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9:00 AM ET, May 20, 2011

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Ari Levy / Bloomberg:
LinkedIn's Founder, Biggest Backers Will Own $2.5 Billion Stake After IPO  —  LinkedIn Corp.'s founder Reid Hoffman and its three top venture backers will own a combined stake of about $2.5 billion after an eight-year wait for the first initial public offering by a major U.S. social-media site.
RELATED:
Evelyn M. Rusli / DealBook:
LinkedIn's Surge Sets Stage for More Internet I.P.O.'s
Discussion: Mark Evans Tech
Henry Blodget / SAI:
CONGRATULATIONS, LINKEDIN! You Just Got Screwed Out Of $130 Million
Liz Gannes / NetworkEffect:
SecondMarket Unseals LinkedIn Pricing Now That It's Public
Jay Greene / CNET News:
Scoop: Microsoft closes consumer skunkworks unit  —  A little more than three years after opening Pioneer Studios, a skunkworks operation to develop consumer electronics and experiences, Microsoft has closed the unit, CNET has learned.  —  Pioneer was the brainchild of J Allard …
Seth Weintraub / 9 to 5 Mac:
Screenshots of Apple's impressive new Daily Download iPad app, more Apple Store 2.0 news  —  We've gotten our hands on the internal Apple RetailMe iPads and have been rifling through the interesting new features that debuted for Retail employees on Monday.  First is obviously the Daily Download …
Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:
The End Of Blippy As We Know It  —  So it turns out that almost nobody wants people to check out their purchases.  And also that just adding a social element to a feature isn't enough to make it useful.  The lessons of user adoption are sometimes learned the hard way.
Discussion: SAI
Elizabeth Woyke / Mobilized:
Nokia To Use ST-Ericsson Chips For Windows Phone 8 Handsets  —  When Nokia debuts its hotly-anticipated new smartphones running on Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system, at least some of the devices will be powered by silicon from ST-Ericsson, said Carlo Bozotti, the Chief Executive …
Wolfgang Gruener / ConceivablyTech:
Google Is Serious: You Can Kill Chrome's URL Bar  —  We wrote about this feature a few months ago and now we are seeing a first implementation of it.  The URL bar in Chrome is still active by default, but there is a flag to hide it.  Chrome is serious about keeping the URL bar flexible …
Derek Kessler / PreCentral.net:
Wal-Mart to carry TouchPad, 32GB set at $599 [exclusive]  —  HP's distribution advantage over some other tablet manufacturers is hard to deny.  They have massive inroads with traditional electronics retailers like Best Buy and Amazon, their own online store, and a good relationship …
Stephen Chapman / SEO Whistleblower Blog:
Porn, piracy, and personal data: Universities providing more than just education...  UPDATE, 5/19/11 2:13PM EST: It appears word is getting around to some of the schools I've linked to in this post, as links are beginning to die off (which is a good thing for the universities taking care of business).
Jack Purcher / Patently Apple:
Apple Patent Reveals Aperture Coming to Touch Display Devices  —  A number of patents have surfaced over the last two years concerning light pens and apps moving to touch screens.  While one of the first detailed patents surfaced in 2009 in relation to business forms, we've since seen …
Discussion: TUAW, PadGadget, App Advice and MacStories
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Facebook to use Microsoft's PhotoDNA technology to combat child pornography  —  Facebook will be the first company outside of Microsoft to roll out the Redmond company's PhotoDNA technology — a move that the companies are describing as a big step in the fight against child pornography …
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
HTML5: It's Last Call for Comments  —  After more than 3 years of development and discussion by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Working Group on the subject, the draft specifications document for HTML version 5 will now be moved into Last Call status after a 63 to 2 vote, with 3 abstentions.
Discussion: Burningbird, Thanks:marshallk
Staci D. Kramer / paidContent:
Updated: Liberty Media Offers Nearly $1 Billion For Barnes & Noble; Would Buy 70 Percent  —  Bankrupt Borders needs a sale the most but Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS), whichput itself in play last August, is the book retailer with a serious suitor—and they don't come much more serious than John Malone.
Business Week:
Apple Alumni Don't Fall Far from the Tree  —  A wave of star engineers has left to start mobile app companies  —  After selling mobile ad startup Quattro Wireless to Apple (AAPL) in late 2009, Lars Albright took a job helping the iPhone maker work with its community of mobile app developers.
Matt McGee / Search Engine Land:
Google, Smartphone Contacts & Social Graphs: Has Eric Schmidt Crossed The Creepy Line Again?  —  Things have been a little quiet — perhaps even boring — since Eric Schmidt stepped down as Google's CEO to become the company's Executive Chairman.  The strange quotes and not-so-funny attempts …
David Chen / /Film:
‘Neuromancer’ Goes Into Pre-Production  —  After years in development, Vincenzo Natali's Neuromancer is finally moving forward.  According to a press release, the film has secured sales from distributors at Cannes and visual effects work has already begun.  Filming will begin in 2012 …
Discussion: Jacket Copy and I4U News
Karen Gullo / Bloomberg:
Apple Denies Amazon's Claim That ‘App Store’ Is Generic Term  —  Apple Inc., suing Amazon.com Inc. for trademark infringement, denied the retailer's claims that “app store” is a generic term and that the words together stand for a store for application programs.
Discussion: Mobile Entertainment
Stacey Higginbotham / GigaOM:
Exclusive: A First Look at AT&T's LTE Network  —  Yesterday, I took a tour of AT&T's Foundry space in Plano, Texas.  I interviewed Jon Summers, SVP of application and service infrastructure at AT&T, with other reporters, to try to understand the shift AT&T is making in how it approaches buying goods …
Carly Carioli / Phlog:
Google abandons master-plan to archive the world's newspapers  —  In an email today to publishers including the Boston Phoenix, Google told partners in its News Archive project that it would cease accepting, scanning, and indexing microfilm and other archival material from newspapers …
Dan Goodin / The Register:
Eureka!  Google breakthrough makes SSL less painful  —  Client-side change cuts latency by 30%  —  Google researchers say they've devised a way to significantly reduce the time it takes websites to establish encrypted connections with end-user browsers, a breakthrough that could make it less painful …
Discussion: Chromium Blog and Softpedia News
Josh Ong / AppleInsider:
Apple strikes deal with Sony for streaming iTunes music service - report  —  Apple has reportedly inked a licensing deal with Sony Corp.'s music division to begin offering the label's catalog in the cloud, leaving Universal Music Group as the last holdout among the major record labels.
Vlad Savov / Engadget:
Orange and Barclaycard launch ‘Quick Tap’ NFC mobile payments in the UK  —  Yay for the UK, it's now one step closer to catching up to the Japan of last decade.  Mobile carrier Orange is today launching the UK's first mobile phone contactless payment service, dubbed Quick Tap, for purchases up to £15.
Mikko / F-Secure Antivirus Research Weblog:
Phishing Site Found on a Sony Server  —  We know you're not supposed to kick somebody when they're already down... but we just found a live phishing site running on one of Sony's servers.  —  However, this incident has nothing to do with the Sony PSN hack.  —  This is the official homepage of Sony Thailand:
Peter Burrows / Business Week:
Nuance Plays Hardball in Voice Recognition  —  The speech-recognition software maker has acquired at least four companies after suing them first  —  When rumors swirled on May 7 that Apple (AAPL) might acquire Nuance Communications (NUAN), shares of the software company rose 10 percent to $22, within pennies of an all-time high.
 
