Techmeme: Inside subscription content: Apple iPad vs Google One Pass vs Amazon Kindle (Daniel Eran Dilger/AppleInsider)

12:30 AM ET, February 18, 2011

Top Items:

Apple Is Weighing a Cheaper iPhone — SAN FRANCISCO — Apple has been exploring ways to broaden the appeal of the iPhone by making the popular device less expensive and allowing users to control it with voice commands. — But contrary to published reports, Apple is not currently developing …

Discussion: App Advice, Digital Daily, AppleInsider, Examiner, ReadWriteWeb, Crave, NewsGrange, 9 to 5 Mac, TiPb, MobileWhack, Neowin.net, Mashable!, Apple Bitch, MacStories, Geek.com, Erictric, TUAW, Engadget, msnbc.com, iClarified, The Loop and everythingiCafe

Arn / MacRumors: Apple Not Planning to Launch a Smaller iPhone

The Official Google Blog:

An update to Google Social Search — Today we're doing a little bit more to bring you all the goodness of Google, plus the opinions of the people you care about. As always, we want to help you find the most relevant answers among the billions of interconnected pages on the web.

Matt McGee / Search Engine Land:

Google's Search Results Get More Social; Twitter As The New Facebook “Like” — Your friends' activity on Twitter, Flickr and elsewhere — but for now, not Facebook — will soon be a lot more visible in Google's search results, including having an impact on how pages rank.

Discussion: ReadWriteWeb, TechCrunch, Gizmodo, WebProNews, Logic+Emotion, Inside Facebook, Mashable!, Neowin.net, The Huffington Post, MediaPost, Electronista, Fortune, SAI, The Atlantic Online and NetworkEffect

Popular Mechanics:

Confessions of an Apple Store Employee — Apple is famous for its secrecy, with a code of silence that runs from top management all the way down to its retail employees. One Apple Store employee decided to throw protocol to the curb and tell us what it's really like working at the vaunted retail outlets.

Discussion: Examiner, App Advice, AppleInsider, MacNN, TUAW, MacRumors, MacStories and NBC Bay Area

David Sarno / L.A. Times Tech Blog:

Official list of attendees at Obama tech meeting: CEOs of Twitter, Netflix, Oracle, Yahoo, others — Here's the official list of attendees of Thursday evening's meeting of technology industry chiefs with President Obama in San Francisco. It includes many of Silicon Valley's biggest names.

Discussion: The Oatmeal, Between the Lines Blog, Bits, Computerworld, Digital Daily, @lexnfx, The Snitch, Pulse2, NBC Bay Area and SiliconANGLE

Matt Spetalnick / Reuters:

Apple's Jobs at tech CEO meeting with Obama: White House — (Reuters) - Apple Inc Chief Executive Steve Jobs, who is on medical leave from the company he co-founded, attended a meeting of technology industry leaders with U.S. President Barack Obama in northern California on Thursday, a White House official said.

Wall Street Journal:

Regulators Eye Apple Anew — Enforcers Interested in Whether Digital-Subscription Rules Stifle Competition — WASHINGTON—U.S. antitrust enforcers have begun looking at the terms Apple Inc. set this week for media companies who want to sell their content on its popular iPad and other devices …

Discussion: AppleInsider, VentureBeat, Between the Lines Blog, 9 to 5 Mac, ITworld.com, New York Times, MacStories, MacNN and Download Squad

Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:

Gawker's Gulp Moment: Big Redesign Is Driving People Away — About ten days ago, gossip blog Gawker and its sister sites Gizmodo, Lifehacker and others switched over to a drastic redesign which was met with plenty of jeers. People always complain about design changes …

Connie Loizos / PE Hub Blog:

It's Not a Bubble, People; It's a Pyramid Scheme — Mark Cuban knows a thing or two about bubbles, having profited handsomely from an earlier Internet boom. But ask him if we're seeing Bubble 2.0 and he'll give you a different theory. — “It's almost the 2011 version of a private equity chain letter …

Discussion: DealBook

Leander Kahney / Cult of Mac:

Confirmed: Apple To Build Biggest Store Yet In Grand Central Terminal [Exclusive] — Apple will be building a massive store in New York's Grand Central Terminal, we have independently confirmed. The store will open in the fall, likely early September — and it will be Apple's largest retail space in the world.

Discussion: VentureBeat, MacStories, Epicenter, Geek.com, Pulse2, MacRumors, CNET News, RazorianFly, The Next Web, MacNN, The Huffington Post and iClarified

Jan Wildeboer:

Microsoft: Absolutely NO (GPLv3-or-compat-licensed) Free Software for Windows Phone and Xbox Apps. — This is rather uncool, IMHO, I stumbled upon this forum entry and was quite astonished. It points to the Microsoft Application Provider Agreement that governs the Windows Marketplace …

Discussion: thinq_, Computerworld, Arktronic's blog, ForeverGeek, Neowin.net, The Next Web, The Register, Hardware 2.0 Blog and ThinkMobile

Neil Hughes / AppleInsider:

Apple looking to increase battery life with dense lithium cells — Apple is investigating techniques to increase the energy capacity of rechargeable lithium battery cells without increasing the size of the battery, allowing longer battery life in future devices.

Discussion: Electronista, MacStories, RazorianFly and TUAW

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

Nordstrom Acquires Flash Sales Site HauteLook For $270 Million — In one of the larger exits so far in the flash sales business, retail chain Nordstrom has acquired flash sales site HauteLookfor $180 million in Nordstrom stock and three-year earn-out of up to $90 million. HauteLook has raised $41 million in funding.

Discussion: Venture Capital Dispatch, Thomson IR, eMoney, @cisco_mobile, @msuster, SAI and Pulse2

Sascha Segan / PC Magazine:

Skype: Expect Video Calling for AT&T — Now that Skype and Qik have joined, they plan to bring video calls to all four major US carriers. — BARCELONA—Skype's video-calling prowess will improve the quality of Qik video calls on Sprint and T-Mobile devices, and the joined company is pursuing …

Discussion: Electronista and Engadget

Alex Williams / ReadWriteWeb:

Amazon CTO Werner Vogels Now Hosts His Blog on Amazon S3 and So Can You — Amazon is now offering hosting for static Web sites through S3. It makes it possible now for people with blogs and static Web sites to get the power of Amazon Web Services performance. — Its first customer?

Discussion: Amazon Web Services Blog and All Things Distributed

Greg Sterling / Search Engine Land:

Redesigned Bing Bar Toolbar More Like A “Dashboard” — Bing is introducing a totally redesigned version of its toolbar, called the “Bing Bar.” Apparently it has been “rebuilt from the ground up,” says Microsoft's Stefan Weitz. Indeed, it operates more like a kind of “dashboard” …

Jennifer Lynch / Electronic Frontier Foundation:

Newly Released Documents Detail FBI's Plan to Expand Federal Surveillance Laws — EFF just received documents in response to a 2-year old FOIA request for information on the FBI's “Going Dark” program, an initiative to increase the FBI's authority in response to problems the FBI …

Discussion: paidContent

Declan McCullagh / CNET News:
FBI: We're not demanding encryption backdoors

Discussion: Techdirt, PC World, DSLreports and Electronista

Tricia Duryee / eMoney:

Telltale Signs That Videogames Will Be Downloaded, Not Sold at Retail — The business of selling plastic-wrapped videogames for $60 apiece is becoming an ancient practice, as digital downloads take over-often at lower prices. — But a small San Rafael, Calif.-based videogame company thinks …

Discussion: App Advice, VG247, Joystiq and GoNintendo

MG Siegler / TechCrunch:

‘Year Of The Rabbit’ Begins As Chrome 10 Hops Into Beta With ‘Crankshaft’ JavaScript — As they have made abundantly clear over the past several months, Google hates talking about the version numbers of Chrome. — Well, except when they have something to talk about. Which is actually quite often.

Discussion: Google Chrome Blog, ReadWriteWeb, LaptopMemo and Google Chrome Releases

Daniel Eran Dilger / AppleInsider:

Inside subscription content: Apple iPad vs Google One Pass vs Amazon Kindle — Apple's iOS App Store isn't the only game in town for subscribed digital content. Here's a look at how the plans to court publishers' subscription content by Apple, Amazon's Kindle and Google's One Pass compare.

Claude Brodesser-Akner / New York Magazine:

YouTube Offering Millions for Celebrity-Created Content — In a move designed to vastly improve the quality of its content, Google's YouTube is undertaking what's understood to be a massive bid to attract Hollywood talent — one that has agents practically leaping out of their John Lobbs …

Discussion: Digital Trends, GigaOM, SAI, Techland and WebProNews

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Spotify Signs On EMI for U.S. Launch. At Least One More to Go... It's getting closer: Spotify has finalized a U.S. distribution deal with EMI Music, multiple sources tell me. — Both EMI and Spotify declined to comment. — Coupled with last month's Sony deal, Spotify now has the approval …

Discussion: Erictric, Mashable!, SAI, Electronista, hypebot and The Next Web

John Paczkowski / Digital Daily:

Mac Growth Outpaces Market for 19th Straight Quarter — The Mac has been on a growth tear for a few years now, outperforming the broader PC market in most every sector. Indeed, December 2010 marked the 19th consecutive quarter that it did so. Mac shipments grew 23.5 percent for the month …

Discussion: Ars Technica, MacStories, The Loop, TUAW, SAI and everythingiCafe

Evelyn M. Rusli / DealBook:

Zynga Nears Deal Valuing It at Close to $10 Billion — Zynga, the company behind many of the Web's most viral games, is in advanced discussions on an investment that would value the company at nearly $10 billion and could pave the way for an initial public offering next year.

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, VentureBeat, SAI, BoomTown and Venture Capital Dispatch

Ben Fritz / Company Town:

Redbox digital service will go toe-to-toe with Netflix — Redbox is gearing up to challenge Netflix head-on, the kiosk DVD rental company confirmed Wednesday. — At a meeting with analysts, Redbox President Mitch Lowe said his company's forthcoming digital option will be subscription-based …

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