Check out Mini-Techmeme for simple mobiles or Techmeme Mobile for modern smartphones.
12:45 PM ET, December 21, 2010

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Microsoft:
Windows Phone 7 Sales Off to a Promising Start, First Step in a New Era of Mobile  —  Achim Berg, Microsoft's vice president of business and marketing for Windows Phones, discusses the momentum, strengths and challenges of the company's newly launched Windows Phone 7.
RELATED:
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft Blog:
Microsoft: More than 1.5 million Windows Phone 7s sold to date  —  After weeks of avoiding answering questions about how many Windows Phone 7 devices have been sold since their launch in late October, Microsoft execs have decided to release figures.  —  On December 21, in an article …
Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:
Apple Removes WikiLeaks App From App Store  —  Looks like an unofficial iPhone and iPad app that let you view WikiLeaks site content and follow the WikiLeaks Twitter account on the go has been removed from the App app store earlier today.  The app used to be available here (here's the Google cache).
Apple:
New Apple TV Sales to Top One Million This Week  —  Apple® today announced that it expects sales of its new Apple TV® to top one million units later this week.  The new Apple TV offers the simplest way to watch your favorite HD movies and TV shows, stream content from Netflix …
Dan Frommer / SAI: Silicon Alley Insider:
About.Me CEO Tony Conrad: Here's Why I Sold My Company To AOL So Quickly  —  About.me, a super-simple make-your-own-pretty-looking- homepage tool, just launched last week, and today the company announced that it had already been acquired by AOL.  (Actually, the company signed a letter of intent in November …
Discussion: TG Daily, Xconomy and TechCrunch, Thanks:blogfisher
RELATED:
Dan Frommer / SAI: Silicon Alley Insider:
Roku CEO: Sales Doubled When Apple TV Launched  —  When Apple and Google made big moves into the “digital living room” this year, it made sense to assume that business would become a lot harder for Roku.  —  The Silicon Valley-based company has been selling inexpensive web TV set-top boxes since 2008 …
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Facebook Launches Instant Personalization On TripAdvisor  —  Hot on the heels of bringing Instant Personalization to Clicker last week, today Facebook is announcing the latest addition to the program: TripAdvisor.  The popular travel site, which includes user reviews of hotels, restaurants …
RELATED:
Tiffany Chang Black / Facebook Blog:
Plan the Perfect Trip with Help from Friends
Discussion: Computerworld, PR Newswire and Tnooz
Josh Kosman / New York Post:
Google shopping for Groupon wannabe: sources  —  Google, whose $6 billion buyout offer was spurned by online coupon site Groupon, is in talks with much smaller rivals of the two-year-old firm, a source close to the situation told The Post.  —  The deal talks show that the search giant …
Audrey Watters / ReadWriteWeb:
One of the “Killer Apps for Android,” Swype Opens Its Beta  —  Oh, the war of words between iPhone and Android fans.  How it has preoccupied us this year.  I won't take sides now.  I own both.  (Don't judge.)  But I will say this: if you're an Android user, you might want to go now and join Swype's beta.
Surur / WMPoweruser.com:
IDC: Windows Phone 7 marketplace ramping up “faster than Android”  —  The Windows Phone 7 marketplace is ramping up faster than Android, and even when compared to the iPhone App store (red line) it does not look too bad.  (WP7 graph from WP7Applist.com)  —  We continue to see rather odd stories …
Ezone.com iPhone News:
It's Official: EA Owns the App Store - Now What Do We Do?  —  It's official.  The big publishers now own the App Store.  We all knew it was going to happen sooner or later (it's just we all hoped it would be later).  Apologies for leading off our second idevblogaday post with another ranking chart …
Discussion: SlashGear
Carolyn Penner / Twitter Blog:
Fluther Flocks to Twitter  —  There are now three times as many people on the Twitter team as there were at this time last year.  More than half of our employees work in engineering and operations, and those teams continue to grow as we attract more and more talented people interested …
Stuart Miles / Pocket-lint:
EXCLUSIVE: PlayStation phone to hit shops in April  —  Sources confirm to Pocket-lint launch date and release  —  The Sony Ericsson PlayStation phone will hit shops in April, after a February Mobile World Congress launch, sources close to the matter have confirmed to Pocket-lint.
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Real Estate Site Trulia Acquires Movity  —  San Francisco real estate site Trulia said it has acquired Movity, a buzzy stealth start-up that searches and aggregates geodata for home buyers and renters, such as noise, crime and pricing, from a variety of sources.
Discussion: Screenwerk
Wall Street Journal:
SEC Probes Hurd Exit From H-P  —  The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating the circumstances surrounding Mark Hurd's departure from Hewlett-Packard Co., in a broad inquiry that includes claims that the former chief executive shared inside information about an acquisition, people familiar with the matter said.
DigiTimes:
Acer, Asustek, Lenovo to launch new notebooks with ultra-thin design in 1Q11  —  As Apple's new MacBook Air notebook has seen a strong demand in the channel, notebook brands including Acer, Asustek Computer and Lenovo are all set to follow suit and launch 13.3- to 14-inch notebooks …
SAI: Silicon Alley Insider:
CHART OF THE DAY: Facebook Revenue Is Not Growing Like Google's Did  —  Want to get the Chart of The Day before everybody else?  Get it in an email.  —  Facebook is on track to generate $2 billion in sales this year, a nice milestone for the social networking king.
Discussion: NBC Bay Area
Nick Bilton / Bits:
Instagram Quickly Passes 1 Million Users  —  Instagram, a social photo-sharing company that opened its shutters to iPhone owners just two months ago, announced Tuesday that it passed a milestone of one million registered users.  —  The company began offering its simple photo service …
Kim-Mai Cutler / Inside Facebook:
After Critiquing Facebook, Google Researcher Paul Adams Joins It  —  Paul Adams, the Google user experience researcher who critiqued Facebook in a lengthy report over the summer, is leaving the search giant to join them.  His report is said to have accelerated the Groups product …
Riley McDermid / VentureBeat:
VCs say they'll invest, hire and sell more in 2011  —  Venture capitalists say they will invest more in 2011, as hiring in the sector heats up and selling begins to shake off the lingering woes of the financial crisis, according to a study released today by the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and Dow Jones VentureSource.
Scott Thurm / Wall Street Journal:
Cellphone Marketers Plan Rules on Privacy  —  Facing growing public concern about privacy breaches, a lobby representing mobile-phone advertisers and publishers called for guidelines to better protect smartphone users from intrusive tracking technologies.  —  The Mobile Marketing Association …
Carolyn Duffy Marsan / Network World:
U.S. military strong-arming IT industry on IPv6  —  Pentagon pressuring suppliers to use IPv6 products they sell on their own networks, Web sites  —  The U.S. military is ratcheting up the pressure on its network suppliers to deploy IPv6 on their own networks and Web sites …
Janko Roettgers / GigaOM:
No Hulu Plus for Your Cable DVR  —  Hulu Plus is slated to come to TiVo's Premiere DVR soon — but don't expect it to show up on any TiVo devices supplied by cable companies like Suddenlink, Cox or RCN.  Rights holders are resisting subscription-based streaming content being placed next …
John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
Title Junk  —  The recent hubbub about Delicious got me thinking about bookmarking in general, and brought to mind a long-standing irritation: poorly designed web page titles.  —  Here's an example that I bookmarked last night: Roger Ebert's 1968 review of 2001: A Space Odyssey.  The title of that web page is:
 
