Techmeme: The Digg Effect v4 (Keith Plocek/Social Keith)

7:10 AM ET, October 20, 2010

Top Items:

RIM Responds to Apple's ‘Distortion Field’ — For those of us who live outside of Apple's distortion field, we know that 7" tablets will actually be a big portion of the market and we know that Adobe Flash support actually matters to customers who want a real web experience.

Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:

Developer Joe Hewitt Tears Into Android's Definition Of “Open” — In Silicon Valley, there are few developers more respected than Joe Hewitt — he helped create Firefox, he built the indispensible development tool FireBug, and he was also responsible for both Facebook's ‘Touch’ mobile website …

Discussion: eWeek, Phone Arena, @vanelsas, Electronista, PR Newswire, Engadget, WebProNews, VentureBeat, 901am, iClarified, MacRumors and L.A. Times Tech Blog

Joe Wilcox / BetaNews:

What is Steve Jobs so afraid of? — There's a saying that the more you have, the more you fear losing it. — Apple's CEO made a surprise appearance during yesterday's fiscal 2010 fourth quarter earnings call. Jobs said he couldn't resist participating, given Apple's record $20.34 billion revenue.

Discussion: The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, 37signals, eWeek, Roughly Drafted, Computerworld and digg.com

Joshua Topolsky / Engadget:

webOS 2.0 review — When it comes to webOS 2.0 (now actually called HP webOS), it almost felt like we'd never see the version number, let alone get to review it. It's been an intense few months for Palm: after floundering in the early part of the smartphone wars, it was scooped up by HP for a tidy sum of $1.2b.

Discussion: Telegraph, The Official Palm Blog, Ars Technica, UK Gadget and Tech News …, Gizmodo, ThinkMobile, GeekSmack, Electronista, Gearlog, techno.blog, internetnews.com, Computerworld, blogs.chron.com, displayblog, The Tech Herald …, WinBeta, Data Central and PreCentral.net

Declan McCullagh / CNET News:

Google ditches all Street View Wi-Fi scanning — Google has no plans to resume using its Street View cars to collect information about the location of Wi-Fi networks, a practice that led to a flurry of privacy probes after the company said it unintentionally captured fragments of unencrypted data.

Discussion: priv.gc.ca, Guardian, Wi-Fi Networking News, Gizmodo, dailywireless.org, Inside Google, MWD Tech News, ReadWriteWeb, WebProNews, The Next Web, Engadget and CBC News

Austin Carr / Fast Company:
Canada, Spain Find Google Violated Privacy Laws, Collected Loads …

Discussion: TechEye, Search Engine Watch, PC World and Search Engine Land

Jay Sullivan / The Mozilla Blog:

Prototype of an Open Web App Ecosystem — The open Web is a great platform for rich applications. It would be even better if it had additional capabilities to ease discovery, acquisition, installation and use of apps, while also enabling monetization for developers.

Discussion: The Register, Mike Rowehl, InformationWeek, Mashable!, Lifehacker, Epicenter, BetaNews, ReadWriteWeb, techno.blog, TechCrunch, Download Squad and Asa Dotzler

Kevin C. Tofel / GigaOM:
Mozilla Wants Everyone to Have a Web App Store

Discussion: OStatic blogs

Paul Graham:

The New Funding Landscape — After barely changing at all for decades, the startup funding business is now in what could, at least by comparison, be called turmoil. At Y Combinator we've seen dramatic changes in the funding environment for startups. Fortunately one of them is much higher valuations.

cdixon's posterous: A few comments on Paul Graham re superangels

Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:

Bartz On Blogging: “An Extremely Hard Engineering Feat” — Carol Bartz was almost subdued on today's earnings call. Missing were the salty outbursts of previous conference calls, but she did manage one zinger. Apparently, one of Yahoo's problems before was an inflexible content management system …

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Yahoo Tops Earning Expectations, While Revenues Remain Weak (and Outlook Even Worse)

Jennifer Van Grove / Mashable!:

First Look: Starbucks Digital Network Is Here — Beginning Wednesday, Starbucks customers who use the free Wi-Fi at more than 6,800 U.S. company-operated stores will be greeted with the Starbucks Digital Network (SDN) — an exclusive content network curated by the company and designed to enhance the customer's in-store experience.

