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11:40 AM ET, April 28, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Business Week:
New Gear from Apple and Verizon Wireless?  —  The companies are in talks to develop two iPhone-like handhelds that could be unveiled as soon as this year  —  Verizon Wireless is warming to the idea of an Apple (AAPL) partnership.  Verizon Wireless is in talks with Apple to distribute …
RELATED:
Matt Richtel / New York Times:
Verizon Said to Be in Talks for the iPhone
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:
Matt McGee / Search Engine Land:
Microsoft Goes Social (& Local) With Vine
Discussion: Beyond Search
Darren Waters / BBC:
Home Office ‘colluded with Phorm’  —  The Home Office has been accused of colluding with online ad firm Phorm on “informal guidance” to the public on whether the company's service is legal.  —  E-mails between the ministry and Phorm show the department asking if the firm would be “comforted” by its position.
RELATED:
Jemima Kiss / Guardian:
Phorm launches rebuttal website
Discussion: TechCrunch Europe
Rupert Neate / Telegraph:
Phorm chief labels critics ‘serial agitators’
Discussion: p2pnet, Stop Phoul Play and Web User
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Mint Turns Personal Finance Into A Game.  It's Not As Bad As 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.
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Facebook, Firefox, Twitter Lead App, Web Usage  —  Facebook and Mozilla Firefox are the applications used most across different platforms, according to data collected by Wakoopa, a software-oriented social network.  The Amsterdam-based startup offers a small download client that's installed on the desktops of its 75,000 users.
RELATED:
Robert / Wakoopa blog:   The State of Apps - Q1 2009
Jenna Wortham / Bits:
Apple iPhone Owners Don't Use It For Work  —  Do you treat your iPhone as a guilty pleasure?  You're not alone.  —  A new report from Compete surveying the behavior of smartphone users found that 73 percent of iPhone owners used their mobile devices primarily for personal reasons, such as entertainment.
Erica Ogg / Crave: The gadget blog:
Adieu to the old-fashioned desktop computer?  —  Some giants of the PC industry are just beginning to sell tiny and cheap Netbooks and all-in-one desktops, which have the monitor and processor in the same box.  —  Tae-Hyun “Tiger” Cho  —  (Credit: Averatec)
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Zoho preps mobile suite  —  Zoho on Tuesday rolled out a unified mobile front for its suite of Web applications.  —  Zoho had offered some basic iPhone and Windows Mobile support previously, but now is unifying applications like Mail, Calendar, Writer, Sheet, Show & Creator into one interface.
RELATED:
Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:
Zoho's productivity apps go mobile
Camille Ricketts / VentureBeat:
Coming soon: A new, smarter Google News?  —  Google may be working on a new, intelligent news distribution system, according to Sharon Waxman, a reporter for Hollywood newsblog TheWrap.  She approached chief executive Eric Schmidt at a soiree thrown by Arianna Huffington last week …
Plamere / Music Machinery:
moot wins, Time Inc. loses  —  This morning Time.com published the final result for their annual TIME 100 Poll.  Time reports that the new owner of the title 'Worlds's most influential person, is moot'.  What TIME doesn't say is that their poll was so totally manipulated that the results …
Ryan Paul / Ars Technica:
With no $10 laptop in sight, India buys 250,000 OLPCs  —  India has purchased 250,000 XO laptops.  This move will boost the One Laptop Per Child project and could help the deflating effort get back on its feet.  —  The government of India has signed an agreement with the One Laptop Per Child …
Randall C. Kennedy / Randall C. Kennedy's blog:
Windows 7's ‘XP mode’: Right idea, wrong technology  —  Why Microsoft's decision to implement a VM-based legacy compatibility solution is a dumb move  —  Well, it finally happened.  After years of patching and tweaking the Windows runtime to preserve backward compatibility …
Discussion: Hardware 2.0
PR Newswire:
EarthLink Announces First Quarter 2009 Results  —  Beats First Call Consensus EPS Estimates; Raises Full Year Guidance  —  EarthLink, Inc. (Nasdaq: ELNK - News) today announced financial results for its first quarter ended March 31, 2009.  Highlights for the first quarter include:
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Keep It Simple, Stupid  —  K-I-S-S: Keep It Simple, Stupid.  It's a mantra that always pops into my head when I'm looking at new startups.  A lot of them seem to want to do a million different things because other companies have been successful at one of those things in the past.  But that's a bad idea.
Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:
RapidShare hands over user info in Germany, users panic  —  File hosting service RapidShare has reportedly handed over user IP data to the record industry, leading to at least one user's home being raided in Germany.  This has led to speculation that content owners may start abusing Germany's copyright law …
Discussion: Pulse2 and Music Ally
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Socialthing Starts Spreading Across 75 AOL Sites  —  A couple weeks ago, I spotted the reincarnation of Socialthing on AOL's country-music Website TheBoot and speculated that it would potentially be rolled out across AOL's other MediaGlow properties as well.
Discussion: ReadWriteWeb, Mashable! and GigaOM
Liz Gannes / NewTeeVee:
As Hulu Gets More Mainstream, Long Viewing Sessions Wane  —  Hulu continues to claw its way up the U.S. video charts, and in March surpassed Yahoo to claim the No. 3 spot by number of video streams (Yahoo still claims No. 3 by number of visitors).  Hulu had 380 million streams …
Dan Nosowitz / Gizmodo:
HP ProBook S-Series: Businesspeople Can Have Sassy Red Laptops Too  —  HP today revealed its new business laptops, the ProBook s-series.  The 14.1", 15.6", and 17.3" ProBooks are all about pragmatic performance, affordability, and inoffensive design.  They're the Toyota Camry of laptops.
Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land:
Search Marketing Firm, Marin Software, Raises Additional $13 Million  —  paidContent.org reports Marin Software, a search marketing company, has raised an additional $13 million venture capital.  The primary source of the money came from DAG Ventures, adding up to Marin raising a total …
Matt Buchanan / Gizmodo:
Dell Studio 19 Multitouch All-in-One Arrives in US of A for $699, No Signs of Swine Flu  —  Six weeks after Dell's multitouch Studio 19 all-in-one hit Japan, it's finally coming to the US.  Despite my penchant for mocking Dell's designers, if you're looking for a non-iMac all-in-one, it's worth a shot.
Discussion: Electronista and Engadget
Emily Chung / CBC News:
Who will cash in on Canada's love for online video?  —  Canadian TV networks still testing online waters as Hulu looks north  —  Many TV shows and movies available online in the U.S. are blocked to users in Canada, but Canadians are still among the most voracious consumers of online video in the world.
Discussion: HipMojo.com
Jason Scott / ASCII:
Geocities: Lessons So Far  —  The Geocities-is-going-away thing broke wide a short while ago.  The “Jason is Saving Geocities” thing is breaking wider by the day, so I guess we need an update.  —  After my initial call-out, a nice selection of folks showed up to the Archive Team IRC channel …
Discussion: hughstimson.org
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Quub: A Micromessaging Service That Asks “What Are You Doing?”  And Means It  —  At its core, Twitter is supposed to be a micro-presence service that invites users to answer the question, “What are you doing?”.  That's all well and good, but most people tend to ignore this question entirely …
Discussion: MarketingVOX and Mashable!
Damaster / LiveSide:
Windows Live Profile (April) update is here!  —  As announced one week ago, the newly updated Windows Live Profile has been rolled out to all users now!  A summary of all the changes that were part of this update include:  — 20 new Web Activities, including Facebook, Digg, Last.fm …
Chris Ziegler / Engadget:
HTC's XV6175 for Verizon outed in render form  —  Yo, T-Mobile, you guys might want to speed that Snap / Dash 2 / whatever along, because you've got a few carriers nipping at your heels with their own WinMo-based portrait QWERTY models fresh out of HTC's foundry.
 
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 More Items: 
New York Times:
U.S. Steps Up Effort on Digital Defenses
Jenn K. Lee / Pocketables:
Unboxing the UMID mbook M1
Discussion: jkOnTheRun, Engadget and PMP Today
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
Swedish ISPs Obstruct New Anti-Piracy Legislation
David Barboza / New York Times:
In China, Knockoff Cellphones Are a Hit
Discussion: Gizmodo and TG Daily
Mark Prigg / This Is London:
Hello Wembley, I'm on my iPhone
Forbes:
Virtually Flu-Free Meetings
Discussion: Network World
Emma Hall / AdAge:
Online Ad Effectiveness Depends on Time of Day
 Earlier Items: 
Laurie Sullivan / MediaPost:
Ad Retargeting Can Outperform Paid Search
eMarketer:
US Online Sales Up
David Sarno / L.A. Times Tech Blog:
Illinois attorney general demands shutdown of Craigslist's erotic services section
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Matthew Keys / The Desk:
DirecTV terminates its Dish acquisition after a group of Dish creditors rejected a modified bond exchange offer

Ashley Carman / Bloomberg:
A growing number of podcasters, including Tim Ferriss, are moving away from interviews to monologues or co-hosts, as some well-known guests can be overexposed

Jonathan Stempel / Reuters:
A New York judge finds Sirius XM liable for a difficult subscription cancellation process; Sirius says it will appeal but abide by a new “click-to-cancel” rule

 
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