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1:30 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.
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
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 …
Discussion: Tech Eye and CNET News
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:
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.
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 …
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 …
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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 …
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 …
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.
Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
Travel Rewards Program Topguest Integrates with Facebook Places  —  Topguest, the check-in program for frequent travelers, is now integrated with Facebook Places, making it the fourth company to do so, after Yelp, Booyah and Gowalla.  This service, which offers program loyalty points …
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
ISP's top data hog gobbles 2.7TB of data in a month  —  ISPs sometimes complain about “data hogs,” often in the service of ridiculously tight-fisted data caps on Internet service.  But there are users who deserve the porcine label, and Belgian ISP Telenet recently offered a rare picture of them.
Discussion: Geek.com and Tech Eye
Vic Gundotra / Google Mobile Blog:
To 100 million and beyond with Google Maps for mobile  —  Almost five years ago, we launched Google Maps for mobile to help you get where you needed to go from your phone instead of a paper map.  Today, more than 100 million people a month are now using Google Maps for mobile to get from point A to point B …
RELATED:
Sid Yadav / VentureBeat:
Google's social czar picks a location fight with Facebook
Discussion: CNET News
 
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 More Items: 
Richard Lawler / Engadget:
Google TV demo shows off Dish Network integration, universal search (video)
Sangwon Yoon / Associated Press:
North Korea reportedly joins Facebook
Discussion: Computerworld, Mobilized and Mashable!
Quentyn Kennemer / Android Phone Fans:
TweetDeck Beta For Android More Popular Than iPad, New Version Brings More Features
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
Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:
Teevox Turns Your iPhone Into A Computer TV Remote Control
 Earlier Items: 
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