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4:55 PM ET, December 21, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Yelp Walks Away From Google Deal, And Half A Billion Dollars  —  Jeremy Stoppleman, the CEO of Yelp, has walked away from an all-but-signed deal to be acquired by Google for more than half a billion dollars.  —  The deal was, as we wrote late last week, in the later stages of negotiation.
Jon Stokes / Ars Technica:
Intel reveals next-generation Atom details  —  SAN FRANCISCO — This past Thursday, Intel briefed journalists on its forthcoming Atom version, codenamed Pine Trail, and on its plans to launch a slew of new processors at CES.  Apart from the launch details, the company's general message …
RELATED:
Spencer E. Ante / Business Week:
Content-Search Deals Make Twitter Profitable  —  Data-mining deals signed in October will bring in $25 million in exchange for rendering Twitter's tweets searchable on Google and Microsoft Bing  —  Twitter is ending 2009 on a high note.  The microblogging site has reached profitability …
Boy Genius Report:
Motorola Opus One specifications  —  When we say we have specifications, boy, do we mean it.  One of our connects has sent us the full rundown on Motorla's Opus One (their first iDEN Android handset) that we revealed a little while back.  The features on the device are actually pretty reasonable …
Lars Backstrom / Facebook Blog:
Facebook Memology: Top Status Trends of 2009  —  Status updates on Facebook help people understand their friends and the people around them—how they're feeling, what they're doing and what they're thinking.  In the United States alone, people on Facebook are sharing hundreds of millions of words every day …
Discussion: TechCrunch and Mashable!
Jolie O'Dell / ReadWriteWeb:
Ford's Wired Fleet: WiFi Hotspots on Four Wheels  —  Ford is making a serious bid for geeks' business.  Scott Monty, the auto company's Internet-famous social media head, wrote to us tonight with some of the most exciting car-related news an Internet-dependent nerd could wish for.
Gabriel Madway / Reuters:
Small iPhone developer Tapulous sees big success  —  SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - IPhone app developer Tapulous says its sales have approached $1 million a month, providing fresh evidence of the growing success of start-ups designing programs for Apple Inc's mobile device.
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
World Map Of Social Networks Shows Rise Of Facebook  —  (click through for larger version, interactive widget below)  —  Italian writer, blogger and photographer Vincenzo Cosenza has for the second time put together a visualization that shows the most popular social networks around the world on a map …
Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
Apple Releases Firmware Update to Address Screen Flickering on 27-Inch iMacs  —  Apple today released 27-inch iMac Graphics Firmware Update 1.0, addressing recent complaints of screen flickering on the company's newest iMac models. … Installation instructions for the firmware update …
Discussion: AppleInsider, Apple, TUAW and MacNN
Eugene Wei / Hulu Blog:
Search Captions on Hulu  —  Today we've added a new beta feature to the site in Hulu Labs: Captions Search.  You can now search the captions for thousands of videos across hundreds of shows.  —  You can initiate a captions search from the Hulu Labs page for the feature …
Joe Wilcox / BetaNews:
10 Things Microsoft did right in 2009  —  The year 2009 was pretty good to Microsoft, even as the weak economy ravaged sales.  Microsoft actually did a few things right.  The did wrong list will come tomorrow.  For today, I present the list of 10 things Microsoft did right in 2009 — in no order of importance.
Urmee Khan / Telegraph:
BBC to allow internet through TV  —  The BBC will be bringing internet services to the television set, it has been disclosed.  —  Plans to allow the BBC to use the new technology, which will enable viewers to watch shows from a variety of programme-makers and channels through …
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
The Start Project Launches To Create, Incubate Startups  —  A group of entrepreneurs and investors have partnered to create a new Silicon Valley based business incubator called The Start Project.  —  Behind the new company are Polaris Venture Partners, the founders of 83 Degrees (Webshots …
Discussion: Bits and GigaOM
Stephen E. Arnold / Beyond Search:
Chief Economist of Google Invents a Search Tool for Advertising  —  Most companies don't have a chief economist.  Google has a chief economist.  The economist is Hal R. Varian.  —  Dr. Varian has good paper.  —  Dr. Varian worked on a Google team which includes other Google wizards.
Laura June / Engadget:
Nook 1.1 update hitting now  —  Right on schedule, the Barnes and Noble Nook is kicking out a software update (we rebooted to get the download to start).  We've heard this will fix some of the issues we had with the unit in our review — but we'll update you once we've had a little time to play around with it.
Zee / The Next Web:
Firefox 3.5 is Now the World's Most Popular Browser  —  Site tracking and analytics tool StatCounter Global Statistics now shows that Firefox 3.5 is the most used browser in the world.  —  Note this is the version of the browser rather than the browser brand but nevertheless an incredible achievement.
Etsy News:
Etsy's New Old Young CEO  —  As 2010 begins, I will return to Etsy as CEO, and Maria will leave the company.  —  Maria joined Etsy in the middle of 2008 and led Etsy through an important foundational phase.  We are a profitable company now, and Maria helped us reach this major milestone.
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
Case Study: How Google Hosts & Funds A Copyright-Infringing Web Site  —  Color me tired.  I got a report of a site that reprinted one of our articles without permission.  Checking it out, I discovered that miserable combination of someone making money off content they don't own …
Joshua Topolsky / Engadget:
ICD Ultra Android tablet hands-on  —  As you may have noticed, we had a chance to get our hands on a fairly interesting little tablet made by ICD dubbed the Ultra.  The 7-inch, touchscreen tablet (resistive in the version we saw, but with capacitive versions to come) sports quite an impressive set of specs …
Bryant Urstadt / Technology Review:
Trading Shares in Milliseconds  —  Today's stock market has become a world of automated transactions executed at lightning speed.  This high-frequency trading could make the financial system more efficient, but it could also turn small mistakes into catastrophes.
Discussion: Darren Herman
Joanna Stern / Engadget:
ASUS Eee PC 1005PE review  —  By our count ASUS has released — at the very least — 20 Eee PC netbooks since 2008.  Some had 8.9-inch or 10-inch displays, some ran Xandros Linux or Windows XP, and some packed hard drives instead of flash storage.  But common to virtually …
Richard Wray / Guardian:
Google readies launch of iPhone rival  —  Search engine company tests mobile operators' reaction to its Nexus One handset  —  Google has approached several mobile phone operators in the UK, including T-Mobile and Vodafone, to gauge their interest in supporting its rival to the iPhone ahead of its launch in Britain next year.
Martin Bryant / The Next Web:
Seesmic's new release: Android NEARLY has a perfect Twitter app  —  Seesmic has just pushed out a new version of its Android Twitter app and it pushes Google's mobile platform tantalisingly close to having the perfect Twitter app.  —  Like our own Ralf Rottman I recently made the switch …
Thanks:loic
Jolie O'Dell / ReadWriteWeb:
Google Taps StackOverflow as Official Android Dev Support for Noobs, Q&A  —  Just over a year ago, we were excited to report on a new website for programmers.  StackOverflow was the brainchild of coders/rockstars Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood, and it was a social Q&A channel that promised …
BBC:
Super-fast broadband for Olympics  —  BT's superfast broadband network will be completed in time for the 2012 Olympic Games, the firm has announced.  —  The £1.5bn fibre-optic network will offer speeds of up to 100 Megabits per second (Mbps) for some customers, supporting high-definition video.
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Location-Based Ads Come to Augmented Reality in the US  —  Location-based social network Brightkite announced this morning that it has added what it calls the first mobile Augmented Reality advertising for US markets to its AR layer in the Layar augmented reality browser.
 
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 More Items: 
Michael Learmonth / AdAge:
Who Gets the Highest Ad Rates Online?
John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
Why the HTML5 ‘Video’ …
Discussion: jd/adobe, Thanks:atul
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
Mplayit Launches Android App Directory On Facebook
Discussion: mocoNews
Noam Cohen / New York Times:
Link by Link: The Trouble With Tailoring a Web Search
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Magazines Launch iPhone App Editions, But They're Not Big Sellers (AAPL)
Nicholas Carlson / Silicon Alley Insider:
Microsoft's Departing CFO Joins GM As CFO And Vice-Chair (GM, MSFT)
Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times:
Economist eyes social network cash boost
Discussion: NevilleHobson.com, Thanks:tim
 Earlier Items: 
Glenn Adams / Associated Press:
Maine to consider cell phone cancer warning
MIT:
Putting the squeeze on data
Robert N. Charette / IEEE Spectrum:
Automated to Death  —  As software pilots more of our vehicles …
Thanks:atul
Steve Lohr / New York Times:
New Programs Aim to Lure Young Into Digital Jobs
Discussion: A VC, Bits and Forever Geek
 

 
From Mediagazer:

New York Times:
Court docs detail a smear campaign against actor Blake Lively via media articles and social media posts after she accused director Justin Baldoni of misconduct

Jessica Toonkel / Wall Street Journal:
A deep dive into Paramount's sale to Skydance; sources: Skydance may integrate Pluto into Paramount+, and CBS head George Cheeks is expected to be head of TV

Kimberly Nordyke / The Hollywood Reporter:
News Corp and Telstra agree to sell Australian pay TV company Foxtel Group to sports streaming platform DAZN in a deal worth ~$2.1B

 
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