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10:45 AM ET, October 18, 2008

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Chris Snyder / Epicenter:
Twitter to Get Down to Business in 2009, Investors Say  —  Major leadership changes Thursday at Twitter renewed questions about its business prospects — was the replacement of CEO Jack Dorsey by fellow co-founder Evan Williams a shuffling of deck chairs on the Titanic?
Michael Bettiol / Boy Genius Report:
And we have lift off: AT&T Bold launches on the 27th  —  This is for real, kids.  Information has been pouring in left, right, and center from AT&T and RIM ninjas and we can now say for sure that AT&T is planning to launch the Bold on October 27.  We repeat, October 27!
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Some Of These Layoffs Aren't Really Layoffs  —  I've spoken to a lot of CEOs this week who are going through layoffs or who are thinking of going through going through layoffs.  The list of those who've pulled the trigger gets longer every day, and the unparty seems to just be getting started based on the email flow that we're seeing.
Discussion: Contentinople and Open Sources
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Pressflip Founder Quits: “I'm Tired Of The Fight”  —  One thing investors don't really like to see is founders abandoning the startups they funded.  But that is exactly what Ted Dziuba is doing with his startup PressFlip.  —  In a blog post Dziuba wrote that he was leaving the company …
Ellen Knickmeyer / Washington Post:
Al-Qaeda Web Forums Abruptly Taken Offline  —  Separately, Sunnis and Shiites Wage Online War  —  Four of the five main online forums that al-Qaeda's media wing uses to distribute statements by Osama bin Laden and other extremists have been disabled since mid-September, monitors of the Web sites say.
AppleInsider:
Due next from Apple: refreshed 20- and 24-inch iMacs  —  Assuming last minute snags are avoided, the coming weeks should bring new iMacs, rounding out Apple's 2008 hardware introductions as the company enters the holiday shopping season with one of its strongest product portfolios ever.
Discussion: Edible Apple, MacRumors and digg.com
Harry McCracken / Technologizer:
FireWire Isn't Alone: A Brief History of Features Apple Has Killed  —  Apple has a storied history of being the first company to introduce an array of new technologies in its computers, or among the very first, at least.  It all started with color graphics in 1977's Apple II and continuied features …
Discussion: Gadget Lab, BetaNews and Edible Apple
RELATED:
Peter Cohen / Macworld:   FireWire's MacBook absence—inconvenience or fatal flaw?
David A. Sampayo / Technologizer:
Why the Kill Switch Make Sense for Android, and Not for iPhone  —  “Gasp!” went the collective Internet on Wednesday when the IDG News Service spotted a clause in the terms of service for Google's Android Market stating that: … In other words, Google has a built-in “kill switch” …
Michael Masnick / Techdirt:
Is Web 2.0 About Exploitation Or Empowerment?  —  Earlier this year, at the Mesh Conference in Toronto, I had the pleasure of meeting Nancy Baym, a professor of communications at the University of Kansas.  She's been doing tremendous research into questions concerning online “fan” communities around musicians.
John / Primate Labs Blog:
MacBook and MacBook Pro Performance (October 2008)  —  Earlier this week Apple released new MacBooks and MacBook Pros.  While the biggest changes are the new enclosures and the new graphics cards, the new laptops also have a new chipset (an NVIDIA chipset instead of an Intel chipset) and faster DDR3 memory.
Rebecca / Electronic Frontier Foundation:
EFF Challenges Constitutionality of Telecom Immunity in Federal Court  —  San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Thursday challenged the constitutionality of a law aimed at granting retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that participated in the president's illegal domestic wiretapping program.
RELATED:
Cyrus Farivar / Salon:   New EFF brief argues telecom immunity law is unconstitutional
John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
Translation From Weasel-Speak to English of the Entirety of Duncan Riley's Second Post-MacBook-Introduction-Event Update to His Widely-Cited Week-Ago Report That Apple Was Going to Announce an ‘$800 Laptop’  —  With regard to “Update 2” here. … The entire report was completely wrong.
Discussion: Silicon Alley Insider
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
What Yahoo's Looming Costs Cuts Actually Mean (Not as Many Layoffs as You Think)  —  A lot has been written about the need for drastic layoffs at Yahoo, including reports that the troubled company was preparing to fire from 3,000 to 3,500 of its 15,000 employees.
 
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 More Items: 
internetnews.com:
Ballmer Slaps Google, Ogles Yahoo, Anoints Vista
Claire Cain Miller / Bits:
Venture Capital Investment Down 7 Percent in Third Quarter
Discussion: VC Ratings, VentureBeat and GigaOM
Eric Eldon / VentureBeat:
I read a new rumor about “Facebook Music” but all I got was this stupid picture
Stephen Shankland / CNET News:
Newer Chrome, Firefox show speed improvements
Discussion: WebWorkerDaily and Lifehacker
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
CampusBuddy Hands Over Campus Grading Records To Students
Peter Cohen / Macworld:
DisplayPort: What you need to know  —  With laptop updates …
Discussion: Salon
Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:
Report: Fake antivirus programs claim 30 million victims
Discussion: The Mac Security Blog
 Earlier Items: 
Dianne See Morrison / mocoNews.net:
Amazon's UK Launch Of Kindle Delayed
Discussion: Andrea on Amazon …
Eric Eldon / VentureBeat:
Search engine startup SearchMe cuts 20 percent of staff
Discussion: Valleywag and HipMojo.com
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Keeping Count: The TechCrunch Layoff Tracker
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Caitlin Huston / The Hollywood Reporter:
Internal memo: Hearst Magazines president announces layoffs as part of a decision to “reallocate resources” to “continue our focus on digital innovation”

Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announced she will leave the agency on January 20; she was the first woman to be confirmed to lead the agency

Lachlan Cartwright / The Ankler:
Sources: MSNBC renewed Rachel Maddow's contract early this fall, but with a pay cut; MSNBC bosses' plan to shake up daytime and weekend programming

 
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