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4:50 PM ET, June 16, 2011

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Jason Tanz / Wired:
Kinect Hackers Are Changing the Future of Robotics  —  For 25 years, the field of robotics has been bedeviled by a fundamental problem: If a robot is to move through the world, it needs to be able to create a map of its environment and understand its place within it.
Discussion: I4U News
RELATED:
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Kinect goes legit on Windows as Microsoft releases software development kit  —  Oregon State University student Alex Wiggins gestures to Kinect, which in turn makes a remote-control toy helicopter take off while teammates Ruma Paul (left) and Fabio Matsui (right) look on.
Steve Clayton / TechNet Blogs:
Official Kinect Developer Kit: now available for download  —  When we launched Kinect last year it was greeted with amazing enthusiasm by consumers, resulting in sales of over 10m units at last count - and a place in the Guinness World Book of Records as the fastest selling consumer electronics device of all time.
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Project Spartan: Facebook's Hush-Hush Plan To Take On Apple On Their Own Turf: iOS  —  Given the news that has already come out about Facebook, you're probably thinking there is no way that anything else leaks out today.  They're probably on lockdown (real lockdown, not the crazed coding “lockdown"), right?
Matthew Lynley / VentureBeat:
Hit the deck: LulzSec and Anonymous start trading blows  —  Hacker group LulzSec has begun publicly attacking hacker group Anonymous, an action that could lead to a civil war of sorts between the two hacker groups that have similar origins.  —  LulzSec has begun publicly mocking 4chan.org …
RELATED:
Jay Yarow / SAI: Silicon Alley Insider:
RIM COO Leaving The Company  —  Research In Motion's COO Don Morrison is leaving the company for medical reasons, the WSJ reports.  —  He is expected to return in the fall.  —  Last week we heard from a source that Morrison was going to be leaving the company, but not for medical reasons.
RELATED:
John Paczkowski / AllThingsD:
Break Out the Pepto-Bismol — RIM Reports Earnings Today
Discussion: Tech Trader Daily and MarketBeat
Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:
Rebecca Black Pulls Infamous ‘Friday’ Video From YouTube  —  It's Thursday, Thursday, and Rebecca Black's memetastic “Friday” video is no longer available on YouTube, due to a copyright claim filed by Rebecca Black apparently.  It's not clear what exactly happened to the video …
Discussion: Mashable!
Gary Allen / ifoAppleStore:
Work Begins To Replace Fifth Avenue Glass Cube  —  In a stunning development, an expensive construction project has begun at the Fifth Avenue (NYC) Apple store to completely remove the unique and iconic glass cube entrance to the store and to then reinstall it.
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Comcast shows off 1 Gbps broadband  —  Comcast CEO Brian Roberts showed off the next-generation cable broadband technology on Thursday, which could deliver data at over 1 gigabit per second to our home.  Roberts showed a live 11-mile cable network and downloaded 23 episodes of 30 Rock …
Discussion: CNET News, SAI, Electronista and VentureBeat
Dan Levine / Reuters:
Oracle seeks billions in lawsuit against Google  —  (Reuters) - Oracle Corp is seeking damages “in the billions of dollars” from Google Inc in a patent lawsuit over the smartphone market, according to a court filing.  —  Oracle sued Google last year, claiming the Web search company's Android …
Discussion: SAI, AllThingsD and 24/7 Wall St.
John Paczkowski / AllThingsD:
The MacBook Air: Apple's $3 Billion Baby  —  When he last gauged the revenue opportunity of the MacBook Air back in April, J.P. Morgan hardware analyst Mark Moskowitz estimated it at $2.2 billion.  But with a refresh of the machine in the offing and demand for it still strong, he's reassessed and come up with a new figure: $3 billion.
Discussion: Tech Trader Daily, @jason and Fortune
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes / Hardware 2.0 Blog:
Mozilla planning to use HTML5 and JavaScript to render PDFs in Firefox  —  This is really cool, and a really good idea.  Mozilla is working on a project that will allow PDF documents to be rendered within the browser using HTML5 and JavaScript as opposed to having to rely on a separate plug-in.
Pratip Banerji / Google Book Search Blog:
Google eBooks Affiliate program - Open for business  —  Retailers, bloggers, book publishers and other website owners in the U.S. can now become Google eBooks affiliates.  Affiliates can link to Google eBooks on their sites for any of the hundreds of thousands of titles available for sale …
Chris Dolmetsch / Bloomberg:
Apple Sued by New York Publisher Over Trademark for Use of Term ‘iBooks’  —  Apple Inc. (AAPL), maker of the iPad tablet computer and the iPhone, was sued by New York publisher John T. Colby in federal court today for trademark infringement over its use of the term “iBooks.”
Ina Fried / AllThingsD:
Want to Transfer Data to Your Phone?  Just Point and Shoot.  —  Researchers at Google and MIT think they have come up with a novel way to transfer applications and data to a cellphone without a cable or wireless network.  Their transfer mechanism of choice?  The camera.
Politico:
Google denies special deal for Barack Obama  —  Google denied Wednesday that it gave President Barack Obama's re-election campaign special access to a new advertising program, something a sales representative from the search and advertising giant had claimed in an email to customers.
Discussion: Search Engine Land, WebProNews and SAI
Katherine Rosman / Wall Street Journal:
Eat Your Vegetables, and Don't Forget to Tweet  —  As a teenager, Jessica Wilson rebelled against her parents.  She refused to tweet.  —  Parents are always looking for ways to position their children for success, from piano lessons to Mandarin immersion.
Discussion: Betabeat
Jack Purcher / Patently Apple:
Apple Reveals New Security Features for “Find My iPhone” Part 2  —  A new patent application from Apple this morning reveals that they began working on new security features for “Find My iPhone” shortly after the first iteration was revealed back in 2009.  The next generation security features are noted as being proactive in nature.
Tom Warren / WinRumors:
Microsoft refuses to endorse WebGL, labels it ‘harmful’  —  Microsoft said on Thursday that it refuses to endorse WebGL from a security perspective.  —  The strong words came directly from Microsoft's own security research and defines team.  Microsoft's MSRC engineering team …
Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:
Facebook, Groupon investor Accel raises $1.35B  —  Accel Partners, the firm whose recent successes have put it in the top tier of the venture capital industry, just announced that it has raised two new funds — $475 million its eleventh venture fund and $875 million for its second growth fund.
Discussion: TechCrunch
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
WAR!  Zynga Sues The Hell Out Of Brazilian Clone Vostu … That's Zynga's statement about a lawsuit they just filed against a well funded Brazilian startup - Vostu - for copyright infringement.  Vostu has raised $45.9 million from Intel Capital, General Catalyst, Accel and others.  —  What did Vostu do?
Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:
Tapjoy Puts up $5M to Help App Developers Port to Android  —  The paid distribution provider Tapjoy, many of whose users' mobile gaming applications are now being rejected by Apple, has established a $5 million fund to help transition existing games to Android.
Ryan Kim / GigaOM:
U.S. CIO Kundra leaving for Harvard post  —  Vivek Kundra, the U.S.' first Chief Information Officer, is stepping down to take a fellowship at Harvard University.  Jack Lew, the director of the United States Office of Management and Budget confirmed the news, saying Kundra will leave in August …
Vlad Savov / Engadget:
O2 UK spurns BlackBerry PlayBook, cites issues with ‘end to end customer experience’  —  Today is the PlayBook's official launch day in the UK, but one of the island kingdom's biggest mobile players won't be taking part.  O2 has apparently been reaching out to subscribers who've expressed …
 
