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6:50 PM ET, February 6, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:
A Microsoft smartphone: No. A Microsoft phone chassis: Yes  —  Microsoft is not going to introduce a Microsoft-branded phone at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona later this month.  Not a Microsoft-branded Zune phone.  Not any kind of Microsoft-branded phone.  Period.
RELATED:
Chris Ziegler / Engadget Mobile:
Microsoft's SkyBox site live, branded My Phone?  —  It appears that Microsoft may have its SkyBox beta sign-up site up and running in preparation for a Mobile World Congress unveiling — except that it's not called SkyBox, it's called “My Phone” (even though the domain is getskybox.com — go figure).
Miguel Helft / New York Times:
Google and Amazon to Put More Books on Cellphones  —  SAN FRANCISCO — More electronic books are coming to mobile phones.  —  In a move that could bolster the growing popularity of e-books, Google said Thursday that the 1.5 million public domain books it had scanned and made available free …
RELATED:
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Amazon Announcing Kindle iPhone App Monday? (AMZN, AAPL)
Discussion: Crave, Macworld and Gizmodo
Fast Company:
Are Google Books a Threat to the Kindle?
Discussion: Open Sources
Matt Asay / The Open Road:
Marten Mickos to leave Sun in reorg  —  Marten Mickos, former MySQL chief executive and current senior vice president of Sun Microsystems' database group, is transitioning out of the company in a planned reorganization.  —  I reached Mickos this morning for confirmation: he is definitely leaving.
Kim Zetter / Epicenter:
TED: MIT Students Turn Internet Into a Sixth Human Sense — Video  —  LONG BEACH, California — Students at the MIT Media Lab have developed a wearable computing system that turns any surface into an interactive display screen.  The wearer can summon virtual gadgets and internet data at will …
Dean Jackson / Surfin' Safari:
CSS Animation  —  WebKit now supports explicit animations in CSS.  As a counterpart to transitions, animations provide a way to declare repeating animated effects, with keyframes, completely in CSS.  —  With a recent nightly build, you can see the above animation in action.
RELATED:
Arn / MacRumors:
CSS Animation Coming to Safari, Already in iPhone.  Less Dependence on Flash?
Discussion: 9 to 5 Mac
Darryl K. Taft / eWeek:
Trouble at Salesforce.com?  —  Resource Library:  —  Steve Cakebread, president and chief strategy officer at Salesforce.com, has resigned, and reports say two top vice presidents have also left the company.  —  Is there trouble in the house that Benioff built?
Discussion: The Register and Digits
RELATED:
The Official Google Blog:
Eye-tracking studies: more than meets the eye  —  Imagine that you need a refresher on how to tie a tie.  So, you decide to type [how to tie a tie] into the Google search box.  Which of these results would you choose?  —  Where did your eyes go first when you saw the results page?
Eliot Van Buskirk / Epicenter:
ESPN to ISPs: Pay for Your Customers to Play Video  —  For some sports fans, ESPN360, the online version of ESPN's television channel, is a cornucopia of more than 3,500 sporting events each year, viewable from the convenience of a computer.  For others, it's a total bust.  The only difference: their ISP.
Stacey Higginbotham / GigaOM:
Job Losses: The Silicon Valley Perspective  —  Today's headlines trumpet the loss of 598,000 jobs last month — the worst in 34 years — but what does that mean for Silicon Valley, the home of technology?  In order to get a sense of what's happening with venture-backed startups …
Discussion: PE Hub Blog, Thanks:eldon
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Apple 2.0:
Apple has NOT banned Facebook  —  How do these rumors get started?  Or, more to the point, how do they get perpetuated?  —  Late Thursday, a site called tinycomb ("Hand-Picked Tech News") reported that Facebook had been banned “for life” from every Apple (AAPL) store in the United States …
Chris Albrecht / GigaOM:
Why Does Everyone Heart Boxee?  —  The buzz has been building for Boxee lately.  Mainstream news outlets like The New York Times, BusinessWeek and NPR are getting hip to the little open-source media center that could quite possibly change the way you experience TV.
Discussion: NewTeeVee, OStatic blogs and Webomatica
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
StumbleUpon Hits 7 Million Users, Quietly 50% Bigger Than Twitter  —  What's got a button to push, knows how to make money while changing the world and is read all over?  StumbleUpon!  The social discovery network, like Pandora for webpages and videos, just passed 7 million users according to the site.
Discussion: Pulse2, Thanks:mrinaldesai
Jeremy Laird / bit-tech.net:
The Dark Side of Overdrive  —  Faster is always better.  Thanks to that simple philosophy, LCD pixel response times have been driven down to puny proportions in recent years.  —  Today, even the slowest panels are rated at 16ms or better and deliver adequate response for all but the most fanatical PC gamers.
Discussion: Engadget, Thanks:sifter
Venture Capital Dispatch:
Vinod Khosla Moves Beyond Personal Wealth  —  It just might be official: Vinod Khosla isn't heading back to Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers after all.  —  When Khosla started up his own venture capital firm in 2004 to invest his personal wealth in information technology and clean technology companies …
Thanks:atul
David Chartier / Ars Technica:
Facebook's “next steps in openness” raises questions  —  Facebook's wildly popular “Facebook Connect” service may be the polar opposite of OpenID's stumbling approach to providing online identity management with single sign-on convenience.  The former is criticized for being a “walled garden …
Discussion: eWeek, AppScout and The Blog Herald
Greg Sandoval / CNET News:
Why Microsoft, labels cling to music subscriptions  —  LOS ANGELES—For anybody wondering why Microsoft and the top music labels continue to promote subscription music services, the answer was revealed Thursday.  —  David Ring, executive vice president of business development …
Discussion: Technologizer and TomsTechBlog.com
Judd Legum / Legum's New Line:
Maryland General Assembly Bans Facebook  —  The New Line has learned that the Maryland General Assembly, citing security concerns, has blocked Facebook and MySpace from the computers of state legislators and their staffs.  —  Here is the full text of the memo from Office …
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
The Pirate Bay Plans to Sue IFPI  —  The decision to block The Pirate Bay has once again ignited a debate on Internet filtering, the responsibilities of Internet providers and the legal status of BitTorrent sites.  The IFPI - the RIAA's global partner - has chalked up a small victory this week, but the fight is far from over.
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
News Corp: We Spent $2.8 Billion Too Much on Dow Jones  —  A little more detail, via a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, on the $8.4 billion write-down announced by News Corp. yesterday: $2.8 billion of that charge is getting assigned to the company's $5.7 billion purchase of Dow Jones …
Benjamin J. Romano / Microsoft Pri0:
Microsoft digital ad shop Razorfish lays off 70 in Seattle, Portland, SF and LA  —  Razorfish, the digital advertising agency that Microsoft gained when it acquired aQuantive in 2007, is going through another round of layoffs.  A spokeswoman confirmed that the company laid off about 70 people …
Discussion: AdAge
Declan McCullagh / CNET News:
Obama names Doerr, Phillips to economic board  —  Two Silicon Valley leaders have been appointed by President Obama to a 16-person committee that's charged with offering economic advice during what has become an unusually sharp and deep recession.  —  John Doerr, the billionaire venture capitalist …
Discussion: eWeek and VentureBeat
Matthew Moore / Telegraph:
Police create wanted poster on Nintendo Wii  —  Japanese police have used a Nintendo Wii to generate a wanted poster of a hit-and-run suspect.  —  Rather than commissioning an artist or employing photofit software, officers put together a caricature of the man they want to trace using …
Discussion: Switched and Obsessable
Jim Goldman / Tech Check with Jim Goldman:
Apple's Not So Quiet Rally And Why It Will Continue  —  On Wednesday, January 14, the day Apple [AAPL Loading...  () ] CEO Steve Jobs announced he would be taking a 6-month medical leave of absence, Apple shares closed at $85.33.  From the moment that news hit the tape, shares began to slide …
Discussion: The Mac Observer and The After Mac
TOP 20 MSI News:
MSI Wind NetOn AP1900Not Just a Monitor, PC Inside It !  —  Taipeiã€' MSI today announces Wind NetOn AP1900 in AIO family.  The AP1900 is the world's very first personal computer that achieved the perfect balance through brilliant calculation of delicate design, energy-saving …
 
