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6:00 PM ET, September 4, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Loopt Location To Update In The Background On iPhone  —  Loopt, a location-based social networking service, will be the first third-party iPhone service to work in the background while the app is not running.  —  Via a deal with AT&T, and with your permission, Loopt will be able to access …
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Brainstorm Tech:
Meet Seth the blogger guy, AT&T's answer to angry iPhone owners  —  Seth Bloom.  Photo: AT&T  —  “We have heard you.  We are on it.”  —  So says the Seth Bloom — a.k.a. Seth the blogger guy — the geeky talking head that AT&T (T) has sent out to do damage control in the face …
RELATED:
Jared Newman / PC World:
Network Woes?  Hate the iPhone, Not AT&T  —  Now that AT&T has finally greenlit MMS for the iPhone, maybe it's time we gave the company a break.  —  For years, AT&T's iPhone customers have endured dropped calls, slow connections, and crippled service, especially in crowded areas such as New York and San Francisco.
Marco.org:   On one hand, it's easy to feel sorry for AT&T because it takes …
Rafat Ali / paidContent:
Social App Foursquare Takes in $1.35 Million in Funding From Unionsquare  —  Foursquare, the hot iPhone social app that allows you to broadcast your location to your friends, is raising its seed round of $1.35 million., and has raised almost all of it, according to a new SEC document just filed.
RELATED:
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Confirmed: Foursquare Gets $1.35 Million To Play With From Union …
Discussion: the Econsultancy blog
Dan Grabham / TechRadar.com:
Samsung: OLED notebooks by late 2010  —  Global computing boss targets release a year from now  —  Samsung says we could get the first commercial OLED laptops a year from now.  —  Speaking at the official IFA launch of the X-Series and N-Series notebooks and netbooks, Kyu Uhm …
Geoffrey A. Fowler / Digits:
Amazon Offers Redelivery or $30 to People Who Lost '1984′  —  Amazon took a lot of heat in July when it wirelessly deleted copies of two George Orwell titles from the Kindle e-readers of some customers.  CEO Jeff Bezos eventually apologized for the incident, calling it “stupid …
Siobhan Gorman / Wall Street Journal:
How Team of Geeks Cracked Spy Trade  —  PALO ALTO, Calif. — From a Silicon Valley office strewn with bean-bag chairs, a group of twenty-something software engineers is building an unlikely following of terrorist hunters at U.S. spy agencies.  —  One of the latest entrants …
Discussion: AdExchanger.com, Thanks:blogfisher
Tim O'Reilly / TechCrunch:
Gov 2.0: It's All About The Platform  —  Editor's note: The following guest post is by Tim O'Reilly, the founder and CEO of computer book publisher O'Reilly Media and a conference organizer.  O'Reilly coined the term Web 2.0 five years ago.  Now he is arguing it is time for Gov 2.0 …
Greg Sterling / Search Engine Land:
Is Google Using A Privacy Double Standard?  —  There is a much longer post to be written on Google's privacy policies and its history of combatting or complying with government requests for information and those of third parties using the courts to get access to user data.
Discussion: ZDNet Government and Business Week, Thanks:mrinaldesai
RELATED:
Cade Metz / The Register:
Feds force Googlebooks privacy promise
Jane Horvath / Google Public Policy Blog:
An update on Google Books and privacy
Brian Mastenbrook:
How I cross-site scripted Twitter in 15 minutes, and why you shouldn't store important data on 37signals' applications  —  Today the Ruby on Rails security team released a patch for a cross-site scripting issue which affected multiple high-profile applications, including Twitter and Basecamp.
Discussion: Softpedia News, TechCrunch and SC Magazine US, Thanks:atul
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Snow Leopard, Marble, And Calamine Lotion  —  There are two types of people in the world: Those that hate change, and those that embrace it.  I tend to fall into the latter category.  And that's why OS X Snow Leopard is an odd product for me.  —  On one hand, I like the idea that Apple …
Discussion: PC World and TUAW, Thanks:mrinaldesai
Fred / A VC:
RSS Is Alive And Well  —  Somehow the comments on my “10 Characteristics of Great Companies” post yesterday drifted into the topic of the future of RSS.  I was debating whether to wade into this silly debate about whether “RSS is dead” or not and was leaning toward ignoring it.
Dieter Bohn / PreCentral.net:
WebOS 1.2 Accidentally Leaked!  —  go4craig in our Palm Pre Forums has just posted that he applied the webOS Doctor (the ‘last resort’ method for getting your Pre back to factory standard) and, wonder of wonders, it installed webOS 1.2 for him.  Guess what - same thing happened for forum member Leathal.
Kelly Hodgkins / Boy Genius Report:
Verizon Wireless Touch Pro2 to land September 11th, $199.99  —  As if an Android handset and a couple of Blackberry handsets weren't enough, Verizon Wireless customers may have yet another handset coming quickly down the pike.  A trusted ninja let us know that VZW's Touch Pro2 is slated …
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
Spectrial 2: Pirate Bay Appeal Scheduled for November  —  Millions of BitTorrent users all around the world followed the Pirate Bay trial with great interest this February.  Many had hoped that the Court would decide that operating a BitTorrent tracker is no offense, and indeed the ten …
Discussion: Techdirt, Softpedia News and Neowin.net
RELATED:
Simmi Aujla / Chronicle of Higher Education:
RIAA Says Student Continues to Encourage Illegal Downloading
Discussion: p2pnet, madisonian.net and ArtsBeat
Gmail Blog:
Four new themes  —  Posted by Jake Knapp, UI Designer and Manu Cornet, Software Engineer  —  Manu: Hey Jake, you still using that same old theme?  —  Jake: Well, yeah.  I mean, I like it — but I don't know... I guess it just doesn't feel as new as it used to.  —  Manu: I hear ya.  Well, good news!
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Bit.ly Offering Even Shorter ‘J.mp’ URLs  —  Bit.ly, Twitter's official URL shortening service, is offering even shorter URLs, via a new ‘j.mp’ service.  —  We just popped open our bit.ly sidebar to send a tweet and got this new URL tool instead.  By knocking out two characters from the URL …
Andrew LaVallee / Digits:
Techie-Conference Smackdown  —  An upcoming New York arts and technology event, dubbed the Audience Conference, is scheduled for Nov. 5 and 6, but it's managed to ruffle some techie feathers well in advance. … Several of its speakers, including TechCrunch's Michael Arrington …
Discussion: Copyblogger
Bloomberg:
Dish Told to Pay TiVo Almost $200 Million Over Patent  —  Sept. 4 (Bloomberg) — Dish Network Corp. and EchoStar Corp. were told to pay almost $200 million to TiVo Inc. for contempt of an order that it stop providing its DVR service after losing a patent-infringement ruling.
Nick Eaton / The Microsoft Blog:
LinkedIn profiles give clues of Windows Mobile 7 features  —  Stephen Chapman, aka the UX Evangelist, has scoured the LinkedIn profiles of tech-industry workers for clues of what features Microsoft is building into its upcoming Windows Mobile 7 phone operating system.
Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:
Smule's new T-Pain app provides the Auto-Tuned voice you've always wanted  —  There are lots of music fans out there who aren't happy about the frequent use of Auto-Tune technology in songs — a viewpoint expressed in Jay-Z's song “Death to Auto-Tune.”  But if Auto-Tune haters were unhappy …
Preston Gralla / PC World:
Windows XP: Finally on its Way Out?  —  Analysis: Microsoft is rejoicing, because Windows XP use is finally dropping.  —  Recommends  —  The biggest danger to Windows 7 and Windows Vista isn't Mac OS X or Linux —  it's Windows XP, whose  —  Artwork: Chip Taylor  —  the aging operating system.
Ayan Mandal / Finance Blog:
Google Search Volumes and Economic Activity  —  We are really excited to launch Google Domestic Trends on Google Finance.  This launch was inspired by Hal Varian, our chief economist's research on using Google Trends data to predict economic indicators.  —  Google Domestic Trends tracks …
Helen / buzzmarketing daily:
Facebook Coming Soon: Ability to Measure Stream Activity  —  If you look closely on the “learn more” blurb on the Facebook Insights there's a very interesting “coming soon” feature.  It reads:  —  Stream CTR / ETR: This graph is a measure of the Click Through Rate and Engagement Rate …
Discussion: Inside Facebook and All Facebook
Tim Schulz / TrendSlate:
Former MySpace Exec Allen Hurff to Launch SoCal-based Incubator  —  Allen Hurff, former SVP of Engineering at MySpace, will be launching a startup incubator based in Southern California.  The news comes from his recently-updated LinkedIn page (image below).  —  Details on the incubator are cloudy.
Discussion: GigaOM, Techgeist and TechCrunch, Thanks:trendslate
 
