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11:15 PM ET, December 22, 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.
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
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.
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:
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:   Twitter's Biz Stone Looks Back at 2009 and Forward to 2010 …
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.
Electronista:
BlackBerries hit by third major outage  —  BlackBerry users this afternoon have reported another outage affecting the smartphone platform's BlackBerry Information Service.  The failures appear broader than the primarily mail-related delays from just last week and now also affect web browsing …
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
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:
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 …
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 …
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 …
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 …
Discussion: Ars Technica
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 …
Chloe Albanesius / Gearlog:
Acer Unveils Ultra-Thin Timeline Series for Business Users  —  Acer on Tuesday introduced its new TravelMate Timeline series of ultra-thin notebooks intended for business customers.  —  The three versions of the device - the 8571, 8471, and 8371 - include 6-cell batteries that promise …
Discussion: Softpedia News
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”.
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
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?
Discussion: WMPoweruser.com
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.
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 …
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.”
 
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 More Items: 
Michael Schmitt / RAIN:
RAIN 12/22: Students create Net radio app for Ford's in-dash web system
Bing / Search Blog:
Bing...life should be easier  —  Holiday season is in full swing.
David Lawsky / MediaFile:
From science fiction to desktop for telepresence
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
The Twitter/FriendFeed Connection Goes Realtime Once Again
Rafat Ali / paidContent:
Warner Music in Video Deal With Hulu; Second Label After EMI
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
 Earlier Items: 
Joseph Tartakoff / paidContent:
Online Marketing Firm ReachLocal Files For $100 Million IPO
Discussion: alarm:clock, Pulse2 and VatorNews
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
Tricia Duryee / mocoNews:
The U.S. Can Look To Europe To See What The iPhone's Future Will Be Here
Discussion: the Econsultancy blog and Telegraph, Thanks:atul
 

 
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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