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11:20 PM ET, March 5, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Saul Hansell / Bits:
The Nation's New Chief Information Officer Speaks  —  Reforming the entire health care system may be easier than doing everything Vivek Kundra says he wants to do when it comes to reforming the government's computer systems.  —  Mr. Kundra, the 34-year-old former chief technology officer …
RELATED:
The White House:
President Obama Names Vivek Kundra Chief Information Officer  —  WASHINGTON, DC - Today, President Barack Obama named Vivek Kundra the Federal Chief Information Officer (CIO) at the White House.  —  The Federal Chief Information Officer directs the policy and strategic planning …
Patrick Thibodeau / Computerworld:
New federal CIO Vivek Kundra wants a Web 2.0 government
Discussion: Xconomy and The FASTForward Blog
Jason Calacanis / The Jason Calacanis Weblog:
Why I employed a felon  —  Yesterday, I joined one of our Mahalo employees at Federal District Court as he was sentenced to 48 months in jail for crimes related to computer security.  —  Before my employee John Schiefer was sentenced, a violent career criminal was facing 60 months for beating up a prison guard.
RELATED:
Rafe Needleman / Webware.com:
Mahalo: Our hacker employee is no threat to your privacy  —  Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis sent an e-mail Thursday to his followers (also posted on his blog, and worth a read) disclosing that his company mistakenly hired a man convicted of computer crimes but who hasn't yet served his sentence.
Clearwire News Room:
Clearwire Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2008 Results  —  Key 2008 Highlights  — Completed Combination with Sprint's 4G Assets, Resulting in Largest U.S. Mobile Wireless Spectrum Portfolio  — Closed $3.2 Billion Financing Round at $17 Per Share
RELATED:
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Clearwire: The race between Wimax expansion and cash burn is on  —  Clearwire on Thursday outlined its Wimax rollout plans for 2010 as it announced a $118 million fourth quarter net loss.  The company also outlined its capital spending plan for 2009, which calls for it burning through …
John Paczkowski / Digital Daily:
Perhaps if They Think of Their Win Mobile Devices as Broken iPhones...  What an uncomfortable moment for Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at the CIO Summit Wednesday.  Fielding questions at Microsoft's annual event for government and education sector IT workers, Ballmer was asked how best …
Lidija Davis / ReadWriteWeb:
Twitter Begins Rolling Out Search and Trends  —  Twitter appears to be in the process of rolling out its integrated search feature with a search box and a trends button appearing on some user profiles today.  While the feature is not yet available to all users, our guess is that it's very much on the way - and soon.
Justin Smith / Inside Facebook:
New Viral Channel: Facebook Launches Chat Invite API for Applications  —  Facebook has just released a new chat invite API that allows developers to let users send application invitations to their friends via Facebook Chat.  —  Here's how it works:  — After embedding the fb:chat-invite FBML element …
Discussion: All Facebook
RELATED:
Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:
Zimbra tops 40M paid users: More popular than Gmail?  —  We've written glowingly about Yahoo-owned email and collaboration software Zimbra before, but it looks like we're far from being the only fans.  In fact, Zimbra announced that has crossed the 40 million user mark.  And those are paid mailboxes, not free accounts.
Discussion: The Open Road, Thanks:mrinaldesai
Kevin Michaluk / CrackBerry.com blogs:
Exclusive: First Real Photos of the BlackBerry 9630!  —  FINALLY!!!!!  What you're looking at above are the first real photos of the BlackBerry “Niagara” 9630.  As you can see, this CDMA full-QWERTY BlackBerry is looking sweet and very much has the appearance of the BlackBerry Curve 8900 and BlackBerry Bold morphed into one.
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
Google's Tip Jar Uses Crowdsourcing to Help People Save Money  —  Google is using its Moderator product to help people share ideas on how to save money in recessionary times.  Moderator is a tool that helps groups determine which questions should be asked at all-hands meetings, conferences …
RELATED:
Amazon Game Room / Amazon Game Room's Blog:
Amazon.com's Trade-In Store Launches with 1,500+ Eligible Titles  —  Calling all gamers!  Do you have any used games lying around?  —  Today we are pleased to announce the beta launch of Amazon Video Games Trade-In, www.amazon.com/tradeingames.  Amazon Video Games Trade-In is a new service …
Raju Vegesna / Zoho Blogs:
Zoho Writer 2.0 launches with fresh look  —  Refreshing changes don't come often.  Today, we are launching a new major version of our word processor - Zoho Writer 2.0 - with a fresh and elegant user interface & significant improvements.  This important upgrade comes with hundreds of improvements, mostly on the user interface.
Gregg Keizer / Computerworld:
Analyst: Apple turns its back on e-book market  —  Says Amazon.com's Kindle for iPhone proves Apple thinks 'people don't read anymore'  —  Computerworld) Amazon.com's release of a free e-book reader for the iPhone proves that Apple is simply not interested in the electronic book market, one expert said today.
Peter Bright / Ars Technica:
Opinion: Windows 7's UAC is a broken mess; mend it or end it  —  The changes Microsoft has made to Windows 7's UAC render it little more than a pesky annoyance.  If this is the path the company wishes to go down, it should stop doing things by halves and kill it off altogether.
Discussion: OSNews
Chicago Breaking News:
Sheriff sues Craigslist as ‘largest source’ of prostitution  —  Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart announced today that his office has sued Craigslist and has asked a federal judge to ban the Internet company from posting its “erotic services” section, which the sheriff said is a clearing house for prostitution.
David Evans / Online Dating Insider:
PlentyOfFish Starts Charging Premium Membership Fees … Free dating sites have had a good run the past few years.  Everyone starting a free dating site jumped, and continues to jump, on the free dating bandwagon.  Meanwhile, top paid dating sites are making hundreds of millions of dollars …
Discussion: Gear Diary, Thanks:daveevans
Bloomberg:
Pre to Win IPhone Users After Contracts, McNamee Says  —  Palm Inc.'s new Pre smart phone will lure customers away from Apple Inc.'s iPhone when subscribers' contracts start expiring in June, Palm investor Roger McNamee said.  —  “You know the beautiful thing: June 29, 2009 …
Discussion: VentureBeat
Radiowalker:
Living with Cancer in Silicon Valley  —  My cancer returned Monday.  In not exactly a subtle way.  I have two tumors, one of which is 11×8 centimeters.  They are messing with my left psoas muscle which explains all the back and leg pain I have been having.
Discussion: Zoli's Blog
The Daily Beast:
The Journal's Smart Bet  —  A Man More Heroic Than Sully by Lee Siegel  —  Blogs and Stories  —  The Wall Street Journal makes millions from its pay website.  Here are the secrets to their success—and what other papers can learn from them.  —  After nearly 15 years of giving …
Thanks:atul
Stephen Schenck / Obsessable:
Acrobat bug can lead to malware installs without even opening an infected file  —  Because Adobe builds parts of Acrobat into Windows Explorer, you can trigger the bug unintentionally.  —  If you've been living in fear of opening any suspicious PDF files since we let you know about a still-unpatched bug …
Economist:
The internet's librarian  —  Brewster Kahle wants to create a free, online collection of human knowledge.  It sounds impossibly idealistic—but he is making progress  —  FOR a man who has set himself a seemingly impossible mission, Brewster Kahle seems remarkably laid back.
Susanne Ault / Variety:
Fox DVD creates two classes of discs  —  Product variations feed different consumers  —  Could first- and second-class DVDs help increase sales?  —  That's the hope of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, which has told its accounts that it plans to launch a DVD program that creates two classes of discs.
Enigmax / TorrentFreak:
Metallica's Lars Ulrich ‘Pirates’ His Own Album  —  In April 2000, Lars Ulrich launched his vocal campaign against file-sharing service Napster.  After discovering that Metallica's entire back catalogue could be found on the service he could hardly contain his anger and by July 2000 …
Discussion: TECH.BLORGE.com
Arik Hesseldahl / Business Week:
At DEMO, VCs Have Stern Advice for Startups  —  With less money available to entrepreneurs and with fewer startups being bought, VCs are pushing portfolio companies to focus on frugality  —  Watch the Video...  Venture capital investor Christine Herron has a bit of advice for technology startups …
Discussion: HipMojo.com
Economist:
Boom in the bust  —  Despite the recession, the mobile industry is enjoying a promising transformation  —  WHEN the mobile-telecoms industry recently met in Barcelona for the Mobile World Congress, its biggest global shindig, head and body seemed oddly separated.
Paul Schwartzman / Washington Post:
Apple Store's Windows Get Georgetown Board's Okay  —  After Five Redesigns, Tech Shop Construction Will Be Allowed  —  Apple is on its way to Georgetown.  —  An architectural review board today embraced the computer company's revised plans for a store it plans to open on Wisconsin Avenue.
Jessi Hempel / Fortune:
Can MySpace get its mojo back?  —  With Facebook soaring, and top talent leaving, News Corp.'s social network needs answers.  —  NEW YORK (Fortune) — MySpace, the News Corp.-owned social networking site, is off to a rough year.  Growth has slowed (the number of U.S. visitors …
Discussion: mocoNews, Thanks:mrinaldesai
 