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 More Items: 
Reed Hastings / New York Times:
Please Raise My Taxes
Discussion: Coop's Corner and SiliconBeat, Thanks:atul
Sramana Mitra / Forbes:
Open Source Means Business
Discussion: Linux-Watch.com
Chris Duckett / ZDNET.com.au:
Is it Windows 7 or KDE 4? …
Discussion: Gizmodo, Download Squad and CrunchGear
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
The Parent Company Auctions Off Assets, Sells Toys.com Domain For $1.25 Million
Discussion: Domain Name Wire
Claire Cain Miller / Bits:
Venture Capitalist Pleads Guilty to Securities Fraud
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Backup And Share Your iPhone Contacts For Free With IDrive Lite
James Sherwood / The Register:
HP UK pulls Linux from all new netbooks
Discussion: Electricpig.co.uk and Engadget
 Earlier Items: 
Roy Mark / eWeek:
Geeks.com Settles FTC Charges
Discussion: The Register and PC World
DigiTimes:
Acer shipping 10.1-inch Aspire one netbooks
Discussion: I4U News and TG Daily, Thanks:dreamsketcher
Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:
New York Times Nuts Not To Charge Subscription Fee (NYT)
Discussion: Industry Standard
Paul Schwartzman / Washington Post:
Apple Store Design Hits a Glass Wall Again
PC World:
Intel Now Shipping Atom N280 Processor
Discussion: Electronista and The Register
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Anna Betts / The Guardian:
A judge orders an evidentiary hearing for next week to determine whether the Infowars auction was conducted fairly

Charlotte Tobitt / Press Gazette:
An interview with Telegraph Director of Technology Dylan Jacques on the goal of launching 12 significant uses of AI in the newsroom over 12 months

Reuters:
Prince Harry's lawsuit against News Group Newspapers moves towards trial; all but one other litigant in the roughly 40 lawsuits against NGN have settled

 
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