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4:55 PM ET, April 21, 2011

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Arik Hesseldahl / NewEnterprise:
Amazon's Cloud Crashed Overnight, And Brought Several Other Companies Down Too  —  The Amazon Web Services status dashboard is reporting an ongoing failure of its EC2 service on its servers based in Northern Virgina.  Foursquare, Quora, and Reddit are reported to have been affected.
RELATED:
Jon Brodkin / Network World:
Amazon EC2 outage calls ‘availability zones’ into question  —  When multiple zones fail, Amazon's cloud redundancy isn't redundant enough  —  For cloud customers willing to pony up a little extra cash, Amazon has an enticing proposition: Spread your application across multiple availability zones …
Discussion: justinsb's posterous
Martin Bryant / The Next Web:
Amazon EC2 troubles bring down Reddit, Foursquare, Quora, Hootsuite and more
Tiernan Ray / Tech Trader Daily:
Apple: Verizon Looking Forward To ‘World’ iPhone  —  During a conference call with analysts this morning to discuss Q1 results, announced this morning, Verizon Communications (VZ) management remarked that the next version of Apple's (AAPL) iPhone will be a “world phone,” capable of working with other carriers' networks.
RELATED:
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines Blog:
Verizon activates 2.2 million iPhones in first quarter, 260,000 HTC Thunderbolts  —  Verizon delivered better-than-expected first quarter results and gave its tally of iPhone activations.  The company activated 2.2 million iPhones in the first quarter and 500,000 4G devices, including 260,000 HTC Thunderbolts.
Microsoft:
Nokia and Microsoft Sign Definitive Agreement Ahead of Schedule  —  Key contributions to new global mobile ecosystem agreed and significant progress made on engineering of new products.  —  Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) today announced the signing of a definitive agreement …
RELATED:
Ina Fried / Mobilized:
Exclusive: Microsoft's Lees and Nokia's Oistamo Talk About Their Just-Signed Contract  —  Microsoft and Nokia are announcing today that the two companies have signed a definitive contract, fully committing each other to the partnership announced back in February.
Bobbie Johnson / GigaOM:
Researcher: iPhone Location Data Already Used By Cops  —  When British programmers Alasdair Allen and Pete Warden took the stage at the Where 2.0 conference to unveil their work on iPhone location tracking, it was clear they had some big news on their hands.
RELATED:
Alex Levinson:
3 Major Issues with the Latest iPhone Tracking “Discovery”
Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
Senator Asks Apple About Location-Tracking Issues as Experts Weigh In
Yinka Adegoke / Reuters:
Exclusive: Apple to beat Google on cloud music storage: sources  —  NEW YORK (Reuters) - Apple Inc has completed work on an online music storage service and is set to launch it ahead of Google Inc, whose own music efforts have stalled, according to several people familiar with both companies' plans.
Caroline McCarthy:
Onward, to the Plex.  —  So I have some big news.  —  After five incredible years at CNET, I'm moving on.  May 6 is my last day; ten days later, I will join Google's New York office as a member of its fledgling Trends & Insights team.  I'll be doing a lot of writing, editing …
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
Google Allows You To Subscribe To Offers In Portland, New York City, San Francisco  —  It appears that Google's coupon service Offers, is live, starting in in Portland, Oregon.  You also have the ability to subscribe to deals in areas within New York City, Oakland and San Francisco.
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Fortune:
Apple's 92% earnings windfall: The bloggers nail it, the pros miss by a mile  —  The shortfall in iPad sales was one of the few categories the Street called correctly  —  Click to enlarge.  —  The Wall Street analysts who get paid to cover Apple (AAPL) got some things right.
RELATED:
Michael Kan / PC World:
China Is Apple's Fastest Growing Market for IPhone
Discussion: Digital Daily and IBD Click
John Pletz / Chicago Business:
Groupon hires COO from Google  —  (Crain's) — Groupon Inc. didn't go far to find its new chief operating officer, hiring Google Inc.'s highest-ranking executive in Chicago, Margo Georgiadis.  —  Ms. Georgiadis, vice-president of global sales planning and technology for Google …
Discussion: TechCrunch, SAI, BoomTown and paidContent
Florian Mueller / FOSS Patents:
Texas jury finds against Google in Linux patent case, determines damage award of $5,000,000  —  A jury in the Eastern District of Texas handed a verdict in favor of Bedrock Computer Technologies LLC, determining that Google infringes a Linux-related patent, that the patent is valid …
The Dropbox Blog:
Privacy, Security & Your Dropbox  —  Like many of you, we've been reading the reports about a change we made to our Terms of Service, and more generally about Dropbox's approach to privacy and security.  —  Everyone who works at Dropbox knows our most important asset is the trust of our users.
