Techmeme: Aiming to Learn as We Do, a Machine Teaches Itself (Steve Lohr/New York Times)

12:15 PM ET, October 5, 2010

Top Items:

Android Most Popular Operating System in U.S. Among Recent Smartphone Buyers — According to August data from The Nielsen Company, Android is now the most popular operating system among people who bought a smartphone in the past six months, while Blackberry RIM and Apple iOS …

Discussion: ReadWriteWeb, Internet2Go, TechCrunch, Silicon Alley Insider, I4U News, Android Phone Fans, MacStories and FierceWireless, Thanks:atul

Ryan Kim / GigaOM:

Nielsen: Android Surges to No. 1 in Recent Sales — Nielsen is adding its voice to the chorus of research firms confirming the ascension of Android. Nielsen said among recent acquirers of smartphones in the last six months through August, Android was the top platform in the U.S. with 32 percent …

Discussion: Daring Fireball

Peter Parkes / The Big Blog:

Skype now available for Android phones — You've been asking us for it - and now it's here. Skype is now available on a wide range of Android phones, so you can save money and stay in touch when you're out and about. Visit skype.com/m on your phone to download, or read on to find out what's inside.

Rachel King / The Toybox Blog:
Skype for Android arrives; U.S. only gets Wi-Fi while the world gets 3G calling

Discussion: About Skype, Droid Life and Android Phone Fans

Jemima Kiss / Guardian:

Jason Calacanis: Revenge is a new editorial project to rival TechCrunch — Jason Calacanis is angry. You can tell he's angry partly because he talks even faster than normal, but also because he's (still) spitting feathers about TechCrunch founder (and now AOL, employee) Mike Arrington.

Discussion: The Next Web

John Melloy / Fast Money:

iPad Adoption Rate Fastest Ever, Passing DVD Player — Apple's iPad sold three million units in the first 80 days after its April release and its current sales rate is about 4.5 million units per quarter, according to Bernstein Research. This sales rate is blowing past the one million units …

Discussion: The Toybox Blog, PC World, Engadget, Digital Daily, ReadWriteWeb, The Equity Kicker, Guardian, MacNN, Gearlog, Mobility Site, 9 to 5 Mac, everythingiCafe, Cult of Mac, Macsimum News and The Huffington Post

Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Fortune:
How many iPads has Apple really sold?

Discussion: MacStories

Thomas Ricker / Engadget:

Nokia's MeeGo device chief quits — The VP in charge of Nokia's MeeGo Devices has resigned. Ari Jaaksi confirmed to Finland's Talous Sanomat that he resigned last week. According to a Nokia spokesman his departure does not affect MeeGo's rollout schedule which had called for a first device to be delivered before the end of 2010.

Georgina Prodhan / Reuters:

Microsoft CEO says will see Windows slates by Christmas — (Reuters) - A Microsoft slate to counter Apple's popular iPad tablet computer will be seen by the Christmas holiday, Microsoft's Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said on Tuesday. — Ballmer did not say whether the palm-sized slates …

Discussion: Electronista

Tom Warren / Neowin.net:
Windows Slates coming at Christmas, unveiled on October 11

Discussion: Telegraph, Silicon Alley Insider, Mobility Site, SlashGear, I4U News, Pocket-lint, Erictric and Engadget, Thanks:gilly2468

MG Siegler / TechCrunch:

Evan Williams And Dick Costolo: New Twitter Triggered CEO Change — As you may have heard by now, Twitter has a new CEO. Former COO Dick Costolo is taking over from Evan Williams as the head of the company. A few minutes ago, I got a chance to speak to both of them about the change.

Discussion: VatorNews and ReadWriteWeb

Evan Williams / Twitter Blog:
#newtwitterceo — By all accounts Twitter is on a roll.

Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Why Dick Costolo Is Now CEO Of Twitter: It's Time To Make A LOT Of Money

Discussion: HipMojo.com

Steve Lohr / New York Times:

Aiming to Learn as We Do, a Machine Teaches Itself — Give a computer a task that can be crisply defined — win at chess, predict the weather — and the machine bests humans nearly every time. Yet when problems are nuanced or ambiguous, or require combining varied sources of information, computers are no match for human intelligence.

Discussion: Hillicon Valley

Matt Buchanan / Gizmodo:

Exclusive: First Photo of Jungle, Panasonic's Portable Online Gaming System — This is Jungle. It's the first portable gaming console designed exclusively for online gaming and MMORPGs. And it's from the company who gave us the 3DO nearly 20 years ago. — Sure, the PSP and Nintendo DS …

Discussion: Ars Technica, Engadget, CrunchGear, I4U News, Obsessable, Geek.com, Gearlog, Newlaunches.com, Product Reviews Net, Kotaku, VG247, Eurogamer, Electricpig, VentureBeat, Pulse2, Destructoid, Fudzilla, Joystiq, techeblog.com and Technabob

Julie Bosman / New York Times:

2 E-Books Cost More Than Amazon Hardcovers — Readers of e-books may not be able to turn paper pages, lend their copies to friends or file them away on living room bookshelves. But they do have the comfort of knowing that they paid less for them than for hardcovers.

Discussion: VatorNews

Jeremy Sikora / TiPb:

Netflix app for iPhone updated to include video out — The Netflix app for iPhone received a nice little update last night that includes video out support. Yes, this means you are now able to use your iPhone 4 or iPod touch 4 to send any streaming video content available on Netflix directly to your TV.

