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7:05 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
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:
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.
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 …
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:
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.
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
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.
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 …
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 …
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.
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.
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
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 …
Cecilia Kang / Post Tech:
Free messaging apps threaten wireless carriers' cash cow  —  Here's the dirty secret about text messages.  It costs a wireless carrier close to nothing to send and receive them — even though they charge about $10 a month for 500 to 1,000 texts.  —  Now, a new crop of messaging apps …
Discussion: dailywireless.org and DSLreports
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.
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.
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.
Marco Arment / Marco.org:
A rare disagreement  —  John Gruber:  —  The root cause for so much of the subscription ruckus, I think, isn't that 30% number — it's that Apple pulled the rug out from under some major apps after the fact.  And unlike nearly every App Store rule change in the past, this is a major change …
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.
Cryptome:
Birgitta Jonsdottir Interview on Wikileaks  —  A sends:  —  “Birgitta Jonsdottir, ex-WikiLeaks, Crusades for Freedom of Information”  —  Interview with Icelandic member of parliament Birgitta Jonsdottir by Dominique Deckmyn in Ghent  —  De Standaard Online [Belgian news outlet]
Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
Apple Seeds iOS 4.3 Golden Master to Developers  —  Apple today seeded the golden master version of iOS 4.3 to developers, paving the way for a public release of the update on March 11th.  —  The update is available in versions for the iPad, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, and third- and fourth-generation iPod touch …
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: 
Jim Popkin / Epicenter:
Robert Soloway Exits Prison, Disavows ‘Spam King’ Ways
Tiernan Ray / Tech Trader Daily:
INTC: Piper Sees Change Of Guard In Tech Wave
Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
‘Joint Venture’ Small Business Program Officially Launched
Discussion: PC World, Macworld, The Next Web and TUAW
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines Blog:
Comcast's Roberts aims to make the cable box cool, take on Netflix
Discussion: CrunchGear and Electronista
Horace Dediu / asymco:
Apps are 15 times more popular than ebooks
Discussion: Kindle Review
Eric Savitz / The Tech Trade:
Tablet Fallout: Gartner Slashes 2011, 2012 PC Growth Forecast
 Earlier Items: 
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
March Madness Comes to the iPad, for Free
Zach Epstein / BGR:
AT&T says iPhone users aren't fleeing to Verizon faster than expected