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4:50 PM ET, January 6, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Tom Neumayr / Apple:
Changes Coming to the iTunes Store  —  Apple® today announced several changes to the iTunes® Store (www.itunes.com).  Beginning today, all four major music labels—Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, Warner Music Group and EMI, along with thousands of independent labels …
RELATED:
Ethan Smith / Wall Street Journal:
ITunes to Change Pricing Strategy  —  Apple Inc. said it is making changes to its iTunes Store, representing significant shifts in its longstanding approach to the business of selling songs online.  —  The changes, unveiled during a speech Tuesday at the Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco …
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Confirmed: iTunes Going DRM-Free.  Unclear: Does Anyone Care?  —  In 2007, Apple CEO Steve Jobs predicted that half the music offered at his iTunes store would be sold without digital rights management-the lock-and-key system that the music labels wrap their songs-by the end of that year.
AppleInsider:
Apple unveils 17-inch MacBook Pro with 8-hour battery  —  Presenting at the Macworld Expo on Tuesday, Apple unveiled the new 17-inch MacBook Pro featuring a durable and precision aluminum unibody enclosure, and a revolutionary new built-in battery that delivers up to eight hours of use …
RELATED:
Joshua Topolsky / Engadget:
MacBook Pro 17-inch first hands-on (update: video added)  —  Yep — it looks just like its little brothers!  Feels like 'em too, except the obvious bit of heft added by that 17-inch display.  Of course, they don't have that sweet, gigantic battery inside, or that matte display option (until we torch Curpertino, of course... in love).
Discussion: techeblog.com
Bill Evans / Apple:
Apple Introduces 17-inch MacBook Pro With Revolutionary New Built-in Battery That Delivers Eight Hours of Use & 1,000 Recharges  —  Apple® today unveiled the new 17-inch MacBook® Pro featuring a durable and beautiful precision aluminum unibody enclosure, and a revolutionary new built …
Joshua Topolsky / Engadget:
Live from the Macworld 2009 keynote  —  9:07AM “If you wanna hear some new things today — I have three new things...”  —  9:07AM “The last year was our biggest ever, 9.7 mil Macs.  We did it by growing twice as fast as the rest of the industry.”  “The hardware THE leopard (!)...”
RELATED:
Owen Thomas / Gawker:
The Russian Bear Slashes a Social Network  —  The bubble in social networking has burst, decisively.  LiveJournal, the San Francisco-based arm of Sup, a Russian Internet startup, has cut 12 of 28 U.S. employees — and offered them no severance, we're told.  —  The quirky site …
Nicholas Deleon / CrunchGear:
Say hello to iWork 09: Like iWork 08, but plus one  —  Whoever predicted that Apple would introduce iWork '09 today gets a gold star.  Keynote, Pages and Numbers all received what I would consider minor updates; no need to run around all willy nilly for these, methinks.
Discussion: Telegraph, Obsessable and SlashGear
RELATED:
Josh Lowensohn / Webware.com:
Apple takes another small step on to the Web
Discussion: Apple Watch and TechFlash
Apple:
Apple Unveils iWork '09
Wilson Rothman / Gizmodo:
Apple Revamps iLife for '09 with iPhoto Facial Recognition and More  —  Today at Macworld 2009, Apple showed off a new iPhoto with true facial recognition, a better iMovie and other iLife updates—$79 solo, $99 for family, requires Leopard, available late January.  —  It's a good solid upgrade full of very nice features.
RELATED:
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
iPhoto Gets A Facelift
Discussion: CrunchGear
Jack Shafer / Slate:
How Newspapers Tried to Invent the Web  —  But failed.  —  A moment of sympathy, please, for newspapers, whose readers and advertisers have been fleeing at a frightening rate.  —  It would be easy to accuse editors and publishers of being clueless about the coming Internet disruption …
Discussion: Scripting News
Karen Jacobs / Reuters:
Best Buy offers used iPhones at lower price  —  ATLANTA (Reuters) - Retailer Best Buy Co, seeking new ways to appeal to cost-conscious shoppers, said on Tuesday it is selling refurbished versions of Apple Inc's iPhone 3G at its stores that are priced about $50 less than new iPhones.
PC World:
AMD: Creating a New Laptop Category  — Netbooks have their appeal—tiny budget machines with just enough oomph to run Windows XP.  Ultraportables have horsepower in spades, but they cost too much to suit some people.  This year we're going to see a whole new category of notebook take shape …
RELATED:
Caroline McCarthy / The Social:
Hackers hit MacRumors keynote coverage  —  Some nasty pranksters, likely associated with Web forum 4Chan, have hacked into Apple gossip mainstay MacRumors' live-blog coverage of Tuesday's Macworld keynote.  Hosted on a separate domain, MacRumorsLive.com, the site was plagued by offensive messages …
Brian Krebs / Security Fix:
Spamhaus: Google Now 4th Most Spam-Friendly Provider  —  Google's free services are being heavily exploited by spammers to redirect visitors to sites touting knockoff designer drugs and scams, according to the latest rankings from Spamhaus.org, a group that tracks unsolicited commercial e-mail.
Discussion: eWeek and The Register
RELATED:
The Spamhaus Project:
Spamhaus Statistics : The Top 10
Discussion: Computerworld and Neowin.net
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Clearspring Lays Off 20%, President And COO Jay Rappaport Leaving  —  Seems like widget distribution startup Clearspring is another victim of the economic meltdown forced to make some tough decisions.  We heard rumors floating that the company laid off about 20% of its staff in early December …
Discussion: Webware.com
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:
Report: PC makers to provide free Vista-to Win-7 upgrades starting July 1  —  In yet another indicator as to the progress of Windows 7, the Tech ARP site reported that Microsoft plans to allow PC makers to offer customers who buy Windows Vista machines as of July 1 free upgrades to Windows 7 once it ships.
Anne Thomas Manes / Application Platform …:
SOA is Dead; Long Live Services  —  SOA met its demise on January 1, 2009, when it was wiped out by the catastrophic impact of the economic recession.  SOA is survived by its offspring: mashups, BPM, SaaS, Cloud Computing, and all other architectural approaches that depend on “services”.
Twitter Status:
Delivery delays  —  We're experiencing some delays in the amount of time it takes for updates to appear in timelines.  Working on this now.
Discussion: Mashable!
The Boy Genius / Boy Genius Report:
HTC announces HTC S743: U.S. edition, suckaz  —  Not forgetting about those ever-important arrogant American consumers, HTC has crafted a U.S.-specific version of their HTC S740 Windows Mobile Standard device.  Supporting 850MHz/1900MHz HSDPA bands (sorry, T-Mo users), they're taking …
Joseph Tartakoff / The Microsoft Blog:
Microsoft's MacBU touts the ‘software + services’ mantra  —  Microsoft used its presence at Macworld today to announce several updates that will make it easier for Mac users to link up with Microsoft applications online.  —  Here's a summary of Microsoft's announcements at Macworld:
Discussion: Macworld
Macky Cruz / TrendLabs:
Bogus LinkedIn Profiles Harbor Malicious Content  —  The LinkedIn professional networking site connects more than 30 million users from across many different industries.  The advantages of maintaining a list of trusted business contacts for career planning purposes is not lost on LinkedIn's users.
 
