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7:05 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:
Apple will NOT stream tomorrow's iPhone event  —  In case there was any question, we've heard directly from Apple PR that there won't be a webcast of Apple's iPhone launch event.  Last Year's September event was live streamed but for unspecified reasons, Apple has chosen to keep this one off the airwaves.
Seth Weintraub / 9to5Mac:
Co-Founder of Siri: Assistant launch is a “World-Changing Event” (Interview)  —  On Tuesday, Apple will change the way humans interact with electronic devices.  All over again.  —  Perhaps the biggest announcement at Apple's iPhone event on Tuesday will be Assistant, Apple's evolution of the Siri Personal Assistant Software.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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
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 …
Discussion: AllThingsD, Bloomberg, Reuters and WinRumors
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 …
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: Softpedia News and Ed Bott
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.
Brian Stelter / New York Times:
‘Diggnation,’ Popular Web Talk Show, to End in December  —  Together, Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht are akin to Oprah for a certain class of tech enthusiasts.  —  The weekly beta-testing and beer-guzzling show they have hosted for six years, “Diggnation,” adapted the television talk show format …
The Politico:
Early D.C. Facebook hire departs  —  One of Facebook's earliest hires in Washington, Tim Sparapani, has left the social giant's Beltway lobbying team for undisclosed reasons, Facebook confirmed Monday.  —  Sparapani had served as Facebook's director of public policy since 2009 …
Thanks:tonyromm
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.
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 …
 
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 More Items: 
Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:
YouTube's Rick Klau Joins Google Ventures To Head Startup University
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: ReadWriteWeb
DealBook:
Questions Arise 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
Discussion: The Next Web
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
 

 
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

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

 
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