Discussion: ReadWriteWeb, MediaMemo, Gizmodo, Phone Arena, BlogsDNA, 9 to 5 Mac and Gadgetell

John Paczkowski / Digital Daily:

Google Answers Oracle's Android Suit — Google today responded to Oracle's claims that its Android OS infringes copyrights and patents related to Java, which Oracle acquired as part of its purchase of Sun Microsystems earlier this year. This morning Google filed an answer to Oracle's copyright claims, asking a court to dismiss them.

DigiTimes:

Sintek denies sampling projected capacitive touch panels for iMac, says spokesman — Barry Wu, VP and spokesperson of Sintek Photronics has denied reports that the company is sampling projected capacitive touch panels for Apple's iMac. — An October 1, 2010 report cited industry sources saying Sintek …

Discussion: AppleInsider, MacRumors, 9 to 5 Mac, Edible Apple, Erictric, Cult of Mac, SlashGear, MacStories, I4U News, TUAW, Electronista and The Loop

Jesus Diaz / Gizmodo:

Applications Install Just Fine on Apple TV — iPhone developer Steven Troughton-Smith has found out that you can easily install applications into the Apple TV. However, don't expect them to run your favoritest game on it just yet. You will need a launcher for that.

Discussion: Cult of Mac, The Apple Core Blog, Geeky-Gadgets, TiPb, App Advice, MacRumors, TUAW and Edible Apple

Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:

Facebook Holding Special Event This Wednesday — It's been a big couple of months for Facebook — the site launched its Places feature in August, had a major gaming-focused event two weeks ago, and recently revamped its photos feature to allow for high-resolution uploads (which is a big deal).

Discussion: Product Reviews Net, All Facebook, Electricpig, msnbc.com, bizjournals and Gizmodo

Julio Ojeda-Zapata / Your Tech Weblog:

Microsoft to do direct battle with Apple at Mall of America — A Microsoft retail store is coming to the Mall of America and — get this — it's directly across from one of Apple's famed retail stores. — Microsoft is a notorious imitator of all things Apple, and it's doing it again …

Discussion: Electronista, 9 to 5 Mac, Edible Apple, SlashGear, Neowin.net, Gearlog, My Microsoft Life, TUAW and Computerworld

MG Siegler / TechCrunch:

Pay Now, Read Later: Instapaper Starts Testing Subscriptions — There are few services I use more on a daily basis than Instapaper. The super-simple bookmarking tool has been my go-to way to come back to articles to read later for a few years now. And with brilliant iPhone and iPad apps, Instapaper has only gotten better with time.

Discussion: Fast Company and Download Squad, Thanks:rawmeet

Brad McCarty / The Next Web:

Fring is now on Android. FringOut takes on Skype at $.01 per minute. — You might remember a few months ago when Fring and Skype got into a heated battle of sorts. Fring, an application that allows for voice and video calling from your iPhone, had enabled people to make video calls using Skype's system.

Discussion: Download Squad, The Toybox Blog, fring, Engadget, Black Web 2.0, mobiputing, iThinkDifferent, Geeky-Gadgets, Android Community, ThinkMobile, Fortune and MobileBurn.com

Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:

GetJar to give mobile games away to millions of users for free — Mobile app store operator GetJar plans to shake up the mobile game industry by giving away millions of copies of mobile games for free. That's going to make it tough on companies that are trying to sell high-quality mobile games …

Discussion: ReadWriteWeb and mocoNews

Daniel Lyons / Newsweek:

Android Invasion — How a tiny piece of software created by a few Google engineers is ushering in the mobile revolution and reshaping the fortunes of the world's biggest tech companies. — Nobody ever imagined how quickly the Android mobile-phone platform would take off-not even Andy Rubin …

Discussion: Computerworld, The Register, PC World, IntoMobile, Phone Arena, Fortune, Gizmodo and Daring Fireball, Thanks:atul

Jane Wells / WordPress.com News:

Hello, Goodbye: Offsite Redirect Upgrade — “You say goodbye, I say hello.” - The Beatles — Needless to say, we hope you never want to leave WordPress.com. But, should the day arrive that you decide to strike out on your own and set up a self-hosted WordPress blog with the free …

Discussion: Matt Mullenweg and The Next Web

Archived Page Info:

This is a snapshot of Techmeme at 12:15 PM ET, October 5, 2010.

View the current page or another snapshot:

Techmeme Sponsor Posts:

Tribe AI:

Build AI that works — Tribe builds tech for top AI companies. Get in touch to learn how our bench of 500+ engineers and researchers can accelerate your roadmap.

Kulkan Security:

Hire Kulkan as your penetration testing partner — Kulkan prioritizes deep-dive manual security reviews, dissecting your software and infrastructure to find issues that once remediated can truly reduce security risk.

Zoho:

App spotlight: Devart ODBC for Zoho CRM — An efficient CRM tool helps sales teams maintain strong customer relationships. However, for a business to leverage a CRM fully, it needs to be connected with other databases to ensure a smooth two-way data flow.

Mastodon:

Donate to Mastodon — Mastodon gGmbH, the non-profit behind the open-source software powering the social web, relies entirely on support from users like you. Donate directly with a credit card or through Patreon.

Sponsor Techmeme

Who's Hiring in Tech?