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10:10 AM ET, February 4, 2010

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Ashlee Vance / Bits:
Sun's Chief Executive Tweets His Resignation  —  Jonathan Schwartz, the last chief executive of Sun Microsystems, has become the first Fortune 200 boss to tweet his resignation.  —  Late Wednesday night, Mr. Schwartz used Twitter to publish a haiku about his exit from Oracle, which just completed its purchase of Sun last week.
New York Times:
Amazon Is Said to Buy Touch-Screen Company  —  In a sign that Amazon wants to upgrade its Kindle e-reader to compete head-on with the Apple iPad, Amazon has acquired Touchco, a New York-based start-up specializing in touch-screen technology, a person briefed on the deal said Wednesday.
RELATED:
Nick Bilton / Bits:
Is Amazon Building a Superkindle?  —  If you were Amazon, and Apple released the iPad, what would you do?  Scurry away into the corner, or buy a small company in New York and use its technology to build a Superkindle, with a multitouch color screen and built-in applications?  If you guessed the latter, you're right.
Brad Stone / Bits:
AT&T Gives Green Light to Sling TV Over 3G  —  Remember the Great Sling Spat?  —  A year ago, Sling Media, a subsidiary of EchoStar, introduced a nifty application for the Apple iPhone that allowed users with a Slingbox at home to watch and control their home television signal from their handsets.
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Apple Now Lets You Preview iPhone Apps In Your Browser  —  In November 2009, Apple launched a feature dubbed iTunes Preview, which essentially enabled people to see what music is available on iTunes from their Web browser without the need to fire up - or install - the desktop software program.
Priya Ganapati / Gadget Lab:
Symbian Operating System, Now Open Source and Free  —  The source code for the ten-year old Symbian platform will be completely open source and available for free starting Thursday.  The transition from proprietary code to open source is the largest in software history, claims the Symbian Foundation.
Ellen Nakashima / Washington Post:
Google to enlist NSA to help it ward off cyberattacks  —  The world's largest Internet search company and the world's most powerful electronic surveillance organization are teaming up in the name of cybersecurity.  —  Under an agreement that is still being finalized, the National Security Agency …
RELATED:
Nicholas Carlson / Silicon Alley Insider:
Monster Buys Yahoo HotJobs For $225 Million In Cash (YHOO, MWW)  —  Monster (MWW) will buy Yahoo (YHOO) HotJobs for $225 million in cash, the companies announced today.  —  Details from the release:  — “Monster and Yahoo! have also entered into a three year commercial traffic agreement …
RELATED:
Jennadawn / Twitter Blog:
Flying Around With Hovercards  —  Because many of you use twitter.com to read and write tweets, we've been spending some time focusing on ways to improve your experience on the site.  Today, we're introducing a feature called Hovercards that will be a handy way to interact with the folks behind each tweet.
Discussion: Pulse2, Mashable!, Geekword, The Next Web and Pocket-lint, Thanks:atul
Heather Hopkins / Hitwise Intelligence:
Facebook Largest News Reader?  —  Marshall Kirkpatrick at Read Write Web had an interesting piece suggesting that Facebook could become the world's leading news reader.  A recent Facebook company blog entry encouraged members to set up a news feed on Facebook.
David Watson / Comcast Voices:
Comcast Launches XFINITY  —  Today on Comcast's earnings call Brian Roberts and Steve Burke talked about XFINITY, the new brand for our technology platform and products.  Simply put, XFINITY is about offering our customers more — more HD, more speed, more choice and more control over their services.
Laurie Sullivan / MediaPost:
Google Patent Filings Shed Light On Future Of Internet And Online Advertising  —  Google updated a series of patent filings in January that could suggest the search giant plans to dig deeper into behavioral targeting, video content, and might also roll out dynamic advertising in its mapping applications …
Thanks:atul
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Kwedit Launches: The First Completely Unreliable Payment Network  —  Something tells me Kwedit, which launches today, is going to be a hit.  It's a new payment service that absolutely doesn't guarantee payments.  In fact, its unreliability is what makes it so attractive to social game publishers and other people selling virtual goods.
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
5min Rules The How-To Video Space  —  We recently wrote about the traction that how-to video site and producer Howcast is seeing online.  But there's another information and how-to video startup that is dominating the space: 5min.  The company is a syndication platform for instructional …
James Kendrick / jkOnTheRun:
Palm Mobile Hotspot Speed Tests — Not so Good  —  Palm captured the imagination of many when they announced the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus on Verizon early this year.  The ability to turn the phones into the equivalent of the MiFi excited quite a few who were considering such capability for their mobile arsenal.
Android Tapp:
Download The Weather Channel Android App from your TV!  —  The Weather Channel is helping Google's mobile platform Android reach the masses by allowing users to scan a bar code from a television and download their weather app from the Android Market.  An innovative approach to bridge the gap …
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Factual Raises $1 Million Seed Round From Andreessen Horowitz, Idealab, And Angels  —  If you co-founded the company that became Google AdSense, as Gil Elbaz did with Applied Semantics, you don't have any problem finding investors when you want to start a new venture.
Ben Parr / Mashable!:
Twitter Finally Fixes Mobile OAuth [PICS]  —  Twitter mobile users and developers, rejoice: the microblogging company has finally fixed mobile OAuth.  —  In an announcement earlier today, Twitter's Director of Platform Ryan Sarver revealed that the team has finally fixed the rendering issue …
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
AppsFire Draws In Some French Angels To Bankroll Mobile App Recommendations  —  With more than 140,000 apps on the iPhone alone, there is a real need for services which help you find the best apps.  Apple's iTunes ratings and genius recommendations only go so far.
Discussion: AppsFire.com blog and The Next Web
Joel Hruska / HotHardware.com News:
Intel Details Upcoming Mobile and Six-Core Processors  —  With the International Solid-State Circuits Conference less than a week away, Intel has released additional details on its hexa-core desktop, next generation mobile and dual-core Westmere processors.  Much of the dual-core data …
Walter S. Mossberg / Personal Technology:
Two Little Laptops With a Lot to Offer Their Core Users  —  For all the talk about new tablet computers like Apple's iPad, laptops remain the computer industry's bread and butter, and smaller laptops are especially popular with consumers.  —  So, I've been testing two diminutive laptops …
Eric Eldon / Inside Facebook:
Facebook Puts Email Addresses on User Profiles Back Into Plain Text  —  Facebook has been investing in tools to detect and block automated systems and scripts created by spammers heavily in recent years.  When it comes to user email addresses on Facebook profiles, Facebook for years has taken …
Discussion: Geekword
Matt Buchanan / Gizmodo:
H.264 Will Stay Royalty-Free for Free Internet Video Through 2016 (But Don't Clap Yet)  —  Appropriately following our explainer on why HTML5 won't save the internet (yet) and the embedded discussion about video codecs and the future of internet video, MPEG LA—who licenses the h.264 codec …
Clay Dillow / Popular Science:
New Digital Protocol Lets You Sign Secure, Legally Binding Contracts Over the Phone  —  Alexander Graham Bell He helped replace the telegraph.  He never knew he might replace the fountain pen as well.  —  Bringing a new connotation to the term “verbal contract,” researchers …
John Leyden / The Register:
Wikileaks finds cash to continue  —  Don't (whistle)blow it all at once  —  Whistle-blowing site Wikileaks has secured enough money in donations to resume operations.  —  The site stopped publishing leaked documents in December in order to concentrate on a pledge drive …
Discussion: Telegraph
 
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 More Items: 
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
The Sims celebrates 125 million games sold across 10 years
Discussion: VG247
Jaikumar Vijayan / Computerworld:
Facebook comes out swinging at critics of settlement offer in Beacon lawsuit
Enigmax / TorrentFreak:
Movie Studios Lose Landmark Case Against Aussie ISP
Jaikumar Vijayan / Computerworld:
Versign fails to take action against malicious sites, researcher says
Mike Masnick / Techdirt:
ICanHasLawsuit? …
Kunur Patel / Silicon Alley Insider:
Foursquare Plots Its Business Model
Discussion: the Econsultancy blog
 Earlier Items: 
Markcuban / blog maverick:
Why Google is Bad for the Newspaper Business
Discussion: TechCrunch, Thanks:atul
Jordy Yager / Hillicon Valley:
iPad-inspired vending machine woos Hill staffers
Schneier on Security:
Anonymity and the Internet
Discussion: broadstuff