Check out Mini-Techmeme for simple mobiles or Techmeme Mobile for modern smartphones.
8:20 AM ET, August 6, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Andrew Clark / Guardian:
Murdoch plans charge for all news websites by next summer  —  Times and Sun readers to pay as loss-making Murdoch declares end to free-for-all  —  The billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch suffered the indignity of seeing his global empire make a huge financial loss yesterday and promptly pledged …
RELATED:
Staci D. Kramer / paidContent:
Murdoch on Leading The Charging Charge  —  Rupert Murdoch really, really, really wants to charge for online news.  Really.  At least, he keeps saying so even though by far the bulk of News Corp.'s online news content continues to be ad supported.  Wednesday, finally setting even the most vague …
Min Li Chan / Google Chrome Blog:
A New Beta: Why slow down when you can speed up?  —  There's a brand new beta for you to try out today.  As always, we continue to focus on speed, and this beta release shows over 30% improvement on both the V8 and SunSpider benchmarks over our current stable channel release.
RELATED:
Kevin Purdy / Lifehacker:
Firefox Director Talks Firefox 3.6, Tasks, and Competing with Chrome
Thanks:atul
Clint Boulton / eWeek:
Google Chrome Gets 30% Speed Bump, HTML5 Functionality
Apple:
About the Mac OS X v10.5.8 Update  —  The Mac OS X v10.5.8 Update is recommended for Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard users and includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility and security of your Mac.  For detailed information about the security content of this update, please visit this website.
RELATED:
Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:
Mac OS X 10.5.8 chock full of security, reliability fixes
Discussion: Softpedia News and Macworld
Darren Murph / Engadget:
Sony's Party-shot dock snaps incriminating Facebook photos while you drink  —  As if your Facebook profile doesn't have enough hard evidence that you're completely unfit for any job you might strike up the courage to apply for, here's a thoughtful accessory for producing even more regret-inducing snapshots.
Erica Alini / Wall Street Journal:
Coffee Shops Pull the Plug on Laptops  —  They Sit for Hours and Don't Spend Much; Getting the Bum's Rush in the Big Apple  —  A sign at Naidre's, a small neighborhood coffee shop in Brooklyn, N.Y., begins warmly: “Dear customers, we are absolutely thrilled that you like us so much that you want to spend the day...”
Discussion: Wi-Fi Networking News and Gawker
Mike Butcher / TechCrunch Europe:
London is the capital of Twitter, says founder @ev  —  Twitter was featured on the BBC's Newsnight programme last night.  There weren't any great revelations about the service, however the confirmation from the CEO that London remains the top Twitter-using city in the world is pretty interesting.
Discussion: Pocket-lint.com
Boy Genius Report:
Apple launching iPhone 3GS 8GB soon?  —  We've had a number of unconfirmed tips over the last few days about this so we figured we'd post it... apparently it seems that Rogers in Canada is in the process of shipping iPhone 3GS 8GB flavor handsets to stores.  Again, unconfirmed, no idea on pricing …
Jeff Atwood / Coding Horror:
Software Pricing: Are We Doing It Wrong?  —  One of the side effects of using the iPhone App store so much is that it's started to fundamentally alter my perception of software pricing.  So many excellent iPhone applications are either free, or no more than a few bucks at most.
Greg Sterling / Search Engine Land:
Google Brings Community To iGoogle With “Social Gadgets”  —  This morning Google is rolling out a program in Australia enabling developers to create “social gadgets” that permit sharing, collaboration and groups on the iGoogle homepage.  The social gadgets will come to the US and other markets in the future …
Discussion: Google Operating System, Thanks:atul
John C. Dvorak / PC Magazine:
What is Happening to Windows 7?  —  Blame the tricky upgrade process—and, by extension, the Registry—for the backlash against Windows 7.  —  Why has Windows 7 suddenly fallen off the track with negative publicity?  What happened?  What changed?  —  This is one of the strangest developments …
Discussion: Technovia, Mossblog and digg.com
Ed Bott / Ed Bott's Microsoft Report:
A killer Windows 7 bug?  Sorry, no  —  The blogosphere is abuzz over a newly publicized bug in Windows 7.  I read about it yesterday on Chris123NT's blog, where it was described as a “critical bug in Windows 7 RTM.”  The story picked up momentum today when InfoWorld's Randall Kennedy …
Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:
You are SO unfollowed!  —  Whew, it's been a while since I've done a good old fashioned blog.  I've been busy, though.  Posting tons of videos, both on my personal site on Blip.tv as well as professional videos over on building43.com.  Last night I put up a live video of USA's new CTO speaking to a bunch of Silicon Valley geeks, too.
Dan Goodin / The Register:
XML flaws threaten ‘enormous’ array of apps  —  Java, Python, and Apache - for starters  —  Free whitepaper - Avoiding 7 common mistakes of IT security compliance  —  Security researchers have uncovered critical flaws in open-source software that implements the Extensible Markup Language …
Discussion: Softpedia News and eWeek
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
ShoeMoney Reaches Settlement With Google Employee Over AdWords Violations  —  Over the last few months we've been tracking a lawsuit between online marketing guru Jeremy Schoemaker and a Google employee named Keyen Farrell.  This week comes news that Schoemaker has settled the case with Farrell, though details are scant.
Discussion: Softpedia News
Dan Rayburn / The Business Of Online Video:
Debunking Some Myths Of The Google/On2 Deal, Questioning VP8's Quality  —  Following up on my earlier post today entitled “Google's Acquisition Of On2 Not A Big Deal, Here's Why”, here's some more thoughts on the subject.  While clearly no one, including me, truly knows what Google plans to do with On2 …
Inside Edge:
TomTom iPhone pricing leaked  —  Please support our Hardware and Software advertiser: Programming Forums  —  How much for an iPhone-powered TomTom satnav?  That's the question that has been on the lips of many an iPhone user ever since TomTom announced it was developing a version …
Sascha Segan / AppScout:
Opera Mobile for Android in the Works  —  Opera Mobile 9.7 is a great alternative browser for Windows Mobile and Symbian, but so far it hasn't been available on other smart phone platforms.  In an interview with PCMag.com today, Opera Software CEO Jon von Tetzchner said the browser might come …
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Bing Has Succeeded... In Finding The Worst Jingle Ever  —  A few weeks ago, we wrote about the contest Microsoft's new search engine Bing was holding to find a catchy jingle for the product.  Today, they have announced the winner.  “Catchy” is one word for it.  Another is “awful.”
Rosa Golijan / Lifehacker:
Massacre Gmail Ads with These Two Sentences (and Some Tragic Words)  —  Those “Sponsored Ads” in e-mails are an annoyance to both sender and recipient and they seem to escape blocking.  Until now.  These two (so far) fail-proof sentences at the end of an email will let you enjoy e-mailed rants, ad-free.
Discussion: Download Squad and Gizmodo
Sysomos:
Inside Twitter  —  An In-Depth Look at the 5% of Most Active Users  —  When Sysomos published its initial “Inside Twitter” report last month that looked at the people on Twitter and how it was being used, we discovered that 5% of users accounted for 75% of all activity.
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Arrington's CrunchPad Will Be ‘A Real Hit’, Says Best Buy Marketing Boss  —  Best Buy (BBY) chief marketing officer Barry Judge just met with the “chief blogger” at TechCrunch.  Presumably, that's Michael Arrington.  —  Judge also took a peek at the CrunchPad, Arrington's Web-only tablet PC project.
W. David Gardner / InformationWeek:
WiMax Versus WiMax In Texas Towns  —  The battle is likely a harbinger of the wireless future in which different high speed wireless technologies will compete against each other on a wide scale.  —  Mobile WiMax is still in its deployment infancy, but two providers are already competing …
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
Comcast adopts DNS hijacking, imposes irritating opt-out  —  Despite knowing the ways in which DNS hijacking can cause problems for non-Web clients, Comcast has rolled it out in an attempt to make money off misspelled URLs.  To make matters worse, opting out is a hassle.
TechCrunch:
Spotify and the Great Leaps of Faith  —  Last month at The Europas - TechCrunch Europe's version of the Crunchies - a lot of impressive start-ups were honored.  But one was clearly cleaning up: Spotify, the sexy online music app that has music lovers in Europe swooning.
Oliver J. Chiang / Forbes:
The Challenge Of User-Generated Porn  —  YouTube-like pornography sites have YouTube-like profit problems.  —  BURLINGAME, Calif. — You would think that if anyone were making boatloads of money from Internet video, it would be high-traffic porn sites.  You would be wrong.
Greg Kumparak / MobileCrunch:
Qik for Android gets video editing, “Speed sharing”  —  Just over a month back, an Alpha version of Qik found its way into the Android Market.  As the Alpha tag implies, it was a bit of a rough cut; it lacked a number of features found on other ports, and plenty of bugs were abound.
 
 Archived Page Info: 
This is a snapshot of Techmeme at 8:20 AM ET, August 6, 2009.

View the current page or another snapshot:


 
 Techmeme Sponsor Posts: 
Meta:
Open Source AI: Available to all, not just the few  —  Meta's open source AI enables small businesses, start-ups, students, researchers and more to download and build with our models at no cost.
Tribe AI:
Build AI products that matter  —  Tribe AI helps organizations rapidly deploy AI solutions that have real business impact.  We bring together world class AI talent and tooling to drive differentiated results.
Zoho:
CIO challenge 5: Can we find an effective solution that also minimizes operational costs?  —  Welcome to the next and final installment of our CIO series!  After what feels like a thousand cups of coffee …
Hamming:
Make AI Voice Agents trustworthy  —  Hamming AI automatically tests AI voice agents and continuously monitors them in production.
Sponsor Techmeme
 
 See Also: 
Techmeme: site main
Techmeme River: reverse chronological Techmeme
Techmeme Mobile: for phones
Techmeme Leaderboard: Techmeme's top sources
 
 Subscribe: 
Techmeme RSS feed
Techmeme on X
Techmeme on Mastodon
 
 
 More Items: 
Roy Mark / eWeek:
Lawmakers Back Permanent U.S. Involvement with ICANN
Discussion: Domain Name Wire
Bill Rigby / Reuters:
Publicis front-runner to buy Razorfish: report
Discussion: Wall Street Journal
Matt Marshall / VentureBeat:
Symantec helps pump $20M into identity theft protection company Lifelock
Discussion: WebWire
Paul Carr:
An open letter to Sam Sethi, on the occasion of him completely losing his mind
Discussion: Robin Wauters
Preston Gralla / Computerworld:
Report: Microsoft Bing benefits from illegal pharmaceutical sales
Discussion: LiveSide, Ars Technica and eWeek
Ryan Tate / Gawker:
It's Time for Current TV to Talk About What Happened to Their Captured Reporters
Nick O'Neill / All Facebook:
Facebook Removes Ability To Search Based On Relationship Status
Discussion: blogs.ft.com and Gawker
 Earlier Items: 
Jane Macartney / Times of London:
Chinese teenager beaten to death in internet addiction clinic
Discussion: TECH.BLORGE.com, Thanks:mikeharvey
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Here Come The Twitter Patent Lawsuits.  TechRadium Files The First One.
Discussion: VentureBeat and Threat Level
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Daniel Thomas / Financial Times:
James Harding says the Tortoise-Observer deal could create a profitable media group and there isn't a guaranteed future for the Observer with the Guardian

Alex Sherman / CNBC:
Analyzing Comcast's spinoff of cable networks, purposefully structured with low debt: the move might be a signal to the industry that it's time to consolidate

Lauren Forristal / TechCrunch:
Tubi launches Scenes, a mobile feature that lets viewers watch 60-to-90-second trailer-style clips from its library to help with content discovery

 
Sister Sites:

Mediagazer
 Top news and commentary for media professionals from all around the web
memeorandum
 What US political commentators are discussing online right now
WeSmirch
 The top celebrity news from all around the web on a single page