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9:40 AM ET, March 18, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Robert Valpuesta / Bloomberg:
IBM Is in Negotiations to Buy Sun Microsystems for $6.5 Billion, WSJ Says  —  International Business Machines Corp. is in talks to buy Sun Microsystems Inc., the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.  —  IBM may pay at least $6.5 billion …
RELATED:
Ben Worthen / Digits:
IBM's Flirtation with Sun: the Next Volley in the Data Center War  —  IBM is in talks to buy Sun Microsystems, marking the beginning of what is likely to be a new wave of acquisitions in the tech industry over the next 18 months.  —  It's the logical consequence of the all-out war for the data center …
Kasper Jade / AppleInsider:
iPhone OS 3.0 first impressions and photos  —  Developers late Tuesday evening are downloading a widely distributed beta of Apple's new iPhone 3.0 software, installing it on their handsets, and weighing in with some first impressions and screen shots, all of which follow.
RELATED:
Jesus Diaz / Gizmodo:
iPhone 3.0 OS Guide: Everything You Need to Know  —  iPhone 3.0 OS, the next generation operating system for the iPhone, iPod touch, and whatever Apple device comes next.  New features, new apps, here you will find all the information you need.  —  NEW IPHONE OS 3.0 FEATURES
John Mahoney / Gizmodo:
Apple Puts Onus On AT&T For 3G Tethering, Confirms Hardware Support
Discussion: Engadget, AppleInsider and VentureBeat
Soshable:
46% of the Digg Front Page is Controlled by 50 Websites  —  Recent changes and restrictions made by Digg.com to encourage diversity in the range of users whose submissions reach the front page have had 2 profound results.  Newer and less active users have seen their stories reach the front page …
Discussion: Silicon Alley Insider
Kit Eaton / Fast Company:
Palm Pre vs iPhone 3.0: A Feature-by-Feature Comparison  —  The Palm Pre is going to be a hot item when it launches this summer—possibly hot enough to tackle the iPhone.  One reason it's gaining so much traction is that the Pre's features weren't designed to compete against the current iPhone, but the next generation.
Discussion: blogs.ft.com and Technologizer
Hutch Carpenter / I'm Not Actually a Geek:
How to Tweet Your Way Out of a Job  —  I saw this exchange on Twitter, which is a painful lesson in how NOT to use Twitter in this tough economy.  —  A lucky job applicant tweeted the following: … This tweet caught the attention of Tim Levad, a channel partner advocate for Cisco.
Discussion: Twitterrati, Thanks:atul
InfoWorld:
Sun challenges Amazon for cloud dominance  —  Move over, Amazon.  The leading provider of cloud services is about to get some serious competition from Sun Microsystems, which made its entrance into cloud computing Wednesday with plans to offer compute and storage services built on Sun technologies, including OpenSolaris and MySQL.
David de Kloet / Gmail Blog:
A small (but helpful) change to ‘mark as unread’  —  Gmail's threaded conversations are useful because they keep your messages in context — you don't have to look for previous messages to see what people are talking about.  But sometimes, when many people are replying to the same conversation …
Discussion: InformationWeek and geeksugar, Thanks:sinkercat
PR Newswire:
Aircell Expands Pricing Options for Gogo Inflight Internet Service  —  Gogo Now Available to Handheld Devices for $7.95 on Any Gogo Flight  —  As smartphones like BlackBerry and the iPhone continue to take over the mobile phone market, more and more people are finding that they have wireless …
Discussion: DSLreports
John Schwartz / New York Times:
As Jurors Turn to Web, Mistrials Are Popping Up  —  Last week, a juror in a big federal drug trial in Florida admitted to the judge that he had been doing research on the case on the Internet, directly violating the judge's instructions and centuries of legal rules.
Timothy Lee / Techdirt:
TomTom Caught Between Microsoft Rock And GPL Hard Place  —  Last month we covered Microsoft's patent infringement lawsuit against GPS device maker TomTom.  As Mike noted, this is a pretty clear example of abusive patent litigation.  The patents in question are so broad that it's virtually impossible …
Micah L. Sifry / techPresident:
Breaking News: CIO Vivek Kundra is Back on the Job [updated]  —  Vivek Kundra, the federal government's new Chief Information Officer, has been spotted at his desk, doing his job.  We're hearing that his temporary leave of absence, in the wake of last week's arrest of two individuals individuals running …
RELATED:
Katharine Q. Seelye / The Caucus:
Chief Information Officer Is Quietly Reinstated
Discussion: InformationWeek, Gawker and Post I.T.
Jared M. Spool / UIE:
The Magic Behind Amazon's 2.7 Billion Dollar Question  —  Since its release in 2007, the last volume of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, has garnered 3,286 reviews from Amazon.com customers.  While response has been overwhelmingly positive for the book …
Thanks:atul
Maria Russo / The Wrap:
AOL Leaps Into Original News Content With PoliticsDaily.com  —  The longtime portal has hired Melinda Henneberger as editor of PoliticsDaily.com and launches in April.  —  New Media is about to meet Old Media.  But not in the way you'd think.  —  AOL is about to launch a politics site …
Thanks:atul
Ina Fried / Beyond Binary:
IE 8, Silverlight 3 on tap for Microsoft's Mix  —  A correction was made to this story.  See below for details.  —  The expected release of Internet Explorer 8 is likely to be the biggest headline out of Microsoft's Mix conference this week, though the company is likely to spend at least …
Sophos:
Credit card skimming malware targeting ATMs  —  From time to time, because they know I work for SophosLabs, my friends ask me about different malware types and forward me warnings of alleged malware outbreaks, which often turn out to be just standard hoax emails.
Jason Toff / Google Chrome Blog:
Google Chrome has a new beta  —  Since we took the “beta” tag off Google Chrome in December, we've been updating two release channels: developer and stable.  With our latest release, we're re-introducing the beta channel for some early feedback — and if you're reading the brand new Google Chrome blog …
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Amazon Shutters Unpopular Alexa Site Thumbnail Service  —  Amazon Web Services is discontinuing the Alexa Site Thumbnail service, which has been providing developers with programmatic access to millions of thumbnail images for the home pages of web sites that were stored in Alexa's index since July 2006.
 
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 More Items: 
Daisuke Wakabayashi / Wall Street Journal:
Toshiba Names New President
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Major Book Publishers Start Turning To Scribd
Thanks:omfut
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
30 million iPhones sold — now that's a game platform
Discussion: Kotaku and AppleInsider
Saul Hansell / Bits:
Government 2.0 Meets Catch 22
Discussion: TomsTechBlog.com and cnewmark
Emil Protalinski / Ars Technica:
Why Microsoft continues with search: it's still not solved
 Earlier Items: 
corporate.discovery.com:
Discovery Communications Files Patent Infringement Suit Against Amazon.com
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
A Fail You Can't Blame Twitter For: ABC's McCain Interview
Discussion: eWeek and CNET News
Byron Acohido / USA Today:
Website-infecting SQL injection attacks hit 450,000 a day
Eric Eldon / VentureBeat:
Google advertising appearing in iPhone applications [confirmed]
Reuters:
Expedia shares gain on Google takeover talk
Discussion: TechFlash, Thanks:mrinaldesai