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12:55 PM ET, May 18, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Sam Oliver / AppleInsider:
Repeat: AT&T may introduce $20 limited iPhone data plan  —  With next-generation iPhone hardware and software around the corner, a new report is adding to claims that AT&T is mulling changes to its iPhone monthly service and data plans that could reduce the cost of owning an iPhone and help Apple grow its share of the smartphone market.
Discussion: tinyComb
RELATED:
Olga Kharif / Yahoo! Finance:
Cheaper iPhone Plans from AT&T?  — Apple Inc. - , Forrester Research Inc. - , Palm, Inc.  —  Victor Lin wants an iPhone, but he's put off by the price.  The smartphone costs at least $199 up front, and if he wants unlimited Web and e-mail access in addition to calling, he'll need to pay an additional $70 a month.
Thomas Ricker / Engadget:
Napster relaunching, again: $5 per month streaming plus five free downloads  —  Like subscription music services?  You know, like Microsoft's Zune Pass where you pay $14.99 monthly and keep up to 10 tracks each month forever.  Sure, renting music at $180 per year can be a drag for those stuck …
RELATED:
Jessica Hall / Reuters:
Wal-Mart targets electronics customers: report
Discussion: CrunchGear, PreCentral.net and Switched
Brad Stone / New York Times:
Site Lets Writers Sell Digital Copies  —  SAN FRANCISCO — Turning itself into a kind of electronic vanity publisher, Scribd, an Internet start-up here, will introduce on Monday a way for anyone to upload a document to the Web and charge for it.  —  The Scribd Web site is the most popular …
RELATED:
Mark Guim / The Nokia Blog:
Nokia N97 For North America Arriving June 2nd  —  I told you a couple days ago the Nokia N97 NAM was coming soon, but I wasn't sure of the exact date.  Well, Nokia just notified one of their major North American distributors of the estimated shipping date: June 2nd, 2009!  How accurate are we?
Abbey Klaassen / AdAge:
Twitter Proves Its Worth as a Killer App for Local Businesses  —  New Orleans Pizza Joint, Chicago Yogurt Chain See Results From Promos on Microblogging Service  —  NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — All those brands trying to figure the ROI of Twitter?  They might do well to follow the lead of the local pizza joint.
RELATED:
Caroline McCarthy / CNET News:   When Twitter met food trucks
Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:
Search Engine Wolfram Alpha Launches With Big Dreams And No Chance  —  Another next-generation search engine launches.  It looks more differentiated than the much-ado-about-nothing known as Cuil, but that's not saying much.  —  Our prediction: Wolfram Alpha (terrible name) …
Discussion: Tech Central, Digits and Softpedia News
RELATED:
Kit Eaton / Fast Company:
Wolfram Alpha Isn't Google, so Stop Comparing Them
Eric Lai / Computerworld:
Buy an app via Windows Marketplace, share with four friends or family members  —  Microsoft readies challenge to rivals in mobile apps market  —  Computerworld - In a potentially market-changing move, Microsoft Corp. plans to let customers of its upcoming Windows Marketplace …
Dan Ackerman / Crave: The gadget blog:
Acer's next-gen Aspire One Netbooks available now  —  We've already seen them previewed with the rest of Acer's upcoming lineup back in April, but the official release of the next generation of Aspire One Netbooks is finally here.  Most notable is the inclusion of a new, bigger 11.6-inch model …
Amazon Web Services Blog:
New Features for Amazon EC2: Elastic Load Balancing, Auto Scaling, and Amazon CloudWatch  —  We are working to make it even easier for you to build sophisticated, scalable, and robust web applications using AWS.  As soon as you launch some EC2 instances, you want visibility into resource utilization and overall performance.
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Stand Firm Craig (and Jim)  —  South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster is giving even the normally sleazy Attorney General title a bad name.  This is an office that has little to do with protecting the public and everything to do with making high profile attacks on targets that will generate a lot of positive press.
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Eric Schmidt's Commencement Address At Carnegie Mellon (Video)  —  Here's Google CEO Eric Schmidt's commencement address at Carnegie Mellon's 112th commencement ceremony, held yesterday.  (Via @CarnegieMellon)  —  Schmidt's talk to the audience, which he refers to as the ‘Facebook and Google generation’ …
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Walt Mossberg?  We've Got an App for That!  —  That would be Walt Mossberg and his well-known Personal Technology and Mossberg Mailbox columns-as well as BoomTown, John Paczkowski's Digital Daily, Peter Kafka's MediaMemo, Katherine Boehret's Mossberg Solution and video and photographs from our famous D: All Things Digital conferences.
Michael Masnick / Techdirt:
San Jose Mercury News: No One Reads Us Any More, So Let's Start Charging  —  When I first moved to Silicon Valley, the newspaper of record was the San Jose Mercury News.  Everyone read it.  It did a great job covering the local startup scene, and had some fantastic columnists and writers.
CNET News:
HTC Magic vs. Samsung I7500  —  Here're the HTC Magic (left) and the Samsung I7500 (right) side by side.  The I7500 looks slightly larger than the Magic, but that's because my hand was slightly closer to the camera.  Also, the screen on the I7500 appears dimmer due to an early firmware issue …
Discussion: Android Phone Fans and SlashGear
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Will OpenTable Be Just What Silicon Valley Ordered This Week?  —  One of the first Silicon Valley start-ups to go public in a long while-OpenTable-is expected to come to market this week, with venture firms hoping it will prove a tasty treat for Wall Street.
Ben Kuchera / Ars Technica:
Sims 3 leaked to torrent sites weeks before retail release  —  While EA may be backing off the practice of using invasive DRM in its games, piracy continues.  The newest casualty?  Sims 3 has leaked to the torrent sites two weeks before the game's release.
New York Times:
New Mood in Antitrust May Target Google  —  For decades, the nation's biggest antitrust cases have centered on technology companies.  And they have all been efforts by the government to deal with powerful companies with far-reaching influence, like AT&T, the telephone monopoly; I.B.M. …
Robert Lemos / Technology Review:
Are Your “Secret Questions” Too Easily Answered?  —  Research finds that the answers to secret questions used to retrieve forgotten passwords are easily guessed.  —  Brian Green's experience with not-so-secret questions began when he logged on to his World of Warcraft account in March …
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:
Microsoft, Linux Foundation issue joint letter opposing proposed software-licensing principles  —  Truth can, indeed, be stranger than fiction — as is evidenced by a May 14 letter on software-licensing policies that was signed by both Microsoft and Linux Foundation officials.
Matt Holliday / Inside Facebook:
Newsweek Interviewing Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner Live on Facebook Today  —  Newsweek will host a live Q&A with Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner on Facebook this afternoon.  Jon Meacham will be conducting the interview from the National Press Club in Washington …
Discussion: All Facebook and AppScout
 
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 More Items: 
Amy Thomson / Bloomberg:
MetroPCS Chief Linquist Plans to Go His Own Way as Wireless Rivalry Mounts
Discussion: FierceWireless and mocoNews
Billy Bragg / Guardian:
Do we want ISPs to penalise our fans?
AdAge:
App Revenue Is Poised to Surpass Facebook Revenue
Discussion: CNET News
Stephanie Clifford / New York Times:
For Wired, a Revival Lacks Ads
Discussion: Gawker, Thanks:atul
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
The coming wireline business implosion (and how you'll wind up paying for it)
Byron Acohido / USA Today:
Tech security companies are hot acquisitions
Discussion: Technology Live
 Earlier Items: 
Joseph Tartakoff / paidContent.org:
Inside Microsoft's M&A Strategy
AppleTweets:
Adium 1.4 beta with Twitter support
Discussion: TUAW and Adium Blog
William M. Bulkeley / Digits:
The Exploding Digital Universe
Rafe Needleman / CNET News:
BillMyParents makes it easy for kids to spend parents' money
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Apple 2.0:
Would Bill Gates have aired Laptop Hunters?
Discussion: MacDailyNews