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10:05 PM ET, February 5, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Google Book Search Blog:
1.5 million books in your pocket  —  Posted by Viresh Ratnakar, Guillaume Poncin, Brandon Badger, and Frances Haugen, Book Search Mobile Team  —  One of the great things about an iPhone or Android phone is being able to play Pacman while stuck in line at the post office.
RELATED:
Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:
Google Book Search: Seriously, iPhones are eBook readers  —  Like reading on your mobile phone?  Well, Google just added 1.5 million books to your library, with the launch of a new mobile site that optimizes the text of Book Search's public-domain (i.e., non-copyrighted) works for reading on your iPhone or Android device.
Discussion: TUAW and The iPhone Blog
Kasper Jade / AppleInsider:
Apple's Snow Leopard to include location, multi-touch tools  —  Apple's Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard operating system will include tools borrowed from the iPhone that let developers determine the geographical location of Macs, as well as extend additional support for multi-touch to their apps, AppleInsider has learned.
Mike Schroepfer / Facebook Developers:
Next Steps in Openness  —  Enabling social information to flow through the Web is one of the core goals of Facebook.  In the two months since Facebook Connect became generally available, over 4,000 sites and desktop applications have gone live with the service.
RELATED:
Katie Marsal / AppleInsider:
Apple planning connected television, Apple TV with DVR - report  —  Although Apple has publicly denied interest in such markets, investment bank Piper Jaffray said Thursday it expects the company to introduce a networked television in the next two years and update its Apple TV set-top-box with DVR capabilities by year's end.
MSDN Blogs:
UAC Feedback and Follow-Up  —  When we started the “E7” blog we were both excited and also a bit uneasy.  The excitement is obvious.  The unease is because at some point we knew we would mess up.  We weren't sure if we would mess up because we were blogging about a poorly designed feature …
RELATED:
Brooke Crothers / CNET News:
Nvidia-based Microsoft smartphone coming?  —  Nvidia's Tegra chip will be used in an upcoming Microsoft smartphone, according to an analyst at Broadpoint AmTech.  —  The San Francisco-based research firm also is speculating that Apple will eventually use the Nvidia ARM-based chip in a future iPhone.
RELATED:
Nick Wingfield / Digits:
Microsoft: Once Again, We're Not Making a Smartphone
Ina Fried / Beyond Binary:
Microsoft offers to just ‘Fix it’  —  When people encounter a problem with their PC, they often go to the Web and do a search to see if others have had the problem.  If they are lucky, someone has found a fix and listed the steps on either a support document or within a user forum.
Market Wire:
JAJAH Turns iPod Touch Into an iPhone  —  White Label Solution Enables Any Carrier to Provide High Quality Calls and text Messaging via the iPod Touch  —  JAJAH, the leading IP telecommunications company, today announced a complete revamp of the iPod touch, turning the device into a fully functioning mobile phone for consumers.
David Pogue / New York Times:
So Many iPhone Apps, So Little Time  —  Who was it who wrote, in March 2008, just after Apple announced its intention to create an online app store for the iPhone, “You're witnessing the birth of a third major computer platform: Windows, Mac OS X, iPhone”?  —  Oh, right—that was me.
Economist:
Hulu who?  —  After much confusion, it is becoming clear what works in online video  —  IN THE spring of 2007 Jason Kilar was trying to beef up the video offerings of his employer, Amazon, the world's largest online retailer, when he got a call from a headhunting firm.
Alex Chitu / Google Operating System:
Offline Google Calendar  —  Some Google Apps users noticed a new option in Google Calendar: read-only offline access to the calendars using Google Gears.  Mark Mathson has screenshots for the new feature, but it's surprising to see that Google Apps users, who usually received the updates later …
RELATED:
Nicholas Carlson / Silicon Alley Insider:
News Corp Misses, Rupe: Recession Worse Than We Thought (NWS)  —  News Corp. just turned in an ugly earnings report, with $6.4 billion in Q2 losses due to an $8.4 billion writedown.  —  Uglier than that loss: Rupert Murdoch's forecast for 2009.  In the release he says …
Douglas Bowman / Stopdesign:
Recreating the button  —  Until some future version of HTML gives us new native controls to use in a browser, at Google, we've been playing and experimenting with controls we call “custom buttons” in our apps (among other custom controls).  These buttons just launched in Gmail yesterday …
Thanks:atul
Ed Kohler / The Deets:
How Village Voice Media Uses Digg to Game Their Traffic Numbers  —  This is the story about a girl that's actually a dude who's brought in 3.8 - 19.4 million visitors* to Village Voice Media websites by gaming Digg.  —  Village Voice Media appears to be running an organized reciprocal Digg …
Gmail Blog:
New in Labs: Multiple Inboxes  —  I'm seriously into filters and labels.  All the email I get related to Flash goes under my “flash” label, everything about paragliding goes under “flying,” and they all skip my inbox because that's how I like to stay organized.
Discussion: VentureBeat and TechCrunch, Thanks:dreamsketcher
Eric Eldon / VentureBeat:
Meebo launches Facebook chat, officially and securely this time  —  Instant message service aggregator Meebo is launching the first officially sanctioned version of Facebook's IM service, Chat, to work on another web site.  Basically, it lets you IM with friends who are logged into Chat …
Eric Engleman / TechFlash:
Amazon opens up payments platform to all developers  —  Amazon.com is making its Flexible Payments Service broadly available today.  The service, which had been in limited beta, lets third-party developers tap into Amazon's existing payment infrastructure — letting them charge customers using …
GadgetGirl / Gaj-It.com:
Shush!  Samsung Acme i8910 is Leaked  —  Be the first to hear it here, as we have exclusive leaked photos sent to Gaj-It showing Samsungs latest addition to their eclectic portfolio of mobile phones.  This new, but very ‘hush hush’ arrival is the Samsung Acme i8910, however …
Bobbie Johnson / Guardian:
Last.fm fears for online radio future  —  Britain's complicated music royalty system is killing online innovation, according to one of the founders of internet radio service Last.fm.  —  Martin Stiksel, who helped oversee the $280m acquisition of the London-based music recommendation site …
Will Park / IntoMobile:
Is Apple working on a next-gen iPhone with customized multi-core chips?  —  By now it's an accepted fact that Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) has loosed a fleet of unannounced iPhones for real-world testing.  And, true to Apple's usually secretive ways, the new “iPhone 2,1” feature-set is still a mystery.
Discussion: mediabistro.com and 9 to 5 Mac
The Boy Genius / Boy Genius Report:
Verizon Wireless BlackBerry BOGO sale, buy one get one free!  —  We just got a heads up that tomorrow, Verizon Wireless will start a BlackBerry BOGO sale.  What's BOGO mean?  Buy One Get One (free)!  Here's the breakdown on how this will work, when you'll be able to do it, and what's included …
BBC:
Privacy fears over Google tracker  —  Google has announced a new feature that allows users to share their locations among a chosen network of friends.  —  The “opt-in” Latitude service uses data from mobile phone masts, GPS, or wi-fi hardware to update a user's location automatically.
Discussion: PC World and Neowin.net
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Condé Makes Another Digital Move: Someone to Sell Ads  —  Another sign that magazine heavyweight Condé Nast would eventually like to start making money from the Web: It's appointed someone to run the sales force of its digital properties.  —  Condé has tapped former Wired publisher …
Mike Anderiesz / Guardian:
‘We simply have to suffer,’ says Sony  —  For a man whose employer has just recorded its worst Christmas in years, David Reeves seems surprisingly calm.  Indeed, speaking last Thursday, the day Sony announced third-quarter losses of Y18bn (£141m), he sounded more like a corner-man psyching …
Gautham Nagesh / Nextgov.com:
Kundra said to be Obama's pick for OMB e-gov chief  —  The Obama administration plans to announce it has appointed Vivek Kundra, the District of Columbia's chief technology officer to take the top information technology post in the federal government, according to a source.
Discussion: Ars Technica and Tech Daily Dose
Revdancatt / code.flickr:
100,000,000 geotagged photos (plus)  —  Over the weekend we broke the Hundred Million geotagged photos, actually 100,868,302 at last count, mark.  If we remember that we passed the 3 billion photos recently and round the figure down a little that means (does calculations on fingers) …
Discussion: VentureBeat
Alex Chitu / Google Operating System:
Google Chrome Will Have Extensions by May  —  Nicholas Moline noticed an interesting session from Google I/O, a developer conference that will be held in May.  —  Developing extensions for Google Chrome  —  “Learn how Google Chrome makes it easy to write extensions using the web technologies you already know.
Microsoft:
Microsoft Security Bulletin Advance Notification for February 2009  —  Microsoft Security Bulletin Advance Notification issued: February 5, 2009  —  Microsoft Security Bulletins to be issued: February 10, 2009  —  This is an advance notification of security bulletins that Microsoft is intending to release on February 10, 2009.
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
The Wall Street Journal Lays Off 14; Dow Jones Newswire Untouched  —  Here are some of those cost-cutting measures Rupert Murdoch was talking about during today's News Corp. (NWS) earnings call: The Wall Street Journal is laying off 14 people in its editorial group, managing editor Robert Thomson announced this afternoon.
 
