3+ year old TechMeme, an automated news site that shows breaking news clustered by topic, has always generated “headlines” by analyzing how news sites link to each other. If a lot of sites start linking to something unique, TechMeme guesses it’s news.

That isn’t working, says founder Gabe Rivera today in a blog post: “Only an algorithm would feature news about Anna Nicole Smith’s hospitalization after she’s already been declared dead, as our automated celeb news site WeSmirch did last year.”

He’s hired someone to start vetting stories that the algorithm says are headlines, to either push them up or get them off the site entirely.

I believe this is a slippery slope for TechMeme. Certainly a human editor can make the results better. But it also completely destroys the objective nature of TechMeme and turns it into something different. It’s now subjective, and in many ways just another news site.

Today the TechMeme Leaderboard (and we track individual authors on CrunchBase) is an objective list of what sites are breaking the most news and getting other trusted news sources (”trusted” being defined by TechMeme) to link to them. With these changes it isn’t clear what authority that Leaderboard commands.

Overall I think we can expect better and faster news on TechMeme, which is an invaluable resource for journalists, bloggers and news junkies. But the fundamental nature of it has changed.

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Original post by Michael Arrington

On Thursday Livestation, a ̢P desktop application for streaming live TV broadcasts, will show a preview for its iPhone/iPod Touch app to do the same. Yes - live TV on the iPhone. Luckily we don’t have to wait. They’ve got a YouTube video, embedded after the jump, which shows the app working on an iPhone. The irony to all this is that Livestation is a product of a long-in-the-tooth UK startup called Skinkers which is… part owned by Microsoft.

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Original post by Mike Butcher

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Original post by Scott Merrill

Cheezburger Network, the company behind I Can Has Cheezburger and a number of other humorous blogs, has unveiled the newest addition to its popular blog network: OnceUponAWin, a site dedicated to finding and posting nostalgic photos and videos from your childhood.

I have a hard time believing OnceUponAWin will be as popular as the network’s flagship blog about lolcats or FAIL Blog, a favorite around the TechCrunch office. But it’s a solid addition to the network, and will only further boost Cheezburger Network traffic, which has been growing at a steady clip. From September to October the site saw a 19% increase in the number of unique visitors and a total of 128.3 million page views.

Other blogs in the network include IHasAHotDog and EngrishFunny, which launched in August.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Original post by Jason Kincaid

Kleiner Perkins’s iFund is a $100 million fund to invest in startups building applications for the iPhone.

Startups that wish to apply for funding can fill out an online application here. That information, which includes contact information, founder bios, the business plan, demos, financial information, etc. is then dumped into a database for review.

That data was accidentally published on the web by Kleiner Perkins’ former hosting provider, Meteora Technologies Group, in a SQL file, which is easily readable in a text editor or other application. The file was then indexed by Google and found in a query on one of the companies (the guys from Fruux found it). Applications from 588 companies are in the file (Google has cached an incomplete version of the file here). A quick perusal shows very detailed information from each of these companies.

Fruux notified Kleiner Perkins and Meteora and the file was removed this morning. I spoke to Lowell Fletcher, the President of Meteora, who says that they no longer work with Kleiner Perkins, and that the file was accidentally published by one of their employees. Kleiner Perkins has not yet responded to our request for comment.

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Original post by Michael Arrington

Facebook Connect is beginning to materialize and we’re on the ground floor: TechCrunch readers can now use their Facebook accounts to sign in before leaving comments.

Doing so yields several benefits. Most immediately, you’ll no longer have to enter a name, email address and website manually before dropping your two cents. Just click once on the “Connect” button that sits next to the comment form and we’ll automatically detect who you are, even on return visits.

Hooking things up with Facebook also lets us display your profile portrait in miniature form next to your name in the header of comments. Your name conveniently links to your Facebook profile as well, making it easier for other commenters to get in touch with you and perhaps become your virtual friends.

But Facebook Connect doesn’t let information flow just one way. You can now post notifications of your comments to your Facebook wall whenever contributing here on TechCrunch. After hitting the “Add Comment” button, just select a type of feed item (which Facebook calls a “story”) and your friends on Facebook will have the chance to appreciate your snark and wit.

There’s a lot more that can be done with Facebook Connect to enhance the social aspects of TechCrunch, so expect to see more elaborate Facebook-enabled features in the future, such as the ability to see which of your friends are also TechCrunch readers. In the meantime, try this implementation out and let us know what you think in the comments (naturally). Suggestions about how we should expand our usage of Facebook Connect are also most welcome.

Note to Windows users: Facebook Connect on TechCrunch doesn’t play nicely with Internet Explorer 6. Use this as an opportunity to upgrade, assuming it’s within your power to do so. And if it’s not, you probably don’t want your boss noticing how much time you spend on TechCrunch during business hours anyway.

