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9:10 AM ET, November 5, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
The Official Google Blog:
Transparency, choice and control — now complete with a Dashboard!  —  Today, we are excited to announce the launch of Google Dashboard.  Have you ever wondered what data is stored with your Google Account?  The Google Dashboard offers a simple view into the data associated with your account — easily and concisely in one location.
RELATED:
Walter S. Mossberg / Personal Technology:
Motorola's Droid Is Smart Success for Verizon Users  —  Verizon Wireless customers tend to love the company's fast 3G network.  But many tech-oriented Verizon loyalists gripe about the carrier's high-end smart phones, which haven't matched the cachet and versatility of the Apple iPhone sold by AT&T (T).
RELATED:
David Pogue / New York Times:
Call It an ‘App Phone’ (A What?)  —  Last week, I reviewed not one, but three new phones.  You'd think that would be enough for a while, but fall is peak season for new mobile devices, and another major release — Motorola's Droid — is upon us this week.  —  But before we get to today's big review of the Droid, we need a noun.
Discussion: TECH.BLORGE.com, Gizmodo and AppleInsider, Thanks:mblumenthal
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
Search Til You Drop: Google Launches Hosted Commerce Search For Retailers  —  Searching retail sites can be frustrating at times.  While many retailers try to present product search in a visually appealing way, search can often be slow or difficult to refine.
RELATED:
The Official Google Blog:
Introducing Google Commerce Search: Finding holiday gifts faster  —  The holiday season is right around the corner, so online retailers are gearing up for spikes in traffic.  When people go to shop online, search is big part of finding the right product, whether they're looking for a gift or just something for themselves.
Taylor Wimberly / Android and Me:
Has the T-Mobile HSPA 7.2 rollout begun?  Yes!  Confirmed.  —  Earlier today we reported that T-Mobile's HSPA 7.2 upgrade was still on track for 2009.  One of our readers Ted left an interesting comment: HSPA has been lit up in Chicago!  I just tested it and got 6.8 Mbps!
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
CrunchPad Dead?  Delayed By Higher-Than-Expected Costs?  —  The CrunchPad, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington's entry into the gadget business, is still missing in action.  —  Are higher-than-expected costs to blame?  —  One story we heard from a few people on a recent trip to California …
Twitter Status:
Testing new tweet notifications  —  We're starting a limited test of notifications on twitter.com for when you have new tweets.  So if one of the folks you follow has tweeted since you loaded your homepage, you'll get a little notice saying “1 new tweet” that, when clicked, will display the new content.
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
I Love the Smell of Settlement in the Morning: Skype Founders Set to Get 10 Percent, Option to Buy Three Percent More and Two Board Seats  —  According to several sources close to the situation, barring any unforeseen delay, a deal to settle the Skype imbroglio is likely to be announced around the time the markets open tomorrow.
Discussion: Peter O'Kelly's Reality Check, Thanks:atul
Brian Garner / AppleInsider:
Apple's latest 10.6.2 beta packs fixes for VMWare, iMacs, Apple TV  —  Apple has released a new beta of the Mac OS X 10.6.2 update with fixes for various performance issues dealing with AirPort, graphics drivers, and Apple TV, among others.  —  Those familiar with the build …
RELATED:
The Paperboy / Gizmodo:
Microsoft Courier's Swipes, Snips and Scribbles: The Leaked Interface  —  We've seen slides and videos of Microsoft's Courier booklet in action, but nothing has quite explained how all of these things actually work.  This document explains Courier's interface, gestures and features more in-depth than ever before.
Imad / Moblin Blogs:
Moblin v2.1 project release for netbooks and nettops - it's here  —  The Moblin™ project steering committee today announces the project release of Moblin v2.1 for Intel Atom* processor-based netbooks and nettops.  This project release includes the broadest feature additions …
John Cook / TechFlash:
Plumber vs. Programmer: A face-off over an online directory  —  For more than 30 years, Evan Conklin has practiced plumbing in the Seattle area fixing broken water heaters, leaky faucets and malfunctioning toilets.  And during those three decades, Conklin has seen a lot of crap in the business world.
Paul Meller / PC World:
EU Breaks Deadlock in Debate Over Right to Internet Access  —  After months of often bitter debate, European Union lawmakers reached agreement on how to preserve citizen's rights to Internet access in a meeting that ended in the early hours of Thursday morning.
Jeff Smykil / Ars Technica:
Developers stealing from developers: an App Store tale  —  If you are Paul Haddad of TapBots, LLC, it isn't unusual to get requests for contract work.  When your applications are as eye-catching and functional as his, you garner attention.  So when he received an e-mail earlier this month …
Discussion: Edible Apple and Gadgetopia
Zachary M. Seward / Nieman Journalism Lab:
Google CEO Eric Schmidt envisions the news consumer of the future  —  For all the bluster about Google as an enemy of the news industry, you might be surprised to learn that Eric Schmidt, the company's CEO, is kind of a triumphalist for mainstream media, big newspapers, and print.
