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4:55 AM ET, November 6, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Biz / Twitter Blog:
Retweet Limited Rollout  —  We've just activated a feature called retweet on a very small percentage of accounts in order to see how it works in the wild.  Retweet is a button that makes forwarding a particularly interesting tweet to all your followers very easy.
Google Code Blog:
Introducing Closure Tools  —  Millions of Google users worldwide use JavaScript-intensive applications such as Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Maps.  Like developers everywhere, Googlers want great web apps to be easier to create, so we've built many tools to help us develop these (and many other) apps.
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Zynga CEO Mark Pincus: “I Did Every Horrible Thing In The Book Just To Get Revenues”  —  Zynga CEO Mark Pincus said earlier this week that he intends to make sure his company's games don't include scammy offers in the future.  Our full background on this story is here.
Nick Gianos / Facebook Developers:
Continued Action Against Deceptive Ads  —  As part of an ongoing effort we've had underway to address the quality of third-party ads running inside applications, we wanted to offer some clarifications, reminders, and information on our actions.
RELATED:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Facebook To Increase Enforcement Of Anti-Scam Rules
Todd Bishop / TechFlash:
Google CEO: Hopefully we won't repeat Microsoft's past mistakes  —  Eric Schmidt appeared on Fox Business Network tonight for an extensive interview with host Neil Cavuto, who pressed the Google CEO a couple times over whether the company has the potential to become the next Microsoft …
Discussion: GigaOM
Duncan Graham-Rowe / Technology Review:
Splitting Up Search  —  Distributing a search engine's index around the world could make it faster and more efficient, researchers say.  —  Searching the Web could become faster for users and much more efficient for search companies if search engines were split up and distributed around the world, according to researchers at Yahoo.
Boy Genius Report:
AT&T gearing up to launch $99 8GB iPhone 3GS?  —  Definitely not confirmed, but rather interesting nonetheless.  We've heard now from two sources that AT&T, and we guess Apple, are contemplating launching an 8GB iPhone 3GS at the $99 price point before Christmas.
Randy Lewis / Pop & Hiss:
No Doubt sues Activision over Band Hero [Updated]  —  Rock band No Doubt has filed a real-world lawsuit over its virtual role in the just-released Band Hero edition of the Guitar Hero video game series, claiming that the game has “transformed No Doubt band members into a virtual karaoke circus act …
Brandon LeBlanc / The Windows Blog:
Windows 7 sales exceed Vista sales by 234%  —  It has been quite amazing to watch the global excitement build around Windows 7, especially during a tough economic climate.  It was just a few short weeks ago that we learned about Windows 7 outselling the UK's “own” Harry Potter.
RELATED:
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Twitter Starts Curating Trending Topic Tweets  —  Twitter's Trending Topics area is one of the easiest things to game on the web.  Even when trends start out as real items, spammers often latch onto them with bogus tweets hoping to ride the wave and get some people seeing their spammy nonsense.
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
How Google & Yahoo Make Money Off A Twitter Typo Domain  —  Like many people, I misspelled a domain name today when I was trying to visit a web site.  I typed Twiter.com (with one T) rather than Twitter.com.  I wasn't surprised to land on a site with ads, as is common when entering typos.
Stephen Lawson / PC World:
Palm Shows Ares WebOS Development Tool  —  Palm will introduce a Web-based development environment for WebOS applications, called Ares, by the end of this year.  —  Ares got its first public demonstration on Thursday at the Open Mobile Summit conference in San Francisco.
Marguerite Reardon / CNET News:
Midnight Droid madness in Manhattan  —  NEW YORK—More than a hundred people were lined up at midnight Thursday outside a Verizon Wireless store in midtown Manhattan to be among the first people to buy the new Motorola Droid.  —  About 65 eager shoppers lined the south side of West 34th Street across …
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Sean Parker's “Causes” to Leave MySpace: Does It Matter?  —  The wildly popular nonprofit fundraising application Causes reportedly emailed users of its MySpace app on Tuesday to tell them that all Causes will be removed from MySpace on Friday morning, in three days.
Discussion: ssireview.org
Stephen Shankland / CNET News:
Near-final Thunderbird 3 due next week  —  Thunderbird 3, an update to the e-mail software that Mozilla hopes will give it some of the advantages of its Firefox browser has enjoyed, is due to arrive in near-final form next week.  —  Mozilla Messaging plans to issue release candidate 1 …
Nicholas Carlson / Silicon Alley Insider:
Twitter Creator's New Startup Gets An “Extremely Hot Angel Deal”  —  Twitter chairman and cofounder Jack Dorsey has a new startup called the Square iPhone Payment System, to be located at SquareUp.com.  —  The business will be selling consumers on an attachment for their iPhones they can use …
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
US Cyworld Will No Longer Be Able To Service  —  Ah, Engrish.  There's a whole world of funny translations out there to laugh at.  —  Cyworld, the massive Korean based virtual world, is shutting down its U.S. site, which draws all of 112,000 monthly visitors according to Comscore.
