Techmeme: Why LightSquared failed: It was science, not politics (Jon Brodkin/Ars Technica)

February 20, 2012, 11:20 PM

Top News

Dean Hachamovitch / MSDN Blogs:

Google Bypassing User Privacy Settings — When the IE team heard that Google had bypassed user privacy settings on Safari, we asked ourselves a simple question: is Google circumventing the privacy preferences of Internet Explorer users too? We've discovered the answer is yes …

T.C. Sottek / The Verge:

Google responds to Microsoft over privacy issues, calls IE's cookie policy ‘widely non-operational’ — Earlier today, Microsoft accused Google of manipulating Internet Explorer's default privacy restrictions in order to “bypass user preferences about cookies.”

More: The Next Web, Electronista and 9to5Google

Emil Protalinski / Friending Facebook Blog:

Not just Google: Facebook also bypasses privacy settings in IE — Summary: Google isn't the only one bypassing Microsoft Internet Explorer's privacy settings: Facebook does it too, as do thousands of other companies. So, who is to blame? — Following the news that Google …

More: Between the Lines Blog and techpolicy.com

Matt Rosoff / Business Insider:

More Sneaky Business From Google: It Bypasses Internet Explorer Privacy Settings, Too

More: Marketing Land. Tweets: @dannysullivan

MSDN Blogs:

Connecting your apps, files, PCs and devices to the cloud with SkyDrive and Windows 8 … A few months ago we published our vision for designing personal cloud storage. While SkyDrive can store all types of files, the category of personal cloud storage is focused on the content that people create or capture themselves.

Peter Bright / Ars Technica:

Bigger files, remote access, OpenDocument, and more coming to SkyDrive — Microsoft's SkyDrive cloud storage service is set to receive some substantial upgrades this year, according to news from both official and unofficial channels. File synchronization, secure remote access …

More: 9to5Google, 9to5Mac, LiveSide.net, Softpedia News, Ubergizmo and The Register

Josh Davis / LLSocial:

New code lets websites opt-out of Pinterest. — In my discussion this week with Ben Silbermann, the CEO of Pinterest, he laid out a number of future plans for the site, and three of them have been implemented in the past few days. Pinterest has . . . Clarified their business model …

More: ReadWriteWeb, Oh, How Pinteresting!, Marketing Land, Digital Trends and Daily Dot. Thanks:@llsocial

John Rath / Data Center Knowledge:

Google Seeks To Plant Antenna Farm in Iowa — An example of an array of 4.5 meter satellite dishes. Google is seeking permission to deploy an array of 4.5 meter satellite dishes near its data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa. (Source: SETI Institute) — Google subsidiary Google Fiber …

More: SouthwestIowaNews.com, VentureBeat, 9to5Google, WebProNews and Electronista

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Netflix, Whitney Houston and the Great Streaming Video Outrage That Didn't Happen — That story about an evil Hollywood studio pulling “The Bodyguard” away from Netflix, so it could sell more DVDs? — Totally evil. — Also, totally untrue. — So says Netflix PR rep Steve Swasey.

More: Dan McDermott, Techdirt, Digital Trends, Dan McDermott, DSLreports, Daily Dot, The A.V. Club, WebProNews, parislemon and Pulse2 Technology …

Jim Dalrymple / The Loop:

China Telecom to start selling iPhone 4S on March 9 — China Telecom on Monday said it would begin selling the iPhone 4S on March 9. The company will start taking online reservations on March 2. — iPhone 4S will be available starting at RMB for the 16GB, 32GB and 64GB models …

More: The Verge, MacRumors, The Next Web, 9to5Mac, Bloomberg, Reuters, Tech in Asia, iDownloadBlog.com and Electronista. Thanks:@jdalrymple

DigiTimes:

E Ink lands 6-inch color e-book reader module orders from Amazon, says paper — EPD maker E Ink Holdings (EIH) reportedly has landed orders for 6-inch color e-book reader modules from Amazon with shipments to begin in March, according to a Chinese-language Economic Daily News (EDN) report.

More: BGR, T3 News, The Verge, TechnoBuffalo, GadgeTell, Electronista and Softpedia News

Vlad Savov / The Verge:

Nook 8GB Tablet coming on February 22nd to better compete with Kindle Fire

John Paczkowski / AllThingsD:

Apple Threatens to Sue Proview for Defamation — Read the Letter — Proview's legal battle with Apple over the iPad trademark grows more inane by the day. — This morning, the bankrupt company said it won a ruling from People's Intermediate Court in Huizhou barring Sundan, a Chinese electronics retail chain, from selling iPads.

