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8:45 AM ET, August 17, 2011

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Arik Hesseldahl / AllThingsD:
Ouchpad: Best Buy Sitting on a Pile of Unsold HP Tablets  —  There have been plenty of hints that Hewlett-Packard's TouchPad isn't selling well.  First there was a $50 discount.  Then there were spot discounts of $100 at outlets like Costco.  Then the $100 discount became permanent.
RELATED:
Farhad Manjoo / Slate Magazine:
Android Isn't Free  —  How Google's acquisition of Motorola Mobility will make it more like Apple.  —  Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has a knack for making completely boneheaded predictions about his competitors' products, so when he took to blasting Google's Android strategy last year, many observers—myself included—dismissed him.
RELATED:
Anders Bylund / Ars Technica:
What Google lost—and gained—by not buying Motorola in 2010  —  Google just plunked down $12.5 billion for Motorola Mobility.  Would the deal have been cheaper if Big G had just purchased a handset maker back in January 2010 rather than launching the ill-fated Nexus One instead?
JP Mangalindan / Fortune:
Facebook: Google+ has no users  —  Facebook executives have choice words for Google's efforts to bring casual games to its fledgling social network.  —  FORTUNE — A little less than two months after Google launched its fledgling social network, Google+, Silicon Valley's latest rivalry is heating up.
RELATED:
Josh Lowensohn / CNET News:
Google, Facebook spar over Google+ invite issue
Donald Melanson / Engadget:
Why is LTE equipment being installed in an Apple Store?  —  Well, this is certainly interesting.  While rumors of an LTE-enabled iPhone had died down for a little while, they sprung back to life yesterday with a report that just such a device was being tested by carriers.
RELATED:
Nicholas Kolakowski / eWeek:
ATandT Planning First LTE Devices For Aug. 21 Debut
Discussion: BGR, Electronista and iClarified
Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:
Apple currently plans to start pre-orders for next iPhone on Sept. 30, launch Oct. 7  —  We've independently heard that Apple has plans to begin selling the next-generation iPhone on Friday, October 7th; the date first reported by TiPB.  According to our sources, Apple has been weighing between launching …
Michael Stroh / The Windows Blog:
New Xbox LIVE features, games on the way for Windows Phone  —  It's a sweet day for mobile gamers.  Today Microsoft previewed new Xbox LIVE titles and features coming to Windows Phone in the months ahead.  The announcement came at the annual Gamescom conference in Cologne, Germany.
Scientific American:
How Did BART Kill Cellphone Service?  —  The San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit system initially claimed a phone service shut-down was performed by telecoms, but that's not the latest story  —  The San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit system (BART) shut down subterranean cellular phone service …
RELATED:
David Kravets / Threat Level:
San Francisco Subway Spokesman Says Cellphone Shutdown Was His Idea
Discussion: TechCrunch and TechEye
Bloomberg:
Kodak Worth More in Breakup With $3B Patents  —  Eastman Kodak Co. (EK) may hold patents worth five times more than the business itself, making the 131- year-old camera company a target in the billion-dollar hunt for inventions used in mobile phones.  —  Kodak, which once had a market value …
Discussion: AppleInsider
Steve Lohr / New York Times:
A Bull Market in Tech Patents  —  Google was willing on Monday to pay $12.5 billion for Motorola Mobility in no small part because of its stockpile of 17,000 patents.  The patent portfolio, some analysts estimate, could represent more than half of the value of the deal, or more than $400,000 a patent.
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Jeremy, Call Your Mother — She's Worried Sick  —  When we switched to Facebook comments several months ago, we spun it as a way to combat the trolls.  But you know, there was actually a secret agenda.  We wanted to bring families closer together.  —  And it's with great pleasure that I can now announce that it's working.
Emil Protalinski / Friending Facebook Blog:
Exclusive: Paul Ceglia says Facebook is doing the forgery  —  Summary: Following Facebook's accusations of forgery, courtroom adversary Paul Ceglia fires back as he looks to open source his lawsuit through a wiki.  —  Paul Ceglia, a man in a heated lawsuit with Facebook, wants his side heard.
Discussion: Techdirt, memeburn and Epicenter
Michael Gorman / Engadget:
Fusion Garage Grid 10 tablet and Grid 4 smartphone hands-on  —  Yesterday we gave you the lowdown on Fusion Garage's second foray into tablet computing, the Grid 10.  While its tablet world topping pixel density, Tegra 2 silicon, and fresh to death OS certainly sound awesome …
John Martellaro / The Mac Observer:
Calculating the Size of Apple's Spaceship HQ  —  TMO TALK (25)  —  New architectural information has been released about Apple's proposed, so-called spaceship headquarters in Cupertino.  There are lots of things to know about it, but one interesting fact is the diameter.
Alyson Shontell / The Business Insider:
Zynga Acquires Mobile Games Studio Astro Ape  —  We received a tip today about some suspicious LinkedIn activity.  —  Employees at NYC mobile games studio, Astro Ape, are changing their places of employment to Zynga on the professional network.  —  Chieh Huang, Astro Ape's CEO, has switched his profile information.
Daniel Rocha / Inside Search:
The evolution of sitelinks: expanded and improved  —  (Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog)  —  When you're searching, you often have a specific task in mind, like figuring out which exhibits are showing at a nearby museum.  Despite this narrow goal, people often start with a broad query …
Chris Smith / AppleInsider:
Apple predicted to ‘strike back’ at Google with its own patent purchase  —  Following Google's bid to purchase Motorola Mobility, Apple is predicted strike a deal — perhaps with competitors Nokia or RIM — to consolidate its already significant patent portfolio and better position itself both offensively and defensively.
Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:
Fox Starts Its Web Pullback, and ABC Gets Ready to Follow  —  Fox has formally kicked off the The Great Free TV Web Pullback of 2011.  Now get ready for ABC to do the same.  —  Yesterday Fox followed through with its previously announced plans to keep its new shows off the Web for eight days …
Edmund Lee / AdAge:
What's the Most Popular Channel on YouTube?  —  ComScore Measures Largest Channels; Music Brands Top the List  —  Viewers pining for MTV's early era of three-minute lip-synched dramatizations have long known to turn to that grand repository of all video: YouTube.
Joseph Menn / FT Tech Hub:
Icann CEO Beckstrom to step down  —  Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers chief executive Rod Beckstrom said late on Tuesday that he would leave the most central job in internet governance when his contract expires in July.  —  An Icann press release gave no reason for the departure …
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Fortune:
A peek at Steve Jobs' book jacket - front, back and spine  —  The look of Walter Isaacson's bio will be as spare and restrained as any Apple product  —  Click to enlarge.  Copyright Simon & Schuster … He's talking, of course, about Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson, the first book …
 
