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1:55 PM ET, March 31, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
The Official Google Blog:
Google's newest venture  —  Today we're excited to announce Google Ventures, Google's new venture capital fund.  This is Google's effort to take advantage of our resources to support innovation and encourage promising new technology companies.  By borrowing the best practices of top-tier …
RELATED:
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Google's New VC Fund Lacks Domain Name
Discussion: Google Watch and Mark Evans
Alexei Oreskovic / Reuters:   Google forms $100 million venture fund
Rafe Needleman / CNET News:
Wales giving up on Wikia Search  —  Wikia is announcing on Tuesday that it is closing the Wikia Search product.  The service was intended to be a user-generated search engine, through which users could influence the rankings of results for all other users.  —  Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikia …
Chris Davies / Android Community:
Android tethering apps pulled from Market  —  Google has reportedly pulled tethering apps from the Android Market.  According to at least one developer, who contributed to the WiFi Tether for Root Users app, Google are citing their distribution agreements with carriers as the prompt for removal:
RELATED:
Rik Ferguson / Counter Measures:
Poisoned Downad/Conficker Removal Searches...  Reminder: For a FREE tool to remove Conficker (and every other malware in the current pattern file) use Trend Micro's SysClean available here.  —  As soon as the good news breaks that it is possible to use tools such as the network scanning tool nmap …
RELATED:
Seth Weintraub / 9 to 5 Mac:
Skype works on AT&T's 3G on iPhone 3.0  —  We just found something very interesting.  When you install Skype on a 3.0 developer preview iPhone, you can use AT&T's connection to make and receive calls.  It even works pretty well over EDGE.  Skype treats AT&T's WWAN like a Wifi connection.
Dan Reed / USA Today:
American to add Wi-Fi service to domestic flights  —  Being online while being airborne is fast becoming reality for U.S travelers.  —  American Airlines (AMR) is announcing on Tuesday that it's joining rival Delta Air Lines (DAL) in making Wi-Fi Internet connections available to most domestic passengers.
Discussion: dailywireless.org and DSLreports
RELATED:
Elinor Mills / CNET News:
Postini: Spam up again following McColo takedown  —  It has taken spammers only four months to get their botnets back up after hosting company McColo Corp. was shut down, according to statistics due to be released on Tuesday from Google's Postini e-mail security provider.
RELATED:
Brad Stone / Bits:
Spam Back to 94% of All E-Mail
John Koller / PlayStation.Blog:
PlayStation 2 Will Be Available for Under $100  —  Hi everyone, the last time you heard from me, I talked about the huge milestone that PlayStation 2 achieved - reaching 50 million units sold in North America.  Today I'm excited to talk about another milestone in PlayStation 2's lifespan.
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
MySpace, Citysearch Partner To Create MySpace Local  —  MySpace and Citysearch are jointly announcing a new MySpace property this morning called MySpace Local.  The site combines Citysearch business listings (including address, photos, menus, videos, maps and hours of location) from a thousand cities with the MySpace community.
Discussion: Mashable!
Brian X. Chen / Gadget Lab:
Pirates Board Apple's iPhone App Store  —  The iPhone's App Store is becoming an increasingly juicy target for pirates, who have illegally cracked 20 percent of paid applications for free distribution.  —  Apple's App Store offers about 25,000 paid apps, and iPhone analytics company Medialets estimates …
Discussion: Technologizer, Apple 2.0 and iLounge, Thanks:atul
Todd Bishop / TechFlash:
Next up for Microsoft's ‘real life’ Windows star: 7-Eleven ads  —  After setting the tech world abuzz with her criticism of Apple's Mac prices, the star of Microsoft's latest Windows ad will be featured next in promotional videos for 7-Eleven, according to a public Web site where she chronicles her burgeoning acting career.
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Forbes Starts a Second Round of Layoffs; Who Else Will Join It?  —  Forbes Media has begun a new round of layoffs and will let go of more than 50 people on its editorial and business teams, I'm told.  The cuts are roughly proportional to the ones the business publication made in November …
Douglas MacMillan / Business Week:
Hulu Attracts Crowds but Not Ads  —  News Corp.-NBC joint venture Hulu has surged in viewership, but advertisers are still leery, and content partners are pulling back  —  In the Super Bowl commercial calling Hulu “an evil plot to destroy the world,” 30 Rock star Alec Baldwin intones: “There's nothing you can do to stop it.”