Discussion: PC Magazine, PC World and Geek.com
Mark Gurman / 9 to 5 Mac:
Apple floats iPhone ‘4S’ with A5 chip to select developers to prepare for next-gen iPhone  —  The iPad 2′s A5 processor not only is a speedy, dual-core chip, but also works to provide nine times the gaming performance of its predecessor, A4.  So, what's Apple to do for their best-selling gaming phone?
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Ballmer memo: Microsoft plans unprecedented boost in employee compensation, simpler reviews  —  Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer this morning signaled a broad set of changes in how the company's employees are evaluated and compensated — promising to simplify its performance review process …
Dave Zatz / Zatz Not Funny!:
Google Takes Issue With Roku's YouTube Channel  —  While Roku doesn't offer an officially sanctioned YouTube channel, many of us have been enjoying that content through a “private” offering created by The Nowhereman.  In fact, he's such an exceptional developer, Roku brought him on as an employee (where he's known as Chris).
Discussion: GigaOM and CrunchGear
Peter Rojas / gdgt:
Amazon's tablet is coming, but what will it be?  —  It's something of an open secret that Amazon is working on an Android tablet and I am 99% certain they are having Samsung build one for them.  Does the world really need yet another tablet?  If it were anyone else, I'd say no …
Ina Fried / Mobilized:
AT&T Files Papers to Take Over T-Mobile USA's Wireless Licenses  —  AT&T said Thursday it had filed initial paperwork with the Federal Communications Commission to take over the wireless licenses held by T-Mobile USA.  —  The paperwork is the first step in gaining regulatory approval for the proposed $39 billion acquisition.
Discussion: BGR and AT&T Public Policy Blog
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
News.me's Social News Aggregator For The iPad Now Live On The App Store  —  As we reported in February, betaworks and the New York Times are collaborating to launch a socialnews reader for the iPad called News.me.  And we heard more details on the app as it readied for launch this week.
Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
PlayBook Launch Better Than Expected: About 50,000 Units Sold  —  After mixed reviews detailing the unfinished state, not to mention the bugs and quirks that comprise RIM's new 7-inch tablet computer, the BlackBerry PlayBook, few expected yesterday's launch to be anything short of failure.
Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:
Page Sharing Service Bo.lt Lets You Copy, Edit And Share Almost Any Webpage  —  With $5 million in funding from Benchmark Capital, webpage sharing service Bo.lt launches today after about a year in private beta.  Like a “Bit.ly on steroids,” the service lets you paste any URL into its copy engine …
Tim Stevens / Engadget:
ASUS Eee Pad Transformer hits US on April 26th for $399  —  We recently deemed the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer the “best Honeycomb tablet yet.”  Admittedly that was before we got our hands on the T-Mobile G-Slate, but it's still an awfully nice hunk of glass, and now we know just how much you're …
David / TmoNews:
HTC Sensation Arriving June 8th?  Google Says Yes  —  Let's just preface this right away with the idea that the June 8th date we are currently seeing as the rumored release for the HTC Sensation COULD be a Europe launch date.  We've been hearing June since the middle of March for the HTC Pyramid, now known as the HTC Sensation.
 
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 More Items: 
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
Google And Facebook Ramp Up Lobbying Spend In Q1 2011
Discussion: Adotas
Jim Dalrymple / The Loop:
Apple's iOS outdoes Android by 116% in Europe
Discussion: AppleInsider, Internet2Go and SlashGear, Thanks:chronic
Agence France Presse:
Japan Internet providers block child porn
Kip Kniskern / LiveSide.net:
Bing announces Read/Write World: expanding connections between maps and imagery
Discussion: Bing, @dannysullivan and Softpedia News
John Paczkowski / Digital Daily:
Apple: The World's Largest Handset Vendor By Revenue
Discussion: MacRumors
Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
Visa Launches Real-Time, Location-Based Discounts for Gap Customers
Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
The New York Times Sells 100,000 Digital Subscriptions In Three Weeks
 Earlier Items: 
Thomas Ricker / Engadget:
SanDisk and Toshiba announce world's smallest NAND flash memory chips for tinier gadgets
Discussion: Computerworld, TechEye and thinq_
Jon Swartz / USA Today:
Tech jobs boom like it's 1999
Discussion: MediaPost
Matt Haughey / A Whole Lotta Nothing:
Ev's assholishness is greatly exaggerated
Popular Mechanics:
Should Cops Be Allowed to Scan Your Phone During a Traffic Stop?
Discussion: Crave, Ubergizmo, The Register and TG Daily
Sarah E. Needleman / Wall Street Journal:
Sites Retool for Google Effect
Discussion: MediaPost and I4U News
Mark Gurman / 9 to 5 Mac:
Apple pulled Facebook integration from iOS 4, Media Stream is its replacement
Thanks:tc_geeks