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7:55 AM ET, February 4, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Vic Gundotra / The Official Google Blog:
See where your friends are with Google Latitude  —  How often do you find yourself wondering where your friends are and what they're up to?  It's a pretty central question to our daily social lives, and it's precisely the question you can now answer using Google Latitude.
RELATED:
Wall Street Journal:
Tracking Friends the Google Way  —  New Mobile-Device Feature Lets Users Share Their Every Move With Each Other  —  For the past week, I've been stalking my sister, my boyfriend and my boss.  They've also been stalking me, and we still like one other.  —  All four of us have been using …
MG Siegler / VentureBeat:
Google enters the location-based networking fray with Latitude  —  Google has just launched a new aspect of its Google Maps product called Latitude.  It's a social layer that goes over Google Maps to show your location information in real time.  If you think Google is already creepy …
Mark Zuckerberg / Facebook Blog:
Facebook's 5th Birthday  —  Tomorrow is Facebook's 5th birthday.  This is a happy occasion for Facebook, but much more significant to the Facebook team is the fact that over 150 million people around the world are using Facebook to connect with the people in their lives.
RELATED:
Eric Eldon / VentureBeat:
Facebook celebrates fifth birthday with growth in key sharing features
Discussion: dot.life blog, BBC and Gawker
Times of India:
$10-laptop proves to be a damp squib  —  Text:  —  TIRUPATI: The much-touted laptop for the masses said to have been built by students of Vellore Institute of Technology that would cost a mere Rs 500 actually turned out to be only a computing device.  —  Making this clear at the inauguration …
RELATED:
Matt Cutts / Gadgets, Google, and SEO:
Google and Big Ideas  —  I love Om Malik and respect him greatly.  I'm hoping to corner him for lunch sometime to pick his brain on ways that Google could improve.  But today he happened to do a tweet that caught my attention just as my morning caffeine was kicking in.
Discussion: Sample the Web and The Noisy Channel, Thanks:atul
RELATED:
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Google & The Big Ideas  —  Sometimes, a tweet is just a tweet.  Occasionally it is just a start of a healthy debate!  —  Earlier today, when I read about Google launching a mobile version of Tasks.  I was amazed by the attention being focused on essentially a to-do list website.
Mozilla:
Firefox 3 Release Notes  —  Check out what's new, the known issues and frequently asked questions about the latest version of Firefox.  As always, you're encouraged to tell us what you think, either using this feedback form or by filing a bug in Bugzilla.
getclicky.com/blog:
Google's new Ajax-powered search results breaks search keyword tracking for everyone  —  Do you run a web site?  Do you use a service such as Clicky, Statcounter, AWStats, etc, to monitor the traffic to your web site?  Do you find it useful how these services can tell you what search terms are leading visitors to your site?
RELATED:
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:
Microsoft's Windows 7 line-up: The good, the bad and the ugly  —  If you were one of those individuals holding out hope that Microsoft might go the way of Apple and move to one or two SKUs for Windows 7, your prayers have gone unanswered.  But there still is some good news in what's on tap …
RELATED:
Wall Street Journal:
Google's Clout Grows as Tech Initiatives Take Shape  —  When a group of chief executives visited the White House last week to talk about stimulus with President Barack Obama, Google Inc.'s Eric Schmidt wasn't hard to spot, perched in a prime seat on the new president's left side.
The Boy Genius / Boy Genius Report:
One of Acer's Mobile World Congress' handsets gets pictured  —  So, here's the deal... One of our infamous ninjas just sent us a shot of an unreleased and unseen Acer handset.  They told us it would be announced by Acer at MWC in a couple weeks, and that it is “pretty awkward.”  We agreed.
Jeff Smykil / Ars Technica:
Apple adding to its “vintage and obsolete” list  —  Sometimes it's hard to say goodbye: Apple has added a handful of machines to its vintage and obsolete list.  —  alistairmcmillan  —  From a computer enthusiast's point of view, some machines may never fall into the obsolete category.
Discussion: AppleDifferent and TUAW
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
AOL ad revenue slide continues; Time Warner writes down acquisitions  —  Time Warner's fourth quarter financial results showed more pain for its struggling AOL unit.  —  In the fourth quarter (statement), AOL revenue fell 23 percent from a year ago to $968 million.
Nicholas Carlson / Silicon Alley Insider:
Exclusive Screenshots Of Bebo 2.0, Launching In February (TWX)  —  Bebo, the social network Time Warner's (TWX) AOL acquired for $850 million last summer, will launch version 2.0 later this month.  —  The biggest addition to Bebo 2.0 will be “Timelines,” which will integrate a user's photos, videos, blog posts into a “life stream.”
Discussion: VentureBeat
Hiroshi Suzuki / Bloomberg:
Panasonic Will Cut About 15,000 Jobs as First Loss in Six Years Looms  —  Feb. 4 (Bloomberg) — Panasonic Corp. the world's largest consumer-electronics maker, will cut about 15,000 jobs and predicted its first loss in six years as the deepening recession hurts demand for televisions and cameras.
Fred von Lohmann / Electronic Frontier Foundation:
YouTube's January Fair Use Massacre  —  Privacy info.  This embed will serve content from youtube.com.  —  This is what it's come to.  Teenagers singing “Winter Wonderland” being censored off YouTube.  —  Fair use has always been at risk on YouTube, thanks to abusive DMCA takedown notices sent …
Matthew Moore / Telegraph:
SongSmith: Financial crisis soundtrack composed from tumbling share price graphs  —  A soundtrack of the global economic crisis composed by running financial graphs through SongSmith, Microsoft's increasingly popular music software, has become a YouTube hit.
Guardian:
Mobile phone sales fall  —  Mobile phone users are holding on to their handsets and “trading down” to cheaper deals, or opting for a top-of-the-range device such as Apple's iPhone or the BlackBerry Storm, according to the world's largest mobile phone company, Vodafone.
Discussion: Tom Hume
Larry Larsen / Channel 10:
Cool IE8 Tip: Answer Suggestions  —  Starting today, the default Live search in IE8 is so smart it can answer some of your questions before you finish asking them.  For example, with Live set to default in IE8, try typing “MSFT” in the search box.  No sooner does your finger lift off the T before Live provides a stock chart for you.
Discussion: SEO and Tech Daily
Gregg Keizer / Computerworld:
Removing admin rights stymies 92% of Microsoft's bugs  —  Bulk of IE's bugs in '08 could have been blocked, says vendor  —  Computerworld) Nine of out 10 critical bugs reported by Microsoft last year could have been made moot, or at least made less dangerous, if people ran Windows without …
Mike Butcher / TechCrunch UK:
LinkedIn launches German site to take the fight to Xing  —  LinkedIn is launching a dedicated site for Germany where local - and floated - business network Xing predominates.  LinkedIn had significant growth with sites for Spain and France last year - 200,000 users in two months and France hit 700,000.
Judith Townend / Journalism.co.uk:
‘Democratic legitimation via the web is not enough’, says Clay Shirky  —  Clay Shirky has changed his mind about democratic participation, he tells Journalism.co.uk, ahead of an appearance at a POLIS event at the LSE tonight.  —  “All the rhetoric, including - I'm embarrassed to say …
Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:
Google Is Not Your Sugar Daddy  —  Variations on the “Google should pay me for X” theme have been around for some time now, and the precipitous decline of content-related industries — among them book publishing, newspaper printing and music distribution, to name just a few …
Dan Rayburn / The Business Of Online Video:
Netflix's Streaming Service Did Not Drive Increased Earnings  —  After Netflix gave earnings last week, various news sites pointed to Netflix's streaming service as the reason why Netflix earnings beat estimates.  Most seem to attribute this to the comment Netflix's CEO said on the earnings call …
Chris Ziegler / Engadget:
Garmin, ASUS form partnership for phones, nuviphone G60 first model  —  We knew the nuvifone was an ASUS-sourced piece, but who knew the partnership was going to run so deep?  Garmin and ASUS have joined hands to create the Garmin-Asus strategic alliance with the goal of designing and producing a whole line of co-branded handsets.
PC Pro:
Torvalds rejects one-size-fits-all Linux  —  Linus Torvalds has rejected the argument that Linux developers should pool their resources behind a single distribution.  —  As we revealed yesterday, Linux is still failing to show any considerable market share growth despite being pre-installed on a wide selection of netbooks.
Michael Calore / Epicenter:
Ma.gnolia Using FriendFeed to Restore Users' Data  —  Necessity is the mother of invention, but it helps to have an open API, too.  —  Last Friday, social bookmarking site Ma.gnolia suffered a major server meltdown, losing the bulk of its user data as well as its backup.
Thanks:btaylor
 
