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6:30 PM ET, January 20, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
The White House:
Change has come to WhiteHouse.gov  —  Welcome to the new WhiteHouse.gov. I'm Macon Phillips, the Director of New Media for the White House and one of the people who will be contributing to the blog.  —  A short time ago, Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States …
RELATED:
Saul Hansell / Bits:
Obama Renovates WhiteHouse.gov  —  To the keys to the nuclear arsenal, we now add one more technological weapon that is handed over to the incoming president at exactly noon every Inauguration Day: the root password to WhiteHouse.gov.  —  Before Barack Obama even finished taking the oath of office …
Jason Kottke / kottke.org:
The country's new robots.txt file
Spencer Spinnell / Traditional Media:
Turning the page on Print Ads  —  Labels: Announcements, Google Print Ads  —  In the last few months, we've been taking a long, hard look at all the things we are doing to ensure we are investing our resources in the projects that will have the biggest impact for our users and partners.
Adam O'Donnell / Zero Day:
It's a good day to disclose the largest credit card data breach ever  —  While the majority of American media is glued to the quadrennial spectacle that is the Presidential inauguration, Heartland Payment Systems has uncovered a piece of malware hidden in their payment processing system.
RELATED:
Brian Krebs / Security Fix:
Payment Processor Breach May Be Largest Ever  —  A data breach last year at Princeton, N.J., payment processor Heartland Payment Systems may have led to the theft of more than 100 million credit and debit card accounts, the company said today.  —  If accurate, such figures may make the Heartland incident …
Heather Dougherty / Hitwise Intelligence:
Twitter catches up to Digg  —  Twitter has become a popular pastime for many who like to update their daily thoughts and activates, as well as for the voyeurs who just enjoy reading the tweets.  Last week, the market share of visits to Twitter surpassed Digg for the first time since launch and was ranked #84 …
RELATED:
MG Siegler / VentureBeat:   On the mainstream: Twitter's U.S. web market share passes Digg
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Apple iPhone Sales Drop 24% In U.S. During Q4 — Survey (AAPL)  —  Apple's (AAPL) iPhone sales dropped significantly in the Christmas quarter from the September quarter, when the iPhone 3G was first released, according to results of a new survey published by Morgan Stanley.
Discussion: Macsimum News
RELATED:
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Apple 2.0:
Apple sales data: Half empty, half full
Discussion: The Apple Core and GPS Obsessed
Jim Goldman / Tech Check with Jim Goldman:
Big Blue Kicks Off Big Week In Tech Earnings  —  Did Big Blue see big green or big red during the holiday shopping quarter?  —  Only its accountants know for sure, but that will change at the market close tonight when the company releases its fourth quarter numbers.  —  And by doing so, IBM [IBM Loading...
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Eric Lempel / PlayStation.Blog:
Upcoming PS3 Firmware (v2.60) Update  —  Hi, everyone, we have a system software updates for PS3 coming soon, and I wanted to provide you with a sneak peak at the details.  —  The PS3 firmware update (v2.60) is designed primarily to enhance the system's media capabilities.
Wired News:
The Plot to Kill Google  —  When Google's lawyers entered the smooth marble hallways of the Department of Justice on the morning of October 17, they had reason to feel confident.  Sure, they were about to face the antitrust division—an experience most companies dread—to defend a proposed deal with Yahoo.
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Word Cloud Analysis of Obama's Inaugural Speech Compared to Bush, Clinton, Reagan, Lincoln's  —  Barack Obama was just sworn in as President of the US and though he stumbled in repeating his oath, the speech that followed was delivered flawlessly and was widely praised around the web.
Discussion: Susan Mernit's Blog
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Microsoft Sells Entire Comcast Stake  —  Microsoft (MSFT) disclosed in an SEC filing on Friday that it has sold its entire 7.3% stake in Comcast (CMCSA) Class A common stock.  Microsoft had owned 150,935,575 shares.  —  In a research note this morning, Bernstein Research analyst Craig Moffett notes …
Caroline McCarthy / The Social:
Inauguration Day, by the numbers  —  From what early numbers are indicating, the historic swearing-in of President Barack Obama was not the biggest traffic day for the Internet.  But for many social networks and digital-media sites, Inauguration Day shattered traffic and usage records regardless.
Alana Semuels / L.A. Times Tech Blog:
Record Web crowd flocks to CNN and Facebook's live inauguration stream  —  So you couldn't make it to the inauguration.  How to experience it from afar without missing the speeches, the crowds, the inane comments of the guy standing next to you?  —  Thanks to CNN and Facebook …
Discussion: Contentinople and Beet.TV
RELATED:
Andy M. Zaky / Bullish Cross:
How the iPhone and Poor Apple Management have contributed to the Downfall of Apple  —  In April of 2007, Peter Oppenheimer (Apple's CFO) announced that Apple will be using what is commonly referred to as the “subscription method of accounting” for sales of the iPhone where the sales revenue …
Discussion: Apple 2.0
Joseph Tartakoff / Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
Microsoft expansion to take a hit to cut costs  —  Still unclear whether layoffs part of plan  —  When Microsoft Corp. reports its second-quarter earnings Thursday, the company is expected to outline a series of cost-cutting measures, which will include postponing most of its plans …
Apple:
iWork '09: Serial number not required for installation of retail boxes  —  iWork '09 retail boxes no longer come with a serial number.  Install iWork '09 from the enclosed disc and you're ready to go.  —  Products Affected  —  iWork '09  —  Though retail versions of iWork '09 no longer come …
Discussion: MacRumors, Infinite Loop and Macworld
iSpazio - The iPhone Blog:
Clippy - iSpazio Exclusive: Finally the real Copy & Paste for iPhone and iPod Touch is here!  —  Everyone was missing it!  Finally we got the real Copy and Paste application for the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch!  It's Clippy, avaiable from the iSpazio Repository in Cydia:  —  It's very easy to use this app.
BIZ / Twitter Blog:
Inauguration Day on Twitter  —  It was a big day at Twitter HQ today and it's not even noon yet.  We saw 5x normal tweets-per-second and about 4x tweets-per-minute as this chart illustrates.  Overall, Twitter sailed smoothly through the inauguration but at the peak, some folks did experience a 2-5 minute delay receiving updates.
Discussion: VentureBeat and AppScout
Joseph Tartakoff / The Microsoft Blog:
Microsoft won't cut perks, but here's how much they cost  —  Ever since Microsoft drew an outcry from its employees when it cut its complimentary towel service during the last recession, perks have been a sensitive matter at the company.  An internal PowerPoint presentation reviewed …
Discussion: Computerworld and Beyond Binary
mediadonis.net:
The Hyves Hype!  —  It really sounds strange, but mysteriously it just works...  At the moment, it's possible to check if a domain got penalized for selling links (or lost pagerank due any other kind of malicious activity).  —  The only thing you gotta do is put “hyves” as a subdomain in front of the domain to be checked.
Michael Masnick / Techdirt:
An Outsider Gets A Peek Behind The Scenes Of The Music Industry's Mindset: Optimism Into Denial  —  I'm writing this on the way back from MidemNet, where I had the chance to present a case study on why Trent Reznor's various experiments with business models represents the future of music.
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Did You Just Click on a Fake Hyundai Ad?  —  The Web is the future of advertising, but we're not there yet.  And getting there will be an interesting journey.  For instance, I find it hard to believe that traditional media buyers have ever had to worry about impostors buying ad space using their client's name before.
Discussion: Silicon Alley Insider
Matthew Lasar / Ars Technica:
FCC wants big fines for cable giants over channel switching  —  Outgoing Federal Communications Commission chair Kevin Martin got his last licks in on the cable industry on Monday, proposing a slew of fines against companies that the agency says migrate analog channels to digital tiers …
Dan Rayburn / The Business Of Online Video:
CBS Best Inauguration Video Quality, Hulu, C-SPAN The Worst, Others Not Loading  —  I've now watched over a dozen live feeds of the inauguration from most of the major news portals and hands down, CBS has the best quality and most reliable stream.  Others like MSNBC, C-SPAN and Hulu …
 
