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12:30 PM ET, August 27, 2010

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Kim-Mai Cutler / TechCrunch:
Microsoft To Pay More Than Half A Billion Dollars To Jump-Start Windows Phone 7  —  Editor's note: The following guest post is by Kim-Mai Cutler.  —  Nearly four years after Apple launched the iPhone and two years after Google open-sourced the code for its Android operating system …
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Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft Blog:
A billion to launch Windows Phone 7?  I bet Microsoft is paying a lot more  —  Combining guesswork with analyst estimates, TechCrunch is reporting that Microsoft may spend as much as a billion dollars to launch and develop Windows Phone 7 in its first year.  —  Microsoft, as you'd expect, isn't commenting on that figure.
Miguel Helft / New York Times:
Developer of Tablets Loses Apple as Customer  —  SAN FRANCISCO — Apple severed ties with a small Silicon Valley design firm that for nearly a decade had helped with the development of some of its products, after the firm showcased its own prototype tablet computer.
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Guess Who Is Trying To Trademark The Word “Face”?  (And Guess Who Is Trying To Stop It?)  —  When it comes to trademarks, Facebook is proving to be a bully.  It is going after Teachbook in court for using a similar name, and already forced Placebook to change its name.  But that is only half the story.
RELATED:
Jeremy Horwitz / iLounge:
Brand New Details On the iPod touch 4G  —  According to a source who would have reason to know, the fourth-generation iPod touch is changing back shapes—sorry, readers who have been posting with love for the dome-like curved iPod touch 2G/3G back, but that's going away.
RELATED:
Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
Leaked Case Design Suggests iPod Nano May Gain Smaller Square Form Factor
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
YouTube Debuts New Movies Section With 400 Free, Full-Length Films (Updated)  —  YouTube has launched a fresh Movies category on its website, gathering about 400 full-length films for your on-demand viewing pleasure, all free of charge.  —  The renewed section, which is actually …
RELATED:
Peter Kirn / Create Digital Motion:
Apple-Centric Observers Get the Facts Wrong: H.264 Still Ain't Free  —  Addendum to the previous story: an “end user” and an “application” are not the same thing.  Watching comments from some users dumping on Firefox and Opera because they don't understand this is painful.
Emily Wood / The Official Google Blog:
Find out what's hot on search with the Google Beat  —  Every day, there are more than a billion searches for information on Google.  Have you ever wondered what those searches are about—or whether what you're searching for also happens to be on the minds of millions of others across the country?
Discussion: Pocket-lint and BlueGlass
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Index Ventures Buys Into Etsy, Triples Valuation To Nearly $300 Million  —  Crafty commerce site Etsy just raised another $20 million in its fifth venture round (that would be the Series E).  Index Ventures is the new investor leading the round, with partner Danny Rimer getting an observer's seat on the board.
Miguel Helft / New York Times:
Charges Settled Over Fake Reviews on iTunes  —  SAN FRANCISCO — Savvy Internet users know that glowing online reviews of things like books or restaurants can't always be trusted.  But federal regulators are giving notice that if you stand to gain financially from the review you are writing, you should be up front about it.
Paul Lamkin / Pocket-lint:
ViewSonic Android tablet: Pictures emerge  —  Earlier this week, we at Pocket-lint brought you the news that ViewSonic is planning a big (well, little in size but big in attitude) tablet launch at IFA.  —  And now we've been sent these pics from our inside man, showing off a ViewSonic tablet in all of its glossy glory.
Carl Sjogreen / Facebook Developer Blog:
Social From the Ground Up  —  At Facebook, we are huge believers in what a small dedicated team with a unique perspective can accomplish.  We've already seen how a group of startups who built social interactions into the core of their product experience have completely changed how people play games online …
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Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Facebook To Begin Giving Y Combinator Startups VIP Treatment
Discussion: VentureBeat and GigaOMGigaOM
Pete Warden / HubSpot:
The March Of Twitter: Analysis of How And Where Twitter Spread  —  To answer that question I created a visual history of Twitter's growth, feeding data from Dharmesh Shah (developer of TwitterGrader.com) into OpenHeatMap to produce an animated visualization of the service's growth …
Discussion: Guardian and PeteSearch, Thanks:atul
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Apple Upgrades iWork, Gives ePub a Boost  —  It is pretty clear by now that Apple's iWork productivity suite is an acquired taste.  But soon, folks who are interested in publishing their content in the ePub format — an open eBook standard — might just develop a taste for it.
Tony Bradley / Computerworld:
Putting Google Realtime to Real-World Use  —  Google added new functionality to its real-time search engine, and moved it from an obscure feature buried in the options on the left pane of the standard Google search, to its own Web site.  The new Google Realtime can be a powerful tool for businesses that know how to use it.
RELATED:
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
Google Realtime Search Gets Home Page, Conversation View, Alerts & Geosearch
Join Diaspora Blog:
An Overdue Update  —  Since August is nearly over, it is time for an update and answers to some questions.  We have been coding.  We have Diaspora working, we like it, and it will be open-sourced on September 15th.  —  We are spending a good chunk of time concentrating on building clear, contextual sharing.
RELATED:
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Diaspora Three Weeks Away From Unveiling Open-Source Facebook Alternative
Discussion: Mashable!
Stuart Parmenter / The Mozilla Blog:
Fennec Alpha Released for Android and Nokia N900  —  The Alpha release of the next major version of Fennec is now available for Android and Nokia N900 users to download and test.  Fennec (codename for Firefox mobile) is the first mobile browser to offer add-ons and is built on the same technology that powers desktop Firefox.
Alex Chitu / Google Operating System:
Don't Click this Button in Google Voice!  —  Warning: This tip is only for Gmail users outside US.  —  Google says that the latest Gmail feature that allows you to make phone calls is only available in the US, but that's not true.  If you set Gmail's interface language to English (US) …
Discussion: Download Squad, Techdows and calliflower.com, Thanks:rawmeet
RELATED:
Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:
Gmail users place 1M calls in 24 hours
 
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 More Items: 
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines Blog:
Intel cuts outlook; Consumer PC demand weak
Scott Austin / Venture Capital Dispatch:
Kleiner Perkins Sitting Pretty In Event Of ArcSight Sale
Discussion: Wall Street Journal and DealBook
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
SCVNGR Launches Support For Facebook Places
Discussion: ReadWriteWeb, BoomTown and PSFK
Help Net Security:
25% of new worms are designed to spread through USB devices
Discussion: eWeek and Computerworld
Adam DuVander / ProgrammableWeb:
Yahoo Okays Revenue Streams in its Social Streams
 Earlier Items: 
Ivaylo Popov / Google Code Blog:
Google Buzz API adds Track and some improvements
Jaikumar Vijayan / Computerworld:
FTC drops P2P file sharing probe of LimeWire
Discussion: ReadWriteWeb
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Facebook's “Platmobile” Team Working On Eliminating Mobile Password Entry
Caroline McCarthy / CNET News:
Digg's Matt Van Horn leaving for start-up Path
Discussion: TechCrunch, Thanks:atul
Matthew Dolan / Wall Street Journal:
Ford Uses Wi-Fi to Customize Cars
Ina Fried / CNET News:
Exchange ActiveSync to arrive on Hotmail on Monday
 

 
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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