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 More Items: 
Brian Krebs / Washington Post:
Data Breaches Up Almost 50 Percent, Affecting Records of 35.7 Million People
Dana Blankenhorn / Open Source:
Android in a cloud  —  Since the start of the year we've talked …
Discussion: IntoMobile
Fred / Electronic Frontier Foundation:
UMG v. Veoh: Another Victory for Web 2.0
Discussion: Ars Technica, Threat Level and hypebot
Newsosaur / Reflections of a Newsosaur:
Five fatal flaws in local Internet ad sales
Stacey Higginbotham / GigaOM:
Clearwire Launches WiMAX in Portland
Discussion: eWeek and Unstrung
Enigmax / TorrentFreak:
Anonymous BitTorrent Service VPN4Life is a Scam
Mark Wilson / Gizmodo:
Sting Teaches You to Play Guitar in Garageband '09
Discussion: geeksugar and GPS Obsessed
 Earlier Items: 
Emil Protalinski / One Microsoft Way:
Microsoft promotes Bob Muglia to president
Discussion: Microsoft and All about Microsoft
Philipp Lenssen / Google Blogoscoped:
Checkout Icon Makes Ads 10% More Clickable, Google Says
Discussion: Search Engine Land
Matthew Lasar / Ars Technica:
Comcast starts new year with new network management system
Chris Meadows / TeleRead:
Disney DVD debacle: Wall•E vs. DRM (or defects)
Staska / Unwired View:
Apple patents iPhone Mobile Navigation / Mapping App
Discussion: MacNN and GPS Obsessed
Stacey Higginbotham / GigaOM:
Netbooks and the Death of x86 Computing
Discussion: jkOnTheRun and NewTeeVee
Robert McLaws / Windows-Now.com:
I Am Boycotting IE Mobile Until Microsoft Gets Its Act Together
 

 
From Mediagazer:

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

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

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

 
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