Techmeme: Amazon Has Fewer Prime Subscribers Than Estimated (Bloomberg)

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February 14, 2012, 11:05 PM

Top News

Nick Wingfield / Bits:

Apple Chief Unveils a New Product: Himself — When he was alive, Steven P. Jobs, Apple's former chief executive, treated investors as if they were biohazards, rarely deigning to meet with them. The disdain was not mutual, as an Apple stock chart for the last ten years shows.

More: Forbes and New York Times. Tweets: @chrisnuttall, @fromedome, @nickwingfield, @coopeydoop, @johnpaczkowski, @johnpaczkowski, @applespotlight and @entrecapitalist

Erica Ogg / GigaOM:

Tim Cook's vision for Apple, and its cash — At Goldman Sachs' investor conference Tuesday, Apple CEO Tim Cook gave some rare color on how he views not only his own job as Steve Jobs' successor, but also his views on the company's $98 billion cash pile. While he did not make investors …

More: CNET, The Register, CNN, VentureBeat, Macworld, Reuters, MacNN, mocoNews, Between the Lines Blog and Between the Lines Blog. Tweets: @macworld

Matthew Panzarino / The Next Web:

Apple's Tim Cook says there are now over 100M iCloud users, marking 15M user growth in 21 days

More: MacRumors, MacDailyNews, GeekWire, TUAW, Newsome.Org, TechCrunch, 9to5Mac, Business Insider and TechCrunch. Tweets: @poornimagupta

Dieter Bohn / The Verge:

iOS apps and the address book: who has your data, and how they're getting it — Over the course of the past week, a firestorm has erupted in the world of iOS apps, thanks to the discovery that Path was uploading data from your iPhone's address book without asking for explicit permission.

Tweets: @parislemon, @shanedingman, @carlospache_co, @zpower, @backlon and @jbruin

Jennifer Van Grove / VentureBeat:

Your address book is mine: Many iPhone apps take your data — Path got caught red-handed uploading users' address books to its servers and had to apologize. But the relatively obscure journaling app is not alone. In fact, Path was crucified for a practice that has become an unspoken industry standard.

More: TechCrunch, The Next Web and Los Angeles Times

Tweets: @dannysullivan, @hunterwalk and @cdixon

Thanks:@dylan20

Bloomberg:

Amazon Has Fewer Prime Subscribers Than Estimated — Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN)'s Prime service, a linchpin of its effort to keep customers loyal and fuel long- term profit, has attracted fewer than half as many members as analysts estimate, three people familiar with the matter said.

More: Examiner, ReadWriteWeb, VentureBeat, CNET, Business Insider, paidContent, The Next Web, WebProNews and GeekWire

Tweets: @davidsoloff, @firstadopter, @obrien and @taylorbuley

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

Exclusive: Yahoo Asia Deal Talks Off for Now — According to sources close to the situation, the discussions between Yahoo and its Asian partners have hit a potentially deal-breaking impasse over the efficacy of the centerpiece of the complex negotiations — a cash-rich split-off — and several other issues.

More: DealBook, DealBook, CNET, VentureBeat, Betabeat, Reuters, ITworld.com, PE Hub Blog, Business Insider, Washington Post, The Tech Trade and Electronista

Tweets: @scottnations and @dougkass

Matt Rosoff / Business Insider:

Activist Shareholder Declares War On Yahoo: Here's Who He Wants On The Board

More: AllThingsD. See also Mediagazer

Wall Street Journal:

Apple, Suppliers Test Tablet With Smaller Screen — TAIPEI-Apple Inc. is working with component suppliers in Asia to test a new tablet computer with a smaller screen, people familiar with the situation said, as it looks to broaden its product pipeline amid intensifying competition and maintain its dominant market share.

Jim Dalrymple / The Loop:

This is not the iPad 3 — John Gruber talking about 8-inch iPad reported by WSJ:

More: The Next Web. Tweets: @johnpaczkowski

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Why Would You Pay $12 a Month for Free TV? Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia Explains. — If you want to watch TV that comes from one of the broadcast channels, you've got options: You can get it for free, using an old-fashioned over-the-air antenna. Or you can pay for it as part of your cable TV package.

More: paidContent, TechCrunch, CNET, GigaOM and Mixed Media. See also Mediagazer

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

New Service Will Stream Local TV Stations in New York

More: The Verge, VentureBeat, pocketnow.com, Engadget, Betabeat and Business Insider. See also Mediagazer

Janko Roettgers / GigaOM:

Take that, Netflix: Hulu premieres Battleground series — Hulu launched its first original scripted series Battleground Monday night, just one week after Netflix started its foray into original programming with Lilyhammer. — New episodes of Battleground, a comedy about a Senate campaign in Wisconsin …

More: CNET, Gizmodo and Hulu Blog

Bloomberg:

Netflix Said to Plan Another Original Series, Increasing Challenge to HBO

More: VentureBeat, TechCrunch and TPM Idea Lab

Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:

Zynga beats earnings estimates for its first-ever quarterly report as a public company — Zynga reported a modest profit for the fourth-quarter in its first-ever quarter financial report today. — The non-GAAP earnings per share were five cents, or $37.1 million, for the quarter.