Discussion: MediaPost and ChannelWeb, Thanks:mrinaldesai
Dawn Kawamoto / CNET News:
Analyst: 32GB iPhone could debut in June  —  Updated at 9:15 a.m. PDT with comments from analyst Daniel Amir.  —  Apple is expected to begin production on a high-end iPhone with 32GB of flash memory and a low-end 3G version this spring, according to a research report released Tuesday by Lazard Capital Markets analyst.
Cory Doctorow / Guardian:
Authors have lost the plot in Kindle row  —  Amazon's Kindle 2 text-to-speech feature is not so much violating authors' copyright but rather basic consumer rights  —  The Amazon Kindle 2's release in February was attended by much fanfare and controversy: Kindle customers were delighted …
Jacob Gube / Smashing Magazine:
Breaking: Internet Explorer 8.1 Eagle Eyes Leaked  —  Smashing Magazine tries to be at the forefront of new and exciting developments in the wide world of the web.  You might have heard that we met with the IE 8 Chief Strategist in the past, so it should come as no surprise that we like to keep …
Discussion: Technologizer
Microsoft:
Microsoft Gains Support for Next Generation of Windows® Phones  —  EA Mobile, MySpace and Isaac Mizrahi are among early supporters of Windows® phones; new Windows® phone applications are now available.  —  Furthering its vision to connect the PC, Web and phone …
Joel Hruska / Ars Technica:
New method for detecting Conficker discovered, debuted  —  With Conficker.C slowly counting down towards its April 1 launch date, Team White Hat may have had a breakthrough.  The new scanning tool developed by Dan Kaminsky, Felix Leder, and Tillman Werner may not actually remove the malware …
Eric Ward / Search Engine Land:
Twitter: Incredibly Valuable Or Utterly Useless As A Link Building Tool?  —  I've read so many articles lately about Twitter, from mainstream press to the sports world to the SEO world, that all seem to focus on the “phenomena” aspect of it.  After the Twittles (Twitter+Skittles) thing happened, it was like a dam bursting.
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Troubled SeeqPod Files For Bankruptcy Protection  —  SeeqPod, the popular “playable media” search service that many music sites use as the foundation for their core offering, has filed a petition for Chapter 11 yesterday with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court of the Northern District of California.
Discussion: Beet.TV
Saul Hansell / Bits:
What's the Password?  Only Your iPhone Knows  —  A few weeks ago, I wondered if people would start to use their cellphones to verify their identities when logging on to Internet sites.  I imagined a phone application similar to RSA's SecurID, the small gizmo many corporations issue to employees …
Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land:
Microsoft Kills Encyclopedia Encarta  —  paidContent.org reports that Microsoft has decided to discontinue their encyclopedia software, Encarta.  Both the MSN Encarta reference Web sites as well as its Encarta software will be shut down.  Microsoft said: … Clearly, Wikipedia is the dominating online encyclopedia these days.
Steve Gillmor / TechCrunchIT:
The Twitting Point  —  Bill O'Reilly has the last word on Twitter for today.  He thinks the Twitterati is crushing talk radio, by sucking up all our listener time.  He thinks that's bad; I hope he's right and it drives Rush out of business.  It won't drive The View out of business …
Rory Maher / paidContent.org:
When Digital Media CEOs Lose It: Whose Portfolio Took The Biggest Hit In 2008  —  A couple of weeks ago, we ranked digital-media CEOs by the size of paychecks.  But many of these titans derive most of their wealth not from salary, bonus or options, but from their holdings in the companies they run.
 
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 More Items: 
Patrick Oppmann / CNN:
Critics slam Microsoft bridge as waste of stimulus money
Discussion: CNET News and ProPublica
Associated Press:
Unpaid bills? Good luck starting future laptops
Discussion: Ars Technica
Rory Maher / paidContent.org:
Google Shutters Video AdSense Program
Discussion: NewTeeVee
Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:
Mobile payment company Mogees acquires BerryStore
Discussion: MobileContentToday and mocoNews
 Earlier Items: 
Wendy Davis / MediaPost:
Proposed NJ Law Would Require Social Nets To Police Sites
Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:
Online Ad Growth Screeches To A Halt
Discussion: MediaFile
Kasper Jade / AppleInsider:
Apple almost ready with Nehalem-based Xserves
Discussion: MacRumors
Om Malik / GigaOM:
In Market Cap, Google Now Bigger Than GE
Thanks:atul
David Chartier / Ars Technica:
Interview: Gmail's product manager on Labs, beta, the future