Discussion: AppleInsider, paidContent, The Social, The Seattle Times, Gizmodo Australia, ThinkMobile, TechFlash and HighTouch, more at Mediagazer »

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:

ATD Welcomes Ina Fried as Our New Mobile Reporter — Here at All Things Digital, we've always prided ourselves on our journalism efforts, while also fully embracing the fast-paced new world of blogging. — So, we could not be more thrilled to announce the hiring of Ina Fried as our new reporter …

Greg Sandoval / Media Maverick:

Porn studio a step closer to revealing pirates' IDs — Few film companies are assailing piracy with the vigor of Third World Media. — Third World Media (TMW), a porn studio headquartered north of Los Angeles, filed a lawsuit two weeks ago against 1,568 unnamed individuals …

Discussion: Computerworld and PlagiarismToday

Dan Goodin / The Register:

Compromise turns Kaspersky site into malware hub — Hackers exploit buggy app — The US website for anti-virus provider Kaspersky was caught pushing malware to its users for three and a half hours on Sunday after it was compromised by criminal hackers. — The attack first came to light …

Discussion: Security Week, Kaspersky Lab Forum, eWeek, Computerworld, Help Net Security and Softpedia News

Om Malik / GigaOM:

State of the Internet: Mobile Web's Explosive Growth — In 1999, it was the rapid growth of wired web services that was the top story. Fast-forward to today, and it is all about the massive and seemingly unstoppable growth of the mobile Internet that is all the rage.

Keith Plocek / Social Keith:

The Digg Effect v4 — The Digg Effect - n. The power of one social bookmarking site to pummel your servers with a burst of inbound traffic. Formerly the Slashdot Effect. — Digg v4 launched at the end of August with a new look, new features and a lot of criticism.

Thomas Ricker / Engadget:

11.6-inch MacBook Air detailed — So, we've just been discussing the rumored, and long overdue, MacBook Air refresh with a trusted source. This person recently had a working model in their possession for a few minutes and managed to glean quite a bit of detail that would seemingly confirm Apple's plan …

Discussion: MacRumors, Softpedia News, Boy Genius Report, SlashGear, Electricpig.co.uk, Crave and Gizmodo

Josh Ong / AppleInsider:

New photos claim to show Apple's prototype CDMA Verizon iPhone — Photos, possibly from a repair shop in Vietnam, have surfaced allegedly showing a prototype CDMA iPhone in Device Verification Test phase. — The photos, which were obtained by the blogger Richy Rich, may serve …

Discussion: Computerworld, MacRumors, SlashGear, Richy Rich, Redmond Pie, Erictric, I4U News, MWD Tech News, IntoMobile, App Advice, MacStories, Phones Review and iClarified

malcolm coles:

Google adds shared by number to Google news results — Google seems to be experimenting with adding a “Shared by [number]” stat next to Google News results - so you can see how popular each story is on Twitter etc. Here's a screenshot - you can see “Shared by 5+” next to the news source:

Discussion: the Econsultancy blog

Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
In The Wake Of Bing & Facebook, Google Web Search Tests Getting More Social

Discussion: ReadWriteWeb and NewsGrange

Microsoft:

Microsoft Announces Office 365 — New cloud service brings together Office, SharePoint, Exchange and Lync for organizations of all sizes. — Microsoft Corp. today announced Microsoft Office 365, the company's next generation in cloud productivity that brings together Microsoft Office …

Ina Fried / CNET News:
Microsoft to offer hosted version of Office

Larry Dignan / Between the Lines Blog:

Salesforce.com's Benioff unplugged: Supervendors suck, Oracle, Zuckerberg as Gates — Salesforce.com Marc Benioff knocked so-called supervendors, their long lists of acquisitions and approach to innovation in a Gartner keynote that walked the line between a stand-up act and a pep rally for the cloud.

Discussion: ReadWriteCloud

Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:

Google Ventures Invests In Local Deals Site Signpost — No, it's not what you're thinking — Google Ventures didn't just invest in a Groupon clone. But the search giant's VC arm is taking a stake in a local deals startup called Signpost, which looks to help you find the best deals in your neighborhood (more on that in a moment).

Jennifer Valentino-DeVries / Digits:

Facebook and Zynga Face Lawsuits over Privacy Breach — Lawsuits in California and Rhode Island are taking aim at Facebook and its largest application maker, Zynga, alleging that they violated federal law by sending identifying information about their users to advertisers and Internet tracking companies.

Discussion: UK Gadget and Tech News …, Technology Review, Edge Magazine, Computerworld, THINQ.co.uk, Adotas and Ars Technica

Kim Hart / The Politico:

Tech industry waits for President Obama — They called him the first “tech president.” — But two years after they rallied behind his campaign and helped put him in the White House, technology industry executives give President Barack Obama mediocre reviews.

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