Techmeme: Unintended Consequences Of Google's $900 Million Nortel Patent Bid: Creating New Patent Trolls (Mike Masnick/Techdirt)

12:00 PM ET, April 29, 2011

Top Items:

Summary of the Amazon EC2 and Amazon RDS Service Disruption in the US East Region — Now that we have fully restored functionality to all affected services, we would like to share more details with our customers about the events that occurred with the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud ("EC2") …

Arik Hesseldahl / All Things Digital:

Amazon Details Last Week's Cloud Failure, and Apologizes — Amazon has released a detailed account of its terrible, horrible, no good very bad week, during which portions of its Amazon Web Services crashed in the US, and brought the operations of numerous other companies down with it.

Henry Blodget / SAI:
Amazon's Cloud Crash Disaster Permanently Destroyed Many Customers' Data

Discussion: Computerworld and Digital Trends

Nick Bilton / Bits:

Hackers Claim to Have PlayStation Users' Card Data — Security researchers said Thursday that they had seen discussions on underground Internet forums indicating that the hackers who infiltrated the Sony PlayStation Network last week may have made off with the credit card numbers of Sony customers.

Reuters:
Sony faces global legal action over data theft

Discussion: Games blog and I4U News

Devindra Hardawar / VentureBeat:
Hacker Geohot denies involvement in PlayStation Network attack, blames Sony's hubris

Discussion: geohot got sued, DailyTech, Kotaku, ZeroPaid.com, Network World, LaptopMemo, Joystiq and TG Daily

Google Mobile Blog:

Video Chat on Your Android Phone — Sometimes, the expressions on a person's face can mean much more than what they say. To help you stay in touch with your friends and family, we're launching Google Talk with video and voice chat for Android phones. — You can now video or voice chat …

Oliver Haslam / Redmond Pie:
Android 2.3.4 Confirmed Bringing Google Talk Video Calling To Nexus S. OTA Roll-Out In Next Few Weeks

Discussion: MacHackPC and Engadget

Arn / MacRumors:

White iPhone 4 Slightly Thicker Than Black iPhone 4 [Updated] — Earlier today, a MacRumors reader notified us that the white iPhone 4 is ever so slightly thicker than the black iPhone 4. It's a small difference, but enough that the white iPhone 4 wouldn't fit in his Incase slider case:

Microsoft:

Microsoft Reports Record Third-Quarter Results — Redmond, Wash. - Apr. 28, 2011 - Microsoft Corp. today announced third-quarter revenue of $16.43 billion for the quarter ended Mar. 31, 2011, a 13% increase from the same period of the prior year. Operating income, net income …

Discussion: The Apple Core Blog, SAI, Windows Phone Secrets, WinBeta, Digital Trends, Epicenter, New York Times, MSDN Blogs, All about Microsoft Blog, BoomTown, everythingiCafe and eWeek

MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
The Final Shoe Drops: Apple Now More Profitable Than Microsoft Too

Discussion: Bloomberg, MacRumors, Bloomberg, Softpedia News, iClarified, Redmond Pie, MacDailyNews, Network World, Daring Fireball, SlashGear, BGR and SAI

John Biggs / CrunchGear:

Why Can't Anyone Make A Popular Tablet? — I've been thinking a lot about the popularity of tablets and the problems manufacturers face coming up against the iPad. The devices that we see here at CG are all pretty amazing - even the Playbook was a cool, if flawed, device - but no one device seems to be able to grab any traction.

Mike Masnick / Techdirt:

Unintended Consequences Of Google's $900 Million Nortel Patent Bid: Creating New Patent Trolls — A few weeks back, Google got a ton of attention for offering a $900 million bid for a bunch of Nortel patents. Google made it pretty clear that it was seeking these patents largely to keep …

Amit / Digital Inspiration Technology Blog:

Twitter Introduces Text Ads — Twitter is experimenting with sponsored text-ads on their website that show-up just after the “trends” section. The first round of text-ads mainly promoted Twitter apps and other services built around the Twitter ecosystem but that is no longer the case.

Discussion: SAI and Mashable!, Thanks:labnol

Kevin C. Tofel / GigaOM:

What 44 Billion Mobile App Downloads by 2016 Means — Think the mobile app economy is a passing fad? You might want to think again. ABI Research reported Thursday that an estimated 44 billion mobile applications will be downloaded within the next five years.

Discussion: TechCrunch, Business Wire, Dave Morin and Local Media Watch

Greg Lamm / TechFlash:

Amazon to take away 1,249 jobs in S.C. over sales tax beef — The Alliance for Main Street Fairness criticized the tax deal. — Amazon.com has been on a hiring binge, and its need to open more fulfillment centers across the U.S. has been a big factor. But the Seattle ecommerce giant …

Discussion: The State, Associated Press and ReveNews

Elinor Mills / CNET News:

Google sued over Android data location collection — Two Michigan women are suing Google over location data collected by Android devices, a week after Apple was named in a lawsuit citing privacy violations with the iPhone logging similar data. — The $50 million lawsuit against Google seeks …

Discussion: GigaOM, Detroit News, The Register, MediaPost, TechEye, Android Phone Fans and CrunchGear

Gabe Rivera / Techmeme News:

Billboards suck. Promote your company's jobs on Techmeme! — As you might have noticed, a hiring boom is underway in tech, leading to ballooning salaries, aggressive recruiting tactics, and finally, billboards. [1, 2] Yes, billboards along Bay Area highways now pitch jobs to the small fraction …

Discussion: @om, @dannysullivan, @softlayer, @randyholloway and @marshallk

MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Techmeme Becomes Jobmeme Too

Discussion: @eldon

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

eBay's PayPal Buys Mobile Payments Startup Fig Card — In its second acquisition in two weeks, eBay's PayPal unit has bought mobile payments startup FigCard. Terms of the acquisition, which was announced on the PayPal blog, were not disclosed. — Boston-based Fig Card allows merchants …

Discussion: alarm:clock, WebProNews, SAI, The PayPal Blog, L.A. Times Tech Blog, GigaOM and ReadWriteWeb

Tricia Duryee / eMoney: PayPal Acquisition Hints at Company's Approach to the Mobile Wallet

Darrell Etherington / GigaOM:

Cable Company iPad Apps Are Killing It — Today's Time Warner Cable earnings call revealed that its iPad app was downloaded 360,000 times during its first month of availability. Cablevision revealed that it saw 50,000 downloads in the first five days of app availability, and when contacted by GigaOM …

Discussion: PhoneArena

Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:

Worldwide Mobile Phone Market Grew 20% In Q1 2011, Fueled By Smartphone Boom — According to research firm IDC, the global mobile phone market ballooned in the first quarter of this year, growing 19.8 percent year-over-year, mostly due to the meteoric rise of smartphone shipments, especially in emerging markets.

Discussion: MacRumors, BGR, IDC, RazorianFly, Dow Jones Newswires, The Loop and Reuters

Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:

Square To Beef Up Card Reader Security This Summer (And VeriFone Wasn't So Wrong, After All) — Yesterday was a big day for hot mobile payments startup Square. The company announced that it received a strategic investment from Visa, giving the company a big stamp approval.

Discussion: ReadWriteWeb, Visa 2011 Global …, SAI, Investor Overview, App Advice, Gizmodo, iPhone Buzz, Electronista, MacStories, SlashGear and everythingiCafe

Jenna Wortham / Bits:

Instagram Spawns a Photo Ecosystem — Instagram, the social-meets-photos app for the iPhone that transforms plain cellphone pictures into vintage-looking works of art, has attracted millions of users. In recent months, it has also begun to draw entrepreneurs who are eager to capitalize on its growing popularity.

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:

Spotify Lands Major Studio Deals, Prepares To Launch Movie Service — Spotify continues to negotiate with Facebook over its long promised U.S. launch. But that isn't the only thing the music streaming service has been up to. They've negotiated a number of deals with major movie studios …

Discussion: GigaOM

Daniel Ek / @eldsjal:
No it ain't true. Media these days are funny. Soon I'll be reading that Spotify is launching a space rocket.

Discussion: Epicenter

Janko Roettgers / GigaOM:

Logitech Makes a Measly $5M From Google TV — Logitech had a rough fourth fiscal quarter, with sales in Europe far below expectations, and the company's Google TV business not exactly helping to turn things around. Logitech's Revue Google TV set-top box and periphery devices …

Discussion: Media Maverick, Home Theater Blog, Mashable!, Softpedia News, Engadget, DailyTech, Logitech Forums, SAI and Electronista

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