Techmeme: Is Apple Shoring up their Multi-Touch Patent Claims for Battle? (Jack Purcher/Patently Apple)

9:20 AM ET, September 30, 2011

Top Items:

Devindra Hardawar / VentureBeat:

Amazon has Palm in its shopping cart — will it click Buy? (exclusive) — Who will save what's left of Palm from HP's bumbling? It could be Amazon, as the online retailing giant is in serious negotiations to snap up Palm from HP, VentureBeat has learned. — A well-placed source tells us …

Bloomberg:

IBM Tops Microsoft to Become Second-Most Valuable in Technology — Sept. 30 (Bloomberg) — International Business Machines Corp. passed Microsoft Corp. to become the world's second-most valuable technology company, a reflection of industry changes including the shift away from the personal computer.

Discussion: Gizmodo and Neowin.net

DigiTimes:

Amazon likely to outsource 10.1-inch tablet PCs to Foxconn — Amazon is expected to outsource the production of 10.1-inch tablet PCs to Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry), and shipments of the 10.1-inch tablets are likely to begin before year-end 2011 for holiday-season demand, according to industry sources.

Discussion: SlashGear, PhoneArena, Electronista, The Next Web, T3 News, AppleInsider and The Tech Report

Alistair Barr / Reuters:

Amazon's $199 Fire sparks supply, margin questions — (Reuters) - The rock-bottom price of the new Kindle Fire tablet computer is raising questions about Amazon.com Inc's ability to keep up with demand and the device's effect on the company's already razor-thin profit margins.

Discussion: Bits, BGR, CNET News and DigiTimes

Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Full Video: Watch Jeff Bezos unveil Amazon's new Kindles

Discussion: Bits, IBD Click, AllThingsD and Gear Live

Lukas Mathis / ignore the code:
A Machine for Reading Books

Discussion: eWeek, Daring Fireball and Naked Security

Joe Schneider / Bloomberg:

Samsung Electronics Gives Apple Proposal to End Australia Patent Dispute — Samsung Electronics Co. made a proposal to Apple Inc. to resolve their patent dispute in Australia regarding touch-screen technology, a Sydney court was told today. — Samsung lawyer David Catterns didn't give details …

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, GigaOM, Inquirer, Engadget, MacPost, PhoneArena, SlashGear, The Next Web and TheAustralian

Brian Winter / Reuters:

Brazil's $12 billion iPad deal is in trouble: sources — (Reuters) - A much-hyped $12 billion plan for Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn to produce iPads in Brazil is “in doubt” due to stagnant negotiations over tax breaks and Brazil's own deep structural problems such as a lack of skilled labor, government sources tell Reuters.

Discussion: TechEye, thinq_, Guardian, Examiner, PC Magazine, Digital Trends, AppleInsider, PadGadget, SlashGear, TUAW, iDownloadBlog.com, I4U News, CNET News, Business Insider, 9to5Mac, TechCrunch, The Next Web, MacStories and iClarified

Arik Hesseldahl / AllThingsD:

Apotheker's Exit Is Cheaper Than Expected for HP (But Still Pricey, Considering) — Léo Apotheker is gone from Hewlett-Packard, but he left so suddenly that the board of directors didn't have time to finalize his severance package. That is until today.

Discussion: TechCrunch, The Register, The Next Web, PC World, CNET News and The Tech Trade

Shira Ovide / Deal Journal:
Meg Whitman Will Work for $1 a Year

Discussion: Neowin.net

Gregg Keizer / Computerworld:

Chrome poised to take No. 2 browser spot from Firefox — StatCounter's data points to a December 2011 take-over by Google's browser — Google's Chrome is on the brink of replacing Firefox as the second-most-popular browser, according to one Web statistics firm.

Discussion: TechEye, Gizmodo, Computerworld, thechromesource and Slashdot

Michael Arrington / UNCRUNCHED:

AOL + TechCrunch One Year Anniversary: A Look Back And A Look Forward — “So we begin another journey. I fully intend to stay with AOL for a very, very long time.” - Me, one year ago. — A year ago yesterday we announced the acquisition of TechCrunch by Aol.

Discussion: Fortune, @paulcarr and Business Insider

Fred Oliveira / Helloform: The early days of Techcrunch

Neil Hughes / AppleInsider:

Apple exploring accelerometer, gyro stabilization for iPhone video recording — Using the built-in accelerometer and gyroscope, future iPhones could compensate for shaky video recordings with new software-based stabilization. — Apple's interest in allowing users to record better video …

Discussion: Patently Apple, TiPb, MacNN, Mobile Entertainment, App Advice and iClarified

Jack Purcher / Patently Apple:

Is Apple Shoring up their Multi-Touch Patent Claims for Battle? — On September 29, 2011, the US Patent & Trademark Office published two multi-touch related patent applications from Apple that revealed a very odd twist. Apple had just been granted two identical patents in June and it appears …

Discussion: MacDailyNews

Greg Kumparak / TechCrunch:

This Guy Built His Own iPhone 5 “Design Prototype” — Oh, you think you're a hardcore Apple fan? Sure, you might have plastered the back window of your hybrid with Apple stickers. Yeah, you've got something MG Jobs said painted on the wall above your bed.

Ben Worthen / Wall Street Journal:

Ellison Takes New Swings at H-P — Larry Ellison, Oracle Corp.'s iconoclastic chief executive, has passed up few chances to tweak rival Hewlett-Packard Co. But the verbal potshots this week concerning H-P's $10.3 billion acquisition of Autonomy Corp. reached a new level.

Guardian:
Autonomy's reaction to Oracle's statement

Discussion: The Register, FT Alphaville, parislemon, Reuters, Mercury News, Bloomberg, Business Insider, AllThingsD and Oracle

Eric Slivka / MacRumors:

Widespread MobileMe Outage Affecting Mail, Me.com, and Find My iPhone — A number of Apple's MobileMe services appear to have been down for several hours now, and Apple's system status page indicates that the company is experiencing issues with MobileMe Mail, me.com web apps, and Find My iPhone.

Discussion: Fortune, AppleInsider, Ubergizmo, The Next Web and TiPb

Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:

Report: Google Remains ‘Most Attractive Employer’ Among Business, Engineering Students — Universum, a company that specializes in employer branding, has published some findings based on the preferences of over 160,000 career seekers with a business or engineering background from the world's 12 largest economies (based on nominal GDP).

Discussion: TechFlash, Business Week, 9to5Google, The Microsoft Blog and PR Newswire

Jeff Sonderman / Poynter:

With ‘frictionless sharing,’ Facebook and news orgs push boundaries of online privacy — Facebook again may have gone too far in its quest to make privacy obsolete, and this time some news organizations could get burned by going along with it. — Facebook spent years making it easier …

Discussion: Betabeat, FM Blog, The Atlantic Online, GigaOM, AllThingsD and Hillicon Valley, more at Mediagazer »

Ryan Tate / Gawker:

Sean Parker Is Launching a Blog — The Sean Parkington Post? Seanster? Blogify? It's not clear what former Facebook president Sean Parker will call his forthcoming blog, but it's clear the famed tech hustler is serious about the endeavor: He's hired a firm to build buzz, and is already running ads and planning to hire writers.

Roger Cheng / CNET News:

GetJar: We've given away $1 million worth of premium apps — Independent app store GetJar said today that it had given away $1 million worth of pay applications through its Gold program. — GetJar is just one of many alternative app stores that have sprung up catering to Android and other smartphone platforms.

Discussion: TechCrunch

Drew Olanoff / The Next Web:

Number of Circles you're in on Google+ showing up in Google search — If you're an author and decided to take the markup steps that Google+ announced a while back, your Google+ follower numbers are showing up next to your profile in Google search results. — In June, Google explained the new markup language this way:

Discussion: Digital Inspiration …

Noah Davis / Business Insider:

AOL's Seed Is ‘Defunct’ — AOL launched Seed, its platform for freelancers, to great fanfare in late 2009. — It was intended as a way for AOL to solicit content from freelancers. Editors would post stories, and writers would get them written. It was an efficient, seamless way to generate articles …

John Jersin / Google Analytics Blog:

What's happening on your site right now? — The web is getting faster, and not just the speed of the pages, but also the speed of change. Before, it was fine to build a website and modify it only when new products were launched. All of us avid Analytics users know that's just not good enough.

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:

iPhone 4S / 5 appears in Apple's inventory system, iPod touch may see price drops — Yesterday we reported that tweaked iPhone 4 models and white iPod touch models have appeared in Apple's internal inventory systems ahead of the October 4th Apple event. Today, though, comes the big news …

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