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6:50 PM ET, October 12, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
John Herrman / Gizmodo:
T-Mobile Lets Furious Sidekick Users Ditch Their Contracts for Free  —  T-Mobile's initial apologia to Sidekick users grieving their lost data was a joke.  A month of free data service?  To access what?  Now they've manned up, giving affected customers something they might actually want: A way out of their contracts.
RELATED:
Ina Fried / CNET News:
Sidekick users share their horror stories  —  After suffering through a weeklong outage, T-Mobile Sidekick users got even worse news on Saturday, when the company advised them that any data not on their phone was likely gone forever due to a hardware failure.
Vijay Bangaru / Docs Blog:
Shared folders and more in Google Docs  —  Today, we are happy to announce the updates to the Google Docs docs list that we promised in July.  We're rolling out these update gradually, so they should be available to everyone soon.  The biggest update is the introduction of shared folders …
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Genentech's (And Apple Board Member) Arthur Levinson Leaves Google Board  —  Genentech chairman Arthur D. Levinson is resigning from Google's Board of Directors, the Mountain View company announced earlier this morning.  His departure comes shortly after Google Chairman and CEOEricSchmidt resigned …
RELATED:
Neil Hughes / AppleInsider:
Levinson resignation means Apple, Google boards sever last tie
Discussion: Macworld, TG Daily and 9 to 5 Mac
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Venture Funds Raise Only $1.6 Billion In Third Quarter.  Most Of That Went To Vinod Khosla.  —  More evidence that venture exits and fund raising are related.  We already know that venture exits were anemic in the third quarter of 2009, and now the National Venture Capital Association …
RELATED:
Matt Marshall / VentureBeat:
Only 17 venture capital firms raise money in Q3 — fewest in 15 years
Michael Learmonth / AdAge:
He Can Haz Big Blog Empire  —  Cheezburger Network CEO Ben Huh Takes Over the Net One Kitteh at a Time  —  NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Who knew pictures of cats with funny misspelled captions would evolve into one of the bigger indie blog networks in the world?
Discussion: The Seattle Times, Digits, 901am and Gawker
Jason Notte / TheStreet.com:
Microsoft's Ad Blitz Targets Wrong Enemy  —  REDMOND, Wash. (TheStreet) — Within the last year, Microsoft(MSFT Quote) has been Jerry Seinfeld's pal, a PC, a party planner and a four-year-old girl.  It has been a costly identity crisis.  —  It has also been a long 18 months of ad wars that's …
Discussion: Maximum PC
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch Europe:
Spotify competitor Deezer raises €6.5 million Series B round  —  [France] - Music search and discovery engine Deezer has raised €6.5 million in a second round of financing, bringing the total amount invested in the French upstart to approx. €12.2 million.
Harry McCracken / Technologizer:
Windows Vista: A Review Recap  —  Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer isn't so sure about how folks are going to respond to Windows 7.  As Mary-Jo Foley says in a ZDNet blog post, Ballmer told Bloomberg that “The test feedback (on Windows 7) has been good, but the test feedback on Vista was good.
Eric Eldon / Inside Facebook:
Facebook Asks Page Owners to Prove Authenticity  —  Creating a page on Facebook is pretty easy — so easy, in fact, that a lot of “unofficial” pages have sprung up for brands and celebrities.  But Facebook is trying to make pages an integral part of its advertising products …
Discussion: Lonely CEO Media
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Aiming To “Make Meaning,” Jaiku Co-Founder Leaves Google  —  In October 2007, Google bought the Finnish social networking site Jaiku.  In the following couple of years, they somehow managed to do absolutely nothing with it, even as rival Twitter rose in popularity.  Today, co-founder Jyri Engeström is leaving Google.
Jason Hiner / Between the Lines:
Ellison rips IBM, shows off Sun-Oracle benchmarks, offers $10M prize  —  On Sunday night Larry Ellison took the stage at his annual event, Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco, and came out swinging like a samurai warrior with a newly-sharpened sword.  His main target: IBM.
Mike Chino / INHABITAT:
LG Unveils Solar Powered E-Book Reader  —  If we were stuck on a desert island with only one book, this recently unveiled solar e-book would be at the top of our list!  Designed by LG Display, the sleek reader features a wafer-fin photovoltaic cell that provides it with a steady stream of solar energy.
China.org.cn:
China bans foreign investment in online gaming  —  China's press and copyright authorities have banned foreign investors from operating online games “in any form” in the country.  —  A circular jointly released by the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) …
Emily Steel / Wall Street Journal:
Web Ads Hidden Under Cloak of Invisibility  —  Kraft Foods, Greyhound Lines and Capital One Financial have bought some strange ads on the Internet lately.  What's so strange about them is that they're invisible.  —  The companies might not have known about their invisible display ads …
Discussion: ClickZ and AdExchanger.com
Joanna Stern / Gizmodo:
Nokia Booklet 3G Hands On: Nice Netbook, But How Much?  —  The Nokia Booklet 3G has touched down on US soil.  The cell phone manufacturer's first laptop is made of sturdy stuff and is mobile broadband/SIM-card friendly.  I'd buy one if the price is right.  But chances are it's not.
Discussion: GigaOM
Jessica E. Vascellaro / Wall Street Journal:
Why Email No Longer Rules...  And what that means for the way we communicate  —  Services like Twitter, Facebook and Google Wave create a constant stream of interaction among users—for better or worse.  —  Email has had a good run as king of communications.  But its reign is over.
Matt Marshall / VentureBeat:
Glam steals Yahoo's head of display advertising, Josh Jacobs  —  Glam, the fast growing content and ad network for women, has hired away Josh Jacobs, a top advertising executive from Yahoo.  —  The move is significant because Jacobs was Yahoo's top executive for online display advertising.
Mike Butcher / TechCrunch Europe:
The $1.5 billion scramble for Vente Privee by Gilt, eBay and Amazon  —  [France] On stage at last year's Le Web an argument broke out between co-founder Loic Le Meur and TechCrunch's Michael Arrington over whether Europe was capable of producing a ‘big win’ Web company or whether Skype was, perhaps, just a one-hit wonder.
Discussion: Quintura blog
Mike / Understanding Google Maps & Local Search:
Google Replaces Tele Atlas Data in US with Google StreetView Data  —  There has been a lot of activity of late in Google Maps with rollout of Places and its attendant controversy, tests of the new Local Listing Ads, Ads in the iPhone, Streetview in Canada & the Czech Republic and lots, lots more.
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Chrome OS Peeks Out Its Head A Bit Further.  And What Is The Touchpad?  —  Pretty much every morning and every night I download the newest build of Chromium for Mac (the open source builds that will eventually turn into Chrome for Mac).  While we made an auto-updater to do it for you, you can also manually find the latest builds here.
Electronista:
BlackBerry Storm 2 to show next week?  —  The BlackBerry Storm 2 should finally appear this week and represent RIM's best hope for challenging the iPhone, leaks claim today.  British newspaper The Guardian states as a matter of fact that the touchscreen BlackBerry is due to launch this week …
 
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 More Items: 
Claire Cain Miller / New York Times:
Closing the Deal at the Virtual Checkout Counter
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Yahoo Loses Connected TV Leader Patrick Barry.  Is Bartz Paying Attention?
Discussion: NewTeeVee and paidContent
Tameka Kee / paidContent:
Comparison Shopper Become.com Acquires German E-commerce Firm Pangora
Erik Kirschbaum / Reuters:
Merkel criticizes Google for copyright infringement
Patrick Smith / paidContent:
Guardian Hiring Bloggers For Local News Network
Discussion: HyperlocalBlogger
Olga Kharif / Business Week:
M-Commerce's Big Moment
The Steve Rubel Lifestream:
Posterous Catches Friendfeed
 Earlier Items: 
Charlie Sorrel / Gadget Lab:
Crippleware Alert!  International Kindle Gets No Web Access Outside U.S.
Seth Rosenblatt / The Download Blog:
New Ad-Aware offers behavioral detection
Discussion: Lifehacker
Ed Sperling / Forbes:
What IBM Knows About CIOs
Jen Gordon / Smashing Magazine:
iPhone App Design Trends
Discussion: Web Analytics World
 

 
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”

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

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

 
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