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12:20 PM ET, February 4, 2010

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
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.
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.
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.
Dick Brass / New York Times:
Microsoft's Creative Destruction  —  AS they marvel at Apple's new iPad tablet computer, the technorati seem to be focusing on where this leaves Amazon's popular e-book business.  But the much more important question is why Microsoft, America's most famous and prosperous technology company …
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:
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.
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.
Martyn Williams / Computerworld:
Sony interested in challenging Apple's iPad  —  IDG News Service - Sony hinted on Thursday that it's preparing a challenger to Apple's upcoming iPad.  —  “That is a market we are also very interested in.  We are confident we have the skills to create a product,” said Nobuyuki Oneda …
RELATED:
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Sony posts sharply higher earnings and offers upbeat outlook
Discussion: CNET News, CrunchGear and Engadget
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: ReadWriteWeb, Geekword, Pulse2, Mashable! and The Next Web, Thanks:atul
RELATED:
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.
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
Joshua Topolsky / Engadget:
Commenting on Engadget: a human's guide  —  As you may have noticed, the other day we shut down comments on the site.  Things had gotten a little out of hand and the complaint emails we were getting from readers were stacking up, so we decided to take some Engadget time to do a little cleaning …
Sydney Morning Herald:
iiNet slays Hollywood in landmark piracy case  —  Little sign of peace as both sides react to iiNet's landmark file download court victory.  —  The giants of the film industry have lost their case against ISP iiNet in a landmark judgment handed down in the Federal Court today.
RELATED:
Google Enterprise Blog:
Google Apps adds enterprise admin policies for iPhone, Nokia, and Windows Mobile devices  —  In a world focused on improving business productivity, companies look to solutions like Google Apps to provide employees with seamless access to information regardless of location or device.
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 …
Nicholas Deleon / MobileCrunch:
Sirius XM application now available for BlackBerry (but there's no Howard Stern)  —  The Sirius XM application for BlackBerry is now available.  It runs on the Storm/Storm 2, Curve (8500, 8900), Bold (9000, 9700), and Tour (9600).  —  The application requires a Sirius XM subscription plus …
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.
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.
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.
Discussion: Inside Social Games and VentureBeat, Thanks:albert5888
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.
Seanmccullough / Blogger Buzz:
Create Pages in Blogger  —  Another top user-requested feature has just graduated from Blogger In Draft!  Blogger now makes it easy to create Pages linked from your blog.  —  This feature lets you easily publish static information on stand-alone pages.  For example, you can create …
Discussion: Softpedia News
 
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 More Items: 
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
IBM launches Lotus Symphony 3 beta; Office alternatives pile up
Discussion: eWeek
Ben Parr / Mashable!:
Twitter Finally Fixes Mobile OAuth [PICS]
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
5min Rules The How-To Video Space
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
The Sims celebrates 125 million games sold across 10 years
Discussion: VG247
John Leyden / The Register:
Wikileaks finds cash to continue
Discussion: Telegraph
Matt Buchanan / Gizmodo:
H.264 Will Stay Royalty-Free for Free Internet Video Through 2016 …
Discussion: The Register and BetaNews
Clay Dillow / Popular Science:
New Digital Protocol Lets You Sign Secure, Legally Binding Contracts Over the Phone
 Earlier Items: 
Joel Hruska / HotHardware.com News:
Intel Details Upcoming Mobile and Six-Core Processors
Eric Eldon / Inside Facebook:
Facebook Puts Email Addresses on User Profiles Back Into Plain Text
Discussion: Computerworld and Geekword
Jaikumar Vijayan / Computerworld:
Versign fails to take action against malicious sites, researcher says
Walter S. Mossberg / Personal Technology:
Two Little Laptops With a Lot to Offer Their Core Users
Mike Masnick / Techdirt:
ICanHasLawsuit? …
Kunur Patel / Silicon Alley Insider:
Foursquare Plots Its Business Model
Discussion: the Econsultancy blog
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:
Windows veteran Mike Nash to leave Microsoft
Discussion: internetnews.com