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 More Items: 
Marisa Taylor / Digits:
How Old Is This Internet Thing, Again?
Discussion: The Huffington Post and ABCNEWS
Cliff Edwards / Business Week:
Using Cybercitizens to Hunt Down Hackers
David Kaplan / paidContent:
Updated: Bakersfield Paper May Shutter Community Sites; Execs Offer Differing Views
Zach Epstein / Boy Genius Report:
Samsung ‘Intrepid’ (Ace II) and ‘Moment’ headed to Sprint
Discussion: WMPoweruser.com and I4U News
Ryan Paul / Ars Technica:
Diebold impeaches e-voting unit, sells it off for $5 million
Discussion: Technologizer
 Earlier Items: 
Christian / OkTrends:
How To Get People To Reply To Your Messages In Online Dating, Part I
Discussion: ReadWriteWeb and Mashable!
Kevin Purdy / Lifehacker:
Browser Speed Tests: Chrome 4.0 and Opera 10 Take On All Challengers
Discussion: Maximum PC all
Jessica E. Vascellaro / Wall Street Journal:
Google China President Kai-Fu Lee to Resign
 

 
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”

Mark Sweney / The Guardian:
National World, one of the UK's biggest newspaper groups, gets a £56.2M buyout offer from shareholder Media Concierge, a 40% premium to its Nov. 21 stock price

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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