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8:10 PM ET, October 29, 2010

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Sarah Ellison / Fortune:
Get ready for Verizon's ‘Dream Phone’  —  The soon-to-be-unveiled Verizon iPhone is the answer to many consumers' prayers.  But a deal with Apple will test the company that Ivan Seidenberg has spent his career building.  —  By Sarah Ellison, contributor  —  The most talked-about cellphone …
RELATED:
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:   For Apple, AT&T Is The Company You Sleep With, Verizon Is The Company You Marry
Jay Yarow / SAI: Silicon Alley Insider:
Verizon's CEO Opens Up About Steve Jobs
Discussion: Fortune
Ashlee Vance / New York Times:
Microsoft Is Said to Be Buying Canesta, a Chip Maker  —  MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Microsoft is buying a chip company that specializes in gesture recognition technology, which allows people to control computers and other devices just by moving their bodies, according to people briefed on the deal.
RELATED:
Canesta:
CANESTA ANNOUNCES DEFINITIVE AGREEMENT TO BE ACQUIRED BY MICROSOFT  —  Canesta, Inc. today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to have its products, technology, intellectual property, customer contracts, and other resources acquired by the Microsoft Corporation.
Discussion: PC World
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft Blog:
Microsoft: Our strategy with Silverlight has shifted  —  At Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference (PDC) this week, the future of Silverlight is one topic that has gotten short shrift.  There have been no sessions about Silverlight 5 and only one mention of Silverlight in the kick-off keynote.
RELATED:
Joe Wilcox / BetaNews:
Why is Microsoft suddenly so hot for HTML5?
Thanks:rawmeet
Caroline McCarthy / CNET News:
Facebook acquires file-sharing service Drop.io  —  Facebook has acquired most of the assets of Drop.io, a New York-based start-up that lets users privately and sporadically share files through a drag-and-drop interface, the company announced Friday on its blog.  —  Founder Sam Lessin will be joining Facebook full-time.
RELATED:
Jay Hathaway / Download Squad:
Facebook buys drop.io file sharing service, shuts it down
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
After A Five Month Stay (And $750M Acquisition), AdMob CEO Omar Hamoui Leaves Google  —  Last November, Google announced that it had acquired leading mobile ad network AdMob for a whopping $750 million.  Today, less than a year after the deal closed, AdMob founder and CEO Omar Hamoui is leaving Google, we've confirmed with the company.
Discussion: mocoNews and IntoMobile
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Here's AOL Now-Live New Homepage (and Welcome Back to the Adorkable Lindsay Campbell)  —  Today, BoomTown interviewed AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, along with NPR CEO Vivian Schiller, at the Online News Association conference in Washington, D.C. about the future of journalism on the Web.
Discussion: L.A. Times Tech Blog
RELATED:
David Kaplan / paidContent:
AOL's Homepage Revamp Aims For TV Network Model
Joseph Tartakoff / paidContent:
10-Q Watch: Google Paid $179 Million In Cash For Social App Maker Slide  —  Google (NSDQ: GOOG) paid $179 million in cash to buy social app maker Slide in August, according to the company's quarterly filing with the SEC. Previous reports put the price tag as high as $229 million.
Discussion: SAI
RELATED:
Tom Krazit / CNET News:   Google spent $1.6B on 40 companies in 9 months
Sascha Segan / PC Magazine:
Samsung's ‘Nexus Two:’ More Details Come Out  —  Samsung is indeed working on an unlocked Google Android phone as reported by Gizmodo this morning, but it may not be called the “Nexus Two” and it isn't coming out on November 8.  —  Gizmodo riled the Internet today with photos and details of a slim …
Royal Pingdom:
Is Goo.gl really the fastest URL shortener? (chart)  —  A few weeks ago, Google made its URL shortener, Goo.gl, open for everyone and gave it its own website, similar to Bit.ly's.  Previously, Goo.gl could only be used by Google's own services.  —  When they announced this …
Discussion: ReadWriteWeb and Techie Buzz
Josh Ong / AppleInsider:
IDC: Apple passes RIM to become No. 4 global mobile phone vendor  —  A new IDC report shows strong iPhone sales have pushed Apple past Research in Motion, making the iPhone-maker the world's fourth-largest mobile phone seller in the third quarter of 2010.  —  According to IDC's Worldwide …
RELATED:
Horace Dediu / asymco:
Trading Places: How Apple climbed into the Top Tier
Discussion: GigaOM, Fortune and Digital Daily
Marco Arment / Marco.org:
The Mac App Store isn't for today's Mac developers  —  Apple's recently announced App Store for the Mac is a Really Big Deal™, for reasons I'll get to in a moment.  But a lot of existing Mac developers have pointed out major issues or unknowns that need to be addressed:
Jon Brodkin / Network World:
89,000 Microsoft employees will get a Windows Phone 7 handset  —  Steve Ballmer gives phones to every PDC attendee, and every Microsoft employee  —  Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer enthusiastically announced Thursday that all attendees of Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference will receive a new Windows Phone 7 device.
Nicholas Carlson / SAI:
Larry And Sergey Wanted Steve Jobs To Be Google's First CEO  —  The first guy Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin wanted to hire to be their CEO was Apple's Steve Jobs.  —  We learned this detail watching Bloomberg TV's “Game Changers” documentary on the founding of Google.
Discussion: Pulse2 and ResourceShelf
Mike Vernal / Facebook Developers Blog:
An Update on Facebook UIDs  —  As we outlined previously, we recently learned that some developers on Facebook Platform were inadvertently sharing User IDs (UIDs) due to an issue with the way that web browsers work.  While we found no evidence that this inadvertent sharing resulted …
Discussion: All Facebook and Inside Facebook
Nicholas Carlson / SAI:
Foursquare Doomed?  Facebook Places Has 7X More Users  —  About 30 million people have tried Facebook places, a single source who works with Facebook tells us.  —  Reached for a response to this number, Facebook rep Larry Yu told us, “[I] don't have any guidance to offer right now, I'm afraid.”
Claire Cain Miller / Bits:
Google Ventures Invests in HomeAway  —  Google Ventures, the investment fund that Google started last year, is getting into vacation rentals.  —  Google has invested in HomeAway, the vacation rental site that has already raised nearly half a billion dollars in venture capital.
Subel Bhandari / Agence France Presse:
Everest summit wired up with Internet  —  KATHMANDU — Climbers at the top of Mount Everest, the world's highest peak, will now be able to make video calls and surf the Internet on their mobile phones, a Nepalese telecom group claims.  —  Ncell, a subsidiary of Swedish phone giant TeliaSonera …
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Facebook Holding Special Mobile Event This Wednesday  —  Facebook has just sent us an invitation to a special event that's happening this Wednesday.  The theme?  Mobile.  —  We don't know what Facebook is planning to launch (though we'll do our best to find out beforehand), but we have a few guesses.
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Twitter Updates Logos, Rules: Info On Logo Use, Screenshots, And Capital “T” Tweets  —  Today on the Twitter blog, the company wrote a post that was all of three sentences to let people know about their new logos.  Yay!  —  But there's actually quite a bit more to it then it seems.
Discussion: Twitter Blog
Chris Ziegler / Engadget:
Verizon's new rebate form shows two Droid 2 Globals, Samsung Continuum, and more  —  Carrier rebate forms have a fun tendency to reveal unannounced hardware, since they cover several upcoming weeks when they're published — and Verizon's latest for the month of November is a particularly juicy one.
Joshua Topolsky / Engadget:
The PlayStation Phone: new photos, more details!  —  We've gotten our hands on some more images of the PlayStation Phone, and gleaned a few more juicy details about the handset.  Firstly, as you can see in the photos, the model in question does indeed seem to be codenamed “Zeus” (as we reported on the 27th).
 
