Techmeme: How ‘Kony’ Clip Caught Fire Online (Wall Street Journal)

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March 10, 2012, 2:15 PM

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Paul Graham:

Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas — One of the more surprising things I've noticed while working on Y Combinator is how frightening the most ambitious startup ideas are. In this essay I'm going to demonstrate this phenomenon by describing some. Any one of them could make you a billionaire.

More: Brian Rue's Blog, Om Malik and Dustin Curtis

Tweets: @levie, @thomashpark, @ericries and @cdixon

Josh Ong / AppleInsider:

Apple provides additional details, renders for Cupertino campus project — The city of Cupertino released on Friday updated plans and renders for Apple's Cupertino campus project providing additional views of the proposed facility. — Late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs first unveiled plans …

More: MacDailyNews, Cupertino City News and iPhone in Canada Blog

Bloomberg:

Apple Drives Silicon Valley's Biggest Leasing Boom Since 2000 — Apple Inc. (AAPL) is leading the biggest leasing surge in California's Silicon Valley since the dot-com boom, as the company scours the region for space before building a futuristic new headquarters.

Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:

Loopt's Sam Altman on Why He Sold to Green Dot for $43.4M — Mobile location start-up Loopt will be acquired by the banking company Green Dot, best-known for its prepaid cards. — The deal is worth $43.4 million in cash, though that includes $9.8 million set aside in retention payments for key Loopt employees.

More: Business Wire, VentureBeat, GigaOM, The Tech Trade, All Points Blog, TechCrunch, Screenwerk, BetaKit and The Next Web

Steve Tenerowicz / Know Your Cell:

Popular mobile game developer Mika Mobile ending support for Android — Mika Mobile, developer of the popular games Battleheart and Zombieville USA, announced today that it will no longer be developing games for Google's Android mobile OS — Mika Mobile, developer of the hit Android games Zombieville USA …

More: Pulse2 Technology …, MobileSyrup.com, GigaOM and MacNN

Michelle Paulson / Wikimedia blog:

Transfer of Wikipedia sites from GoDaddy complete — After months of deliberation and a complicated transfer, the Wikimedia Foundation domain portfolio has been successfully transferred from GoDaddy to MarkMonitor. The portfolio transfer was formally completed on Friday, March 9th, 2012.

More: Pulse2 Technology …, Softpedia News, ZDNet, WebProNews and ReadWriteWeb

Robert McMillan / Wired:

After Megaupload Bust, Putlocker and RapidShare Pick Up Slack — The Feds shut down Megaupload two months ago, but browser-based filesharing hasn't slowed down. It has just moved to other websites. Before the takedown, Megaupload was the most popular web-based filesharing service — by far.

Laura June / The Verge:

5 Minutes on The Verge: Techmeme's Gabe Rivera — Gabe Rivera is the founder and editor of tech news aggregator Techmeme, which he started in 2005 as a one man operation, and which now has a staff of 10 people who also help to run its sister site, Mediagazer.

Tweets: @megan, @alexia, @zpower and @parislemon

Wall Street Journal:

How ‘Kony’ Clip Caught Fire Online — An Internet video seeking to draw attention to fugitive African rebel leader Joseph Kony now stands as the fastest-growing viral phenomenon in Web history, thanks to informal celebrity advocates and young viewers. — Posted online on Monday …

More: Pulse2 Technology …. See also Mediagazer

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Gundotra: Google+ Won't Let 3rd-Party Apps Post Because “Your Stream Could Easily Be Overwhelmed” — Today at his SXSW fireside chat, head of Google+ Vic Gundotra said “I am 100% to blame” for the social network lacking an API seven months after launch. The reason?

More: Pulse2 Technology …, The Verge, ABCNEWS, Marketing Land, CNET, SiliconFilter and AllThingsD. Tweets: @mikeindustries

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:

Tether launches $30/year web-based tethering service for iPhones, works around Apple's restrictions — Tether made news in November, 2011 when Apple seemingly accidentally accepted their application into the iTunes App Store. The $14.99 piece of iPhone software allowed anyone to simply download …

More: Tether.com, Pulse2 Technology …, App Advice, Softpedia News, The Verge, Gotta Be Mobile, Engadget, CNET, The Next Web, Electronista, everythingiCafe, iPhone Savior and MacRumors. Thanks:@markgurman

Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch:

Army Warns Of Danger Of Geotagging — While for an ordinary civilian the automatic geotagging of your photos or check-ins might be convenient, in the military it can be a lethal mistake. In 2007, geotagged photos of a new fleet of helicopters allowed enemy forces to mortar the base …

More: Gizmodo, Telegraph, WebProNews, INFOdocket and army.mil

Donald Melanson / Engadget:

Nielsen report finds 56 percent of US households have a modern game console, total gaming time up seven percent — Nielsen is out with its annual survey of video game use in the US today, and it's found that gaming continues to be on the rise across the board.

More: blog.nielsen.com, Fudzilla and USA Today

Jennifer Howard / Chronicle of Higher Education:

Google Begins to Scale Back Its Scanning of Books From University Libraries — Google has been quietly slowing down its book-scanning work with partner libraries, according to librarians involved with the vast Google Books digitization project. But what that means for the company's long-term investment in the work remains unclear.

More: New York Times

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

PayPal's New Digital Wallet Will Offer Personalized Deals, Flexible Payments, And More — We've been hearing recently about PayPal's in-store payments platform for large retailers (which will soon be rolled out to small businesses as well). But we haven't seen PayPal do much in the past few months …

More: VentureBeat and GigaOM

Agam Shah / Computerworld:

Intel aims for faster Thunderbolt with PCI-Express 3.0 — Intel is working to boost data transfer speeds with a faster pipe on Thunderbolt, a high-speed connector technology that link computers with peripherals, the company said on Thursday. — Intel is working to boost data transfer speeds …

More: Softpedia News, Macgasm, MacRumors, MacNN, SlashGear, Engadget and TechEye

Telegraph:

Digital ‘map’ of the Titanic to be released for 100-year anniversary — Researchers have pieced together the first comprehensive map of the Titanic's debris field, saying they plan to release the new images next month to mark the 100-year anniversary of the ship's sinking. — The starboard side of the Titanic bow

More: Associated Press, Discovery News, Los Angeles Times, NY Daily News, The Sun, Boston Globe, SlashGear and Techland

Florian Mueller / FOSS Patents:

Apple brings in 73 Korean-American contract attorneys and 20 reviewers to sift through tons of Samsung documents — Apple is facing a huge challenge in dealing with truckloads of Korean-language documents produced by Samsung in two federal lawsuits in California and two ITC investigations.

More: MacNN

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