Techmeme: Now QR Codes Can Generate Likes On Facebook (Caitlin Fitzsimmons/All Facebook)

9:30 PM ET, August 25, 2010

Top Items:

Robin Schriebman / Gmail Blog:

Call phones from Gmail — Gmail voice and video chat makes it easy to stay in touch with friends and family using your computer's microphone and speakers. But until now, this required both people to be at their computers, signed into Gmail at the same time.

Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:

Google Voice Phone Booths To Start Popping Up In Airports, Universities — Google wants to get you hooked on Google Voice, and it's got a new weapon in its arsenal: charming red telephone booths inspired by the sort that litter the UK. Today at a press event where it announced the launch …

Discussion: iGeneration Blog, MediaPost, Search Engine Land, CNET News, WebProNews, Download Squad, BetaNews, Between the Lines Blog, Electronista, Black Web 2.0 and silicontap.com

Sean Hollister / Engadget:

Google introduces Call from Gmail, free calls to US and Canada (update: impressions) — Rumors have been buzzing about since June, but Google just made it official — the company's baking Google Voice calls right into Gmail today. Like the Google Chat text, voice and video chat integrated …

Discussion: Mashable!, The Toybox Blog, TechCrunch, The Tech Report, Newlaunches.com, Geek.com and Neowin.net

Brad McCarty / The Next Web:
Google calls: Not a Skype-killer, but still a viable option.

Discussion: GigaOM

David Pogue / New York Times:

New Kindle Leaves Rivals Farther Back — Too bad there's not a reality TV show called “America's Most Freaked-Out Tech-Company Meetings,” where you watch classic panicked board meetings. For example, when the Apple employee left an iPhone 4 prototype in a bar.

Discussion: TechCrunch

Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft Blog:

Is this Microsoft's new Internet Explorer 9 interface? — Microsoft has delivered four developer previews of Internet Explorer (IE) 9 so far, but has yet to show off the new interface for its next-generation browser. That is expected to happen on September 15, during Microsoft's beta launch event in San Francisco.

Kevin Rose / Digg Blog:

Digg Version 4 — I'm excited to announce that today we opened up the newest version of our Digg platform. We've been working hard on this next evolution of Digg (what we've been calling “v4") and everyone here is really looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the changes we've made.

Discussion: VentureBeat, Search Engine Land, The Social, TechCrunch, BetaNews, ChasNote, WebProNews, AppScout and lalawag

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Digg Trying Hard — Maybe Too Hard — to Stay Relevant — The new version of Digg finally launched for all users today, although the site had some teething problems for much of the morning. It was unavailable for almost two hours, and remained slow for some time afterward …

Thanks:michaelklurfeld

Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:

Apple Issues Invitation For September 1 “Special Event” — Apple (AAPL) has e-mailed invitations to the media for a “special event” to be held September 1 at 10 a.m. at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco. Previous reports suggested that Apple would be holding an event on September 7 …

Discussion: Velocity, Engadget, Digital Daily, Between the Lines Blog, TechCrunch, Techie Buzz, Technologizer, Ars Technica, App Advice, Bits and Obsessable

Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Is Apple Really Going To Announce A TV Gadget At An Event …

Discussion: Fortune, NBC Bay Area and AppleInsider

Peter Burrows / BusinessWeek:

Apple's New Video Strategy Coming Into Focus — The blogosphere has been buzzing with talk of a radically updated version of the Apple TV set-top box. It turns out Apple plans to unveil the $99 device at an event on Sept. 7, my Bloomberg colleagues and I reported today .

Neil Hughes / AppleInsider:
New Apple TV will have ARM processor, App Store access - report

Discussion: The Russians Used a Pencil, DailyTech, Geek.com, everythingiCafe, CNN, Softpedia News, Mashable!, VatorNews and New York Times

Quora:

Why does the Facebook Places icon so obviously contain a “four” in a “square”? — I've seen many people point this out on Twitter/etc, and all of them have had a (predictably) disparaging tone. Facebook must have been aware of the allusion to Foursquare in their new icon - how do they benefit by this?

Discussion: TechCrunch

Mike Luttrell / TG Daily:

Digital Chocolate sues Facebook game giant Zynga over Mafia Wars — Casual gaming company Digital Chocolate has just filed suit against Zynga, the leader in social gaming, because it says it owns the exclusive rights to the name “Mafia Wars.” — Zynga's Facebook game Mafia Wars has become …

Discussion: VatorNews, TechCrunch, Inside Social Games, VentureBeat, Gamezebo, SocialTimes.com, mocoNews, Xconomy, Voices on All Things Digital and GamePolitics News

Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg / Wall Street Journal:

Amazon Loses E-Book Deal — A month after jolting the book industry with a deal to give Amazon.com Inc. exclusive digital access to some of the country's best-known literary works, literary agent Andrew Wylie is largely abandoning the agreement. — The Amazon deal was struck after Mr. Wylie failed …

Discussion: MediaPost, DailyFinance, Engadget, NYConvergence, New York Times, Future Tense, Crave and ResourceShelf, more at Mediagazer »

Emily Glazer / WSJ Blogs - WSJ:

It's Still Too Early to Value Location Services, Businesses Say — Are location-based services going to be the next social-networking step for businesses? — The big debate lately has been whether Facebook's new location-sharing service, Places, will overwhelm pioneers like Foursquare.

