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9:40 PM ET, April 28, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Ola Rosling / The Official Google Blog:
Adding search power to public data  —  Earthquakes are not the only thing that can shake Silicon Valley.  After the dot-com bubble burst back in 2000 the unemployment rate of Santa Clara county went up to 9.1%.  During the last couple of months, it has gone up again:
RELATED:
Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land:
Google Launches Public Data Search & Charts During Wolfram Alpha Demo  —  During the Wolfram Alpha demonstration today, the Google Blog announced the launch of their own structured data search feature that allows you to find and compare public data.  —  Searches such as [unemployment rate new york] …
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Wolfram/Alpha's demo: Search results meet analytics  —  Updated: Stephen Wolfram, creator of the Wolfram/Alpha search engine, on Tuesday demonstrated his much ballyhooed “computational knowledge engine” at a talk at Harvard University.  Wolfram likened his effort to reproducing …
RELATED:
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
After Being Upstaged By Google, Wolfram Alpha Fires Back With A Leaked Screenshot  —  Today was supposed to be a big coming out party for stealthy search engine Wolfram Alpha.  Computer scientist Stephen Wolfram gave the first public demonstration of his knowledge mining search engine at Harvard.
Zach Epstein / Boy Genius Report:
Microsoft and Verizon reportedly cooking up an iPhone competitor  —  Just what the world needs... Another iPhone killer.  If the Wall Street Journal's report is to be believed, it looks like that USA Today story may have omitted a relatively important detail regarding Verizon's “iPhone” offering — it might not be an iPhone at all.
RELATED:
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Microsoft Planning iPhone Rival
Nielsen Wire:
Twitter Quitters Post Roadblock to Long-Term Growth  —  David Martin, Vice President, Primary Research, Nielsen Online  —  Oprah embarrassed herself on it with a stuck caps lock.  That guy from Punk'd competed with “the most trusted name in news” for audience.  A befuddled Jon Stewart shook his fist at it in anger.
RELATED:
Lee Mathews / Download Squad:
Office 2007 SP2 ships, adds Open Document and PDF support
Brier Dudley / Seattle Times:
Microsoft debuts Vine in Seattle: Twitter+Facebook on steroids  —  It's been awhile since Microsoft introduced a game-changing social Web application, but Vine — a service that's debuting today with a beta test in Seattle — could be a contender.  —  Vine is a hyperlocal, personalized message and alert system.
RELATED:
Security Research & Defense:
AutoRun changes in Windows 7  —  As some of our readers are well aware, Conficker and other malware is taking advantage of the AutoRun functionality as a spreading mechanism.  Furthermore, over the last couple of months, there has been a significant increase of this threat, as more malware is abusing this functionality.
Miguel Helft / New York Times:
Justice Dept. Opens Antitrust Inquiry Into Google Books Deal  —  SAN FRANCISCO — The Justice Department has begun an inquiry into the antitrust implications of Google's settlement with authors and publishers over its Google Book Search service, two people briefed on the matter said Tuesday.
RELATED:
Andrew Albanese / Publishers Weekly:
Google Deadline Delayed Four Months as Steinbeck Motion Granted
Discussion: Search Engine Land and SiliconBeat
Jason Chen / Gizmodo:
Palm's Casting a Pre Viral Video Right Now, Hints At Pre Release Date  —  If you're a male in Seattle from the age of 24 to 34, you may have the chance to star in a Palm Pre viral ad.  Update  —  Funny, cool and nerdy.  Is that you?  If so, contact your agent and ask him to get you in.
Discussion: PreCentral.net and Palm WebOS
RELATED:
Matt Marshall / VentureBeat:
OnlineBootyCall is great for hooking up, but can it be more?  —  Website OnlineBootycall.com offers no-strings-attached introductions for sexual encounters, tasteless as that might be for some of you.  It's not filled with porn.  It just gets to the point: It asks you to fill out a form …
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
The Pirate Bay verdict goes English, and we dish the dirt  —  The Pirate Bay ruling has been translated into English, and it's full of little surprises.  Ars dives in to answer the big questions: who possessed those Klomifen tablets, how much did the state pay to defend The Pirate Bay admins …
RELATED:
Thomas Claburn / InformationWeek:
Google: We're Not Like Pirate Bay
Discussion: Techdirt
Ashlee Vance / New York Times:
Revenue and Profits Plunge at Sun Microsystems  —  In what may be its swan song as an independent company, Sun Microsystems reported financial results on Tuesday that pointed to the impact the global recession has had on the already struggling server computer maker.
Discussion: TechSpot
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Rajen Sheth / Google Enterprise Blog:
What we talk about when we talk about cloud computing  —  Recently, McKinsey & Company published a study on cloud computing as part of a symposium for The Uptime Institute, an organization dedicated to supporting the enterprise data center industry.  We share McKinsey's interest in helping …
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Android Backward Compatibility Talk Begins.  This Is Starting To Sound Complicated.  —  Love the iPhone or hate the iPhone, at least you know what you're getting out of the box is a device that will work with all the apps in the App Store.  That's been the case so far with Google's Android platform …
The Boy Genius / Boy Genius Report:
BlackBerry Tour hitting Verizon Wireless in July?  —  BlackBerry Tour?  Oh yeah.  Now that that's been confirmed, we're on to bigger and better things — release dates!  The latest information we've heard is that the BlackBerry Tour is shaping up to be released on Verizon in the month of July.
comScore:
Hulu Continues Ascent in U.S. Online Video Market, Breaking Into Top 3 Properties by Videos Viewed for First Time in March  —  Average U.S. Viewer Watched 5.5 Hours of Online Video During the Month,  —  According to comScore Video Metrix  —  comScore (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring …
Greg Sandoval / CNET News:
MPAA: RealNetworks could strip DVD copy limits  —  Updated at 12:56 p.m. PDT to clarify MPAA's arguments.  —  The film industry in court Tuesday tried to show a federal judge that the software known as RealDVD entrusts its creator, Real Networks, with the job of protecting digital film copies from piracy.
Taylor Buley / Forbes:
Facebook's Trademark Troubles  —  The social network loses the case to trademark one of its ad products.  —  BURLINGAME, Calif. — If Facebook is trying to make a name for its nascent advertising platform, why didn't it fight to keep its Social Ads trademark?
Raju Vegesna / Zoho Blogs:
Introducing Zoho Mobile  —  Over the past year or two we have had some initiatives on mobile capabilities for selected Zoho applications.  With Zoho Mobile, we are aggregating all our previous initiatives with consistent user interface and extending it to multiple applications and mobile platforms.
Matt Holliday / Inside Facebook:
Shaq Jumps Into the Facebook Game After Conquering Twitter  —  Already among the most popular Twitter users with more than 820,000 followers, NBA superstar Shaquille O'Neal has started sharing content on his Facebook public profile and added more than 150,000 fans in just the last two weeks.
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
Associated Content Raises $6 Million For Publishing Platform  —  Online publishing platform Associated Content has closed a $6 million, Series C financing round funded by SoftBank Capital, Canaan Partners and AOL CEO Tim Armstrong.  Associated Content secured $10 million in Series B Financing from SoftBank …
Discussion: Beet.TV
Rochelle Garner / Bloomberg:
Adobe Freezing Pay to Cope With Recession, Finance Chief Mark Garrett Says  —  Adobe Inc., the world's biggest maker of graphic-design software, will freeze pay this year as the recession crimps sales, said Chief Financial Officer Mark Garrett.  —  “Clearly, we aren't going to have salary increases,” he said in an interview.
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Mint Turns Personal Finance Into A Game.  It's Better Than It Sounds  —  Mint, the popular personal finance site that won 2007's TechCrunch40, is launching a new feature called “Financial Fitness” which, strange as it may sound, adds an element of gaming to the service.
 
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 More Items: 
Kevin Drawbaugh / Reuters:
Online gambling bill coming: Frank
Marion Maneker / The Big Money:
Still Haven't Found What They're Looking For
Softpedia News:
Windows 7 Pirates Will Be Kept Safe and Cozy by Microsoft
Discussion: The Windows Blog
Brian Womack / Bloomberg:
Facebook Has Enough Money to Survive Web Advertising Slump, Sandberg Says
Mike Musgrove / Washington Post:
Mixx Looks to Go Beyond the News
Discussion: TechCrunch
Amol Sharma / Digits:
Report: iPhone Users Spend 9.6 Minutes per App
Discussion: Guardian, Thanks:atul
 Earlier Items: 
New York Times:
U.S. Steps Up Effort on Digital Defenses
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Socialthing Starts Spreading Across 75 AOL Sites
Discussion: ReadWriteWeb and Mashable!
Robert / Wakoopa blog:
The State of Apps - Q1 2009
Discussion: TechCrunch, VentureBeat and GigaOM
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Caitlin Huston / The Hollywood Reporter:
Internal memo: Hearst Magazines president announces layoffs as part of a decision to “reallocate resources” to “continue our focus on digital innovation”

Mark Sweney / The Guardian:
National World, one of the UK's biggest newspaper groups, gets a £56.2M buyout offer from shareholder Media Concierge, a 40% premium to its Nov. 21 stock price

Max Goldbart / Deadline:
The English Premier League ends its content partnership with IMG and plans to bring content production and distribution in-house in 2026

 
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