Techmeme
March 9, 2012, 12:20 PM

Top News

Farhad Manjoo / Slate:
The iPad Is Unbeatable  —  Why Apple's tablet competitors don't stand a chance—and maybe never will.  —  Apple CEO Tim Cook announcing the newest iPad  —  Imagine you run a large technology company not named Apple.  Let's say you're Steve Ballmer, Michael Dell, Meg Whitman, Larry Page, or Intel's Paul Otellini.
Electronista:
New 4G iPad seen costing $310 to make, lowering margins  —  UBM sees Apple making less on new iPad  —  A UBM TechInsights preliminary breakdown of the new iPad's costs has suggested Apple is at least taking a slight price hit to build it.  It believed that a 16GB, iPad 4G model cost about $310 in raw components.
Jordan Kahn / 9to5Mac:
K. T. Bradford / Gotta Be Mobile:
Trevor Berg / The Dropbox Blog:
A fresh new Dropbox on the web  —  Over the past few weeks, we've been quietly rolling out a major redesign of the Dropbox website.  Today we turned it up to 11, and anyone who signs into dropbox.com will see a simpler, more powerful, and more beautiful web experience.  Here's what we came up with:
John Cook / GeekWire:
T-Mobile executive: Key to fixing industry is removing device subsidies  —  Cole Brodman, CMO of T-Mobile, speaks at the GeekWire Summit in Seattle (Karen Ducey Photography)  —  As mobile devices become more powerful, prices continue to fall.  And while consumers now have more computing power …
Electronista:
Apple TV now treats DVD digital copies as iTunes purchases  —  Previous Apple TV hardware still limited to 720p  —  Users trying out the new Apple TV software update v5.0 have uncovered a significant change in the way the unit (both the previous 2011 version and the new 2012 edition) handle …
More: iPhone, Engadget and TUAW
Chad Bray / Wall Street Journal:
FBI's ‘Sabu’ Hacker Was a Model Informant  —  As soon as he was caught, an influential computer hacker agreed to become a government informant and “literally worked around the clock” to help federal agents nab an elusive collective of alleged cyber criminals who have launched online attacks against companies …
Hubert Nguyen / Ubergizmo:
Apple A5X and the great quad-core confusion, explained  —  When Apple announced the New iPad, the part about the Apple A5X chip has created a lot of confusion, hype, joy and sometime sheer anger: first, many now believe that the new iPad is a Quad-Core tablet and secondly …
Matt Brian / The Next Web:
Microsoft's next-gen Xbox will reportedly drop disc drives, launching in 2013  —  Microsoft has stayed quiet on its plans to launch a successor to its wildly popular Xbox 360 console, but a new report today has suggested that the company will do away with the traditional disc drive for its next-generation console and launch in 2013.
Robin Wauters / The Next Web:
Green Dot acquires location-based services company Loopt for $43.4 million in cash  —  In a move straight out of left field, Green Dot, a U.S. provider of prepaid debit cards, has acquired Loopt for total consideration of $43.4 million in cash.  —  The press release is below, we're updating this post.
Larry Dignan / ZDNet:
Cloud's price race to zero: Microsoft cuts Azure pricing, eyes Amazon  —  Summary: Cloud computing costs are falling fast for IT buyers and are already on par with electricity rates.  —  Microsoft on Friday cut pricing on its Azure storage as you go service and its extra small compute effort.
Iljitsch van Beijnum / Ars Technica:
iTunes 1080p video looks better, saves space using better H.264 compression  —  In the comments on yesterday's AppleTV story, many people doubted whether 1080p support in the third-generation AppleTV will be very useful.  That question becomes even more relevant when observing the file sizes …
Mark Memmott / NPR:
Facebook Co-Founder Chris Hughes Is Buying ‘The New Republic’  —  Social media meets old media:  —  Saying that he's convinced “the demand for long-form, quality journalism is strong in our country,” Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes tells NPR's Steve Inskeep that he's buying The New Republic.
Robert Andrews / paidContent:
Germany Wants To Charge Search Engines To Use News Excerpts  —  Germany's government wants search engines and news aggregators to pay news publishers for using pieces of their material.  —  Its coalition committee has resolved that a collecting society should charge royalties to re-publishers of news material.
Jenna Wortham / New York Times:
New Apps Connect to Friends Nearby  —  Smartphones have become indispensable for some people to find nearby cool new places for a bite or a drink.  —  Social networks like Facebook help those people connect with friends and colleagues.  —  What if those two features were merged into one service …
Steve Donohue / Fierce Cable:
Comcast won't offer Netflix to Xfinity TV subscribers  —  While Reuters reported Wednesday that Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX) is pitching cable operators the idea of bundling access to its online video service in cable subscriptions, Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA) says it isn't interested in teaming up with the online video rival.
Nielsen Wire:
Buzz in the Blogosphere: Millions More Bloggers and Blog Readers  —  Blogs are sometimes overlooked as a significant source of online buzz in comparison to social networking sites, yet consumer interest in blogs keeps growing.  By the end of 2011, NM Incite, a Nielsen/McKinsey company …
Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
Apple Investing $300 Million in Austin, Texas to Add 3,600 More Workers  —  The State of Texas today announced that Apple has committed to spend $304 million to expand its operations in Austin, seeking to add 3,600 employees to its facilities there. … Apple's campus in Austin, Texas (Source: Flickr/The Pug Father)
Chris Ziegler / The Verge:
Google forcing Android developers to use Google Wallet for in-app payments, Reuters says (Google: same policy as before)  —  Reuters is reporting this afternoon that at least some developers of applications in Google Play (née Android Market) are being forced to use Google Wallet …
Kevin Fitchard / GigaOM:
Clearwire outs first post-PC WiMAX dongle  —  The most unsexy gadget in mobile just got a lot more attractive.  Clearwire has started to sell a new WiMAX dongle that users can plug into laptops, tablets or netbooks and get instant mobile broadband access - without installing any device management software or messing about with logins.

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Stephen Totilo / Kotaku:
Spencer E. Ante / Wall Street Journal: