Techmeme: Apple has a 7.85-inch iPad prototype in its labs, according to John Gruber (Sam Byford/The Verge)

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April 5, 2012, 12:00 PM

Top News

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:

Apple investigating new iPad WiFi issues, tells AppleCare to replace affected units — According to an internal AppleCare document, Apple is actively investigating a series of WiFi-related issues affecting the third-generation iPad. Since the new iPad's launch, many users have been complaining …

Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:

Flashback trojan reportedly controls half a million Macs and counting — Variations of the Flashback trojan have reportedly infected more than half a million Macs around the globe, according to Russian antivirus company Dr. Web. The company made an announcement on Wednesday …

Pew Internet:

The rise of e-reading — 21% of Americans have read an e-book. The increasing availability of e-content is prompting some to read more than in the past and to prefer buying books to borrowing them. — Summary of findings — One-fifth of American adults (21%) report that they have read …

Sam Byford / The Verge:

Apple has a 7.85-inch iPad prototype in its labs, according to John Gruber — Apple has been working on a smaller version of the iPad in its Cupertino labs, according to Daring Fireball's John Gruber. On an episode of The Talk Show podcast, Gruber said that he's heard details …

Sebastian Anthony / ExtremeTech:

Just how big are porn sites? — It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a person in possession of a fast internet connection must be in want of some porn. — While it's difficult domain to penetrate — hard numbers are few and far between — we know for a fact that porn sites …

More: Gizmodo

Jon Bruner / Forbes:

Tim O'Reilly on the Future of Location: “The Guy with the Most Data Wins” — O'Reilly Media founder and Silicon Valley oracle Tim O'Reilly was kind enough to chat with me on camera at O'Reilly Where, his company's conference on “the business of location.” We talked about the history …

More: BRYCE DOT VC

Larry Dignan / Between the Lines Blog:

Dell buys Make Technologies: Three acquisitions in four days — Summary: Dell is making a big bet that companies are going to have to modernize legacy applications, re-host them and make them cloud friendly. — Dell is shopping like a teenager just handed a credit card.

More: Business Wire, The Register, AllThingsD, Computerworld, Deal Journal and Wall Street Journal

Alistair Barr / Reuters:

Analysis: Facebook e-commerce: the next big thing? — (Reuters) - A group of e-commerce start-ups, backed by some of the tech world's most pedigreed financiers, are betting that Facebook Inc can become an e-commerce powerhouse to rival Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc.

Neil Hughes / AppleInsider:

Apple preparing overhaul of its online store — Apple has begun signaling to education shoppers that it plans to relaunch and overhaul its online store in the near future, making it easier to do business. — AppleInsider was alerted on Wednesday to the notice that can be found on the top …

More: App Advice, Softpedia News, SlashGear, VentureBeat, WebProNews, TUAW, Macgasm, iClarified and iDownloadBlog.com

Electronista:

Dropbox clamps down on users gaming HTC promo — Plans to retake snatched storage — Later this month, Dropbox plans on launching a promotion giving HTC phone owners with devices that include the HTC Sense 4.0 app 23GB of online storage free for two years.

More: Android Phone Fans, The Next Web, PhoneArena and Pulse2 Technology …

Emil Protalinski / Zero Day Blog:

Anonymous hacks hundreds of Chinese government sites — Summary: Anonymous has hacked hundreds of Chinese government websites. Some sites were just defaced, but others have had administrator accounts, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses leaked. — The hacktivist group Anonymous now has a Chinese branch.

More: PC World, BBC, The Register, China Real Time Report, Fast Company, International Business Times, Pulse2 Technology …, CNET and The H Security

Nathan Ingraham / The Verge:

Gmail for Android update brings swipe gestures and custom notifications to Honeycomb — Google just pushed out an update to the Gmail Android app that Honeycomb tablet users will likely want to download. As Google puts it, this update brings the Android 4.0 experience to Honeycomb users …

More: Android Police, 9to5Google, Android Community and MobileBurn.com

Rip Empson / TechCrunch:

Twitter Nabs Googler Gabriel Stricker As Comms VP — Back in November, we reported that Sean Garrett, Twitter's Head of Comms, would be stepping down from his post. As he tweeted at the time, for the first time in his career, he would be taking more than a two week break between jobs.

More: Search Engine Land, AllThingsD and 9to5Google. Tweets: @gabrielstricker

Katie Fehrenbacher / GigaOM:

Google to build its first thermal storage for a data center — Google has been more than creative when it comes to making its data centers more energy efficient and greener (seawater cooling and water recycling), and this week says it plans to implement a new energy efficient feature for a data center in Taiwan: thermal energy storage.

More: Data Center Knowledge, The Verge, focustaiwan.tw and Wired

Ian Griffiths / Guardian:

Amazon: £7bn sales, no UK corporation tax — Online retailer's British operation owned by company in Luxembourg which receives all payments for books, DVDs and other goods — Amazon.co.uk, Britain's biggest online retailer, generated sales of more than £3.3bn in the country …

More: London Calling Blog, Betabeat, WebProNews, GigaOM, Pulse2 Technology …, The Verge and Personanondata

Arik Hesseldahl / AllThingsD:

Exclusive: HP Labs Head Prith Banerjee Leaving — Prith Banerjee, a Hewlett-Packard senior vice president — and for five years the head of its research and development organization, HP Labs — is leaving the company effective April 15, according to an internal company memo obtained by AllThingsD.

More: Fortune, The Register, Pulse2 Technology …, PC Magazine, The CIO Report, Mercury News, The Verge and Business Insider. Thanks:@ahess247

Bloomberg:

Google's YouTube Must Defend Viacom Suit, Appeals Court Says — Google Inc. (GOOG)'s YouTube must defend a lawsuit claiming it violated Viacom Inc. (VIAB)'s copyrights by letting its users post videos from shows including “The Colbert Report” without authorization, an appeals court ruled.

More: Wall Street Journal

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

16M Users Strong, TwitchTV Takes Live-Streamed Gaming Portal Mobile With iPad And Android Apps — TwitchTV, a live-streamed video game portal and community for gamers that was spawned last June from live video platform Justin.tv, has been booming in terms of growth and revenue.

More: VentureBeat and GigaOM

Devindra Hardawar / VentureBeat:

Smart thermostat Nest gets smarter with AirWave, robust Energy History, simpler setup — The Nest Learning Thermostat was plenty smart when it was first released five months ago, but even genius products sometimes need a bit of tutoring. — Today Nest users will receive the first major update …

More: Business Insider, ZDNet, TechCrunch, AllThingsD, The Verge, GigaOM, Engadget, Electronista and SlashGear

Dieter Bohn / The Verge:

One quarter of worldwide households have Wi-Fi, says Strategy Analytics — According to a new report from Strategy Analytics, 25 percent of all “households” worldwide now have Wi-Fi networks set up. In terms of adoption, South Korea tops the list of the 17 countries the firm researched …

Heidi Lemmetyinen / Nokia Conversations:

Nokia TV coming to Lumia smartphones in Finland — ESPOO, Finland - You may have seen some excitement online about a new TV service from Nokia for our Lumia smartphones. — We are very pleased to be able to confirm that Nokia TV, the latest Lumia entertainment offering from Nokia following Nokia Music …

More: All About Windows Phone, VR-Zone, PhoneArena, SlashGear, WMPoweruser, My Nokia Blog and Pocket-lint

Spencer Ante / Digits:

SpiderCloud Raises $35 Million At Near $200 Million Valuation — Networking gear maker SpiderCloud Wireless has raised $35 million in venture capital as the start-up prepares to upgrade its technology and make a run at profitability. — The financing round values the four-year-old company …

Tom Krazit / GigaOM:

Nine publishers ready to embrace Zite's mobile news app — Almost a year after Zite's news reader app for the iPad drew the ire of several publishers — not to mention a few angry letters — the company is making friends with its former antagonists. Zite has now signed deals with eight publishers …

More: Mashable!, TUAW, CNET and VentureBeat

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:

Apple subsidiary FileMaker releases new version of its flagship product, makes iOS version free — Apple subsidiary FileMaker has announced a new version of their flagship software product, FileMaker 12, with new database creation tools and themes. The Mac version of FileMaker 12 gain …

More: The Verge, The Apple Core Blog, Pulse2 Technology … and CNET

Vlad Bobleanta / Unwired View:

HTC wins patent for Face Unlock — HTC has basically been granted a patent on Face Unlock. This is interesting, because that feature was first added to Android by Google, in its 4.0 release. It has subsequently made its way onto the very few devices that have so far been updated …

More: Gotta Be Mobile. Thanks:@uvstaska

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

How Facebook's Winning The War Against Yahoo, Patent By Patent — Facebook has executed a masterful response to Yahoo's patent trolling that protects it legally but still makes it look like the victim. Here I examine how for almost every patent Yahoo claims Facebook infringes upon …

More: CNET, Search Engine Watch, Friending Facebook Blog and All Facebook

Lance Whitney / CNET:

IE10 in Windows 8: Can pinned Web sites truly replace Favorites? — (Credit: Screenshot by Lance Whitney/CNET) — Internet Explorer users accustomed to working with Favorites will find life a bit different in the new Windows 8 Metro version of the browser.

More: Inquirer, MSDN Blogs and Windows 8 Beta

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