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4:10 PM ET, February 5, 2010

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Facebook's Project Titan: A Full Featured Webmail Product  —  Facebook is completely rewriting their messaging product and is preparing to launch a fully featured webmail product in its place, according to a source with knowledge of the product.  Internally it's known as Project Titan.
RELATED:
Eric Eldon / Inside Facebook:
Facebook Begins Rolling Out New Home Page Design  —  Facebook is now fully launching the long-planned redesign, with 80 million users getting it tonight — that's 80 million of the now-400 million people using the site, the company says.  The new design is basically what we've been examining …
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
An Apology To Our Readers  —  On Monday evening I received a phone call from someone I trust who told me that one of our interns had asked for compensation in exchange for a blog post.  Specifically, this intern had allegedly asked for a Macbook Air in exchange for a post about a startup.
RELATED:
Daniel Brusilovsky / Weblog of Daniel Brusilovsky:
The Line Was Crossed  —  In the nine months that I've worked at TechCrunch, I've enjoyed every single moment of it.  I couldn't be more thankful to Michael and Heather for giving me this opportunity to work with an amazing organization, and with an amazing group of individuals.
Chris Foresman / Ars Technica:
Sling: We didn't ‘work’ with AT&T for 3G streaming to iPhone (Updated)  —  AT&T made headlines Thursday by announcing that it had decided to allow SlingPlayer Mobile for iPhone to stream video from a Slingbox over its 3G network.  AT&T's CEO claimed in the announcement that Sling Media modified …
Matt Buchanan / Gizmodo:
The $9.99 Ebook Is Dead: Third Major Publisher Hachette Dumps on Amazon  —  Amazon's ebook pricing structure has crumbled.  Hachette's the third major publisher to push for the agency model, following MacMillan and HarperCollins: They'll set the ebook prices (higher, natch) and the bookseller takes a cut.
RELATED:
Dpakman / Pakman's Blog:
Weighing in on Amazon/Macmillan Pricing Debate
Discussion: Music Ally and Techdirt
MacNN:
Apple prohibits App Store devs from using location-based ads  —  Apple has notified App Store developers that they will be prohibited from using location-based information for mobile advertising.  The company claims the GPS data can only be used to provide “beneficial information.”
Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:
Siri launches an iPhone personal assistant that actually works  —  The “personal assistant” label gets attached to a lot of websites and applications, but it's always an exaggeration.  Usually the service in question can only tackle a small slice of what a human assistant would do, such as organizing your emails.
RELATED:
Robert Scoble / building43:
A new personal assistant on your mobile phone
Discussion: Mashable!, ZDNet, Josh Bancroft's … and Bits, Thanks:hisiri
David Drummond / Guardian:
Google: We will bring books back to life  —  We at Google could make that wealth of knowledge available at a click.  And authors would earn too  —  If you love books and care about the knowledge they contain, there is a problem that needs to be solved.  Somewhere in the region of 175m books exist in the world today.
RELATED:
David Sarno / L.A. Times Tech Blog:
Department of Justice objects to revised Google Books settlement
Mark Wilson / Gizmodo:
Full Details on the New Nook 1.2 Firmware Going Out Now  —  A B&N employee (who'd just updated their store's Nooks) sent us all the details of the new Nook firmware 1.2 update that, according to the date on this memo, should hit later today.  UPDATE  —  • Enhanced in-store seamless connectivity …
Amy-Mae Elliott / Pocket-lint:
iTablet launches from UK company  —  Like the iPad but with USB ports, Flash, multi-tasking, choice of OS, HDMI...  In its own words “hot on the heels of Apple's latest product launch”, UK company X2 Computing has launched the “iTablet” range of Windows- or Linux-based tablet PCs.
Xbox Press:
A Letter From Marc Whitten: Discontinuation Of Xbox Live For Original Xbox Games  —  On April 15 we will discontinue the Xbox LIVE service for original Xbox consoles and games, including Xbox v1 games playable on Xbox 360 and Xbox Originals.  I want to start by saying this isn't a decision we made lightly …
Declan McCullagh / CNET News:
FBI wants records kept of Web sites visited  —  The FBI is pressing Internet service providers to record which Web sites customers visit and retain those logs for two years, a requirement that law enforcement believes could help it in investigations of child pornography and other serious crimes.
Dana Blankenhorn / Open Source:
Matt Asay's big break is a big one for open source  —  I have a confession to make.  —  I'm a huge Matt Asay fan (right).  Always have been.  —  Matt is the Anthony Bourdain (below) of open source.  By that I mean he cooks better than most cooks, writes better than most writers, and he has made himself a big time brand.
Discussion: Computerworld and WorksWithU
RELATED:
Jenna Wortham / Bits:
New York City Names Winners of Apps Contest  —  The winners of the first NYC BigApps competition, which invited the public to develop applications using raw sets of municipal data, were announced at an event in New York on Thursday evening.  —  The competition, which the city's Economic …
Gregg Keizer / Computerworld:
Mozilla confirms infected Firefox add-ons slipped through security  —  Malware hidden in two extensions threatens Windows users  —  Computerworld - Mozilla confirmed late Thursday that it failed to detect malware in a pair of Firefox add-ons, which may have infected up to 4,600 users.
Paul Boutin / VentureBeat:
Apple's A4 chip: Engineers correct stupid journalist  —  I have no clue about computer chip design and manufacturing.  So I trolled VentureBeat's readers with a challenge: Explain to me how Apple's switch from third-party chip manufacturers to its own in-house design for the A4 chip that powers …
Thanks:paulboutin
Handset Operating System / Mobile Advertising:
Android moves ahead of iPhone in new Smaato Mobile Advertising Metrics - Symbian still on top  —  Google Nexus One and Motorola Droid effect?  Smaato Metrics for January suggest that new Android devices are revolutionizing mobile advertising performance measured by CTR (click-through-rate).
Larry Dignan / ZDNet:
Microsoft, Facebook expand search partnership; Facebook to sell own ads  —  Microsoft and Facebook have revised their search pact into a global deal where the social networking giant will sell its own ads and get all the features Bing has to offer.  —  In a blog post, Microsoft outlined the changes:
AT&T:
AT&T FamilyMap App Launches on App Store  —  App Brings Peace of Mind to Families On-the-Go; Keeps Schedules, Events and Whereabouts Accessible, Centralized on iPhone
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
PayPal Halts Personal Payment Transactions From And To India  —  PayPal isn't working properly in India. eBay's electronic payment juggernaut appears to be blocking personal transactions to or from accounts of India-based users.  It is reversing personal transactions; transactions involving businesses are still allowed.
Discussion: pluGGd.in
David Hornik / VentureBlog:
Four Square Fatigue and the Evolution of Privacy  —  Over the last few weeks I've started to suffer from Four Square fatigue.  After all, Four Square is a lot of work.  To get the benefits of Four Square, you need to proactively check in wherever you go.  And, while each checkin requires …
Thanks:atul
Chris Dale / YouTube Blog:
YouTube Calls on IPv6  —  The first telephone numbers in the latter part of the 19th century were short and simple, made up of no more than a few digits.  Calls would be routed through operators and these operators would then manually patch these calls into the lines of their intended recipients.
 
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 More Items: 
Jonathan Stempel / Reuters:
Dell must face suit alleging defective notebooks
David / Riding Rails:
Rails 3.0: Beta release
Discussion: eWeek and LinuxWorld.com
Maisie Ramsay / Wireless Week:
CTIA, Verizon, U.S. Cellular File Against Signal Boosters
Neil Hughes / AppleInsider:
Credit Suisse: 75% chance AT&T keeps iPhone exclusivity in 2010
Discussion: Erictric and Macsimum News
Connie Loizos / PE Hub Blog:
A Glimpse Inside Ron Conway's Virtual Venture Firm
 Earlier Items: 
Mehul Srivastava / Business Week:
India's 3G Auctions: Why Companies Are Fearful
Discussion: dailywireless.org
Ryan Tate / Gawker:
Blogger Beware: AOL's Robo-Reporters Will Swarm You Like Locusts
Discussion: PSFK
Jesse Stay / Stay N' Alive:
Twitter Testing “OAuth Delegation” With Select Partners - Genius
Discussion: the.HackerConundrum and CloudAve
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
MySpace Chief Product Officer Jason Hirschhorn On His Way Out …
Discussion: Silicon Alley Insider
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Alex Sherman / CNBC:
Analyzing Comcast's spinoff of cable networks, purposefully structured with low debt: the move might be a signal to the industry that it's time to consolidate

Daniel Thomas / Financial Times:
James Harding says the Tortoise-Observer deal could create a profitable media group and there isn't a guaranteed future for the Observer with the Guardian

John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
Substack, very deliberately, tries to have it both ways by saying publications on their platform are independent while presenting them all as parts of Substack

 
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