic Web:
Yahoo! gets local with SearchMonkey  —  Continuing to deliver on their aim of enriching the core search offering with a little help from SearchMonkey, Yahoo! yesterday announced that the existing SearchMonkey apps for CitySearch and Zagat are now available by default to all users of Yahoo! Search.
Ronen Halevy / BerryReview.com:
AT&T Bold Event Fails To Launch... Michael Phelps & All - Signs Are Pointing To A Release Very Soon  —  I just spent the better portion of my night at a AT&T launch event for the BlackBerry Bold in New York City.  Sadly I had to stand around in line outside for over an hour and a half to even get into the event.
Dusanb / IntoMobile:
Qik taps the feature phone market  —  today announced that their live mobile video streaming product is coming to a feature phone near you.  The Java ME-based application is available in alpha, allowing users with select Nokia and Sony Ericsson feature phones to record and stream video from wherever they are.
Matt Burns / CrunchGear:
NVIDIA launches the Quadro CX GPU for graphic professionals  —  The latest from NVIDIA isn't designed with Crysis in mind, but rather graphic pros that rely heavily on Adobe Creative Suite 4 software.  With an MSRP of $1,999, your Photoshop dabbling isn't the market NVIDIA is after here with this optimized card.
Discussion: TG Daily, InformationWeek and Gizmodo
Federal Bureau of Investigation:
FBI Coordinates Global Effort to Nab ‘Dark Market’ Cyber Criminals  —  Joint Two-Year Undercover Operation Results in 56 arrests; $70 million  —  The FBI, in conjunction with many partners in international law enforcement, today announced the conclusion of a two-year undercover operation targeting members …
Staci D. Kramer / paidContent.org:
Discovery CEO: Web ‘Take-up Rate Is Not That Strong’  —  Cable programmer Discovery (NSDQ: DISAB) is making its first foray in ad-supported, free-to-air TV on the UK's Freeview.  (It's not free for Discovery, which is reported to be paying millions of pounds for the privilege.)
Discussion: Financial Times
C.K. Sample III / Obsessable:
Warhammer Online on a MacBook 2008 running XP  —  One of the questions that has been on everyone's minds since Apple announced their new laptops on Tuesday has been whether the improved NVIDIA graphics cards that Steve Jobs spent so much time discussing on stage would mean that Apple's newer laptops would make good gaming machines.
Discussion: Joystiq, TUAW, CrunchGear and Massively
Greg Phillips / PlayStation.Blog:
Resistance 2 beta begins... today!  —  Heya, it's been a while since I've been seen around these parts as James Stevenson, Bryan Intihar and the others at Insomniac have been doing most of the Resistance 2 posting as of late.  Along with my return to the blog, I bring a few announcements with regards to R2:
Discussion: Destructoid, Kotaku and videogaming247
Grantkd / Server and Tools Business News Bytes blog:
IDC Announces Q2 Worldwide Server Virtualization License Shipments  —  Industry analyst firm IDC today announced worldwide virtualization license shipments in the second quarter of 2008 (2Q08) increased 53% year over year, compared to a 72% year-over-year increase the previous quarter.
 
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 More Items: 
Bhaskar / QIK:
Qik now available on mass marke...
Edible Apple:
Steve Jobs email response re: lack of Firewire on MacBooks
Discussion: MacRumors and digg.com
Matt Cutts / Gadgets, Google, and SEO:
Alerting webmasters to webserver vulnerabilities
AppleInsider:
Apple says new MacBook Airs to ship first week of November
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols / Computerworld Blogs:
The five best things in Linux 2.6.27
Discussion: digg.com
Brian Krebs / Washington Post:
Report: Russian Hacker Forums Fueled Georgia Cyber Attacks
 Earlier Items: 
Pete Koomen / Google App Engine Blog:
Announcing HTTPS support for appspot.com!
Joanna Stern / LAPTOP Magazine:
Exclusive Hands-On With Averatec 18.4-Inch All-In-One
Discussion: Gadget Lab and Engadget
John P. Falcone / Crave: The gadget blog:
First Panasonic Tru2way TVs hit stores in Chicago, Denver
Discussion: DSLreports and Ars Technica
Christopher Beam / Slate:
Epic Win  —  GOODBYE, SCHADENFREUDE; HELLO, FAIL.
Discussion: Guardian and Valleywag
Google Investor Relations:
GOOGLE ANNOUNCES THIRD QUARTER 2008 RESULTS
 

 
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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