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3:40 PM ET, February 24, 2009

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Apple:
Apple Announces Safari 4—The World's Fastest & Most Innovative Browser  —  New Nitro Engine Runs JavaScript More Than Four Times Faster  —  Apple® today announced the public beta of Safari® 4, the world's fastest and most innovative web browser for Mac® and Windows PCs.
RELATED:
Katie Marsal / AppleInsider:
Apple releases public beta of Safari 4 browser
Acacio Cruz / The Official Google Blog:
Update on Gmail  —  The Gmail outage that affected many consumers and Google Apps users worldwide is now over.  Users should find that they're able to access their email now without any further problems.  —  Before you can access your Gmail, you may be asked to fill in what's called …
RELATED:
MG Siegler / VentureBeat:
Where were you during the great Gmail outage of February 2009?  —  If you live in the United States, chances are, you were asleep.  But for those in other parts of the world, and those of us who are nocturnal, Google's email service, Gmail, was down for several hours on Tuesday morning.
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:
Ballmer: Office 14 not this year  —  During his annual “Strategic Update” briefing with Wall Street analysts on February 24, CEO Steve Ballmer said Office 14 won't be shipping in 2009.  —  “Office 14 will not be this year,” Ballmer told analysts.  —  Microsoft officials have been careful …
RELATED:
Jim Finkle / Reuters:
Microsoft Windows 7 Will Work with ‘Netbooks’
Discussion: CNET News
MG Siegler / VentureBeat:
Apple launches a new iTunes Pass feature for groupies  —  Is there an artist you love?  I mean really love, as in you'll buy anything they do before you have any idea what it is?  A lot of people probably do, and for them, Apple has a new feature on iTunes called “iTunes Pass.”
RELATED:
Official google.org Blog:
The Next Chapter for Google.org  —  When Larry and Sergey laid out their vision for Google.org, they hoped that this “experiment in active philanthropy” would one day have an even greater impact on the world than Google itself.  They committed resources from Google's profits …
RELATED:
Owen Thomas / Gawker:
WSJ Conference Organizer's Wife Secretly Running Google  —  Megan Smith, a Google executive little known outside Silicon Valley, is taking a high-profile role running the search engine's in-house charity.  She's part of a power couple whose louder half is AllThingsD blogger Kara Swisher.
comScore:
Americans' Online Search Behavior Points to Significant Increase in Personal Financial Turmoil  —  Searches Using Term ‘Unemployment’ in December Triples versus Year Ago  —  comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released an analysis of changes …
RELATED:
Andrew LaVallee / Digits:
Googling “Unemployment”  —  Searches of economy-related terms like …
Discussion: WebProNews
Dong Ngo / CNET News:
Marvell makes ultrasmall wall plug computer  —  You might have heard or even used one of those Powerline network adapters, such as the one made by Netgear that plug directly into the wall.  Now think of a similar device with the exception that it is an entire computer.
RELATED:
Patrick Wintour / Guardian:
Facebook risks ‘infantilising’ the mind  —  Greenfield warns social networking sites are changing children's brains, resulting in selfish and attention deficient young people  —  Social network sites risk infantilising the mid-21st century mind, leaving it characterised by short attention spans …
Microsoft:
Microsoft Security Advisory (968272)  —  Vulnerability in Microsoft Office Excel Could Allow Remote Code Execution  —  Microsoft is investigating new public reports of a vulnerability in Microsoft Office Excel that could allow remote code execution if a user opens a specially crafted Excel file.
Frederic Lardinois / ReadWriteWeb:
Google Announces Pricing for App Engine: Allows Developers to Scale Beyond Free Quotas  —  Google today announced its pricing plans for its App Engine service.  Google's App Engine allows developers to run web applications on Google's infrastructure and is currently available for free.
Jessica Vascellaro / Digits:
Yahoo Loses a Deal-Maker, Point-Person in Microsoft Talks  —  By Jessica E. Vascellaro  —  As Yahoo chief executive Carol Bartz readies a company-wide reorganization, insiders are playing close attention to how she'll fill one critical hole.  —  Gerald Horkan, Yahoo's senior vice president …
RELATED:
Jim Goldman / Tech Check with Jim Goldman:
Yahoo and Microsoft: Deja Vu All Over Again
Discussion: CNET News
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Apple 2.0:
Steve Jobs is 54  —  Tuesday, Feb. 24, is Steve Jobs' birthday.  —  He turns 54.  —  To celebrate this very personal milestone, we thought we'd re-post what may be the most personal public speech this intensely private man has ever made: his 2005 commencement address to the Stanford University class of 2005.
