Techmeme
August 16, 2012, 7:05 PM

Top News

Matt Jarzemsky / Wall Street Journal:
Facebook Shares Fall to New Lows as Lockup Ends  —  Facebook Inc. shares sank 6.3% to a record low on Thursday, falling below $20 a share on a day when some early investors were allowed to unload their stakes, adding further pressure on the beaten-down stock.
Julianne Pepitone / CNNMoney.com:
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
Square Debuts Monthly Pricing Option For Small Businesses With Zero Swiping Fees  —  On the heels of announcing a mega-deal with Starbucks, mobile payments processing company Square is announcing another piece of key news—specialized, lower pricing per swipe for small businesses.
Matt Brian / The Next Web:
Why Apple really bought AuthenTec: It wanted “new technology” for upcoming products, and quickly  —  On July 27, seemingly out of nowhere, security company AuthenTec announced in a regulatory filing that it had agreed to a $356 million acquisition offer from Apple, making it one of the Apple's biggest mergers in its 36 year history.
Matthew Panzarino / The Next Web:
Apple says Retail Stores still hiring, recent staffing changes were a ‘mistake’, are being reversed  —  Apple says that recent reports about Retail Store employee hours being cut and hiring events being halted were misleading.  Still, it says that some staffing changes were made, but that they were a mistake.
Jim Dalrymple / The Loop:
Apple boss tries to gut retail operation  —  One of the smartest decisions that Apple made over the last decade was to open retail stores worldwide, giving users a chance to get some hands on time with its products.  One of the worst decisions came recently when the new vice president …
Jenna Wortham / NYT Bits:
Braintree, a Payments Company, Buys Venmo for $26.2 Million  —  The mobile payments war continues to escalate.  —  Braintree, a payments company that supplies technology to process credit card transactions on a mobile phone, said it purchased Venmo, a start-up that lets people send and receive money to their friends.
Ina Fried / AllThingsD:
Yes, We Need All These Witnesses, and No, I'm Not Smoking Crack  —  Already frustrated with the amount of paperwork in the Apple vs. Samsung case, Judge Lucy Koh boiled over with frustration on Thursday after lawyers for the sides filed a new round of objections over witness testimony.
Phil Nickinson / Android Central:
Google Play gift cards are real - and here's what they look like  —  We've already seen the Google Play Store app getting prepped for gift cards — and now we've scored the cards themselves.  (Or, at least, a look at the outer wrapping.)  We've been slipped a few pics of $10 and $25 gift cards …
Artem Russakovskii / Android Police:
Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:
Three years later, deleting your photos on Facebook now actually works  —  It has been more than three years since Ars first started covering Facebook's inability to remove “deleted” photos from its servers, but this particular saga appears to be coming to an end.
Michael Arrington / Uncrunched:
Why I Changed My Mind On Klout (And Invested)  —  Klout has been one of my go to punchlines for some time now.  For example - in May I wrote a post titled “My Detailed Thoughts On Klout” that contained a single word in the post itself: “Why?”  —  The problem I had with Klout …
Ellis Hamburger / The Verge:
Instagram 3.0 bets on location with Photo Map, adds infinite scrolling  —  Looking forward, Systrom envisions an Instagram that instantly pipes photos into one location-tagged stream for concertgoers, or one stream of photos tagged in front of the Eiffel Tower.  “All sorts of cool things hapen once people use geodata,” he said.
Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:
Diaspora's Next Act: Social Remixing Site Makr.io  —  If you were to come across a group of people sitting in a room together, all with their own laptops out, sending each other jokes online, you might think that was a little weird, right?  —  “Antisocial” is one word that comes to mind.
More: The Verge and BetabeatTweets: @kessler and @andythegiant
Jeff John Roberts / GigaOM:
‘Friends’ can share your Facebook profile with the government, court rules  —  A federal judge has ruled that investigators can go through your Facebook profile if one of your friends gives them permission to do so.  The decision, which is part of a New York City racketeering trial …
More: EngadgetThanks:@gnagesh
Jack Purcher / Patently Apple:
Boom!  Apple Invents Next-Gen Virtual Drawing App to Take on Adobe's Photoshop & Illustrator  —  In June, Macworld reported that Apple CEO Tim Cook confirmed in an email to an Apple customer that the company is working on “something really great” to address the professional market.
Zack Whittaker / CNET:
WikiLeaks' Julian Assange granted asylum in Ecuador  —  Julian Assange has been granted political asylum by the Ecuadorian government after taking refuge in its London embassy in June.  —  LONDON — Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been granted political asylum by the Ecuadorian government …

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