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 More Items: 
Times of London:
Virgin Media puts content division on the market
Discussion: paidContent.org and Dealscape
Mike Danylchuk / The Official Google Blog:
Shaking up earthquake searches
Discussion: VentureBeat, Thanks:atul
Rory Maher / paidContent.org:
Blockbuster Releases Some Q4 Results Early To Quell Bankruptcy Rumors
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Apple 2.0:
Apple so far immune to PC price “collapse”
Discussion: ZDNet and MacNN
Lee Gomes / Forbes:
Google Disrupts—Again  —  The Internet giant's search engine …
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
New NYTimes iPhone App Enables Offline Reading
Discussion: AppleInsider and Oatmeal Stout
 Earlier Items: 
Liz Gannes / NewTeeVee:
Big Money! Vidyo and Verivue Score Funding for Video Tech
Aza Raskin / Mozilla Labs:
New Tab Page: Proposed design principles and prototype
Heather Hopkins / Hitwise Intelligence:
Yahoo! Mail More than One Third of Yahoo! Traffic
David Pogue / New York Times:
It Rings, It Shoots, It Stumbles
Discussion: Electronic Pulp
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Dominic Ponsford / Press Gazette:
Jason Cowley, the editor-in-chief of UK magazine the New Statesman, is stepping down from the position at the end of December after 16 years

The New York Times Company:
The New York Times names Dick Stevenson as Washington bureau chief; Stevenson has been at the paper for nearly 40 years and Washington editor since 2021

Ayodeji Rotinwa / Columbia Journalism Review:
A look at the Agora Center for Research, a Ugandan newsroom sitting between activism and investigative reporting, posting its work on various social media sites

 
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