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12:50 AM ET, September 29, 2010

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Tim Armstrong / TechCrunch:
Tim Armstrong: We Got TechCrunch!  —  I'm very pleased to announce that we have acquired TechCrunch.  Details are in the press release below, and I'm sure founder Michael Arrington will have a few words to say as well.  This is a great complement to our continued investment in world class content.
RELATED:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Why We Sold TechCrunch To AOL, And Where We Go From Here  —  By now you must have heard the news that AOL has acquired us.  Here are videos of the on stage signing of the agreement and an interview with AOL CEO Tim Armstrong immediately afterwards.  —  So how did all this happen?
Nicholas Carlson / Silicon Alley Insider:
AOL Insider Says TechCrunch Price Only $25 Million - CNBC Says $40 Million  —  Update: Sources tell CNBC that AOL paid $40 million.  We're guessing the $25 million figure is cash and the rest is an earnout.  Earlier: AOL has told insiders that the company is only paying $25 million for TechCrunch, a second-hand source tells us.
Edmund Lee / AdAge:
Why AOL Bought TechCrunch  —  Tim Armstrong Explains Why AOL Decided to Buy This Time Rather Than Build  —  NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — AOL CEO Tim Armstrong told Ad Age today that he wants a “build-first” culture at his company, in which the growth is sparked internally, like the world's oldest startup.
Discussion: dailywireless.org
Ross Miller / Engadget:
BlackBerry PlayBook vs. iPad vs. Galaxy Tab vs. Streak: the tale of the tape  —  What a day — yesterday, that is.  Research in Motion finally announced its long-awaited BlackBerry tablet, the 7-inch PlayBook (thankfully not named the BlackPad).  While there's still quite a few missing details …
RELATED:
Simon Sage / IntoMobile:
RIM VP Confirms PlayBook QNX OS Will Replace BlackBerry OS  —  Over a breakfast event today at the BlackBerry Developer Conference, a RIM VP confirmed that the QNX operating system announced in their new PlayBook tablet would in fact be finding its way to smartphones in the long run, and ultimately replace the existing BlackBerry OS.
Amir Efrati / Digits:
Tweet This Milestone: Twitter Passes MySpace  —  There's a new piece of data that Twitter Chief Operating Officer Dick Costolo could take with him to the stage today at the IAB MIXX conference in New York, as the company tries to woo marketers.  —  Last month the four-year-old micro-blogging …
Bryan Gardiner / Gizmodo:
Exclusive: The Plans For Steve Jobs' New House  —  You knew Steve Jobs was tearing down his old mansion.  You didn't know what he was building in its place.  Until now.  —  After nearly a six years of detailed cost comparisons, environmental impact surveys, court appeals …
Matthew Lynley / VentureBeat:
Google CEO: the Internet of things will augment your brain  —  For Google CEO Eric Schmidt, the next step in technology is the same that it has always been — augmenting humanity to handle information that a human brain couldn't otherwise keep up with, and just make things work.
RELATED:
Amir Efrati / Digits:
Google Wants to Make Online Display Ads ‘Sexy’  —  Google has long dominated Web search, and the advertising it generates.  But the company has vowed to build a major business in the parallel market of online display ads, and on Tuesday laid out some predictions about how that business will evolve.
RELATED:
The Official Google Blog:
What does the future of display advertising look like?
Discussion: Beet.TV, AdExchanger.com and ClickZ
Sebastian Anthony / Download Squad:
GameCrush — where you pay to play video games with hot girls — opens its doors  —  GameCrush is just like prostitution, but with boys buying game time rather than sexy time from a dizzying array of cute, gamer girls.  The service, which has been privately beta testing since the start of the year …
Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:
Pinger brings free calling to your iPod Touch  —  A startup called Pinger says it has already built a big user base for Textfree — which is (you guessed it) a free text messaging service.  Now it's offering a similar service for making phone calls.  —  The calls can be made over a 3G cellular data network or Wi-Fi.
Cecilia Kang / Post Tech:
Internet pioneers protest Senate anti-piracy bill  —  Some of the rock stars of Internet engineering (yes, they exist) on Tuesday protested a Senate bill aimed at fighting online piracy, saying the legislation could lead to censorship and destabilize the architecture of the Web.
RELATED:
The Huffington Post:
Stop the Internet Blacklist
Discussion: demandprogress.org and Techdirt
Joanna Stern / Engadget:
T-Mobile G2 preview  —  Well, well, well... would you look at what we found lounging around Best Buy's NYC holiday event!  Yes, indeed, it's the T-Mobile G2 (the US version of the HTC Desire Z if you happen to think it looks familiar).  After months of leaks and blurry shots we finally got …
Mike Taylor / New York Observer:
Did Apple Suffer a Mini Flash Crash?  —  Shares in Apple Computer experienced two sharp downward spikes today.  But the price action is very different from what we saw yesterday with Progress Energy.  Progress' shares dropped 90 percent almost instantaneously.
