Techmeme: Tighter security available to .com sites, but upgrades required (Carolyn Duffy Marsan/Network World)

8:45 PM ET, March 31, 2011

Top Items:

Doug Bowman / Twitter Blog:

So a bar walks into an app... Last month, we released an update to Twitter for iPhone and iPad containing a number of features that made finding friends and sharing information on Twitter even easier. The iPhone app also contained a new feature we wanted to test named the QuickBar.

Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:

Twitter Kills The #Dickbar — Yes, it's happened. Three days after Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey comes back in to head product, the dreaded #Dickbar, or the Quickbar that inserted trending topics and promoted ads into your tweet-stream on the iPhone, is dead.

Discussion: BGR, @dickc, NBC Bay Area and Betabeat

Mark Milian / CNN:

Google making app that would identify people's faces — Santa Monica, California (CNN) — Google is working on a mobile application that would allow users to snap pictures of people's faces in order to access their personal information, a director for the project said this week.

Brad Smith / TechNet Blogs:

Adding our Voice to Concerns about Search in Europe — Senior Vice President & General Counsel, Microsoft Corporation — Microsoft is filing a formal complaint with the European Commission as part of the Commission's ongoing investigation into whether Google has violated European competition law.

James Kanter / New York Times:
Google Plays Down Microsoft's Antitrust Complaint in Europe

Discussion: Brave New World, BGR and Techland

Steve Lohr / New York Times:
Microsoft Accusing Google of Antitrust Violations

Discussion: Reuters, SAI, Bloomberg, GigaOM, MediaPost and VentureBeat

Nicholas Carlson / SAI:

CHART OF THE DAY: How Many Users Does Twitter REALLY Have? — How many people use Twitter? Many fewer than Twitter would lead you to believe. — According to its “about” page, Twitter has 175 million registered users. But “registered users” is a funny term. What it really means is the number of accounts.

Discussion: ChasNote

Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:

Facebook Now Has 250 Million Mobile Users (And A New Unified Mobile Website To Match) — For years now, Facebook has offered quite a few ways to access the site from mobile devices, and they've proven immensely popular. In February 2010 the site had 100 million mobile users per month …

Discussion: mocoNews, Inside Mobile Apps, All Facebook, Mashable!, GigaOM, NetworkEffect and Redmond Pie

Lee Byron / Facebook: One Mobile Site to Serve Thousands of Phones

Brandon Watson / The Windows Blog:

A Year Later-The Windows Phone 7 Numbers That Matter — At the MIX10 conference last year the Windows Phone team showed, for the first time, the application platform and tools that developers would use to build applications and games for Windows Phone 7. We announced that the tools were free …

John Paczkowski / Digital Daily:

Exclusive: Apple Global Marcom VP Allison Johnson Leaving Company — Allison Johnson, who has served as Apple's vice president of worldwide marketing communications since 2005, is leaving the company, according to several sources. — The reason? — To co-found a new marketing …

Discussion: SAI, MediaPost, GottaBeMobile, Xconomy, CNET News and 9 to 5 Mac

Business Week:

Do Not Anger the Alpha Android — Google cracks down on the chaos of Android Land; some mobile partners aren't happy — Playtime is over in Android Land. Over the last couple of months Google (GOOG) has reached out to the major carriers and device makers backing its mobile operating system …

Josh Lowensohn / CNET News:

eBay reveals its iPad 2 sales data — While the wait continues for the official number of iPad 2s sold by Apple since its launch earlier this month, eBay this morning is sharing a peek at two weeks of iPad 2 buying activity from its U.S. site. — Unsurprisingly the hard-to-get tablet …

Discussion: Examiner, Computerworld, Digits, GottaBeMobile, Bits, Business Wire, PE Hub Blog, App Advice, CrunchGear, 9 to 5 Mac, Screenwerk, TUAW and GigaOM

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Hollywood Rolls Out $30 Rentals. Smart. — Would you pay $30 to rent a movie? — Hollywood thinks you may. Four of the big studios are rolling out a “premium VOD” offering, where renters at home can pay extra to see films that were just in theaters but aren't yet out on DVD.

Discussion: Variety, GigaOM, TechCrunch, TechSpot, NEWS.com.au and NBC Bay Area

Zach Epstein / BGR:

HTC ThunderBolt outselling iPhone 4 at Verizon Wireless stores, analyst claims — BTIG Research analyst Walter Piecyk says HTC's latest beastly smartphone for Verizon Wireless is going toe to toe with the iPhone 4, and is even outselling Apple's iPhone at many Verizon Wireless store locations.