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 More Items: 
Soo Ai Peng / Reuters:
China's Baidu may face tougher rules after state media criticism
Discussion: DigiCha
Jun Yang / Bloomberg:
Apple Sued by South Korean IPhone Users Over Location Data
Rip Empson / TechCrunch:
Ooyala Now Powering ESPN's Billion-Plus Video Streams
Jack Purcher / Patently Apple:
Apple Wins Major Patent for Integrating Cellular Antennas into MacBook and iMac Keyboards
Discussion: AppleInsider and MacRumors
Ryan Lawler / GigaOM:
Time Warner Cable's future is in broadband, not TV
Matthew Lynley / VentureBeat:
Updated: Cloud storage provider Box.net raising $35M at $550M valuation
Discussion: SiliconANGLE and TechCrunch, Thanks:logicalmoron
 Earlier Items: 
Christian Torres / Washington Post:
More drug companies close Facebook pages as Walls open
Discussion: ReadWriteWeb and Gizmodo
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
AWS Launches GovCloud, A Secure Region For U.S. Government Agencies And Contractors
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Evan Drellich / New York Times:
The MLB is planning national packages for streaming companies to bid on in 2028, when its national TV deals with ESPN, Fox, and Turner expire

Alex Sherman / CNBC:
Analyzing Comcast's spinoff of cable networks, purposefully structured with low debt: the move might be a signal to the industry that it's time to consolidate

Lauren Forristal / TechCrunch:
Tubi launches Scenes, a mobile feature that lets viewers watch 60-to-90-second trailer-style clips from its library to help with content discovery
 
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