 Archived Page Info: 
This is a snapshot of Techmeme at 12:45 PM ET, December 21, 2010.

View the current page or another snapshot:


 
 Techmeme Sponsor Posts: 
Meta:
Open Source AI: Available to all, not just the few  —  Meta's open source AI enables small businesses, start-ups, students, researchers and more to download and build with our models at no cost.
Tribe AI:
Build AI products that matter  —  Tribe AI helps organizations rapidly deploy AI solutions that have real business impact.  We bring together world class AI talent and tooling to drive differentiated results.
Zoho:
5 common accounting mistakes  —  This is a guest post by Yaali Bizappln Solutions.  A lot of businesses manage their customers and finances on separate platforms.  This disconnect often leads to missed invoices …
Hamming:
Make AI Voice Agents trustworthy  —  Hamming AI automatically tests AI voice agents and continuously monitors them in production.
Sponsor Techmeme
 
 See Also: 
Techmeme: site main
Techmeme River: reverse chronological Techmeme
Techmeme Mobile: for phones
Techmeme Leaderboard: Techmeme's top sources
 
 Subscribe: 
Techmeme RSS feed
Techmeme on X
Techmeme on Mastodon
 
 
 More Items: 
Bill Callahan / Bloomberg:
Ex-Flextronics Manager Accused of Leaking Apple Tips Wins Bail
Wendy Davis / MediaPost:
Facebook Asks Appellate Court To Let Beacon Settlement Stand
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Fortune:
Steve Jobs is the No. 4 ‘wealth creator’
Discussion: Computerworld
Dan Frommer / SAI: Silicon Alley Insider:
Foursquare Already Getting Almost One Photo Upload Per Second
Verne G. Kopytoff / New York Times:
Skype Looks for a Spot in Offices and Cellphones
Discussion: SAI and VoIP Watch
Mark Gurman / 9 to 5 Mac:
Apple will close Mac OS X downloads site on January 6
Discussion: Macworld, SlashGear, MacRumors, TUAW and Macgasm
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
1 Billion Peoples' Interests Now Tracked by AddThis
 Earlier Items: 
Sarah Lacy / TechCrunch:
Bleacher Report Raises $10.5M; Now Fifth Largest Sports Site
Ina Fried / Mobilized:
Pen Computing Backers Hope to Write New Chapter With Android
Discussion: Engadget, Neowin.net and SlashGear
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
Undue process: how Uncle Sam seized BitTorrent domain names
Federico Viticci / MacStories:
Apple Launches iAd Producer - HTML & CSS Layout App for iAds
Elizabeth Weingarten / The Atlantic Online:
Forget Journalism School and Enroll in Groupon Academy