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1:45 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:
Kelly Hodgkins / Gizmodo:
Best Buy Has 200K Unsold TouchPads, Wants HP To Take Them Back  —  According to AllThingsD, Best Buy may be sitting on a pile of over 200,000 unsold webOS Touchpads.  And the retailer wants to send them back to HP.  —  Best Buy supposedly stocked their warehouses with over 270,000 TouchPad tablets …
Discussion: @chetansharma
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
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:
Eric Savitz / The Tech Trade:
Google: S&P Cuts Rating To Sell From Buy; Sees Risks In Deal  —  Citing concerns about about Google's plan to spend $12.5 billion to buy Motorola Mobility, Standard & Poor's analyst Scott Kessler today cut his rating on the search engine's stock to Sell from Buy, slashing his price target on the stock to $500, from $700.
Andrew Ross Sorkin / DealBook:
Is Google Turning Into a Mobile Phone Company? No, It Says
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 …
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  —  The link that some Google+ users were reportedly unable to see.  —  A purported mishandling of Google+ invite links that keeps them from surfacing on Facebook user news feeds has resulted in a “he said, she said” match between the two companies.
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.
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 …
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.
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.
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
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 …
Discussion: Gizmodo Australia, Thanks:philiped
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.
Daniel Rocha / The Official Google Blog:
The evolution of sitelinks: expanded and improved  —  (Cross-posted on the Inside Search 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 …
Harry McCracken / Time:
Techmeme  —  Want to know what's new in the world of tech?  You could visit one of the big news sites or blogs.  Or you could go right to the site that reporters and bloggers check obsessively throughout the day.  Gabe Rivera's Techmeme pulls together articles from around the Web …
Steven Sande / TUAW:
Lion 10.7.1 now available in Software Update (Updated)  —  The long-awaited first update to OS X Lion, version 10.7.1, has just hit Software Update.  —  The update is relatively small, weighing in at 17.4 MB for an iMac, and requires a reboot after installation.  Apple recommends backing up your Mac prior to updating.
RELATED:
Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:
Apple releases $69 OS X Lion thumb drive, ships in 1-3 business days
Reuters:
Taiwan's HTC sues Apple over patents  —  (Reuters) - Smartphone maker HTC Corp sued Apple Inc, claiming infringement of three patents through Apple's sale of Macintosh computers, iPads, iPods, iPhones and other devices.  —  The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Delaware seeks …
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.
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 …
Discussion: IntoMobile
Jack Purcher / Patently Apple:
Apple Wins Major Patent for Integrating Cellular Antennas into MacBook and iMac Keyboards  —  The US Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 20 newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today.  Our first granted report of the day only covers a single major patent victory …
Discussion: AppleInsider and MacRumors
Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:
Live From 500 Startups Demo Day: McClure's Second Batch Of Startups, Unleashed  —  We're in Mountain View at Dave McClure's 500 Startups HQ where the second ever 500 Startups Demo Day is about to start.  Today 31 startups will present to press and investors here in McClure's bright …
John P. Mello Jr / Computerworld:
XXX Pricing Set, Businesses Claim Domain Extortion  —  As the world's largest Internet registrar announced its rates for the XXX adult entertainment domain set to appear in December, reports began appearing of businesses complaining about being forced to buy domain names they have no desire to buy.
Ryan Lawler / GigaOM:
Time Warner Cable's future is in broadband, not TV  —  The majority of Time Warner Cable's subscribers and the bulk of its revenue still come from its traditional pay TV service, but that is changing — and fast.  As a result, the company is betting on broadband to lead it into the future …
Emil Protalinski / Friending Facebook Blog:
Yahoo, Facebook test “six degrees of separation” idea  —  Summary: Yahoo and Facebook have teamed up to figure out whether the “six degrees of separation” idea is valid or not.  —  Yahoo has partnered with Facebook to test the iconic social experiment known as “six degrees of separation” …
 
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 More Items: 
Alyson Shontell / The Business Insider:
Zynga Acquires Mobile Games Studio Astro Ape
Discussion: Inside Social Games and GigaOM
Scientific American:
How Did BART Kill Cellphone Service?
Rip Empson / TechCrunch:
Ooyala Now Powering ESPN's Billion-Plus Video Streams
Discussion: Beet.TV
Matthew Lynley / VentureBeat:
Updated: Cloud storage provider Box.net raising $35M at $550M valuation
Discussion: SiliconANGLE and TechCrunch, Thanks:logicalmoron
Jenna Wortham / Bits:
Skillshare Raises $3.1 Million to Turn Everyone Into Teachers
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
 Earlier Items: 
Joshua Topolsky / This is my next:
BlackBerry Bold 9930 review
Frederic Lardinois / SiliconFilter:
Mozilla Officially Launches Firefox 6
Kinnari Jhaveri / The Official Google Blog:
Shop your favorite catalogs with Google Catalogs
Florian Mueller / FOSS Patents:
Galaxy Tab 10.1 injunction suspended for all EU countries except Germany
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Caitlin Huston / The Hollywood Reporter:
Internal memo: Hearst Magazines president announces layoffs as part of a decision to “reallocate resources” to “continue our focus on digital innovation”

Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announced she will leave the agency on January 20; she was the first woman to be confirmed to lead the agency

Lachlan Cartwright / The Ankler:
Sources: MSNBC renewed Rachel Maddow's contract early this fall, but with a pay cut; MSNBC bosses' plan to shake up daytime and weekend programming

 
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