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2:30 PM ET, April 29, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
IAC Buys UrbanSpoon Based On Good Recommendations  —  UrbanSpoon, a restaurant recommendation service, started out with a simple plan.  It was three former Jobster employees, Ethan Lowry, Adam Doppelt and Patrick O'Donnell who set out to see if they could build a company in today's world without needing …
Hugo Miller / Bloomberg:
Palm May Cap Pre Stockpile to Boost Cachet With Brand-Conscious Consumers  —  Palm Inc. may stockpile fewer than 400,000 Pre models when the touch-screen device goes on sale this year, making the phone scarce to enhance its allure to consumers, analysts said.
Discussion: Unwired View and PreCentral.net
RELATED:
Arik Hesseldahl / Business Week:
An Early Peek Under The Palm Pre's Hood  —  Preliminary analysis by iSuppli suggests Palm will spend about $138 to build the new smartphone, almost half what it's expected to charge Sprint  —  To say Palm has a lot riding on the Pre smartphone is an understatement.
Miguel Helft / Bits:
Ex-DoubleClick CEO Rosenblatt To Leave Google  —  David Rosenblatt, Google's president of global display advertising, will leave the company on May 15, the latest in a string of top sales execs who have left Google or moved on to new roles in recent weeks.  —  The departure of Mr. Rosenblatt …
Mike Musgrove / Washington Post:
Time Warner to Spin Off AOL Division  —  Time Warner Inc. announced this morning in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it intends to spin off its ailing AOL division.  —  “Although the Company's Board of Directors has not made any decision,” the company wrote …
RELATED:
Staci D. Kramer / paidContent.org:
10-Q Watch: Time Warner Tells Google Will Buy Back Its 5 Percent AOL Stake
Discussion: MediaMemo and paidContent
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:
Spencer Ante / Creative Capital:   Letter: Read the Terms of the Google Book Settlement Agreement
Fred / A VC:
The Venture Capital Math Problem  —  Yesterday Albert and I visited one of the investors in our fund.  The good news is they are happy with the job we are doing.  The bad news is they are frustrated with the venture capital asset class.  —  We got to talking about the venture capital asset class …
Thanks:atul
Will Oremus / Mercury News:
Apple CEO stays home; attorney makes case for demolishing Woodside home  —  Steve Jobs stayed home Tuesday night, leaving his attorney to make the case to the Woodside Town Council that he should be allowed to demolish his historic 14-bedroom house and build a new one.
Zach Epstein / Boy Genius Report:
Calgary to be Motorola's first Android phone, more news on Moto  —  It looks like our ninja took it personally yesterday when we mentioned how eager we were for more info on Motorola's Verizon-bound handsets.  That said, consider us shut up.  He swooped in with a few big updates …
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:
Microsoft finishes Vista SP2  —  Yesterday's rumors were true: Microsoft has released to manufacturing Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 R2.  —  SP2 hit the torrents on April 28, hours before Microsoft officially announced it was done (via a posting to the Windows Vista Team Blog).
RELATED:
Brandon LeBlanc / The Windows Blog:
Windows Vista SP2 RTM + Windows Vista SP1 Blocker Tool Removed
Discussion: TechSpot and Softpedia News
Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:
AOL Ad Revenues Collapse  —  AOL ad revenue dropped a startling 20% in Q1.  For the first time, cost cuts did not keep up with revenue declines, so EBITDA also plunged, to $255 million.  —  The latter—the operating profit—is still impressive considering the wrenching changes AOL …
Discussion: Contentinople
RELATED:
Tim O'Reilly / O'Reilly Radar:
Reinventing the Book in the Age of the Web  —  There's a lot of excitement about ebooks these days, and rightly so.  While Amazon doesn't release sales figures for the Kindle, there's no question that it represents a turning point in the public perception of ebook devices.
Discussion: Rough Type
Seth Rosenblatt / The Download Blog:
Panda introduces cloud-based free antivirus  —  With threats like Conficker fresh in the public's mind, security remains a top concern for Windows users.  Panda Security, publishers of Panda Internet Security and Panda Antivirus, is set to take antivirus where it hasn't been yet: into the clouds.
Tony Peric / prethinking.com:
Palm Pre Early SDK: New WebOS Screenshots  —  Click on it for the whole Gallery!  —  This just in from an anonymous source: Several beautiful shots showing Palm's WebOS in action.  In one shot, you can see the following items under Preferences>software: Bluetooth, calculator, calendar …
David Ellis / 1UP.com:
New PSP Named And Coming This Fall  —  Sources confirm the next PSP will gain an internal flash drive, ditch UMD, and nix the rumored second analog nub.  —  (Not an Actual PSP Go!  Photo)  —  Rumors of a major PSP hardware redesign have repeatedly bubbled to the surface over the last several months …
Harrison Hoffman / CNET News:
Facebook maps the swine flu hysteria  —  There have been a lot of resources that have surfaced to help track the newly spreading swine flu.  On Monday, we covered some of these online resources to help you stay on top of it.  Tuesday night, Facebook released some interesting data …
Liz Gannes / NewTeeVee:
Reddit Launches Video Discovery Service  —  Popular user-curated news and ephemera site Reddit today launched Reddit.TV for browsing videos shared on its site.  —  The Reddit.TV interface is similar to StumbleVideo or Twitmatic, where you're presented with one zeitgeisty video at a time.
Discussion: CNET News, CenterNetworks and Mashable!
Jolie O'Dell / ReadWriteWeb:
Miro Wins “Most Adorable Funding Model” With Adopt-a-Line-of-Code Program  —  You can keep your fusty old venture capital.  For our money, you can't beat the Tamagochi-eqsue cuteness of Miro's Code Adoption Program.  —  Miro is the free, open source, cross-platform online video player …
Discussion: Ars Technica
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.
Claudine Beaumont / Telegraph:
Nokia's Comes with Music comes with fighting talk  —  Mobile phone giant admits it “learned a lot” from the UK launch of Comes with Music but says the eat-as-much-as-you-want song download service is here to stay.  —  The Nokia 5310 XpressMusic  —  Rob Taylor, vice president of Nokia Music …
Discussion: last100 and Engadget Mobile
Tim Stevens / Engadget:
Windows 7's virtual XP has intangible system requirements  —  Microsoft tickled our meta-OS fancies last week by talking up the virtualized version of Windows XP included with Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate Edition.  However, the company has now revealed that ponying up for one of the top tiers …
Discussion: Hardware 2.0
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
MSN Picks WetPaint To Add A Fresh Coat To Its Entertainment Pages  —  MSN had a bit of a problem.  It had the popular entertainment area of its service, where movies, musical acts, and other things in pop culture have pages filled with content for fans.  But the problem was that paying people …
Discussion: TechFlash and Beet.TV
Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:
Eucalyptus Systems raises $5.5M for a hybrid approach to cloud computing  —  Eucalyptus Systems, which supports an open source platform for companies that want the benefits of cloud computing on their own infrastructure, has raised $5.5 million in a first round of funding led by Benchmark Capital.
Discussion: Open Source, OStatic blogs and GigaOM
Daulerio / Deadspin:
ESPN.com's Lead Tech Guru Explains How They Were Attacked By Dancing Unicorns And Glittery Ponies  —  Keith Lam is the programming guy for ESPN.com and spent most of his final hour yesterday fighting off unicorns from ESPN.com's site.  How did this awesomeness happen?  He explains.  Kind of.
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
AOL Homepage Looks Different, Real Different.  The “A” Is For Agnostic.  —  While AOL was officially launching its Socialthing for Websites initiative this morning, it was also quietly making some changes to the design of its homepage.  There are some new themes, Twitter integration …
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes / Hardware 2.0:
$99 - The new “high end” for GPUs  —  AMD's launch off the Radeon HD 4770 redefines the graphics card market, and has the potential to make $99 the new “high end” for GPUs.  —  The last couple of years have been great for PC gaming enthusiasts looking for more power and more frames per second.
 