More: The Verge, Inside Social Games, Business Wire, Guardian, Inside Mobile Apps, TechCrunch, Business Insider, Between the Lines Blog, Social Media, Digits and TechCrunch

Barb Darrow / GigaOM:

Zynga lessens its Amazon dependency

Kunur Patel / AdAge:

Apple Slashes iAd Pricing Again as Mobile Ad Share Declines — Moves Are Reaction to Competition From Google and Realities of Mobile-Ad Market — Apple is once again slashing the minimum amount it charges advertisers to run a campaign on its iAd mobile ad system and boosting the amount …

More: paidContent, MacRumors and iPhone Alley

Jeremy K. Chen / The Official Google Blog:

Google Public DNS: 70 billion requests a day and counting — We launched Google Public DNS in December 2009 to help make the web faster for everyone. Today, we're no longer an experimental service. We're the largest public DNS service in the world, handling an average of more than 70 billion requests a day.

More: CNET, Neowin.net, The Next Web, WebProNews, 9to5Google, CircleID and SiliconFilter

Kim-Mai Cutler / Inside Mobile Apps:

Download bots were the “well-known secret” of the app ecosystem — It's remarkable how widely-known the phenomenon of fraudulent download bots was throughout the iOS developer community. Essentially, bots or automated programs have been used for well over a year to download apps until …

Tatsuo Nomura / Google LatLong:

An easy way to access directions and locations you care about — If you're anything like me, you might use Google Maps to look up the same places and directions more than once, like the location of your hotel while you're on vacation, or directions to a friend's house that you've visited before.

More: VentureBeat, SlashGear, Marketing Pilgrim and The Next Web

John Markoff / New York Times:

Flaw Found in an Online Encryption Method — SAN FRANCISCO — A team of European and American mathematicians and cryptographers have discovered an unexpected weakness in the encryption system widely used worldwide for online shopping, banking, e-mail and other Internet services intended to remain private and secure.

More: Dan Kaminsky's Blog

CNNMoney:

Twitter slaps limits on sales of its pricey stock — NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — While Facebook prepares to go public, Silicon Valley's other buzzy social startup, Twitter, is doing everything in its power to stay private. In pursing that goal, it has slapped its shareholders with an unusual restriction …

More: PandoDaily, the Econsultancy blog, AllTwitter, Business Insider, VentureBeat, ReadWriteWeb, WebProNews and The Next Web

Evan Blass / pocketnow.com:

Motorola's First, Intel-Powered Ice Cream Sandwich Revealed (Images) — We've just gotten some imagery and a few details pertaining to a phone that will allegedly be Motorola's first Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich-powered handset. What's more, this unnamed device will also be one of Motorola's …

More: PC Magazine, AndroidGuys, GadgeTell, eWeek, BGR, Business Insider, Inquirer, IntoMobile, TechCrunch, MobileSyrup.com, Techie Buzz, Softpedia News, CNET and UnleashthePhones

Boonsri Dickinson / Business Insider:

Inside OkCupid Labs: The Modern Matchmakers Of Silicon Valley — Inside the new offices of OkCupid Labs, you won't find beakers. — The experiment happens here on the couch, where engineers brainstorm ways they can use data to be the ultimate matchmaker.

Seth Weintraub / 9to5Mac:

Siri leaks her own upcoming ability to speak Japanese — Siri is many things, but it seems she is not a good secret keeper. A few tipsters reached out and told us that Siri now speaks Japanese. Rumors earlier this month said Apple's AI speech recognition interface would gain Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, and possibly Russian.

More: MacRumors, iDownloadBlog.com, Electronista, The Next Web and TUAW

Mat Honan / Gizmodo:

Happy Valentine's Day, Tech Bloggers — There's been so much hate and self-righteous indignation in tech blog circles lately. Name calling. Ugly accusations. Petty bickering. It's even divided good friends, brother against brother. Can't we all just get along?

Tweets: @parislemon, @jesusdiaz, @joshuatopolsky, @jennydeluxe and @rsingel. Thanks:@jesusdiaz. See also Mediagazer

Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:

Reid Hoffman's New Business Book Tells Everyone to Act Like Entrepreneurs — Reid Hoffman is a nice-guy billionaire who founded LinkedIn, was an early backer of many of the most important Internet companies of the last decade and now also invests professionally as a Sand Hill Road venture capitalist.

More: TechCrunch

John Paczkowski / AllThingsD:

Worry About an Apple Television? Don't Make Samsung Laugh. — Smug complacency. — That seems to be the standard TV industry response to rumors of an Apple HDTV. Back in December, Sharp's Kozo Takahashi dismissed the potential threat Apple might pose to the TV market …

More: App Advice, BGR, parislemon, MacRumors, PC World and MacDailyNews

Italovignoli / The Document Foundation Blog:

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 3.5: “the best free office suite ever” — Berlin, February 14, 2012 - The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 3.5, the third major release of “the best free office suite ever”, which shows to end users the improvements derived …

More: Engadget, Asa Dotzler, ReadWriteWeb, BetaNews, The Register and PC World

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