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11:40 AM ET, July 30, 2011

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
How The Hell Is This My Fault?  —  You've doubtless heard about the Airbnb fiasco - being dubbed #ransackgate by some - that's been exploding the last couple of days.  If you're not familiar with the story, we first covered it here, and there's some terrific source material from the woman who's home …
RELATED:
Tricia Duryee / AllThingsD:
Airbnb's Rental Nightmare Ends in Arrest and One Still Very Unlucky Customer  —  The San Francisco Police department confirmed that it has made an arrest in the incident involving an Airbnb host who had her entire life turned upside down when renters ransacked her apartment and ultimately stole her property and identity.
Discussion: Betabeat, CNET News and Tnooz
James Temple / SFGate:
Exclusive: Victim in Airbnb-related ransacking speaks outs  —  In today's Chronicle, this column covered the case of EJ, the anonymous woman who blogged that her San Francisco home was burglarized and vandalized by a guest who arranged to stay there through the service Airbnb.
Jesus Diaz / Gizmodo:
Unconfirmed: iPhone 5 May Appear at the End of September  —  An AT&T employee says that any vacations for the last two weeks of September would be denied “due to an event blackout”.  According to him, the only times this has been done in the past was when an iPhone was released:
RELATED:
Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:
New iPhone 5 cases indicate a thinner but half inch wider and longer frame  —  Following our post with images of a purported iPhone 5 case, other sources have followed up with us with their own cases.  This time we not only have a silicone case, but a hard case, too.  The image above shows a top view of both of our cases.
Ryan Singel / Epicenter:
Researchers Expose Cunning Online Tracking Service That Can't Be Dodged  —  Researchers at U.C. Berkeley have discovered that some of the net's most popular sites are using a tracking service that can't be evaded — even when users block cookies, turn off storage in Flash, or use browsers' “incognito” functions.
Discussion: @mathewi, @tomsinger and socalTECH.com
Harry McCracken / Technologizer:
A Brief History of Apple Not Buying Things  —  And so it begins again.  BGR has an exclusive scoop from an “unproven” (ooh!) source: Apple is in talks to buy Barnes & Noble, the country's last remaining national bookseller.  As BGR points out, the acquisition would get Apple B&N's digital books …
Todd Haselton / BGR:
AT&T's sleek Samsung slider isn't the Galaxy S II after all  —  Last week, we exclusively reported that AT&T was planning to launch a variant of Samsung's Galaxy S II with a full QWERTY keyboard.  Well, we have good news and bad news: BGR learned on Friday from a trusted source that this handset …
Agnes Valdimarsdottir / Agence France Presse:
Icelanders hand in draft of world's first ‘web’ constitution  —  REYKJAVIK — A group of 25 ordinary citizens on Friday presented to Iceland's parliamentary speaker a new constitution draft, which they compiled with the help of hundreds of others who chipped in online.
Discussion: Mashable! and Deutsche Welle
Josh Lowensohn / CNET News:
Report: Nortel portfolio buyers facing DOJ scrutiny  —  Despite last month's $4.5 billion sale of Nortel's patent portfolio wrapping up this week, government scrutiny over what its buyers intend to do with the patents continues, a new report says.  —  The Wall Street Journal reports …
RELATED:
Tim Conneally / BetaNews:
Nortel completes patent liquidation to Apple, Microsoft, RIM, Sony: now what?
Discussion: moneywatch.bnet.com and MacRumors
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Why game developers hate the Facebook-Zynga marriage, and how Google+ can benefit  —  Facebook game developers were furious when they found out about the tight relationship between Facebook and Zynga.  —  If Google properly channels that anger, it could find considerable support for the idea …
Discussion: Inside Social Games
Arnold Kim / MacRumors:
Apple Extends iTunes Previews to 90 Seconds Internationally  —  Apple seems to have extended iTunes song previews to 90 seconds internationally.  Apple first rolled out 90 second previews in the U.S. back in December, 2010.  International song previews had been stuck at 30 seconds.
Anjali Mullany / NY Daily News:
President Barack Obama takes debt battle to Twitter, loses more than 40,000 followers in one day  —  President Obama brought his debt battle to Twitter and he lost - more than 40,000 Twitter followers.  —  Obama asked Americans Friday to call, email, and tweet Congressional leaders to …
The H Open Source:
Emacs has been violating the GPL since 2009  —  An embarrassing mishap at the Free Software Foundation has seen the Emacs editor become GPL-violating software.  In the process of merging CEDET into Emacs 24, it was noted that a number of compiled CEDET parsers were missing their associated grammar files and parser generators.
 
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 More Items: 
Nanette Byrnes / Reuters:
Senator supports online sales tax reform
Discussion: Hillicon Valley
Tom Warren / WinRumors:
Microsoft patents reveal touch+pen plans, Windows 8 tablet future?
Discussion: WinBeta and Techie Buzz, Thanks:tomwarren
Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times:
Vodafone and Facebook team up on smartphone
Corey Goldfeder / Gmail Blog:
Gmail Snooze with Apps Script
Discussion: PC Magazine and WebProNews
 Earlier Items: 
Seth Weintraub / 9to5Mac:
AT&T verifies data throttling for top 5% of users officially for October 1st
Mike Swift / SiliconValley.com:
Local business site challenges Google ranking
Andy Greenberg / The Firewall:
Flying Drone Can Crack Wi-Fi Networks, Snoop On Cell Phones
Discussion: Geek.com and Slashdot
Xiaorui Gan / Google Mobile Blog:
New Google Search experience for tablets