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4:30 PM ET, November 1, 2008

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Lee Mathews / Download Squad:
Windows 7 hands on - Impressive at every turn  —  With the Microsoft PDC recently wrapping up, excitement has been building for Windows 7.  I wonder, will it be able to live up to the hype?  There's only one way to find out: install it and see for myself.  This is by no means a complete analysis …
AOL Mail Blog:
An Open Letter to Gmail: Happy Halloween!  We love your costume!  —  Happy Halloween Gmail!  We knew you would have the best costume at the party, and who can blame you?  We think it's great that you're using this holiday to pay homage to the one who started it all, who got 35 million people online …
Owen Thomas / Valleywag:
America CTO's infomercial for Obama  —  In exchange for his late-to-the-party endorsement of Barack Obama, Google CEO Eric Schmidt got a spot on Obama's prime-time infomercial last night.  Note how Schmidt explains his decision, made only after Obama took a substantial lead in the polls …
Discussion: Beyond Search and broadstuff
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Is Revver On The Fritz?  —  We've been getting a lot of tips from people who have been having problems reaching the Revver website lately, getting videos uploaded or playing the ones already hosted on the platform.  We haven't paid much attention to them so far, because every time we check …
Discussion: F**kedStartups
Kevin Maney / Portfolio:
The End of This Blog  —  Kevin Maney writes: If Tech Observer looks a little sparse from here on, that's because it is dead.  —  Some of you may have already seen the news that almost all of Portfolio.com's staff is getting cut, and the site will be reformulated as something less costly and ambitious.
Discussion: MediaMemo
Bloomberg:
Panasonic Seeks to Buy Control of Sanyo, Company Official Says  —  Nov. 1 (Bloomberg) — Panasonic Corp., the world's largest maker of consumer electronics, will seek to buy control of Sanyo Electric Co. from its biggest shareholders, a company official familiar with the negotiations said.
Discussion: Reuters, Associated Press and Engadget
Dong Ngo / CNET News:
No more pirated DVDs from China...maybe  —  The MPAA doesn't want to make it easy for you to copy DVDs; DVD Shrink does.  —  If you've been copying DVDs using some made-in-China DVD player, think about taking good care of the device, as you might not be able to buy a replacement.
Discussion: TECH.BLORGE.com
Betsy Schiffman / Epicenter:
Online Ad Prices Hit the Skids With the Stock Market  —  Online ad rates — across all the major search engines — apparently tanked one day a couple weeks ago, just when the stock market went to hell and talk of a world world depression heated up.  Paul Edmondson, CEO of ad management platform YieldBuild.com …
Discussion: The Noisy Channel
Nicholas Thompson / Epicenter:
Now Official: No One In Tech Can Defend McCain  —  There is apparently not a single prominent person who supports John McCain's technology policies and is confident enough to go out there and debate in favor of them.  —  As readers of this blog know, after publishing the Wired Scorecard a couple weeks ago …
Jaime Forman-Lau / The Official Google Blog:
Feed me!  Google Alerts not just for email anymore  —  This week, our Trondheim-based Google Alerts team launched support for feeds, a highly requested feature you can use to receive alerts via the feed reader of your choice.  (Of course, we think the best places to view your updates are iGoogle and Google Reader.)
Discussion: bub.blicio.us, Lifehacker and Mashable!
John Mahoney / Gizmodo:
Confirmed: New MacBooks Support 6GB RAM  —  While we've officially confirmed that the Nvidia chipset in the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros can theoretically support up to 8GB of RAM, Apple says the capacities for each top out at 4GB.  Turns out, the actual number is right there in the middle …
Discussion: CrunchGear, Mobilewhack.com and MacUser
Michael Masnick / Techdirt:
BBC's Magic TV Detector Vans Kept Secret  —  As many of you probably know (especially if you live in the UK), you have to buy a license to have a TV (or even a TV tuner card for a computer).  The license fees go to pay the BBC to operate.  Apparently, the BBC has some secret “TV detector” …
Discussion: Boing Boing Gadgets
 
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 More Items: 
Suzanne Tindal / CNET News:
Windows 7 pre-beta hits BitTorrent
Discussion: Clickety Clack
Sam Diaz / Between the Lines:
Should Facebook be tapping users for cash?
Discussion: broadstuff and The Register
 Earlier Items: 
Doug Beaver / Facebook Blog:
Click or Treat: Halloween Photo Bonanza
Discussion: All Facebook
 

 
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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