Techmeme: We'll be retiring our support of OpenID on May 1 (37signals Product Blog)

2:00 PM 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 …

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 …

Discussion: PC Magazine, Softpedia News, Fortune and MacStories

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

Discussion: PC World, Engadget and Computerworld

Roger Cheng / Digits:

Verizon iPhone: $30 Unlimited Data (for Now) — It's official: Verizon is going to offer iPhone buyers a $30 unlimited data plan. The carrier's heir apparent and chief operating officer, Lowell McAdam, told us the news ahead of the company's meeting with investors. — “I'm not going to shoot myself in the foot,” he said.

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 …

Discussion: VentureBeat, SAI, alarm:clock, Venture Capital Dispatch, Neowin.net, The Huffington Post, ITProPortal, Search Engine Land, Softpedia News and Electronista, more at Mediagazer »

Tricia Duryee / eMoney:

Facebook Acquires Mobile Advertising Startup Rel8tion — Facebook has acquired Rel8tion and the employees of the nine month-old Seattle-based startup, which has been working under the radar to develop a hyper-local mobile advertising service. — Facebook confirmed the acquisition in a statement …

Discussion: Inside Facebook, All Facebook and SAI

37signals Product Blog:

We'll be retiring our support of OpenID on May 1 — We first jumped on the OpenID bandwagon back in 2007 when it was seen as a promising way to make logging into websites simpler. What we've learned over the past three years is that it didn't actually make anything any simpler for the vast majority of our customers.

Discussion: Daring Fireball and SAI

Robert Dong / Google Voice Blog:

Port your existing mobile number to Google Voice — 867-5309 could be one of the most iconic phone numbers of all time, but it's not the only number that a lot of us remember by heart. Many of us have a phone number that we've shared with family, friends, and contacts over the years and are reluctant to let go.

Discussion: TechCrunch, Search Engine Land, Techie Buzz, Droid Life and Lifehacker

AWS Evangelist / Amazon Web Services Blog:

Introducing the Amazon Simple Email Service — Like most technical endeavors, sending email is a lot harder than it looks! The simple solutions that are entirely adequate when you have to send a couple of dozen daily emails simply don't work when you need to send out hundreds, thousands …

Discussion: CNET News, Amazon.com, TechFlash, The Register, InfoQ, TechCrunch, Between the Lines Blog, CenterNetworks, Softpedia News and The Next Web

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: eWeek, The Atlantic Online, Inquirer, Post Tech, Inside Mobile Apps, Fast Company and hypebot

Ryan Kim / GigaOM:
Facebook Credits: Virtual Goods Are Just the Beginning

Discussion: msnbc.com, gameinformer.com and the Econsultancy blog

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: Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, All Facebook, msnbc.com, Inside Facebook, MarketingVOX, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, Electricpig.co.uk and SAI

Dan Frommer / SAI: Silicon Alley Insider:

Why The Verizon iPhone Is Going To Be Huge: Only 26% Of Verizon Subscribers Have Smartphones — Apple probably would have been better off if it had started selling the iPhone at Verizon a year ago, as it probably would have stifled Google Android from becoming such a strong competitor.

Discussion: Internet2Go and Between the Lines Blog

Larry Dignan / Between the Lines Blog:
Verizon's fourth quarter earnings fall short, but wireless subscribers surge

Discussion: Verizon, Computerworld, PC World, GigaOM, Digital Trends, Tech Trader Daily, DSLreports, Reuters, Internet2Go, New York Times, VentureBeat, Telecompetitor, CNET News, WinRumors, Engadget, Reuters, MacNN and FierceWireless

Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:

DLD11: James Murdoch On The Daily, Paywalls, Google And Apple — James Murdoch, son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch and currently Chairman and CEO of News Corporation, Europe and Asia, was interviewed on stage at the DLD Conference in Munich, Germany. — Murdoch touched on everything …

Discussion: MediaMemo, paidContent, App Advice, Macgasm and MacStories, more at Mediagazer »

Declan McCullagh / CNET News:

Justice Department seeks mandatory data retention — Criminal investigations “are being frustrated” because no law currently exists to force Internet providers to keep track of what their customers are doing, the U.S. Department of Justice will announce tomorrow.

Discussion: DSLreports, CNET News, Geek News Central, Between the Lines Blog and Rootsecure.net

Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:

Developers Report Increased Interest in Android, Tablets for 2011 — The average developer is now building for four different devices, a joint survey from app development firm Appcelerator and analyst firm IDC has revealed. Of those multiple devices, building apps for Android tablets …

Discussion: CNET News, TechEye, PC World, Macworld, PC World, GigaOM, Reuters, Fast Company, iPhone Application Developer, eWeek and WMPoweruser.com

Saulius Dailide / Pixelmator | Weblog:

Pixelmator Grosses $1 Million on the Mac App Store — I am ecstatic to announce that Pixelmator grossed a gigantic $1 million on the Mac App Store. And that happened in only 20 short days. — What is even better is that the app is getting rave reviews on the Mac App Store …

Discussion: Technologizer, SAI, Macgasm and MacStories

Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft Blog:

More codenames provide clues to planned Microsoft Mediaroom IPTV blitz — Microsoft filed an International Trade Commission complaint against Tivo in an attempt to stop that company from importing set-top boxes on January 24. Just another day in Microsoft-litigation land? Or is there something bigger going on here?

Discussion: TechFlash, SlashGear and Electronista

Nick Farrell / TechEye:

Obama surrenders to Big Content — The President of the French-backed terrorist government of the former British colony of Virginia has turned over the control of his country's judiciary to the entertainment industry. — In an unusual move, by any country's standards …

Discussion: Threat Level, GMSV, Bloomberg, Washington Post, New York Times, Fox News and Hollywood Reporter

Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:

Yahoo Confirms (Small) Layoffs: 1% Of Global Employee Base — Yahoo confirms that it is letting some employees go today, about 1% of its global employee base. — How many people is that? At the end of Q3, Yahoo had about 14,000 employees, but then it let 650-700 go in December.

Discussion: The Social, BoomTown, SAI and NBC Bay Area

Stacey Higginbotham / GigaOM:

HP's New Cloud Products Offer a Flashback to 2009 — Hewlett-Packard unveiled four new cloud products in what I view as somewhat of a comeback tour for the hardware giant after staying on the sidelines for much of 2010. However, the four new products, which range from an Infrastructure-as a-Service …

Discussion: Dana Gardner's …, TechEye, Datamation, At Your Servers and The Register

Dan Frommer / SAI: Silicon Alley Insider:

Mahalo 4.0 = Howcast + Quora + About.com — Jason Calacanis started Mahalo four years ago as a “human powered search engine,” but the latest version of the site moves completely away from the original idea, and much deeper into web video and “how to” content.

Discussion: ReadWriteWeb, VentureBeat and MediaMemo

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

Ongo: Aggregation So Good, You'll Pay for It. (Maybe.) — Say “aggregation” to most newspaper publishers and what they hear is “content stealing.” But a new aggregator launching today promises to put some money back in the pockets of publishers by catering exclusively to news junkies who will pay for a better reading experience.

Discussion: Techdirt, Screenwerk, Bloomberg, Reuters, paidContent, SAI, VentureBeat, Bits, Epicenter, The Next Web and Poynter, more at Mediagazer »

Caroline McCarthy / CNET News:

‘The Social Network’ nominated for eight Oscars — The claim by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin that he was unduly ousted from the social network's early executive team formed the basis for “The Social Network,” the controversial yet acclaimed film about the birth of the company.

Discussion: All Facebook, Search Engine Land, The Register, Epicenter and NetworkEffect

Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:

Twitter Is Blocked In Egypt Amidst Rising Protests — Inspired by the recent Tunisian demonstrations against corruption, protesters are filling the streets of Cairo. And like the protests in Tunisia, the Egyptian ones were partly organized on Facebook and Twitter.

Discussion: Switched, The Business Insider and Mashable

Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:

New Initiative Harnesses Smartphones To Help Keep Heart Attack Victims Alive — It isn't often that I get to write about a smartphone app that's actually going to save lives. Which is why I'm so excited about this story. — Right now in the San Francisco suburb of San Ramon, California …

Discussion: CNET News, NBC Bay Area and O'Reilly Radar

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