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12:30 PM ET, April 15, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
WMPoweruser.com:
New ZuneHD pictures, details  —  Some more ZuneHD information has trickled into our inbox, and while we do not, in general, cover PMP's, Zune seems inextricably linked with the future of Windows Mobile, so its probably a valid topic of conversation here.  —  From our limited information …
Amol Sharma / Wall Street Journal:
AT&T Chief Presses for iPhone  —  When Randall Stephenson became AT&T Inc.'s chief executive, the company had just started offering the iPhone.  The blockbuster device has since reeled in millions of new customers and helped revitalize the telecom giant's brand.
RELATED:
Ian Paul / PC World:   AT&T Wants to Keep iPhone Exclusivity Until 2011
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Stop Me if You've Heard This One: Yahoo Management and Staff Set on Shuffle Again  —  Yes, more layoffs are indeed coming to Yahoo, sources confirmed to BoomTown, but perhaps even more than have been reported.  —  But that's not all, as even more top-level managers are either leaving …
RELATED:
Miguel Helft / New York Times:
Yahoo Is Said to Plan More Layoffs  —  SAN FRANCISCO — Yahoo is planning a new round of layoffs, the first since Carol Bartz became chief executive in January, according to several people with knowledge of the situation.  —  The layoffs could affect several hundred employees and may be announced …
Amit Agarwal / Digital Inspiration:
Get a Vanity URL for your Google Profile Now  —  You may read the full article later but first, head over to this page and claim a vanity URL for your Google Profile before someone else snatches your favorite user name.  This is available to all Google Accounts that don't use a Gmail address.
RELATED:
Chris Messina / FactoryCity:
Google Profiles, namespace lock-in & social search  —  I'd originally intended to respond to Joshua Schacter's post about URL shorteners and how they're merely the tip of the data iceberg, but since I missed that debate, Google has fortuitously plied me with an even better example by releasing custom profile URLs today.
Discussion: Regular Geek
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Apple 2.0:
Piper Jaffray sales count: 22 iPhones, 28 Macs a day  —  One of the things that distinguishes Gene Munster's coverage of Apple (AAPL) from the other analysts who follow the company is that he actually leaves his office, goes into Apple stores, and counts sales.
Darren Waters / BBC:
Amazon blocks Phorm adverts scan  —  Amazon has said it will not allow online advertising system Phorm to scan its web pages to produce targeted ads.  —  Phorm builds a profile of users by scanning for keywords on websites visited and then assigns relevant ads.
Maureen Dowd / New York Times:
Dinosaur at the Gate  —  Eric Schmidt looks innocent enough, with his watercolor blue eyes and his tiny office full of toys and his Google campus stocked with volleyball courts and unlocked bikes and wheat-grass shots and cereal dispensers and Haribo Gummi Bears and heated toilet seats …
Discussion: Beyond Search
Phone Arena:
LG Viewty II is on the way  —  First official information on the Viewty II, now also known as the Viewty Smart, has just been published by LG's official German blog!  LG seems to have hired Motorola's newly announced MOTOROKR W6 as a personal trainer for the Viewty Smart …
RELATED:
Caroline McCarthy / CNET News:
ComScore: Facebook is conquering Europe  —  Facebook has become the top social network in a majority of European countries, according to analytics firm ComScore's figures for February.  —  That's most dramatically reflected in Spain, where Facebook's reach has grown tenfold over the course of only a year and is now in the No. 1 spot.
Discussion: All Facebook
RELATED:
comScore:
Facebook Ranks as Top Social Networking Site in the Majority of European Countries
Discussion: Screenwerk, Profy and TheNextWeb.com
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Skype IPO Could Range From $1.6-3.1 Billion  —  Earlier today, online auction giant eBay announced it plans to spin off Skype, its Internet phone company, as a public company next year.  How much could it be worth?  —  In a note, JPMorgan analyst Imran Khan estimates that Skype's 2010 net revenue …
RELATED:
eBay Inc.:
eBay Inc. Announces Plan for 2010 Initial Public Offering of Skype
Eric Lai / LinuxWorld.com:
A faster, sleeker way to do MySQL?  —  Start-up offers appliance delivering high-performance data warehousing  —  The archetypal MySQL database chugs along in the server room of a Web 2.0 start-up, powering a small but promising Web site.  In fact, a quarter of the 12 million MySQL installations …
Discussion: eWeek
Matthew Lasar / Ars Technica:
Time Warner Cable tells FCC to shut up about net neutrality  —  “Now is not the time... to engage in a debate about the need for net neutrality obligations,” Time Warner Cable tells the FCC.  But why not, other than the fact that TWC is taking a beating over bandwidth caps?
