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"Welcome to this morning's edition of \"First To Know,\" a series in which we keep you in the know on what's happening in the digital world. We're keeping our eyes on three particular stories of interest today.\nAOL Earnings Beat Expectations\nAOL has released its Q3 2010 earnings, reporting total revenue of $563.5 million, higher than analyst predictions of $557.04 million. This is good news for AOL CEO Tim Armstrong who has missed his targets in each of the last two quarters.\nWhile AOL's net income was up, it's not all sunshine and roses. AOL's ad revenue continues to tank, down 27% compared to the year ago quarter. Most startling is the company's international display ad revenues, down more than 54% year-over-year.\nAOL also announced that it paid $97.1 million in acquisitions of 5min, TechCrunch and Things Labs.\nFormer eBay and HP CEO's Lose Political Bids\nThe overarching success of Republican candidates in U.S. mid-term elections did not extend to California, not even with former tech CEOs running for office. Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman lost the race for governor to Democrat Jerry Brown, and Carly Fiorina \u2014 the former CEO of HP \u2014 lost her race for the U.S. Senate, being defeated by incumbent Barbara Boxer.\nBoth women ran loud, glitzy campaigns, buoyed by their own personal fortunes. As VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi notes, \"The pedigree of being an executive at a major tech company isn't necessarily a winning background for California politics.\"\nThe one bright spot for politicians with a Silicon Valley bent is the win by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom in his race for lieutenant governor.\nPalm Pre 2 Pre-orders May Start November 8\nAre you interested in webOS 2.0 and the Palm Pre 2? If you're a U.S. Verizon customer you might not have long to wait.\nThe eagle-eyed PreCentral watchers noticed that HP's Facebook Page for students noted that pre-orders for the Palm Pre 2 will begin on November 8.\nAlthough HP's Facebook Page has since been changed to simply say \"coming soon\" \u2014 a November pre-order date would jive with some internal Verizon documents that previously indicated that the next-generation webOS device would hit the U.S. in November.\nOther News\n\nGoogle E-mails Users About Buzz Settlement \u2014 Check your inbox, Google has sent out a message to every Gmail user informing them of the settlement in the class action lawsuit over Google Buzz. Our big question: How long before Buzz goes the way of Wave?\nApple Triples the Length of iTunes Previews \u2014 You know that episode of The Office where Michael plays that James Blunt song over and over again and you realize he's just playing the 30-second iTunes preview? Well, soon Steve Carrell's hapless manager will be able to enjoy triple the song preview length. Hey, if this doubles again, iTunes might sort of start to resemble Lala!\nFoursquare Businesses Can Oust Cheating Mayors \u2014 Hey, dude that never comes into my Starbucks but is inexplicably the mayor, your days are numbered thanks to a new tool Foursquare is offering business owners.\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2010/11/03/aol-earnings-carly-meg-lose-races-palm-pre-2-pre-order/>