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1:50 PM ET, August 20, 2010

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Wall Street Journal:
LG Readies Tablet, Optimus Smartphones  —  SEOUL—LG Electronics Inc., which was late to the smartphone game, said it plans to launch 10 more smartphones and sell five million devices by the end of the year in a scramble to compete with rivals.  —  The South Korean company also plans to launch …
RELATED:
Matt Burns / CrunchGear:   LG To The WSJ, “Our tablet will be better than the iPad.”
Chris Ziegler / Engadget:
Exclusive: T-Mobile G2 in the wild!  —  These shots of a real, live G2 confirm what we'd already suspected from renders: this is basically an Americanized version of the upcoming HTC Vision.  What does that mean?  Well, it means you can expect a 3.7-inch display paired with Android …
Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
Jobs: Software Update to Address iOS 4 Performance Issues on iPhone 3G ‘Coming Soon’  —  A new email from Apple CEO Steve Jobs appears to confirm that the company will soon be issuing a software update to address issues with the iPhone 3G's performance under iOS 4.
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
The Facebook Effect: Foursquare Had Its Most Signups Ever Today  —  Leading up to Facebook's location announcement, there were two schools of thought.  Either you thought Facebook Places was going to destroy Foursquare.  Or you thought that this new service would help the startup by bringing more awareness to the location field.
John Leyden / The Register:
Trojan-ridden warning system implicated in Spanair crash  —  Cascading fail  —  Malware may have been a contributory cause of a fatal Spanair crash that killed 154 people two years ago.  —  Spanair flight number JK 5022 crashed with 172 on board moments after taking off from Madrid's Barajas Airport …
Sean Hollister / Engadget:
Exclusive: Dell Thunder prototype preview (video)  —  Christmas came early at Engadget HQ this year, as evidenced by the picture above — you're looking at two Dell Thunder prototype smartphones, each with some surprising quirks, and hints that they might include global HSPA, AWS for T-Mobile, and maybe even a dash of CDMA support.
Liz Shannon Miller / NewTeeVee:
Auto-Tune the News Hits the Billboard Top 100  —  Online video stars The Gregory Brothers continue making strides towards world domination.  Their latest hit Auto-Tune the News single, Bed Intruder, debuted at number 89 on the Billboard Hot 100 today.  —  Billboard uses a number …
RELATED:
Richard MacManus / ReadWriteWeb:
Is Ultimate Chart Overhyped?  Its Top 10 is Nearly Identical to Billboard's
Discussion: The Huffington Post
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
The Confusing Stages Of Opting Into Facebook Places  —  Earlier today we had a bit of a fire-drill at TechCrunch Headquarters.  As I checked into TCHQ on Facebook Places, I also tagged a few of my coworkers, fully expecting their checkins to be delayed until they actually opted into the feature …
RELATED:
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Confirmed Hot Potato: Yup, Facebook Bought 'Em, Will Soon Shut Them Down  —  As we noted nearly a month ago now, Facebook has acquired social activity and ‘check-in’ service provider Hot Potato for about $10 million in cash.  —  Facebook, fresh from announcing its entry into the location game …
Dow Jones Newswires:
McAfee another weapon for Intel's mobile battle  —  Chip maker bolstering portfolio to take on likes of Qualcomm, Texas Intruments, ARM.  —  Intel Corp.'s acquisition of McAfee Inc. represents the chip maker's most dramatic step yet in a quest to supply chips to virtually every electronic device connected to the Internet.
RELATED:
Adam Frucci / Gizmodo:
Here's a Much More Realistic Facetime iPhone 4 Commercial  —  Those Facetime-based iPhone 4 ads sure are shmaltzy!  This one is a little closer to what people are actually experiencing with the service.  And yes, that's an older iPhone.  Try to look past it.  [Funny or Die]
Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:
Hey Verizon, Whoever Made This Is Going To Hell  —  Verizon, Verizon, Verizon ... So this is what you're doing instead of going after the iPhone?  You guys must think we're so stupid.  —  You've based your latest mcgarrybowen-produced “Rule The Air! campaign around the concept of your product being gender …
Discussion: adweek.blogs.com and eWeek
Stephen Shankland / Crave:
Google Runs out of Nexus Ones for developers  —  Google scrapped its plan to sell the Nexus One through its own store in July, six months after trying to rewrite the phone market's rules.  With Android developers, though, to whom Google still sells the phone, it's become a bit too desirable at least measured by Google's inventory.
Richard Lawler / Engadget:
Google TV demo shows off Dish Network integration, universal search (video)  —  For those still wavering over the possibility of dropping a few Ben Franklins on something rocking the Google TV logo this fall, maybe the best idea is to get to know this new flavor of Android a bit better.
Susie Pan / DigiTimes:
Qualcomm to invest US$2 billion to set up Mirasol display plant in Taiwan, say sources  —  Qualcomm MEMS Technologies plans to invest a total of US$2 billion to set up a 4.5G production plant for Mirasol displays at the Longtan site of Central Taiwan Science Park (CTSP), according to market sources.
Michael Yang / iSuppli:
Will $1 Per Gigabyte NAND Resuscitate Solid State Drives?  —  After two years of inflated prices, NAND flash memory at the end of 2010 is set to return to the key $1 per gigabyte level considered a key threshold to drive adoption of Solid State Drives (SSD), but the cost reduction may come …
Mike Fleming / Deadline.com:
Google Founders Sergey Brin And Larry Page Get Feature Film Treatment  —  EXCLUSIVE: The founders of Facebook aren't the only game-changing geeks poised to have their story told on a movie screen.  Michael London's Groundswell Productions has teamed with producer John Morris to acquire movie rights …
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Smartphone App Market Reached More Than $2.2 Billion In The First Half Of 2010  —  Research2guidance, a Berlin-based research organization specialized in all things mobile, recently forecasted the worldwide smartphone application market to reach $15 billion by 2013.
Marco Arment / Marco.org:
A smartphone retrospective  —  This is what high-end smartphones looked like in 2007:  —  Smartphones were an established consumer-electronics market with devices that people thought were pretty cool, but often frustrating and with serious shortcomings and design flaws.  —  Then this happened:
Discussion: Scripting News
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Fortune:
Time Inc. breaks the iPad logjam  —  This week's People app is free to subscribers.  Time, SI and Fortune are expected to follow  —  Image: Time Inc.  —  There's more to the iPad issue of People that appeared on the Apple (AAPL) App Store this morning than Sandra Bullock's new joy.
RELATED:
Jeremy W. Peters / New York Times:
People Magazine Subscribers to Receive Free Access on iPads
Discussion: SiliconANGLE and Gizmodo
Keith Winstein / Ksplice:
Essay: 3G and me  —  In 2002, I got my first cell phone.  —  June was stuffy in Manhattan, and my summer internship copy-editing the New York Sun, the now-defunct right-wing newspaper, was just about to start.  I swam through the humid air past Madison Square Park to get to the store before closing.
Stefan Constantinescu / IntoMobile:
Verizon invests $400,000 into CardStar to help you carry fewer loyalty and membership cards  —  Verizon has invested $400,000 into a small startup called CardStar according to The Wall Street Journal.  CardStar, who's based out of Boston, has already received a $1 million investment round …
Stefan Constantinescu / IntoMobile:
Nokia just bought mobile analytics firm Motally  —  Nokia has just announced that they've acquired mobile analytics firm Motally, which currently has only 8 employees.  Financial details have not been disclosed, and I doubt you're going to hear about them anyway, but the deal is set to become official towards the end of this quarter.
Ryan Lawler / NewTeeVee:
Studios Giving Up on DVD, Pushing VOD Instead  —  The time lag between DVD release dates and the availability of films on cable video-on-demand services has been drastically reduced over the past year, falling to just five days in the first half of this year, according to BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield.
 
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 More Items: 
Pew Social & Demographic Trends:
The Fading Glory of the Television and Telephone
Discussion: Engage, Thanks:steverubel
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
ISP's top data hog gobbles 2.7TB of data in a month
Discussion: Geek.com and Tech Eye
Sangwon Yoon / Associated Press:
North Korea reportedly joins Facebook
Discussion: THINQ.co.uk, ITworld.com and Mobilized
Quentyn Kennemer / Android Phone Fans:
TweetDeck Beta For Android More Popular Than iPad, New Version Brings More Features
Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
Travel Rewards Program Topguest Integrates with Facebook Places
Reyhan Harmanci / New York Times:
For Digital Artists, Apps Provide New Palette
Chris Matyszczyk / CNET News:
How to get stars to follow you on Twitter
 Earlier Items: 
Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:
Teevox Turns Your iPhone Into A Computer TV Remote Control
Chris Tolles / TechCrunch:
When Attorneys General Attack
David Pogue / New York Times:
State of the Art: OpenDNS Simplifies Life for Web Users
James Niccolai / Computerworld:
HP: WebOS tablet coming early next year
 

 
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

John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
Substack, very deliberately, tries to have it both ways by saying publications on their platform are independent while presenting them all as parts of Substack

 
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