Top Items:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Skype To Acquire Year-old Group Messaging Service GroupMe — Skype will acquire group messaging service GroupMe, a service that was born at a hackathon at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York in 2010. GroupMe was founded by Jared Hecht and Steve Martocci. — The terms of the deal, including price, aren't being disclosed.
Discussion:
VentureBeat, Mobile Marketing Watch, davidtisch.com, GroupMe Blog, Electronista, paidContent, All about Microsoft Blog, GeekWire, Thisisgoingtobebig.com, The Business Insider, @howardlindzon, CNET News, GigaOM, Skype Journal, Bits, The Huffington Post, SlashGear, @cdixon, @samfromwgtn, @joshk, WPCentral.com, SplatF, @howardlindzon, @jasonkincaid, Mashable!, @erichippeau, DealBook, WMPoweruser and Gizmodo
RELATED:
Ben Popper / Betabeat:
GroupMe Acquired by Skype for More than $50 Million — GroupMe just celebrated their one year anniversary, and founders Steve Martocci and Jared Hetch certainly had something to smile about. A deal in the works for months was just completed, with global VOIP giant Skype acquiring GroupMe for a price we hear is north of $50 million.
Thanks:betabeat
Tricia Duryee / AllThingsD:
Skype Pays Around $85 Million For GroupMe — Skype has agreed to acquire GroupMe, a company that has developed a way to for a group of people to send messages to each across various smartphone platforms. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Skype is in the process of being acquired by Microsoft.
Discussion:
About Skype and PC Magazine
John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
A Simple Explanation for Why HP Abandoned Palm and Is Getting Out of the PC Business — HP acquired Palm at the end of April 2010, for $1.2 billion. HP's CEO was Mark Hurd. — Three months later, in early August, Mark Hurd was forced to resign over that scandal with forged expenses and lies about his lady friend.
Discussion:
Examiner and DisplayBlog
RELATED:
Poornima Gupta / Reuters:
Analysis: HP - Dial “M” for mayhem — (Reuters) - Leo Apotheker's credibility as a CEO is falling along with Hewlett-Packard's stock price. — Apotheker, who gained a reputation for sharp business acumen when he headed up SAP, thoroughly flummoxed HP shareholders last week with what some analysts …
Discussion:
AllThingsD, Pulse2 and Gizmodo
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines Blog:
HP's TouchPad fire sale: The fallout — Summary: HP's TouchPad liquidation sale says a lot about the company, the tablet market and its ability to keep an e-commerce site running. — HP's TouchPad liquidation sale this weekend was telling on multiple fronts as techies drooled over a good deal …
Discussion:
PC World, Digits, InformationWeek, CloudAve, TeleRead, Electronista, Engadget, BetaNews, techno.blog, @harrymccracken, @triciad, TUAW, Mashable!, mocoNews, @brynaathp, Android and Me, Liliputing, BetaNews and webOSroundup
RELATED:
Joe Wilcox / BetaNews:
‘It was like a stampede, and they went quick’ — That's how a Best Buy employee described the line waiting to buy discounted HP TouchPads today outside the Mission Valley store in San Diego. — More than 100 people waited for the store to open, on a Sunday morning, to get one of about 30 TouchPads still in stock.
BetaNews.com / @betanews:
Want a $99 HP TouchPad? They are hard to find. Your best bet is to keep on top of this SlickDeals thread: http://t.co/N3Va7NR
Discussion:
L.A. Times Tech Blog, Pulse2, TechnoBuffalo, Liliputing, @joshuatopolsky, Shiny Objects, @brynaathp, @percival, PC World, @mrgan, Engadget, PhoneArena, PC World and Daring Fireball
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
Another EA Exec Jumps Ship To Zynga; Jeff Karp Joins As Chief Marketing And Revenue Officer — Zynga has snagged another EA exec today. The social gaming giant is announcing today that former EA Executive Vice President Jeff Karp is joining as Chief Marketing and Revenue Officer.
Discussion:
VentureBeat and AllThingsD
Arnold Kim / MacRumors:
Apple Testing LTE in iOS 5 and Hiring More LTE Engineers — Early last week, Boy Genius Report claimed that Apple has been testing a 4G LTE-enabled iPhone with carriers, and pointed to an “internal iOS test build” of one of Apple's major mobile partners. In that build was a property list file (.plist) for LTE.
Discussion:
Techie Buzz, Redmond Pie, SlashGear, Pulse2, Examiner, AppleInsider, everythingiCafe, PC World, Electronista and iClarified
RELATED:
Zusha Elinson / New York Times:
After Cellphone Action, BART Faces Escalating Protests — Early last month, a BART police officer shot and killed a knife-wielding homeless man at the San Francisco Civic Center station. The incident provoked a series of small protests that drew little attention until Aug. 11 …
RELATED:
Edward Moyer / CNET News:
SF subway sets public debate on cell shutdown
Discussion:
Examiner, BART News, SF Appeal, San Francisco Chronicle and Pastebin
Zee M Kane / The Next Web:
Twitter Just Got the Respect it Deserves — If you're one to check your analytics on a daily basis you may have noticed a pretty sharp increase in referrals from Twitter's “t.co” domains. We noticed it almost immediately on Wednesday but naively didn't pay much attention.
Discussion:
getclicky.com/blog, more at Mediagazer »
Sean Portnoy / Home Theater Blog:
Best Buy's Samsung HDTV and Galaxy Tab combo offer: “Bundling two losing products together”? — Summary: Samsung is the biggest name in 3D TV, and its Galaxy Tab is the best-known Android tablet competitor to the iPad. So when Best Buy decided to bundle a free Galaxy Tab …
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
Facebook, Twitter Drew Record Numbers Of U.S. Visitors In July — comScore's July traffic numbers are out and similar to June's findings, Facebook and Twitter both saw record traffic in terms of U.S. unique visitors in the month. In July, Facebook saw a whopping 162 million unique visitors …
Kevin Marks / Epeus' epigone:
Google Plus must stop this Identity Theatre — Bruce Schneier in Beyond Fear coined a phrase: … The Common Names debâcle at Google Plus is a variant of this, where the supposed protections are manifestly not working. Google's stated policy on this is that you should use your ‘common name’ …
Discussion:
Chris Saad and TechCrunch
RELATED:
Jamie Zawinski / jwz:
Nym Wars — Yes, yes, let's just get this one out of the way now.
Discussion:
En passant
