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12:45 PM ET, April 8, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Siobhan Gorman / Wall Street Journal:
Electricity Grid in U.S. Penetrated by Spies  —  Robert Moran monitors an electric grid in Dallas.  Such infrastructure grids across the country are vulnerable to cyberattacks.  —  WASHINGTON — Cyberspies have penetrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs …
Cisco Cheng / PC Magazine:
Massive Acer Launch Includes New Timeline Laptop Line  —  It's rare when a company can launch over twenty new products on a single night.  Acer did just that Tuesday night at an event held in New Jersey, unleashing a bevy of new systems that include a new line of laptops, two netbooks …
RELATED:
Marguerite Reardon / CNET News:
Acer execs downplay Android, hint at Verizon Netbook deal  —  Acer executives said that Google's Android still has a long way to go before it can be used as the operating system for the hot new category of laptops known as Netbooks.  And the CEO of the Taiwanese company hinted that its Netbooks …
Jonathan Adams / New York Times:
Apple Sued Over Touch-Screen Rights  —  TAIPEI — The Taiwanese company Elan Microelectronics has sued Apple Computer, alleging infringement of two of its touch screen patents, a company spokesman said Wednesday.  —  The suit was filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco …
Miguel Helft / New York Times:
Google Insists It's a Friend to Newspapers  —  SAN DIEGO — It had the makings of a high-tension face-off: Eric E. Schmidt, Google's chief executive, spoke Tuesday at a convention of newspaper executives at a time when a growing chorus in the struggling industry is accusing Google of succeeding, in part, at their expense.
RELATED:
New York Times:   They Pay for Cable, Music and Extra Bags. How About News?
Maggie Shiels / BBC:
Google addresses newspaper woes
Mark Zuckerberg / Facebook Blog:
200 Million Strong  —  We will welcome our 200 millionth user to Facebook some time today, and I want to take this opportunity to describe what this means to us and what we hope it can mean for everyone using Facebook.  —  When we built Facebook in 2004, our goal was to create a richer …
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Mobile Socializing: Limbo Merges With Brightkite And Announces $9 Million Funding Round  —  In the nascent world of mobile social networking, there are the big dogs (Facebook and MySpace) and everyone who wants to be a big dog.  Two of the puppies just got bigger.
RELATED:
Brady Becker / Brightkite Blog:
Huge news! Limbo is joining forces with Brightkite
Discussion: Local Mobile Search
University of San Francisco (USF):
The Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist Confidence Index (Bloomberg ticker: USFSVVCI)  —  First Quarter - 2009 … The quarterly Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist Confidence Index™ (Bloomberg ticker symbol: USFSVVCI) is based on an on-going survey of San Francisco Bay Area/Silicon Valley venture capitalists.
RELATED:
Mary Kathleen Flynn / Dealscape:   Headhunter Jon Holman on VC job market
Don Clark / Digits:   For VCs, A Tiny Ray of Hope Amid Clouds
Darren Waters / BBC:
Spam overwhelms e-mail messages  —  More than 97% of all e-mails sent over the net are unwanted, according to a Microsoft security report.  —  The e-mails are dominated by spam adverts for drugs, and general product pitches and often have malicious attachments.
Discussion: Softpedia News and Gizmodo
Sarah Radwanick / comScore Voices:
Twitter Traffic Explodes...And Not Being Driven by the Usual Suspects!  —  Twitter seems to be just about everywhere these days, infiltrating pop culture and challenging traditional communication channels as people answer the simple Twitter question, “What are you doing?”
Matt Marshall / VentureBeat:
Yet another Googler leaves: Singh Cassidy joins Accel Partners  —  The exodus from Google continues at a torrid pace.  —  Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, Google's president for Asia-Pacific (APAC) & Latin American Operations, has left the company to join Accel Partners, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm …
RELATED:
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Top Exec Singh Cassidy Leaves Google to Go to Accel Partners …
Gregg Keizer / Computerworld:
Poll reveals user love for Windows 7  —  44% ‘very satisfied’ with beta, says research firm; just 10% of early Vista users said the same  —  Computerworld) Beta testers of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows 7 are four times more likely to be happy with what they're seeing than were early users of Windows Vista …
RELATED:
Emil Protalinski / Ars Technica:
First screenshots of build Windows 7 build 7077 leak
David Chartier / Ars Technica:
Variable pricing spreads to Amazon, Lala, Rhapsody, Wal-Mart  —  At Macworld Expo in January 2009, Apple announced that it had negotiated a deal that would allow it to join the rest of the digital music distribution industry by removing DRM from all 10 million songs in its download catalog.
Discussion: Macworld, AppScout and Music Ally
RELATED:
Brad Stone / New York Times:
Lost in the Real World, Found via Cyberspace  —  Rhonda Surman and her husband were hiking around some Bronze Age ruins in western Scotland last year when they glimpsed sunlight reflecting off burnished metal.  It was an Olympus digital camera, lying on the ground.
Discussion: Gawker
Aidan Malley / AppleInsider:
Apple delaying web standard with patent royalty claim  —  Often touting web standards itself, Apple is being accused of holding back an important web specification by demanding royalty payments on a patent for updates.  —  The World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C, has notified members …
Discussion: Apple iPhone Apps and My Opera
RELATED:
Tom Krazit / CNET News:
Apple refusing royalty-free license to widget patent
Discussion: MacNN
Matthew Dolan / Wall Street Journal:
Ford Takes Online Gamble With New Fiesta  —  Auto Maker to Loan 100 Young People a Car; They'll Post Videos Over Which Ford Has No Control  —  Auto makers must boost fuel economy under new government regulations, and a sure way to do that is promote small cars.
Discussion: Off On A Tangent, Thanks:blissfork
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
BumpTop gives Windows desktop a much-needed makeover  —  Microsoft's Windows desktop isn't nearly as efficient at using space as a real desktop.  That's what Anand Agarawala concluded more than five years ago, when he began to study ways to create a better user interface for the screen that computer users stare at all day long.
Google App Engine Blog:
Seriously this time, the new language on App Engine: Java™  —  Today, we're very excited to announce the availability of a new programming language for Google App Engine.  Please welcome the Java runtime!  —  When the two of us first heard the promise of Google App Engine …
Intel:
Intel Developer Forum: 1-Year Intel® Atom™ Processor Anniversary Brings New Chips, Demonstration of Next-Generation Device  —  Intel Executives Share Vision, Updates at Beijing Tech Event  —  Celebrating the 1-year anniversary of Intel Corporation's introduction …
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
Dictionary.com Launches Free iPhone App  —  Dictionary.com, part of the Ask.com network, has launched a free iPhone app that delivers lets you look up definitions and synonyms from Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com, reaching into a database of more than 275,000 definitions and 80,000 synonyms.
Discussion: iPhone Buzz and Mashable!
 
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 More Items: 
Royal Pingdom:
40% still use old Google Analytics script
Discussion: The Blog Herald
Erica Ogg / Crave: The gadget blog:
The new TV remote: Your bare hand?
Discussion: Coolest Gadgets
Karl Bode / DSLreports:
2009: The FCC Finally Makes A Broadband Plan …
Discussion: CNET News
Riva Richmond / Gadgetwise:
Macs Aren't Safer, Just a Smaller Target
Discussion: MacDailyNews
Farhad Manjoo / Slate:
YouTube for Artistes  —  The Web video site Vimeo goes …
 Earlier Items: 
Nicholas Kolakowski / eWeek:
Former Microsoft Executive Charles Simonyi Returns to Earth
Discussion: CNET News
Mike Butcher / TechCrunch Europe:
Gone in 140 characters …
Discussion: nerdgirl and Voice on the Web, Thanks:atul
Austin Modine / The Register:
Microsoft killing free XP support next week
Discussion: AppScout
Robert MacMillan / MediaFile:
McClatchy will make $200mln from digital this year
Discussion: Silicon Alley Insider
Nick Wingfield / Digits:
Microsoft Faces Branding Problem In Effort to Top Google
Alex Chitu / Google Operating System:
Google Image Search Color Filter
Rory Cellan-Jones / dot.life blog:
The battle over content  —  It's a month since the row between YouTube …
Discussion: Music Ally