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2:20 PM ET, February 25, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Enigmax / TorrentFreak:
Pirate Bay Trial Day 8: Pirates Kill the Music Biz  —  Today's first witness is Tobias Andersson from Piratbyrån and later on the IFPI's CEO John Kennedy will testify, although it's not expected that he will respond to the open letter and peace offering issued yesterday by the ‘Kopimists’.
RELATED:
Roy Blount Jr / New York Times:
The Kindle Swindle?  —  BEING president of too many well-meaning organizations put my father into an early grave.  The lesson in this was not lost on me.  But now I am president of the Authors Guild, whose mission is to sustain book-writing as a viable occupation.
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Amazon Exposes 1 Terabyte of Public Data to Developers  —  Amazon.com changed the retail world.  In the process the company built up so much surplus computing power that it started a dirt cheap “computing in the cloud” business that changed the computing world.
Discussion: WinBeta
RELATED:
Amazon Web Services Blog:
New AWS Public Data Sets - Economics, DBpedia, Freebase, and Wikipedia
Discussion: Beyond Search and bytes|genes
Ryan Spoon:
Perez Hilton Hits 14,000,000 Pageviews Yesterday.  Wow.  —  You might not be interested in celebrity news and gossip...  You might not consider it important or meaningful...  But to the web, it is significant and marks a major move in the Digital Media space.
Sam Oliver / AppleInsider:
Apple updates Apple TV software to version 2.3.1 [Ux2]  —  Apple overnight released a minor software update for owners of its Apple TV set-top media box that has thus far been revealed to include a new Network Test function and improvements when using Apple Remote for iPhone.
Farhad Manjoo / Slate:
The unrecognizable Internet of 1996.  —  The Internet of 1996 is almost unrecognizable compared with what we have today.  —  It's 1996, and you're bored.  What do you do?  If you're one of the lucky people with an AOL account, you probably do the same thing you'd do in 2009: Go online.
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Connected Life Head Marco Boerries to Leave Yahoo  —  Yahoo's top mobile exec, Marco Boerries, is departing Yahoo, according to an internal email obtained by BoomTown that he sent to some staffers on Sunday.  —  I have also confirmed Boerries's departure with company insiders familiar with the situation.
IEBlog:
IE8 Reliability Update for Windows 7 Beta Now Available  —  We wanted to let you know that an update was released earlier today that will improve Internet Explorer's reliability for users running the Windows 7 Beta.  The update is now available via Windows Update, and can also be downloaded via Microsoft Update.
RELATED:
Jim Goldman / Tech Check with Jim Goldman:
The Stealth Apple Shareholder Meeting  —  To wit, Apple [AAPL Loading...  () ] will not be streaming the event to its website, a restriction it has historically used.  Nor, I'm told, will Apple allow any communication devices into the event so those of us trying to cover it can live blog.
Discussion: Apple 2.0
Kelly Fiveash / The Register:
Google blames Gmail outage on data centre collapse  —  Domino effect crashes through the cloud  —  Free whitepaper - Lessons learned in successful implementation of enterprise learning  —  Google has apologised for yesterday's major Gmail meltdown after some of its data centres in Europe failed …
Dana Milbank / Washington Post:
A Tale of 140 Characters, Plus the Ones in Congress  —  It's a case of Twittering while Rome burns.  —  President Obama spoke of economic calamity and war last night in that solemn rite of democracy, the address to the joint session of Congress.  And lawmakers watched him with the dignity Americans …
RELATED:
Peter Hamby / CNN:
Members of Congress twitter through Obama's big speech
Discussion: broadstuff and ReadWriteWeb, Thanks:brickandclick
GamesIndustry.biz:
PS3 price cut announcement “in the next couple of days” - Janco  —  The PlayStation 3 could be about to receive a price cut, with Sony due to make an announcement imminently.  —  That's according to Janco Partners' Mike Hickey, who has said in his latest note to investors that Sony needs …
Rory Cellan-Jones / dot.life blog:
Who profits from the App Store?  —  You will struggle to find a happy shopkeeper right now - but I've just met one.  His name is Eric, and he has good reason to be contented.  After all his store only opened in July last year, but has already sold 500 million products, and its deal with its suppliers means it gets 30% of the revenues.
John Leyden / The Register:
Gmail phishing attack hits on heels of outage  —  Oh the humanity  —  Free whitepaper - Lower security risks and costs by minimizing the time to protection  —  Gmail users, still swooning from the extended outage on Tuesday, were hit with a widespread phishing attack hours after the blackout.
Discussion: NewTeeVee, Sophos and ReadWriteWeb
Tim Culpan / Bloomberg:
Microsoft May Begin Shipping Windows 7 in September, Compal's Chen Says  —  Feb. 25 (Bloomberg) — Microsoft Corp., the world's largest software maker, may begin shipping its Windows 7 operating system as early as the third quarter, a computer-industry executive said.
BBC:
Texting ‘improves language skill’  —  Text speak, rather than harming literacy, could have a positive effect on the way children interact with language, says a study.  —  Researchers from Coventry University studied 88 children aged between 10 and 12 to understand the impact of text messaging on their language skills.
