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5:55 AM ET, August 27, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Walter S. Mossberg / Personal Technology:
Apple Changes Leopard's Spots  —  For a company known for breakthrough products with cool features, Apple this week is doing something unusual: It is introducing a key product with very few new features that are visible to its users.  This new release, the latest major version …
RELATED:
Nilay Patel / Engadget:
Snow Leopard review  —  Snow Leopard.  Even the name seems to underpromise — it's the first “big cat” OS X codename to reference the previous version of the OS, and the list of big-ticket new features is seemingly pretty short for a version-number jump.  Maybe that's why Apple's priced …
Discussion: digg.com
James Galbraith / Macworld:
Gauging Snow Leopard's speed boosts  —  Macworld Lab tests Mac OS X 10.6 to see how much faster it truly is  —  Apple describes Snow Leopard as a top-to-bottom refinement of existing features.  One major goal of those refinements: Improved performance.  —  Snow Leopard aims to run leaner …
Gina Trapani / Lifehacker:
Prep Your Mac for Snow Leopard  —  An operating system update like this Friday's release of Mac OS X Snow Leopard is a perfect time to clean up your computer and start fresh.  Let's prepare your Mac for this weekend's 10.6 upgrade.  —  Before You Upgrade, Part 1: Clean Up Your Mac
Discussion: Gadget Lab, MacFixIt and digg.com
Jason Snell / Macworld:
Snow Leopard: The in-depth review
Discussion: Gizmodo, PC World, Telegraph and 9 to 5 Mac
Zach Epstein / Boy Genius Report:
Augmented Traffic Views for Android could be the coolest AR app we've seen yet  —  Augmented Reality is quickly becoming a hot ticket item in the mobile world and we've seen various nifty applications of the technology previewed recently.  The key of course, is finding useful and valuable ways to apply AR concepts to mobile devices.
RELATED:
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Is Augmented Reality Garbage or Golden?
Miguel Helft / Bits:
Is Google Entering the Mortgage Quote Business?  —  Google plans to begin offering loan quotes online as early as this month, a lawsuit filed in federal court this week claims.  The suit was filed by LendingTree, which offers consumers mortgage quotes and conditional loan offers online …
Brandon Badger / Google Book Search Blog:
Download Over a Million Public Domain Books from Google Books in the Open EPUB Format  —  Over the years, we've heard a lot from people who've unearthed hidden treasures in Google Books: a crafter who uncovered a forgotten knitting technique, a family historian who discovered her ancestor once traveled …
The Sun:
Nessie on Google Earth  —  THIS amazing image on Google Earth could be the elusive proof that the Loch Ness Monster exists.  Sun reader Jason Cooke spotted “Nessie” while browsing the website's satellite photos.  Security guard Jason, 25, of Nottingham, said: “I couldn't believe it.
Tameka Kee / paidContent:
Console Price Wars: Microsoft Drops Xbox Elite Down To $299  —  Hoping to boost console sales this holiday season, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has dropped the price of its Elite Xbox 360 to $299.  The $100 price cut comes just about a week after Sony (finally) slashed the price of the PS3, also to $299.
Kasper Jade / AppleInsider:
Sources: Apple to unveil new iPod lineup on September 9  —  Apple currently plans to host a media event on Wednesday, Sept. 9 to introduce its 2009 iPod offerings and make a host of other music-related announcements, AppleInsider can independently confirm.  —  People familiar with the matter …
Barry Collins / PC Pro:
Porn collection put people off upgrading to Firefox 3  —  Mozilla's Security team has disclosed a very interesting piece of research which suggests people refused to upgrade to the latest version of Firefox because they were afraid the browser would expose their, ahem, private collection of websites.
Farhad Manjoo / Slate:
Unchain the Office Computers!  —  Why corporate IT should let us browse any way we want.  —  During a town hall meeting for State Department workers last month, an employee named Jim Finkle asked Hillary Clinton a very important question: “Can you please let the staff use an alternative Web browser called Firefox?”
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Brainstorm Tech:
Snow Leopard warning: Your apps may crash  —  Two days before the scheduled launch of Mac OS X Snow Leopard — the latest update of Apple's (AAPL) flagship operating system — developers are still scrambling to make sure their applications will work with the new version.
RELATED:
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Apple Says Vonage App Delayed By Technical Issues; Vonage Says Fix Made, App Resubmitted (Updated)  —  Approval of a request by Vonage (VG) to distribute a mobile VOIP application through the Apple (AAPL) App Store has been delayed by technical issues with the Vonage software …
Austin Modine / The Register:
Judge orders cybersquatter to pay Verizon $33m  —  Massive default damages ruled acceptable  —  A federal court in California has upheld a massive $33.15m penalty against a cybersquatting domain aggregator that registered hundreds of websites mimicking Verizon's name and trademarks.
John Paczkowski / Digital Daily:
Stern Fans Rejoice: Sirius XM SkyDock for iPhone  —  The rumors were true.  At an invitation-only media event in New York City this morning, Sirius XM (SIRI) debuted the first-ever radio dock for the iPhone and iPod touch.  —  Dubbed SkyDock, the $119.99 peripheral uses iPhone OS 3's support …
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Google To Open The AdSense Gates To Other Ad Networks — That They Approve Of  —  In what looks to be an effort to be the one overall ad network that rules them all, Google sent out an email to AdSense publishers today letting them know that they would soon be opening up their accounts …
Discussion: paidContent, Inside AdSense and silicontap.com, Thanks:atul
MacNN:
Apple nearly ready for Chinese iPhone launch - report  —  Apple is nearly prepared to start selling iPhones in China, the company's largest untapped mobile phone market, says the Wall Street Journal.  A testing center under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology confirmed an iPhone prototype …
Nicholas Kolakowski / eWeek:
Microsoft Downplays Yahoo Upgrades to E-Mail, Search, Messenger Apps  —  Microsoft responds to Yahoo's Aug. 24 announcement of upgrades for users by insisting that it had already integrated many of Yahoo's new features, including search results from social networking sites such as Facebook, into its offerings for Windows Live.
Discussion: LiveSide
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Palm Wants To Embrace Google Voice, But It's Not Clear Google Wants To Embrace Palm  —  Suddenly Apple's competitors see a weakness in the iPhone, and it's Google Voice.  We've heard from a source close to Palm that the company plans to roll out deep integration with Google Voice on the Pre phones for users who want it.
Caroline McCarthy / CNET News:
ACLU chapter flags Facebook app privacy  —  The Northern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has put out a campaign designed to raise awareness of the privacy implications of Facebook's developer platform.  It's focusing specifically on the popular “quiz” applications …
RELATED:
LuAnn LaSalle / Globe and Mail:
Progress seen on Facebook privacy fixes
Discussion: Reuters, GigaOM and Mashable!
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Facebook Wants To Own Idea Of Crowdsourced Translations  —  Facebook is the biggest social network in the world, so it may come as a surprise to some that up until early 2008, it didn't offer any localized versions of the site at all.  The company managed to jumpstart its international presence …
Gary Wolf / Epicenter:
The Craigslist Credo: Craigslist vs. eBay  —  In 2005 Fortune magazine published a piece by Adam Lashinsky called Burning Sensation, which described the threat craigslist posed to newspapers.  But it didn't ignore the threat that other tech companies posed to craigslist:
Discussion: Marco.org
Peter / gdgt:
Qualcomm readying handheld FLO TV Personal Television device  —  You know I like to keep my ear close to the ground when it comes to new gadgets, and I just got the scoop via a very reliable source about a new portable digital TV that Qualcomm is going to be introducing soon.
Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life:
The Top 5 Reasons RSS Readers Went Wrong  —  Sam Diaz over at ZDNet wrote the following in a blog entry titled RSS: A good idea at the time but there are better ways now in response to an announcement of a new feature in Google Reader … I take issue with the title of Sam's post since …
 
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 More Items: 
Tristan Louis / The TNL.net weblog:
Fauxpenness  —  It's the height of summer and a several year …
Thanks:tnlnyc
Steve Lohr / Bits:
Zoho: Thriving Amid the Giants
Discussion: ReadWriteWeb, Zoho Blogs and TechCrunch, Thanks:rajuv
Staci D. Kramer / paidContent:
Time Warner Cable Online Video Test En Route
Discussion: Wall Street Journal
Niels Provos / Google Online Security Blog:
Malware Statistics Update
Daryl Lang / PDNPulse:
Mystery: Who Asked Flickr to Delete the Obama Joker?
Greg Sandoval / CNET News:
Isohunt judge says MPAA has yet to prove direct infringment
Kristina Grifantini / Technology Review:
Formalizing the retweet may change people's behavior.
Discussion: Off On A Tangent
 Earlier Items: 
ACLU:
ACLU Seeks Records About Laptop Searches At The Border
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
Bing Continues With Fake Referrers: What Part Of Stop Don't They Understand?
FBHive:
Facebook Screenshots Reveal Upcoming Features?
Discussion: Inside Facebook and TechCrunch
Stefan Constantinescu / IntoMobile:
Nokia just became PayPal with the launch of Nokia Money; built on top of Obopay