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 More Items: 
Stacey Higginbotham / GigaOM:
An Apple Integrated SIM: What it Could Mean
Discussion: PhoneArena and The Register
Ina Fried / CNET News:
Microsoft releases lock on Windows Phone 7 developers
Thanks:rawmeet
Will Larson / Digg Blog:
Introducing Digg's Streaming API
Discussion: ReadWriteWeb and The Blog Herald
Harrison Hoffman / The Windows Blog:
Windows Live serves up local photo spots on foursquare
Discussion: LiveSide.net and The Next Web, Thanks:rawmeet
Ben Fritz / Company Town:
Redbox planning to expand onto the Web next year
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
Facebook Weeks Away From Launching New Games Portal
Discussion: The Next Web
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
AOL Sells Buildings, Land To CB Richard Ellis Realty Trust …
Discussion: Business Wire, SAI and Pulse2
Yoree Koh / Japan Real Time:
Facebook Looking for Japanese Friends
 Earlier Items: 
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Demand Media's IPO Is On Deck, With Amended Filing
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
Leaked DVD Screener of The Social Network A BitTorrent Hit
Monica Chen / DigiTimes:
Asustek details tablet PC plans
Michael Siliski / Google Mobile Blog:
New in Google Maps for Android: Updated reviews, search filters …
 

 
From Mediagazer:

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

Evan Drellich / New York Times:
The MLB is planning national packages for streaming companies to bid on in 2028, when its national TV deals with ESPN, Fox, and Turner expire

Lauren Forristal / TechCrunch:
Tubi launches Scenes, a mobile feature that lets viewers watch 60-to-90-second trailer-style clips from its library to help with content discovery

 
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