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
When Google Latitude Stalking Isn't Such A Bad Thing  —  Yesterday, Silicon Valley's local CBS affiliate ran a story (video here) about a woman getting her purse snatched.  But what's interesting is the way she got it back: With an assist from Google Latitude.
Discussion: Gizmodo and Digital Inspiration
Eric Maurice / The Oracle Global Product Security Blog:
April 2009 Critical Patch Update Released  —  Hello, this is Eric Maurice again!  —  Today Oracle released the April 2009 Critical Patch Update (CPUApr2009).  —  This Critical Patch Update (CPU) includes fixes for 43 new security vulnerabilities across the following product families …
Kim Zetter / Threat Level:
PIN Crackers Nab Holy Grail of Bank Card Security  —  Hackers have crossed into new frontiers by devising sophisticated ways to steal large amounts of personal identification numbers, or PINs, protecting credit and debit cards, says an investigator.  The attacks involve both unencrypted PINs …
Discussion: Gizmodo
Matt Marshall / VentureBeat:
Tired of the events mess on Facebook?  Try Socializr  —  Socializr, a service that lets you organize your events online, has just released a cool new set of features that let you more easily see what events your friends are going to, and then track and manage the photos of these events.
Discussion: CNET News, Mashable! and TechCrunch
Jay Yarow / Silicon Alley Insider:
CHART OF THE DAY: Internet Ads Growing Faster Than Any Medium In History  —  The growth of Internet advertising through the medium's first 14 years obliterates the growth of advertising for cable and broadcast television over their first 14 years.  Here's a revenue comparison in current inflation-adjusted dollars.
David Kaplan / paidContent.org:
Lead-Gen Provider Pontiflex Raises $6.25 Million Second Round  —  Lead-gen tech company Pontiflex has raised a $6.25 million second round funding.  The round was led by RRE Ventures, with returning investors New Atlantic Ventures and Greenhill SAVP also participating.
Discussion: Beet.TV
Gamasutra:
Report: WiiWare's Minimum Sales Threshold Affects Developers  —  by Staff, Simon Carless  —  stumble it!  —  According to multiple Gamasutra development sources, Nintendo's WiiWare service has a minimum sales threshold in place — under which indie game developers do not get paid at all.
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Attack of The Frames: VideoEgg Introduces The Twig Ad Bar  —  Frames are definitely back.  More and more Web apps like the Diggbar are using frames to overlay a thin toolbar on top of other Websites, and the practice is causing some controversy because frames are generally frowned upon as messy Web design.
Discussion: Mashable!
Richard Pérez-Peña / New York Times:
Newspaper Ad Revenue Could Fall as Much as 30%  —  NEWSPAPER advertising, already in its worst slump since the Depression, suffered by far the sharpest drop in generations during the first quarter of 2009, down 30 percent for some papers, industry executives and analysts say.
Digital Music News:
Passalong Networks Shutting Down; Top Execs Departing  —  Passalong Networks is now winding down and looking to sell its various business units, according to details confirmed by Digital Music News late Monday.  The shutdown process already involves the departures of several top executives …
Discussion: p2pnet and Music Ally
Mark Walsh / MediaPost:
Armani Exchange Launches Mobile Campaign  —  Armani has kicked off its first mobile ad campaign in partnership with The Media Kitchen and mobile ad network AdMob to promote the spring 2009 collection for its Armani Exchange stores.  —  The iPhone-focused effort carrying the tagline of “Instant Message.
Discussion: AppScout
 
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 More Items: 
Variety.com / The Cut Scene:
Activision buys developer of “DJ Hero's” biggest competitors, gets itself a lawsuit
Greg Sterling / Search Engine Land:
JumpTap Launches Advanced Mobile PPC Marketplace
Sam Oliver / AppleInsider:
Easter delivers first signs of iPod growth since start of year
Discussion: Macsimum News and Ars Technica
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
An Embarrassed Warner Music Regrets MySpace Music Deal
Discussion: Music Ally, Thanks:bobcaswell
Frederic Lardinois / ReadWriteWeb:
The Future of Firefox: No Tabs, Built-In Ubiquity
Discussion: MarketingVOX and Download Squad, Thanks:mrinaldesai
 Earlier Items: 
Peter Rip / Business Week:
What Venture Capital Can Learn from Private Equity
Rory Maher / paidContent.org:
The StumbleUpon Effect: Which Internet Acquisition Will Blow Up Next?
Discussion: the Econsultancy blog and Digits
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Algorithms everywhere: Can IBM automate business decisions?
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Amazon: Now One-Third Of All U.S. E-Commerce
Discussion: Between the Lines, Thanks:atul
Douglas MacMillan / Business Week:
The Fragile Flight of the Twitterlings
Niall Kennedy / Niall Kennedy's Weblog:
Google search referer changes
Eric Eldon / VentureBeat:
Single sign-on service OpenID getting more usage