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2:50 PM ET, April 20, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Ashlee Vance / New York Times:
Oracle Agrees to Acquire Sun Microsystems  —  The Oracle Corporation, the technology information company, announced Monday that it would acquire a rival, Sun Microsystems, for $9.50 a share, which would value the transition at $7.4 billion.  —  The deal with Oracle came about two weeks after I.B.M. ended its talks with Sun.
RELATED:
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Oracle to Buy Sun (and MySQL) for $7.4B  —  Updated: Less than a month after it walked away from a $7 billion deal with IBM, Sun Microsystems says that it has entered into a definitive merger agreement with database and enterprise software giant Oracle.  Oracle will acquire Sun common stock for $9.50 per share in cash.
Reuters:
Microsoft CEO ‘very surprised’ by Oracle-Sun deal  —  Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said on Monday he was ‘very surprised’ by Oracle Corp's (ORCL.O) plans to buy Sun Microsystems Inc (JAVA.O).  “I just learnt it ... I need to think about it.  I am very surprised,” Ballmer told reporters in Moscow.
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Oracle buys Sun; Now owns Java; Becomes a hardware player  —  Updated: Oracle said Monday that it will buy Sun Microsystems for $9.50 a share in cash, or about $5.6 billion excluding debt, in a deal that plunges Larry Ellison & Co. into the hardware market.  The company added that the acquisition …
eWeek:
Key to Oracle-Sun Deal: Storage, DB Hardware
Sun Microsystems:   Oracle to Buy Sun
Sylvie Barak / Inquirer:
Apple netbooks manufactured by Foxconn rumoured  —  Apple sliced down to netbook size?  —  WE'VE PICKED UP ON some Chinese whispering which would have us believe Apple could be about to release its very own netbook, with Foxconn Electronics chosen as the fruity toymaker's main manufacturing partner.
RELATED:
DigiTimes:
Foxconn to land Apple netbook order, says paper  —  Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry) is in the running to land orders for a netbook from Apple, according to a Chinese-language Commercial Times report citing sources from the component supply chain.
Jason Hiner / Between the Lines:
Have we arrived in the post-Windows era?  —  Microsoft knew this day was coming.  This was the reason it desperately wanted — no, needed — to take down Netscape in 1996.  Netscape wasn't just trying to build a program for reading text and photos across a network of connected computers.
RELATED:
John Leyden / The Register:
Music industry sites DDoSed after Pirate Bay verdict  —  Hacktivism cuts both ways  —  Free whitepaper - Guidelines for specification of data center power density  —  Hacktivists have launched denial of service attacks against music industry association ifpi.org and lawyers involved …
RELATED:
Kelly Fiveash / The Register:
The Pirate Bay loads cannon with official appeal
Discussion: ZDNet Government, AppScout and BBC
BBC:
Adobe Flash secures set-top deal  —  Adobe has secured a deal to put its Flash software into many of the chips that go inside TVs and set-top boxes.  —  It will enable developers and content providers to create applications to deliver web-based content such as news, weather and share prices to TV screens.
Discussion: the Econsultancy blog and AppScout
RELATED:
Kevin Fitchard / TELEPHONY Magazine:
AT&T doubling 3G capacity  —  Tweaks to the HSPA network will bring 3G capacity up to 7.2 Mb/s even before AT&T implements next-gen wireless technologies  —  AT&T is in the process of doubling the capacity of its 3G networks, using software enhancements to squeeze one last boost in bandwidth …
Tim Elliott / The Age:
How the man in a van outsmarted Microsoft  —  Ric Richardson ... money not that important.  —  Picture: Steve Holland  —  He has been called a “born creative thinker” and “a man of extraordinarily high principle”.  Others consider his inventions frivolous and derivative.
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Apple 2.0:
Apple jumps 32 spots into Fortune 100  —  Reflecting a strong 2008 in which its sales — if not its stock price — jumped sharply, Apple (AAPL) this week made its first appearance in the top 100 of the Fortune 500 since Steve Jobs' return.  —  Apple has been a Fortune 500 company since 1983 …
Discussion: 9 to 5 Mac, The Apple Core and Macworld, Thanks:mattpol
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
How Many New Twitter Users Post-Oprah?  A Lot.  Maybe Over A Million.  —  Late last night, former Engadget editor-in-chief Ryan Block tweeted out that he had done some research to attempt to quantify the “Oprah Effect” — that is, the number of users who signed up for Twitter after Oprah featured the service on her show on Friday.
Michael S. Malone / Wall Street Journal:
The Twitter Revolution  —  The brains behind the Web's hottest networking tool.  —  San Francisco  —  “Twitter is the side project that took,” says company co-founder Biz Stone, 35.  “Now it's our chance to do something transformative.”  —  When I arrive at Twitter's headquarters on a recent morning …
Thanks:atul
Peter Svensson / Associated Press:
Washington, D.C. will be 1st to get free mobile TV  —  Washington will be the first U.S. city to get free digital TV broadcasts for mobile devices like cell phones, laptop computers and in-car entertainment systems, broadcasters were set to announce Monday.  —  Broadcasts using new …
Zachary Rodgers / ClickZ:
Digg Ends Exclusive Ad Deal with Microsoft  —  Digg is ending its two-year-old exclusive ad selling relationship with Microsoft, one year earlier than the deal was set to expire.  —  The two will continue working together on remnant and so-called “network reserve” inventory.
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Former Yahoo Music Exec Dave Goldberg to Head SurveyMonkey  —  Former Yahoo music head Dave Goldberg-who has been an entrepreneur-in-residence at Benchmark Capital since he left the Internet company more than two years ago-has finally landed at another company, sources said, taking over as CEO of SurveyMonkey.
David Kaplan / paidContent.org:
Spot Runner: ‘Sophisticated Investor’ WPP Was Given Opportunities To Sell Shares  —  Web-based TV ad agency Spot Runner has tried to reassure staffers over the weekend with a memo that could offer a clue as to how it plans to fight WPP Group's $13 million lawsuit accusing the company of securities fraud and breach of contract.
Verizon:
Verizon Expands Advanced, Remote DVR Management Service to More FiOS TV Customers  —  Media Manager Subscribers Can Now Use Any Wireless Handset With a Data Plan to Remotely Control DVR; All FiOS TV Customers Can Now Manage their Verizon DVRs Remotely Online
Discussion: jkOnTheRun, Gearlog and Phone Scoop
Kristen Nicole / All Facebook:
Cooliris Adds Facebook Support for Cooler Photo Viewing  —  Cooliris is a browser extension that lets you browse photos, videos games and news stories from various websites.  A new Facebook application for Cooliris is taking the browser extension to the next level with Facebook-specific media …
Discussion: Inside Facebook
 
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 More Items: 
Abbey Klaassen / AdAge:
Dennis Woodside Wants to Be a Friend to Agencies, Advertisers
Maggie Shiels / BBC:
Is the mobile web coming of age?
Marcelo Soares / Wired News:
The Great Brazilian Sat-Hack Crackdown
Discussion: Boing Boing
Tim Mullaney / Bloomberg:
Google IPO Manager Buyer Says Last Week's Sales Don't Augur Return to 1999
Park Si-soo / The Korea Times:
Online Blogger ‘Minerva’ Found Not Guilty
Discussion: Reuters and Guardian
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Palm: Merrill Ups Rating To Buy; Sets $14 Target
Discussion: PreCentral.net
 Earlier Items: 
John Leyden / The Register:
Twitter riddled with worms and scams (again)
Laurie Sullivan / MediaPost:
Google's DoubleClick Unveils Network Builder
Discussion: MarketingVOX
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Kadoink Seized By Creditors
Discussion: mocoNews and FierceMobileContent
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
No Tech Tapeworms Here!  We Update Voices Policies on All Things Digital.
Thanks:atul
Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:
The newspaper industry just gave away another free meal, er Twitter …
Thanks:atul
Douglas Quenqua / New York Times:
Recklessly Seeking Sex on Craigslist