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5:50 PM ET, March 3, 2011

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:
WordPress.com Suffers Largest DDoS Attack In Its History  —  You have no idea how hard it was to get this post up, as WordPress.com, our blog host, is currently under a denial of service attack.  It's been almost impossible to access the TechCrunch backend for the past 10 minutes …
RELATED:
WordPress.com / @wordpressdotcom:
Our systems are back to normal. We'll continue to monitor them and post updates here if needed.
Discussion: TechSpot
Nielsen Wire:
Who is Winning the U.S. Smartphone Battle?  —  The answer depends on whether you're looking at operating systems or manufacturers.  —  The battle for the hearts and minds of consumer smartphone owners continues to be a heated one according to data just released by The Nielsen Company.
RELATED:
Ingrid Lunden / mocoNews:   Nielsen: Apple, RIM Are Beating Android OEMs In The U.S. Smartphone Race
Andy Chu / Bing:
Bing Launches Deals  —  Calling all bargain hunters, deal lovers, Groupon groupies and Living Social fanatics!  Things just got easier.  —  Today we're launching Bing deals for the desktop and mobile (m.bing.com) - giving you access to more than 200,000 unique offers in over 14,000 cities …
RELATED:
Matt Rosoff / SAI: Silicon Alley Insider:
Microsoft Adds Daily Deals To Bing  —  Microsoft will incorporate daily deals and discounts into Bing search results through a partnership with The Dealmap.The move gives Microsoft another weapon against Google, who failed to acquire Groupon after bidding a reported $6 billion late last year.
Jonathan S. Geller / BGR:
Exclusive: BlackBerry Messenger will launch on Android and iOS  —  BGR has learned from multiple trusted sources that Research In Motion is planning to bring its beloved BlackBerry Messenger app and service to Android, and eventually to iOS as well.  According to our sources …
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
With “Quick Bar”, Twitter Has Figured Out How To Cram Ads Into The Stream  —  Twitter has just rolled out a pretty substantial new update to the iOS versions of its app today.  Several of the new features look nice, such as the new Tweet box design, and the easier way to find friends via phone contacts.
RELATED:
Federico Viticci / MacStories:
Twitter Updates iOS App with Lots Of New Features
Jay Hathaway / Download Squad:
Twitter for iOS updated with “quick bar” and new friend finder
Discussion: TiPb and Redmond Pie
Garett Sloane / New York Post:
Facebook co-founder set to sell 10M shares  —  While deep-pocketed investors from New York to Beijing are clamoring to buy a piece of Facebook, news that a co-founder of the social networking giant is shopping around a portion of his stake is raising eyebrows on Wall Street, The Post has learned.
Jennifer Allan / Electricpig.co.uk:
iPad price drop: Apple will refund the difference  —  If you recently bought an iPad, only to find that there's now a shiny new iPad 2 and a whopping great £100 reduction on the price tag of the original iPad, do not be alarmed!  Apple will refund you the difference, so you could still take advantage of that iPad price drop.
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Ditto: The Social App For What You Should Be Doing  —  Think about Foursquare right now.  You can tell everyone what you're currently doing, but there's no good mechanism for planning something to do or for getting a recommendation for something to do.  Sure, you could use “shouts” that way.
Mike Butcher / TechCrunch Europe:
Disney acquires gaming engine startup to build HTML5 games outside of App stores  —  Disney has acquired an HTML5 gaming engine startup called Rocket Pack, based out of Helsinki, Finalnd.  A Disney spokesperson told us today, exclusively: “We can confirm that The Walt Disney Company has acquired Rocketpack …
David Kirkpatrick / Vanity Fair:
Twitter Was Act One  —  Considering that he invented Twitter and is about to launch another potential game changer with his new company, Square, Jack Dorsey has one of the lowest profiles in tech.  But from his childhood obsession (city maps) to his dream job (mayor of New York City) …
Discussion: eMoney, @tedr and TechCrunch
Seth Weintraub / Fortune:
Steve Jobs' reality distortion takes its toll on truth  —  Apple twisted facts and used an erroneous quotation to try to convince crowds that all other tablets had no shot at de-throning the iPad in 2011.  —  In what seems like a ritual at this point, I watched Apple's iPad 2 keynote in disbelief …
Nir Ben Yona / Technologer:
Did Apple Just ‘Borrow’ The Smart Cover Idea From Incase?  —  Apple has really blown our minds away with their latest and greatest Smart Cover revelation, yesterday morning.  Designed specifically for iPad 2 devices, the fabulous and colorful covers - soon to be offered in polyurethane or leather flavors …
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
The Twitter Story Fail  —  It's amazing to me how wrong The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times were on their Twitter fundraising stories last week.  All claimed multiple independent sources, but everyone got the story wrong in the same way.
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft Blog:
A low-tech Microsoft slate for the masses  —  You can never be too thin or too fast ... or too pricey — if you're a slate/tablet targeted at the developed world.  But if customers in the developing world are your focus, iPads, Galaxy Tabs and Windows 7 business slates are probably out of the reach of most of them.
Joe Wilcox / BetaNews:
iPad 2 wasn't Apple's big March 2nd announcement  —  It was the software — FaceTime, Garage Band, iMovie and Photo Booth — and the colorful Smart Covers.  I kid you not.  There are good reasons why so much of yesterday's launch event focused on software — hell, Apple even made a video …
Discussion: Guardian and MacGazette.net
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
And Now The True Test For Hot Beta Chat App Yobongo: Going Live  —  We've written about Yobongo a couple of times now.  It's an interesting concept (location-centric realtime mobile chat) with great execution.  But that execution has so far only had to withstand 140 or so beta testers.
Ryan Kim / GigaOM:
Instapaper's Arment: Seek Money From Customers, Not VCs  —  Marco Arment, the former chief technology officer of the Tumblr blog platform, is best known these days for his time-shifting reading app Instapaper.  But he could start a side-job as a financial advisor to start-ups.
David Faber / The Faber Report:
Latest Facebook Investment Values Company at $65 Billion  —  General Atlantic, a $17 billion investment firm, will soon become the latest investor in Facebook, buying one tenth of one percent of the company in a deal that values the social networking giant at $65 billion, according to people with knowledge of the transaction.
Discussion: DealBook, Reuters and SocialTimes.com
Florian Mueller / FOSS Patents:
Microsoft and Google jointly sue GeoTag Inc. in order to invalidate a patent asserted against more than 300 entities  —  Google and Microsoft have joined forces to take down a Texas company's geotagging patent that they claim has been used in lawsuits against more than 300 entities, many of which are customers of the two companies.
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
March Madness Comes to the iPad, for Free  —  Big sports events generally shy away from the Web, because they're still worried-with good reason-about trading analog dollars for digital dimes.  —  One exception to the rule has been the annual March Madness NCAA college basketball tournament …
Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
‘Joint Venture’ Small Business Program Officially Launched  —  Earlier this week, we noted that Apple had prepped its employees for a rollout of a new support program known as “Joint Venture” targeting small businesses.  The program has now officially launched and is essentially in line …
Discussion: PC World, Macworld, TUAW and The Next Web
Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
AT&T Introduces Postpaid Subscription Plans for Tablet Data Access  —  Fresh on the heels of confirmation that AT&T will support personal hotspot functionality for the iPhone 4 when the feature debuts with iOS 4.3 next week, the carrier today also announced the launch of new postpaid subscription data plans …
Gina Trapani / Smarterware:
The Case Against Drop-down Identities  —  Human beings and their relationships are complex and nuanced, so the software that attempts to describe them must accomodate a wide range of expression.  Last night, Google rolled out an update to the Google Profiles product, which I've promoted for for almost 2 years.
Horace Dediu / asymco:
Apps are 15 times more popular than ebooks … The Passion of Steve Jobs - NYTimes.com  —  It was almost exactly three years ago that Steve Jobs dismissed the Kindle reader as a futile attempt to change user behavior.  —  Yesterday, Steve Jobs announced that the iBooks store served 100 million ebooks …
Discussion: Kindle Review
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Browser makers release standard to bring 3D graphics to web apps without plug-ins  —  An industry consortium including browser makers Apple, Mozilla, Opera and Google today announced it has created a final standard on how to deliver built-in 3D graphics in web pages that won't require a plug-in or add-on to the browser.
Discussion: The Register
 
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 More Items: 
Tiernan Ray / Tech Trader Daily:
INTC: Piper Sees Change Of Guard In Tech Wave
Cecilia Kang / Post Tech:
Free messaging apps threaten wireless carriers' cash cow
Discussion: dailywireless.org and DSLreports
Larry Downes / CNET News:
Snowe, Kerry introduce spectrum inventory bill
Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
Apple Seeds iOS 4.3 Golden Master to Developers
Discussion: PC World, 9 to 5 Mac, Gizmodo, Apple and Macworld
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines Blog:
Comcast's Roberts aims to make the cable box cool, take on Netflix
Discussion: CrunchGear and Electronista
Eric Savitz / The Tech Trade:
Tablet Fallout: Gartner Slashes 2011, 2012 PC Growth Forecast
Nathan Olivarez-Giles / L.A. Times Tech Blog:
Gmail service fully restored after several days of problems, Google says
Discussion: NBC Bay Area
 Earlier Items: 
Joseph Goldstein / New York Times:
Social Media Offers Wealth of Clues for Law Enforcement
Andy Greenberg / The Firewall:
Documents Reveal TSA Research Proposal To Body-Scan Pedestrians, Train Passengers
Discussion: Techdirt, SlashGear and p2pnet