Techmeme: Exclusive: Electronic Arts Set To Layoff +500 Employees (Derek Andersen/Startup Grind)

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April 16, 2012, 5:00 PM

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Brad McCarty / The Next Web:

Google Drive detailed: 5 GB for free, launching next week for Mac, Windows, Android and iOS — Sometimes we get lucky, and today is one of those days. I got a draft release from a partner of Google's upcoming Google Drive service and it gives away a wealth of information about how Google plans to take on the incumbent Dropbox.

More: The Verge, Between the Lines Blog, Business Insider, Gizmodo, PhoneArena, The Digital Reader and Simply Zesty. Thanks:@jonnyrowntree

Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:

Confirmed: Redpoint Leads $40M Funding Round for Path — Path, the mobile social networking start-up, is planning to announce it has raised Series B funding as early as tomorrow, according to sources. — Redpoint Ventures led the $40 million round, which values Path at $250 million.

More: Inside Mobile Apps, The Next Web, VentureBeat, Pulse2 Technology …, Fortune, Appolicious Advisor, FierceMobileContent, WebProNews, CNET, Betabeat, Mobile Entertainment and VatorNews. Tweets: @dondodge

Om Malik / GigaOM:

Why Path is no Instagram — Ever since Facebook decided that Instagram was worth $1 billion, there has been recurring talk of Path, another social service being the next big buyout target. And while I am happy for the Path team, I find the comparisons with Instagram unfounded and premature.

More: CNET

Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Fortune:

How many iPhones did Apple sell last quarter? — The estimates range from 26 to 44 million. The best analysts' consensus: 35 million. The most important metric for Apple (AAPL) in the quarter that ended two weeks ago — likely to account for more than half of the company's revenue for fiscal Q2 2012 …

More: parislemon, Internet2Go, Between the Lines Blog, Pulse2 Technology …, App Advice, iDownloadBlog.com, Mashable! and dailywireless.org

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:

Huffington Post Wins Pulitzer Prize — Huffington Post senior military correspondent David Wood has spent decades covering war, watching as wounded combat troops are loaded onto medical evacuation helicopters and, he said, “go off in a cloud of dust.” But after their sacrifice on the battlefield …

More: VentureBeat, Business Insider, GalleyCat and Nieman Journalism Lab

Tweets: @moorehn, @producermatthew, @edbott, @jacobwe, @robpegoraro, @hunterw, @johnjcook, @rosental and @wyattkash

See also Mediagazer

Derek Andersen / Startup Grind:

Exclusive: Electronic Arts Set To Layoff +500 Employees — Exclusive: I've confirmed from multiple sources within Electronic Arts that the company is planning to layoff 500-1,000 people as soon as this week. As of March 31 public numbers, that represents between 5%-11% of total company employees.

More: WebProNews, MCV: Home Stream, AllThingsD, Digital Trends, Joystiq, Pulse2 Technology …, GamesIndustry International, GamePolitics blogs, TechSpot, Cinema Blend Feeds, VG247, ITProPortal, Kotaku and Destructoid

Eric Mack / CNET:

Raspberry Pi $35 mini system starts shipping — The credit card-sized Linux system is being delivered to first 10,000 customers worldwide this week. Raspberry Pi, the $35 Linux system about the size of a credit card, is fully baked and ready to eat... er, ship.

More: VentureBeat, Engadget, Inquirer and The Verge

Serena Saitto / Bloomberg:

RIM Said to Discuss Hiring Bank to Help Weigh Strategy Options — Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM), the troubled maker of the BlackBerry smartphone, is in talks to hire a financial adviser that can help it weigh strategic options, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.

More: ZDNet and MacNN

Devindra Hardawar / VentureBeat:

Foursquare confirms 20M users, 2 billion check-ins, on 4sqDay 2012 — Today, the third annual 4sqDay (April 16, four-squared, get it?), check-in king Foursquare confirmed that it has reached new milestones of 20 million users and a whopping 2 billion check-ins.

More: SiliconANGLE, The Next Web, The Verge, VatorNews, Betabeat, CNET, Examiner, Marketing Pilgrim, Mashable!, App Advice, About Foursquare and Pulse2 Technology …. Thanks:@venturebeat

Nathan Ingraham / The Verge:

Galaxy Nexus coming to Sprint on April 22nd for $199.99, includes a $40 Google Wallet credit — We've been waiting for a release date since CES, but it's finally official — the Galaxy Nexus is coming to Sprint on April 22nd for $199.99 when you sign a new two-year contract.

