Techmeme: Google is making a huge and annoying mistake. (Wil Wheaton/WWdN: In Exile)

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May 2, 2012, 8:25 PM

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Tom Warren / The Verge:

Exclusive: $99 Xbox 360 + Kinect bundle launching next week with two-year subscription — Microsoft is planning to launch a $99 Xbox console package with a monthly subscription as early as next week, according to our sources. The software giant will offer the 4GB console with a Kinect sensor …

Steve Kovach / Business Insider:

Liquidmetal Inventor: Apple Will Use It In A ‘Breakthrough Product’ — We've been hearing a lot about Liquidmetal lately, mostly because of rumors that Apple could be using the alloy in its next iPhone. — But what exactly is Liquidmetal? What makes it so special that Apple decided to license the rights to use it in its products?

More: msnbc.com, CNET, AppleInsider, 9to5Mac, Mobile, PadGadget, MacRumors, Redmond Pie, iDownloadBlog.com and iPhone in Canada Blog

Ross Miller / The Verge:

It's official: Target will phase out all Kindle-branded products this spring — Last night we reported on Target's plans to discontinue sale of the Kindle due to “conflict of interest,” and now the company has confirmed to us that it will, indeed, discontinue sale.

Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Fortune:

An Apple CEO-in-waiting sells 95% of his company shares — The head of iPhone and iPad software sold 64,151 shares Friday worth $38.7 million FORTUNE — Scott Forstall took home a chunk of change Friday. Taking advantage of Apple's (AAPL) relatively high (but not record) share price …

More: PC Magazine, Pulse2 Technology …, iDownloadBlog.com, App Advice, 9to5Mac, VentureBeat, AppleInsider, TUAW, Business Insider, NBC Bay Area and CNET

Wil Wheaton / WWdN: In Exile:

Google is making a huge and annoying mistake. — I like Google Plus. Some of the smartest people I've ever read are on Google Plus, and the Hangout is amazing. — But Google is doing everything it can to force Google Plus on everyone, and it's pissing me off. — Yesterday, I tried to like a video on YouTube.

More: Business Insider, parislemon and Marketing Land. Tweets: @zephoria

Paul McNamara / Network World:

EXCLUSIVE: Watch Steve Jobs play FDR in Apple's long-lost takeoff on famous ‘1984’ Macintosh TV commercial — Nine-minute film called ‘1944’ was produced to inspire Apple sales team to take on IBM — h(f)){c=a.createElement('script'); c.type='text/javascript';c.src= 'http …

More: The Verge, Engadget, CNET, Techland, iDownloadBlog.com, Macgasm, Redmond Pie and MacStories

David Cohen / AllFacebook:

Facebook Introduces Open Graph Action Links — Allfacebook Marketing Conference AllFacebook.de SocialTimes Send an anonymous tip — Move over, action verbs, and make way for action links, which Facebook introduced today as a way for users to interact directly with timeline applications.

More: AllThingsD, ZDNet, PC World, The Next Web, Mashable!, internetretailer.com, Facebook Developer Blog and WebProNews

Jim Edwards / Business Insider:

Tumblr Wants $25,000 Per Ad—Here's What They Look Like — Tumblr, the blogging platform with a massive audience but negligible revenues, has set its entry-level ad price at $25,000, the company said in an email. — The ad spots are on Tumblr Radar and Tumblr Spotlight …

More: VentureBeat, ReadWriteWeb, Digital Trends, TechCrunch, Mashable!, WebProNews, The Next Web, Adotas and Betabeat. Tweets: @tumblr. See also Mediagazer

John Cook / GeekWire:

Zillow to buy RentJuice for $40M in cash, posts record revenue and profits — Zillow is using some of its new-found cash to gobble up San Francisco's RentJuice, adding a new set of technologies that help landlords and property managers more easily keep track of properties, upload photos, manage revenue and deals.