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 More Items: 
Connie Loizos / PE Hub Blog:
Workday Raises $75 Million Round Led by NEA: Total Funding …
Discussion: Between the Lines, Thanks:mrinaldesai
Money:
The curious case of tech stocks
Geoffrey A. Fowler / Digits:
Free Rides for Students on Amazon's Cloud
Caroline McCarthy / CNET News:
Sony's Crackle expands movie lineup
Discussion: paidContent.org
Paul Redfern / PhysOrg.com:
Analysis of Flickr photos could lead to online travel books
Discussion: Gizmodo
 Earlier Items: 
Todd Bishop / TechFlash:
Microsoft's silence on Windows release date reflects new era
Brian Caulfield / Forbes:
Apple's New Era  —  The Jobs era has been defined by software.
Connie Loizos / PE Hub Blog:
Tragic Story Shows Limits of Startups Like ReputationDefender
New York Magazine:
The Twitter Approval Matrix
Discussion: Gawker, Thanks:atul
John Cook / TechFlash:
Browsing the neighborhood on Zillow's new iPhone app
Discussion: Local Mobile Search
 

 
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”

Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announced she will leave the agency on January 20; she was the first woman to be confirmed to lead the agency

Lachlan Cartwright / The Ankler:
Sources: MSNBC renewed Rachel Maddow's contract early this fall, but with a pay cut; MSNBC bosses' plan to shake up daytime and weekend programming

 
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