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 More Items: 
Noreen O'Leary / Adweek:
Eric Schmidt Named Cannes' Media Person of the Year
Audrey Watters / ReadWriteWeb:
iOS Users Downloading 5 Million Games a Day, Report Finds
Discussion: MacStories, Guardian and Distimo
Esther Dyson / Project Syndicate:
Illusions of Democracy  —  NEW YORK - The Internet is an extraordinarily powerful tool.
Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:
Kleiner backs Quattro co-founder's new startup Session M
Reuters:
Facebook looks at China, Zuckerberg packs bags
Discussion: TechCrunch and The Next Web
 Earlier Items: 
Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:
RIAA v. the cloud: Box.net faces subpoena over prerelease music
Discussion: Music Ally and Hollywood Reporter
Matt Rosoff / SAI: Silicon Alley Insider:
Netflix Is On A Hiring Spree For Big Europe Push
Discussion: Electronista
Matt Brian / The Next Web:
Internet Explorer emerges as only browser not vulnerable to huge memory leak
Discussion: Web Browser and WinRumors
Chris Morris / Gamasutra:
Sony Tells Dev Partners PlayStation Store To Return May 24
Jack Purcher / Patently Apple:
Whoa! Apple Patent Confirms iTunes Cloud Media Services
 

 
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

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

John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
Substack, very deliberately, tries to have it both ways by saying publications on their platform are independent while presenting them all as parts of Substack

 
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