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2:35 PM ET, November 4, 2011

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:
Groupon IPO Shares Pop 40% On First Trade, Debuts At $28 With A $17.8B Market Cap  —  After some timing drama, daily deal site Groupon finally has begun trading on the NASDAQ this morning, in the most hotly anticipated and largest Internet company IPO since Google.
RELATED:
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines Blog:
Groupon's IPO: The numbers to know
Business Week:
Apple's Supply-Chain Secret?  Hoard Lasers  —  The iPhone maker spends lavishly on all stages of the manufacturing process, giving it a huge operations advantage  —  About five years ago, Apple design guru Jony Ive decided he wanted a new feature for the next MacBook …
Florian Mueller / FOSS Patents:
European Commission investigating Samsung over possible abuse of FRAND patents against Apple  —  Samsung's various attempts to shut down Apple products — most recently the iPhone 4S — with patents declared essential to the 3G industry standard have now given rise to an antitrust investigation by Europe's top competition “watchdog”.
RELATED:
Jonny Evans / Computerworld:   Clarification: Samsung, not Apple, subject to EU probe
John Paczkowski / AllThingsD:
Apple Headed for 60 Percent of Handset Industry Operating Profits  —  With the iPhone, Apple is doing to the smartphone business what it has done to the PC business with the Mac: Generating a disproportionate share of profits relative to revenue.  —  In its third quarter …
Discussion: MacRumors, PhoneArena and iClarified
RELATED:
Zach Epstein / BGR:
iPhone 4S now No.1 smartphone at top-3 U.S. carriers, iPhone 4 still hot  —  Apple looks to be following up its surprising miss in the September quarter with a huge holiday quarter for its popular iPhone line.  According to Canaccord Genuity's checks, Apple's iPhone 4S was the best-selling smartphone …
Discussion: 9to5Mac
Peter Burrows / Bloomberg:
Apple's First Freebie IPhone Pits Once-Premium Brand Against Bargain Fare  —  Apple Inc. (AAPL)'s iPhone 3GS model is more than two years old and shunned by gadget snobs, and yet it's turning into one of the company's bigger weapons against devices running Google Inc. (GOOG)'s Android software this holiday season.
Wall Street Journal:
Google Ponders Pay-TV Business  —  Pilot Project in Kansas City Would Rival Cable, Satellite  —  Internet giant Google Inc. is considering a plan to offer paid cable-TV services to consumers, a move that could unleash a new wave of competition within the traditional TV business.
RELATED:
Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:
Wait a Minute. Does Google Really Want to Be a Cable Guy?
Discussion: Deadline.com and FierceIPTV
Darren Murph / Engadget:
B&N launching Nook Tablet for $249 on November 16th, and we've got the dirty details  —  Sitting down?  Good.  Come November 16th, Amazon's Kindle Fire will have company.  We've wrapped our paws around a stash of documents confirming the impending launch of the first bona fide tablet in the Nook line …
RELATED:
DigiTimes:
Amazon next-generation Kindle Fire likely to have 8.9-inch display  —  Amazon is likely to change its product roadmap by shifting the display size of its next-generation Kindle Fire to 8.9-inch instead of 10.1-inch as originally planned, according to sources in Amazon's supply chain.
Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
Apple's New Fifth Avenue Store Cube Fully Revealed [Update: Video]  —  While Apple's Fifth Avenue retail store in Manhattan is not set to reopen until 10:00 AM this morning, crews have completed their work on the revamped glass cube, fully revealing the streamlined design for the first time.
Kimberly Dozier / Associated Press:
AP Exclusive: CIA following Twitter, Facebook  —  McLEAN, Virginia (AP) — In an anonymous industrial park in Virginia, in an unassuming brick building, the CIA is following tweets — up to 5 million a day.  —  At the agency's Open Source Center, a team known affectionately as the …
Ryan Lawler / GigaOM:
CBS turned down an ad-based Apple TV deal  —  CBS CEO Les Moonves is known to occasionally drop pieces of information that he's not supposed to on his company's earnings calls, and this quarter was no exception.  When asked about CBS's appetite for striking deals with new streaming providers …
IDC:
Samsung Takes Top Spot as Smartphone Market Grows 42.6% in the Third Quarter, According to IDC  —  FRAMINGHAM, Mass. November 3 2011 - The worldwide smartphone market grew 42.6% year over year in the third quarter of 2011 (3Q11), despite a slowdown within key mature markets.
Nick Bradbury:
The Long-Term Failure of Web APIs  —  Years ago, when developers such as myself started the transition away from OS-specific APIs to web APIs, we believed that doing so would empower our software and save it from the confines of the desktop.  —  And we were right.
Thanks:dsilverman
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Ustream CEO John Ham Steps Down To Work On New Startup  —  John Ham, cofounder and longtime CEO of live streaming video service Ustream, is stepping down from the company he helped start four and a half years ago.  Ham will be replaced by cofounder Brad Hunstable, who will serve as interim CEO …
Discussion: Business Insider
Reuters:
Yahoo sale process heats up as PE firms sign on  —  (Reuters) - Yahoo has signed confidentiality agreements with several parties interested in a deal ahead of Friday's deadline, according to people familiar with the matter.  —  The Sunnyvale, California-based Internet icon said potential buyers …
Discussion: ZDNet and @soyoungsays
Matt Lynley / Business Insider:
Zynga Is Still Profitable, Made $12.5 Million In Third Quarter Off $307 Million In Revenue  —  Zynga made $12.5 million in the third quarter this year — down 54 percent from $27 million in the third quarter last year — off $307 million in revenue, according to an updated S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Jordan Crook / TechCrunch:
Hands-On With The Samsung Focus S For AT&T  —  If the Samsung Focus Flash had you even remotely excited, then the Focus S is sure to leave you thrilled.  With almost all the same specs as baby brother, the Focus S brings a slightly larger screen and more powerful camera to an already snappy little phone.
Nick Bilton / Bits:
Thailand Floods Could Affect Cloud Computing  —  Thailand is under water, and as a result, some Internet companies could be facing problems.  —  Flooding in the country has now shuttered more than 1,000 factories — some of which make computer hard drives.
 
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 More Items: 
Alex Chitu / Google Operating System:
Google's Location-Based Social Annotations
John Cook / GeekWire:
My five favorite pitches from the TechStars Seattle Demo Day
Discussion: Tech Cocktail and TechFlash
Ina Fried / AllThingsD:
Sprint CEO Hesse: “We Stand for Simplicity and Value”
Janko Roettgers / GigaOM:
Exclusive: majority of YouTube views from non-English audience
 Earlier Items: 
Farhad Manjoo / Slate:
It's Not Just for Baby Photos Anymore
Wil Shipley / Call Me Fishmeal:
Real Security in Mac OS X Requires Apple-Signed Certificates
Discussion: Softpedia News and inessential.com
Nick O'Neill:
The Increasingly Prevalent Auto-Follow “Trick”
Dana Vachon / Vanity Fair:
The Code of the Winklevii  —  Remember the Winklevoss twins?
Fortune:
Facebook vs. Google: The battle for the future of the Web