Discussion: Tech Trader Daily
Natasha Lomas / silicon.com:
“Android is not open.  It's a marketing label”  —  Google, Symbian get claws out in ‘open’ cat fight  —  If you thought the rise of open OS platforms would herald a new era of peace and harmony in the mobile industry you'd be sadly mistaken, as rival players in the space Google and the Symbian Foundation …
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
InstantAction enables 3-D games in web browsers  —  InstantAction is announcing today the formal launch of its site that lets gamers play 3-D games in a web browser.  —  The site will have nine games that are available for free at the outset, with a half-dozen more games coming soon.
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Nokia To Staff: Hey, Who Wants To Quit?  —  Nokia (NOK) this morning said that it offering employees a “voluntary resignation package” in an effort reduce its staff by 1,000 people.  The company also said it “encourages” workers to take time off instead of cashing in days off for extra pay.
Arnold Kim / MacRumors:
New NVIDIA-based iMacs Imminent?  More Hints.  —  Over the past week, there have been an increasing number hints that the long-awaited iMac revisions are indeed imminent.  Resellers have had low stocks of iMacs and educational Apple sales reps have been authorized to give special pricing on the current iMacs.
Discussion: Softpedia News and SlashGear
Enigmax / TorrentFreak:
Pirate Bay Trial Day 7: Screenshots for Evidence  —  Today's scheduled witnesses are Magnus Mårtensson, a lawyer for the IFPI, Anders Nilsson of Antipiratbyrån and John Stéenmark.  —  Prosecutor Håkan Roswall begins by saying that Tobias Andersson from Piratbyrån …
Discussion: Ars Technica, Gizmodo and The Local
Clive Thompson / Wired News:
The Netbook Effect: How Cheap Little Laptops Hit the Big Time  —  Netbooks prove that we finally know what PCs are actually for.  Which is to say, not all that much.  —  Mary Lou Jepsen didn't set out to invent the netbook and turn the computer industry upside down.  She was just trying to create a supercheap laptop.
Discussion: TomsTechBlog.com, Thanks:atul
Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
Bad News for OpenID: People Still Using Same Password Everywhere  —  A new survey from Gartner Research delivers some bad news regarding our online security practices: two-thirds of U.S. consumers use the same one or two passwords for all the web sites they access.  And they like it that way.
Mhtaylor Mhtaylor / Digits:
Intuit Defends Its Threatening Letter to Mint.com  —  By Marisa Taylor  —  Does financial planning phenom Mint.com, one of the 34 tech pioneer companies invited to Davos for the World Economic Forum this year, have competitor Intuit shaking in its boots?  —  A letter sent to Mint CEO Aaron Patzer …
Justin Smith / Inside Facebook:
Facebook: Telecoms' New Best Friend?  —  The buzz at last week's Mobile World Congress last week was palpable: social networks are hot.  —  As a sign of the times, INQ's INQ1 phone, also known as the “Facebook phone,” took home the GSM Associations's prestigious Best Mobile Handset or Device award …
Thanks:atul
Arn / MacRumors:
DoubleTwist Beta for Mac Offers Easy Media Browsing and Sharing  —  Startup company doubleTwist has launched a public beta of their new universal media application for the Mac today.  Their vision for the product is “a single, streamlined interface that connects to any device, media source or network.”
 
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 More Items: 
Ben Hardwidge / bit-tech.net:
Intel tears apart Nvidia Ion in document
EurActiv.com:
EU to oblige Microsoft to offer competitors' browsers
Eric Eldon / VentureBeat:
Lookery refocuses on its paid ad targeting business
Discussion: Lookery Blog
Jonoscript / Not The User's Fault:
Fennec Tab-Sync UI Update
Discussion: Unwired View
Wall Street Journal:
Entrepreneurs Can Lead Us Out of the Crisis
Royal Pingdom:
The latest domain name numbers and trends
Discussion: CircleID, Thanks:atul
Yinka Adegoke / Reuters:
U.S. cable, programmers set for Web TV by summer
 Earlier Items: 
Michael Learmonth / AdAge:
Reality Sinks in at Online Advertising Confab
Discussion: VatorNews
Chris Preimesberger / eWeek:
Hitachi to Acquire Personal Storage Maker Fabrik
Discussion: Crave
Elizabeth Garone / Wall Street Journal:
Growing a List of Opportunities
Thanks:atul
InfoWorld:
VMware adds to cloud strategy
Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:
Making sense of Mac market share figures
Discussion: OSNews
Robert L. Mitchell / Computerworld:
When good browsers go bad — and they all do
Discussion: Electronista, PC World and SitePoint
Andy Sternberg / netZoo:
To 90,000 Twitter Followers in 30 Days