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10:50 AM ET, August 31, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Staci D. Kramer / paidContent:
Spider-Man Meets Mickey Mouse: Disney Buying Marvel For $4 Billion In Stock, Cash  —  The Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS) is buying Marvel Entertainment (NYSE: MVL) and its 5,000-character roster for a cool $4 billion in stock and cash.  The deal, which would help Disney expand its appeal to boys …
RELATED:
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Disney To Acquire Marvel Entertainment For $4 Billion
Steve Lohr / New York Times:
Challenging Microsoft With a New Technology  —  Microsoft's No. 1 rival is a household name, Google.  But a strong candidate for No. 2 is a company that is scarcely known outside the technology industry: VMware.  —  “VMware is definitely a threat,” said Gary Chen, an analyst at IDC, a research firm.
Discussion: Bits, Thanks:atul
RELATED:
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
VMware to step up data center automation game  —  VMware on Monday will roll out a product family dubbed vCenter to automate data center tasks and manage to service level agreements.  —  The announcements will kick off VMworld 2009 in San Francisco this week.
Hadley Leggett / Wired Science:
Wikipedia to Color Code Untrustworthy Text  —  Starting this fall, you'll have a new reason to trust the information you find on Wikipedia: An optional feature called “WikiTrust” will color code every word of the encyclopedia based on the reliability of its author and the length of time it has persisted on the page.
Miguel Helft / New York Times:
A Hired Gun for Microsoft, in Dogged Pursuit of Google  —  REDMOND, Wash. — Qi Lu knows as well as anyone just how difficult it is to take on Google.  —  For nearly a decade, Mr. Lu played a leading role in building Yahoo's Internet search and advertising technologies.
Discussion: Search Engine Land and Beyond Search, Thanks:atul
Ryan Faas / Computerworld:
What's the real deal with 64-bit computing in Snow Leopard?  —  Is Snow Leopard a 64-bit operating system?  Well, yes and no.  —  Computerworld - One of the biggest points of confusion around Apple's newest version of Mac OS X is about whether it's really a 64-bit or a 32-bit operating system.
Discussion: InfoWorld, TUAW, Softpedia News and PC World
RELATED:
Stephen Shankland / CNET News:   Apple's new OS geared for multicore future
Dan Dorfman / The Huffington Post:
SEC Investigating Apple Trading  —  Hey, have some investors been screwing around illegally with the shares of high-flying Apple, Inc., a superstar of the investment scene?  —  Apparently, the Securities & Exchange Commission is suspicious this may be the case and has kicked off an investigation …
Discussion: Tech Trader Daily and 9 to 5 Mac
Monica Chen / DigiTimes:
Asustek set to launch ultra-thin notebooks using new Intel CPUs  —  Asustek Computer plans to launch two new ultra-thin notebooks using Intel's upcoming 45nm Celeron 743 and SU2300 CPUs on September 7, 2009, according to industry sources.  —  The new models will initially ship to areas including Taiwan, China and Europe.
Discussion: SlashGear, I4U News and Engadget
Laura Saunders / Wall Street Journal:
Is ‘Friending’ in Your Future?  Better Pay Your Taxes First  —  Tax deadbeats are finding someone actually reads their MySpace and Facebook postings: the taxman.  —  State revenue agents have begun nabbing scofflaws by mining information posted on social-networking Web sites …
Ginny Mies / PC World:
Hands-On: SanDisk Sansa Clip+  —  SanDisk's tiny, popular Sansa Clip flash-based MP3 player gets upgraded with a microSD slot and a slightly different name.  The Sansa Clip+ retains the same high quality audio and great value as the original, but the added storage slot gives the player even greater potential.
Neil Hughes / AppleInsider:
Apple expected to offer iPhone on new U.S. carriers within a year  —  Apple's worldwide single-carrier exclusivity model for each nation is seen as fleeting, as a new report suggests the iPhone could be available for carriers other than AT&T in the U.S. within a year.
