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6:40 AM ET, October 25, 2008

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Oprah.com:
Oprah's Favorite New Gadget  —  This page requires Flash 9.  Download it here.  —  This summer, Oprah received a gift that she says changed her life.  “I'm telling you, it is absolutely my new favorite thing in the world,” she says.  —  Meet the Amazon Kindle&trade …
RELATED:
Dan Farber / Outside the Lines:
Amazon's Kindle obsession: Bury the printed book  —  Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos loves to talk about the Kindle e-book reader.  He's even got media mogul Oprah Winfrey pitching the device: “I'm telling you, it is absolutely my new favorite thing in the world,” she recently said.
Discussion: Technologizer and Crave
Eric Engleman / TechFlash:
Video: Amazon's Bezos on Oprah
Discussion: Andrea on Amazon …
Mike Nash / Windows Vista Team Blog:
Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Beta  —  Hi there, Mike Nash here.  —  As you know we are getting ready to talk about Windows 7 at the PDC next week.  Before we do that, I thought I would give you an update on our latest work for Windows Vista.  —  We are committed to continually improving Windows …
RELATED:
Michelle Quinn / L.A. Times Tech Blog:
Apple donates $100,000 to fight same-sex marriage ban*  —  Apple is contributing $100,000 to fight Proposition 8, the California ballot measure that would define marriage as only between a man and a woman.  The company's announcement today came as the fight over Prop. 8 grows hotly contested …
RELATED:
Mike Swift / Mercury News:
Google co-founders Brin and Page among large donors to campaign to defeat Prop.
Discussion: TECH.BLORGE.com
Alex Payne / Twitter Technology Blog:
We Got Data  —  There are lots of ways to get data into and out of Twitter.  So many, in fact, that it's become a bit confusing as to what a developer's options are.  We'd like to clear that up.  —  REST API  —  If you want to interact with Twitter on behalf of an individual user …
Discussion: Channel 10
RELATED:
Steve Gillmor / TechCrunchIT:
Realtime wars pick up speed  —  Thursday night Twitter engineer Alex Payne finally acknowledged the obvious regarding the firehose - the full stream of data sought after by third-party developers to add back the long-withheld Track service.  Twitter executives have been all over the map on this …
Discussion: FriendFeed Blog
Will Park / IntoMobile:
Box.net iPhone application for FREE on AppStore  —  Well that sure was fast.  Just the other day I sat down with Sean from Box.net to discuss the online data storage service's plans for the mobile space.  In talking about how Box.net was gunning to cover the mobile, desktop …
Discussion: Startup Meme and Mashable!
Steve Lohr / Bits:
Microsoft's Vista Problem, by the Numbers  —  Microsoft reported a reassuringly solid quarter in tough times on Thursday, but its Windows business looked weak.  —  The big Windows unit reported a 2 percent rise in revenue and 4 percent decline in operating income.
Discussion: Gizmodo and New York Times
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
19,683 Tech Layoffs And Counting  —  This has been a brutal month or so for tech layoffs.  According to our Layoff Tracker, there have been 19,683 job eliminations at tech companies announced since mid-September, and we're not even counting the 24,600 people at Hewlett-Packard who are being eliminated …
Discussion: F**kedStartups
John Markoff / New York Times:
Security Flaw Is Revealed in T-Mobile's Google Phone  —  SAN FRANCISCO — Just days after the T-Mobile G1 smartphone went on the market, a group of security researchers have found what they call a serious flaw in the Android software from Google that runs it.
Brian Shih / Google Reader:
Reading The Guardian, full-text style  —  We've always used Reader to keep up to date on news and current events and today it just got a little easier: The Guardian just moved all of their RSS feeds from partial to full-text.  They are the first major newspaper in the world to do so, and this is, well, great news.
RELATED:
Rick Turoczy / ReadWriteWeb:   The Guardian Gives Readers the Whole Story via RSS
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
What's Up at Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference (Hint: Cloudy With a Chance of Amazon Pain)  —  Next week in Los Angeles, Microsoft will kick off its Professional Developers Conference, a place the software giant likes to unveil all kinds of news in a big launchtastic flourish.
Nick O'Neill / All Facebook:
New Facebook Design: Running the Numbers on Applications  —  Over the past few weeks there has been some debate going on about the overall impact of the new Facebook design.  Scott Rafer declared the Facebook platform dead earlier this week.  I had previously posted numbers suggesting …
Discussion: Lonely CEO Media
Nick Bryant / BBC:
Australia trials national net filters  —  Is the Rudd government about to erect a Great Firewall of Australia - introducing a form of internet censorship that will infringe upon the freedom of computer users to browse the worldwide web?  —  That is the concern of online civil liberties groups …
Arn / MacRumors:
New MacBook Pro Does Not Support 8GB RAM (for now)  —  Luke from iFixit.com was kind enough to test out a new NVIDIA-based MacBook Pro with 8GB of RAM (two 4GB chips) to see if the earlier reports were true.  NVIDIA representatives had stated that the new chipsets used in the MacBook and MacBook Pro could support up to 8GB of RAM.
Owen Thomas / Valleywag:
Twitter bug reveals private messages  —  Be careful what you Twitter — especially if you think the website will keep it secret for you.  In 1999, Scott McNealy, then Sun's CEO, said, “You have zero privacy anyway.  Get over it.”  Webheads have been diligently trying to prove him wrong since …
Discussion: Startup Meme
Ina Fried / Beyond Binary:
Yahoo discontinues Vista-optimized IM program  —  Yahoo Messenger for Vista, now discontinued, offered richer graphics that took advantage of Vista's Windows Presentation Foundation engine.  —  (Credit: Yahoo)  —  One of the first applications designed to run only on Windows Vista has been discontinued.
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Don't Be Evil?  Google Uses Shady Ad Tactics To Edge Out Competitor  —  Two weeks ago we wrote about Yamli, a powerful transliteration engine that allows users to use their Latin keyboards to type in Arabic text.  The service has gotten rave reviews (see the comments), and serves a very large audience that has largely been neglected.
Michael Masnick / Techdirt:
Surprise, Surprise: E-Voting Glitches Found In Early Voting  —  from the this-is-a-surprise?  dept  —  The GAO had warned that there would be some pretty massive e-voting problems this year, as election officials were not properly trained on the already problematic machines …
Discussion: CNN and Daily Kos
Brian X. Chen / Epicenter:
Apple Is Ready to Take a Bite of Silicon Valley  —  Comments from Apple CEO Steve Jobs this week suggested that the cash-rich computer and phone maker might be in a good position to start snapping up struggling tech companies.  —  During Apple's earnings call Tuesday, Steve Jobs proudly reported …
Will Park / IntoMobile:
Sony Ericsson: UIQ is dead  —  What's this?  Sony Ericsson, a champion of the UIQ mobile OS, has apparently seen the last days of the Symbian-based OS.  Sony Ericsson's Patrick Olsen said at the Symbian Smartphone Show that his company's mobile OS of choice just “didn't make it.”
Discussion: Crave
The Technium:
Evidence of a Global SuperOrganism  —  I am not the first, nor the only one, to believe a superorganism is emerging from the cloak of wires, radio waves, and electronic nodes wrapping the surface of our planet.  No one can dispute the scale or reality of this vast connectivity.  What's uncertain is, what is it?
Discussion: MAKE Magazine
 