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 More Items: 
Enigmax / TorrentFreak:
Hackers Hit Anti-Pirates to Avenge Sub-Site Takedown
Economist:
Keep it official  —  Independent blogging under threat
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
MySpace Struggles In Korea, Shuts Down Regional Office
Thanks:hoisie
Nigel Kendall / Times of London:
Over 30,000 people fall for ComputerTan hoax
Dawn Kawamoto / CNET News:
Social networkers want TV airtime
Ryan Paul / Ars Technica:
Canadian government eyes open source, asks for feedback
 Earlier Items: 
Chauncey Dupree / 9 to 5 Mac:
Samsung SyncMaster U70 is a really great idea - not for Mac yet
Discussion: SlashGear
Guardian:
The fog of cyberwar
Zach Spear / AppleInsider:
Apple exploring intelligent universal battery technology
Discussion: The Register
Ben Worthen / Digits:
Larry Ellison Buys Another Company
Discussion: eWeek
Dave Caolo / TUAW:
First Look: Analytics for iPhone
Discussion: Cartoon Barry Blog, Thanks:mdjensen
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Jonathan Stempel / Reuters:
A New York judge finds Sirius XM liable for a difficult subscription cancellation process; Sirius says it will appeal but abide by a new “click-to-cancel” rule

Brian Steinberg / Variety:
Sources: NBCUniversal Vice Chairman Bonnie Hammer plans to leave the company at the end of the year; she has been with the company since 2004

Peter Kafka / Business Insider:
A Q&A with Chris Balfe, CEO of Red Seat Ventures, which has helped Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly set up their podcast and streaming businesses and sell ads

 
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