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8:20 AM ET, October 4, 2011

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Wall Street Journal:
Sprint to ‘Bet the Company’ on iPhone  —  With the new iPhone coming out this week, Sprint Nextel Corp. is finally expected to gain access to a device it has long coveted—but at a staggering cost.  —  The No. 3 wireless company is making a multibillion dollar gamble that Apple Inc.'s gadget …
RELATED:
Jonathan S. Geller / BGR:
Sprint scores iPhone 5 exclusive thanks to $20 billion deal with Apple?  —  The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Sprint has entered into an agreement with Apple to purchase over $20 billion worth of iPhones over the next four years — that's around 30 million iPhones.
Michael Arrington / UNCRUNCHED:
Welcome To CrunchFund, MG Siegler  —  I want to welcome MG Siegler as our newest general partner at CrunchFund.  MG, who I worked with for several years at TechCrunch, will join me and Patrick Gallagher in the next couple of weeks.  More on this shortly.  Update: MG's post with details on his decision is here.
RELATED:
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
MG Siegler Will Become Our Apple Columnist, And Join CrunchFund As A VC  —  When I first reached out to MG Siegler to join TechCrunch two and a half years ago, I knew he was an amazing talent who could help cement our place as the premier technology blog on the Internet.
Fred Destin:
CrunchFund ?  —  The Uncrunching of Techcrunch.  It's been one of the most entertaining saga's on the web recently, in a reality TV kind of way.  But in the process, a discourse has emerged that seems to say “nothing matters except Influence”.  I don't buy that.
Discussion: @arrington
MG Siegler / parislemon:
On The Next Venture  —  I've been thinking about how I was going to write this post for a while now.  Of course, I didn't anticipate that I would be writing at 2 AM local time in London, where I'm currently visiting to speak at FOWA in a couple of days (that talk also just potentially got more interesting).
Loic / Loic Le Meur Blog:
A Journalist? A VC? Who cares. It's all about Influence.
Thanks:loic
Robert Scoble / Google+:
Will tomorrow be Steve Jobs' last big thing?  —  I read all the press reports, like this one on CNET, about what Apple is announcing tomorrow http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3- 20114545-248/what-to-expect-from-apples - iphone-event/ or the others here on Techmeme: http://www.techmeme.com/111003/ p13#a111003p13 …
RELATED:
Seth Weintraub / 9to5Mac:
Co-Founder of Siri: Assistant launch is a “World-Changing Event” (Interview)
Nik Cubrilovic:
Facebook Re-Enables Controversial Tracking Cookie  —  In May of this year the Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook like buttons and other website widgets were setting cookies on visiting browsers.  This cookie could then be read later and used to track the user across different web properties and back to the Facebook site.
Sean Buckley / Engadget:
HTC confirms security hole, says patch is incoming  —  HTC held true to its promise to look into the security vulnerability that surfaced over the weekend, an apparent glitch that allows any app requesting internet access to take a peek at a user account information, GPS location, system logs, and other potentially private data.
Mike Masnick / Techdirt:
Patent Troll Says Anyone Using WiFi Infringes; Won't Sue Individuals ‘At This Stage’  —  Just as some in the copyright trolling business are lowering their settlement fees, but making it up in volume, it appears there's a similar effort under way on the patent trolling side of the world.
Tom Warren / WinRumors:
Microsoft confirms Zune HD death, “we will no longer be producing Zune players”  —  Microsoft has officially confirmed the death of its Zune player devices.  —  The software giant removed references to the Zune HD from its Zune site on Monday and later claimed that the removal was “a mistake.”
Reuters:
Apple rejects Samsung offer to help end Australia dispute  —  (Reuters) - Apple Inc has rejected an offer from South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co to help settle their tablet-computer dispute in Australia, hoping for an important court victory there in its global campaign of patent litigation.
Jeffrey Veen / The Typekit Blog:
Adobe acquires Typekit  —  Just a few moments ago, Adobe's CTO Kevin Lynch took the stage at their annual MAX conference and explained the company's Creative Cloud strategy.  Part of that announcement is very big news for us: Typekit has been acquired by Adobe.  —  We are thrilled.
RELATED:
Ryan Paul / Ars Technica:
PhoneGap to become an Apache project as Adobe acquires Nitobi
Discussion: eWeek
Richard Lawler / Engadget:
Showtime launches Anytime streaming portal, social iPad app  —  Just in time for the return of everyone's favorite serial killer, Showtime Anytime soft-launched recently, bringing online access to the network's library of movies, TV shows and more.  Multichannel News reports AT&T U-verse subscribers …
Discussion: PadGadget, TUAW and iClarified
Phil Wolff / Skype Journal:
Should the US have OK'd Microsoft's purchase of Skype?  Should the EU?  —  The European Commission will make a statement on the Microsoft-Skype deal on or before this Friday, 7 October 2011.  —  Skype is too big to slip under regulatory radar.  —  Skype was all promise in 2003.  Now it is achievement.
Thanks:evanwolf
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Microsoft board gives Ballmer a 2% pay increase, says he's underpaid  —  Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.  (Microsoft photo)  —  Microsoft's annual proxy statement was just issued via the Securities and Exchange Commission.  We're still going through the fine print, but in one of the most …
Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:
Exclusive: Here's Myspace's New Pitch Deck: Music, Youth Culture and “Steadied” Traffic  —  Today and tomorrow Specific Media-owned Myspace is at Advertising Week with investor Justin Timberlake in tow to pitch its new agenda to marketers.  The company declined to make execs available …
Discussion: memeburn and Gizmodo
Tom Nguyen / Adobe AIR and Adobe Flash Player Team Blog:
Adobe Flash Player 11 & AIR 3 Have Launched!  —  Adobe MAX is here, and we've got a lot of news to share.  Today we're releasing Flash Player 11 and AIR 3 — you can download the release starting at 9:00 PM Pacific today.  As we announced previously, there are lots of new features …
Woody Leonhard / InfoWorld:
The rise and fall of the Windows Desktop Gadget  —  Following last month's dump of user-submitted Office templates, Microsoft has abruptly dropped support for third party Windows Desktop Gadgets  —  Follow @infoworld  —  In a move that took many by surprise, Microsoft dropped support for new Windows Desktop Gadgets.
Discussion: eWeek, Ed Bott and Softpedia News
Brad Molen / Engadget:
Mango rollout going smoothly, now available to half of all Windows Phones  —  Bring.  It.  On.  Rolling out a phone update tends to take a few weeks before it's available to everyone, so we were expecting Windows Phone to have its share of hiccups when doling Mango out to several different models simultaneously across the globe.
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Fusion-io unveils new memory platform for accelerating data center servers  —  The demand for accessing data keeps going up and up.  That's why Fusion-io has grown quickly by selling flash-based memory systems for data center servers.  Today the company is introducing its second-generation ioMemory products to double its performance.
Electronista:
New BlackBerry OS may be called BlackBerry X, take Apple cue  —  BlackBerry X may merge RIM phone, tablet platforms  —  RIM's BlackBerry DevCon this month may see it take a page from Apple in an OS naming scheme and strategy.  New leaks from multiple sources pointed to a more unified platform known …
Ryan Lawler / GigaOM:
AOL drops big bucks on original web video  —  AOL has seen a ton of growth in its video properties over the last year or so, and is looking to bolster that part of its business even more, with a slate of web original content designed to capture viewer attention and steal TV ad dollars.
Brian / The Tech Erra:
Apple to allow iOS app rentals soon?  —  After some examinations of various strings in iTunes 10.5 beta 9, @SonnyDickson found some interesting results.  —  If you look at the below image, you can see that it may soon be possible to rent iOS apps.  At the end of the rental period …
 