Anil Dash:
Make The Revolution  —  Malcolm Gladwell gets started with “The revolution will not be tweeted” in this week's New Yorker, condemning social media's ability to enact real cultural change with an argument he sums up early in the piece: … Who are the “they”?  It's not really clear.
Discussion: Leigh's Blitherings
Gary Merson / HD Guru:
Google TV by Sony Revealed-Exclusive First Photos  —  (September 28, 2010)Best Buy conducted its holiday preview press event today in New York City.  Included among the hot items for the fourth quarter was the first Google HDTV, the Sony NSX-46GT1.  HD GURU received a quick demo and snapped these exclusive photos.
Mimi Turner / Hollywood Reporter:
Jeff Bewkes: Beware of Apple, Amazon deals  —  TW chief says low-cost digital giveaways devalue TV fare  —  LONDON — Time Warner boss Jeff Bewkes told British media execs that television is entering a second golden age of creativity and reward but warned against the danger of low-cost digital giveaways.
Staci D. Kramer / paidContent:
AOL's Wild Acquisition Day Concludes With Thing Labs, Maker Of Brizzly  —  It's a Ronco kind of day for folks who cover AOL (NYSE: AOL)—you think you're done and then the company says, but, wait, there's more.  For the last one (today), paidContent can confirm that AOL has acquired Thing Labs and its Brizzly social media reader.
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
MobilePay May Be The Death Of The Wallet.  Yes, For Real This Time.  —  I absolutely hate carrying around both my phone and my wallet in my pocket.  What if I could just carry around my phone and my driver's license?  That would be awesome.  If MobilePay USA takes off, my wish will come true.
Discussion: VentureBeat and IntoMobile
Enigmax / TorrentFreak:
RIAA Takes Down Music Downloading App Mulve  —  Last week an impressive new music downloading application hit the mainstream.  Mulve became hugely popular and demand was so great that the site's servers couldn't handle the pressure and fell over.  Today the site is down again …
Office For Mac:
Office for Mac 2011 Available October 26  —  We are excited to announce that starting on October 26 you can get your own copy of Office for Mac 2011!  And starting today preorders can be placed at Amazon.com.  —  One of the most visually impactful features in the new suite also is called Dynamic Reorder …
Tarmo Virki / Reuters:
Apple takes legal battle with Nokia to Britain  —  (Reuters) - Apple has sued Nokia in Britain, extending the two technology giants' legal battle over patents beyond U.S. borders.  “We are investigating the claims, which appear to be based on nine implementation patents already in suit between …
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Condé Nast's iPad Apps Are Too Portly.  Blame Adobe.  —  The Wired iPad app has a weight problem.  —  The first one came in at about half a gigabyte of memory, and it hasn't shrunk that much since.  —  And Condé Nast's newest iPad app, from the New Yorker, isn't much better …
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Fortune:
iPad owners: younger and more male.  Kindle's: richer and better educated  —  What Nielsen has learned about the owners of tablets and other connected devices.  As part of Advertising Week's Mobile Ad Summit Tuesday, the Nielsen Company released the results of a survey of 5,000 consumers …
Ina Fried / CNET News:
Paul Allen starts tweeting  —  Microsoft founder and Vulcan Ventures chief Paul Allen has become active on Twitter in recent days.  —  Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has started tweeting, following in the footsteps of fellow co-founder Bill Gates, who became active on Twitter earlier this year.
Discussion: The Microsoft Blog and TechFlash
Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg / Wall Street Journal:
Authors Feel Pinch in Age of E-Books  —  Author John Pipkin worries about the e-book business model: 'I've had to rethink my plans in terms of supporting my family full time as a writer.'  —  When literary agent Sarah Yake shopped around Kirsten Kaschock's debut novel “Sleight” this year …
 
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 More Items: 
Don Jeffrey / Bloomberg:
Disney, CBS, Fox Sue Online Subscription Service Ivi for Streaming Shows
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
First Ben Silverman Online Program-"Ready, Set, Dance!"  -Debuts on Yahoo
Matthew Lynley / VentureBeat:
Voxy teaches languages through news and text messages
Discussion: TechCrunch
Ryan Singel / Threat Level:
FBI Drive for Encryption Backdoors Is Déjà Vu for Security Experts
Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:
Figure Out Your Flying Needs With Superfly
Discussion: VentureBeat
Amir Efrati / Digits:
For Google and Apple, an Easing of Tensions?
Discussion: ZDNet, Computerworld and BuzzingUp
 Earlier Items: 
John Paczkowski / Digital Daily:
Former Palm CEO: HP's Android Tablet Tossed
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
Yammer Debuts A Facebook For The Enterprise
Discussion: VentureBeat and All Facebook
Jessica Dolcourt / Crave: The gadget blog:
Mozilla: No Firefox browser for the iPhone
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Exclusive: Yahoo Exec Churn Continues, With Media Head Pitaro Ready to Bolt
Seth Weintraub / 9 to 5 Mac:
Two new iPhones and an unidentified device show up in the AppleTV firmware