More: eWeek, PC World, CNET, Engadget, Pulse2 Technology …, Examiner, Ars Technica, Sprint Newsroom, BGR, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, GigaOM, Gotta Be Mobile, Business Insider, Sammy Hub, Gizmodo and Pocketables

Dan Frommer / ReadWriteWeb:

Why Facebook Terrifies Google — Google is still the biggest, baddest online advertising company on the planet. Its $2.9 billion profit last quarter, announced yesterday, was almost as much as Facebook's revenue for all of 2011. — But Facebook has something important that Google doesn't …

More: Business Insider and NBC Bay Area

David Carr / New York Times:

The Media Equation: Amazon Low Prices Disguise a High Cost — The Justice Department finally took aim at the monopolistic monolith that threatened to dominate the book industry. So imagine the shock when the bullet aimed at threats to competition went whizzing by Amazon …

More: Business Insider, Pulse2 Technology …, Mike Cane's xBlog, TeleRead, SplatF and Media Decoder. See also Mediagazer

Nick Hopkins / Guardian:

US and China engage in cyber war games — Exclusive: US and Chinese officials take part in war games in bid to prevent military escalation from cyber attacks — The US and China have been discreetly engaging in “war games” amid rising anger in Washington over the scale and audacity …

More: dailywireless.org and TG Daily

Rachel King / Between the Lines Blog:

Oracle v. Google: What's at stake — Summary: Oracle and Google are finally going to trial after two years of litigation, but what's really at stake here for these two Silicon Valley giants? — Oracle's patent infringement lawsuit against Google is finally set to go to trial …

More: VentureBeat, Forbes, eWeek, Wall Street Journal, Open Source Subnet …, Ars Technica, Reuters, Bloomberg, The Register, ITProPortal, SlashGear, Computerworld, Slashdot, BBC and AllThingsD

Matthew Panzarino / The Next Web:

Twitter acquires social analytics company Hotspots.io for its revenue engineering team — The social analytics company Hotspots.io has been acquired by Twitter, and its team will be joining the revenue engineering department there, according to a splash page on its website.

More: PandoDaily, VentureBeat and TechCrunch

Apple:

New iPad Arrives in South Korea & 11 Additional Countries This Week — CUPERTINO, California April 16, 2012 Apple® today announced the new iPad®, the third generation of its category defining mobile device, will arrive in South Korea and 11 additional countries on Friday, April 20.

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

SEC Filing: First Round Capital Raising $135 Million For New Fund — From a recent SEC filing, it looks like early stage investment firm First Round Capital is raising $135 million for a new fund, First Round Capital IV, L.P. Managing partners Josh Kopelman, Chris Fralic …

More: VentureBeat

Sean Ludwig / VentureBeat:

Rackspace launches OpenStack-powered next-gen public cloud — Rackspace, the top cloud infrastructure provider after Amazon, has significantly upgraded its core offerings with a new next-generation public cloud powered by OpenStack, the company said Monday.

More: ReadWriteWeb, GigaOM, Computerworld and The Register

Paul Sawers / The Next Web:

Google partners with MGM to bring more than 600 titles to YouTube and Google Play in North America — Two weeks after Google stuck a deal with Paramount to make it 5-out-of-6 of the major movie studios, the Internet giant has announced that Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) is the latest movie company …

More: Engadget, VentureBeat, paidContent, 9to5Google, YouTube Blog and Ubergizmo. See also Mediagazer

Eric Slivka / MacRumors:

Apple Discontinues Free Trials of Aperture and iWork — As noted by MacStories, Apple has discontinued its free trials of Aperture and iWork, directing users to the Mac App Store where the apps are available for purchase. — The discontinuation of the Aperture trial is not particularly recent …

More: Computerworld, Macgasm, MacStories, MacNN, MacDailyNews, 9to5Mac, TUAW and Techie Buzz

Richard Lai / Engadget:

Meizu MX Quad-core launching with Android 4.0 in June, gets 32GB and 64GB flavors — Can't say we're surprised, but Meizu's finally giving us the lowdown on the quad-core variant of its flagship Android smartphone. Simply dubbed the MX Quad-core, this new device will be powered by a Cortex-A9-based …

More: IntoMobile, ITProPortal, Android Phone Fans, Phones Review, SlashGear, Tech in Asia, Know Your Cell and The Verge

Robert Andrews / paidContent:

Zattikka buys three social gaming startups & takes on Zynga — Both the social games development space and London's AIM stock exchange welcomed a new entrant on Monday. — Zattikka, a new multi-platform studio founded by Virgin Interactive games executives Tim Chaney (pictured) …

More: Inside Social Games, CNET, Zattikka, TechCrunch, VentureBeat and www.pocketgamer.biz

Dante D'Orazio / The Verge:

Asus opens up registrations for Transformer Prime GPS dongle — It looks like the Asus Transformer Prime GPS saga is coming to a close. After complaints about poor positioning performance, Asus has announced that it is going to give owners a free GPS dongle that should drastically improve the accuracy and speed of lock-ons.

More: TechCrunch, TechnoBuffalo, Android News, Rumours … and Gizmodo

Richard Chirgwin / The Register:

Yet another OSX/Java Trojan spotted in the wild — Kaspersky Labs tags MS Word as the vector — Hard on the heels of the Flashback Trojan, Kaspersky Labs is warning of a new OSX threat, which it's dubbed Backdoor.OSX.SabPub.a. — In a post to Securelist, Kaspersky's Costin Raiu …

More: CNET, msnbc.com, Ars Technica, Naked Security, TUAW, Computerworld, Gizmodo, Help Net Security, CNET, AppleTell and Softpedia News

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Chartbeat raises $9.5M to give publishers better radar — Launched three years ago as a way of giving publishers and media companies better real-time analytics related to their content, Chartbeat announced Monday that it has closed a new round of Series B financing worth $9.5 million …

More: BetaKit, VentureBeat, inside analytics, AllThingsD, Betabeat, TechCrunch and PandoDaily. Thanks:@antderosa. See also Mediagazer

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