More: Fortune, Los Angeles Times, PhoneArena, The Next Web, VentureBeat, everythingiCafe, Kotaku, Softpedia News and Macgasm

Elaine Kurtenbach / Associated Press:

Lower Chinese court rules shops should pull iPads

More: Examiner, CNET, TechnoBuffalo, GamePolitics blogs, Gotta Be Mobile, AppleInsider, iDownloadBlog.com, AppleInsider, MobileBurn.com, Redmond Pie, BGR, Phones Review, Computerworld, PC World, Pulse2 Technology …, 9to5Mac, iClarified, MacRumors and TechCrunch

Jack Purcher / Patently Apple:

Google Developing Siri-Like User Interface for Google TV — Just six days prior to Apple officially launching iCloud and Siri, Google was rushing their patent application to the US Patent and Trademark Office covering a new Google TV remote and/or application.

More: GTVsource.com, Computerworld, VentureBeat, WebProNews, TechnoBuffalo, Android Community, SlashGear, Electronista, Geeky-Gadgets, Android Phone Fans and Gizmodo

Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:

Why LightSquared failed: It was science, not politics — The seeds of LightSquared's failure to win government clearance to build a 4G-LTE network can, ironically, be found in the “approval” the company received just 13 months ago. — In January 2011, the Federal Communications Commission …

More: Techdirt

Sarah Mitroff / VentureBeat:

Meet the ZTE Mimosa X, Nvidia's first branded smartphone — Nvidia's technology powers many cell phones on the market, including the T-Mobile G2X and Motorola Droid X2. But until now, Nvidia only supplied its processors to external cell phone manufacturers.

More: AllThingsD, BetaNews, LAPTOP Magazine, Engadget, GigaOM, IntoMobile and Electronista

Rich Miller / Data Center Knowledge:

Apple Plans 20MW of Solar Power for iDataCenter — The exterior of the Apple data center facility in Maiden, North Carolina (Source: Apple) — Apple has revealed new details about the operations of its huge data center in Maiden, North Carolina, including plans to build a 20-megawatt solar power facility to support its operations.

More: Engadget, CNET, 9to5Mac, GigaOM, BGR, Electronista, TechCrunch, VentureBeat and MacRumors

Bill Slawski / SEO by the Sea:

Google Acquires Cuil Patent Applications — According to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) assigment database, Google has acquired the pending patent applications of one time search rival Cuil, touted when launched as a potential Google Killer.

More: Techland, WebProNews, VentureBeat, Pulse2 Technology … and Search Engine Land

Darrell Etherington / BetaKit:

Convore Shutting Down as Founder Focuses on New Startup — Updated with comment from Convore co-founder Leah Culver. Group communication is a crowded space, as we wrote about when we covered the reaction of messaging startups to Apple's OSX iMessage expansion.

More: Convore and The Next Web

Ed Bott / The Ed Bott Report Blog:

Microsoft quietly extends consumer support for Windows 7, Vista — Summary: This month, with almost no fanfare, Microsoft has revised its support policy for consumer versions of Windows. The two most recent releases, Vista and Windows 7, now qualify for a full 10 years of support. I've got the details.

More: Computerworld, Electronista, TechnoBuffalo, TechCrunch, WinBeta, Ed Bott and Seattle Times

Joseph Walker / Digits:

Flash-Sale Site Fab.com Acquires Germany's Casacanda — Design e-commerce site Fab.com Inc. is going global, expanding into Europe with its first international acquisition. New York-based Fab.com will acquire Germany's Casacanda GmbH in an all-stock deal valuing the start-up at around $10 million …

More: TechCrunch, The Next Web, VatorNews, VentureBeat, VentureVillage, internetretailer.com, Pulse2 Technology … and Betabeat

Kyle Orland / Ars Technica:

Fake Pokemon Yellow rises to No. 3 position on iTunes app charts — For years now industry wags have been saying Nintendo should get out of the portable hardware business and just bring its popular game franchises directly to Apple's iOS devices. So when an app called Pokemon Yellow appeared …

More: Gizmodo, Touch Arcade, TUAW, SlashGear, WebProNews, Macgasm and Kotaku

Tim Haines / @timhaines:

Significant to web engineers: Twitter's moving away from Hashbangs (#!). http://storify.com/timhaines/hashbang- conversation

Tweets: @danwrong

Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Fortune:

Nielsen: 66% of Americans ages 24-35 own a smartphone — But 55- to 64-year olds who make more than $100,000 a year are big buyers too — “Whether or not you have a smartphone is closely related to both how old you are and how much money you make,” finds a Nielsen survey of 20,000 Americans with mobile phones conducted in January.

More: CNET, Nielsen Wire, Electronista, WebProNews, TechCrunch and Bijan Sabet

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Rackspace Blog:

How ImgPage Uploads 25 MB Photos to Cloud Files Using the Mailgun API — The team over at Mailgun just posted a Python tutorial written by Mailgun customer Paul Finn about how to use Python and the Mailgun API to upload large images to Cloud Files.

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