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5:25 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:
T-Mobile halts sales of Sidekick  —  Wireless carrier T-Mobile USA has, at least temporarily, stopped selling all models of the Sidekick in the wake of a massive hardware failure that resulted in many customers losing their e-mail, contacts, and other data.  —  As of Sunday, all models …
Ina Fried / CNET News:
Sidekick users share their horror stories
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:
Miguel Helft / Bits:
Levinson Leaves Google Board Amid F.T.C. Inquiry  —  UPDATE: 12:55 pm Adding comment from F.T.C. chairman.  —  Google said Monday that Arthur D. Levinson, the former chief executive of Genentech, is leaving its board of directors.  Google gave no reason for Mr. Levinson's departure …
Neil Hughes / AppleInsider:
Levinson resignation means Apple, Google boards sever last tie
Discussion: TG Daily
Google:
Arthur Levinson Resigns from Google's Board of Directors
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 …
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
Nicola Clark / New York Times:
Lufthansa Bringing Back Onboard Wi-Fi  —  PARIS — Three years after unplugging its in-flight Internet service because of insufficient demand, Lufthansa said Monday that it would reintroduce a new and improved version of the service on most of its long-haul flights by the first half of 2010.
Discussion: CrunchGear
RELATED:
Patrick Smith / paidContent:
Guardian Hiring Bloggers For Local News Network  —  There's now no doubt that Guardian News & Media is planning a local online news project.  Despite parent company Guardian Media Group laying off almost 250 staff in its regional division this year, GNM is hiring for metropolitan “beatbloggers” …
Discussion: HyperlocalBlogger
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) …
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
 
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 More Items: 
Joanna Stern / Gizmodo:
Nokia Booklet 3G Hands On: Nice Netbook, But How Much?
Discussion: GigaOM
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: paidContent and NewTeeVee
Tameka Kee / paidContent:
Comparison Shopper Become.com Acquires German E-commerce Firm Pangora
Erik Kirschbaum / Reuters:
Merkel criticizes Google for copyright infringement
Discussion: ReadWriteWeb and PlagiarismToday
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
Ashlee Vance / New York Times:
Training to Climb an Everest of Digital Data
Discussion: open and Memex 1.1, Thanks:mrinaldesai