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6:00 PM ET, December 22, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Nielsen Wire:
Top Mobile Phones, Sites and Brands for 2009  —  The iPhone and various Blackberry handhelds dominated the mobile device market, while Google, Yahoo! and YouTube led the way as far as most accessed sites and brands on the mobile web.  —  Top 10 Mobile Phones in Use (U.S.) - January -October 2009 RANK Device Embedded Base of
RELATED:
Dave Rosenberg / CNET News:   LG, RIM top Apple in number of phone users
Bill Rigby / Reuters:
Microsoft loses Word appeal, will adjust program  —  SEATTLE (Reuters) - A U.S. court of appeals on Tuesday upheld a $290 million jury verdict against Microsoft Corp for infringing a patent held by a small Canadian software firm, and affirmed an injunction that prevents Microsoft from selling versions …
RELATED:
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:
Microsoft loses its appeal in $200-million-plus Custom XML patent infringement case  —  Microsoft is going to have to cease providing Custom XML as part of its Office suite, as it has lost its appeal to overturn a patent-infringement verdict awarded to Toronto-based i4i for that technology.
Microsoft:
Microsoft Statement Regarding the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit Ruling in the i4i Case  —  Statement by Kevin Kutz, Director of Public Affairs, Microsoft  —  We have just learned that the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has denied our appeal in the i4i case.
Anand Lal Shimpi / AnandTech:
Epic Demonstrates Unreal Engine 3 for the iPod Touch/iPhone 3GS  —  Buy the Apple MC011LL/A iPod Touch 64GB Screen  —  I got together with Mark Rein last week and he showed me an Unreal Engine 3 tech demo running on a 3rd generation iPod Touch.  The same Unreal Engine 3 that powers Gears of War 2, running on an iPod Touch.
Marc Flores / Boy Genius Report:
Israeli programmer hacks Kindle, breaks DRM protection  —  Nothing makes you feel like you truly own your media and content like being able to do almost whatever you want with it.  We're already used to DRM for our MP3s and the limitations it puts on device selection and sharing …
Discussion: Maximum PC, Erictric and GeekTonic
RELATED:
Ed Bayley / Electronic Frontier Foundation:
An E-Book Buyer's Guide to Privacy  —  As we count down to end of 2009, the emerging star of this year's holiday shopping season is shaping up to be the electronic book reader (or e-reader).  From Amazon's Kindle to Barnes and Noble's forthcoming Nook, e-readers are starting to transform …
Discussion: eWeek, Computerworld, BayNewser and TeleRead
Michael Calore / Epicenter:
Vaporware 2009: Inhale the Fail  —  Take a deep breath and savor the sweet stench of disappointment.  It's time for another installment of Wired.com's Vaporware Awards.  —  This is the 12th year we've offered our annual roundup of the tech industry's biggest, brashest and most baffling unfulfilled promises.
Discussion: Blue's News
Macon Phillips / White House.gov Blog Feed:
Introducing the New Cybersecurity Coordinator  —  Today the White House announced the President's new White House Cybersecurity Coordinator, Howard Schmidt.  —  President Barack Obama greets his new White House Cyber Security Chief Howard A. Schmidt in the Cross Hall of the White House.
Telegraph:
Facebook fuelling divorce, research claims  —  Facebook is being cited in almost one in five of online divorce petitions, lawyers have claimed.  —  The social networking site, which connects old friends and allows users to make new ones online, is being blamed for an increasing number of marital breakdowns.
Miguel Helft / Bits:
Who Walked, Google or Yelp?  —  One thing is certain about the Google-Yelp courtship: After turning hot as recently as Friday, a bitter chill has spread over the relationship, and for now, the mating dance is definitely off.  —  But why things fell apart after the two sides had virtually agreed …
RELATED:
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
As Microsoft Warily Eyes Google Buying Spree, Will It Jump …
Business Wire:
One Laptop Per Child Drives Breakthrough Advances in Revolutionary XO Children's Laptop  —  Product Road Map to Deliver Unprecedented High Performance, Low Power Consumption and Design Innovation at Lower and Lower Cost  —  CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—One Laptop per Child (OLPC) …
RELATED:
Jonathan Fildes / BBC:
Firefox for mobile ready to debut  —  The mobile browser has been in development for the last year and a half  —  The first mobile phone version of the popular web browser Firefox is “days away” from launch, the head of the project has told the BBC.  —  The browser, codenamed Fennec …
Arn / MacRumors:
More Evidence of iPhone OS 4.0 Already in Testing  —  Last week we saw the first evidence that iPhone 4.0 was in testing with reports that it was already being spotted in web site logs.  We pointed out at the time that while interesting, such user agent logs could easily be faked.
Jay Yarow / Silicon Alley Insider:
Netflix Options Jump On Takeover Rumors (NFLX, AMZN)  —  Netflix (NFLX) option activity is jumping as scuttlebutt says the company could be a takeover target.  —  Earlier today, Reuters reporter Anupreeta Das tweeted “Netflix-Amazon rumor doing rounds of options market again.”
Clive Thompson / Wired News:
Learn to Let Go: How Success Killed Duke Nukem  —  On the last day, they gathered for a group photo.  They were videogame programmers, artists, level builders, artificial-intelligence experts.  Their team was — finally — giving up, declaring defeat, and disbanding.
