Techmeme
April 4, 2012, 4:55 PM

Top News

Nick Bilton / Bits:
Google Begins Testing Its Augmented-Reality Glasses  —  If you venture into a coffee shop in the coming months and see someone with a pair of futuristic glasses that look like a prop from “Star Trek,” don't worry.  It's probably just a Google employee testing the company's new augmented-reality glasses.
Kevin C. Tofel / GigaOM:
Google glasses make sense as the “next” mobile device  —  Smartphones already have Google Goggles, an image recognition search app, but consumers may one day have “Google glasses”.  The search company publicly introduced Project Glass on Wednesday, a concept for wearable glasses that integrate directly with Google services.
Brad Stone / Business Week:
Google's Page: Apple's Android Pique ‘For Show’  —  On April 3, Google (GOOG) co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Larry Page sat down with Bloomberg Businessweek to discuss his first year at the helm of the technology giant, his plans for the future, and the company's relationships with its competitors.
Amir Efrati / Digits:
Read Yahoo CEO's Letter to Employees About Layoffs … Yahoo today confirmed this morning it plans to cut 2,000 jobs, or 14% of its 14,000 work force.  —  Here's CEO Scott Thompson's letter to employees:  —  Yahoos -  —  Today we are restructuring Yahoo! to give ourselves the opportunity to compete and win in our core business.
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
Yahoo Cuts 14 Percent Of Workforce; 2,000 Given Pink Slips; Will Save $375M  —  Yahoo has made its massive round of layoffs official.  The company just released a statement saying that 2,000 jobs have been cut, or 14 percent of it total workforce (which was previously around 14,000).
Sam Anderson / New York Times:
Just One More Game ...  Angry Birds, Farmville and Other Hyperaddictive ‘Stupid Games’  —  In 1989, as communism was beginning to crumble across Eastern Europe, just a few months before protesters started pecking away at the Berlin Wall, the Japanese game-making giant Nintendo reached across …
Justin Ellis / Nieman Journalism Lab:
New high score: How the NYT created its “stupid game”  —  When Jon Huang was younger he was the type of kid who spent his time making mods for Duke Nukem 3D.  So it makes a kind of sense he's now turned The New York Times into its own kind of shoot 'em up.  —  Huang was the multimedia producer behind …
Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:
Randi Zuckerberg and Ben Huh Bring Silicon Valley to Bravo TV  —  Cue up the righteous anger, Silicon Valley.  Here comes a clueless effort by a big dumb TV channel to portray you world-changers as a bunch of vapid schemers.  Even worse, it's from a cable TV channel …
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
How Facebook's Winning The War Against Yahoo, Patent By Patent  —  Facebook has executed a masterful response to Yahoo's patent trolling that protects it legally but still makes it look like the victim.  Here I examine how for almost every patent Yahoo claims Facebook infringes upon …
Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
Broad Rollout of iPhone to Small U.S. Carriers Coming on April 20  —  Earlier today, we noted that nTelos Wireless, a CDMA carrier based in Waynesboro, Virginia, announced that it would begin carrying the iPhone 4S and iPhone 4 on April 20.  Pricing for the device comes in at $50 below …
Joshua Topolsky / The Verge:
Lumia 900 review  —  It occurred to me that the Lumia 900 review would be one of the more important critiques of a product that I write this year.  For those of you who don't know the backstory here, the new LTE-equipped, AT&T-bound smartphone represents what could be the beginning of a new era …
Gareth Morgan / V3.co.uk:
Swedish researchers uncover key to China's Tor-blocking system  —  Swedish researchers have discovered that Chinese officials have updated the country's ‘Great Firewall’ to make it harder for citizens to use the Tor network that provides a means of surfing the web anonymously.
Tim Hoover / Denver Post:
Federal court tosses Colorado's Amazon tax  —  A federal court has thrown out a 2010 Colorado law meant to spur online retailers like Amazon to collect state sales tax.  —  The law had already been temporarily blocked in federal court last year, but U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn's ruling Friday permanently handcuffs it.
More: TechFlash
Daniel Frankel / paidContent:
Researcher: Over 1 Million U.S. Cable Subscribers Cut Cord In 2011  —  Cable and satellite TV subscription growth slowed down more than had been previously reported, and cord-cutting was a primary factor.  But don't worry about it — a revolution that will re-create the current multi-channel access paradigm is still a long way away.
Matt Smith / The Bay Citizen:
Airbnb Must Pay Hotel Tax in San Francisco  —  Airbnb and other online vacation rental brokers must pay San Francisco's 14 percent hotel tax, according to a rule published Tuesday by the city's tax collector in spite of efforts by Mayor Ed Lee to delay its implementation.
Patrick Flanary / Rolling Stone:
Neil Young Trademarks New Audio Format  —  Rocker developing high-def alternative to MP3's  —  Neil Young performs in Los Angeles.  —  By  —  They might sound like great song titles, but “21st Century Record Player,” “Earth Storage” and “Thanks for Listening” aren't new Neil Young tunes.
More: PadGadget and The Verge
Erica Ogg / GigaOM:
Creativity tools: The next wave of iOS apps?  —  When Snapguide debuted last week it received pretty good reviews in the press.  But more importantly, it got a “very warm response,” as founder Daniel Raffel put it, from new users.  He's barely been sleeping, staying up to answer a constant stream …
Sarah Lacy / PandoDaily:
As Wall Street Points Fingers at Groupon, Three Fingers Point Back  —  Now I know how Goldilocks felt.  —  About the time Groupon was raising its $1 billion growth round and getting the big endorsement from some of the Valley's biggest names, I was bringing up all the problems …
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Draw Something hits mobile game record as it passes 50M downloads  —  Draw Something, the Pictionary-style app that Zynga acquired with its $180 million purchase of OMGPOP, has surpassed 50 million downloads.  —  In just 50 days, the title has become the fastest-growing original mobile game of all time.
Sarah Lacy / PandoDaily:
After Eight Years, the Web 2.0 Conference Is Over  —  Before there was Disrupt or Launch or any of the other myriad of smaller social media confabs, there was Web 2.0.  —  It was the first conference that chronicled the second coming of the consumer Web.  It was a partnership between Tim O'Reilly …
Stuart Miles / Pocket-lint:
New Swiftkey 3 removes the need for spacebar  —  Swiftkey has announced the launch of a new version of Swiftkey, the popular Android keyboard, that promises to make typing on the go even easier.  —  The crux of the new app, Swiftkey 3, now compensates for when you don't hit the space key …

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Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:
Peter Kafka / AllThingsD: