Techmeme: It's Called Google Propeller and It's Aimed at Flipboard (and Facebook, Too, Natch) (Kara Swisher/AllThingsD)

11:50 AM ET, September 16, 2011

Top Items:

Nick Bilton / Bits:

Plenty of Chatter About a New iPhone — We're just weeks away from the announcement of the new Apple iPhone 5, according to an Apple employee who asked not to be named because he was not allowed to speak publicly for the company. — As the excitement for Apple's latest product revs up …

Todd Haselton / BGR:
iPhone 5 to have radical new design according to Case-Mate images

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

It's Called Google Propeller and It's Aimed at Flipboard (and Facebook, Too, Natch) — Please see this disclosure related to me and Google. — Earlier today, well-known digerati dude Robert Scoble posted on his social feed on Google+ that the search giant was working on a social and news reader.

Mike Elgan / Datamation.com:

Why Facebook is the New Yahoo — Facebook's awkward attempts to copy Google+ smack of a quiet desperation. — Sure, Facebook looks massively successful. With a mind-boggling 750 million users, the social site can do no wrong, right? — Wrong. — Look closer, and it looks like Facebook can do nothing right.

Farhad Manjoo / Slate Magazine: Great Social Networks Steal

Arnold Kim / MacRumors:

Apple Working on Allowing the Merging of Multiple Apple IDs — MacRumors has learned that Apple is working on a process to merge multiple Apple IDs into a single login. The issue of juggling multiple Apple ID logins has been a minor inconvenience in the past, but with the early developer testing …

Discussion: CNET News, App Advice, Gizmodo, The Next Web, MacStories, Cult of Mac, Startup Meme, MacNN, everythingiCafe and iClarified

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Twitter Shakes Things Up Again: Fred Wilson, Bijan Sabet Leaving Board — Twitter's is reshaping itself yet again, this time at a corporate level: Investors Fred Wilson and Bijan Sabet are leaving the company's board at the end of the month. Sources say the company won't fill their seats.

Discussion: GigaOM, Business Insider, @danprimack and @danprimack

MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Twitter Loses Its Chief Scientist, Summize Co-Founder Abdur Chowdhury

Discussion: AllThingsD

Tom Warren / WinRumors:

iPad iOS 5 vs Windows 8 Slate [video] — Microsoft unveiled its Windows 8 developer preview earlier this week, but how does it compare to iOS? — Microsoft has done some impressive work with Windows 8 to make it truly slate friendly. Hardware specifications and specifics are still …

Discussion: Gizmodo, Electronista, netbooknews.com, Redmond Pie, App Advice, BGR, GottaBeMobile, SlashGear, Cult of Mac, PhoneArena, Lifehacker and 9to5Mac, Thanks:marylin_ad

Mat Honan / Gizmodo:
If You Already Hate Windows 8 Then You Hate Technology

Discussion: Ars Technica, CNET News and ReadWriteWeb, Thanks:joemfbrown

Bertrand Damiba / Google Mobile Blog:

Introducing Voice Actions for Android in the UK, France, Italy, Germany and Spain — Last year in the US, we introduced Voice Actions, a series of spoken commands that let you control your Android phone or tablet with your voice. You can call businesses and contacts, send texts …

Discussion: TechCrunch, 9to5Google, Techie Buzz, SlashGear, Android Phone Fans, Android Community, MobileBurn.com, Engadget and Electronista

Kim Zetter / Threat Level:

Hacker Ring Appears to Make Good on Promise to Expose Celebrities — A ring of hackers that boasted it would pry into celebrities' phones and e-mail accounts appears to have delivered on that promise. Reported hacks of actresses Scarlett Johannson and Mila Kunis led to racy photos posted on the web.

MG Siegler / TechCrunch:

Forget Apps, Carbyn Has Built A HTML5 OS — HTML5, HTML5, HTML5 — it seems to be the only thing anyone wants to talk about these days. And that excitement could get kicked into overdrive next week when Facebook unveils Project Spartan, their platform for HTML5 apps. But why wait?

Discussion: Ubergizmo

Frederic Lardinois / SiliconFilter:

Even Google is Tired of Needlessly Paginated Content — Google just announced that it will now do its best to lead searchers directly to the single-page version of the online content it indexes instead of the paginated versions of the same content. Whenever an obvious “view-all” …

Discussion: SplatF, Google Webmaster Central Blog and Search Engine Roundtable

Mike Hirshland / VCMike's Blog:

My Next Chapter — Effective today, I will be leaving Polaris Venture Partners, and setting out to launch a new seed firm. — While I am excited by the prospect of building something new, it is difficult to leave the partnership I have been part of for 12 years.

Discussion: Venture Capital Dispatch and PE Hub Blog

Foo Yun Chee / Reuters:

EU probing Google on Internet search — (Reuters) - EU regulators are investigating whether Google dominates in Internet search but have yet to decide if this is the case, the EU's antitrust chief said on Friday. — “As part of our current investigation, we are trying to determine whether …

Discussion: Search Engine Land and DailyTech

Joseph Volpe / Engadget:

MasterCard demos Google Wallet, QkR platform for mobile payments — You've most likely heard plenty about NFC-capable smartphones, but little in the way of actual real-world uses for the chip. Well, MasterCard's looking to change all of that, and throw in a few innovations of its own courtesy of its in-house R&D labs and Google.

Discussion: Google Watch, 9to5Google, GottaBeMobile, PhoneArena and ReadWriteWeb

Royal Pingdom:

Microsoft's web server is losing ground: IIS market share back to 1997 levels — Apache has been the most widely used web server on the Internet since the early days of the Web. It still is. The second-most popular web server has been, and still is, Microsoft's Internet Information Server, IIS.

Thanks:pingdom

Matt Brian / The Next Web:

Stevie Wonder sings Steve Jobs' praises for iOS accessibility — Steve Jobs has been lauded for making the smartphone truly accessible for everyone, incorporating subtle features that help the visually impaired or those with disabilies operate Apple's iPhone, iPad and iPod devices.

Discussion: Business Insider, everythingiCafe, PhoneArena, TUAW, MacNN, Computerworld, Fortune, iDownloadBlog.com, AppleInsider, IntoMobile and MacDailyNews

Chris Brandrick / PC World:

Windows 8 Gets Sad New Blue Screen of Death — Microsoft's next release of their flagship operating system, Windows 8, will sport an updated error screen, most commonly referred to as the ‘Blue Screen of Death’ (BSoD). For those fortunate enough to not run into the infamous error message over the years …

Discussion: The Register, rand($thoughts); and SFGate

Consumer Reports Press Room:

CR Survey: 7.5 Million Facebook Users are Under the Age of 13, Violating the Site's Terms — Use of Social Media Increases Threat to Personal Security; Annual State of the Net Survey Also Found that Around $2.3 Billion Lost to Malware — YONKERS, NY — Of the 20 million minors …

Discussion: Digital Trends, Screenwerk, CNET News, Computerworld and New York Times

Ina Fried / AllThingsD:

Research In Motion Earnings At Low End of Forecast as Cash Drops by Half — BlackBerry manufacturer Research In Motion said on Thursday reported sales and earnings at the low end of its forecast and below what many analysts had been expecting. — The smartphone and tablet maker said that revenue …

Steve Kovach / Business Insider:
OUCH! RIM Shipped Just 200,000 PlayBooks Last Quarter

Discussion: iClarified, paidContent, Liliputing, CrackBerry.com blogs, @johnprice167, SplatF, The Loop and Reuters

Orin S. Kerr / Wall Street Journal:

Should Faking a Name on Facebook Be a Felony? — Congress contemplates draconian punishment for Internet lies. — Imagine that President Obama could order the arrest of anyone who broke a promise on the Internet. So you could be jailed for lying about your age or weight on an Internet dating site.

Discussion: The Not-So Private Parts

Joel Spolsky / Joel on Software:

Should you launch at a conference? — Should you launch at Launch? (Or TechCrunch Disrupt? Or Demo? They're all pretty similar). — This year I launched two major new products at conferences: Careers 2.0 and Trello, and both times, it was totally worth it. — First, a little background.

Discussion: TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2011, Epicenter and Digital Trends

Nicholas Carlson / Business Insider:

Microsoft Source: We're Talking About Buying Yahoo — As big shareholders flee AOL and Yahoo's board flounders, consolidation is “definitely” in the air, a source close to Microsoft's portal, MSN, tells us. — “Definitely, people are talking about it.” — This source - who asked …

Felix Salmon:

Can Netflix still win when cable TV loses? — Ryan Lawler makes a very important point: even as the number of people living in poverty continues to rise, and median incomes have gone nowhere since 1996, the price of cable TV just goes inevitably and inexorably upwards.

Discussion: Gawker

Mark Surman / The Mozilla Blog:

Mozilla Launches Open Badges Project — Today we announced Mozilla's Open Badge Infrastructure project, an effort to make it easy to issue and share digital learning badges across the web. — More and more people are looking at badges to show skills and achievements online.

Discussion: Hack Education, Softpedia News and MozillaWiki, Thanks:arpitnext

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