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4:40 AM ET, December 9, 2010

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Mike Isaac / Social Medium:
Facebook and Twitter Suspend Operation Payback Accounts  —  Apparently, Wikileaks has a posse.  —  Or rather, those who support the ideals behind Wikileaks, and the spreading of information.  On Tuesday, my colleague Andy Greenberg reported on how the hacker group Operation:Payback …
RELATED:
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
Why Wikileaks Will Never Be Closed Or Blocked  —  Last weekend, rather than read stories about the US diplomatic cables that Wikileaks has released, I decided to read them directly myself.  In doing so, I better understood why no one — certainly not the US State Department — is going to shove those cables back into the darkness.
The PayPal Blog:
Updated Statement about WikiLeaks from PayPal General Counsel, John Muller
Guardian:
WikiLeaks: Who are the hackers behind Operation Payback?
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
The Media Comes To The Defense Of WikiLeaks At LeWeb: “The Leakers Will Win”
Brian Crecente / Kotaku:
Apple Loses Its iPhone Game Guru  —  The man in charge of making sure that Apple's popular portable devices play games well is no longer with the tech titan.  —  Graeme Devine joined Apple's iPhone Game Technologies division last year.  Devine tells Kotaku that his last day at the company was Friday.
Seth Weintraub / Fortune:
Andy Rubin: Google activates 300,000 phones every day  —  Google may now be the biggest smartphone vendor on earth.  —  Andy Rubin just Tweeted that Google (GOOG) is activating 300,000 phones a day.  That passes Apple's (AAPL) iOS, that passes Blackberry (RIMM).  That even matches any figures that Symbian has ever put up.
Carolyn Penner / Twitter Blog:
To Trend or Not to Trend...  Since Twitter first introduced the Trends feature in the summer of 2008, one frequently asked question has been “Why isn't X trending?”  This question has come up around a variety of subjects, from #justinbieber and #adamlambert to #flotilla, #iranelection and #demo2010.
RELATED:
Oliver Chiang / SelectStart:
Prompted By WikiLeaks Queries, Twitter Finally Explains Trends Algorithm
Discussion: Social Medium
Jay Yarow / SAI: Silicon Alley Insider:
Google Adsense Creator Lands $25 Million Round From Andreessen Horowitz, Index For New Startup, Factual  —  Andreessen Horowitz and Index Ventures have co-led a $25 million round in Factual, a data startup.  —  Factual is founded by Gil Elbaz, who is the co-founder of Applied Semantics …
Discussion: VentureBeat, GigaOM, TechCrunch and Pulse2
Jonathan S. Geller / BGR:
BlackBerry PlayBook hands-on video demo  —  We promised a hands on demo video of the BlackBerry PlayBook, and that's what you're going to get from us — almost 10 minutes of 1080p joy.  As we said previously, we were pretty impressed seeing the PlayBook demo'd in person right in front of us, and well, we could go on for days.
Rose Yao / Facebook Blog:
More Control on Mobile  —  Over 200 million people use Facebook on their mobile phones to share photos, access applications and stay connected with friends.  In October, we added a dashboard to give you a way to clearly see and control the ways applications use your information.
RELATED:
Jackie Cohen / All Facebook:   Facebook Updates Mobile Dashboards To Adjust Privacy On The Go
Nicholas Carlson / SAI:
Why Groupon Said No To Google's $6 Billion  —  Each and every Groupon board member stood to gain millions, hundreds of millions, or even more than a billion dollars by accepting Google's $6 billion offer to acquire the company.  —  Groupon cofounders Brad Keywell and Eric Lefkofsky might …
Discussion: Examiner and Tech Trader Daily
Jonathan S. Geller / BGR:
Best Buy Mobile offering iPhone 3GS for free on December 10th  —  We just received a tip from a Best Buy ninja of ours, and well, it seems that Radio Shack isn't the only game in town in you're looking for an Apple iPhone.  Best Buy will be offering up Apple's iPhone 3GS for free for one day only, this Friday the 10th.
Daniel Bates / Daily Mail:
Twins who accused Mark Zuckerberg of stealing idea for Facebook launch ANOTHER lawsuit against him  —  The twins who have accused Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg of stealing the idea for the world-conquering website from them have re-started their bitter legal battle against him.
Jim Dalrymple / The Loop:
Mac App Store launching in January 2011  —  Despite published reports to the contrary, Apple's Mac App Store will launch in January 2011.  —  Reports earlier this week claimed Apple would launch the Mac App Store on December 13, ahead of the holiday shopping season.
Pew Internet:
8% of online Americans use Twitter  —  This is the first-ever survey reading from the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project that exclusively examines Twitter users.  In previous surveys, the Project had asked internet users whether they “used Twitter or another service …
Josh Ong / AppleInsider:
Apple rolling out 90-second iTunes song previews  —  Apple has begun extending song previews in the iTunes Store to 90 seconds on select songs in the U.S. store.  —  Some songs on iTunes now offer 90-second previews for users of the U.S. iTunes Music Store.
Mike Isaac / Social Medium:
Facebook CEO Zuckerberg Agrees to Donate Fortune to Charities  —  Well, if Mark Zuckerberg's image wasn't already bolstered enough by his recent appearance on 60 Minutes, today's announcement might help polish it a bit more.  —  Zuckerberg is one of 17 of the latest billionaires to sign the Giving Pledge …
Lauren A. E. Schuker / Wall Street Journal:
Movies at Home, for $20,000  —  A proposed service aims to bring movies to homes the same day they hit theaters, a milestone that Hollywood has long anticipated with a mixture of fear and fascination.  —  But there's a catch: At the prices currently being discussed by Prima Cinema Inc. …
Tom Warren / WinRumors:
New Windows 8 user interface codenamed ‘Wind’?  —  Windows 8 will have two separate interfaces according to recent rumors.  —  Italian based windows8italia reports that Microsoft's next-generation Windows operating system will be 32-bit and 64-bit with two separate interfaces.
Discussion: The Next Web, Thanks:nstalnecker
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
Truly Decentralized BitTorrent Downloading Has Finally Arrived  —  BitTorrent is a great technology to share files both quickly and efficiently, but like all other P2P-technologies it has an Achilles' heel.  The download process relies in part on central servers that can crash or go offline for a variety of reasons.
Bill Rigby / Reuters:
Google says shut out of USDA cloud computing deal  —  (Reuters) - Google Inc didn't get the chance to compete for the largest federal government “cloud computing” deal yet announced, according to the Web firm, adding to its concerns that government agencies are unfairly favoring rival Microsoft Corp.
Discussion: SlashGear and WinRumors
Andrey Doronichev / Google Mobile Blog:
YouTube 2.1 App Now Available on Android Market  —  When you're watching a video on YouTube, how often do you JUST watch the video?  If you're like me, you scroll down, maybe read the video description and glance over at the related videos to choose what you might watch next.
Electronista:
AMD, Intel, PC builders plan to drop VGA by 2015  —  AMD, Dell, Intel, Lenovo, Samsung and LG on Wednesday said they plan on focusing on putting digital DisplayPort and HDMI connections into their computer products.  They hope to drop analog VGA and LVDS connections in AMD- and Intel-based products by 2015, the chipmakers said.
Kevin May / Tnooz:
Google Places blocked from using TripAdvisor reviews  —  Now here is an interesting development - Google is no longer able to stream in reviews from TripAdvisor to Places pages after the user review giant blocked it.  —  TripAdvisor confirmed the move today in an email …
Matt Idema / Yahoo!'s Yodel Anecdotal:
Yahoo! Gets Hyper-Local  —  Here at Yahoo! we are constantly redefining how people experience and interact with content on the Web.  Users today want to go beyond words presented on the screen.  They want videos.  They want social activity.  They want it anywhere and anytime.
 
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 More Items: 
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
IPO Gives Chinese Video Site Youku A $3.3 Billion Market Cap; Worth More Than AOL
Discussion: SAI
Martyn Williams / Computerworld:
Facebook in breach of Korean privacy laws, says regulator
Adam Ostrow / Mashable!:
Is Foursquare About to Add Photo Sharing? [PIC]
Discussion: About Foursquare, Thanks:jolieodell
Andrew Sinkov / Evernote Blogcast:
Sponsored Accounts: A way to get Evernote Premium for groups of any size
Discussion: SiliconANGLE, GottaBeMobile and Xconomy, Thanks:keithdsouza
The Smoking Gun:
Porn Site Gave Federal Agents Free Rein
Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
iTunes Store Now Offering HD Movie Sales in UK
Discussion: TUAW and AppleInsider
 Earlier Items: 
Jason Roberts / Codus Operandi:
How I Screwed Up My Google Acquisition
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft Blog:
(Not so) Crazy Microsoft Rumors: Microsoft store for NYC coming in 2011
Eric Engleman / TechFlash:
Intellectual Ventures sues nine tech firms for patent infringement
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Alex Sherman / CNBC:
Analyzing Comcast's spinoff of cable networks, purposefully structured with low debt: the move might be a signal to the industry that it's time to consolidate

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

Daniel Thomas / Financial Times:
James Harding says the Tortoise-Observer deal could create a profitable media group and there isn't a guaranteed future for the Observer with the Guardian

 
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