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 More Items: 
Eric Lai / PC World:
In Satellite Photo Resolution Race, Who's Winning?
BBC:
iTunes glitch censors song titles
Discussion: MacNN and ringtonia.com
Robert Johnson / Facebook Blog:
Scribe Makes Its Open Source Debut
Discussion: Mashable!
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Checking In On Facebook Connect: Where Are All The Partners?
Discussion: Lookery Blog and PE Hub Blog
Om Malik / GigaOM:
BroadSoft Cuts Jobs As Sales Slow
Discussion: VoIP Watch
 Earlier Items: 
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
AOL Begins Shutdown Of AOL Pictures, BlueString And Xdrive
Discussion: Webware.com and F**kedStartups
Alex Patriquin / Compete Blog:
The Undiscovered Best: How Yahoo! Actually Leads Paid Search
Discussion: SitePoint Blogs
Laura Rich / Portfolio:
When Will Microsoft Go in for the Kill?  —  Sam Gustin writes …
Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:
How The New York Times (NYT) Can Save Itself
Jim Goldman / Tech Check with Jim Goldman:
What's Apple Really Worth?
Discussion: The Mac Observer
Mark Hendrickson / TechCrunch:
Live: Yahoo Previews Its New Application Platform
Discussion: Webware.com and VentureBeat
 

 
From Mediagazer:

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

Evan Drellich / New York Times:
The MLB is planning national packages for streaming companies to bid on in 2028, when its national TV deals with ESPN, Fox, and Turner expire

Lauren Forristal / TechCrunch:
Tubi launches Scenes, a mobile feature that lets viewers watch 60-to-90-second trailer-style clips from its library to help with content discovery

 
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