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 More Items: 
Richard Jalichandra / The Technorati Weblog:
We're Launching Original Tag Articles and Blurbs on Technorati.com
Discussion: Mashable! and TechCrunch, Thanks:davidpiette
Kevin Poulsen / Threat Level:
Global ATM Caper Nets Hackers $9 Million in One Day
Chris Morris / Forbes:
GameFly ‘Shacks’ Up  —  Online videogame rental company buys Shacknews.
John Timmer / Ars Technica:
New Singularity University may overpromise the infinite
Discussion: GMSV, Thanks:sampad
Murad Ahmed / Tech Central:
Top 20 tracks remixed by Microsoft Songsmith
Discussion: Online Video Watch
 Earlier Items: 
Michael Masnick / Techdirt:
Fox Demands Site Give Up Fair Use Rights, Run Special Fox Ads, To Do Any Commentary
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Apple: ChangeWave Sees Macbook Demand Ebbing
Skylar / build.kiva:
Welcome to build.kiva.org!
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Jessica Toonkel / Wall Street Journal:
A deep dive into Paramount's sale to Skydance; sources: Skydance may integrate Pluto into Paramount+, and CBS head George Cheeks is expected to be head of TV

Brian Stelter / CNN:
In a letter to Bob Iger, incoming FCC chair Brendan Carr raised concerns about ABC's negotiations with its affiliated stations, public trust in media, and more

Todd Spangler / Variety:
Netflix will host NFL Christmas games, including Beyonce's Halftime show, for only three hours after streaming them live; replays will be available on NFL+

 
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