Techmeme: Groupon Stumbles in China (Wall Street Journal)

12:50 PM ET, August 23, 2011

Top Items:

Exclusive: Apple suppliers building cheaper, 8GB iPhone 4 — (Reuters) - Asian suppliers to Apple Inc have begun manufacturing a lower priced version of its hot-selling iPhone 4 with a smaller 8 gigabyte flash drive, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.

Arnold Kim / MacRumors:
Apple Building Cheaper 8GB iPhone 4, End of September Launch Alongside iPhone 5

Discussion: Computerworld, 9to5Mac, iDownloadBlog.com, PhoneArena and Electricpig.co.uk

Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:

Source: The iPhone 5 Will Indeed Be A Dual-Mode CDMA / GSM ‘World Phone’ — The upcoming iPhone 5 will almost certainly be a single phone that supports multiple networks, namely CDMA (such as the one used by Verizon or Sprint in the United States) as well as GSM (which is used by AT&T and T-Mobile in the U.S.).

Discussion: AppleInsider, Computerworld, PC World, Macgasm, FierceWireless, iThinkDifferent, Techland, TiPb, App Advice, MacRumors, Softpedia News, VentureBeat, Engadget, Apple Bitch, iPhone, The Next Web, GottaBeMobile, iDownloadBlog.com, MacStories, Shoutpedia, iLounge, PhoneArena and Crave

Arik Hesseldahl / AllThingsD:

How Much Did HP Lose on the TouchPad? Here's a Good Guess. — Sales of Hewlett-Packard's abandoned TouchPad tablet are spiking today on word that prices have been slashed on existing inventories of the device at retailers like Best Buy to $99 for the 16 gigabyte version and $149 for the 32GB version.

Discussion: Between the Lines Blog, Inquirer, Crave, Guardian, Neowin.net, L.A. Times Tech Blog, eWeek, Examiner and FT Tech Hub

David Daw / PC World:
Huh? TouchPads Now Selling for Almost $300 on eBay

Discussion: Computerworld, Gizmodo, Hack N Mod and Liliputing

Nathan Olivarez-Giles / L.A. Times Tech Blog:
HP Touchpad: HP promises to keep them coming until they run out

Discussion: CNN, Computerworld, Network World, TechCrunch, Computerworld UK's News, Good E-Reader Blog, SiliconANGLE and Mashable!

Steve Kovach / Tools:
Your TouchPad May Not Be A Brick After All — These Guys Are Working On Making It Run Android

Discussion: The Business Insider

Brian Womack / Bloomberg:

Facebook Seeks Acquisitions to Fend Off Google — Facebook Inc., the world's largest social network, is planning acquisitions that will improve site design, keep its service reliable and advance mobile features to stave off competition from Google Inc. (GOOG) and Twitter Inc.

Discussion: Digits, ZDNet, Search Engine Land, The Register and The Next Web

Matthew Humphries / Geek.com:

China airs documentary proving military university is hacking U.S. targets — For a long time now there has been suspicion that China is a hotbed of hacking activity either endorsed or ignored by the government and targeting foreign individuals, companies, and even governments.

Discussion: Epoch Times, ZDNet, F-Secure Antivirus …, Softpedia News, DailyTech and Neowin.net

MG Siegler / TechCrunch:

Android (Finally) Taking Steps Towards WebKit And Chromium — Why isn't Chrome a part of Android? It's a question as old as time itself. Or at least a few years old. But given that the same company, Google, makes both products, it never made much sense. Now they're finally taking steps to resolve this.

Discussion: CNET News, SiliconANGLE, lists.webkit.org Mailing Lists, Peter Beverloo, GottaBeMobile, Softpedia News, 9to5Google and MacNN

Amir Efrati / Wall Street Journal:

Geeks Beat Jocks as Bar Fight Breaks Out Over Control of the TV — Fans Muscle Into Sports Bars to Watch Pro Videogamers Do Battle on the Tube — SAN FRANCISCO—One Sunday afternoon last month, a hundred boisterous patrons crowded into Mad Dog in the Fog, a British sports bar here, to watch a live broadcast.

Mark Striebeck / Google+:

A first, tiny step: view recent Google+ posts in the Gmail people widget! — You can now see the most recent Google+ post that the sender of the email shared with you in the Gmail people widget - see screenshot below. — BTW: +Bella Kazwell is a tech lead on the Gmail team and +Steven Bills …

Discussion: PC World, eWeek, Techland, Softpedia News and 9to5Google

Fred / A VC:

Identity, Authentication, and Provisioning Them Online — Christina jotted down some thoughts on indentity on a flight to SF and I read them this morning. In her post, she references Ev's excellent post on the same topic from a while back. So I went on a bike ride as the sun rose …

Matt Rosoff / The Business Insider:

This Is What Google REALLY Meant By “Don't Be Evil” — Google has been throwing its weight around and pissing a lot of people off. — It allegedly leaned on Motorola not to use a competing location-detecting service from Skyhook. Then it turned around and dropped $12.5 billion on Motorola …

