Techmeme
February 15, 2012, 10:25 AM

Top News

Nick Wingfield / Bits:
Apple Chief Unveils a New Product: Himself  —  When he was alive, Steven P. Jobs, Apple's former chief executive, treated investors as if they were biohazards, rarely deigning to meet with them.  The disdain was not mutual, as an Apple stock chart for the last ten years shows.
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
iOS apps and the address book: who has your data, and how they're getting it  —  Over the course of the past week, a firestorm has erupted in the world of iOS apps, thanks to the discovery that Path was uploading data from your iPhone's address book without asking for explicit permission.
Jennifer Van Grove / VentureBeat:
Your address book is mine: Many iPhone apps take your data  —  Path got caught red-handed uploading users' address books to its servers and had to apologize.  But the relatively obscure journaling app is not alone.  In fact, Path was crucified for a practice that has become an unspoken industry standard.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Clear: Why This Simple To Do List App Has Everyone Talking  —  Clear, the heavily-anticipated touch-based to-do list app, is launching in the iTunes App Store tonight.  And by heavily anticipated, I mean this app was getting tech blog coverage based on demos, previews and teaser videos.
Reuters:
Exclusive: Proview says any ban of iPad exports hard to impose  —  (Reuters) - A Chinese technology firm seeking to ban all shipments of Apple's popular iPad tablet into and out of the country has been told that China's customs authorities are unlikely to intervene in the trademark battle.
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Exclusive: HTC rumored to be working on a streaming music service  —  HTC Corp., one of the earliest champions of Android-based smartphones seems to have fallen on hard times, thanks to growing power of Samsung and Apple.  But the Taiwanese phone maker isn't ready to call it quits …
Kunur Patel / AdAge:
Apple Slashes iAd Pricing Again as Mobile Ad Share Declines  —  Moves Are Reaction to Competition From Google and Realities of Mobile-Ad Market  —  Apple is once again slashing the minimum amount it charges advertisers to run a campaign on its iAd mobile ad system and boosting the amount …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Gartner: Apple's iPhone Stole The Smartphone Show In Q4, 2011  —  We've seen handset makers like HTC, LG and Nokia all warning of declines in smartphone sales.  But if there is a slowdown affecting some, it's not because people are not buying smartphones; it's because they're all buying iPhones.
Seth Weintraub / 9to5Mac:
Siri leaks her own upcoming ability to speak Japanese  —  Siri is many things, but it seems she is not a good secret keeper.  A few tipsters reached out and told us that Siri now speaks Japanese.  Rumors earlier this month said Apple's AI speech recognition interface would gain Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, and possibly Russian.
Wall Street Journal:
Apple's Size Clouds Market  —  To Get a Picture of Corporate Health, Analysts Cut Tech Giant Out of the Frame  —  In analyzing U.S. corporate earnings and stock-market trends, apples-to-apples comparisons may now require tossing out the Apple.  —  Apple Inc.'s success selling consumer gadgets …
More: Gizmodo
Jesse Hamilton / Bloomberg:
AT&T Must Let Beastie Boy Vote on Net Neutrality, SEC Says  —  Feb. 14 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has told AT&T Inc. and other telecommunications companies they must include a resolution supporting wireless net-neutrality in annual shareholder votes.
Bloomberg:
Amazon Has Fewer Prime Subscribers Than Estimated  —  Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN)'s Prime service, a linchpin of its effort to keep customers loyal and fuel long- term profit, has attracted fewer than half as many members as analysts estimate, three people familiar with the matter said.
John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
Walter Isaacson's ‘Steve Jobs’  —  What is Apple at heart: a software company, or hardware company?  —  This is a perennial question.  The truth, of course, is that Apple is neither.  Apple is an experience company.  That they create both hardware and software is part of creating the entire product experience.
Eric Eldon / TechCrunch:
Jonathan Schwartz Launches CareZone, A Simple Caregiving Site With Big Plans  —  The problem that former Sun Microsystems chief executive Jonathan Schwartz is trying to fix with his new startup is clear enough.  —  More and more people are having to care for older relatives as the US population ages …
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Kindle Touch breakthrough: Startup debuts handwriting recognition in puzzle book  —  Puzzle technology startup Puzzazz is giving Amazon's Kindle Touch a capability that even Amazon didn't envision — letting users input numbers and letters by writing them naturally with a finger on the screen …
John Paul Titlow / ReadWriteWeb:
How Developers Are Shaping the Future of Music  —  That the music industry has radically changed in the last decade is a serious understatement.  Technology has altered everything from the creation of music to its distribution, upending retailers, studios and business models across the industry.
More: Lifehacker
Susan P. Crawford / Bloomberg:
The Case for Publicly Owned Internet Service: Susan P. Crawford  —  In cities and towns across the U.S., a familiar story is replaying itself: Powerful companies are preventing local governments from providing an essential service to their citizens.  More than 100 years ago, it was electricity.
Kim-Mai Cutler / Inside Mobile Apps:
Download bots were the “well-known secret” of the app ecosystem  —  It's remarkable how widely-known the phenomenon of fraudulent download bots was throughout the iOS developer community.  Essentially, bots or automated programs have been used for well over a year to download apps until …
Brad Reed / Network World:
Two-thirds of Google+ users are men  —  Students, software engineers and consultants are the most typical user occupations  —  Google+ really is a man's social network.  —  According to figures released today from Website-Monitoring.com, two-thirds of Google+ users are men …

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