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2:55 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 …
Google Public Policy Blog:
Google Book Search settlement will expand access  —  Posted by Adam Smith, Director of Product Management, Book Search  —  Over the last few weeks we've heard a number of questions about the Google Book Search settlement and what it means for readers.  Over the coming days …
Discussion: InformationWeek and ZDNet Government, Thanks:atul
RELATED:
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.
Spencer Ante / Creative Capital:   Letter: Read the Terms of the Google Book Settlement Agreement
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
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
RELATED:
Arik Hesseldahl / Business Week:
An Early Peek Under The Palm Pre's Hood
The Official Google Blog:
Experimental Flu Trends for Mexico  —  In November 2008, we launched Google Flu Trends after finding a close relationship between how many people search for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu symptoms.  Google Flu Trends may be able to detect influenza outbreaks earlier …
RELATED:
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 …
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 …
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
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
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.
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.
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 …
Joshua Benton / Nieman Journalism Lab:
Kindle users skew older; does that impact news biz's revenue hopes?  —  Publishers Lunch is a daily pay newsletter for the book publishing industry.  (Speaking of business models, here's one: Find a niche; create great content that serves that niche; hide it behind a pay wall and charge.
Thanks:atul
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 Electronista
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
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, Mashable! and CenterNetworks
Todd Bishop / TechFlash:
Microsoft's silence on Windows release date reflects new era  —  Microsoft's Windows 7 Release Candidate is due out later this week.  It's the last big milestone before the next version of the flagship product hits the market.  However, the company hasn't yet announced a final release date.
Discussion: CNET News
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Why Obama's Flickr Photos Aren't in the Public Domain  —  The White House is making unprecedented use of consumer web technologies but those technologies aren't always well suited to fit the government's needs.  They aren't always well suited to fit anyone's needs - but maybe if Obama leans on them a little bit things will change.
Discussion: Creative Commons
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
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.
Connie Loizos / PE Hub Blog:
Workday Raises $75 Million Round Led by NEA: Total Funding Now Exceeds Whopping $150 Million  —  Last summer, legendary entrepreneur Dave Duffield predicted that his newest startup, Workday, could become the second coming of PeopleSoft — a company Duffield founded and grudgingly sold to Oracle in January 2005 for $10.3 billion.
Discussion: Between the Lines, Thanks:mrinaldesai
 
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 More Items: 
Money:
The curious case of tech stocks
Geoffrey A. Fowler / Digits:
Free Rides for Students on Amazon's Cloud
Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:
Eucalyptus Systems raises $5.5M for a hybrid approach to cloud computing
Discussion: Open Source, GigaOM and OStatic blogs
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: 
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes / Hardware 2.0:
$99 - The new “high end” for GPUs
Tim Stevens / Engadget:
Windows 7's virtual XP has intangible system requirements
Discussion: Hardware 2.0
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
John Cook / TechFlash:
Browsing the neighborhood on Zillow's new iPhone app
Discussion: AppScout and Local Mobile Search
Nielsen Wire:
Twitter Quitters Post Roadblock to Long-Term Growth
 

 
From Mediagazer:

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

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

 
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