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 More Items: 
Melanie Lee / Reuters:
Alibaba to split, not IPO, e-commerce unit Taobao
Discussion: MediaFile
Greg Sargent / The Plum Line:
Weiner resigns, and Twitter claims its first major political casualty
Alexei Oreskovic / MediaFile:
Google and AOL venture arms fund tool to track retail price changes
Discussion: TechCrunch and VatorNews
Chris Buckley / Reuters:
China military paper urges steps against U.S. cyber war threat
Discussion: CircleID, CNET News and TechEye
Jessica Guynn / L.A. Times Tech Blog:
Pew report: Facebook users have a higher degree of social well-being
Louis Gray:
Tech Leaders Don't Win By Saying They'll Crush Somebody
 Earlier Items: 
Arnold Kim / MacRumors:
Apple Launches 2011 Back to School Promotion - $100 App Store Credit
Matt Brian / The Next Web:
IBM Turns 100 Today, We Look Back
Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:
Why Android will gain HUGE tablet marketshare later this year
Discussion: MediaPost and eHomeUpgrade, Thanks:scobleizer
Greg Sterling / Search Engine Land:
Yahoo Builds App Search For PC, AppSpot For iPhone, Android
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Benjamin Mullin / New York Times:
Authentic Brands licenses Sports Illustrated's publishing rights to The Players' Tribune owner Minute Media for 10 years, with plans to keep the print edition

Charlotte Tobitt / Press Gazette:
Ofcom rules that five GB News programs presented by Conservative politicians have broken its due impartiality rules and puts the channel “on notice”

Todd Spangler / Variety:
YouTuber MrBeast announces a deal with Prime Video for Beast Games, a reality-competition show with 1,000 contestants, promising the winner a $5M cash prize

 
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