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4:40 AM ET, December 23, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Nilay Patel / Engadget:
Microsoft loses patent appeal; Word and Office to be barred from sale starting January 11  —  It's getting closer and closer to check-writing time for Steve Ballmer, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has just upheld a decision that would see Microsoft Word and Office banned from sale starting January 11.
RELATED:
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.
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:
Microsoft loses its appeal in $200-million-plus Custom XML patent infringement case
Josh Wingrove / Globe and Mail:
BlackBerry outage sweeps North America  —  Research In Motion confirmed delays in service, but couldn't offer a timeline for when service would resume  —  Waterloo, Ont.-based Research In Motion RIMM-Q was working to fix its BlackBerry messaging systems Tuesday night after a range of service outages were reported in Canada and abroad.
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Yahoo! Will Kill MyBlogLog Next Month  —  5 years to the month after it was founded, cross-blog social networking widget MyBlogLog will be closed down by Yahoo! in January, we're hearing from sources close to the project.  MyBlogLog is a service that shows blog writers and readers the faces …
Discussion: Search Engine Land
Priya Ganapati / Gadget Lab:
Strapped to Android, HTC Takes a Dizzying Ride to the Top  —  Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC is on a tear.  This year alone, the company has released five Android handsets.  Its next phone, the HTC Nexus One, aka the Googlephone, is among the most anticipated devices of 2010.
Discussion: MobileContentToday and Gizmodo
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.
Andy Greenberg / Forbes:
The $75 Tablet Computer  —  Designer Yves Behar shares images and details from One Laptop Per Child's flashy PC plans.  —  Take a look at the designs for what could someday be the world's cheapest PC, and you may start to wish you were a third-grade child in Burundi.
Liz Gannes / GigaOM:
4chan Founder “moot” to Speak at TED  —  Christopher “moot” Poole, the young founder of the irascible online forum 4chan, will speak in February at the TED conference, the elite gathering of thought leaders whose video-taped talks have become immensely popular online.
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.
The Mercury:
iPhone cops nab drivers  —  IDIOT drivers are proving to be no match for new Tasmanian-designed technology in police cars and iPhones.  —  In the first eight minutes of the new system being turned on last week, a licence and registration check conducted while police were stopped at a traffic light …
Discussion: TUAW and LOOPRumors
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
The World Is Flat For Twitter, As In Global Growth Has Stalled  —  Twitter's international traffic continues to flatten as the microblogging site's number of unique visitors flattened in November.  Twitter saw 60.3 million unique visitors in November compared to 58.3 million unique visitors in October.
RELATED:
Elizabeth Woyke / Forbes:
Android App Market Splinters  —  Netbook and tablet manufacturers are launching app stores for Android devices.  How many Android stores are too many?  —  Google designed its mobile operating system, Android, so anyone could grab the code and inject it into a product.
Discussion: MobileContentToday
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
Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:
Comcast settles P2P throttling class-action for $16 million  —  Comcast has agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit over the throttling of P2P connections that had users up in arms in late 2007 and 2008.  The company still stands behind its controversial methods for “managing” network traffic …
Dispatch:
Citigroup Internal Memo  —  The Wall Street Journal reported today on a Federal Bureau of Investigation probe into a computer-security breach targeting Citigroup that resulted in a theft of tens of millions of dollars by hackers who appear linked to a Russian cyber gang.
Matt Asay / The Open Road:
Red Hat's Q3 earnings defy gravity  —  Someone needs to let the folks in Raleigh know we're in a down economy still.  While much of the tech market lingers in the doldrums, Red Hat announced another strong earnings report for its fiscal third quarter 2010.  —  Here are some of the headline numbers:
Eric Zeman / InformationWeek:
Sprint, LG, Microsoft To Intro WinMo WiMax Phone?  —  Sprint has scheduled a press conference for Wednesday, January 6 — the day before the Consumer Electronics Show kicks off.  LG and Microsoft factor large in the presentation, and Brooke Shields is involved, too.  What could they possibly be announcing?
