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11:40 AM ET, May 27, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Ina Fried / Beyond Binary:
Microsoft confirms Zune HD coming this fall  —  Microsoft on Tuesday confirmed its plans to take on the iPod Touch with a new, touch-screen Zune that will be able to surf the Web, play high-definition movies, and tune in to digital radio.  —  The Zune HD, which will be available in the U.S …
RELATED:
Harry McCracken / Technologizer:
Seven Questions About the Zune HD  —  Back on April 10th, our own Ed Oswald reported that he'd confirmed that the rumored Zune HD was real and would ship in the fall.  He spoke the truth-as Cnet's Ina Fried is reporting, Microsoft confirmed today that it plans to release an iPod Touch-like Zune then.
Zune.net:
ZUNE SPOTLIGHT  —  Media contact: For media inquiries only, e-mail zunepress@edelman.com.  —  For customer inquiries and technical support, click here or contact support directly:  —  call 1-877-GET-ZUNE (1-877-438-9863) or, for the hearing impaired, TTY 1-800-801-1189.
Thomas Ricker / Engadget:
Apple quietly updates $999 MacBook, again — goes back to school with free iPod touch  —  Shh, don't tell the press but Apple just bumped the specs on its entry-level white MacBook again.  The bump measures in at just 0.13GHz on the processor, 133MHz more oomph from the DDR2 SDRAM, and an extra 40GB of disk space.
Discussion: Edible Apple, TUAW and digg.com
RELATED:
Slash Lane / AppleInsider:
Apple updates white MacBook with faster processor and memory  —  Apple alongside its 2009 Back-to-School promotion on Wednesday also updated its entry-level white MacBook with a faster Intel processor, memory architecture and more hard disk space.  —  The update was announced quietly on the company's online store.
AppleInsider:
Apple's Back-to-School promo offers free 8GB iPod touch  —  Apple on Wednesday officially kicked off its 2009 back-to-school promotion, which offers a free 8GB iPod touch to students and educational staffers who purchase a qualifying Mac.  —  More specifically, the promotion offers …
Peter Kafka / D7 Highlights:
Twitter Guys: We'll Still Be Running This Company in 5 Years  —  Meet the Internet's It Boys: Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone.  A year ago their “micromessaging” platform was unknown outside of a small circle of digerati.  Now the service has broken through to the mainstream …
RELATED:
Brad Stone / Bits:
Twitter Founders Say They're In for the Long Haul
Discussion: Digits, Beet.TV and D7 Highlights
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Topsy Search Launches: ReTweets Are The New Currency Of The Web  —  New search engine Topsy, which has been in stealth development for three years, launches, well, now.  —  Before Google, search engines like AltaVista determined relevance based on how well a web page matched the query.
RELATED:
Steve Rubel / Micro Persuasion:
Visits to Twitter Search Soar, Indicating Social Search Has Arrived
Discussion: the Econsultancy blog, Thanks:wedocreative
Alan Duke / CNN:
Kutcher threatens to stop Twittering  —  LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) — Ashton Kutcher — Twitter's top tweeter — warned he may pull the plug on his tweeting if the micro-blogging service partners on a reality TV show.  —  “It's all fun and games until somebody gets stalked,” Kutcher wrote in a Twitter posting late Monday.
Inside Sprint Now:
Sprint Palm Pre Activation  —  Since there are quite a few in the wild already, and we're just over a week away from launch, I figured it'd be as good a time as any to give a preview of what activation/first use will look like on the Pre, and field any questions that may come up in the process.
Todd Bishop / TechFlash:
Microsoft's Ballmer whoops it up as Ford CEO delivers his new car  —  Too bad Ford doesn't have more customers as loyal and enthusiastic as Steve Ballmer.  Then again, the Microsoft CEO is an easy sell, as a Detroit native whose father worked for the automaker.
Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:
Rich mobile browser Skyfire launches version 1.0  —  Skyfire, a mobile browser that wants to bring the full desktop web experience to mobile phones, is taking its product out of beta testing today and launching version 1.0.  Sometimes, that's a signal that a service is ready for mass usage …
Jordan Golson / GigaOM:
Android, iPhone Dominate Mobile Browsing in April 2009  —  Google's Android and Apple's iPhone together accounted for almost three-quarters of web browsing on mobile devices in April, yet not even 10 percent of device sales, according to the most recent Mobile Metrics Report from AdMob.
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Apple: Will It Cut 8GB iPhone Price To $99?  —  Is Apple (AAPL) going to attack the low end of the smartphone market with a big price cut in the 8 GB version of the iPhone?  —  RBC Capital analyst Mike Abramsky thinks they might.  In a research note this morning, he notes that the company …
David Coursey / BizFeed:
Microsoft to Netbooks: Stay Tiny Or Pay the Price  —  Microsoft appears to have decided that any netbook with more than 10.2-inch screen isn't really a netbook at all, and should pay more for a copy of Windows 7.  This is Redmond's version of the question facing the hardware companies themselves …
Discussion: CNET News, AppScout and digg.com
Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:
Acrobat.com challenges PowerPoint with collaborative presentations  —  Acrobat.com, Adobe's website of free office software, is unveiling a new tool today that marks the early steps towards competing with PowerPoint, the ubiquitous presentation-making software in Microsoft Office.
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Time Warner To Decide On AOL Spinoff At Thursday Board Meeting (It's A Done Deal, Supposedly)  —  Last month Time Warner announced that it would likely spin off its AOL assets into a new company, followed by an IPO (10Q SEC filing is here).  Little detail was given about the transaction …
Lance Whitney / CNET News:
Report: Spam now 90 percent of all e-mail  —  Spam now accounts for 90.4 percent of all e-mail, according to a report released Monday from security vendor Symantec.  This means that 1 out of every 1.1 e-mails is junk.  The report also notes that spam shot up 5.1 percent just from April to May.
Mark Potts / Recovering Journalist:
The Future is ChicagoNow  —  It's been eminently fashionable to bash Sam Zell for his gutting of Tribune Co., and with good reason—a copy of the Baltimore Sun I saw recently looked about as substantial as a cocktail napkin, and that was before the Sun's latest newsroom layoffs.
Steve Lohr / Bits:
Hints of a Tech Gold Mine in the Stimulus Package  —  The headline technology winners in the government's economic stimulus package have been electronic health records and smart grids, where computing is front and center.  Many billions have been pledged to these obviously high-tech fields.
Discussion: ZDNet Government
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
SanDisk Signs New Cross-License Deal With Samsung  —  SanDisk (SNDK) shares are poised to rally this morning after the company announced a new patent cross-licensing deal with Samsung.  The company also signed an agreement for Samsung to to continue to supply SanDisk with a guaranteed portion …
Justin Smith / Inside Facebook:
Facebook Crosses 60 Million Monthly US Users, But Fewer People Over 55 Coming Back  —  Two months ago, we reported that the number of US Facebook users over 35 had almost doubled over the previous 60 days from 9.8 million at the beginning of February to 17.1 million at the end of March.
Discussion: Silicon Alley Insider
Liz Gannes / NewTeeVee:
Head of Yahoo Video Division to Leave  —  Satish Menon, VP of the Consumer Platforms Group at Yahoo (aka the video platform division, with responsibility for video infrastructure, software and advertising), will soon leave the company, he told us over the weekend.
Matt Richtel / Bits:
A Nintendo Phone?  Not Our Thing, Executive Says  —  Starting next Tuesday, the video game industry will celebrate its existence and show off its latest wares at the E3 Expo, an annual trade show held in Los Angeles.  The timing is designed to rev up consumers and retailers in advance of the crucial holiday shopping season.
Discussion: mocoNews
Tameka Kee / paidContent.org:
More Mags Jump On The Premium App Bandwagon  —  Magazine publishers clearly have all that iPhone app store revenue on the brain.  Just a week after People.com rolled out its $1.99 iPhone application, comes news that publishers like Time, Conde Nast and Hachette Filipacchi have plans …
Discussion: dailywireless.org
Chris Forrester / Rapid TV News:
BSkyB link with Microsoft on X-Box  —  Rapid TV News understands that the long-awaited link up between BSkyB and Microsoft's X-Box is at last going to happen.  Full details will be announced tomorrow (Friday, May 29).  The unveiling “Experience the Vision' press event will explain more.
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:
‘Cashmere’: Another (possible) destination on Microsoft's embedded roadmap  —  Microsoft is considering releasing this year a new version of the core embedded operating system that powers Windows Mobile phones and other devices.  That new Windows Embedded Compact release, codenamed “Cashmere …
Discussion: WMExperts
 
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 More Items: 
Jeffrey Burt / eWeek:
HP Expands Thin-Client Offerings
Dan Nystedt / PC World:
Asus EeeNAS 1TB Backup Device Joins Atom Family
Georgina Prodhan / Reuters:
IBM earmarks $3 billion for Europe and Asia stimulus
Jane Wakefield / BBC:
UK broadband ‘notspots’ revealed
Discussion: Guardian
Paul Boutin / VentureBeat:
Can eBay rebrand itself as the Web's Wal-Mart?
Discussion: Wall Street Journal
Gary L. Reback / Forbes:
Animating Antitrust  —  Why U.S. industry needs a revitalized antitrust division.
Tameka Kee / paidContent.org:
Earnings: Take-Two Swings To Loss; Adds Another (Downloadable) GTA Sequel
Discussion: Softpedia News, Crave and Technologizer
 Earlier Items: 
Microblink:
FeedStats: FriendFeed Stats For You and Your Friends
Discussion: ReadWriteWeb and louisgray.com
Eric Engleman / TechFlash:
Amazon patents design for what looks like mini-storefront
Thanks:johnhcook
Elinor Mills / CNET News:
Facebook user drops lawsuit over virus
Dianne See Morrison / mocoNews:
Warner's iPhone App Push: Beginning Of The End For Small Developers?
Ryan Paul / Ars Technica:
Canonical developers aim to make Android apps run on Ubuntu
 

 
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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