Top Items:
Around The World and Back Again:
Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight — Somewhere around 1:00 am yesterday, my Airbnb.com horror story was picked up by Hacker News; to say this story has gone viral in the past two days would be the understatement of my life. I sit here now, taken aback and utterly astounded as I witness …
Discussion:
Betabeat, The Business Insider, TechCrunch, CenterNetworks, @sarahcuda, the Econsultancy blog, Fast Company, LAUNCH, PE Hub Blog and Financial Times
RELATED:
Hayley Tsukayama / Washington Post:
Airbnb burglary victim says company tried to quiet her
Discussion:
@paulcarr, @jtemple, @dgelles, Gawker and TechCrunch
Derek Thompson / The Atlantic Online:
Apple Now Has More Cash Than the U.S. Government — When Apple reported last week that it had $76 billion in cash, we speculated that it might be enough to buy Goldman Sachs or Facebook. Today, Steve Jobs' reserves match up with the world's largest sovereign entity. — That's right.
Discussion:
CNN, Digital Trends, MediaPost, The Business Insider, BBC, AllThingsD, TechFlash, 9to5Mac, Financial Post, Eurogamer, Technically Personal!, Pulse2, MacDailyNews, The Next Web and Gizmodo
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Josh Ong / AppleInsider:
Apple's $76B in cash reserves surpasses US government operating balance — New figures from the U.S. Treasury Department indicate that the government has a total operating cash balance of $73.768 billion, less than Apple's own war chest of $75.876 billion. — As noted by Matt Hartley …
Discussion:
BetaNews, Fortune, @percival, iDownloadBlog.com, PhoneArena, Redmond Pie, Newlaunches.com, @mathewi, Geek.com, iClarified, dailywireless.org and NBC Bay Area
Jennifer Van Grove / Mashable!:
Foursquare & Groupon Hook Up for Real-Time Deals [EXCLUSIVE] — Foursquare users in the U.S. and Canada will start to see Groupon's daily deals in the Explore tab of the application and on Foursquare.com beginning Friday, Mashable has learned. — Groupon has become Foursquare's sixth and latest daily deals partner.
Discussion:
VentureBeat, CNET News, MediaPost, About Foursquare, The Business Insider, ReadWriteWeb, Groublogpon, paidContent, Pulse2, FierceMobileContent, GigaOM Pro and Electronista
Zach Holman:
Steve Jobs Sometimes Lies to You — I love Apple. I love Apple so much that if someone gave me a bulletproof vest made out of MacBook Airs, I'd strap it to my back and take a bullet to my chest to protect my precious aluminum friends. — But Steve's lying to us when it comes to FaceTime.
Discussion:
The Business Insider and MacNN
Horace Dediu / asymco:
Apple captured two thirds of available mobile phone profits in Q2 — The major publicly traded phone vendors have all reported results for the second quarter. Based on the data available so far we can begin putting together a picture of the market. — The first picture I'll draw is usually the last: profitability.
Discussion:
AppleInsider, MacRumors, SplatF, 9to5Mac, TiPb, FierceWireless and MacDailyNews
Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
Apple Passes Nokia and Holds Off Samsung to Become World's Top Smartphone Vendor [Updated] — Just hours after research firm IDC released data showing Apple dramatically outpacing the overall mobile phone industry in year-over-year growth for the second quarter of 2011 …
Discussion:
Between the Lines Blog, SlashGear, Mashable!, AppleInsider, ABI Research, AllThingsD, VentureBeat, mocoNews, BGR, Business Wire, Tech Trader Daily, PC World, GigaOM, DisplayBlog, Electricpig.co.uk, Peter O'Kelly's Reality Check, iPhone in Canada Blog, Softpedia News, iPhone, PhoneArena, Electronista, MobileSyrup.com, Fortune and The Next Web
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Patrick May / Mercury News:
Online marketers hit hard by California's new online-sales tax — It wasn't the Great Recession that killed Nick Loper's business. It was a flick of Jerry Brown's wrist. — When the governor signed the state's new online-sales tax law last month, Seattle-based Amazon …
Brian Womack / Bloomberg:
Google Buys Inventions From IBM as It Aims to Build Patent Hoard — Google Inc., facing a growing threat of intellectual-property lawsuits, acquired a batch of patents this month from International Business Machines Corp. to bolster its portfolio. — “Like many tech companies …
Cleve Nettles / 9to5Mac:
AT&T to implement data throttling in early October, just in time for iPhone 5 — A new change for AT&T Wireless' Unlimited Data subscribers will soon be taking place. Rumored to be starting in the first week of October, we've heard that AT&T will start throttling the data speeds of the network's top data hogs.
