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7:15 PM ET, December 1, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Jack Dorsey's Square Is (Almost) Open For Business  —  We've been tracking Twitter founder Jack Dorsey's Square since May when we first got the details on the new mobile phone payment service.  —  Today the company unveiled its website for the first time, and they continue to test the product in private beta.
RELATED:
Nicholas Carlson / Silicon Alley Insider:
Not All Of Square's “Advisors” Are Hollywood Sexpots  —  Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey today unveiled his new startup, Square, which lets any iPhone-owning merchant accept credit cards.  —  Square also announced its “advisors.”  Among them: Alyssa Milano, of “Who's The Boss?” fame.
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Square Worth $40 Million Before Launch  —  Earlier today we wrote about Square, the new payment service cofounded by Jim McKelvey and Twitter creator Jack Dorsey.  We also interviewed Dorsey and used Square to buy a coffee.  —  We knew Square had closed a hyper-competitive venture round.
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Is YouTube Ready for Primetime?  Google Wants to Stream TV, for a Fee.  —  YouTube, which is already trying out the movie rental business, wants to get into TV too.  —  Google's video site has been trying to convince the TV industry to let it stream individual shows for a fee, multiple sources tell me.
John Paczkowski / Digital Daily:
AT&T Ranked Last in Consumer Reports' Best Cellphone Service Survey  —  The annual survey of wireless customer satisfaction from Consumer Reports hits the streets this week and it doesn't have much good to say about AT&T. In a canvass of more than 50,000 readers spanning 26 U.S. cities …
Chris Foresman / Ars Technica:
Steve Jobs intervenes, approves Knocking streaming video app  —  A persuasive e-mail from an iPhone developer to Steve Jobs helped Pointy Heads Software get its Knocking Live Video—the first official iPhone app capable of streaming live video over 3G and WiFi connections—approved for sale in the App Store.
Gregg Keizer / Computerworld:
Apple, Psystar strike deal in copyright case  —  Mac clone maker to pay Apple unspecified damages, but may be able to keep selling systems  —  Computerworld - Apple and Mac clone maker Psystar agreed Monday to settle a 17-month lawsuit that will effectively stop Psystar from preinstalling Apple's Mac OS X …
RELATED:
Neil Hughes / AppleInsider:
Psystar agrees to pay Apple $2.7M in settlement
Discussion: LOOPRumors
Boy Genius Report:
Apple's iDVD getting refreshed with iTunes LP creation support?  —  That's what one of our connects are telling us.  We've been informed that Apple plans to completely redo their iDVD application (in addition to others in iLife 2010), and besides iDVD not being refreshed in a pretty long time …
Sam Diaz / Between the Lines:
Comcast keeps promise, launches data usage meter  —  Nearly a year ago, Comcast first announced that it would establish a data usage tracking meter to help its broadband customers determine the amount of data being used on their accounts, especially since the company imposed a 250 GB cap on usage last year.
Marissa Mayer / The Official Google Blog:
Zeitgeist 2009: the collective consciousness  —  Curiosity — it's why we search the web.  Whether searching for the latest news, a popular holiday gift, a website you've heard about, the latest singing sensation, or the trailer to a blockbuster film, you come to Google with something on your mind.
David Faber / CNBC.com:
GE, Comcast Complete Deal Over NBC Universal: Source  —  The deal between General Electric and Comcast over a majority stake in NBC Universal is complete, and there is nothing left to do but process paper, a source close to the merger told CNBC Tuesday.  —  A deal is expected to be completed …
Zee / The Next Web:
Introducing twitter's first augmented reality iPhone app with geo-tagging built in.  —  Twitter 360 is an iPhone app that lets you visually see the flow of tweets from locations nearby, layered on top of your natural “real” environment.  —  Thanks to to the iPhone's video camera and Twitter's …
Nick Eaton / The Microsoft Blog:
Microsoft says black screens not caused by security updates  —  Updated 3:09 p.m.: Prevx posts response to Microsoft's statement.  —  Contrary to reports earlier this week, Microsoft said Tuesday the “black screens of death” some people have attributed to recent Windows security patches are not caused by those updates.
RELATED:
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes / Hardware 2.0:
UPDATED - “Black Screen of Death” problems seem to be little …
Christopher Soghoian / slight paranoia:
8 Million Reasons for Real Surveillance Oversight  —  Disclaimer: The information presented here has been gathered and analyzed in my capacity as a graduate student at Indiana University.  This data was gathered and analyzed on my own time, without using federal government resources.
Joseph Tartakoff / paidContent:
Huffington To Murdoch: Stop ‘Pointing Fingers’  —  Arianna Huffington used her 25 minutes at the FTC's ‘How Will Journalism Survive The Internet Age?’ conference to take News Corp (NYSE: NWS).  CEO Rupert Murdoch and his executives to task for their remarks comparing news aggregators to …
RELATED:
Cecilia Kang / Post Tech:
Murdoch: Future of newspapers in online payment, feds should stand back
Discussion: L.A. Times Tech Blog and Techdirt
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes / Hardware 2.0:
XP's usage share down, Win 7, Firefox & IE8 up  —  Data released by web metrics company Net Applications indicates that the release of Windows 7 to the general public has put a significant dent into Windows XP's usage share.  —  For the November period, web usage of XP dropped by 1.45%, while Vista's usage share only dropped by 0.2%.
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Fring Brings Free Video Calling To The iPhone, Nokia Smartphones  —  Apple has long been rumored to integrate video conferencing capabilities in the iPhone, and most expected Skype to incorporate such a feature in its free application for iPhone and iPod Touch devices sooner or later, but Israel's fring is first to actually do it.
R. Scott Raynovich / Light Reading:
Luke Wilson's War  —  BOZEMAN, Mont. - I've been following with interest the AT&T and Verizon map wars.  From my own personal experience, it's a fascinating exercise in disingenuous marketing.  For AT&T, possibly more so, as I believe its map commercials are egregiously misleading.
Thanks:aschmitt
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:
Office Web Apps access comes to Windows Mobile, iPhone, BlackBerry and more (with some caveats)  —  For the past year, Microsoft officials have said repeatedly — without offering any specifics — that Office Web Apps will work on mobile phones.  But now that the public beta of Office Web Apps is available …
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Web-based toy maker Smith & Tinker lays off 30 percent of staff  —  Smith & Tinker had a high-profile launch of its Nanovor toy and accompanying game web site this fall.  It was billed as a marriage of toys and online games.  —  But yesterday the company laid off about 30 percent of its staff …
Discussion: TechFlash and Xconomy
Chris Kanaracus / Computerworld:
SAP readying potential Google Wave rival  —  IDG News Service - SAP is planning to release a “virtual war room” decision-making tool dubbed Constellation, which could be a potential rival to Google's heralded Wave collaboration platform.  —  Constellation will consist of a cloud-based tool accessible via …
Discussion: ReadWriteWeb
paidContent:
Ten Predictions For The E-Reader/E-Book Market In 2010  —  This has been a breakout year for e-readers and e-books—device sales will have more than tripled by the end of this year, and content sales are up 176% for the year.  But next year will be anything but boring.  Here are Forrester's predictions for 2010:
Discussion: TeleRead
Todd Bishop / TechFlash:
Microsoft exec: Quitting Google as tough as stopping smoking  —  There were some great insights at last night's Xconomy Forum on the Future of Search and Information Discovery, and we'll get to those in a moment.  But first, the primary challenge facing any company thinking about getting …
Discussion: Xconomy
Staci D. Kramer / paidContent:
Seeking Alpha Raises $7 Million Second Round  —  Interesting news from Seeking Alpha: the financial commentary and info site has raised $7 million in a second round led by new investor DAG Ventures with “full participation” from existing investors Benchmark & Accel.
Discussion: Silicon Alley Insider
Om Malik / GigaOM:
For Nokia's Ovi, the World (Minus the U.S.) Is Enough  —  Tero Ojanperä, Nokia's EVP of Services  —  For nearly two years, I have been critical of Nokia for a diverse set of reasons including its denial of competition from Apple's iPhone, its hardware, and a botched launch of its Ovi app store.
Nicholas Carlson / Silicon Alley Insider:
AOL's Editorial Process — Revealed!  —  Today we obtained a copy of one AOL editor's “welcome to the team” email to new writers.  —  Reading it, we learned a little bit about how AOL — transtioning from a dying dial-up ISP to a huge media company — expects its 500 fulltime …
 
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 More Items: 
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Brainstorm Tech:
Charlie Wolf: How the Mac roared back
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Heyzap makes Flash-based web games more social
Discussion: Inside Social Games and TechCrunch
Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:
Ansca Mobile raises $1M to build Adobe Flash rival for iPhone apps
Discussion: mocoNews
Karl Bunyan / Inside Facebook:
Will Facebook Users Share Their Email Address with App Developers?
Discussion: All Facebook
Alex Williams / ReadWriteWeb:
Gartner to Acquire AMR Research for $64 Million
 Earlier Items: 
Andrew LaVallee / Digits:
Bing's Take on Twitter Trends Differs From Twitter's
John Ebbert / AdExchanger.com:
Yahoo! Closes Right Media's Direct Media Exchange
Discussion: paidContent and TechCrunch
Lucas Mearian / Computerworld:
Harvard study: Computers don't save hospitals money
Discussion: Rough Type
Roi Carthy / TechCrunch:
Need Help Selecting a Payment Processor?  Look No Further Than Payments-R-Us
Discussion: Online Dating Insider
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Peter White / Deadline:
Fox and Hulu extend their content partnership, including in-season streaming rights for Fox's programming; sources: the deal is worth $1.5B over four years

Peter Kafka / Business Insider:
A Q&A with Chris Balfe, CEO of Red Seat Ventures, which has helped Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly set up their podcast and streaming businesses and sell ads

Ashley Carman / Bloomberg:
A growing number of podcasters, including Tim Ferriss, are moving away from interviews to monologues or co-hosts, as some well-known guests can be overexposed

 
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