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3:50 PM ET, March 18, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
IBM's potential purchase of Sun: Here's why it makes sense  —  IBM is reportedly in talks to buy Sun Microsystems for $6.5 billion and the deal is long overdue.  The companies mesh on the open source software front, Sun is struggling and IBM can consolidate some server market share.  —  First, the headlines.
RELATED:
Steve Lohr / New York Times:
I.B.M. Said to Be in Talks to Buy Sun for $7 Billion  —  I.B.M. is in talks to buy Sun Microsystems in a proposed deal valued at nearly $7 billion, a person with knowledge of the negotiations said on Wednesday.  —  The merger, if completed, would mark a big consolidation step in the market …
Ben Worthen / Digits:
IBM's Flirtation with Sun: The Next Volley in the Data-Center War
frontech.fujitsu.com:
Fujitsu Begins On-Line Consumer Sales of World's First Color E-Paper Mobile Terminal FLEPia  — Displays up to 260,000 colors; features Bluetooth and high-speed wireless LAN; thin and lightweight -  —  Fujitsu Frontech Limited and Fujitsu Laboratories Limited today announced the start …
RELATED:
Paul Miller / Engadget:
Fujitsu melts faces and wallets with FLEPia, the first color e-book …
DealBook:
All That Twitters May Not Be Gold, Analysts Say  —  Twitter seems to have gone from obscure to mainstream in about the same time it takes to send a “tweet” over the network.  —  Despite the fact that the three-year-old microblogging service doesn't generate revenue — nevermind profits …
Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:
FACEBOOK COULD KILL GOOGLE — Analyst  —  Ross Sandler of RBC has done what every good analyst should do, which is say something interesting.  What Ross has said is that, at its current growth rate, Facebook will surpass Google in size by 2011-2012.  —  (We expect Facebook's growth will slow …
Emil Protalinski / Ars Technica:
MIX09: Silverlight 3 beta bits start to arrive early (Updated x2)  —  Early Silverlight 3 downloads have hit the Microsoft Download Center early, though there is definitely more to come.  —  The Scott Guthrie and Bill Buxton keynote at MIX09 in Las Vegas is less than four hours away.
RELATED:
Edm / Expression Web team blog:
MICROSOFT EXPRESSION WEB SUPERPREVIEW  —  How many times have you had to debug your web pages on virtual or multiple machines running different versions of Internet Explorer?  Or had to wait for a slow web service to return renderings of your pages?  —  You don't have to do that anymore.
RELATED:
Long Zheng / istartedsomething:
Expression Web SuperPreview makes cross-browser testing like moist delicious cake
Discussion: SitePoint and Ajaxian
pavlov.net:
Fennec 1.0 Beta 1  —  I'm super happy to announce the first beta release of Fennec for the Maemo platform.  —  Fennec 1.0 Beta 1 includes lots of great improvements, especially around performance.  Starting with this beta, I'm able to use Fennec as the primary browser on my N810.
RELATED:
Scott M. Fulton, III / BetaNews:   Mozilla's mobile browser experiment finally enters beta
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
NBC CEO Jeff Zucker: Jon Stewart Was “Incredibly Unfair” to CNBC  —  Hard to imagine that NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker spends a lot of time thinking about “The Daily Show” critique of CNBC.  But when he sat down for a Q&A this morning with BusinessWeek's Ellen Pollock, that was topic A.
RELATED:
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
NBC Boss Explains Why Boxee Users Can't Have Hulu
Discussion: The Social, Thanks:atul
The Boy Genius / Boy Genius Report:
AT&T bringin' sexy back, offering iPhone 3G at no-commitment price, no activation  —  Time to clear out some inventory, boys!  AT&T, starting March 26th, is going to start offering the 8GB and 16GB iPhone 3Gs at a no-commitment price.  These prices are $599 and $699 respectively.
Zach Epstein / Boy Genius Report:
Pandora for BlackBerry finally launches  —  BlackBerry users rejoice, Pandora has finally released v1 of it's custom internet radio streaming application this morning and long story short, it's everything we've been waiting for.  It's... About... Time!  We tested the app out on a Bold via …
Stuart Miles / Pocket-lint.com:
Psystar launches new Mac clone PC … Psystar might be in a heated court battle with Apple over the use of the Apple Mac OS X operating system, but that hasn't stopped the Mac clone company releasing a new Open Computer model on Tuesday.  —  According to the company the new model, the Open …
Matt Asay / The Open Road:
Linux a recession winner, IDC finds  —  Linux long ago became the “furniture” of open source: essential infrastructure to most of the Fortune 500 and somewhat mundane in its predictable, ever-increasing adoption.  —  Despite its impressive rise, however, Linux still has a long, long way to go.
Katie Marsal / AppleInsider:
Apple's iPhone 3.0 expands the ‘yawning’ competitive gap  —  While the vast majority of smartphone makers are betting that beefed-up handset hardware alone will attract new feature phone users, Apple demonstrated Tuesday that software stands to be the biggest differentiating factor as the market matures …
Discussion: Fast Company, Lifehacker and I4U News
Matt Cutts / Gadgets, Google, and SEO:
How to Write a Chrome Extension in Three Easy Steps  —  I just installed a “hello world” Chrome extension from this Chrome Extension HOWTO page.  When you surf to www.google.com, the Google logo is replaced with a Lolcat:  —  Here's how to write your own Google Chrome extension in three steps:
Imran Hussain / ithinkdifferrent:
Microsoft Web Platform Installer makes life simple.  Download now!  —  Scott Guthrie just announced Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0 Beta or Web PI for short.  It is a simple web based installer that makes available almost all popular web technologies whether Microsoft's or not at your desktop.
Discussion: Port 25, Thanks:imhassan
Rik Myslewski / The Register:
iPhone chip designer trumpets multi-core GPUs  —  Use your Imagination  —  Multicore Expo Immersive gaming, photo-realistic graphics, and HD video will soon take a giant step off your desktop and into the palm of your hand with the arrival of a new line of multi-core GPUs aimed squarely at the mobile, handheld, and automotive markets.
Avram Piltch / LAPTOP Mag:
More Office Depot Employees Report Lying to Customers, Changing Price Tags  —  Since we published our article about Office Depot associates lying to customers last week, the company has issued an internal memo “reminding” employees not to lie to customers about notebook stock.
Ina Fried / Beyond Binary:
Microsoft releases Web translating widget  —  LAS VEGAS—Microsoft's research unit on Wednesday released a tool that allows Web developers to let users translate their Web site into other languages without having to leave the page.  —  The company said a tech preview version …
Mark Goldstein / Photography Blog:
Fujifilm FinePix F200EXR Review  —  The Fujifilm Finepix F200EXR is potentially one of the most revolutionary cameras of 2009.  It features Fujifilm's innocuous sounding EXR technology, which rather cleverly turns the Fuji F200 into three cameras in one.  The first EXR mode shoots …
Discussion: Engadget
 
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 More Items: 
Dan Nystedt / Network World:
Acer smartphones to hit markets soon
Associated Press:
Skiles to Villanueva: No halftime tweets
Discussion: Pulse2 and CNET News
Michael Masnick / Techdirt:
Google Provides Numbers On Just How Often DMCA Takedown Process Is Abused
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Sunlight Foundation Receives $4m For Obama Era Data Visualization
Christoph Niemann / Abstract City:
My Life With Cables
Discussion: Wi-Fi Networking News and Switched
Todd Spangler / Multichannel News:
Comcast Exec: Internet TV Plans Preserve Cable Model
Discussion: NewTeeVee and Telecompetitor
 Earlier Items: 
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Google Sells Advertising to Advertisers
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Nintendo: Game Over? Time To Sell, Deutsche Bank Says
Discussion: GamesIndustry.biz and Joystiq
Timothy Lee / Techdirt:
TomTom Caught Between Microsoft Rock And GPL Hard Place
Discussion: Silicon Alley Insider
Soshable:
46% of the Digg Front Page is Controlled by 50 Websites
Discussion: Silicon Alley Insider
Hutch Carpenter / I'm Not Actually a Geek:
How to Tweet Your Way Out of a Job
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Jonathan Stempel / Reuters:
A New York judge finds Sirius XM liable for a difficult subscription cancellation process; Sirius says it will appeal but abide by a new “click-to-cancel” rule

Ashley Carman / Bloomberg:
A growing number of podcasters, including Tim Ferriss, are moving away from interviews to monologues or co-hosts, as some well-known guests can be overexposed

Brian Steinberg / Variety:
Sources: NBCUniversal Vice Chairman Bonnie Hammer plans to leave the company at the end of the year; she has been with the company since 2004

 
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