John Cook / TechFlash:
iPhone app wins top honors at Microsoft sponsored event  —  Learn That Name, a new iPhone app designed to help people remember the names of people they bump into at events, won the most votes at Startup Weekend even though the 54-hour coding marathon was held on Microsoft's campus.
Scott M. Fulton, III / BetaNews:
Here come AMD's six-core, ultra-low-power Opteron EEs  —  There are three “rails” of wattage in AMD's architectural plan for its CPUs: its higher-performance SE line, its lowest-power EE line, and its hybrid HE line that trades some performance for power savings.
Netbooked:
ASUS Eee PC Netbook Roadmap Revealed  —  Someone by the name of JazzDoc, working in the “industry” has spilled the beans on the roadmap of the ASUS Eee PC netbooks.  It reveals new Eee PC products including a 12-inch ION mini-notebook! and a few surprising EOLs:
Andrew Lim / Recombu:
Tech21 iBand: Serious impact protection (proved on video)  —  Dragons' Den's Peter Jones must understand the anguish we all suffer when we drop our phones as his latest investment is in Tech21, a company that specialises in impact protection for mobile devices.
Stacey Higginbotham / GigaOM:
Calix Raises $100M to Meet Broadband Demand  —  Calix, a company that provides equipment to help carriers, cable companies or rural broadband providers deploy and manage fiber networks, has raised $100 million in a combination of debt and equity financing.  The funding will help …
bizjournals:
Global chip sales gained strength in July  —  Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal  —  Global sales of semiconductor chips reportedly posted their fifth consecutive month of gains in July to $18.2 billion, up 5.3 percent from June but remained down 18 percent from a year earlier.
New York Times:
Stopping Start-Ups  —  VARIOUS pieces of legislation now making their way through Congress would require private pools of investment capital to be registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission.  The goal is to curtail abuses and protect the public from questionable practices.
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Google May Hand Over Caribbean Journalists' IP Addresses  —  Google has reportedly sent a letter to a high-profile Caribbean investigative website called The TCI Journal saying it will supply the IP addresses used to access the Journal's primary GMail account unless the Journal supplies a legal counter-motion within the next two weeks.
Discussion: Wikileaks
bizjournals:
Sun's Q4 loss feeds talk Oracle will sell hardware unit  —  Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal  —  Sun Microsystems Inc. posted its fourth straight loss late on Friday amid new reports that Oracle Corp. will sell off the company's hardware unit when it completes its $7.4 billion acquisition of the company.
Richard MacManus / ReadWriteWeb:
Oyster Card: 10 Million + RFID Chips in London  —  The Oyster card is an RFID smart card used for electronic ticketing on London public transport services, notably the London Underground and buses.  Other countries have similar smart cards.  A couple that I've come across in real life recently …
 
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 More Items: 
BBC:
Thousands call for Turing apology
Discussion: Slashdot
Marc Flores / Boy Genius Report:
Verizon cuts BlackBerry Storm pricing to $50
Tim Greene / Network World:
Developer denies software to beat Chinese censors is malicious
Ryan Kim / San Francisco Chronicle:
HP Labs researchers shift focus to bottom line
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Report: Tech component inventory lean (perhaps too lean)
Maria Elena / Show Tracker:
Fox goes tweet, tweet, tweet on your TV screen during reruns of ‘Fringe’ and ‘Glee’
Cleve Nettles / 9 to 5 Mac:
Did AT&T get a sour apple when it snagged the iPhone?
John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
So Dan Lyons Called
Discussion: Global Nerdy, Thanks:atul
 Earlier Items: 
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
Twitter Conferences Continue To Grow
Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:
Lost or stolen Kindle? Amazon says you're out of luck
Discussion: MobileContentToday, Thanks:atul
Zizhuang Yang / Facebook Engineering's Notes:
Every Millisecond Counts
Discussion: Royal Pingdom and TechCrunch
Devin Leonard / New York Times:
Hey, PC, Who Taught You to Fight Back?
Discussion: Brainstorm Tech
Brooke Crothers / CNET News:
When the Apple tablet comes out, are you in?
Discussion: 9 to 5 Mac
 

 
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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