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7:30 AM ET, April 3, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Sources: Google In Talks To Acquire Twitter (Updated)  —  Here's a heck of a rumor that we've sourced from two separate people close to the negotiations: Google is in late stage negotiations to acquire Twitter.  We don't know the price but can assume its well, well north of the $250 million valuation …
RELATED:
Todd Bishop / TechFlash:
Showdown: Why Microsoft can't afford to lose Twitter to Google
Discussion: CNET News and WinBeta
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
DiggBar Keeps All Digg Homepage Traffic On Digg  —  DiggBar, the new shortURL and toolbar service from Digg, is certainly useful.  I expect it to become my default short URL service on Twitter since it is so easy to create a short URL by simply adding Digg.com/ in front of any URL.
Discussion: The Gong Show, Thanks:bobcaswell
RELATED:
Kevin Rose / Digg the Blog:
DiggBar Launches Today!  —  Hey everyone -  —  Starting today, we'll begin rolling out a new product we are calling the DiggBar.  Before we dive into the details, check out this short video overview:  —  The DiggBar allows you to...  - Digg directly on the destination site: No more awkward toggling between the story page and Digg.
MG Siegler / VentureBeat:
With DiggBar, Digg wants to be central to sharing content on the web …
Ibrahim Bokharouss / Gmail Blog:
New in Labs: Gmail search made easier (and lazier)  —  On the Gmail team, we believe finding the right email among thousands of messages can be as important as finding the right web page across the billions of web pages out there.  So with the aim of making search in Gmail easier …
RELATED:
Adam Pash / Lifehacker:   Gmail Search Autocomplete Makes Searching Your Inbox a Breeze
Libby Purves / Times of London:
Village mob thwarts Google Street View car  —  Angry villagers formed a human chain to thwart the progress of a Google Street View car that was in the process of taking photographs of their homes.  —  Police were called to Broughton in Buckinghamshire yesterday, after furious villagers blocked …
New York Times:
I.B.M. Reportedly Will Buy Rival Sun for $7 Billion  —  I.B.M. appears on the verge of acquiring Sun Microsystems, a longtime rival in the computer server and software markets, for nearly $7 billion.  —  The two companies have been negotiating for weeks, ironing out terms of an agreement …
Owen Thomas / Gawker:
Mark Zuckerberg's Status Update: Paranoid as Hell  —  Is Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg hunting leakers?  His internal memo about CFO Gideon Yu's departure got forwarded to bloggers.  Perhaps he was hoping that would happen, and not just so his spin would get out.
RELATED:
Sam Diaz / Between the Lines:
Facebook Fallout: Is it time for Zuckerberg to go?  —  For the record, I've never officially met Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook.  But I've met guys who are probably like him.  Young.  Smart.  Rich.  Full of great ideas.  And, yeah, probably a little bit full of himself, too.
Discussion: Gawker and Silicon Alley Insider
Holly Stewart / IBM Internet Security Systems …:
Counting Confickers  —  Now that the ambiguity about what is going to happen on April 1 (nothing) is behind us, the next question that seems to be on everyone's mind is how many infections are really out there.  We've been holding off on releasing our numbers because we keep seeing the numbers climb considerably each day.
Discussion: PC World
RELATED:
Todd Jackson / The Official Google Blog:
5 years of Gmail  —  It was five years ago yesterday that Gmail launched by giving out a gig.  Back then, a typical webmail account could only store about five megabytes of mail.  It's hard to remember what those days were like, considering that today, you can send a single 20 megabyte attachment …
Discussion: Gmail Blog and Lifehacker, Thanks:sinkercat
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
Harvard P2P lawyer: file-swapping is fair use—no, really!  —  Not content to argue that massive damage awards against P2P file-swappers are unconstitutionally severe, Harvard Law professor Charlie Nesson claims that file-swapping is actually a “fair use” of copyrighted works.
RELATED:
Eric Eldon / VentureBeat:
Public market buys ChangYou's virtual goods model, stock up after IPO  —  In a public market vote of confidence on the business of virtual goods, Chinese game-maker ChangYou (CYOU) has gone public on NASDAQ today and its stock is currently up around 25 percent on heavy trading.  Why?
Discussion: Economist and Reuters, Thanks:mrinaldesai
RELATED:
alarm:clock:
China's ChangYou Shows Us How An IPO Is Done
Fred / Electronic Frontier Foundation:
iPods, First Sale, President Obama, and the Queen of England  —  President Obama reportedly gave an iPod, loaded with 40 show tunes, to England's Queen Elizabeth II as a gift.  Did he violate the law when he did so?  —  You know your copyright laws are broken when there is no easy answer to this question.
Chris Davies / iPhone Buzz:
3.2MP next-gen iPhone, new 5MP Apple device later this year?  —  Apple will upgrade the next-gen iPhone's camera to 3.2-megapixels, according to market sources in Asia.  Manufacturer OmniVision is believed to have won the Apple contract to supply the 3.2-megapixel CMOS image sensor used in the smartphone …
Discussion: DigiTimes, Gizmodo, SlashGear and Engadget
Ryan Naraine / Threatpost Blog:
Microsoft issues PowerPoint zero-day warning  —  Microsoft has issued an advisory to warn about an under-attack zero-day vulnerability affecting its PowerPoint software.  —  According to the pre-patch advisory, the flaw allows remote code execution if a user opens a booby-trapped PowerPoint file.
Dan Stober / Stanford News:
Free Stanford course on developing iPhone software  —  Want to know how to write programs for the iPhone and iPod touch?  Beginning this week, a Stanford computer science class on that buzzworthy topic will be available online to the general public for free.  —  The 10-week course, iPhone Application Programming, is a hot ticket.
Maggie Shiels / dot.life blog:
Renaming Web 2.0  —  At the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, internet guru Tim O'Reilly threw out the possibility that perhaps the name should be changed.  —  He said he and his friend John Battelle of Federated Media had been playing around with an alternative which was Web 2.0 + World = Web Squared.
David Thomas / KickingTires:
Video: 2009 Toyota Venza iPhone Streaming Bluetooth Audio  —  When I reviewed the Toyota Venza a few months ago, I couldn't believe the company didn't include a USB port for MP3 players.  An analog auxiliary jack was standard, and you had to upgrade to a more expensive stereo for Bluetooth streaming audio.
Discussion: Mobile Tech Addicts, TUAW and Gizmodo
Abbey Klaassen / AdAge:
Google Uses Twitter to Sell Ads  —  Intuit Is First Marketer to Have Its Tweets Streamed Across AdSense Network  —  NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Twitter may still be tweaking its own business model, but Google has found a way to use the popular microblogging service to sell ads.
Adrian Covert / Gizmodo:
Palm Pre Apps Hands On: Hardly Lightweight, Looking Great  —  We're nearing the still unknown release date for the Palm Pre, and new details are slowly surfacing.  Sprint demoed the Pre's WebOS apps at CTIA, including PalmOS Emulator, Google Maps and Pandora.  These look fantastic.
Todd Bishop / TechFlash:
Microsoft: Distinction between PC and phone gets even blurrier  —  Speaking at the CTIA Wireless convention in Las Vegas this morning, Microsoft's Robbie Bach started not by touting Windows Mobile but by talking about computers — specifically, netbooks.  His comments, via webcast …
Peter Parkes / Skype Blogs:
Skype for iPhone zooms past one million downloads  —  In less than two days, Skype for iPhone has been downloaded more than one million times - around six downloads every second.  —  This is a phenomenal performance, and we're confident that it's one of the fastest-downloaded iPhone apps ever.
Elizabeth Woyke / Forbes:
Samsung's Android Phone Plans  —  The handset maker plans to launch three “Google” phones this year.  —  Despite a fanatical amount of interest from the tech media and early adopters, Samsung has mostly kept quiet about its plans to develop phones using Google's mobile platform, Android.
 
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 More Items: 
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Does Rupert Murdoch Have Kindle Envy? …
Discussion: paidContent.org, Thanks:mrinaldesai
Nicholas Kolakowski / eWeek:
Intel Nehalem Draws on Wall Street Collaboration
Discussion: iTnews Australia
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
Technorati Lays Off Another 10 Percent Of Employees
Thanks:atul
Sharon Jayson / USA Today:
For teens, a friend online is usually a friend offline, too
Discussion: Techdirt
Elinor Mills / CNET News:
Microsoft helps keep Koobface virus off Facebook
Amy-Mae Elliott / Pocket-lint.com:
Vodafone HTC Magic delayed
Discussion: Phone Arena and MobileCrunch
Saul Hansell / Bits:
Microsoft and the Corporate Identity Crisis
 Earlier Items: 
Svetlana Gladkova / Profy:
Microsoft To Officially Become a Monopoly in Russia
Discussion: CNET News
Chris Ziegler / Engadget:
NVIDIA's Franken-Mini is half HP, half Tegra, no Intel
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Max Tani / Semafor:
News media personalities including Andrew Ross Sorkin, David Remnick, Rachel Maddow, Mehdi Hasan, and Bari Weiss reflect on the things they got wrong in 2024

William Christou / The Guardian:
A look at Syria's state news agency Sana, which had led the Assad regime's propaganda effort for the past 13 years, with its journalists unable to report freely

Lillian Rizzo / CNBC:
Industry executives say media companies expect ad spending to stabilize in 2025 and even grow for platforms with sports and live events

 
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