Amar Toor / Engadget:

Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet now available for order, priced at $500 and up — It's been a while coming, but Lenovo's ThinkPad tablet has finally made its way to market. As expected, the line of Honeycomb slates is now available for order on the company's product page, with the 16GB …

Discussion: LAPTOP Magazine, AndroidGuys, ZDNet, Hardware 2.0 Blog, TechCrunch, Wired, Electronista, Softpedia News, GottaBeMobile, Liliputing, Mashable! and Ubergizmo

Sascha Segan / PC Magazine:

HP Pre 3 Cancelled in U.S., Will Sell for $75 In Europe — The $99 HP TouchPad isn't the only amazing deal coming out of HP's fire sale on WebOS devices. The unlocked HP Pre 3 smartphone will go on sale “shortly” in both France and the U.K. for a mere $75 unlocked, according to HP.

Discussion: Computerworld, IntoMobile, SlashPhone, TechnoBuffalo, TechRadar.com, L.A. Times Tech Blog, PhoneArena, The Cell Phone Junkie and Examiner

Aaron Draczynski / gdgt:
Palm post mortem: what could have been

Discussion: Liliputing, Neowin.net, Electronista and Engadget, Thanks:gdgt

Ambarish Kenghe / The Official Google TV Blog:

Preview of Google TV add-on for the Android SDK — At Google I/O, we announced that Android Market is coming to Google TV. Today, we are excited to announce a preview of the Google TV add-on for the Android SDK. With the upcoming OS update to Honeycomb, Google TV devices will be Android compatible.

Discussion: Engadget, SlashGear, VentureBeat, Softpedia News, eHomeUpgrade, AndroidGuys, Android Tapp, Android Phone Fans, Android and Me, 9to5Google, TechCrunch and Electricpig

Wall Street Journal:

Groupon Stumbles in China — China's joint venture in China, Gaopeng.com, has closed offices in some cities and laid off hundreds of employees. The moves appears to mark an abrupt reversal of Groupon's aggressive expansion into China just eight months ago.

Richard Stallman / Guardian:

Beware: Europe's ‘unitary patent’ could mean unlimited software patents — The battles seen in the US over software patents could spread to the UK and the rest of Europe if the unitary patent is allowed to come into force — Just as the US software industry is experiencing the long-anticipated …

Mike Swift / Mercury News:

Facebook reveals plans for second campus in Menlo Park — Even as Facebook starts moving its workforce to Menlo Park, the social networking company is unveiling plans for the second campus it expects to construct across from the 57-acre former Sun Microsystems site.

Discussion: NBC Bay Area

Matt McGee / Search Engine Land:

Here's What Twitter Should Do To Make Photo Galleries More Useful — I like the new user photo galleries that Twitter started rolling out yesterday. They'll make photo search and discovery much easier, especially for those of us who've scattered our photo uploads across TwitPic, yFrog, Mobypicture and other photo services.

Discussion: CNET News, The Atlantic Online, PC World, Small Business Search … and FierceMobileContent

Dieter Bohn / This is my next:

Curve 9350, 9360, 9370 announced with BlackBerry OS 7; hit Canada this month — Curve 9350, 9360, 9370 announced with BlackBerry OS 7; hit Canada this month — RIM has announced three new BlackBerrys: the Curve 9350, Curve 9360, and Curve 9370. Each brings BlackBerry OS 7 to lower-end handsets …

Karen Weintraub / Boston Globe:

‘Wormhole’ links MIT and Stanford — In a Massachusetts Institute of Technology cafeteria, down the hall from an early radar dish, is the “wormhole,” an oddly-shaped plexiglass dome hovering over a video screen. The live signal displayed on the screen shows a similar cafeteria scene at Stanford University …

Todd Bishop / GeekWire:

Amazon ‘ElastiCache’ promises to boost web app performance — Amazon Web Services this morning made a new pitch for running web apps on its cloud computing platform, introducing a feature called ElastiCache that promises to improve the performance of web apps such as social networks, games and media-sharing sites.

Discussion: TechFlash, Between the Lines Blog, Amazon Web Services Blog, All Things Distributed, PC World, Amazon.com and the Econsultancy blog

Declan McCullagh / CNET News:

White House pledges new Net privacy approach — Danny Weitzner pledges new privacy laws without a “traditional regulatory structure.” — ASPEN, Colo.—A White House aide today previewed the administration's forthcoming approach to Internet consumer protection, saying it will provide “privacy law without regulation.”

Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:

Forkly Launches to Discover Food You'll Like the Taste Of — Forkly is a beautiful new iPhone app that helps you discover new restaurants you might like and recommends dishes once you're at restaurants, based on your individual taste. Built by former leaders of location based social network Brightkite …

Discussion: Digital Trends, Forkly Blog and TechCrunch

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