Discussion: MobileWhack, Droid Life, Android Phone Fans and DroidMatters.com

Eric Reagan / Photography Bay:

Photoshop for iPad Live Demo — Here's the promised live demo of the killer new iPad Photoshop app that debuted today at Photoshop World. Again, this is still in development with no set release date yet. — Check it out, complete with the awesome layers animation, below.

Discussion: Electricpig.co.uk, MacRumors, PhoneArena, Mobilized, Download Squad, GottaBeMobile, msnbc.com, App Advice, Mobiles DNA, WebProNews, I4U News, Engadget, SlashGear and everythingiCafe

MG Siegler / TechCrunch:

Boxcar Pushes Its Way Onto The Mac — My love of Boxcar should be pretty clear at this point. Because I'm an information junkie, it's probably the app I use the most on my iPhone/iPad besides Safari. And earlier this year, they brought the notification goodness to the web as well.

Discussion: PC World, SAI, MacStories, ReadWriteWeb and Download Squad

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

Time Warner Pulls Channels From iPad App — Time Warner Cable on Thursday abruptly removed several channels from its app that replicates the TV viewing experience on an iPad. — The cable company yanked the channels, including MTV and FX, after receiving complaints from three major media companies …

Discussion: AppleInsider and TG Daily

Bloomberg:

Amazon.com Said to Be Considering Mobile-Payment Service for Smartphones — Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) is considering the introduction of a service that would let consumers pay for goods in brick-and-mortar stores using their mobile phones, according to two people with knowledge of the project.

Discussion: CNET News, SlashGear and MacNN

Connie Loizos / PE Hub Blog:

After Blippy, Pud Contemplates His Next Move — As a little boy, Philip Kaplan, the serial entrepreneur long known as Pud, was “force fed” Ritalin. Kaplan says this with a laugh, but even today, the 35-year-old admits to having trouble focusing for too long on any one thing.

Discussion: Mashable!

DigiTimes:

Apple to absorb increasing costs created by Japan earthquake — Although Japan's power brownout policy is seriously affecting the operations of Japan-based upstream component makers, causing related upstream components to see price rises, since Apple has agreed to absorb all the additional costs …

Discussion: GigaOM, PadGadget, MacRumors, Gear Live, Fortune and Edible Apple

Tricia Duryee / eMoney:

EBay Unveils a Local Strategy That Has Nothing to Do With Daily Deals! — Groupon and LivingSocial, the poster children of local commerce, have done a bang-up job of making us believe that the trend is all about offering steep discounts to restaurants, spas or other nearby merchants.

Discussion: CNET News and TechCrunch

Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:

Google's Newest Mobile Search Feature is a Thing of Beauty — Google Mobile Search added a new feature today that lets users search for stock ticker symbols and see their results in a beautiful, structured interface that scrolls horizontally to display different kinds of results.

Discussion: Google Mobile Blog, Android Phone Fans, iClarified, mobiputing and WebProNews

Scott Gilbertson / Epicenter:

In Big Endorsement, AP Embraces Mozilla's ‘Do Not Track’ Header — Among the many new features in Firefox 4 is support for the Do Not Track (DNT) HTTP header. If you turn on the DNT header in Firefox 4's preferences pane, the browser will broadcast a custom header in HTTP requests …

Discussion: The Mozilla Blog

Cari Tuna / Digits:

Intuit, Salesforce.com Team Up to Target Small Businesses — Intuit and Salesforce.com are teaming up to take more small businesses to the cloud. … The two companies on Friday are set to announce a partnership that marries Intuit's accounting software for small businesses …

Discussion: InfoWorld

Patrik Runald / Security Labs:

LizaMoon mass injection hits over 226,000 URLs (was 28,000) — Websense Security Labs and the Websense Threatseeker Network have identified a new malicious mass-injection campaign that we call LizaMoon. Websense customers are protected with the Advanced Classification Engine.

Discussion: Ars Technica, Dancho Danchev's Blog and Neowin.net, Thanks:tomwarren

Nick Bilton / Bits:

GoDaddy Chief Draws Criticism for Elephant Hunting Video — A frame from a video by Bob Parsons, GoDaddy's chief executive, who documented his killing of an elephant in Zimbabwe. You can watch the full video, which is graphic in parts. — What did Bob Parsons, chief executive and founder …

Discussion: Technically Incorrect, Examiner, San Francisco Chronicle, WebProNews and Techland

Abhijit Kalamkar / Google Chrome Blog:

Google Cloud Print Ready printers now available — Imagine printing an important email from your Chrome notebook on your train ride to work, then finding the completed printout in the printer tray when you reach the office. Or printing your airline boarding pass from your smartphone to your home printer …

Discussion: Crave, BlogsDNA, Gear Live, Computerworld, SAI, The Toybox Blog, thechromesource, Ubergizmo, The Next Web and Softpedia News, Thanks:shankargan

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