Arthur de Haan / The Windows Blog:
A peek behind the scenes at Hotmail  —  Hi, my name is Arthur de Haan and I am responsible for Test and System Engineering in Windows Live.  To kick things off, I'd like to give you a look behind the scenes at Hotmail, and tell you more about what it takes to build, deploy and run …
Louis Gray:
For All the Gloom Around RSS, Readers Continue to Climb  —  Skimming many of the leading technology outlets, you would think RSS had given up its ghost, making way for new services, like Twitter.  Just this week, ReadWriteWeb claimed the RSS reader market was in “disarray” and continued a “decline”.
Discussion: Shooting at Bubbles, Thanks:atul
Ross Miller / Engadget:
Firefox 4 Windows mockup provides 5 UI hints of things to come  —  Want a hint as to where Firefox will go next?  As a product visual designer at Mozilla, Stephen Horlander is the kind of guy who can make things happen — so when he shares updates and mockups on Firefox 4's user interface, we tend to pay attention.
Discussion: Neowin.net, Gizmodo and Download Squad
Jeffrey Burt / eWeek:
IBM Strikes Electronic Health Care Records Deals  —  IBM Global Financing has entered into deals with four health care organizations to help them pay for their EHR projects while they await federal stimulus funds.  The deals also will enable IBM to collect interest on the financing and raise …
Discussion: IBM, Bloomberg and Computerworld
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.
The Mozilla Blog:
Mozilla Firefox and Thailand  —  It has come to our attention that there are reports on the popular Thai forum Blognone, à¸" Mozilla à¸" Firefox , and from Mr. Paiboon's blog !!, of someone called ‘Edison’ calling Internet businesses in Thailand and using the Mozilla Foundation name.
Computerworld:
Apple approves, then pulls Nintendo emulator for iPhone  —  Last night, I e-mailed my editors at Macworld excitedly: “NES emulator for iPhone!  Approved by Apple!  Let me write this up!”  —  Last night, I e-mailed my editors at Macworld excitedly: “NES emulator for iPhone!  Approved by Apple!
Nicole Scott / netbooknews.com:
ASUS Eee pad comes with NVIDIA Tegra  —  The rumors brewing that ASUS is coming out with an Eee pad to the tablet market aren't exactly new, BUT that they are planning on using the NVIDIA Tegra platform is Amazing News!!!  The Eee PC platform has been exclusively using Intel CPUs for the past 2 years …
Joanna / The Invisible Things Lab's blog:
Another TXT Attack  —  Earlier this year our team has presented an attack against Intel TXT that exploited a design problem with SMM mode being over privileged on PC platforms and able to interfere with the SENTER instruction.  The Intel response was two-fold: to patch the SMM implementation bugs …
Discussion: Slashdot and The Register
 
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 More Items: 
Michael Schmitt / RAIN:
RAIN 12/22: Students create Net radio app for Ford's in-dash web system
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Twitter's Biz Stone Looks Back at 2009 and Forward to 2010 …
Bing / Search Blog:
Bing...life should be easier  —  Holiday season is in full swing.
Chloe Albanesius / Gearlog:
Acer Unveils Ultra-Thin Timeline Series for Business Users
Discussion: Softpedia News
David Lawsky / MediaFile:
From science fiction to desktop for telepresence
Rafat Ali / paidContent:
Warner Music in Video Deal With Hulu; Second Label After EMI
Jay Yarow / Silicon Alley Insider:
Netflix Options Jump On Takeover Rumors (NFLX, AMZN)
 Earlier Items: 
Daniel Brusilovsky / TechCrunch:
BitGravity Co-Founder Announces 3Crowd, Funded By Jay Adelson And Kevin Rose
Discussion: Verbophobia and blog.3crowd.com
The Typekit Blog:
Customize your WordPress blog with Typekit fonts
Thanks:atul
Nick Spence / Computerworld:
Autodesk launches Smoke 2010 for Mac OS X (Updated)
Michael Calore / Epicenter:
Vaporware 2009: Inhale the Fail
Discussion: Blue's News
Macon Phillips / White House.gov Blog Feed:
Introducing the New Cybersecurity Coordinator
 

 
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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