Techmeme: Facebook Valued at $102.8 Billion in Last SharesPost Auction (Brian Womack/Bloomberg)

March 31, 2012, 7:50 AM

Top News

Breach Hits Card Processor Global Payments — Global Payments Inc., which processes credit cards and debit cards for banks and merchants, has been hit by a security breach that has put some 50,000 cardholders at risk, according to people with knowledge of the situation.

More: Global Payments Inc., Bloomberg, Examiner, Pulse2 Technology …, Zero Day Blog, Between the Lines Blog, Gartner, SecurityWeek, Softpedia News, Office of Inadequate Security and SeekingAlpha.com. Tweets: @dannysullivan

Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:

MasterCard, VISA Warn of Processor Breach — VISA and MasterCard are alerting banks across the country about a recent major breach at a U.S.-based credit card processor. Sources in the financial sector are calling the breach “massive,” and say it may involve more than 10 million compromised card numbers.

John Brownlee / Cult of Mac:

This Creepy App Isn't Just Stalking Women Without Their Knowledge, It's A Wake-Up Call About Facebook Privacy [Update] — This app is meant to all be in good fun, but it's potentially a weapon in the hands of stalkers. — “Boy, you sure have a lot of apps on your phone.” — “Well, it's my job.”

More: Bits, The Verge, TechCrunch, PC Magazine, Digital Trends, Pulp Tech Blog, VentureBeat, The Tech Report and Gawker

Amit Runchal / Interactioned:

Who Do We Blame? — This story by Nick Bilton in the New York Times, which John Brownlee first wrote about in Cult of Mac, discusses an iOS app called Girls Around Me. Creepy doesn't begin to describe it: … Foursquare shut them down after learning about it, but it's clear from Bilton's article …

More: TechCrunch

Harrison Weber / The Next Web:

Foursquare shuts down location API access to creepy Girls Around Me app

More: msnbc.com

Colleen Taylor / TechCrunch:

Twitter Takes Tweetdeck Offline After Apparent Bug Opens Access To Accounts — Twitter has taken Tweetdeck offline after an apparent bug has possibly given some Tweetdeck users access to others' accounts. — A Tweetdeck user in Australia, Geoff Evanson, says he discovered today …

More: The Next Web, Geek.com, Digital Trends, Digits, PC Magazine, VentureBeat, CNNMoney.com, Mashable!, Ubergizmo, The Verge, msnbc.com, Softpedia News, LaptopMemo, CNET and Lifehacker

Dieter Bohn / The Verge:

TweetDeck back online, unauthorized access was ‘random’ and likely never ‘used maliciously’ — TweetDeck, taken down earlier today, is now back online for everybody. The original issue appeared when a user in Australia discovered he was able to access hundreds of Twitter and Facebook accounts.

More: MacNN. Tweets: @tweetdeck

Danny Sullivan / Marketing Land:

Debunking Senator Al Franken On Google, The Internet & Privacy — I liked Al Franken as a comedian. I liked the idea of him becoming a US Senator. I definitely like the idea that he wants to defend Americans from potential privacy problems. But I don't like that he sounds like an uneducated senator of old.

Nilay Patel / The Verge:

Senator Al Franken: ‘privacy is a casualty’ of Google and Facebook's success

More: CNET and Interactioned

Brian Womack / Bloomberg:

Facebook Valued at $102.8 Billion in Last SharesPost Auction — Facebook Inc. (FB)'s implied valued rose 8.9 percent to $102.8 billion in what is expected to be the last auction of its stock on SharesPost Inc.'s exchange before the social-networking company's initial public offering.

More: Business Insider, Friending Facebook Blog, The Next Web, All Facebook, Los Angeles Times, The Domains, Techie Buzz, The Next Web and VentureBeat. Tweets: @emilychangtv

Bits:

With Tablet Plan, Google Goes After Apple and Amazon — Google's long-awaited tablet might finally be on the way to becoming a reality. For at least two years, there have been reports that the search giant was working on something that could compete with Apple's iPad.

Sascha Segan / PC Magazine:

Why Google's Tablet Store Isn't the Nexus One All Over Again

More: Coyote Tracks and parislemon

Elinor Mills / CNET:

Old-time hacktivists to Anonymous: You've crossed the line — Despite shared concerns, pioneers in the movement say the methods of a newer generation abridge free speech and hurt the cause — Oxblood Ruffin of Cult of the Dead Cow and Hacktivismo — In December 1998 …

Tweets: @anonopssweden

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

Yahoo Layoffs Set to Begin Next Week, Followed by Restructuring the Week After — Yahoo is preparing to begin layoffs of what could be thousands of employees starting next week, according to multiple sources, and is then expected to announce a new restructuring of the company the week after.

More: Deadline.com, Search Engine Land, SlashGear, The Verge, TechFlash, Digits, Tech and China, Tech Trader Daily, bizjournals, SeekingAlpha.com, Business Insider and WebProNews

Adi Avidor / Inside Search:

Graphing on Google.com - Now in 3D — A few months ago we launched a graphing functionality right in search to help students and math lovers plot functions in an easy, simple way. In addition to calculating something simple like dividing up a restaurant bill or graphing more difficult math functions using …

More: ReadWriteWeb, Mashable!, WebProNews, Search Engine Roundtable and Search Engine Land

Emil Protalinski / Friending Facebook Blog:

All Facebook Pages get Timeline — Summary: All Facebook Pages get the new Timeline design starting today at 11:00 AM PST. Facebook does not have a date and time for when the update process will be complete for all Pages. — All Facebook Pages are getting a mandatory Timeline update today.

More: CBS News, Customer Management Software, Wired, ITProPortal, The Next Web and All Facebook

Greg Sterling / Search Engine Land:

How Serious Is Facebook About Search? — An article in BusinessWeek suggests that Facebook is planning a deeper push into search. Will that be limited to improving search for the site — or will it be something more comprehensive? — It's clear that Facebook needs better internal search.

More: bub.blicio.us, Business Insider, WebProNews and Mashable!

Georg Szalai / Hollywood Reporter:

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong's Employment Contract Extended Through March 2016 — UPDATED: “We are continuing to work on the comeback of AOL and have a plan that is beneficial for employees, customers and shareholders,” the company said. — NEW YORK - AOL said Friday it has extended …

More: PandoDaily, The Wrap, Business Insider and Deadline.com

Joe Pollicino / Engadget:

AT&T now accepting Lumia 900 pre-orders, only those seeking cyan or black need apply (update) — Friendly reminder here, folks. As expected, AT&T has opened the pre-order floodgates for the Nokia Lumia 900 today ahead of its April 8th release in the US. Interested parties can secure …

More: IntoMobile, Windows Phone Blog, The Verge, Gear Live, Techie Buzz and BGR

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Static.com Adds Hadoop Support for Cloud Foundry — In this guest post, Jake Farrell, CTO for Static.com, explains how the major shift in the hosting industry towards platforms for high developer productivity …

Rackspace Blog:

DevOps: Improved Productivity, Higher Value — Those of us who have been aligned with DevOps for some time already know that the greater agility and closer collaboration it enables deliver real business value for our organizations.

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Get Started with Hadoop on Hortonworks Data Platform 1.1 for Windows — We are excited to release the Hortonworks Data Platform 1.1 for Windows as a Generally Available product.

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