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11:30 PM ET, February 19, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
AppleInsider:
Photo of next-gen Apple Mac mini in the wild [u]  —  A photo making the rounds on the Internet appears to conform to descriptions of a next-generation Mac mini published by AppleInsider earlier in the year.  —  The photo shows the rear of a Mac mini that includes five USB ports instead of 4 …
RELATED:
Arn / MacRumors:
Leaked Photo of the Next-Generation Mac Mini?  —  A possible image of the next generation Mac Mini was first posted to a MacRumors forum discussion thread.  The image depicts what could be the next Mac mini.  —  The original leaker also claimed the following specs:  — Intel Core 2 Duo
Ray C. He / Facebook Developers:
Commenting with Facebook Connect  —  Since Facebook Connect launched, we've seen over 6,000 developers make their sites more social using Facebook Connect.  One of the most common features we've seen sites add with Facebook Connect is the ability to allow users to log in with a single click …
RELATED:
Nick O'Neill / All Facebook:
Facebook Launches First Public Connect-Enabled Widget
Discussion: Webware.com
CNBC.com:
Sprint Shares Skyrocket 20% on Palm Pre Deal  —  Sprint [PALM Loading...  () ], which also reported a narrower-than-expected quarterly loss on Thursday, saw its shares rise leap almost 20 percent to $3.25 Thursday.  —  The person, who asked not to be named, said the exclusivity period …
RELATED:
Nilay Patel / Engadget:
Palm Pre no longer features data tethering on Sprint website
Discussion: PreCentral.net, CrunchGear and Gizmodo
John Paczkowski / Digital Daily:
HP CEO Mark Hurd's Memo to the Troops on Pay Cuts  —  Here is the letter Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) CEO Mark Hurd broadcast to employees Wednesday explaining the company's disappointing reversal in outlook for the fiscal year and its plans to reduce pay and benefits across the board.
RELATED:
Bloomberg:
Hewlett-Packard's Hurd Cuts Employees' Pay as Silicon Valley Retrenches
Discussion: BloggingStocks and CNN
Elizabeth Holmes / Digits:
CBS Strikes Back at Hulu  —  Is this the start of a Web video war?  —  A day after news broke that Hulu had pulled its video content from CBS Corp.'s TV.com because of “contractual” issues, CBS fought back with a statement declaring its own rights.  —  “CBS Interactive is well within …
Discussion: TVbytheNumbers, Thanks:atul
Philipp Lenssen / Google Blogoscoped:
Gmail With Custom Colors  —  You can now make Gmail as ugly or pretty as you want - by choosing your own colors.  Go to Gmail -> Settings -> Themes, and click “Choose your own colors”.  This opens a window where you can configure a template with instant preview.  Hit Save & Close, and Gmail will appear in your custom colors.
RELATED:
Manu Cornet / Gmail Blog:
Choose your own theme colors
Discussion: WebProNews and Google Operating System, Thanks:sinkercat
Steve Gillmor / TechCrunchIT:
Free Fred Wilson  —  Fred Wilson finds himself on two sides of the fundamental issue of our time: the user's right to access data the way he or she wants to.  On one side, that of the user, Wilson is an investor and board member of Boxee, a startup that translates web pages into a form more easily consumable on a TV screen.
Discussion: SmoothSpan Blog, GMSV, A VC and AppScout, Thanks:atul
Amit Agarwal / Digital Inspiration:
Single Google Query uses 1000 Machines in 0.2 seconds  —  Google is normally quite secretive about their search infrastructure but, in a break from tradition, they have revealed that a single search query on Google can consume the processing power of 1000 machines.
Thanks:atul
Arn / MacRumors:
Apple Discontinues 20" Cinema Display, Product Refreshes Coming?  —  Apple has removed the 20" Cinema Display from the online Apple Store and has notified resellers that the product has been “end of life'd” and can no longer be ordered.  —  While it may be possible that Apple has simply chosen …
Joe Wilcox / Microsoft Watch:
The Windows Empire Strikes Back  —  Since Vista's launch, Mac enthusiasts and Microsoft critics have successfully mounted a rebel campaign against the Windows PC.  Apple's brand was resurgent, and Macs were the cooler computers.  Mac sales growth blew away Windows PCs, while Apple computers rapidly gained market share.
Discussion: Guardian and Apple Watch
Mhtaylor Mhtaylor / Digits:
Pirate Bay Jokes With the Prosecution, Dissuades Hackers  —  By Marisa Taylor  —  On day four of the tumultuous Pirate Bay trial, the proceedings were focused on one defendant, Fredrik Neij, according to BitTorrent-news blog TorrentFreak. … It reported that on Thursday, Monique Wadsted …
RELATED:
Michael Masnick / Techdirt:
U2 Album Leaks... Despite Ridiculous Attempts To Block It  —  At some point, folks in the music industry are going to (finally) recognize a rather simple fact: it just takes one digital copy of a song/movie/whatever to get out there, and it's everywhere.  You can't stop it.  No matter how annoying it is.
Discussion: Neowin.net and TorrentFreak
J. Nicholas Hoover / InformationWeek:
SAP Buys Cloud Computing Startup Coghead  —  Coghead's service continues through April, but SAP will shut customer obligations and relationships down after that.  —  Bad news for cloud computing: Coghead — a venture-backed, online application development platform — is closing, leaving customers with a problem to solve.
RELATED:
Emil Protalinski / Ars Technica:
Testers get SP2 Release Candidate for Vista and Server 2008  —  Microsoft has released the Release Candidate build of Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 to the public.  The build can be downloaded by anyone willing to test it.  —  Microsoft today released …
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Pinch Media Data Shows The Average Shelf Life Of An iPhone App Is Less Than 30 Days  —  There may be more than 20,000 iPhone apps out there that have been downloaded more than 500 million times, but what is the average shelf life of each app?  Greg Yardley, CEO of Pinch Media …
Discussion: Russell Beattie's Weblog and Macsimum News, Thanks:atul
David Sarno / L.A. Times Tech Blog:
Jack Dorsey on the Twitter ecosystem, journalism and how to reduce reply spam.  Part II  —  Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey.  (Credit: Joi Ito via Flickr)  —  On Wednesday we posted the first half of an interview with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey (@jack), in which he talked about the conceptual roots of the site.
Discussion: ReTweet, WebProNews and Search Engine Journal, Thanks:atul
The Boy Genius / Boy Genius Report:
Upcoming Verizon news: BlackBerry Niagara, Hub updates, Netbooks, Apex  —  One of our trusty ninjas just hit us up with a couple details on some of Verizon's upcoming products and product offerings.  First off.. Netbooks.  We've been told that Verizon Wireless will 100% start selling Netbooks in stores around May of this year.
The Boy Genius / Boy Genius Report:
Paid apps finally infiltrating Android Market?  —  We just got a tip that if you're running the latest T-Mobile G1 OS, you'll now see paid applications finally appear in the Android Market.  We're in the process of booting up our G1, so we can't confirm this ourselves, but it sure as heck does seem likely.
Eric Eldon / VentureBeat:
Twitter gets half the press coverage of Facebook, but a fraction of its traffic  —  Ever heard the phrase “why is everyone always talking about Twitter?”  Well, here's the reason, maybe.  The micro-messaging service is getting half of social network Facebook's press coverage …
Discussion: Gawker, Thanks:atul
Michael Masnick / Techdirt:
Valve Exec Explains How To Compete With Piracy  —  Last month, an exec at Valve Software noted that “Pirates are underserved customers” and said when someone realizes that, they also discover: “I can do some interesting things and make some interesting money off of it.”
James Sherwood / The Register:
Cameraphone with physical shutter spied  —  Eliminates ghosting and blurring, it's claimed  —  MWC Camera firm Jabil has showcased an 8Mp camera module with a physical shutter.  The firm hopes it could soon make its way into smartphones.  —  The module measures 10 x 10 x 8mm …
Discussion: Gizmodo
Eric Krangel / Silicon Alley Insider:
Expect Windows 7 This Year Come Hell Or High Water  —  Is Microsoft (MSFT) rushing Windows 7 out the door?  —  So far, Microsoft still isn't committing to a release date for Windows 7, under the idea that if any bugs are found the company wants to be able to fix them without the black eye of …
Paul Miller / Engadget:
Haier shows off mysterious “NetBooks,” Android phones  —  Haier's offerings are always an adventure, and this year at MWC they didn't disappoint.  They were showing off an interesting assortment of MIDs, confusingly dubbed “NetBooks,” including a mini-laptop of sorts (left) that falls somewhere in the middle.
Discussion: Mobilewhack.com and Pocketables
Michael Calore / Epicenter:
Norwegian Websites Declare War on IE 6  —  Several large websites in Norway have launched an advocacy campaign urging Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 users to upgrade their outdated web browsers.  —  Leading the charge is Finn.no, an eBay-like site which is apparently the largest site for buying …
Andy Greenberg / Forbes:
How Much Data Fits On A Pin?  —  Researchers invent a technique that could cram 10 trillion bits onto a surface the size of a quarter.  —  For decades, hard-disk makers have been shrinking the electromagnetic media that store data to cram more information into a tinier footprint.
Discussion: Imaging Insider
Paul Miller / Engadget:
Stantum's mind-blowing multitouch interface on video!  —  We just got a look at some amazing touchscreen interaction, running on a humble resistive touchscreen with some OMAP hardware backing it up.  Stantum's technology is a software-based refinement to resistive touchscreens that allows …
Mark Milian / L.A. Times Tech Blog:
YouTube looks out for content owners, disables video ripping  —  When YouTube announced last week that select videos would be available to download, it meant little to the savvy YouTube surfer.  After all, they've been able to do that for years thanks to Firefox scripts and tools provided by various websites.
 
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 More Items: 
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
The TechCrunch 2008 Year in Review
Thanks:sampad
Arlene Lee / Inside AdSense:
Fontastic new options for your ad units
Discussion: Search Engine Journal
Verity Burns / Pocket-lint.co.uk:
Philips unveils GoGear Ariaz media player
Discussion: Crave and Engadget
Julian Sanchez / Ars Technica:
New bill would force ISPs to retain user data for two years
Dan Rayburn / The Business Of Online Video:
Sun's CEO Claims JavaFX As The Fastest Growing RIA Platform: Completely Untrue
Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:
Comcast: 50Mbps speeds to 65% of territory by end of 2009
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Disney Acquires Kerpoof's Kid-Friendly Creative Suite
Discussion: Virtual Worlds News
 Earlier Items: 
Julie Steenhuysen / Reuters:
Scientists make advances on “nano” electronics
Discussion: Electronista
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
DocStoc Does Its Part To Rid The Web Of Download Links
Paul Miller / Engadget:
Palm confirms games are in development for Pre, drops a few other tidbits