Special thanks to Adam Hupp and Josh Elman at Facebook for their help in making this happen.

Also check out the test application we developed with MySpace Data Availability back in June.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Original post by Mark Hendrickson

Google may get three times more search traffic than Yahoo, but, SearchWiki aside, most of the innovation seems to be coming from Yahoo and Microsoft’s Live Search as they strive to gain a larger slice of the search market share.

Last year Yahoo introduced Search Assist, an advanced autocomplete feature that recommends related searches as you type your query into the search box. Autocomplete isn’t a new concept - Google has offered it for years through Firefox and its browser toolbar (and recently integrated it into its homepage). But Yahoo takes it a step further, going beyond just guessing what word you’re typing by suggesting possible related searches.

Today the site is introducing thumbnail previews for its image searches, allowing users to see how they should modify their queries to get the set of images they’re looking for. For example, typing “Obama” presents suggested searches for “Obama family”, “Barack Obama”, and “Michelle Obama”, each accompanied by a thumbnail indicative of what the query will yield. After trying a few searches of my own it’s easy to see how this could come in handy, especially when it comes to searching for queries with multiple, very different meanings (like “Sierra Nevada”, the beer or the mountain range). That said, the feature is a little quirky - oftentimes I had to refresh the page if I wanted any suggestions to appear.

Meanwhile, earlier this week Microsoft’s Live Search introduced the ability to use an image itself to search for similar images.

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Original post by Jason Kincaid

With the launch of multiple DSLRs including today’s Nikon D3X, camera manufacturers are ready and waiting for you to buy their wares. But should you?

DSLRs are perceived by beginners as the pick-up trucks of the camera world. Why buy something with high wheels and a tailgate when you are perfectly happy with a comfortable minivan or sedan? But DSLRs aren’t quite they heavy duty machines we make them out to be. Point-and-shoots, while small and comfortable, are severely limited in terms of shooting ability. Manufacturers stuff all sorts of image improving features into these things including red-eye reduction, night mode, and even child mode for fast-moving rugrats. But these are crutches designed to reduce the effect of slow image sensors and wonky lenses that have to fold in on themselves to stay compact.

Original post by John Biggs

The FBI emailed us today - never a good sign - to let us know about their updated top ten fugitives widget. It’s a big improvement on the eyesore that they released a year ago. Get it here.

The widgets are powered by Silicon Valley based Clearspring.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Joϖ.0

Original post by Michael Arrington

In the waning days of his leadership at the FCC, chairman Kevin J. Martin is trying to push through some striking initiatives in his last chance to leave his mark on the agency. On Election Day, for instance, the FCC approved unlicensed use for white-space TV spectrum (aka, WiFi 2.0) that is being freed up. Now Martin wants to rid the wireless Web of porn.

One of the issues he plans to tackle in upcoming meetings this month, is a plan to give all Americans free access to the Web via the airwaves, minus the porn. Adults would be able to opt back in to get the raw, unfiltered Internet.

The proposal opens the door for the FCC to regulate decency standards on the Web, but only when it is accessed over the airwaves by wireless devices. It would reassert the FCC’s authority in this area, which harkens back to the decency standards it imposes on broadcast TV. This is a bad idea for several reasons.

1. The FCC has a hard enough time figuring out what is decent and what is not on 500 channels. It is not equipped to police decency on billions of Websites, even if it relies on automated filters to do most of the work.

2. The rule would apply to only one sliver of spectrum, the AWS-3 band, which nobody really uses yet. It would be like banning porn on fiber-optic IPTV, but not doing anything about it on satellite or cable. If children watching porn is the problem, this will do nothing to stop it.

3. Porn filtering aside, requiring winners of the AWS-3 spectrum auction to give up a quarter of the airwaves they win to set up a free slower-tier wireless Internet service will certainly make those airwaves worth less to any potential bidders. Worse, it could drive away the best potential bidders who might decide it is just not worth their effort or capital.

You’ve got to wonder whether Martin really thinks he can get this passed, or whether he just wants it as a resume stuffer. It’s the kind of thing that plays well on the campaign trail, should Martin decide to run for political office in the future. Why is he bringing this up now for what is ultimately a minor swath of spectrum? If he was serious about eradicating porn on the wireless Web, he should have tried to impose this kind of rule during the last set of auctions for the 700 MHz spectrum. But he didn’t.

Setting up a free tier of wireless Web access is the more interesting part of his proposal. Perhaps a better way to do that would be to set up economic incentives for spectrum winners to offer free tiers of service, rather than mandate it. For instance, why not offer a 25 percent discount to each bid that includes provisions for free Web access that could be supported by advertising. That way the market would sort out what portion should be free and what portion should be paid.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Original post by Erick Schonfeld