Daniel Brusilovsky / TechCrunch:
BitGravity Co-Founder Announces 3Crowd, Funded By Jay Adelson And Kevin Rose  —  3Crowd Technologies, Barrett Lyon's new stealth startup, has announced that the company has received funding from Storm Ventures, Greenwich Technology Associates and angels Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson participating as well.
Discussion: Verbophobia and blog.3crowd.com
Jonny Evans / 9 to 5 Mac:
iPhone price wars begin - massive discounts hit France...  France is Europe's healthiest iPhone market because the device has been sold there by multiple carriers, driving sales higher - now carriers there are slashing prices on the product, applying steep discounts against the regular price.
Clifford J. Levy / New York Times:
Russians Wary of Cyrillic Web Domains  —  MOSCOW — The Kremlin has long been irritated by the way the United States dominates the Internet, all the way down to the ban on using Cyrillic for Web addresses — even kremlin.ru has to be demeaningly rendered in English.
Discussion: Domain Name Wire and Gadgetopia
David Diaz / TechCrunch:
Apple Not Liable For Plagued iMac Screens, Updates Firmware Anyway  —  Apple just dodged a bullet.  —  A California federal judge dismissed a potential class action lawsuit which alleged that Apple propagated their popular iMac screens without disclosing certain manufacturing defects to its customers …
Brian Garner / AppleInsider:
Apple's TV subscription plan gains potential partners in CBS, Disney  —  Both CBS Corp. and Walt Disney Co. have shown interest in offering content for Apple's TV subscription proposal slated for roll out sometime in 2010.  —  Walt Disney Co. and CBS Corp. are considering participating …
Dennis Fisher:
Attackers Buying Own Data Centers for Botnets, Spam  —  The malware writers and criminals who run botnets for years have been using shared hosting platforms and so-called bulletproof hosting providers as bases of operations for their online crimes.  But, as law enforcement agencies …
Discussion: Gizmodo, Ars Technica and Fudzilla
Jason Hiner / Between the Lines:
Backupify drops paywall; backs up your data from Twitter, Facebook, and Gmail  —  One of the best parts of keeping your data in the cloud is that you don't have to worry quite as much about doing your own backups.  If your computer crashes or your hard drive dies, you won't lose all of the messages …
Matt Marshall / VentureBeat:
Language learning site Livemocha keeps growing — gets $8M boost  —  Livemocha, the fast-growing site that lets people learn other languages for free — by matching them up with other native speakers online — has raised $8 million more in a second round of funding.
David Lawsky / MediaFile:
From science fiction to desktop for telepresence  —  Telepresence was science fiction in the 50s, a Disneyland attraction in the 60s, and eventually morphed into costly corporate “telepresence rooms” and other high-end systems, which relied on expensive dedicated communications lines.
Chris / cdixon.org:
Google should open source what actually matters: their search ranking algorithm  —  Websites live or die based on how a small group of programmers at Google decide their sites should rank in Google's main search results.  As the “router” of the vast majority of traffic on the internet …
Rafat Ali / paidContent:
Warner Music in Video Deal With Hulu; Second Label After EMI  —  Hulu is looking more and more like a mini-Vevo competitor: after a deal with EMI, done last month before Vevo's launch, Warner Music (not part of Vevo JV) has just announced a deal Hulu.  Among the Warner labels …
Discussion: MediaMemo and CNET News
 
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 More Items: 
Chloe Albanesius / Gearlog:
Acer Unveils Ultra-Thin Timeline Series for Business Users
Discussion: Softpedia News
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
The Twitter/FriendFeed Connection Goes Realtime Once Again
Tameka Kee / mocoNews:
Digital Chocolate's Trip Hawkins: Offerpal Is Still A Good Partner …
Discussion: Inside Social Games
Kate O'Brien / mobilesyrup.com:
Nokia Beta Labs intros “Nokia Image Space”
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Bump Shares Its Phone Tapping, Data Swapping Technology With A New API
Discussion: Bump Blog
The Typekit Blog:
Customize your WordPress blog with Typekit fonts
Thanks:atul
Brooke Crothers / CNET News:
Broadcom, Nvidia bring HD video to new Netbooks
Discussion: Neowin.net
Joseph Tartakoff / paidContent:
Online Marketing Firm ReachLocal Files For $100 Million IPO
Discussion: alarm:clock and Pulse2
 Earlier Items: 
Greg Sandoval / CNET News:
Accused ‘Wolverine’ pirate calls charges ‘ridiculous’
Discussion: p2pnet
Nick Spence / Computerworld:
Autodesk launches Smoke 2010 for Mac OS X (Updated)
Mark Gibbs / Network World:
Tynt, a whole new set of Web metrics
Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:
The best and worst thing Twitter did in 2009: RT
Thanks:atul
Clint Boulton / eWeek:
IBM Preps for Cloud Computing War vs. Google, Microsoft in 2010
Tricia Duryee / mocoNews:
The U.S. Can Look To Europe To See What The iPhone's Future Will Be Here
Discussion: the Econsultancy blog, Thanks:atul
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Voice May Join Google's Enterprise Lineup
Roberto Mateu / Opera Labs:
Opera 10.5 pre-alpha for Labs