Techmeme: $10K iTunes Winner Hung Up On Apple, Thought It Was a Prank [Exclusive] (Leander Kahney/Cult of Mac)

4:25 PM ET, January 23, 2011

Top Items:

Vlad Savov / Engadget:

Motorola Xoom launching February 17th at Best Buy (update: priced at $700) — When we stumbled upon an $800 price for the Motorola Xoom yesterday, our instinctive reaction was to leap forward to the next obvious question: when? Well, that call has now been answered by an internal Best Buy document that's …

Vivek Wadhwa / TechCrunch:

Why I Don't Buy the Quora Hype — Let me start with a disclaimer: I am not writing this in my capacity as a university professor or researcher; I don't claim to be an expert on social networking; and I will be happy to be proven wrong—I have no vested interest in the success or failure of Quora.

Discussion: SAI, @eghosao, Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life, @briannorgard, @johnniemanzari, @jason and @scobleizer

semilshah's posterous:
A Quick Response to @vwadhwa Post on Quora

Discussion: @christinelu

Frederic Lardinois / NewsGrange:

Hacker Shows It Doesn't Take $8 Million to Clone Qwiki - Just 321 Lines of HTML Will do the Trick — Qwiki is an app that creates pretty slideshows based on Wikipedia entries. The service won the top award at the last Techcrunch Disrupt conference and just received $8 million in new funding …

Discussion: Pulse2 and ABCNEWS

Leena Rao / TechCrunch: TechCrunch Disrupt Winner Qwiki Hits No. 1 On Google Trends 'Hot …

Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:

A To Do List For Google's New CEO Larry Page — Welcome back, Larry! When you were last CEO of Google in 2001, the company was a much loved scrappy underdog with a bright future. Ten years later, you're coming back to the helm. Things have changed. You're soon to be steering …

Discussion: San Francisco Chronicle, AOL News, Network World and MarketingVOX, Thanks:ideaversesg

Quora:

What should Larry Page focus on now that he is CEO of Google? — 25 Answers — Robert Scoble — I would focus the company on a few key projects: 1. Make Android a real usability leader, not just a marketshare leader. I've been using Android a lot lately, and it simply isn't as nice as iPhone or, even, Windows Phone 7, in usability.

Discussion: Reuters and Bloomberg

Liz Gannes / NetworkEffect:
Is Larry Page the Consummate Anti-Social CEO?

Discussion: TechCrunch

Zee / The Next Web:

Sean Parker: The Social Network is a complete work of fiction — Sean Parker and Paulo Coelho's two man panel at DLD raised a number of interesting points about the future of content but it was Coelho's question to Parker on his thoughts on the The Social Network, that grabbed everyone's attention.

Discussion: Mashable! and TechCrunch Europe

Leander Kahney / Cult of Mac:

$10K iTunes Winner Hung Up On Apple, Thought It Was a Prank [Exclusive] — Gail Davis of Orpington Kent hung up the phone when Apple called to say she'd won a $10,000 iTunes gift card. She thought it was a prank call. — The winner of the Apple's 10 billionth App download sweepstakes nearly …

Discussion: CNET News, Examiner, Gizmodo, Neowin.net, everythingiCafe, IntoMobile and Guardian

Trudy Muller / Apple:
Apple's App Store Downloads Top 10 Billion

Josh Ong / AppleInsider:

Apple's new ‘two is better than one’ iPhone ad promotes Verizon, AT&T — Just days after Verizon launched its first iPhone ad, a new TV spot from Apple for the iPhone 4 highlights both Verizon and AT&T with the pitch “two is better than one.” — Set to the iconic Blue Danube Waltz by Johann Strauss …

Discussion: Examiner, 9 to 5 Mac, Gizmodo Australia, PhoneArena, everythingiCafe, Life On My Mobile, IntoMobile, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, MacRumors, Engadget, TiPb, Erictric and Electronista

Mark Gurman / 9 to 5 Mac:
Verizon iPhone 4 costs $50 more than AT&T iPhone 4 off contract

Discussion: SAI, Examiner, Apple Headlines, Phones Review, Life On My Mobile and iClarified

Dan Frommer / SAI: Silicon Alley Insider:

Jason Calacanis Starts Promoting Mahalo 4.0 “Pivot” — Jason Calacanis is launching “Mahalo 4.0” on Tuesday, he just said on Quora, “our pivot from human-powered search to....... :-)”. — In other words, Mahalo, his startup, is shifting focus again. — To what? Good question.

Ernesto / TorrentFreak:

The Music Bay: Pirate Bay Crew Instill More Fear Into The Music Industry — For years The Pirate Bay has been a thorn in the side of the music industry, but things could be about to take a turn for the worse. Over the past days rumors of a new project titled “The Music Bay” have been circling …

Discussion: PC Magazine, The Next Web, THINQ.co.uk, Erictric and p2pnet

Paul McMahon / TokyoDev:

Facebook is Japan's LinkedIn — A couple of weeks back, an article Facebook Wins Relatively Few Friends in Japan made its rounds. As usual, Facebook is compared to the big three Japanese SNS: mixi, Gree, and Mobage-town. However, Gree and Mobage-town market themselves more as social gaming platforms …

Matt McGee / Search Engine Land:

Google May Let You Blacklist Domains To Fight Spam — Ready for do-it-yourself spam fighting? Google has discussed giving searchers the ability to remove domains from its search results. That's according to Matt Cutts, Google's top spam fighter, who's been posting frequently …

Discussion: WebProNews, eWeek and The Atlantic Online

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