Discussion: SiliconANGLE

Kim-Mai Cutler / Inside Facebook:

Slide's Max Levchin Becomes a VP of Engineering at Google — Max Levchin, who was the chief executive of Slide and a PayPal co-founder, has landed a new title at Google as a vice president of engineering. It's the latest leadership adjustment since the search giant bought the social developer …

Graeme Wearden / Guardian:

Shareholder trading values Facebook at more than $33bn — With shares selling for up to $76, investors are calculating social networking site is worth nearly twice as much as Yahoo! — Facebook is now being valued at more than $33bn (£21.3bn) as investors try to secure a stake …

Discussion: The Social, broadstuff and DealBook

Joab Jackson / PC World:

Red Hat Offers Its Cloud APIs as Industry Standard — As the industry call for cloud interoperability grows more fervent, open-source enterprise software company Red Hat has submitted its cloud platform, Deltacloud, to the DMTF (Distributed Management Task Force) as a potential standard …

Discussion: internetnews.com, Datamation and eWeek

Adam Vaughan / Guardian:

Apple blocks iPhones from green ranking scheme — Scheme rates handsets on factors such as ecological impact of raw materials, manufacturing process and energy efficiency — • iPhone app pitches climate change science against scepticism — Apple has refused to allow its iPhones …

Caitlin Fitzsimmons / All Facebook:

Now QR Codes Can Generate Likes On Facebook — Technology that brings together the real world and the virtual world of Facebook seems to be becoming the next big thing. Last week Facebook launched its location check-in service Places. Yesterday we wrote about a Coca-Cola festival in Israel …

Thanks:srikardhanakoti

Matt McGee / Search Engine Land:

Bing's Market Share Up 51% In Past 12 Months — Bing's search engine market share has risen 51% in the U.S. over the past 12 months according to Nielsen stats announced today. — According to Nielsen, Bing's market share in July 2010 was up to 13.6%, a 51% jump from its 9% market share in July 2009 …

Discussion: Nielsen Wire and WebProNews

Mark Hachman / PC Magazine:

IBM Describes Fastest Microprocessor Ever — PALO ALTO—IBM revealed more details of its 5.2-GHz chip on Tuesday, the fastest microprocessor ever announced. Don't bet that you'll ever be able to buy it, though. — At the Hot Chips 2010 conference here, IBM executives described the z196 …

Discussion: Electronista, SlashGear and Obsessable

Ellen Nakashima / Washington Post:

Defense official discloses cyberattack — Now it is official: The most significant breach of U.S. military computers was caused by a flash drive inserted into a U.S. military laptop on a post in the Middle East in 2008. — In an article to be published Wednesday discussing the Pentagon's cyberstrategy …

Discussion: CNET News, Foreign Affairs, New York Times, Ars Technica, eWeek, Computerworld, Security and Risk, The Register, Gizmodo, Security Watch, msnbc.com, CIOInsight, Switched and Technology Liberation Front

Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:

SCVNGR's Secret Game Mechanics Playdeck — Some companies keep a playbook of product tips, tricks and trade secrets. Zynga has an internal playbook, for instance, that is a collection of “concepts, techniques, know-how and best practices for developing successful and distinctive social games”.

Discussion: SmoothSpan Blog and Android and Me

Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:

Encrypted and obfuscated? Your P2P protocol can still be IDed — Typical Web traffic is easy enough to spot: it uses TCP port 80. But plenty of protocols prefer to remain in the shadows and purposely make themselves difficult to identify—including Skype, BitTorrent, and eMule.

Ian Sherr / Wall Street Journal:

Online Coupons Get Smarter — Groupon, Rivals Add Personalized Bargains, Staff as Some Merchants Gripe — When Jennifer London cut a deal with Groupon Inc. to promote her smoothie shop in an email, she wasn't sure how many people would show up for discounted drinks.

Discussion: Venture Capital Dispatch, Thanks:chirag_mehta

Evan Selleck / SlashGear:

Sharper Image Literati eReader Unveiled, Features Color LCD and $159 Price Tag — Even if tablets are seemingly the focus of the tech industry right now, and even if most of those tablets work just fine as eReaders in of themselves, that's not stopping the eReader market from pumping out more and more of the devices.

Discussion: Technologizer, Obsessable and Electronista

Tom Simonite / Technology Review:

A Search Service that Can Peer into the Future — A Yahoo Research tool mines news archives for meaning—illuminating past, present, and even future events. — Showing news stories on a timeline has been tried before. But Time Explorer, a prototype news search engine created …

Thanks:albertonardelli

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