Techmeme: Google Realtime Search Quietly Adds Quora, Gowalla, Others (MG Siegler/TechCrunch)

12:15 PM ET, April 27, 2011

Top Items:

Apple Q&A on Location Data — Apple would like to respond to the questions we have recently received about the gathering and use of location information by our devices. — 1. Why is Apple tracking the location of my iPhone? — Apple is not tracking the location of your iPhone.

AppleInsider:

Apple issues statement on iOS location controversy, says fix is coming — Apple on Wednesday responded to growing concern over a bug in the iOS mobile operating system that powers the iPhone and iPad, informing customers that it is not tracking them and revealing that it will address the issue with a forthcoming software update.

Discussion: TechCrunch, TechEye, LAPTOP Magazine, Inquirer, Gizmodo, SAI, RazorianFly, Hillicon Valley and The Cell Phone Junkie

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry / SAI:

Apple Hints That It Will Release Turn-By-Turn Navigation On The iPhone — Apple's lengthy response to the whole location tracking scandal includes this nugget: — Apple is now collecting anonymous traffic data to build a crowd-sourced traffic database with the goal of providing iPhone users …

Discussion: MacRumors, 9 to 5 Mac and Engadget

Apple:

White iPhone Arrives Tomorrow — Apple® today announced that the white iPhone® 4 will be available beginning tomorrow. White iPhone 4 models will be available from Apple's online store (www.apple.com), at Apple's retail stores, AT&T and Verizon Wireless stores and select Apple Authorized Resellers.

Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:
Finally: white iPhone 4 arrives April 28 on AT&T and Verizon

Discussion: BetaNews, App Advice, CNET News and WebProNews

Patrick Seybold / PlayStation Blog:

Update on PlayStation Network and Qriocity — Thank you for your patience while we work to resolve the current outage of PlayStation Network & Qriocity services. We are currently working to send a similar message to the one below via email to all of our registered account holders regarding …

Chris Davies / SlashGear:
Sony defends sluggish PSN leak warnings; Some PSN services back “within a week”

Discussion: PlayStation Blog, Joystiq, F-Secure Antivirus …, VG247, Games blog, Gizmodo and Pocket-lint

Fahmida Y. Rashid / eWeek:
Sony PlayStation Network Data Breach Compromises 77 Million User Accounts

Discussion: ReadWriteWeb, Softpedia News, Disruptors, @morrildl and MacHackPC

Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:

Nokia To Cut 4,000 Jobs Worldwide, Transfer 3,000 Symbian Jobs To Accenture — It was inevitable. Nokia this morning announced plans to ‘align its global workforce and consolidate site operations’. That means significant layoffs and reorganizations across the board, of course, so here are the details:

Discussion: Inquirer, Inquirer, Nokia, PC World, CNET News, New York Times, Nokia Conversations, Reuters, PC World, Macworld, BBC, GigaOM, Reuters, IntoMobile, Associated Press, BGR, Wall Street Journal, PhoneArena, Techland, The Tech Trade, SAI, Between the Lines Blog, Engadget, Bloomberg, SlashGear, Electronista, Pocket-lint, PalmAddicts and TechEye

Andrew Orlowski / The Register:
Memo gives full details of Nokia staff cull and closures

Discussion: Nokia and OStatic blogs

Apple:

iPad 2 Arrives in Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore & Eight Other Countries This Week — Apple® today announced that iPad® 2, the second-generation of its breakthrough post-PC device, will arrive in Japan on Thursday, April 28 and Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore and eight additional countries on Friday …

Discussion: GigaOM, Engadget, CNET News, BGR, App Advice, AppleInsider, 9 to 5 Mac, Macworld, MacStories, Product Reviews, RazorianFly, LiewCF Tech Blog, Pluggd.in, TUAW, MacHackPC, Electronista, TiPb and CrunchGear

Vlad Savov / Engadget:

Verizon's LTE network takes the night off, leaves a bunch of Thunderbolt users bewildered — Is your fancy new phone lacking that certain extra G that makes it special? Worry not, it's not just your device, Verizon's entire LTE network seems to be having problems as outages have been reported from across the US.

Discussion: Network World, SAI, Smartphones …, Gizmodo, BGR, GottaBeMobile, Know Your Cell, IntoMobile, The Cell Phone Junkie and Android Phone Fans

Cade Metz / The Register:

Amazon: Some data won't be recovered after cloud outage — Post mortem wait — Amazon says that about 0.07 per cent of the EBS storage volumes in the East Region of its infrastructure cloud are not “fully recoverable” following the extended outage that hit the service last Thursday.

Discussion: Fast Company and ZDNet

Slate: Will Amazon's recent server failures slow the rise of cloud computing?

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

Visa Makes A Strategic Investment In Disruptive Mobile Payments Startup Square — There is no doubt that mobile payments company Square is on a roll. The company just landed a lucrative deal selling its credit card readers in Apple's retail stores and is growing at a fast clip.

Discussion: L.A. Times Tech Blog

MG Siegler / TechCrunch:

Google Realtime Search Quietly Adds Quora, Gowalla, Others — Google Realtime Search is nothing new. For months it has existed as its own area within the search engine's navigation to search for things happening in realtime. But up until now, that has meant mainly Twitter (thanks to Google's data deal with that company).

Discussion: Search Engine Land, Quora, MarketingVOX and Black Web 2.0

SAI: Silicon Alley Insider:

CHART OF THE DAY: Surprise! Microsoft Has Sold 3 Times As Many Windows 7 Licenses As All Apple Products Combined — Apple has been turning in hot quarter after hot quarter, blowing away expectations. Apple's mobile operating system, iOS, the platform underlying iPhones, iPods, and iPads, seems to be taking over the world.

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

RIM Acquires Social Calendaring Application Tungle.Me — RIM has picked up another company today—social calendaring application Tungle.Me. The startup taps into your social graph and simplifies the process of finding and connecting with friends and colleagues.

Discussion: GigaOM, VatorNews, Engadget, Digital Daily, SAI, Tungle.me, Deal Journal, @dondodge, VoIP Watch, CloudAve, @sameerpatel and Electronista

Larry Dignan / Between the Lines Blog:

CenturyLink acquires Savvis in $2.5 billion deal; Cloud, hosting consolidation continues — Data center hosting and cloud computing providers continue to be gobbled up. — CenturyLink said Wednesday that it will acquire Savvis, a hosting and cloud computing provider with big established …

Discussion: The Register, CenturyLink, GigaOM, Computerworld, Data Center Knowledge, TechCrunch, Telecompetitor and Dow Jones Newswires

Greg Sandoval / CNET News:

Expect Apple to charge for music cloud — Don't expect Apple's cloud-music service to come free of charge, at least not forever. Music industry insiders told me that Apple has indicated it could offer the service free of charge initially but that company will eventually require a fee.

Discussion: ITProPortal, GottaBeMobile and iPhone Download Blog

Frederic Lardinois / NewsGrange:

Google Apps Gets $5 Monthly Plans, Makes Business With 10+ Users Pay — Earlier today, Google announced some changes to its Google Apps accounts. First the bad news: business with more than 10 users now have to sign up for a paid Google Apps for Business account when they sign up for a new account …

Discussion: SAI, Softpedia News, The Register, The Next Web and InfoWorld

Sarah Lacy / TechCrunch:

Milk Completes $1.5 Million Angel Round, Packed with Valley Names — Kevin Rose has completed a hefty $1.5 million angel round for his new mobile development lab, which we first reported in March, Milk. Rose went for the more-is-more approach, pulling in a wide-syndicate of Valley elites, including TechCrunch's Michael Arrington.

Discussion: VentureBeat, SAI and @jason

Dave Zatz / Zatz Not Funny!:

DirecTV Real Interested In Netflix, Contemplates Launching A Competitor — DirecTV (DTV) hit up some of their customers today with a web survey. A very interesting web survey. As it's nearly all about Netflix (NFLX) - usage patterns, both physical discs and online streaming.

Discussion: CNET News and DSLreports

Amir Efrati / Wall Street Journal:

Yahoo Mulls Spin-off for Hadoop Software Unit — Yahoo Inc., which generates $6 billion in annual revenue by selling online ads, is considering a new strategy to exploit what analysts say could be another billion-dollar business: Hadoop. — Over the past six years, the Internet pioneer helped …

Discussion: SAI and Softpedia News

John Cook / GeekWire:

SignalSet lands $6M, looks to quickly switch mobile devices between GSM and CDMA networks — No matter what carrier you choose, wireless coverage oftentimes is spotty. But imagine if you could overlay the coverage of Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile into one uber-network of sorts?

Discussion: VentureBeat and TechFlash

Greg Sterling / Search Engine Land:

Google: 50 Percent Of Those Exposed To Mobile Ads Took Action — Google today released findings of a smartphone-user study that the company did with Ipsos OTX at the end of 2010. The sample consisted of 5,000 US adults who owned a smartphone and accessed the mobile internet.

Discussion: Electronista

Dai Pham / Google Mobile Ads Blog:
Smartphone user study shows mobile movement under way

Discussion: the Econsultancy blog, GigaOM, broadstuff, NevilleHobson.com and SAI

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