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12:35 PM ET, October 31, 2008

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Is Google Playing Chicken With the Justice Department?  —  Are Google and Yahoo thinking of walking of away from their controversial search advertising deal, as reported in an amusingly hedged report in The Wall Street Journal last night?  —  How's this for covering your bases in a story …
RELATED:
Jessica E. Vascellaro / Wall Street Journal:
Talks Over Google-Yahoo Search Deal Fail to Progress  —  The likelihood that Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. will walk away from their planned search partnership has risen, say people familiar with the matter.  —  The two Internet companies have so far failed to reach an agreement on their partnership …
Reuters:
Yahoo, Google May Walk Away from Search Deal: Report
Discussion: WebProNews
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Facebook May Be Growing Too Fast.  And Hitting The Capital Markets Again.  —  When Facebook raised $240 million from Microsoft in 2007, and another $235 million in debt and equity in 2008, everyone thought they had plenty of cash to get through their big growth phase.
Michael Calore / webmonkey:
OMG!  Gmail Adds SMS Chat  —  Users of Google's Gmail service can now send text message chats to mobile phones using the webapp's built-in Chat feature.  —  Google is adding the experimental functionality through Gmail Labs.  To turn it on, go to the Labs tab within Gmail's settings.
Discussion: PC World, CostPerNews and Profy
RELATED:
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Gmail Labs Adds Text Messaging Feature. KTHXBAI.
Stephen Shankland / Webware.com:
Google brings text-messaging to online chat
Matt Buchanan / Gizmodo:
BlackBerry Curve 8900 First Impressions (Kills the Original)  —  RIM excels at many things, but keeping secrets ain't one of 'em, so we'd eyeballed the BlackBerry Curve 8900 (nee Javelin) quite a bit before this AT&T-branded one dropped in our laps.  It's a Bolder version of the current Curve …
Tom Krazit / CNET News:
Apple hires top IBM chip designer and blade server guru  —  Apple's decision to hire Mark Papermaster away from IBM could mean that its Xserve lineup is taking on a more prominent role.  —  (Credit: Apple)  —  Updated throughout at 4:55 p.m. PT with additional details and comment from IBM.
RELATED:
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:   IBM sues brainiac looking to leap to Apple; Download the docs
Monica Chen / DigiTimes:
Asustek expects to ship US$200 Eee PC in 2009, says president  —  Asustek Computer has announced consolidated revenues of NT$78.26 billion (US$2.39 billion) for the third quarter this year, while net profit after tax was NT$6.38 billion, an increase of 13% on quarter, but a drop of 14.2% on year.
Amanda Kelly / Inside AdWords:
Improvements to Ads Quality  —  We're always working on improvements that will help us show the most relevant ads to our searchers, and we're excited to tell you that we'll soon introduce two changes designed to enhance how we calculate Quality Score and rank ads.
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes / Hardware 2.0:
No Opera Mini for the iPhone  —  It seems that the engineers at Opera developed a version of Opera Mini that would run on the iPhone (and the iPod touch), but this browser will never see light of day because Apple rejected it from the App Store. … Well that sucks.
RELATED:
Joanna Stern / LAPTOP Magazine:
Eee PC 1000H Runs Windows 7 Well  —  Here is a confession: I am getting pretty tired of netbooks running Windows XP.  So when we got our Windows 7 Beta disc at PDC earlier this week, I couldn't wait to get it running on a netbook.  —  This morning we loaded Windows 7 Ultimate (Pre-Beta) on an ASUS Eee PC 1000H.
Amy-Mae Elliott / Pocket-lint.co.uk:
BlackBerry Storm pricing revealed … Vodafone has finally revealed the pricing and availability for the BlackBerry Storm 9500.  —  RIM's first touchscreen device, the new smartphone, that's said to have been purpose-built for Vodafone, will be delivered to those pre-ordering via the Voda site on November 11.
RELATED:
John Kennedy / Silicon Republic:
BlackBerry Storm price plans revealed
Discussion: I4U News and Engadget Mobile
Maggie Shiels / BBC:
Trojan virus steals bank info  —  The details of around 500,000 online bank accounts and credit and debit cards have been stolen by a virus described as “one of the most advanced pieces of crimeware ever created”.  —  The Sinowal trojan has been tracked by RSA, which provides security solutions for Fortune 500 companies.
Glenn Fleishman / Ars Technica:
WiFi thermostat puts power (and cooling) at your fingertips  —  In an age where we can put WiFi into a plastic bunny that wiggles its ears in response to commands over the Internet, why not stick the same wireless networking into a thermostat that allows remote monitoring and schedule changes?
Discussion: The Pondering Primate
Ina Fried / Beyond Binary:
Microsoft's other new platform: Live Framework  —  LOS ANGELES—While it was Windows Azure that got much of the attention, Microsoft also released another important platform at this week's Professional Developers Conference.  —  Microsoft's Live Framework is essentially the developer piece of Live Mesh.
Elinor Mills / CNET News:
Google's JotSpot exposes user data  —  Google's JotSpot service, which allows people to collaborate on online documents, has been found to expose user names and e-mail addresses to anyone on the Internet.  The breach, which was uncovered by a Harvard Business School professor and security researcher …
Discussion: fiercecio.comwatch
Jack Schofield / Guardian:
Microsoft's Azure is not Hailstorm, but what's the point of it?  —  Microsoft has made its Azure cloud computing announcements at PDC, so now we know what it's doing: it is extending Windows 2008 Server into the online market so that programmers who develop applications in Visual Studio …
Ashlee Vance / New York Times:
Sun Microsystems Reports $1.7 Billion Loss and Falling Sales  —  MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — With falling revenue, problematic acquisitions, product slips and a stock that has lost three-quarters of its value in the last year, Sun Microsystems is finding that Wall Street is losing patience.
Jim Zemlin:
Linux to Ship on More Desktops than Windows  —  For those that decry the constant prediction of the “year of the Linux desktop” I am happy to say that next year Linux may actually ship on more desktops than Windows or the Mac.  That is right, I said next year.  What is driving this?  Two words: fast boot.
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Cloud computing: Will the financial geeks give it a boost?  —  The advantages of cloud computing are commonly known: You don't need upfront infrastructure investment; scaling up is relatively easy; and the service provider is likely to be more efficient than your company.
Karl Bode / DSLreports:
Sprint, Cogent in Peering Feud - Sprint disconnects from Cogent network, impacting customers  —  Cogent is no stranger to peering disputes, fighting with Level3 back in 2005 and AOL back in 2002.  While most peering arrangements involve carriers trading equal amounts of bandwidth …
Discussion: PR Newswire and WebProNews
Roger Grimes / Security Adviser:
China is not selling bugged hardware  —  Rumors of secret Chinese spy chips in office computers don't stand up to logical scrutiny  —  In the last two weeks, I've heard various groups theorizing that Chinese companies are producing computers that contain secret spy hardware.
 
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 More Items: 
Marguerite Reardon / CNET News:
Verizon gets DOJ approval for Alltel purchase
Discussion: dailywireless.org
Enigmax / TorrentFreak:
Chinese State Bans Video Sites, Huge eDonkey Site Survives
Discussion: p2pnet and ShanghaiDaily.com
Sramana Mitra / Forbes:
Bargains For Private Equity
 Earlier Items: 
Kirk / Medialoper:
Waiting for Google's Kindle Killer
Rick Turoczy / ReadWriteWeb:
Selling Ads on Your Twitter Background? You'll Love Magpie
Discussion: Mashable!
Brian X. Chen / Gadget Lab:
Hard Times? Not for iPhone Developers
Discussion: Listening Post and Edible Apple
Michael Masnick / Techdirt:
MTV Bleeps File Sharing Software Out Of Music Videos
Discussion: DSLreports, CrunchGear and Slashdot
Kurt Mackey / Ars Technica:
More on the Windows 7 UI: new taskbar will be mandatory
Discussion: OSNews
Stephen Shankland / CNET News:
Study: Google runs more than 10 million Web sites