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6:05 PM ET, March 10, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Wei Yi Lim / Dow Jones Newswires:
Apple Plans To Launch Netbook With Touch Screen - Sources  —  TAIPEI -(Dow Jones)- Apple Inc. (AAPL) is planning to launch a netbook computer with a touch screen monitor as early as the second half of this year, two people close to the situation told Dow Jones Newswires Tuesday.
Microsoft:
Growing Notebook Market Spurs New Accessories From Microsoft  —  Hardware Group expands into new product category and updates top-selling Arc Mouse.  —  REDMOND, Wash. March 10, 2009 Notebook sales are now outpacing desktop PCs three to one,1 and to meet that growth, the Microsoft Hardware Group …
RELATED:
Stuart Dredge / Music Ally:
Chinese hackers selling $200 iTunes vouchers for $2.60  —  Chinese hackers have cracked the codes used for iTunes Store vouchers using key-generators, and as a result are selling $200 voucher codes for as little as $2.60 online.  That's according to a report on the blog of Chinese music industry consultancy Outdustry.
RELATED:
Ulysses Shi / Outdustry:
The Chinese iTunes Gift Voucher Trick  —  While there are some legitimate digital music download sites in China - including 9Sky, Top100 and the recently launched Wawawa - digital music is proving to be a tough sell in the P.R.C, partly because of the market dominance of Baidu's free mp3 search.
Nicholas Carlson / Silicon Alley Insider:
27 Huge Publishers Join To Replace The Banner  —  27 publishers with a reach of about 109 million unique visitors per month — that's 66% of the total U.S. Internet audience — have agreed to try one of three new online ad formats sometime before July.  The publishers are all members of the online publishers association (OPA).
Bull3t's Blog:
The mysterious Norton cover-up and pifts.exe  —  Apparently something big is happening.  A mysterious program known as pifts.exe is attempting to contact a server in Africa and seems to be associated with Symantec's anti-virus system, Norton.  There is virtually no information …
Discussion: The Register
RELATED:
Swa Frantzen / SANS Internet Storm Center, InfoCON:
conspiracy fodder: pifts.exe  —  Several readers wrote in with samples of a file PIFTS.exe that seems to be related to a Norton update and gets flagged for its behavior.  —  The file has been confirmed to call home to stats.norton.com .  —  The truly bizarre are the mentions that the support forums …
Sam Diaz / Between the Lines:
Jobs not at Disney meeting; Shareholders talk contingencies  —  Update: Apple CEO Steve Jobs didn't turn up after all at the Disney shareholder meeting, but he was a frequent topic of discussion.  The biggest worry: Jobs' 7.4 percent stake in the company would hit the open market if something happened to him.
RELATED:
MG Siegler / VentureBeat:   Steve Jobs makes a brief appearance — on MarketWatch's news ticker
John Paczkowski / Digital Daily:
Palm: Put a Sock in It, McNamee. … Roger McNamee's hyperbolic predictions about iPhone-to-Pre conversion rates didn't go over too well at Palm.  Appalled by McNamee's inflated, indecorous claims about its forthcoming smartphone, the handset maker on Monday filed a Free Writing Prospectus …
Discussion: GMSV, Macworld, Treonauts and mocoNews
RELATED:
Rene Ritchie / The iPhone Blog:
Tweetie 1.3 Rejected by Apple for Returning “Offensive Language” in Search Results (NSFW-L)  —  So, who could it be running the approval process for the iTunes App Store at Apple?  Hmm.  Tough one.  Let us put on our little thinking caps here for a moment.... SATAN?!
Bill Gurley / abovethecrowd.com:
How To Monetize A Social Network: MySpace And Facebook Should Follow TenCent  —  Everybody had to pay and pay"  —  The consensus seems to be that social networks have a monetization problem.  On this topic, both the leading technology industry blogs and the world's top news organizations agree.
Discussion: Venture Capital Dispatch, Thanks:atul
Matthew Lasar / Ars Technica:
FCC promises open process on national broadband strategy  —  Get ready for an excruciatingly inclusive process in figuring out how the government will implement its national broadband strategy.  —  Interim Federal Communications Commission Chair Michael Copps was clearly feeling his oats …
RELATED:
Washington Wire:
It's Standing Room Only for Broadband Stimulus Meeting
Discussion: DSLreports
Juan Carlos Perez / Computerworld:
Gmail down; Outage could last 36 hours for some  —  IDG News Service) Google Inc.'s Gmail e-mail service is down for an undetermined number of users, and while the outage has been partially fixed, some people could be locked out of their accounts for many more hours.
Discussion: eWeek and InfoWorld
RELATED:
BBC:   Gmail down again for some users
Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:
AOL Layoffs In Progress  —  As expected, many AOLers in Dulles started receiving “the email” yesterday afternoon.  The email asks them to attend an “important meeting” this morning—at which they will be fired.  —  This is the way AOL's layoffs have been handled over the past several years, with depressing regularity.
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Sony cuts deal with NBC Universal for film/TV shows on PlayStation Network  —  Sony's PlayStation Network is getting a boost today as the company announces its deal to add movies and TV shows from NBC Universal to its nascent online video store.  —  This development follows the addition …
Robert Buderi / Xconomy:
Paul Graham on Why Boston Should Worry About Its Future as a Tech Hub—Says Region Focuses On Ideas, Not Startups  —  Robert Buderi wrote:  —  For entrepreneurs and investors alike, it was a sad day back in January, when Y Combinator founder Paul Graham announced he would stay …
Discussion: SiliconAngle
Kevin Anderson / Guardian:
Guardian launches Open Platform tool to make online content available free  —  The Guardian today launched Open Platform, a service that will allow partners to reuse guardian.co.uk content and data for free and weave it “into the fabric of the internet”.  —  Open Platform launched …
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Legacy Locker: An Online Will For Your Digital Life  —  For many of us, the internet is quickly becoming a comprehensive digital archive of our lives, housing our photo albums, documents, correspondence, and video clips.  Unfortunately, when someone passes away, the mechanisms for transferring …
Adriana Lee / PhoneDog.com:
Rumor: Samsung A877 to launch 3/29 for AT&T  —  This just in ...  According to an anonymous source, it looks like Samsung A877 will be launching through AT&T on March 29.  If you're in the market for a sweet messaging phone, this might be one worth waiting for.  — 3.2" WQVGA AMOLED touchscreen
Associated Press:
Hitachi to admit to fixing LCD prices  —  WASHINGTON - Hitachi Displays Ltd. has agreed to plead guilty to conspiring to fix prices on the sale of LCD panels.  —  The Japan-based electronics firm agreed to pay a $31 million fine as part of its deal with the U.S. Justice Department.
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Apple: Was February The Bottom For Mac Sales?  —  Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster this morning said he expects the next set of NPD data on Apple (AAPL) Mac sales to show a 12% year-over-year drop compared with a year ago, but that the recently revamped product line should provide a rebound in March.
InfoWorld:
Microsoft to accelerate relational capabilities for the cloud  —  Microsoft will expose the network protocol from its SQL Server database as the service protocol in SDS (SQL Data Services), the cloud-based version of the database, thus enabling customers to use a full relational model in the cloud.
Discussion: The Register
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:
Microsoft touts new CRM freebies  —  Microsoft is making new CRM services and add-ons for free to appeal to business users hurting from the worldwide recession, according to company officials.  —  Microsoft announced the new wares during the first day of its Convergence conference for customers …
Discussion: eWeek and Computerworld
Dawn Kawamoto / CNET News:
Palm boosts stock offering, nets $83.9 million  —  Palm shares rose sharply in early morning trading Tuesday, after the smartphone maker increased the size of its secondary offering and netted $83.9 million.  —  Palm resold 23.13 million shares, as part of a follow-on offering it announced the previous day.
Tech-On! : tech news:
USB 3.0 Test Spec to Be Released in June 2009  —  Compatibility test specification for the next-generation USB, “USB 3.0,” will be formulated as early as the first half of 2009.  —  According to Agilent Technologies Inc, which is engaged in the formulation of the test specification, the …
Discussion: AppleInsider, TechSpot and Engadget
 
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 More Items: 
Alina Dizik / Wall Street Journal:
Windows Into Lives After a Layoff
Ashlee Vance / Bits:
EMC Tightens Its Embrace of VMware
Discussion: The Register
DealBook:
Google and Cisco Eyed as Possible Dow Candidates
Discussion: GigaOM, Search Engine Watch and DailyTech, Thanks:atul
Jemima Kiss / Guardian:
YouTube rights row over music videos could spread to MySpace
Discussion: Music Ally, CNET News and paidContent, Thanks:atul
John Boudreau / Mercury News:
A chat with Padmasree Warrier, Cisco's chief technology officer
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Investors Bet $5 Million on Casual Game Site OMGPOP, Hope Users Start Paying Up
 Earlier Items: 
Celine Allee / Springboard Series:
Windows 7 Virtual Roundtable Q&A: Part One
Jennifer Van Grove / Mashable!:
Cliqset Wants to Unify Your Social Identities
Jack Davis / SiliconBeat:
Silicon Graphics shares headed for delisting
Matt Cutts / Gadgets, Google, and SEO:
How many links per page?
Discussion: Search Engine Watch, Thanks:atul
Brian Solis / TechCrunch:
Are Blogs Losing Their Authority To The Statusphere?
Saul Hansell / Bits:
The Broadband Gap: Why Is Theirs Faster?
Discussion: DSLreports and CrunchGear
 

 
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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