Techmeme: Facebook Checks In to the World of Locations (Walter S. Mossberg/Personal Technology)

11:05 PM ET, August 18, 2010

Top Items:

Michael Eyal Sharon / Facebook Blog:

Who, What, When, and Now...Where — If you're like me, when you find a place you really like, you want to tell your friends you're there. Maybe it's a new restaurant, a beautiful hiking trail or an amazing live show. — Starting today, you can immediately tell people about that favorite spot with Facebook Places.

Walter S. Mossberg / Personal Technology:

Facebook Checks In to the World of Locations — The 800-pound gorilla of social networks, Facebook, is jumping into the location game. — On Wednesday, it announced a new, optional service for its 500 million members called Places, which allows you to check in to various places you go …

ACLU of Northern California:

Facebook Places: Check This Out Before You Check In — Following Facebook's announcement today about its new location-based product, Places, here's what the ACLU of Northern California has to say on the privacy front: Facebook made some changes to its regular privacy practices …

Discussion: Guardian, Bits, CNET News, TechFlash and ResourceShelf

MG Siegler / TechCrunch:

Facebook Partnering With Gowalla, Foursquare For Places — Today at an event in Palo Alto, CA, Facebook unveiled its new Places product — essentially their check-in utility. Obviously, there has been a lot of talk about what this means for the current players like Foursquare and Gowalla.

Discussion: 9 to 5 Mac, BetaNews and VentureBeat

Cody Barbierri / VentureBeat:

Foursquare's Dennis Crowley: Still deciding on Facebook Places — With Facebook's announcement of a check-in feature dubbed Facebook Places, we're all wondering how it will affect location-based services like Foursquare. So I went ahead and asked founder and chief executive Dennis Crowley.

Discussion: New York Times, Bloomberg and Socialmedia.biz

Justin Smith / Inside Facebook:
New Facebook for iPhone Application with Places Coming Tonight

Discussion: TechCrunch

Adam DuVander / ProgrammableWeb:
Facebook Location API Launches: Read Only For Now

Discussion: dailywireless.org and The Snitch

Lee Mathews / Download Squad:

Google launching a Chrome OS tablet on Verizon, goes on sale November 26 — The title pretty much says it all on this one, folks. — Yes, our source tells us that Google is building a Chrome OS tablet. It's real, and it's being built by HTC. No surprise there, since HTC churned out the Nexus One for Google.

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:

Skype's Chief Development Officer Leaves Amid TechCrunch Comment Fiasco — Madhu Yarlagadda, who joined Skype as Chief Development Officer last month, has left the company. Generally speaking executives don't leave a startup as it jumps into the IPO process, and they certainly don't leave after just a month on the job.

Ashlee Vance / Bits:

Skype Loses Engineering Chief Before Offering — After just a month as chief development officer at Skype, Madhu Yarlagadda has left the company for personal reasons, a company spokesman said on Wednesday. — Mr. Yarlagadda's responsibilities at Skype included running engineering for all of its products …

Discussion: The Next Web and mocoNews

Brian X. Chen / Gadget Lab:

Apple's App Store Director Sells His Own Fart Apps — Apple has long been an icon for quality products, but its overflowing iOS App Store is a crapshoot: Nuggets of quality are buried in a vast, steaming heap of inanity. In fact, the man who oversees the App Store process runs a side business selling fart and urination apps.

Discussion: Wired News, Computerworld, Gizmodo, iPhone Download Blog, TiPb, iThinkDifferent, AppleInsider, Engadget, MacStories, MacRumors and 9 to 5 Mac

Ryan Tate / Gawker:
Apple's ‘Freedom From Porn’ Enforcer Drawn To Porn Stars and Escorts on Twitter

Discussion: VatorNews, everythingiCafe and iLounge

Google Mobile Blog:

The Iterative Web App: New Stacked Cards Interface for Gmail on iPad. — In April 2009, we announced a new version of Gmail for mobile for iOS and Android. Among the improvements was a complete redesign of the web application's underlying code, which allows us to more rapidly develop …

Discussion: 9 to 5 Mac, Erictric, BlogsDNA, The Next Web, IntoMobile and Google Code Blog

Ryan Lawler / NewTeeVee:

Verizon to Put Live TV on the iPad — Verizon unveiled a series of new video applications today, including an upcoming iPad app that will allow FiOS subscribers to watch the same linear programming that is available on their TV screens on their tablet devices.

Harry McCracken / Technologizer:

The Tragic Death of Practically Everything — Wired Editor in Chief Chris Anderson is catching flack for the magazine's current cover story, which declares that the Web is dead. I'm not sure what the controversy is. For years, once-vibrant technologies, products, and companies …

Discussion: MediaPost, PC World, Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog and Internet Evolution, more at Mediagazer »

Thomas Ricker / Engadget:

Microsoft's Arc Touch Mouse revealed? — It's not official until Microsoft says it is, but the image above of the rumored Microsoft Arc Touch Mouse was just snagged off a German online store. Amazingly, the mouse arches its back for comfortable mousing before packing flat for easy transport.

Discussion: TG Daily, eHomeUpgrade, Techie Buzz, I4U News, Obsessable, CrunchGear, DailyTech, Techland, SlashGear, TechFlash, Boy Genius Report, The Microsoft Blog, TechSpot, Softpedia News, Electricpig.co.uk, Geek.com, Crave and Electronista, Thanks:rawmeet

Cho Ji-hyun / The Korea Herald:

Site crashes as iPhone fans make 130,000 pre-orders — KT Corp., the exclusive provider of the iPhone in Korea, said Wednesday that the number of people who made pre-orders for Apple's iPhone 4 surpassed 130,000 in the first 13 hours of registration. — The number of people applying …

Discussion: AppleInsider, 9 to 5 Mac, Digital Daily and Agence France Presse

Kyle VanHemert / Gizmodo:

What It's Like To Suddenly See Your Bank Account at Negative $900,000 Thanks to PayPal — This morning, 24-year-old web developer Derek Lanphier started seeing fraudulent charges on his PayPal account, adding up to about $3,000. Then, moments later, his bank account balance was at -$888,871.91.

Kevin C. Tofel / GigaOM:

Apple Catching Up on iPhone 4, iPad Production — The wait for a new Apple iPhone 4 order should be shorter by the end of September, which would help Apple sell 14 million new handsets in the third quarter and another 15 million in the final three months of 2010 according to an industry analyst.

Discussion: CNET News, Yahoo! News, TheAppleBlog, Computerworld, Erictric and Ubergizmo

Eric Goldman / Technology & Marketing Law Blog:

The Problems With Google House Ads — [Note: This blog post has taken me 7 months to write, so I'm glad to be sharing it finally. I am cross-posting it to Search Engine Land.] — Introduction — Many publishers run “house ads” to self-promote their own offerings. Google does too.

Discussion: The Register, the Econsultancy blog, CNET News and Ubergizmo

Wall Street Journal:

RIM Shops for Mobile Ad Network — Under pressure in the increasingly competitive wireless market, BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd. is shopping for a mobile advertising network, people familiar with the matter said. — In recent months, the Canadian device maker has held talks …

Discussion: mocoNews and Silicon Alley Insider

Joseph Tartakoff / paidContent:

‘Powered By Bing’ Shows Up On Yahoo Search Pages—In Size 8 Font — Microsoft's Bing search engine isn't getting much branding play on the “powered by Bing” Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) search result pages, which are making their debut this week. Do a search on Yahoo, and you'll need a magnifying glass …

Discussion: Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim and eWeek

DigiTimes:

Toshiba to launch Android tablet PC in September-October — Toshiba will launch its first tablet PC model featuring Nvidia's Tegra 2 processor, Android operating system and a 10-inch screen in September-October 2010, with global shipments until the end of 2010 expected to be 40,000-50,000 units, according to Taiwan-based makers.

Discussion: Engadget, Liliputing, I4U News, netbooknews.com, The Toybox Blog, Pocket-lint and Crave

Ryan Lawler / NewTeeVee:

Brightcove Doubles Customer Count, Adds Execs — White-label video management firm Brightcove today touted aggressive expansion, doubling the number of customers it has signed up since the beginning of the year. The company, which is positioning itself for an IPO sometime in 2011, also announced some key executive hires.

Discussion: VideoNuze

Bostjan Spetic / Z-Blog:

Zemanta now available on WordPress.com … As of today, Zemanta, the ultimate blogging assistant, is available to all of you as a part of the WordPress.com platform. — We are proud to announce the launch of our partnership with the most advanced and acclaimed blogging platform in the world …

Discussion: Stowe Boyd, WordPress.com News, TechCrunch Europe, The Next Web and ReadWriteWeb

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