Techmeme: Sony evaluating possible goodwill gesture for PSN outage and breach (Griffin McElroy/Joystiq)

3:40 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.

Discussion: Electronista

Jon Brodkin / Network World:
Amazon: Bad execution during planned upgrade caused outage

Discussion: The Next Web

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

Discussion: PC World, SiliconANGLE, 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.

Griffin McElroy / Joystiq:
Sony evaluating possible goodwill gesture for PSN outage and breach

Discussion: Ars Technica, PC Magazine, TechFlash, PlayStation Blog, Digital Trends, GameLife, USA Today, PC World, msnbc.com, Computerworld, IndustryGamers, Kotaku, GamePolitics News, Techland, Softpedia News, Destructoid, Kotaku and VG247

Reuters:
Sony faces global legal action over data theft

Discussion: CNET News, GMSV, PC World, Games blog and I4U News

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

Discussion: geohot got sued, The Escapist, DailyTech, Kotaku, Gizmodo and ZeroPaid.com

Kasper Jade / AppleInsider:

Sources: Apple utilizing ‘iCloud’ internally, service to be more than music — Apple has begun adopting the “iCloud” name within several products currently under development, suggesting the appropriately labeled moniker is indeed the frontrunner for the company's soon-to-debut Internet cloud service …

Discussion: Gizmodo, MacRumors, RazorianFly, WebProNews and Electronista

John Paczkowski / Digital Daily:

Yes, Apple Did Buy the iCloud.com Domain — Apple has indeed acquired the domain name iCloud.com from Sweden-based hybrid cloud computing outfit Xcerion. Sources in position to know confirm that Apple bought the domain as GigaOm first reported Thursday, though they declined to say whether …

Discussion: Computerworld, GigaOM, 9 to 5 Mac, App Advice, RazorianFly, Softpedia News, AppleInsider, I4U News, TUAW, TechSpot, O'Grady's PowerPage, Edible Apple, Electronista, The Domains and MacRumors

Alex Pham / Pop & Hiss:

Price war! Amazon launches 69-cent MP3 store for top-selling tunes — Amazon.com, which is a distant No. 2 to Apple Inc. as a retailer of downloadable music, has upped the ante or, rather, lowered its prices to compete with iTunes. — The Seattle online company is now pricing select top-selling tunes …

Discussion: Gizmodo, Electronista, TechSpot and iLounge

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: BGR, Bloomberg, Detroit News, Geek.com, GigaOM, TechEye, SlashGear, Android Community, IntoMobile, OStatic blogs, MediaPost, The Register, Android Phone Fans and CrunchGear

Kashmir Hill / The Not-So Private Parts:

Verizon Plans To Put Location-Tracking Warning Sticker on Phones — Verizon tells Congress that it plans to put warning labels on phones (illustration from Verizon letter to Markey and Barton) — Though Apple and Google have become the whipping boys for location privacy …

Discussion: 9 to 5 Mac, Phone Scoop, Electronista, Engadget, BGR, Know Your Cell and MobileBurn.com

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

Zach Honig / Engadget:

HBO Go hits iOS and Android, free for subscribers — Don't ditch that premium cable subscription just yet. The long-anticipated HBO Go app just hit the iOS App Store and Android Market, bringing original HBO series and a variety of blockbuster films to your mobile device.

Discussion: GigaOM, PC World, 9 to 5 Mac, App Advice, WebProNews, PhoneArena, GottaBeMobile, BGR, RazorianFly and Electronista

Antti Vilpponen / ArcticStartup Posts:

Some More On The Nokia Microsoft Partnership — Nokia Ääni blog, which is the Finnish equivalent of the Nokia Conversations blog, has just released in the past few days some interesting material regarding the Nokia Microsoft Partnership. The information trickles from a video …

Discussion: LiveSide.net

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: @jason, CrunchGear, The State, ReveNews and Associated Press

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.

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: Mashable!, AllTwitter, SAI and MarketingVOX, 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: Business Wire, TechCrunch, Dave Morin and Local Media Watch

Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft Blog:

Microsoft tool aims to help developers migrate iPhone applications to Windows Phone — Microsoft released a developer tool on April 29 that is aimed at helping iPhone developers port their applications more easily to Windows Phones. — Microsoft officials described the new API …

Discussion: CNET News, ReadWriteWeb, Engadget, Windows Phone Developer Blog, WMPoweruser.com, IntoMobile, MSDN Blogs, MarketingVOX, The Next Web, MobileTechWorld, WinRumors and Windows Phone Secrets

Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:

Twitter Confirms It Has Passed 200 Million Accounts, 70% of Traffic Now International — The number of people who have registered accounts on Twitter has now surpassed 200 million, a representative of the company said publicly yesterday. Katie Stanton, Twitter's Vice President of International Strategy …

Discussion: @fredericl

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:

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 …

Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:

AudioMicro Partners With Microsoft: Free Music, Sound Effects For Office 2010 Users — AudioMicro, a site where you can find royalty-free stock music and sound effects backed by DFJ Frontier and Fotolia, has struck a deal with Microsoft to provide music and sound effect files to Microsoft Office 2010 users worldwide.

Discussion: VatorNews and Sean Percival's Blog

Ross Miller / This is my next:

Hulu Plus on Xbox 360 review: same skin, new frontier — As with most products, services, and other tech industry deliverables, there are two distinct elements. The first is the dream of the product — the Big Picture or the pitch, if you will. This is its raison d'etre …

Discussion: The Escapist and WinRumors

Gregg Keizer / Computerworld:

Apple, Google will testify to Senate on location tracking — Franken, Leahy confirm both companies will answer questions about smartphone privacy at May 10 inquiry — Computerworld - Representatives from both Apple and Google will testify at a Congressional hearing next month on consumer privacy …

Discussion: App Advice, Al Franken, MacRumors, RazorianFly and TUAW

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