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6:45 PM ET, November 19, 2010

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Google Turns Its Local Eyes to Groupon-But Who Else Could Enter Bidding?  —  According to multiple sources close to the situation, Google is in discussions with local deals powerhouse Groupon about buying it.  —  Without making the requisite joke about the deal of the day …
RELATED:
Henry Blodget / SAI:
Hell, Yes, Google Should Buy Groupon.  And Twitter.  And Foursquare...  Google is in talks to buy Groupon for more than $3 billion, Kara Swisher reports.  —  Good.  —  Google offered $2.5-$4 billion to buy Twitter a few months ago, Nicholas Carlson reports.  —  Also good.
Bloomberg:
Groupon Said to Weigh Sale to Google vs. Raising More Funds
John Paczkowski / Digital Daily:
Apple Developing CDMA-GSM ‘World iPad’?  —  Here's an interesting bit of speculation from Wedge Partners analyst Brian Blair, whose recent Qualcomm channel checks may reveal something about Apple's next-generation iPad.  According to Blair, Apple is developing a “World iPad” based on one of Qualcomm's multimode CDMA-GSM chips.
Tim Berners-Lee / Scientific American:
Long Live the Web  —  The Web is critical not merely to the digital revolution but to our continued prosperity—and even our liberty.  Like democracy itself, it needs defending  —  The world wide web went live, on my physical desktop in Geneva, Switzerland, in December 1990.
James Cowie / Renesys Blog:
China's 18-Minute Mystery  —  When the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission released its report to Congress this week, something slightly unusual happened: people read it.  And there, buried on pages 236-247, a mystery was revealed, and the media have greedily amplified it.
Discussion: Computerworld
RELATED:
Andy Greenberg / The Firewall:
China Hijacks 15% Of Internet Traffic? More Like .015%
Jim Wolf / Reuters:   Pentagon “aware” of China Internet rerouting
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Accel Selling Big Chunks Of Facebook Stock  —  Sometime in the last week or so, we've heard from multiple sources, Accel Partners has sold very significant chunks of Facebook stock.  So significant, in fact, that their ownership percentage has dropped to a point where they are no longer the largest venture shareholder in the company.
Discussion: SAI
Liz Gannes / NetworkEffect:
The Landscape Around Google's Hiring Binge  —  After a year or two of stagnancy, the Google employee count is growing rapidly again.  But the growth spurt and retention efforts seem forced, and unlikely to be the perfect formula to keep the company at the top of the Web heap, despite its clout, market share, and massive revenue.
RELATED:
Andrew Sykes / Gizchina:
Genuine White iPhone 4 On the Grey Market in China!  —  This week it's all been about the iPhone 4, more specifically the elusive yet to be released (rumored to be axed) White iPhone 4.  We've brought you pictures of a genuine white iPhone 4 complete with video and we've even managed to track …
Dan Primack / Fortune:
Tumblr dives into a boatload of money  —  Tumblr, the lightweight blogging company, has raised between $25 million and $30 million in new VC funding, Fortune has learned.  The valuation is in the ballpark of $135 million.  —  BusinessInsider first reported on the existence of a new round last week …
RELATED:
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:   What's New At Tumblr: Funding, Hires, Office, Board Member, And A Focus On Fashion
Austin Carr / Fast Company:
Exclusive: Foursquare's New Partnership With PepsiCo Takes Focus Off of Places  —  Foursquare's pilot program, launching today, breaks away from Facebook Places and Gowalla with badges and discounts based not only on locations but your reasons for being there.
Heather Dougherty / Hitwise Intelligence:
Facebook.com generates nearly 1 in 4 page views in the US  —  In March, we reported an important milestone when the market share of visits to Facebook.com* surpassed Google.com*.  Since then, we have continued to watch the growth of Facebook.com, which increased 60% from the same week last year …
Discussion: TechCrunch and ReadWriteWeb
Horace Dediu / asymco:
Why the Mac keeps growing  —  When the iPhone vs. Android rhetorical war heats up, both sides bring up the history of Macs vs. Windows PCs.  The commonly held thesis is that Windows triumphed as the PC was commoditized (and modularized).  This triumph was at the expense of the over-serving and over-priced Mac.
Dieter Bohn / PreCentral.net:
webOS 2.0 will be released to “all devices” in coming months (Update: Video online)  —  We just heard a confirmation from Palm's Josh Marinacci that HP / Palm intends to get webOS 2.0 on all existing webOS devices in “the coming months.”  That timeline is still vaguer that we'd like …
Scott Austin / Venture Capital Dispatch:
A New Fund Helps Facebook Employees Exercise Stock Options  —  Google's initial public offering in 2004 turned hundreds of Googlers into instant millionaires thanks to stock options that soared in value.  The same will likely happen to Facebookers if and when Facebook decides to go public.
Discussion: All Facebook and SAI
adafruit industries blog:
Microsoft now says it's “inspired' by community finding new uses for Kinect...  Science Friday had a segment on the Xbox Kinect - apparently our bounty / hack was mentioned and now Microsoft's Alex Kipman & Shannon Loftis says “Kinect interface was left unprotected 'by design” and they're “inspired' by community finding new uses.”
Pete Warden / ReadWriteWeb:
Secrets of the LinkedIn Data Scientists  —  I suffer from severe data envy when it comes to LinkedIn.  They have detailed information on millions of people who are motivated to keep their profiles up-to-date, collect a rich network of connections and have a strong desire from their users …
Fortune:
How Facebook learned from MySpace's mistakes  —  Facebook and MySpace were neck and neck competitors for years, but with yesterday's announcement, Mark Zuckerberg became the clear victor of this round of social.  Here's how Facebook did it.  —  By Kevin Kelleher, contributor
Discussion: Computerworld
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
You Can Now Gift Anyone With An E-mail Address A Kindle Book  —  With the holiday shopping season in full swing, retailers are clamoring to publicize their sales, deals and more.  Amazon issued a release today that customers can now give any of the 725,000 Kindle books to anyone with an email address.
Phil Nickinson / Android Central:
HTC Merge 360-degree view appears, quickly disappears from Verizon's site  —  Need another sign that the HTC Merge is nearing release?  How about a 360-degree look to go along with our previous hands-on and video preview.  It popped up on Verizon's website today and was quickly pulled, but that's just not how we do things around here.
Seth Weintraub / 9 to 5 Mac:
Changewave maps carrier remorse: More than a third wish they could buy iPhone  —  A fun survey from the folks from Changewave today.  They asked US smartphone customers not on AT&T if they would have liked to have purchased the iPhone, if their carrier ...carried it.
Seth Weintraub / 9 to 5 Mac:
Mac App Store opening soon, Apple implores developers to submit their apps  —  Apple sent out an email this evening telling Mac developers to submit their Mac ‘apps’ for inclsion in the opening of the store which should happen pretty soon.
 
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 More Items: 
Alexis Madrigal / The Atlantic Online:
Facebook Warns Debt Collectors About Using Its Service
Discussion: Switched
John Paczkowski / Digital Daily:
Oracle Rests SAP Case, Slams HP CEO
Grant Gross / PC World:
Senator Threatens to Block Online Copyright Bill
Discussion: Music Ally and PlagiarismToday
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Video: BoomTown Puts Twitter's Revenue Dude Adam Bain in the Deep Freeze
 Earlier Items: 
Shayndi Raice / Wall Street Journal:
Small Deal Brings Scrutiny to Huawei
Phil / Nokia Conversations:
EVP Niklas Savander discusses Nokia N8 quality
Kelly Riddell / Bloomberg:
Cox Communications Takes On AT&T, Verizon With Mobile Offering