Discussion:
LAPTOP Magazine, Digital Trends, Ars Technica, PC World, Gizmodo, The Business Insider, GMSV, Android and Me, PhoneDog.com, Techland, DroidMatters.com, Know Your Cell, Hardware 2.0 Blog, DailyTech, SlashGear, Android Phone Fans, TechnoBuffalo, blog.chron.com, GottaBeMobile, Neowin.net, iDownloadBlog.com, CNET News, Examiner, NBC Bay Area, App Advice, The Next Web, BGR, Electronista, everythingiCafe and The Loop
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Looking To Sink Their Teeth Into Some Tasty Northwest Startups, Google Takes A Bite Of PIE — If you haven't heard of PIE, it's probably because you don't live in the Pacific Northwest. But the Portland Incubator Experiment has already amassed such an impressive roster of startups that everyone may know about them soon enough.
Discussion:
GeekWire, Pulse2 and Silicon Florist
Declan McCullagh / CNET News:
Microsoft's Web map exposes phone, PC locations — caption: Examples of HTC device locations that CNET extracted from Microsoft's Live.com location database. — Microsoft has collected the locations of millions of laptops, cell phones, and other Wi-Fi devices around the world and makes …
Discussion:
LiveSide.net, Neowin.net and LAPTOP Magazine
Katharine Q. Seelye / New York Times:
Seattle Places Police Calls on Twitter — SEATTLE — A flurry of Twitter messages that began early Tuesday morning from the Seattle Police Department puzzled many Twitter users. Was there a sudden crime wave in Seattle? Was the city under attack? Had a computer gone haywire?
Martin Bryant / The Next Web:
Google starts to open up its cloud music service with user invites, still US only — We haven't heard much about Google Music, the company's cloud-based music locker service, since it launched back in May at the I/O developer conference. Getting in to try it was tough …
Discussion:
Electronista, ReadWriteWeb and Engadget
Matt Rosoff / The Business Insider:
STUDY: Internet Explorer Users Are Dumber — A research firm posted an IQ test on its Web site and then compiled the results from more than 100,000 users. — It found that there was no substantial difference between users of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Opera. — But Internet Explorer users had IQs below average.
Discussion:
CNN, MediaPost, WebProNews, AptiQuant, Mashable!, NBC Bay Area and The Next Web
Christopher Trout / Engadget:
Acer Iconia Tab A100 finally available in August for $300 — It's been a long and twisted road for Acer's 7-inch Honeycomb tablet, but after all the starts and stops, we've finally got an ETA for the Iconia Tab A100. According to an email sent out to Acer retail partners today …
Discussion:
DigiTimes, Android Police, Fudzilla, GottaBeMobile, SlashGear, DroidMatters.com, Softpedia News, Tablets Planet, PhoneArena, Android Phone Fans and Electronista
John Marzulli / NY Daily News:
Fugitive taunts cops on Facebook “catch me if you can” before they find him in Brooklyn apartment — A fugitive fool who taunted cops on his Facebook page, “Catch me if you can, I'm in Brooklyn” - has been captured by U.S. marshals. — And guess where. — Victor Burgos was sitting …
Discussion:
Inquirer, Technically Incorrect, Gizmodo, NBC Bay Area, Gawker, All Facebook and Gothamist
Electronista:
Samsung's Galaxy S II teaser page for the US goes live — Phone expected to ship next month — Samsung has given a strong indication that the company's popular new smartphone, the Galaxy S II, will be hitting US shores soon. Samsung has posted a new live webpage for the phone.
Dante Cesa / Engadget:
‘Official-looking’ pic of white Galaxy S II leaks, unicorns right around the corner — Albino Nexus S, meet your better specced, bleached out, dual-core nemesis — the mythical white Samsung Galaxy S II. The leaked snap is certainly timely, coming in only one day after a UK retailer promised …
Discussion:
Inquirer, BGR, 9to5Google and Android Central Podcast
New York Times:
In Baring Facts of Train Crash, Blogs Erode China Censorship — BEIJING — “After all the wind and storm, what's going on with the high-speed train?” read the prophetic message posted last Saturday evening on the Chinese microblog Sina Weibo. “It's crawling slower than a snail. I hope nothing happens to it.”
Jon Mitchell / ReadWriteWeb:
Cancer Survivors Build Social Network For Social Good — The social Web has a tendency to fold in on itself. Shortly after the launch of Google Plus, for example, users began to complain that it was only being used to talk about Google Plus. Drew Olanoff, currently the community manager …
Discussion:
Laughing Squid, Thanks:thatdrew
Olga Kharif / Bloomberg:
Verizon Wireless Approves $10 Billion Distribution to Co-Owners — Verizon Wireless, the largest U.S. wireless carrier, approved a $10 billion distribution to owners Verizon Communications Inc. and Vodafone Group Plc, the first payout of that kind in more than five years.
Discussion:
Pulse2 and Wall Street Journal
Adam Holisky / Tecca:
Obama spams Republican Twitter handles to urge debt compromise — The President is urging the public to tweet legislators, one state at a time — With the debt ceiling looming and political tensions at an all time high, the President has been encouraging people to contact their representatives and express themselves.
Discussion:
@barackobama and TechCrunch
