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4:50 AM ET, February 20, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
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
RELATED:
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 …
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  —  Tonight Facebook has announced that the launch of their “first social widget” for Facebook Connect.  It's a comment box which enables blogs, photo galleries, or other sites, to add comments to their site quickly.
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  —  Sigh, we knew it was too good to be true — data tethering has been removed from the Palm Pre's spec list on Sprint's site and replaced with a “connector” section.  We don't know if Sprint's just trying to clean things …
Brandon LeBlanc / The Windows Blog:
Test Updates for Windows 7 Beta Users  —  Starting February 24, we will be releasing up to 5 test updates to PCs running the Windows 7 Beta (Build 7000) via Windows Update.  These updates allow us to test and verify our ability to deliver and manage the updating of Windows 7.
Discussion: Beyond Binary and Neowin.net
RELATED:
Emil Protalinski / Ars Technica:
Windows 7 boot animation customization will not be supported
Eric Krangel / Silicon Alley Insider:
Expect Windows 7 This Year Come Hell Or High Water
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Quicken Online Can't Believe Mint Is Doing So Well; Sends Threatening Letter  —  Intuit, the company behind the well-known Quicken suite of money management software that includes Quicken Online, can't believe how well its competitor Mint is doing.  In fact, they were so bewildered …
Discussion: AccMan Pro
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
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.
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: CNET News, Neowin.net and TorrentFreak
RELATED:
Sydney Morning Herald:
Look who leaked U2's new album
Discussion: A Networked World
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
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, PlagiarismToday and AppScout, 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, Twitter Blog and digg.com, Thanks:atul
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.
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
CNN:
Meghan McCain tells GOP to get tech savvy  —  (CNN) — The Republican Party needs to change — at least when it comes to its use of technology, Meghan McCain says.  —  In a column on the Daily Beast Web site, the daughter of Sen. John McCain says the GOP is likely to continue its decline …
Stephanie Simon / Wall Street Journal:
Parents Give Up Facebook for Lent  —  They're a little too old to give up potato chips, Guitar Hero or Red Bull for Lent.  —  But as Christian parents ponder an appropriate sacrifice, they find themselves mulling a choice they'd have once seen as preposterous: A Facebook fast — not for their teens but for themselves.
Peter Svensson / Associated Press:
Skepticism arises over rural broadband stimulus  —  WASHINGTON — With the first concerted federal program to subsidize high-speed Internet services in rural areas, the new economic stimulus package will create some jobs and could get hundreds of thousands of households online.
MG Siegler / VentureBeat:
Amid PR follies, Facebook attempts to humanize  —  Facebook has a lot of communication problems.  Most recently, changes made to its terms of service sent a ripple through the internet community, leaving users feeling like they had unwillingly ceded ownership of their data to the site.
Discussion: Facebook Blog and ParisLemon, Thanks:atul
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.
Arlene Lee / Inside AdSense:
Fontastic new options for your ad units  —  You've been asking for more control over the appearance of the ads on your sites, so we're happy to let you know that you can now change the font face of the text in ad units on pages in Latin-character languages.  You can choose between Arial, Times, and Verdana font faces.
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 …
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.
Kevin Hale / Particletree:
How Not to Pitch to a Startup  —  Several months ago, Infinity Box, our company, and thus Wufoo were listed in a publication targeted at investors, angels and venture capital firms as a promising young startup.  We have, unfortunately, not been able to track down the source of this recommendation …
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
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.
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
 
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 More Items: 
Cara Garretson / Network World:
Security researcher Kaminsky pushes DNS patching
Discussion: CircleID
Daisy Whitney / TVWeek.com:
ManiaTV Puts Itself Up for Sale
Discussion: paidContent.org and NewTeeVee
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
The TechCrunch 2008 Year in Review
Thanks:sampad
Julian Sanchez / Ars Technica:
New bill would force ISPs to retain user data for two years
Michael Masnick / Techdirt:
Valve Exec Explains How To Compete With Piracy
Discussion: Ars Technica, Joystiq and G4tv.com
Paul Miller / Engadget:
Haier shows off mysterious “NetBooks,” Android phones
Discussion: Mobilewhack.com and Pocketables
Dan Rayburn / The Business Of Online Video:
Sun's CEO Claims JavaFX As The Fastest Growing RIA Platform: Completely Untrue
 Earlier Items: 
Michael Calore / Epicenter:
Norwegian Websites Declare War on IE 6
Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:
Comcast: 50Mbps speeds to 65% of territory by end of 2009
Eric Eldon / VentureBeat:
Twitter gets half the press coverage of Facebook, but a fraction of its traffic
Discussion: Gawker, Thanks:atul
Andy Greenberg / Forbes:
How Much Data Fits On A Pin?
Discussion: Imaging Insider
Arn / MacRumors:
Apple Discontinues 20" Cinema Display, Product Refreshes Coming?
 

 
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

Manuela Vega / Toronto Star:
Rogers Sports & Media lays off more than two dozen employees in its radio and podcasting divisions, citing declining revenue and challenges in advertising

 
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