Discussion: GMSV, DailyTech, Obsessable and Gearlog
Zach Spear / AppleInsider:
SoftBank now giving away iPhones in Japan  —  In a bid to possibly clear inventory, combat slumping sales, or both, SoftBank Mobile's new “iPhone for Everybody Campaign” is offering customers in Japan a free iPhone 3G with a two-year contract through May.  —  Announced on the Japanese carrier's website …
Discussion: The iPhone Blog and iLounge
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Y Combinator Startup Fliggo Lets You Build Your Own YouTube  —  First we had Ning, which lets you build your own niche social network.  Now we have Fliggo, which lets you build your own YouTube.  Fliggo is the latest startup to come out of Y Combinator.  It has been in private beta for a while, but is now open to the public.
Discussion: Mashable!
Fëdor Karpelevitch / Gmail Blog:
New in Labs: Browser title bar tweaks  —  I'm often doing something on my computer and want to know if I have new mail without having to keep my Gmail window open.  But if you keep Gmail minimized or in an inactive tab sometimes all you see in the browser title bar is something like “Gmail - Inbo...”
Nate Lanxon / CNET News:
Safari 4 benchmarked: 42x faster than IE 7, 3.5x faster than Firefox 3  —  Proving itself a staggering 42 times faster at rendering JavaScript than IE 7, our benchmarks confirm Apple's Safari 4 browser, released in beta today, is the fastest browser on the planet.
Lester Haines / The Register:
Ryanair trades blows with ‘idiot blogger’  —  Online booking glitch provokes almighty punch-up  —  Free whitepaper - Lessons learned in successful implementation of enterprise learning  —  Hats off this fine morning to Ryanair, which last week traded blows with “idiot blogger” …
Times of India:
Bloggers can be nailed for views  —  Text:  —  NEW DELHI: A 19-year-old blogger's case could forever change the ground rules of blogging.  Bloggers may no longer express their uninhibited views on everything under the sun, for the Supreme Court said they may face libel and even prosecution for the blog content.
Discussion: ReadWriteWeb and p2pnet, Thanks:sampad
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Upside at the Washington Post: At Least Web Ads Didn't Disappear Last Quarter  —  At this point you need to be a skilled relativist to find something positive to say about the newspaper business.  Last fall, for instance, executives at the Washington Post Co. (WPO) could argue …
Chris Snyder / Epicenter:
Amazon's E-Book Strategy Re-Kindles Debate on Open Standards  —  While many salivated over this week's arrival of “the iPod of the book world,” supporters of open e-book standards are opining anew that the Kindle's proprietary format is not only bad for readers but, in the long run, probably for Amazon as well.
Discussion: Silicon Alley Insider
Wall Street Journal:
Lost Cellphone?  Carriers Have Backup  —  By the time you've left your cellphone in a taxi or dropped it into a pot of soup, it's too late.  All those phone numbers you had at your finger tips — your best friend, your boss, your mom — are gone.  (Well, maybe you'll remember Mom's.)
Olga Kharif / Business Week:
Mobile Apps for Music: Look Out iTunes?  —  Low-cost apps that let users download music and other extras to their cell phones could help lure cash-strapped music fans  —  Just what the music industry needs: another way to distribute music at a fraction of the cost of a traditional CD.
Monica Chen / DigiTimes:
Intel to launch new CPUs for ultra-thin notebooks  —  Intel plans to launch two new ultra low voltage (ULV) CPUs by the end of March this year mainly targeting the company's consumer ultra low voltage (CULV) platform for ultra-thin notebook products, according to sources at notebook makers.
Liz Gannes / NewTeeVee:
RockYou Gears Up to Distribute Content  —  RockYou, one of the largest developers of applications for social networks, has tremendous reach — 130 million global users and 18 billion page views per month.  Though some content creators might consider glitter text and slideshows beneath them …
Spencer E. Ante / Business Week:
Michael Moritz: Lessons from a Long-Ball Hitter  —  The journalist-turned-venture capitalist was early to ring the alarm bells about the weakening economy, but he remains optimistic  —  In 1984 a young British journalist named Michael Moritz wrote a short piece in Time magazine …
Discussion: Time
 
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 More Items: 
Matthew Richardson / Prefix Magazine:
iTunes Launches Indie Store
Discussion: Ars Technica
Nortel:
NORTEL ANNOUNCES WORKFORCE REDUCTIONS
Matt McGee / Search Engine Land:
Search Queries Are Getting Longer: Hitwise Report
Stephanie Condon / CNET News:
Telecom industry may see over $12 million in fines
Discussion: Ars Technica and mocoNews.net
 Earlier Items: 
Sarah Lacy / Business Week:
What Sells Online? Unsexy Newsletters
Bad Science:
“Facebook causes cancer”
Discussion: Guardian
Matt Buchanan / Gizmodo:
Gizmodo's Amazon Kindle 2 Review Matrix
Bloomberg:
Ballmer Says He Doesn't Want to Become ‘Jerry Yang’ of Web Search Market
Discussion: WMPoweruser.com
Kdoctor / Content Bridges:
Chronicle Crackdown Prompts Question: Where's the Bay Area Online Super Startup?
Sundar Pichai / Google Public Policy Blog:
Browsers powered by user choice