Techmeme
February 20, 2012, 11:50 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 …
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 …
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.
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 …
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 …
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.
Ben Popper / VentureBeat:
Kickstarter gets its third $1M project in the span of two weeks with Order of the Stick  —  It was big news when a Kickstarter project broke the $1 million dollar mark for the first time on February 9th.  More amazingly, two projects shattered that record in the same day.
More: Kickstarter and ForbesThanks:@forrestkoba
Vlad Savov / The Verge:
Elaine Kurtenbach / Associated Press:
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
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.
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.
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 …
Lex Friedman / Macworld:
Siri: The missing Mountain Lion feature  —  Like many Mac users, I'm excited about Mountain Lion, the new version of OS X that Apple says will arrive late summer of this year.  But as excited as I am about the update, which brings a slew of iOS features and apps (inluding Reminders, Notes …

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Bill Weir / ABCNEWS: