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4:25 PM ET, January 15, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Brian X. Chen / Gadget Lab:
Steve Jobs Probably Won't Come Back to Apple  —  Steve Jobs' medical leave from Apple is likely to be permanent, analysts say.  —  In a letter to Apple staff on Wednesday, Jobs said he was taking a five-month medical leave because his health issues are “more complex than I originally thought.”
RELATED:
Saul Hansell / Bits:
What If Steve Jobs Doesn't Come Back to Work?  —  We don't know what's wrong with Steven P. Jobs, Apple's chief executive.  But it's got to be serious.  You don't take a six-month leave of absence, as he is, just because you've got a stomachache.  —  So that raises the question …
Bloomberg:
Steve Jobs May Have Pancreas Removed After Cancer  —  Jan. 15 (Bloomberg) — Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs could be facing surgery to remove his pancreas, doctors say.  —  Jobs said yesterday he's taking a five-month leave of absence after discovering that his health problems are …
Joe Nocera / Executive Suite:
It's Time for Apple to Come Clean  —  Last week, when Steve Jobs announced that his recent weight loss was due to “a hormone imbalance,” I got calls from reporters and others (which, I must admit, I ducked) asking me if that was the medical problem he had confessed to when he and I had had …
RELATED:
Brian Caulfield / Forbes:
Lawsuits Could Fly Over Jobs' Exit
Discussion: Gawker and The Mac Observer
Zach Spear / AppleInsider:
Lawsuits against Apple likely in light of Jobs' latest disclosure
Discussion: Reuters, iLounge and Macsimum News
Bloomberg:
Apple's Cook Pushes Staff in Lieu of Jobs's Magic  —  A A A  —  Jan. 15 (Bloomberg) — Apple Inc. founder and Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs is prone to fits of passion, table pounding and screaming.  —  Tim Cook, who will oversee the company while Jobs takes medical leave, never raises his voice.
RELATED:
Nick Wingfield / Digits:
When Steve Jobs Met Tim Cook  —  For the next six months , Steve Jobs has asked Tim Cook run Apple while Jobs convalesces.  For Cook, that must feel a little like getting the keys to dad's Porsche.  For Jobs, it suggests he's confident Cook won't drive the company into a ditch.
Arik Hesseldahl / Business Week:
Tim Cook: A Steady Go-To Guide for Apple
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
Google Ends Google Video Uploads, Shutters Notebook, Catalog Search, Dodgeball & Jaiku  —  Google's announced they're closing or ceasing development of a variety of products as part of an already continuing move to keep efforts focused on other products with greater usage.
RELATED:
Vic Gundotra / Google Code Blog:
Changes for Jaiku and Farewell to Dodgeball and Mashup Editor
Emil Protalinski / One Microsoft Way:
Leaked: First Office 14 screenshots  —  It didn't take long this time, either.  Earlier this week, testers received alpha builds of Office 14, the codename for the successor to Office 2007.  One tester from Russian site wzor.net has now leaked the screenshots of the applications included in the productivity suite.
Discussion: Lifehacker
John Paczkowski / Digital Daily:
Apple Investors Are Wusses  —  Ironic, isn't that, that in this decade of CEO scandals and corporate duplicity, shareholders are punishing Apple-which in its last quarterly statement, reported earnings of $1.14 billion on sales of $7.9 billion, with nearly $25 billion in cash-for allowing CEO Steve Jobs a medical leave of absence?
Discussion: Mark Sigal's Blog, Techmamas and Gawker
RELATED:
Rebecca Buckman / Forbes:
The Exacting Standards Of Carol Bartz  —  The turnaround at automated design software firm Autodesk gives hints of how Bartz will manage Yahoo!  —  When Carol Bartz swept into the chief executive's suite at tech firm Autodesk in 1992, she took over a classic, chaotic engineers' paradise.
Discussion: Computerworld Blogs
RELATED:
Wall Street Journal:
Departing Yahoo President Has History of Missteps  —  On Monday night, outgoing Yahoo Inc. Chief Executive Jerry Yang delivered some tough news to Yahoo President Susan Decker: The Yahoo board had picked someone else as its new CEO.  On Tuesday, Ms. Decker announced her plans to resign …
Aidan Malley / AppleInsider:
Apple seeks trademark on “OS X” without the “Mac”  —  Seemingly cementing a move first hinted at during the World Wide Developers Conference, Apple has filed for a trademark for its OS X operating system but without the “Mac” prefix that has accompanied the name since its inception.