Discussion: paidContent
Epicenter:
Judge Halts Online Sale of Beatles Songs  —  A federal judge on Thursday ordered a Santa Cruz company to immediately quit selling Beatles and other music on its online site, setting aside a preposterous argument that it had copyrights on songs via a process called “psycho-acoustic simulation.”
Juan Carlos Perez / ITworld.com:
Postini technology to spread across Google Apps  —  I like it!  —  The Postini technology that lets Google Apps Premier administrators control their e-mail environments by establishing and enforcing usage policies, rules and parameters will be extended to the other applications of the suite.
Geoffrey A. Fowler / Digits:
E-Commerce Health is in the Eye of the Beholder  —  Depending on whom you ask, U.S. online shopping is either in unprecedented decline - or one of the only bright spots in American retail.  —  On Thursday, comScore reported that U.S. online spending in the third quarter slipped 2% to $29.6 billion versus last year.
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Brizzly Marries Groups And Twitter Lists  —  When it was first unveiled at our Realtime Crunchup in July, easily one of the best features of the web-based Twitter client Brizzly was Groups.  Basically, it allowed you to sort your Twitter followers into subsections, to make specific groups of users easier to follow.
Wendy Davis / MediaPost:
iPhone Users Sue Gaming Company For Harvesting Cell Numbers  —  Gaming manufacturer Storm8 has been sued for allegedly collecting phone numbers of iPhone users who downloaded the company's popular games from the iTunes app store.  —  “The wireless telephone numbers of users' phones are not used …
Mike Clark / Near Field Communications World:
Apple testing RFID-enabled iPhone?  —  Einar Rosenberg, who runs the Near Field Communications Group on Linkedin.com, has reported the following: … For more details on Apple's ‘Touch Screen RFID Tag Reader’ patent see our earlier article here.  —  UPDATE: And here's the Touch Project's iPhone RFID demonstration video:
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
Demonoid is Alive, The Tracker Has Returned  —  Since Demonoid went down in September there has been a lot of speculation about what had caused it, and how long it would take for the site to recover.  —  As always, Demonoid staff kept quiet about the site's future and all its users …
Discussion: digg.com
Adam Lashinsky / Fortune:
The decade of Steve  —  How Apple's imperious, brilliant CEO transformed American business.  —  (Fortune magazine) — How's this for a gripping corporate story line: Youthful founder gets booted from his company in the 1980s, returns in the 1990s, and in the following decade survives two brushes with death …
Andrew LaVallee / Digits:
Facebook ‘What People Are Up To,’ MySpace ‘What People Are Into,’ News Corp. Exec Says  —  News Corp.'s digital chief said Thursday that the company's social-networking property MySpace is going in a different direction than rival Facebook, based on how its members socialize and share interests.
Discussion: All Facebook
Neil Hughes / AppleInsider:
Apple investigating ‘Grab & Go’ simplified cross-platform sync  —  Apple could make the transferring of files between devices like Macs, iPhones and the Apple TV simpler with a new cross-platform, cloud-integrated sync service.  —  In a system described in a new patent application …
Discussion: MacRumors, The iPhone Blog and Engadget
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Lawsuit alleges Offerpal co-founder was cheated out of ownership  —  Offerpal Media founder Anu Shukla was hit with a lawsuit this summer over alleged shenanigans over the company's founding, VentureBeat has learned.  —  In August, Kevin Halpern filed a breach of contract lawsuit against Shukla.
Discussion: The Social and CNET News
Brandon Badger / Google Book Search Blog:
List of all magazines now available in Google Books  —  Posted by Jeffrey Peng, Software Engineer, Google Books  —  I'm a software engineer on Google Books.  One of my main projects is adding magazine content and features to the site.  In September we were excited to announce the availability …
Discussion: Kindle Review, TeleRead and ResourceShelf, Thanks:mrinaldesai
Nilay Patel / Engadget:
Motorola DROID goes on sale a little early at Best Buy Mobile  —  Looks like the DROID invasion is starting a little early — we were just sent these pics of Motorola's beastly Android slider on sale at an unspecified Best Buy Mobile somewhere deep within America's heartland.
Discussion: Digits, PC World and SoftSailor
 
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 More Items: 
Tameka Kee / mocoNews:
Mogreet Launches MMS-Based Video Ad Platform
Tricia Duryee / mocoNews:
The Associated Press Offers Platform To Publishers For Building Mobile Apps
Jessica Dolcourt / Crave: The gadget blog:
Slacker Radio now playing on Android phones
Discussion: AndroidGuys and Gizmodo
James Urquhart / CNET News:
IBM launches development and test cloud
Brad Linder / Download Squad:
Zoho rebrands as FakeOffice (not really, but it's catchy, no?)
Discussion: Zoho Blogs
iPodNN:
Apple reveals Louvre store, promises more French locations
Discussion: MacNN
 Earlier Items: 
David Kaplan / paidContent:
CBS Swings To Profit; Interactive Revs Drop 14 Percent
Webmaster Blog:
MSNBot 1.1 is retired  —  The Bing team has been talking …
John Cox / Network World:
Apple seeks new sheriff to lock up iPhones
Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
As Facebook Ages, Gen Y Turns to Twitter
Discussion: Ypulse
 

 
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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