Discussion: The Equity Kicker, Thanks:atul
Elinor Mills / CNET News:
Mac Game: Art project or malware?  —  As part of his Master of Fine Arts thesis project, Zach Gage wrote a game to run on Macintosh computers that resembles Space Invaders but with a digital roulette twist—for every alien space ship the player destroys a random file on the computer is deleted.
Boy Genius Report:
HTC DROID Eris gets unboxed  —  One of our connects just blessed us with a couple shots of the HTC DROID Eris and graciously unboxed the retail packaging.  We could bore you with meaningless details about how the phone is thinner and lighter than the Sprint HTC Hero, feels much better in the hand …
Jonny Evans / 9 to 5 Mac:
Dating habits of iPhone users revealed  —  Hey, fresh this morning from the spurious but strangely amusing iLifestyle desk comes a breakdown of the dating habits of iPhone users..  —  According to Retrevo (remember them, they told Apple what to charge for its current fantasy tablet product last week) …
Telegraph:
BBC website suffers outage  —  The BBC home page was inaccessible for several hours following a network failure.  —  The BBC said the outage was caused by a network failure that slowed down access to the site, and at some points, prevented people from visiting the BBC home page at all.
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Offerpal Tries Out A New CEO.  Shukla, Queen Of Scams, Is Out.  —  Offerpal Media, the central character in the Scamville drama, is changing CEOs.  Anu Shukla is no longer the CEO of the company she cofounded.  Veteran executive George Garrick, most recently the CEO of Mochi Media, is now the CEO of the company.
Discussion: VentureBeat, Forbes and paidContent
Dan Goodin / The Register:
Twitter fanatic glimpses dark side of OAuth  —  ‘Secure’ authentication can be anything but  —  A mobile enthusiast and professional internet strategist got a glimpse of OAuth's dark side recently when he received an urgent advisory from Twitter.  —  The dispatch, generated when Terence Eden tried …
Discussion: SHKSPR.mobi
Dan Goodin / The Register:
Tech titans meet in secret to plug SSL hole  —  Web authentication busted on Apache, IIS  —  Researchers say they've uncovered a flaw in the secure sockets layer protocol that allows attackers to inject text into encrypted traffic passing between two endpoints.
Discussion: Extended Subset, ietf.org and InfoWorld
Google News Blog:
Create and Share custom News sections  —  Today, Google News is making it even easier to follow the latest stories on whatever subjects interest you.  We are happy to announce our Custom sections directory, which gives users of some of our English-language editions the expanded ability …
Douglas MacMillan / Business Week:
Private Online Shopping Sites Cash In  —  A Virtual Velvet Rope  —  The most exclusive club in town may be just a few mouse clicks away.  Invitation-only shopping sites with names like Gilt Groupe and Rue La La are gaining popularity online.  They're generating millions of dollars in revenue …
Stephen Baker / Blogspotting:
Buying Twitter followers?  —  I've been carrying out a small experiment in one of the areas of greatest potential abuse of social media: Twitter marketing.  If you Google “Twitter buy followers,” you'll see lots of choices.  One outfit called Quick Online Tips offers 100,000 followers for a mere $3,479.
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
A Little Perspective (Digg, Twitter, Facebook)  —  It wasn't all that long ago that Digg captured our collective imagination.  In fact, even last year Google thought it was important enough to seriously consider buying Digg, only to back out at the last minute.  Digg was the future of news.
Chester Wisniewski / Chester Wisniewski's Blog:
Windows 7 vulnerable to 8 out of 10 viruses  —  Now that we in the northern hemisphere have had some time to digest the Windows 7 hype and settle in for the coming winter, we thought we would get some more hard data regarding Windows 7 security.  —  On October 22nd, we settled in at SophosLabs …
 
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 More Items: 
Mallary Jean Tenore / poynter.org:
Texas Tribune's Launch ‘Just the Beginning’ of Databases, What's to Come
Discussion: Silicon Alley Insider
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
RealNetworks to Lay Off Four Percent of Staff Today
Discussion: CNET News
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Ngmoco scores with iPhone games that charge per time played
Beverley Head / iTWire:
iiNet claims it can't block Pirate Bay
Stacey Higginbotham / GigaOM:
CNN Explains the Cloud ... Badly
Discussion: CNN and Behind the Scenes, Thanks:enauzer
Kevin J. O'Brien / New York Times:
Rivals to Challenge Microsoft Browser Settlement
 Earlier Items: 
Preston Gralla / Computerworld:
Is Apple targeting Windows 7 pirates?
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
Eventbrite Gets A $6.5 Million Infusion From Sequoia Capital
Discussion: paidContent and silicontap.com, Thanks:widawski
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Microsoft Loses Don Dodge. This Is A Huge Mistake
Andrew Munchbach / Boy Genius Report:
Confirmed: Verizon Wireless to charge up to $350 early termination on …
 

 
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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