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Is The Wireless Sector Headed For A Price War?  —  Sprint's (S) Boost Mobile unit this week unveiled a new plan on its iDEN network which includes unlimited voice, texting, Web access and push-to-talk services for a flat pre-paid rate of $50 a month.  Phones for the service, which all will be from Motorola (MOT), will start at $20.
Discussion: Silicon Alley Insider
RELATED:
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
Judge calls RIAA objections “specious,” will stream hearing  —  A federal judge has agreed to a novel request: streaming parts of an upcoming file-sharing trial over the Internet.  Judge Nancy Gertner has granted the request of Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson and students to put the gavel …
WebOS Arena:
Best Buy to be Palm Pre's exclusive retailer  —  We received news from a credible source that BestBuy Mobile will be getting an exclusive deal with Sprint for the Palm Pre release.  For 60 days the number one consumer electronics retailer will be the only place where you can get your hands on the Palm Pre, besides Sprint of course.
Kelly Fiveash / The Register:
Mozilla delays third Firefox 3.1 beta  —  Pesky bugs stall progress  —  Mozilla Corporation has pushed back the release of the third, and possibly final, beta for Firefox 3.1 by a week to allow the firm to fix some bugs in the upcoming version of its open source browser.
Discussion: Open Source and Obsessable
Paul Miller / Engadget:
What Apple could learn from Palm's webOS  —  In case you missed the keynote, Palm took some special moments to let everyone know that they're not trying to compete with Apple — which is of course exactly what they're doing with the Pre and webOS.  Sure, there's plenty of room in the market …
Discussion: Download Squad and PalmAddicts
Jenna Wortham / Bits:
InsideView, Web Crawler for Business, Raises $6.5 Million  —  As companies continue to put the brakes on expenditures and reduce staffs, maximizing efficiency becomes even more essential for businesses looking to weather the recession.  —  InsideView, a start-up based in San Francisco …
Discussion: VatorNews
YouTube Blog:
Coming Up Next... YouTube on Your TV  —  Have you ever wanted to just sit on your couch and watch YouTube on your TV?  Well, now that's possible via YouTube for Television, initially available through the Sony PS3 and Nintendo Wii game consoles at www.youtube.com/tv.
PewResearch.org:
Social Networks Grow: Friending Mom and Dad  —  The share of adult internet users who have a profile on a social networking site has more than quadrupled in the past four years — from 8% in 2005 to 35% now,1 according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project's December 2008 tracking survey.
Discussion: PC World
Matt Jones / Dopplr Blog:
Dopplr presents the Personal Annual Report 2008: freshly generated for you, and Barack Obama...  We've generated what we call the Personal Annual Report for all our users.  It's a unique-to-you PDF of data, visualisations and factoids about your travel in 2008, that we're delivering …
Discussion: Thomas Crampton
 
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 More Items: 
Emil Protalinski / One Microsoft Way:
Microsoft Mediaroom coming to China
Discussion: FierceIPTV
Economist:
Here we go again  —  It cannot defy gravity, but the technology …
Discussion: The Open Road
Lewis Page / The Register:
Royal Navy warships lose email in virus infection
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Wikipedia Celebrates 8th Birthday With New Tech for the Future
Tameka Kee / paidContent.org:
SB Nation Got $5 Million In Funding For Sports Blogs
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Sharpcast Raises $10 Million In Down Round For File Syncing
Discussion: VentureBeat
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Autodesk Issues FY Q4 Warning; Cutting 750 Jobs
Discussion: CNET News
 Earlier Items: 
Matt McGee / Search Engine Land:
Yahoo Shows Wikipedia Some SearchMonkey Love
Andy Greenberg / Forbes:
The Deal That Could Have Saved Nortel
Dusan Belic / IntoMobile:
PerfectStorm theme makes your iPhone look like the BlackBerry Storm
Discussion: BerryReview.com
Cat Keynes / The Register:
China's three-horse mobile bet: Repeating America's mistakes
Alistair Croll / GigaOM:
Identi.ca Gets Funding to Make Open-source Twitter Variant
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
How Warner Music Killed Facebook Music
Discussion: All Facebook, AppScout and p2pnet