Techmeme
May 17, 2012, 7:10 AM

Top News

AllThingsD:
Exclusive: Japan's Rakuten Wins the Heart of Pinterest in $100M Funding Race With $1.5B Valuation  —  Rakuten, the largest e-commerce site in Japan, is expected to be the lead investor in the much-contested next round of funding for Silicon Valley's hottest start-up, Pinterest.
Amit Singhal / The Official Google Blog:
Introducing the Knowledge Graph: things, not strings  —  Search is a lot about discovery—the basic human need to learn and broaden your horizons.  But searching still requires a lot of hard work by you, the user.  So today I'm really excited to launch the Knowledge Graph …
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
Google Launches Knowledge Graph To Provide Answers, Not Just Links  —  Hinted at for months, Google formally launched its “Knowledge Graph” today.  The new technology is being used to provide popular facts about people, places and things alongside Google's traditional results.
Quentin Hardy / New York Times:
A Facebook Co-Founder Reflects on the Path Forward  —  Eduardo Saverin can escape the United States, but he can't slip Facebook.  —  “Everything I do in my personal life, in my professional life, it's completely there,” said Mr. Saverin, a Facebook co-founder, in his first major interview.
Alex Wilhelm / The Next Web:
US-citizenship renouncing Facebook cofounder Saverin may be effectively banned from the country  —  Oh dear, I don't think that too many people saw this coming.  I do hope that Eduardo Saverin did, however, as his move to renounce his US citizenship may carry a penalty …
Janko Roettgers / GigaOM:
Netflix launches sexy new web-based video player  —  Netflix just rolled out a completely revamped video player for browser-based viewing, and I gotta say, it's pretty slick: Not only does it come with lightbox-like text overlays while a video is paused, users can also preview entire seasons …
Sue Marek / FierceWireless:
Verizon will kill ‘grandfathered’ unlimited data plans, push users to data share  —  Verizon Wireless (NYSE:VZ) plans to eliminate the $30 per month unlimited data plan that it still provides to 3G customers who were “grandfathered” into the plan because they were data customers prior …
Kim-Mai Cutler / TechCrunch:
Sleepover Time!  All-Night Hackathon Precedes Facebook IPO At Headquarters  —  Carrying on in the esteemed tradition of Facebook hackathons, there will be an all-nighter on Thursday at the company's Menlo Park headquarters that culminates with CEO Mark Zuckerberg ringing in the NASDAQ bell ahead …
Neal Gompa / ExtremeTech:
Japanese researchers transmit 3Gbps using terahertz frequencies  —  Researchers at the Tokyo Institute of Technology have developed a new wireless transmission system that works above all currently regulated spectrum frequencies.  The new system works at the range of 300GHz to 3THz (terahertz) …
Matthew Braga / Ars Technica:
Say hello to the real real-time Web  —  It's not just a buzzword, but a technological shift—the instantly accessible Web.  —  Real-time technologies are making Web apps faster—and in some cases, indistinguishable from desktop apps.  —  Garret Voight  —  It started with a simple idea …
Sean Gallagher / Ars Technica:
Google's bots learn to read interactive webpages more like humans  —  Google can now index parts of the Web that weren't indexable before  —  Google feeds its search engine's index with site data from a virtual army of “bots”—Web-crawling applications that scour sites for content.
Antony Savvas / Computerworld UK Public Sector:
Met Police uses ‘quick’ mobile data extraction system against suspects  —  Police will have immediate access to data on handset  —  The Metropolitan Police has rolled out a mobile device data extraction system to allow officers to extract data “within minutes” from suspects' phones while they are in custody.
More: TechEye
Rebecca Mackinnon / Foreign Policy:
The Rise of Europe's Private Internet Police  —  Activists are fighting to rein them in.  —  In 2005, Peter Mahnke, a resident of the English town of St. Margaret's, Middlesex, set up a community website.  For the past seven years, he and a handful of local volunteers have been publishing regular updates …
David Kravets / Wired:
Banned PlayStation Hacker Sees Hope of Return in Jailbreaking Deliberations  —  Hacking sensation George Hotz, aka “GeoHot.”  Photo: George Hotz  —  George Hotz, an infamous hardware hacker better known online as Geohot, has a PlayStation that he's not allowed to play with …
Colleen Taylor / TechCrunch:
Palantir Technologies Nabs $56M In New Funding, SEC Filing Shows  —  Palantir Technologies, the big data analysis company founded in 2004 by a team of ex-PayPal employees including Peter Thiel, has raised $56 million in new funding, according to a document filed today with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:
Even as Settlement Hopes Appear, Facebook Blames Shoddy Checking in Answer to Yahoo Patent Fraud Claim  —  When last we tuned in to the ongoing drama that is the patent infringement lawsuit Yahoo aimed at Facebook, Yahoo had a CEO — Scott Thompson — who was full steam ahead in pressing the controversial legal action.
Enigmax / TorrentFreak:
Pirate Bay Under DDoS Attack From Unknown Enemy  —  Although Pirate Bay downtime happens a handful of times each month, it rarely persists for more than a few hours.  When it goes beyond that the steady flow of reader emails to TorrentFreak quickly transforms itself into a torrent.
David Meyer / GigaOM:
Rocket caught copying Fab code in Nigerian push  —  In recent days, Berlin clone factory Rocket Internet has had a register-your-interest page up for its new Nigerian site, Sabunta.  It's a clothing store and, once launched, it will probably look like Rocket's many other Zappos clones.
More: Portfolio
Mike Isaac / AllThingsD:
In the Race to Win Social Video, Is One App Gaming the System Too Much?  —  There's a popular maxim in Silicon Valley: Find your user base and the revenues will come later.  —  For a while, it seemed to be the easiest way for a founder to explain his or her way out of a proper business model.
More: BetaKitThanks:@mikeisaac

Sponsor Posts

Tribe AI:
Build AI products that matter  —  Tribe AI helps organizations rapidly deploy AI solutions that have real business impact.  We bring together world class AI talent and tooling to drive differentiated results.
Zoho:
How to choose the right live chat software for your business  —  In a world where instant communication is the norm, live chat software enables businesses to meet customer expectations with real-time assistance.
Hamming:
Make AI Voice Agents trustworthy  —  Hamming AI automatically tests AI voice agents and continuously monitors them in production.
Techmeme Leaderboards:
Discover the top reporters on AI, VR, policy, and much more  —  We've analyzed Techmeme's news crawl to identify the most influential and prolific writers on 48 news topics.  Download reports immediately for just $100.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Wed. 11/13 - Amazon Haul
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 7:10 AM ET, May 17, 2012.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Earlier Picks

Reuters: