Techmeme: As Kindle Fire Faces Critics, Remedies Are Promised (David Streitfeld/New York Times)

1:15 PM ET, December 12, 2011

Top Items:

David Streitfeld / New York Times:

As Kindle Fire Faces Critics, Remedies Are Promised — The Kindle Fire, Amazon's heavily promoted tablet, is less than a blazing success with many of its early users. The most disgruntled are packing the device up and firing it back to the retailer. — A few of their many complaints: there is no external volume control.

John Biggs / TechCrunch:

Amazon's Trojan Horse: Don't Underestimate The Kindle Fire — A number of prominent folks have been ripping into the Kindle Fire lately, claiming that it is slow, exhibits poor UX choices, and that consumers are returning them en masse. Heck, even the affable Marco Arment writes …

Discussion: @dannysullivan and ReadWriteWeb

Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Kindle Fire software update coming in less than two weeks, performance and UI improvements promised

Discussion: Macworld, New York Times, Know Your Cell, CNET News, Mashable!, GottaBeMobile and Electricpig.co.uk

Mitch Lipka / Reuters:
Amazon's Kindle Fire lets kids charge up a storm

Discussion: Gadget Lab and Daring Fireball

DigiTimes:

Next generation iPads to be available in 3-4 months, say sources — The next generation iPads are expected to be available in the next 3-4 months as makers in the supply chain have started delivering parts and components for the new tablets to OEM contractors while reducing those prepared for iPad 2 …

Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Fortune:

Is DigiTimes trying to kill the iPad 2's Christmas sales? — No, but the steady flow of rumors about a new iPad just around the corner aren't helping — Remember what happened to iPhone 4 sales last summer? They hit a wall in mid-July, according to Apple CEO Tim Cook, when “speculation” …

Discussion: Action at a Distance

Apple:

Apple's Mac App Store Downloads Top 100 Million — Apple® today announced that over 100 million apps have been downloaded from the Mac® App Store™ in less than one year. With thousands of free and paid apps, the Mac App Store brings the App Store experience to the Mac …

Jim Dalrymple / The Loop:
Mac App Store downloads don't include Lion, updates or downloads to other Macs

Thanks:theloop1

Sung-won Shim / Reuters:

Samsung says sells over 300 million mobile handsets in 2011 — (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd (005930.KS) said on Sunday its annual mobile handset sales this year had exceeded 300 million units for the first time in the company's history. — The world's second largest handset maker …

Michael Robertson / GigaOM:

Why Spotify can never be profitable: The secret demands of record labels — Imagine a new hot-dog selling venture. Let's also say there's only one supplier to purchase hot dogs from. Instead of simply charging a fixed price for hot dogs, that supplier demands the HIGHER of the following …

Discussion: Business Insider, SlashGear, Digiday and Electronista

Kate Rose / YouTube Blog:

Opening up a world of educational content with YouTube for Schools — When I was in school during the 90s, watching videos in the classroom was a highlight of any week. The teacher would roll in a television on a cart, pop in a VHS tape, and then we'd enjoy whatever scratchy science video …

Discussion: ReadWriteWeb, Between the Lines Blog, Mashable!, SocialTimes.com, Softpedia News, 9to5Google and Pocket-lint

Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:

How Zynga grew from gaming outcast to $9 billion social game powerhouse — Zynga has turned the video game world upside down in its short five-year history. As it's poised on the verge of a massive initial public offering, the social game startup is now one of gaming's great success stories.

Thanks:dylan20

Douglas MacMillan / Bloomberg:
Pincus Faceoff With Zuckerberg Shows Fearsome Prelude to Zynga's IPO: Tech

Discussion: Business Insider

GSMArena:

EXCLUSIVE: Big Sony Ericsson Arc HD (Nozomi) live shots pop up — Now look what we found in our mailbox this morning. We just received photos of the upcoming Sony Ericsson flagship and some specs to go with them. Unfortunately, we didn't get the name cleared out so we don't know if the earlier …

Discussion: Engadget, Softpedia News, SlashGear, Techie Buzz, IntoMobile, MobileWhack.com, MobileBurn.com, MobileSyrup.com, Electronista, Ubergizmo, PhoneArena and Android Phone Fans

Quentin Hardy / New York Times:

Salesforce, a Leader in Cloud Computing, Draws Big Rivals — SAN FRANCISCO — For over a decade, Marc Benioff has had to listen to dismissals of the company he founded, Salesforce.com, as a marginal player in the business software industry. — But recently Salesforce has won the sincerest form …

Aoife White / Bloomberg:

Google, Motorola Mobility Review Temporarily Halted by EU — European Union regulators suspended their antitrust review of plans by Google Inc. (GOOG), the biggest maker of smartphone software, to buy Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. after requesting more information about the deal.

Discussion: The Register, London Calling Blog, CNET News, SlashGear, PhoneArena and WebProNews

Frederic Lardinois / SiliconFilter:

Adblock Plus Will Soon Block Fewer Ads — AdBlock Plus, the popular ad-blocking plugin for Firefox and Chrome, will soon stop blocking “non-intrusive” ads by default. AdBlock Plus, of course, became as popular as it is today because it scrubbed websites from intrusive …

Discussion: Adblock Plus and … and ExtremeTech

Enigmax / TorrentFreak:

Megaupload to Sue Universal, Joins Fight Against SOPA — Last Friday, file-hosting service Megaupload surprised the Internet by launching a campaign fronted by a Printz Board-produced song featuring some of the world's most prominent recording artists. — Needless to say, the spectacle of P Diddy …

Discussion: Gizmodo, ReadWriteWeb, WebProNews, The Verge, Stack Exchange, hypebot, ITProPortal and TeleRead

Tom Warren / WinRumors:

Microsoft: Windows Phone 7.5 does not support NFC, coming next year — NFC support for next-generation Windows Phones — Microsoft was forced on Monday to correct a previous statement it made on NFC support in Windows Phone 7.5. — The software giant mistakenly revealed the existence …

Discussion: SlashGear, Neowin.net and WMPoweruser

Arik Hesseldahl / AllThingsD:

Jive Software Will Start Trading Tuesday — Shares of Jive Software, the social enterprise and collaboration software company, will price today and will debut on the Nasdaq exchange tomorrow morning, sources familiar with the matter tell AllThingsD. The debut will cap a process that began …

Shelly Freierman / New York Times:

One Million Mobile Apps, and Counting at a Fast Pace — Somewhere at a computer last Wednesday, a developer pushed a button and the one millionth mobile app went to market. — Apps shrink the programs that were once available only on a desktop computer to make them usable on smartphones …

Discussion: dailywireless.org, Thanks:jasonhiner

Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft Blog:

Microsoft to allow open source apps in Windows 8 Store — Summary: Microsoft is providing a loophole in its Windows 8 Store developer agreement that allows for inclusion of OSI-licensed open source apps. — Microsoft is planning to allow applications licensed under Open Source Iniative …

Discussion: L.A. Times Tech Blog, Computerworld, ZDNet, Between the Lines Blog and ExtremeTech

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