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1:50 PM ET, February 19, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Fred / A VC:
Why Hulu Should Embrace Boxee  —  For those that don't know, Union Square Ventures is an investor in Boxee and I am on the board.  For the past several weeks I have watched Boxee's management try their hardest to convince Hulu that Boxee is a big step forward for Hulu and Hulu's content partners.
RELATED:
Jason / Hulu Blog:
Doing hard things  —  “I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter.”  — Walt Disney  —  Later this week, Hulu's content will no longer be available through Boxee.  While we never had a formal relationship with Boxee …
Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog:
Your Ads, Richer  —  Yahoo! adds video, images and custom links to search ads  —  Ever since we launched pay-per-click advertising, the ads have looked more or less the same: A headline, a line of ad copy, a link.  They haven't changed because, frankly, the combination works pretty well.
RELATED:
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
The Little Engine That Could? …
Discussion: InformationWeek and ReadWriteWeb
Michael Masnick / Techdirt:
Band Puts All Its Music (Plus More) Into A $3 iPhone App  —  The pop band The Presidents of the United States of America have released a special iPhone app that contains all of the music from all of their albums, as well as additional rare and unreleased music and images.
Discussion: TechCrunch and Macworld
RELATED:
Eliot Van Buskirk / Epicenter:
The Presidents of the United States of America Unleash Multiple-Album iPhone App  —  Dave Dederer, former singer and guitarist for nineties hitmakers The Presidents of the United States of America, has fashioned quite a second career for himself as the vice president of business development for Melodeo …
Kathleen Richards / East Bay Express:
Yelp and the Business of Extortion 2.0  —  Local business owners say Yelp offers to hide negative customer reviews of their businesses on its web site ... for a price.  —  Send a letter  —  The phone calls came almost daily.  It started to get creepy.  —  “Hi, this is Mike from Yelp,” the voice would say.
RELATED:
Jeremy / Yelp Official Blog:
Kathleen Richards - East Bay Express  —  Today the East Bay Express ran a lengthy story that accuses Yelp of manipulating review order for money.  As we've said many-a-time we do not do this and you don't have to take my word for it.  Let's take a quick look at an advertiser...
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Sprint: Customer defections continue; Can Palm's Pre reverse the slide?  —  Sprint Nextel showed some signs of improvement in its fourth quarter, but is still losing customers at a rapid clip.  Sprint CEO Dan Hesse said the company has “high expectations” that the Palm Pre handset can attract customers to the wireless provider.
RELATED:
Arn / MacRumors:
Turn-By-Turn iPhone GPS App Already Available in iTunes  —  It seems despite all the anticipation about Turn-by-Turn GPS routing for the iPhone, an App already exists in the App Store that delivers this basic functionality.  —  XRoad Co.'s G-Map U.S. West and G-Map U.S. East apps were released …
Enigmax / TorrentFreak:
Day 4 - Pirate Bay Defense Calls Foul Over Evidence  —  Prosecutor Håkan Roswall began the day by again referencing the case in Finland against the administrators of Finreactor.  Fredrik's lawyer Jonas Nilsson requested a copy of the case notes for the defense.
Discussion: p2pnet
RELATED:
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 …
Owen Thomas / Gawker:
Tumblr CEO Acts His Age on Censorship Dilemma  —  David Karp, the 22-year-old CEO of blogging startup Tumblr, has decided he doesn't want to be in the business of censorship after all.  Now everyone's free to make fun of his friend Julia Allison.  —  Karp decided to ban five blogs …
Discussion: Reblogging Nonsociety and Bits
RELATED:
Bhaswati Mukhopadhyay / Reuters:
Microsoft ‘Vista Capable’ Lawsuit Can Proceed  —  A federal judge has ruled that a lawsuit against Microsoft and the software giant's “Vista Capable” claims can proceed.  However, the same judge denied that the plaintiffs' request for class action status in the case.
Prince McLean / AppleInsider:
Apple buying up available flash RAM supplies for next iPhone  —  A report issued on the flash RAM market indicates that Apple is inhaling supplies of memory components in preparation for the next generation iPhone, causing part shortages and raising the spot price for memory.
InfoWorld:
Dell calls for Psion ‘netbook’ trademark to be removed  —  Dell has enlisted the help of the US courts in a bid to remove Psion's trademark of the term ‘Netbook’.  —  Netbook is the term used to describe low cost and low spec small laptops that are ideal for surfing the web on-the-go.
Discussion: Electronista and jkOnTheRun
Michael Learmonth / AdAge:
MTV Pioneer Launches $99 Music Videos on the Web  —  Verizon is sponsoring latest channel from web studio Next New Networks  —  Back in 1981, Fred Seibert helped create MTV.  Now he'd like to recreate it on the web with a new network devoted to music videos made in a day for $99 or less.
Gary / HDGURU.Com:
New HDTV Makers Enter The US Market With LCD Flat Panels Up to 82″ Part I-HD Guru Exclusive  —  Honeywell's 82″ LCD HDTV (Outside Dimensions 52.9″ H x 79.6″ W)  —  Plagued by low profits (or outright losses), sagging sales, and enormous competition …
Discussion: SlashGear, Gizmodo and Engadget HD
Bloomberg:
Hewlett-Packard's Hurd Cuts Employees' Pay as Silicon Valley Retrenches  —  Feb. 19 (Bloomberg) — Hewlett-Packard Co. Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurd spent three years cutting costs to lift profit.  Now he's targeting employee pay to ride an economic slump he says will last the rest of the year.
Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:
YouNoodle scores the buzz on 25,000 startups  —  YouNoodle, the company that made a splash last year by claiming to predict the future value of startups, is continuing its efforts to turn startup evaluation into a science.  Now it's adding a YouNoodle Score that tracks news stories to determine a startup's …
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
Flip Or Bust?  FlipGloss Debuts Glossy Digital Photo Magazine  —  FlipGloss, a Forbes Media-funded digital magazine focused purely on editorial and advertising photo content, has launched the beta version of its site.  Featuring “lifestyle” based photography focused on fashion, design and travel …
Discussion: paidContent.org, MediaMemo and 901am
Rory Cellan-Jones / dot.life blog:
Has MySpace lost its cool?  —  I'm not entirely sure that Chis DeWolfe enjoyed our encounter at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.  The affable American, co-founder and chief executive of MySpace, was jet-lagged, having stepped off a flight from Los Angeles that morning into a punishing schedule …
Discussion: Mobile Industry Review, Thanks:dreamsketcher
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.
Randall C. Kennedy / Enterprise Desktop:
Windows 7: Cutting corners in the rush to market?  —  Is Microsoft ignoring beta tester feedback in its quest to ship Windows 7 come hell or high water in 2009?  —  Is Microsoft moving too fast with Windows 7?  That's the complaint coming from some members of the technical beta program.
Discussion: TechSpot
Saul Hansell / Bits:
I.B.M. Delivers Rural Broadband Over Power Lines  —  With $7 billion of government money on the line, it's no surprise that all kinds of companies are claiming they can wire the most isolated ranchers and cave dwellers with broadband Internet service.  —  On Thursday, I.B.M. piped …
Discussion: Yahoo! Finance and DSLreports
 
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 More Items: 
Ryan Singel / Threat Level:
Wikileaks Forced to Leak Its Own Secret Info - Updated
Discussion: DailyTech and Gizmodo
Paul Miller / Engadget:
Palm confirms games are in development for Pre, drops a few other tidbits
iFixit:
MacBook Pro 17" Unibody First Look
Discussion: Macworld, TUAW and O'Grady's PowerPage
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Coghead Grinds To A Halt, Heads To The Deadpool
Discussion: InfoWorld
Stephen J. Dubner / Freakonomics:
What Would Micropayments Do for Journalism? A Freakonomics Quorum
Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab
 Earlier Items: 
Asa Dotzler:
how many linux users are there  —  Counting users for a browser …
Anne Loucks / OLDaily:
The Agreeable Cat
Joel Hruska / Ars Technica:
Black hat, blank face: researchers crack biometric scanners
Discussion: The Register and DailyTech
Dan Goodin / The Register:
Hacker pokes new hole in secure sockets layer
Discussion: Forbes
David Sarno / L.A. Times Tech Blog:
Twitter creator Jack Dorsey illuminates the site's founding document.
Thanks:atul
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Alex Sherman / CNBC:
Analyzing Comcast's spinoff of cable networks, purposefully structured with low debt: the move might be a signal to the industry that it's time to consolidate

Daniel Thomas / Financial Times:
James Harding says the Tortoise-Observer deal could create a profitable media group and there isn't a guaranteed future for the Observer with the Guardian

John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
Substack, very deliberately, tries to have it both ways by saying publications on their platform are independent while presenting them all as parts of Substack

 
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