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 More Items: 
PR Newswire:
News Corp's News Digital Media Turns to thePlatform to Power …
Discussion: TechFlash
Mike Tedesco / Mac Mojo:
Entourage for Exchange Web Services Beta is Live!
Discussion: Infinite Loop
Frederic Lardinois / ReadWriteWeb:
Mozilla's Test Pilot: A Global Usability Lab for Firefox
Discussion: Download Squad and Mozilla Labs
Randall C. Kennedy / PC World:
What Will Become of Windows Vista?
Discussion: Smalltalk Tidbits …
Rachel Donadio / New York Times:
On Facebook, Sicilian Mafia Is a Hot Topic
Discussion: Silicon Alley Insider
InfoWorld:
Eclipse PHP upgrade tackles object-oriented programming
Discussion: The Register
Tom Espiner / CNET News:
IBM to buy Chinese e-mail company
Robert Andrews / paidContent.org:
Yahoo Cutting 20 Percent Of French Staff, Developers Bear The Brunt
Discussion: CNET News
 Earlier Items: 
Tony Ruscoe / Google Blogoscoped:
Google Web Drive and “Cosmo” Discussed in Deleted Document
Farhad Manjoo / Slate:
Why Microsoft should forget about Yahoo and buy Palm.
Ashlee Vance / Bits:
Chaos Reigns in the PC Industry
Discussion: 451 CAOS Theory
Emily Steel / Wall Street Journal:
Marketers Look Beyond Search Engines
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Caitlin Huston / The Hollywood Reporter:
Internal memo: Hearst Magazines president announces layoffs as part of a decision to “reallocate resources” to “continue our focus on digital innovation”

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

Lachlan Cartwright / The Ankler:
Sources: MSNBC renewed Rachel Maddow's contract early this fall, but with a pay cut; MSNBC bosses' plan to shake up daytime and weekend programming

 
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