Techmeme: The Pirate Party Becomes The Pirate Bay's New Host (Enigmax/TorrentFreak)

3:30 PM ET, May 18, 2010

Top Items:

Re-inventing Windows Live Hotmail - the next generation of personal email — If you've been following this blog, you know that we've spent a lot of time talking about how consumers are using their email and how they manage their inboxes. We've also talked about how we decide what to build based on what we hear from customers.

Paul Boutin / VentureBeat:

New Hotmail takes aim at Gmail's top features — Microsoft presented a sneak peek this morning of a massively overhauled Hotmail — Hotmail Wave 4 in Microsoft jargon — that will go into a public beta test this summer. — Hotmail Wave 4 adds several features that have until now been unique …

Discussion: Computerworld, Mashable!, Beyond Binary, Macworld, WebProNews, The Business of Search, TNW Microsoft, The Microsoft Blog and LiveSide.net

Liz Gannes / GigaOM:

Hot or Not: New Hotmail Is No Knockout — Hotmail, the leading web email provider, has coasted along for years with barely a feature update. But Microsoft is finally planning a major release for later this summer and on Monday provided reporters with a preview.

Joseph Tartakoff / mocoNews:

Google To Buy VOIP Technology Firm Global IP Solutions For $68.2 Million — Google (NSDQ: GOOG) is offering $68.2 million to buy up publicly-traded Global IP Solutions, a San Francisco-based company which sells technology used to deliver voice and video over IP networks.

Larry Dignan / ZDNet:

Google buys VOIP engine behind Yahoo, AOL, WebEx, Lotus conferencing — Google on Tuesday said it will acquire Global IP Solutions Holding, which makes processing software for voice and video over IP, for $68.2 million. The deal means that Google will own the voice and video conferencing engine behind …

Discussion: Boy Genius Report, Financial Times, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, ReadWriteWeb, Daring Fireball, Mashable!, Know Your Cell and Guardian

Electronista:

Google buys VoIP firm, hints at possible Android video chat — Google on Tuesday bought Global IP Solutions in a possible sign of a video chat implementation for Android. The $68.2 million deal gives Google access to a firm that supplies both audio and video through IP networks.

Discussion: IntoMobile, I4U News and Android Central

Facebook Press Releases:

Facebook and Zynga Enter Into Long-Term Relationship — Facebook and Zynga announced today that they have entered into a five-year strategic relationship that increases their shared commitment to social gaming on Facebook and expands use of Facebook Credits in Zynga's games.

Discussion: Digital Daily, CNET News, GigaOM, blogs.ft.com, TechCrunch and SecondShares

Nicholas Carlson / Silicon Alley Insider:
Zynga Saved! Five Year Deal Keeps Farmville-Maker On Facebook

Discussion: L.A. Times Tech Blog, Inside Facebook, paidContent, VentureBeat, Inside Social Games, Pulse2 and TNW Social Media

Thomas Ricker / Engadget:

MacBook refresh gets official with 10-hour battery — Weird, but there it is, the leaked MacBook refresh is now official, on Tuesday, just as we thought. The 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo refresh with NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics and longer 10-hour battery life (up from 7 hours) is sitting up …

AppleInsider:
Apple releases updated $999 MacBook with GeForce 320M graphics

Discussion: TG Daily

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Waiting to Pay for Hulu? Wait a While Longer. — A public service announcement for those of you eager to start paying for Hulu: Be patient. You're going to have to keep waiting. — Last month, the Los Angeles Times said Hulu was set to roll out a subscription service “as soon as May 24.”

Discussion: Fast Company, Geek.com, PadGadget, I4U News, AppleInsider, SlashGear, CrunchGear, O'Grady's PowerPage, fierceonlinevideo.com …, Ubergizmo and Electronista

Michael Finney / KGO-TV:

Cash not always welcome at Apple stores — PALO ALTO (KGO) — It is said that “cash is king” and that people can buy anything with U.S. currency. But, that is not always true and the red hot Apple iPad is a case in point. It is unbelievable but true. Apple Computer has come a long …

Discussion: ZDNet, TeleRead, GottaBeMobile, MacNN, CrunchGear and Tech Eye

Greg Kumparak / MobileCrunch:

Visa officially announces their case that turns your iPhone into a credit card (and we've got pics!) — Around two weeks ago, Visa announced that they'd partnered with a company called DeviceFidelity to build the iPhone case of our dreams: one that would allow us to use our iPhone as a credit card …

Discussion: SlashGear, PC World, MacRumors, Visa Corporate, Edible Apple, Geeky-Gadgets, Engadget, iPhone Buzz, Gadget Lab, I4U News and MobileContentToday

MG Siegler / TechCrunch:

Kindle For Android Hits This Summer — And You Can Buy Books In It — Easily one of my favorite apps for the iPad is the Kindle app. Weird, I know. But in some ways it's superior to the iPad's own iBooks experience. You can sync it across multiple devices, for example.

Enigmax / TorrentFreak:

The Pirate Party Becomes The Pirate Bay's New Host — Following an injunction obtained by several major Hollywood movie studios, yesterday Pirate Bay bandwidth provider CB3ROB Ltd. & Co. KG took the decision to take the site offline while it digested the legal implications.

Discussion: Techdirt, DSLreports, Ars Technica, PC World, Erictric, Mashable!, Technology News, The Register, Softpedia News, Geekosystem, PlagiarismToday, p2pnet and Netcraft

Ryan Tate / Gawker:

Steve Jobs Is Opening Up Apple One Email at a Time — If there's one enduring lesson I took away from my late-night argument with Steve Jobs, it's that Apple's relationship with the public is undergoing a quiet revolution. Are we about to see a new, more open Apple?

Discussion: Media Decoder and Apple Gazette

Joseph Tartakoff / paidContent:

Best Buy's Digital Movie Service Launches Under CinemaNow Name — Best Buy's long-awaited entry to the online video download market is here. Best Buy said last June that under an agreement with Sonic Solutions' CinemaNow movie service it would make movies and TV shows available for download …

Discussion: Ubergizmo

Michael Liedtke / Associated Press:
Best Buy's Internet video service ready to debut

Discussion: NewTeeVee, PC Magazine, ReadWriteWeb, Engadget, Mashable!, Company Town, Bloomberg, SlashGear, Erictric and Wall Street Journal

Charles Arthur / Guardian:

Google ordered to destroy data from UK Wi-Fi networks — Search engine ordered to take action amid mounting concern that US firms such as Facebook and Google have inadequate privacy provisions — The UK Information Commission's Office has ordered the search engine company Google …

Discussion: CNET News, Softpedia News, Wall Street Journal and MediaPost

Cecilia Kang / Post Tech:
Google deletes private data in Ireland; a complaint filed in U.S.

Discussion: PC World, Search Engine Watch and Financial Times

Robert Andrews / paidContent:

Spotify Halves Subscription Cost As Competitors Gather — Spotify is slashing the cost of its advert-free music streaming in Europe, in a bid to win more paying customers besides just mobile users. It comes in two new tariffs Spotify's introducing... —Spotify Unlimited …

Discussion: Digits, Spotify, Music Ally, Fast Company, TechCrunch Europe, Tech Eye, THINQ.co.uk, Download Squad, The Register, Telegraph, blogs.ft.com, T3.com News and TNW Apps

Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:

Google To Launch Amazon S3 Competitor ‘Google Storage’ At I/O — Amazon's cloud storage services are going to be getting another major competitor this week: Google. We hear that this week during its I/O conference, Google will be announcing a new service that is a direct competitor with Amazon's S3 cloud storage.

Discussion: TNW Apps and ZDNet, Thanks:auralab

Thomas Ricker / Engadget:

The Onion: Google ‘whisper ads’ detect keywords in phone calls (video) — Oh man, The Onion really outdid itself this time. Its latest tech parody takes on ad supported phones from Google meant to drive down the device's cost. Funny, because it's true. Users won't even remember …

Discussion: The Onion, Erictric, 9 to 5 Mac and GottaBeMobile, Thanks:alexia

Jennifer Valentino-DeVries / Digits:

Facebook Crosses the 500-Million Threshold, ComScore Says — Facebook crossed the 500-million-visitor mark for the first time in April, according to market-research firm comScore — providing some positive news for the social-networking site amid criticism over its privacy policies.

Discussion: Free People Search …, Softpedia News, The Register and Gadgetell

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