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12:55 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.
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 …
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
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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.
Discussion: Open Source
RELATED:
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.
Kelly Fiveash / The Register:
The Pirate Bay loads cannon with official appeal  —  Reel around the fountain  —  Free whitepaper - Avoiding costs from oversizing data center and network room infrastructure  —  The Pirate Bay four, who were convicted of being accessories to breaching copyright laws on Friday …
Discussion: ZDNet Government, AppScout and BBC
RELATED:
John Leyden / The Register:
Music industry sites DDoSed after Pirate Bay verdict
Discussion: TorrentFreak and ZDNet Government
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 Survey Monkey  —  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.
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
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 …
Steven Johnson / Wall Street Journal:
How the E-Book Will Change the Way We Read and Write  —  Author Steven Johnson outlines a future with more books, more distractions — and the end of reading alone  —  Every genuinely revolutionary technology implants some kind of “aha” moment in your memory — the moment where you flip …
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Apple 2.0:
Apple jumps 32 spots into Fortune 100  —  Reflecting a strong 2008 in which its earnings — 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 …
Thanks:mattpol
Laurie Sullivan / MediaPost:
Google's DoubleClick Unveils Network Builder  —  Google unveils today its DoubleClick Network Builder, which allows publishers to build out and operate a partners' ad network.  —  The product, which sits on the DART for Publishers platform, launched in private beta with 10 companies in late October.
Discussion: MarketingVOX
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.
 
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 More Items: 
David Kaplan / paidContent.org:
Spot Runner: ‘Sophisticated Investor’ WPP Was Given Opportunities To Sell Shares
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Palm: Merrill Ups Rating To Buy; Sets $14 Target
Discussion: PreCentral.net
Eric Bangeman / Ars Technica:
Internet Archive wants book copyright indemnity like Google
John Leyden / The Register:
Twitter riddled with worms and scams (again)
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Kadoink Seized By Creditors
Discussion: FierceMobileContent and mocoNews
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
No Tech Tapeworms Here!  We Update Voices Policies on All Things Digital.
Thanks:atul
Marc Flores / Boy Genius Report:
Samsung Instinct S30 now available from Sprint
Discussion: MobileCrunch and Obsessable
 Earlier Items: 
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
Discussion: Online Dating Insider
Bobbie Mixon / EurekAlert!:
‘Instant on’ computing  —  Materials researchers say rebooting soon …
Discussion: digg.com
David Lieberman / USA Today:
TiVo to sell instant data on what people watch, fast-forward
Discussion: TechCrunch
Lisa Baertlein / Reuters:
Eyeing diners, restaurants take to Twitter
Discussion: Reuters
Saul Hansell / New York Times:
As Costs Fall, Companies Push to Raise Internet Price
Discussion: DSLreports and Technology Live