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9:30 AM ET, August 7, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Elinor Mills / CNET News:
Twitter, Facebook attack targeted one user  —  A Russian activist blogger with accounts on Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal and Google's Blogger and YouTube was targeted in a denial of service attack that led to the site-wide outage at Twitter and problems at the other sites on Thursday, according to a Facebook executive.
RELATED:
Dan Goodin / The Register:
Researcher: Twitter attack targeted anti-Russian blogger  —  Joejobbing Cyxymu  —  Free whitepaper - Avoiding 7 common mistakes of IT security compliance  —  As Twitter struggled to return to normal Wednesday evening, a trickle of details suggested that the outage that left 30 million users unable …
Chris Dannen / Fast Company:
Think You're Pissed at Facebook and Twitter?  —  This morning you logged on to Facebook and Twitter, only to find you had no way of announcing to the world that you were starting a new diet.  Or eating Raisin Bran.  Or hungover.  So you stormed away from your computer, irate: how could the intertubes have failed you so utterly?
Discussion: Epicenter, Infocult and Digital Daily
Emily Steel / Digits:
Twittering in the Dark: Lance Armstrong, Andy Dick Weigh In  —  and Elizabeth Holmes  —  Twitter went silent for a few hours on Thursday, and popular Tweeters had plenty to say about it.  —  Comedian Andy Dick complained that the outage kept him from blocking a user who had taken a swipe at his celebrity status.
Discussion: Wall Street Journal and TechCrunch
Clint Boulton / eWeek:
How Google Was Impacted By The Twitter-Facebook Denial of Service Attacks  —  A small group of users of Google's Blogger blogging service and Google Sites wiki experienced an hour-long outage.  However, Google's core Web services, including its search engine, Gmail and Docs …
John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
Phil Schiller Responds Regarding Ninjawords and the App Store  —  Tuesday's piece on Ninjawords was really about two stories.  The small story is that of a clever $2 iPhone dictionary app, the developers of which removed “objectionable” words from its dictionary so as to get it published in the App Store.
RELATED:
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Brainstorm Tech:
Apple's curious PR problem  —  Senior VP Phil Schiller.  Image: Apple Inc.  —  The tech press is buzzing this week with the news that a senior Apple (AAPL) vice president took the time to e-mail a blogger.  —  The senior VP was Phil Schiller, one of Steve Jobs' top lieutenants.
Discussion: eWeek and IntoMobile
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Apple's Phil Schiller Speaks On Censored iPhone Dictionaries …
Arik Hesseldahl / Business Week:
Schmidt's Apple Gig: He Worked for Free  —  Former Apple director Eric Schmidt took no salary or stock for his board service.  What did the Google chief accept?  Lots of Apple gear  —  Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt served on Apple's board essentially without pay …
Elinor Mills / CNET News:
Is Adobe the next (pre-2002) Microsoft?  —  If you are a criminal and you want to break into a network a common attack method is to exploit a hole in software that exists on most computers, has its fair share of holes and isn't automatically updated.  —  In 2002, that would have been Windows.
Discussion: Computerworld and AppScout
David Pogue / New York Times:
New Entry in E-Books Is a Paper Tiger  —  Suppose there are two rival companies — let's call them A and B. Each wants to dominate the blossoming world of electronic books.  —  Company A (that's A as in “Amazon") began life selling physical books online.  Its reading gadget, the Kindle …
Discussion: TeleRead
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
This Is Quite Possibly The Spotify Cap Table  —  Hot European music startup Spotify is back in the news today.  On August 4 we broke the news that the big music labels have secretly been shareholders in the company since 2008, and that they paid roughly the same price for their preferred stock …
Ross Miller / Engadget:
Google Wave dev preview hands-on and impressions  —  After an impressive debut at Google I/O, the company's newest experiment and collaborative chat client has been making its way into the hands of developers in the lead-up to a torrent of new testers on September 30th.
Discussion: TheNextWeb.com
Ed Bott / Ed Bott's Microsoft Report:
Microsoft blunders with a confusing Windows 7 upgrade chart  —  Someone at Microsoft is secretly working for Apple.  —  That's the only possible explanation I can come up with for why they sent this “Official Windows 7 Upgrade chart” to Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal …
Brandon LeBlanc / The Windows Blog:
Windows 7 RTM Available Today for MSDN & TechNet Subscribers  —  As we previously announced, today MSDN & TechNet Subscribers will be able to download Windows 7 RTM in English.  On October 1st, the remaining languages will be released.  —  The bits are available now!
Google LatLong:
New data in Google Earth show wider swath of destruction in Darfur  —  On the side of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum west wall is a quote etched into the rock from General Dwight D Eisenhower, who witnessed firsthand the conditions in the concentration camps in 1945, after they were liberated:
Discussion: Softpedia News and TechCrunch
Clint Boulton / eWeek:
Does Google Want On2 for a Gaming Console?  —  Table of Contents:  —  Google's acquisition of On2 Technologies prompts punditry and blog posts from all over the Web.  Some say buying the video compression specialist was a YouTube play.  Others believe Google will leverage the On2 codecs …
Nilay Patel / Engadget:
Pressure-sensitive keyboard lets you express fury, tenderness  —  Microsoft's hardware division has always pushed the envelope, and its latest prototype is no exception: this pressure-sensitive keyboard looks exactly like a normal 'board, but each key can register up to eight levels of pressure …
Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:
Microsoft releases Open XML fix for Mac Office 2008 SP2  —  Microsoft's Mac Business Unit has released a minor update to Office 2008 for Mac that fixes a bug when opening Open XML files.  The update, version 12.2.1, has just been posted to the Office for Mac downloads site.
Owen Fletcher / Computerworld:
Chinese Microsoft Office rival launching on Web soon  —  IDG News Service - A Chinese company that offers a rival suite to Microsoft Office is following industry trends by turning its software into a Web-based service.  —  Evermore Software, based in the eastern Chinese city of Wuxi …
Corynne / Electronic Frontier Foundation:
The Kindle Lawsuit: Protecting Readers From Future Abuses  —  Not surprisingly, Amazon's recent deletion of George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm from its customers' Kindle e-book readers has sparked a class action lawsuit by Kindle users.  After all, not only was the remote deletion “stupid …
John Cook / TechFlash:
Urbanspoon looks to take a bite out of OpenTable's reservations  —  Urbanspoon — the wildly popular online restaurant directory — is hosting a big bash tonight in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood.  No specific reason was given for the party in the invite, but the company certainly …
Major Nelson / Xbox Live's Major Nelson:
PayPal now available for US Xbox LIVE Accounts  —  If you are in the United States, you can now use PayPal as a method of payment for the Xbox LIVE Marketplace.  —  You can use PayPal to buy Microsoft Points without having to associate your credit card information to your Xbox LIVE account.
Discussion: CrunchGear, Techgeist, VG247 and Kotaku
WindowsITPro:
In five years all browsers will block internet advertisements by default.  —  If you want to earn money through publishing content on the Internet you only have a few options.  The first is to put up a paywall where people can only access the content after they have paid a subscription fee.
Discussion: Slashdot
Don Dodge / TechCrunch:
TechStars Incubator Hatches 10 New Companies  —  Editor's note: The following report comes from Don Dodge, who blogs at Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing and is a business development executive for Microsoft.  TechStarsis a startup incubator that selects 10 teams and provides funding of $18,000 per team …
 
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 More Items: 
Cara Duckworth / RIAA Music Notes Blog:
MUSINGS ON TENENBAUM CASE
Discussion: Techdirt
Saul Hansell / Bits:
What's Green, Made of Corn and Has Buttons?
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
TwitCause Is Yes, A Causes For Twitter
Karl Bode / DSLreports:
Comcast: 80% DOCSIS 3. Coverage By Year's End …
Discussion: Electronista
Cody Brown:
MySpace is to Facebook as Twitter is to ______
Discussion: Forbes and Gawker
Michael Learmonth / AdAge:
DirecTV to Join TV Everywhere
 Earlier Items: 
David Kaplan / paidContent:
Earnings: CBS Net Income Plunges 96 Percent; Interactive Rev Down 8 Percent
John Paczkowski / Digital Daily:
Confirmed: Layoffs at RealNetworks' Rhapsody
Discussion: TechFlash and paidContent