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2:50 PM ET, January 17, 2011

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Apple:
Apple Media Advisory  —  Apple CEO Steve Jobs today sent the following email to all Apple employees:  —  Team,  —  At my request, the board of directors has granted me a medical leave of absence so I can focus on my health.  I will continue as CEO and be involved in major strategic decisions for the company.
RELATED:
Miguel Helft / New York Times:
Apple Says Steve Jobs Is Taking a New Medical Leave  —  Steven P. Jobs, the co-founder and chief executive of Apple Inc., is taking a medical leave of absence, a year and a half after his return from a liver transplant, the company said on Monday.  —  Mr. Jobs announced his leave in a letter to employees …
Jonathan S. Geller / BGR:
Could Steve Jobs' leave of absence be more serious this time around?  —  This morning, Apple revealed that its CEO and leader in every sense of the word, Steve Jobs, will be taking a medical leave of absence for an unspecified amount of time.  While the news is shocking, it's also apparently not completely unexpected.
Discussion: SAI
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Fortune:
Thinking the unthinkable: Apple without Steve Jobs
Discussion: MacDailyNews
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines Blog:
Apple's Jobs takes medical leave, remains CEO; Succession planning in focus
Digits:
How Much Privacy Does Steve Jobs Deserve?
Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:
Can Apple's Stock Withstand the Absence of Steve Jobs?
Aaron Lucchetti / Wall Street Journal:
Goldman to Offer Facebook Shares Only to Non-U.S. Clients  —  Goldman Sachs Group Inc. decided to exclude U.S. clients from the private offering of as much as $1.5 billion in shares of social-networking company Facebook Inc., citing “intense media attention.”
RELATED:
Andrew Ross Sorkin / DealBook:   Goldman Limits Facebook Investment to Foreign Clients
Henry Blodget / SAI:   Goldman Sachs Thumbs Nose At SEC, Sells Facebook Deal Outside Its Jurisdiction
Daniel Eran Dilger / AppleInsider:
Apple expected to pack ultrafast, dual core SGX543 graphics into iPad 2, iPhone 5  —  Apple's next generation iPad and iPhone, both due the first half of this year, will pack a new version of the company's custom A4 chip, with dual, faster graphics cores capable of supporting a Retina Display iPad …
RELATED:
Arn / MacRumors:
iPad 2 LCD for Sale Already? iPad 2 to Include Vibrating Motor?
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Eighth grader knocks Angry Birds out of the top free spot on the App Store  —  Angry Birds and its variants have dominated the top ranks of iPhone games for the past year.  But on Thursday, a game called Bubble Ball ousted Angry Birds: Seasons from the No. 1 spot on the App Store's top free apps list.
Tarmo Virki / Reuters:
Nokia pulls plug on free music in most markets  —  (Reuters) - The world's top cellphone maker, Nokia, is ending its bundling of free music downloads with cellphones in 27 countries, where it has gained little traction since its 2008 launch.  —  Nokia will continue to sell phones …
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Blog Fight Rules Of Engagement  —  Blog fights happen.  Sometimes for attention, but most of the time because someone is really pissed off about something.  And don't count out big media, they jump right in too when they feel it.  —  No one's ever written down any rules for blog fights that I know of.
RELATED:
Joshua Topolsky:
Dear Michael Arrington
Discussion: SAI, Thanks:keithdsouza
Jay Yarow / SAI: Silicon Alley Insider:
AOL'S CIVIL WAR CONTINUES: Mike Arrington Tears Into Engadget Again
Discussion: Pluggd.in
Michael Learmonth / AdAge:
Media World Awaits The Daily to Forge Model for iPad Content  —  Macy's, Verizon, Pepsi, Land Rover and Virgin Sponsor News Corp./Apple Project  —  NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — In the coming weeks, News Corp. is set to unveil one of its more audacious content bets in recent years: The Daily …
RELATED:
Dan Frommer / SAI: Silicon Alley Insider:
“The Daily” Won't Run Apple's iAds
Discussion: The Register and silicontap.com
Microsoft:
Microsoft Launches Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Cloud Service Globally  —  Steve Ballmer introduces the new service that delivers the Power of Productivity to customers worldwide.  —  Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq “MSFT") CEO Steve Ballmer today announced the worldwide availability …
RELATED:
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft Blog:
Microsoft makes CRM Online 2011 available worldwide
USA Today:
Maria Bartiromo interviews Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer  —  A: If you want to know where is the consumer heat, the things that people want to get their hands on, it's Xbox and Xbox Kinect.  I think about my own family.  My wife used to say, “No, no, that's the machine the boys use,” and now she says, “Yeah, I want to go watch movies.
Ryan Radia / Ars Technica:
Why you should always encrypt your smartphone  —  Last week, California's Supreme Court reached a controversial 5-2 decision in People v. Diaz (PDF), holding that police officers may lawfully search mobile phones found on arrested individuals' persons without first obtaining a search warrant.
BBC:
Wikileaks given data on Swiss bank accounts  —  Mr Elmer said he took responsibility for the data he was handing over to Wikileaks  —  A former Swiss banker has passed on data containing account details of 2,000 prominent people to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.
Jeremy W. Peters / New York Times:
For Magazines, a Bitter Pill in iPad  —  The frustration that the country's magazine and newspaper publishers feel toward Apple can sound a lot like a variation on the old relationship gripe, “can't live with 'em, may get left behind without 'em.”  —  Since Apple introduced the iPad last year …
Yeeguy / FrameThink:
How Facebook Ships Code  —  I'm fascinated by the way Facebook operates.  It's a very unique environment, not easily replicated (nor would their system work for all companies, even if they tried).  These are notes gathered from talking with many friends at Facebook about how the company develops and release software.
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Awards In Hand, The Social Network Filmmakers Heap Praise On Zuckerberg  —  One of the standout scenes at in The Social Network happens in the first five minutes of the movie.  Erica Albright (Rooney Mara) is sitting in a bar with boyfriend Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) when she says the following to him:
RELATED:
Dan Sabbagh / Guardian:
Music makers plan ‘instant pop’ to beat piracy  —  • New singles to go ‘on air, on sale’ simultaneously  —  • Record labels target X Factor generation  —  Ten years after piracy first began to ravage the music industry, Britain's two biggest record labels will finally try to play …
Horace Dediu / asymco:
iTunes has paid over $2 billion to app developers and $12 billion to record labels  —  The last analysis of the iTunes content store showed amazing acceleration in download rates.  Since we know something about the pricing of apps in aggregate, we can make some guesses about the income from apps for both Apple and suppliers.
Discussion: Fortune
RELATED:
Horace Dediu / asymco:
More than 60 apps have been downloaded for every iOS device sold
 
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 More Items: 
New York Times:
In New Military, Data Overload Can Be Deadly
Josh Halliday / Guardian:
Google to fight Spanish demands to remove ‘libelous’ links
Discussion: Search Engine Land and Inquirer
Dave McClure / 500 Startups:
Top 10 Tech Investing Trends For 2011
 Earlier Items: 
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Groupon Poised to Strike Partnership With China's Tencent …