Techmeme: Apple loses buzz, Microsoft gains (Philip Elmer-DeWitt/Fortune)

6:00 AM ET, January 25, 2011

Top Items:

Olga Kharif / Bloomberg:

Apple Plans Service That Lets IPhone Users Pay With Handsets — Apple Inc. plans to introduce services that would let customers use its iPhone and iPad computer to make purchases, said Richard Doherty, director of consulting firm Envisioneering Group. — The services are based on …

Discussion: SAI, App Advice, MacRumors, Forbes, SlashGear, The Next Web, ITProPortal, Phones Review, parislemon and Online Social Media

MG Siegler / TechCrunch:

Apple Aims To Take NFC Mainstream; Perhaps The Greatest Trick They've Ever Pulled? — Bloomberg has an interesting report tonight, but they have the headline all wrong. Apple Plans Service That Lets IPhone Users Pay With Handsets — is technically correct (assuming the report is true …

Mark Gurman / 9 to 5 Mac:
iPhone 5 and iPad 2 to have NFC with new mobile payment service?

Discussion: Engadget and Online Social Media

Google Public Policy Blog:

Keep your opt-outs — Today we're making available Keep My Opt-Outs, which enables you to opt out permanently from ad tracking cookies. It's available as an extension for download in Chrome. — Why have we developed this feature? — Recently, the Federal Trade Commission and others …

Alex Fowler / First Person Cookie:
More Choice and Control Over Online Tracking

Discussion: Mashable, DSLreports, Fast Company, GigaOM, Computerworld, paidContent, GMSV, extreme geekboy and WebProNews

Audrey Watters / ReadWriteWeb:
Firefox and Chrome Add “Do Not Track” Tools To Their Browsers

Discussion: Macgasm and Electronista

Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft Blog:

How Microsoft plans to market against the iPad — Even though Microsoft's public stance, when asked about the impact of Apple's slate is “iPad? What iPad?”, the Redmondians are preparing the company's partners for battle in 2011. — Microsoft is making available to its reseller partners …

Discussion: Guardian, Engadget, SlashGear, ZDNet, CNET News, ThinkMobile, SAI, Pulse2, FM Blog, MacStories, The Microsoft Blog, GottaBeMobile, WinRumors, Electronista, The Next Web and GeekSmack

Darren Murph / Engadget:

Exclusive: Barnes & Noble phasing out the Nook 3G — Barnes & Noble may be selling millions of Nook products, but it's sounding like the 3G variant hasn't really done its part to help those figures. We've received hard evidence from within B&N that the Nook is being discontinued …

Discussion: AndroidOS.in, SlashGear, CrunchGear, Android Central, CNET News, MobileWhack.com, Kindle Review, Android Community, Pulse2, Online Social Media, Android Phone Fans, GeekSmack, Electronista, TeleRead, Crave and The Digital Reader

Ali Imam / The LinkedIn Blog:

Visualize your LinkedIn network with InMaps — If you're a LinkedIn user, you already know the power of your professional network. — What if you could visualize what your network looks like? Would your connections form clusters or groups? Wouldn't it be great if you could see the way …

Discussion: Download Squad, ReadWriteWeb, SFGate, FlowingData, USA Today, The Next Web, Associated Press and Forbes

Facebook Developer Blog:

The Next Step for Facebook Credits — Facebook Credits is a virtual currency that enables fast and easy transactions across games on Facebook. With Facebook Credits, people enter their payment information once and can buy, earn and spend safely across lots of different games.

Discussion: Download Squad, GigaOM, EngageDigital, Mashable, Inside Facebook, All Facebook, WebProNews, eMoney, Inside Social Games and Search Engine Land

Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Facebook To Make ‘Facebook Credits’ Mandatory For Game Developers (Confirmed)

Discussion: Inside Facebook, Pulse2, VentureBeat, GamePolitics News, Forbes, SAI and MarketingVOX

Tyler Odean / Gmail Blog:

Print from your phone with Gmail for mobile and Google Cloud Print — Let's say you need to print an important email attachment on your way to work so that it's waiting for you when you walk in the door. With Gmail for mobile and Google Cloud Print — a service that allows printing …

Dieter Bohn / PreCentral:

Topaz Specs! Exclusive details on Touchstone v2 and much more! — We've received a massive document detailing HP's plans for the Topaz webOS slate from last year. While these details aren't final, what we know is that HP is planning to make the Topaz highly competitive with the iPad from both a hardware and a software perspective.

Roger Ebert / Roger Ebert's Journal:

Why 3D doesn't work and never will. Case closed. — I received a letter that ends, as far as I am concerned, the discussion about 3D. It doesn't work with our brains and it never will. — The notion that we are asked to pay a premium to witness an inferior and inherently brain-confusing image is outrageous.

Discussion: BBC, Technologizer, Gizmodo, CrunchGear, SlashGear and VizWorld.com

Irina Slutsky / AdAge:

Facebook Turns the ‘Like’ Into Its Newest Ad — Say Something About a Brand? It Could End Up as an Ad in Your Friends' Feeds — SAN FRANCISCO (AdAge.com) — The ubiquitous “like” is currency for brands, and Facebook is giving them a new way to collect: an ad unit that shows …

Discussion: SAI, Inside Facebook, Mashable and Electricpig.co.uk

Susan Decker / Bloomberg:

Kodak's Push for Royalties From Apple, RIM Is Derailed — Eastman Kodak Co., the 130-year-old camera company, lost a U.S. International Trade Commission ruling that may hamper its effort to collect patent royalties from Apple Inc. and Research In Motion Ltd.

Discussion: 9 to 5 Mac, Forbes, AppleInsider, Electronista, Between the Lines Blog and CNET News

Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Fortune:

Apple loses buzz, Microsoft gains — The net loss in “media value” last quarter, according to a new report, was nearly $460 million — Click to enlarge. Source: General Sentiment — Here's an interesting exercise. Take the total number of news stories, social media mentions and tweets about Apple …

Discussion: WinRumors

John Cook / TechFlash:

Report: Amazon plans to expand grocery delivery service — Amazon.com is looking to expand its home delivery service, with The Financial Times reporting (subscription required) that the online retailer has begun recruiting staffers for a national push. Amazon has operated …

Discussion: Mashable, Financial Times, Seattle Times, Wall Street Journal, Epoch Times, Switched and InvestorPlace

Joel Spolsky / Stack Overflow:

State of the Stack 2010 (a message from your CEO) — 2010 was an absolutely amazing year here at Stack Overflow. We grew from 7 million visitors to over 16 million, putting us in Quantcast's top 400. We raised $6 million in venture capital, and we went from three full time employees to 27.

Fatema Yasmine / The Next Web:

Dropbox Founder on New Features and Global Expansion. — I recently had the chance to sit down with Dropbox cofounder and CTO Arash Ferdowsi. The interview took place in their swanky new office in downtown San Francisco. We talked in-depth about the major changes coming to Dropbox and the success of the company to date.

Thanks:zee

Dow Jones Newswires:

France Telecom to buy 49% of Dailymotion as part of new strategy — French operator in exclusive talks with video-sharing Website over potential €58.8 million deal. — France Telecom's Orange Tuesday said it had started exclusive talks to acquire a 49% stake in French video-sharing website Dailymotion …

Discussion: SAI and Reuters

Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:

Google To Acquire fflick For $10 Million — Back in August we wrote about a neat service called fflick that looked to harness Twitter to power a movie sentiment and recommendation engine, with an added dash of colorful style. Now the service is getting two big thumbs up from Google …

Electronista:

Pegatron making 10m initial iPhone 5s, all-out for iPhone 4 — Pegatron has already earned enough trust from Apple to start manufacturing the iPhone 5, part makers said Monday night. The company is due to make at least 10 million to 12 million CDMA iPhone 4 units but has reportedly been picked …

Discussion: DigiTimes and IntoMobile

Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:

25% of files downloaded from The Pirate Bay are fakes — For years, antipiracy companies like MediaDefender (read our 2007 profile) have scratched out a living by flooding peer-to-peer file-sharing networks with bad data. While the techniques differ, the goal is the same …

Discussion: GamePolitics News

John Brownlee / Cult of Mac:

T-Mobile: 10% Of Departing Customers Leave For The iPhone — During a presentation to investors in New York on Thursday, T-Mobile CEO Philipp Humm put an explicit percentage on the so-called iPhone effect: how many T-Mobile subscribers leave every month for AT&T just because of Apple's smartphone.

Discussion: ThinkMobile

Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:

HighNote Is Group Messaging With A Multimedia Twist — What sets group messaging app HighNote apart from the current wave of group texting apps like Kik, PingChat and Beluga is that it adds a multimedia focus to the act of messaging in multiple. — Aside from being a free Internet Protocol …

Discussion: VentureBeat

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