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 More Items: 
Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:
YouTube's Rick Klau Joins Google Ventures To Head Startup University
The Politico:
Early D.C. Facebook hire departs
Thanks:tonyromm
James Vicini / Reuters:
U.S. top court rejects Internet music download case
Discussion: Techdirt and Plagiarism Today
Matthew Panzarino / The Next Web:
Instagram 2.0.1 released, restores 2 old filters, geo tags imported and original images
Discussion: Lifehacker and ReadWriteWeb
DealBook:
Questions Over Yahoo's Value as Buyers Weigh Bids
Discussion: The Tech Trade
Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:
StumbleUpon Brings Its Tablet Experience To Android, Optimizes UI Across All Its Mobile Apps
Discussion: Android Phone Fans
Drew Olanoff / The Next Web:
New version of Growl enters The Mac App Store for $1.99
Discussion: MacStories, MacNN, MacRumors and TUAW
Ryan Lane / Wikimedia blog:
Native HTTPS support enabled for all Wikimedia Foundation wikis
Discussion: Softpedia News
 Earlier Items: 
Stuart Dredge / paidContent:
More Than Half Of Netflix's Streams Are TV Shows, Not Films
Mike Krieger / Instagram Engineering:
Sharding & IDs at Instagram
Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:
Greylock Funds WhoSay's Celebrity Social Media Platform
Discussion: VentureBeat, PE Hub News and VatorNews
Jennifer Preston / New York Times:
Mashable, Once a One-Man Blog, Gains Clout in Social Media
Brian Stelter / New York Times:
‘Diggnation,’ Popular Web Talk Show, to End in December
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Evan Drellich / New York Times:
The MLB is planning national packages for streaming companies to bid on in 2028, when its national TV deals with ESPN, Fox, and Turner expire

Lauren Forristal / TechCrunch:
Tubi launches Scenes, a mobile feature that lets viewers watch 60-to-90-second trailer-style clips from its library to help with content discovery

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

 
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