Techmeme: Apple's struggles to meet 13-inch MacBook Air demand trigger price gouging (Sam Oliver/AppleInsider)

10:05 PM ET, August 23, 2011

Top Items:

Making It Easier to Share With Who You Want — Today we're announcing a bunch of improvements that make it easier to share posts, photos, tags and other content with exactly the people you want. You have told us that “who can see this?” could be clearer across Facebook …

MG Siegler / TechCrunch:

One Year Later, Facebook Killing Off Places ...To Put Location Everywhere — It was almost exactly one year ago that Facebook launched Places, their location-based offering. Reading the press at the time, you would have thought it was going to be the Foursquare-killer, the Gowalla-strangler, the Loopt-beheader, etc.

Discussion: scribbal.com, Betabeat, PSFK, @taylorbuley and Gizmodo Australia

Matt Rosoff / The Business Insider:

Facebook Rolls Out Major, Sweeping Privacy Changes — Facebook is making a sweeping set of changes to its privacy and sharing policies that will give users much more control over the information they share and who they share it with. — See our guided tour of the changes→

Discussion: About Foursquare, Mashable!, All Facebook, Guardian and NBC Bay Area

Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Facebook's Massive Kitchen Sink Update: Photo Tag Approvals And So Much More

Discussion: VentureBeat, GigaOM, Electronista, All Facebook, @r and AllThingsD

Kashmir Hill / Forbes:
Facebook Finally Helps Users Avoid Being Tagged in Embarrassing Photos, But Also Expands Who Can Tag

Discussion: Gawker and @kashhill, Thanks:forbestech

Wall Street Journal:

Sprint to Get iPhone 5, Sources Say — Sprint Nextel Corp. will begin selling the iPhone 5 in mid-October, people familiar with the matter said, closing a huge hole in the No. 3 U.S. carrier's lineup and giving Apple Inc. another channel for selling its popular phone.

Matt Rosoff / The Business Insider:
Sprint Deal Will Mean 6 Million More iPhones Sold In 2012

Discussion: AppleInsider and Redmond Pie

Dennis K. Berman / @dkberman:
Breaking from WSJ: Sprint to start offering Apple's iPhone 5 in October. $S $AAPL

Discussion: @sammywalrusiv and Sprintfeed

Florian Mueller / FOSS Patents:

Samsung cites Stanley Kubrick's ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ movie as prior art against iPad design patent — Late last night, Samsung filed its opposition brief to Apple's motion for a preliminary injunction in the United States. The main part of Samsung's opposition brief has not yet entered …

Chris Smith / TechRadar:
Samsung: Kubrick invented tablets, not Apple

Discussion: Computerworld

Biz Stone / The Obvious Corporation:

Unlocking Potential — It's important never to delude ourselves into thinking that technology changes the world. People are responsible for change—technology just helps out. At Obvious, our goal is to foster systems that help people work together to improve the world.

Discussion: The Next Web, @biz and @obviouscorp

Tony Stubblebine / @tonystubblebine: New company today! Lift. With @jcrosby, @c_t_montgomery, and @obviouscorp. http://t.co/dvSEOBX

Matthew Humphries / Geek.com:

Google Fiber shows its potential with 151Mbps download speeds — Early last year Google set out on a mission to bring 1Gbps fiber-to-the-home networks in selected areas across the U.S. It was a big challenge, and one that states, counties, and cities fought hard to get in their areas.

Discussion: Telecompetitor

Brad Reed / Network World:
Google fiber network beta goes live at Stanford

Discussion: DSLreports

Greg Kumparak / TechCrunch:

Failbook Phone: AT&T Already Looking To Ditch The HTC Status, Says Source — Surprise! Even a clever little gimmick like a dedicated Facebook button can't save a bad phone from an early demise. — After just 36 days on the shelves, a trusted source close to AT&T tells us the carrier …

Discussion: BGR, Friending Facebook Blog, Neowin.net, Electronista, GottaBeMobile and Android Phone Fans

Sam Oliver / AppleInsider:

Apple's struggles to meet 13-inch MacBook Air demand trigger price gouging — More than a month after introducing its latest Thunderbolt MacBook Airs, Apple is still unable to meet broader demand for the 13-inch models, which can be seen listed at prices well above MSRP on at least one of the internet's largest ecommerce sites.

Discussion: BetaNews, Ubergizmo and TUAW

Bill Ray / The Register:

Google closes Android developer complaint forums — Silent support costs more, but it's less embarrassing — Google is shutting down the Marketplace forums which have, until now, required Android developers to resolve their problems in public and without much in the way of official support.

Discussion: ReadWriteWeb

Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:

Y Combinator Unloads Massive New Batch of Start-Ups — The start-up incubator Y Combinator today is pushing out 63 new companies, its largest and most daunting class ever. Of them, 31 are presenting themselves on the record for investors and press at the newly embiggened Y Combinator headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.

Discussion: VentureBeat, Betabeat, @aplusk, @bryce, The Next Web, @cdixon, @christine and @bryce

Richard Lawler / Engadget:

Sony's S1 Android Tablet is the Tablet S, due to arrive in early September — While one consumer electronics giant is unceremoniously exiting the tablet wars, after many teaser trailers we're hearing Sony is finally ready to reveal its entry. We uncovered the S1 PlayStation Tablet ahead …

Discussion: 9to5Google, This is my next, Know Your Cell, The Toybox Blog, IntoMobile, Liliputing, Electronista, Android Phone Fans, SlashGear, TechSpot and Inquirer

LAUNCH:

Chicago Police to Airbnb Host: No Whites in Black Neighborhoods, Please — Chicago police officers confronted a black Airbnb host in the city's Engelwood neighborhood about renting to white tourists — allegedly over guest safety — in an episode the host filmed and posted to YouTube.

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:

What Skype Really Paid For GroupMe — On Sunday we broke the news that Skype was acquiring group messaging service GroupMe. What we didn't know was the price, and neither company disclosed any of the terms of the deal other than that GroupMe would remain a standalone brand for now, and the team would stay in New York.

Discussion: The Business Insider

Patently Apple:

Apple Wins Key Patents Related to Multi-Touch & “Numbers” — The US Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 16 newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today. In our second and final granted patent report of the day you'll learn about two key patents that Apple has won.

Irina Slutsky / AdAge:

Five Years in, Twitter Seeks PR Help — Social Network Hunts for Agency as It Plots Global Growth, Broader Usage — Even social-media companies need a dose of good old-fashioned PR. Twitter is on the hunt for an agency to help it through its next stage of growth, Ad Age has learned.

Discussion: Drew B's take on tech PR and @jspepper

Nivedita Bhattacharjee / Reuters:

Exclusive: Groupon turns to Citydeal team ahead of IPO — (Reuters) - No. 1 daily deals website Groupon Inc is turning to executives from Citydeal — the European business it bought last year — to help boost slowing growth in its domestic business, ahead of a planned public listing.

Discussion: @rtrswalibarr and @rtrswalibarr

Brad Molen / Engadget:

Verzo teases its first Android smartphone, aims for a late-September launch — Ready to check out a phone brand you've never seen or heard of before? Of course you are. We just got our hands on exclusive photos and details of a mysterious Android handset from Verzo, a newcomer to the market.

Discussion: Electronista, TechnoBuffalo, SlashGear and Android Phone Fans

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

Windows Phone Reaches 30,000 Apps, Opens Marketplace to Mango Submissions — There are now 30,000 mobile applications available for Windows Phone, Microsoft's newest mobile operating system. That's a huge jump from the 11,500 apps Microsoft reported back in March, but still far short of industry leaders, iOS and Android.

Discussion: The Windows Blog, Electronista, Light Reading and Softpedia News

Andrew Hampp / AdAge:

Revamped MySpace Will Have iTunes, Spotify and Vevo in Its Crosshairs — New Marketing Chief Explains Site's New Direction Under Specific Media, Talks Forthcoming Ad Campaign — Forget Facebook and Twitter. When MySpace relaunches later this year under new corporate parent Specific Media …

Discussion: Betabeat, ReadWriteWeb and Adotas

Robert Nyman / Mozilla Hacks:

Introducing WebAPI — Mozilla would like to introduce WebAPI with the goal to provide a basic HTML5 phone experience within 3 to 6 months. — The current situation — Where we are today, there's a clear distinction between the Open Web and native APIs and how things have to be built.

Discussion: ReadWriteHack and Softpedia News

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: Search Engine Land, VatorNews and Wired In Blog| BNET

Bloomberg:

Torture in Bahrain Aided by Nokia Siemens — The interrogation of Abdul Ghani Al Khanjar followed a pattern. — First, Bahraini jailers armed with stiff rubber hoses beat the 39-year-old school administrator and human rights activist in a windowless room two stories below ground …

Discussion: Threat Level

Digital Chosunilbo:

Korea to Develop Own Web-Based OS — The government has decided to develop an operating system capable of rivaling Google's Chrome OS in collaboration with Korean companies such as Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics, a move to gain ground in the emerging cloud computing service industry.

Discussion: PhoneArena

Archived Page Info:

This is a snapshot of Techmeme at 10:05 PM ET, August 23, 2011.

View the current page or another snapshot:

Techmeme Sponsor Posts:

Meta:

Open Source AI: Available to all, not just the few — Meta's open source AI enables small businesses, start-ups, students, researchers and more to download and build with our models at no cost.

Tribe AI:

Build AI products that matter — Tribe AI helps organizations rapidly deploy AI solutions that have real business impact. We bring together world class AI talent and tooling to drive differentiated results.

Zoho:

CIO challenge 5: Can we find an effective solution that also minimizes operational costs? — Welcome to the next and final installment of our CIO series! After what feels like a thousand cups of coffee …

Hamming: