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8:05 PM ET, August 20, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Biz / Twitter Blog:
Location, Location, Location  —  Twitter platform developers have been doing innovative work with location for some time despite having access to only a rudimentary level of API support.  Most of the location-based projects we see are built using the simple, account-level location field folks can fill out as part of their profile.
RELATED:
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Twitter Can Now Know Where You Tweet  —  Location is one of the features that a lot of the Twitter apps tack on using things like the iPhone's geolocation services.  It's a cool feature, but not enough people use it.  But they are likely to now that Twitter is adding native support for it with a new API.
Tameka Kee / paidContent:
Twitter To Add Location Data—A Precursor To Geotargeted Ads?
Connie Guglielmo / Bloomberg:
Palm's Colligan Said to Reject Steve Jobs Proposal to Stop Employee Hiring  —  Aug. 20 (Bloomberg) — Former Palm Inc. Chief Executive Officer Ed Colligan rejected a proposal from Apple Inc.'s Steve Jobs to refrain from hiring each other's employees two years ago, calling it wrong and “likely illegal,” according to their communications.
RELATED:
Ryan Tate / Gawker:
How Palm Faced Down a Tyrannical Control Freak
Discussion: ChannelWeb
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Brainstorm Tech:
Munster: An Apple TV set by 2011  —  Gene Munster has seen the future of television and it has an Apple (AAPL) logo on it.  —  In a note to clients Thursday, Piper Jaffray's senior analyst offered a scenario by which Apple would enter the cut-throat TV market by 2011 with an Apple-branded television set …
Wall Street Journal:
Internet Archive to Form Coalition to Challenge Google Books Settlement  —  Microsoft Corp., Amazon.com Inc., Yahoo Inc., and a number of other library associations are joining a coalition being created by the Internet Archive to challenge Google Inc.'s settlement with authors and publishers …
Discussion: CNET News and New York Times
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
MySpace to Hire Media Link (and Millard) to Take Over Ad Sales; Berman Out  —  UPDATE: In an internal memo, MySpace is now telling employees that current ad sales head Jeff Berman is leaving the company.  —  In a move that will surely have Madison Avenue talking, well-known online advertising …
RELATED:
Gavin O'Malley / MediaPost:   Wenda Harris Millard: 'I'm Not Going To MySpace'
Caroline McCarthy / The Social:
Why ‘Joe Facebook’ wants to cash out  —  Was there an unexpected rush of Facebook employees looking to cash out their stock?  Yes, says BusinessWeek's Sarah Lacy, who said that the $100 million buyback orchestrated by investor Digital Sky Technologies has been oversubscribed.
RELATED:
Claudine Beaumont / Telegraph:
Bloggers beware?  Google forced to identify anonymous blogger  —  A US court has ordered Google to hand over the identity of a blogger who used her website to defame Liskula Cohen, a former Vogue cover girl.  What does the ruling mean for the blogosphere?  —  Liskula Cohen, a Vogue covergirl …
RELATED:
Richard Koman / ZDNet Government:   The First Amendment rights of anonymous defamers
Joachim Bean / TUAW:
Want a 1st generation iPod?  They're still available from the Apple Store  —  In 2001, the same year the Game Boy Advance was introduced, Apple brought the iPod to us (and not to universal enthusiasm, either).  When I was doing some Google searching last night on Apple model numbers, I found something quite strange.
Liz Gannes / NewTeeVee:
Usain Bolt Breaks Another World Record, and Footage Speeds Online  —  Usain Bolt ran 200 meters in 19.19 seconds today, breaking his own world record set last year in the Olympics.  Earlier this week he broke his own world record in the 100 meters.  But I would venture to say that the sprinter …
Enigmax / TorrentFreak:
Torrented Pirate Bay Copy Comes To Life  —  Four days ago TorrentFreak broke the news that a copy of The Pirate Bay's entire site was being shared, somewhat appropriately, on The Pirate Bay.  —  The 21.3 Gigabyte torrent was created by anonymous reader who told us: “I suppose I want us to have assurances.
Jon Fortt / Brainstorm Tech:
The end of the phone as we know it  —  Startups and disruptors (yes, Google) seek to rethink voice calling.  —  Andy Jagoe is zigging while the rest of the mobile world zags.  Let everyone else chase the next hot iPhone app.  He's betting the next big thing is a twist on the same old thing: making calls.
Discussion: L.A. Times Tech Blog
Saul Hansell / Bits:
How Hackers Snatch Real-Time Security ID Numbers  —  The world's savviest hackers are on to the “real-time Web” and using it to devilish effect.  The real-time Web is the fire hose of information coming from services like Twitter.  The latest generation of Trojans—nasty little programs …
Discussion: threatpost and New York Times, Thanks:atul
Christopher Breen / Macworld:
The end of free lyrics?  —  Something interesting happened to albums in the mid-60s.  (No, not double-album covers and their utilitarian use.)  With artists such as Bob Dylan, The Beatles, and Leonard Cohen singing about something other than teen angst, words began to matter.
Discussion: The Register
Brett Winterford / iTnews.com.au:
Stress tests rain on Amazon's cloud  —  Availability an issue for Amazon EC2, Google AppLogic and Microsoft Azure.  —  Stress tests conducted by Sydney-based researchers have revealed that the infrastructure-on-demand services offered by Amazon, Google and Microsoft suffer from regular performance and availability issues.
Gregg Keizer / Computerworld:
Windows 7 will run 120 days for free, Microsoft confirms  —  Same ‘rearm’ command that worked for Vista extends activation-free grace period  —  Computerworld - Like its predecessor, Windows 7 can be used for up to 120 days without providing a product activation key, Microsoft confirmed today.
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Yahoo Recommends Firefox Users To Switch To The “New, Safer IE8″  —  Not sure when this started occurring exactly, but Yahoo is apparently now letting Firefox users know that they'd be better off switching to the “new, safer Internet Explorer 8″.
Discussion: Gawker and Seeking Alpha
Long Zheng / istartedsomething:
The Real Live Search - Bing API experiment  —  Wouldn't it be cool if search engines were as fast as you could type and actually showed you results as-you-type?  As I found out this evening with jQuery in one hand and JSON in another, not only is it possible but turns out to be just as cool as I imagined.
Discussion: TechCrunch
Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:
Internet slowly wakes up to PayPal's quiet fee hike  —  PayPal made some policy changes in June, but it's likely that you haven't heard much about them until very recently.  That's because the company quietly slid in extra fees that will affect nearly all users but failed to be transparent about the changes.
Discussion: I4U News and Between the Lines
Nick Eaton / The Microsoft Blog:
Survey: Xbox 360 failure rate is 54.2%  —  Xbox 360 gamers know the Red Ring of Death all too well.  When one of Microsoft's gaming consoles experiences a hardware failure, three of the four red lights ringing the Xbox's power indicator illuminate.  —  Since the Xbox 360's launch in late 2005 …
Discussion: gdgt, MacDailyNews and Slashdot
Matt McGee / Search Engine Land:
Yahoo's Social Plan: Twitter, Twitter, & More Twitter?  —  Is it just me, or does Yahoo have a thing for Twitter?  Watching Yahoo's moves this year is like watching a kid in class fall head-over-heels for the prettiest girl in class.  He scribbles her initials inside his notebook and tries to impress her at every turn.
Thomas Kang / Google Photos Blog:
Collaborate on Picasa Web Albums  —  After a recent trip to Yosemite, I was frustrated to see my traveling companions share their photos in three different online albums on three different photo-sharing sites.  What we really needed was a single album to which everyone could add their photos.
Macenstein:
Snow Leopard to hit next Friday (August 28th) - support training has begun  —  According to reliable sources in Elk Grove, support training for Snow Leopard has begun, signaling an imminent release of the next major release of OS X. Sources claim a date of Friday, August 28th is extremely likely.
Discussion: MacRumors and Gizmodo
Lionel Laurent / Forbes:
Li Ka-shing Confirms Spotify Stake  —  The billionaire's charitable foundation tells Forbes about its latest online investment.  —  LONDON — Will free music go mobile?  One of the world's most powerful telecommunications moguls, billionaire Li Ka-shing—who sits atop the Hong Kong …
Discussion: GigaOM and mocoNews
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols / Computerworld:
Fixing Linux  —  Everything has security problems, even Linux.  An old and obscure problem with the gcc compiler was recently discovered to have left a security hole in essentially every version of Linux that anyone is likely to be running.  Here's what you need to know about fixing it.
Mark Milian / L.A. Times Tech Blog:
Flickr says ‘Obama Joker’ image removal complied with takedown request  —  The now-infamous “Obama Joker” picture.  Credit: Firas Alkhateeb  —  After a Chicago student gained national fame for editing a picture of President Obama in the image of the Joker villain from “The Dark Knight” …
Lawrence Lessig / Lessig Blog:
Announcing the hibernation of lessig.org/blog (from the blogs-deserve-a-sabbatical-too department)  —  So my blog turns seven today.  On August 20, 2002, while hiding north of San Francisco working on the Eldred appeal, I penned my first (wildly and embarrassingly defensive) missive to Dave.
Discussion: Sample the Web and madisonian.net
 
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 More Items: 
Rich Jaroslovsky / Bloomberg:
Baseball for a Buck Pushes Online Frontier: Rich Jaroslovsky
Discussion: paidContent and NewTeeVee
Electronista:
Apple now has 10% of Canadian PC market
Discussion: The Mac Observer
John Paczkowski / Digital Daily:
Sirius Building iPhone Dock?
Discussion: Satwaves and Tech Trader Daily
Henry Blodget / Silicon Alley Insider:
Go Ahead, Embed This Post!
Discussion: Felix Salmon
Taylor Buley / Forbes:
A Scheme For Protecting Content
Bloomberg:
Apple Sued by Colorado Man Claiming IPhone App Used His Copyrighted Image
 Earlier Items: 
Chris Ziegler / Engadget Mobile:
HTC Hero earns FCC approval with CDMA, Sprint launch rumors more solid than ever
Michael Sragow / Baltimore Sun:
Twitter Effect rattles Hollywood
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Posterous Finally Has An iPhone App, Could Have Been Way Better