More: The Seattle Times, Zillow MediaRoom, TechCrunch, Business Insider and Tech Trader Daily. Thanks:@toddbishop

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Amazon Gets Into the Sitcom Business — Amazon has been stocking up its Web-video offering with lots of old TV shows. Now it's going to start making some of its own. — The company is pulling back the covers (a bit) on its plans to produce kids' shows and sitcoms via its “Amazon Studios” …

More: Hollywonk, Variety, The Next Web, CNET, Amazon.com, Washington Post, paidContent, WebProNews, GeekWire, The Verge, The Tech Trade, internetretailer.com, paidContent, TechCrunch, Fortune, VentureBeat and Ars Technica. See also Mediagazer

Jessica Dolcourt / CNET:

Verizon's LTE-powered in-home broadband goes national — While Sprint and T-Mobile are struggling to launch their 4G LTE networks, Verizon apparently has enough LTE to power your devices at home. — Starting Thursday, Verizon's HomeFusion Broadband service will bring LTE-powered Internet access nationwide.

More: PC World, dailywireless.org and The Verge

Stuart Dredge / Guardian:

The dark side of in-app purchases — Decision to make music game unplayable is controversial, but it's not the only example — The glory days of guitar-based music games may be firmly in the past, yet there are plenty of people still firing up Rock Band or Guitar Hero on their consoles for a nostalgic glow.

More: CNET, msnbc.com, BuzzFeed, RockBandAide and VG247

Enigmax / TorrentFreak:

Pirate Bay Enjoys 12 Million Traffic Boost, Shares Unblocking Tips — Last Friday the UK High Court ruled that several of country's leading ISPs must censor The Pirate Bay website having ruled in February that the site and its users breach copyright on a grand scale.

More: gHacks Technology News, Guardian and WebProNews

Todd Bishop / GeekWire:

German court says Motorola can block Xbox, Windows — but U.S. court stands in way — Setting up an unusual conflict between courts on different continents, a judge in Germany ruled overnight that Microsoft violates two of Motorola Mobility's digital video patents — ostensibly preventing …

More: FOSS Patents, BBC, Dow Jones Newswires, Pulse2 Technology …, DailyTech, VentureBeat and PC Magazine

Steven Bertoni / Forbes:

The 26-Year-Old VC Who Cashed In On Instagram — Joshua Kushner was in Mexico in April for a family Passover trip, up late in his hotel room reading The Power Broker, Robert Caro's biography of New York City's master builder, Robert Moses, when the text message arrived from an insider.

Thanks:@joshraffel

Kim-Mai Cutler / TechCrunch:

Yelp's Post-IPO Earnings: $27.4M in Revenue, Up 66% From A Year Earlier, But Net Loss Triples — In its first ever earnings report as a publicly-traded company, Yelp said it earned $27.4 million in revenue, up 66 percent from the $16.5 million it made in the same time a year ago.

More: Business Insider, VentureBeat and WebProNews

Jennifer Baker / PC World:

Programming Languages Not Copyrightable Rules Top EU Court — Europe's top court ruled on Wednesday that the functionality of a computer program and the programming language it is written in cannot be protected by copyright. — The European Court of Justice made the decision in relation …

More: Jan Wildeboer, Techdirt, ZDNet, Ars Technica and Inquirer

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

Google Updates Google Docs With 450 New Fonts, 60 New Templates And More — Google today announced that it is bringing web fonts to Google Docs. Thanks to this update, you can now use 450 new fonts in your Google documents. These are the same 450 fonts Google already features on its Web Fonts site for web designers.

More: Ars Technica, VentureBeat, Docs Blog, Engadget, The Verge, Techland, 9to5Google and The Next Web

Ryan Kim / GigaOM:

Pebble smartwatch gets its first app partner: RunKeeper — When I talked to the man behind the Pebble smartwatch, which has become the biggest Kickstarter project ever, he said what excited him about all the success was the ability to turn Pebble into an app platform.

More: RunKeeper, Business Insider, Mashable!, PC Magazine, Android and Me, Gotta Be Mobile, Betabeat, iPhone in Canada Blog, Pocket-lint, The Next Web and Business Insider

Brendan Sasso / Hillicon Valley:

Senate to examine Obama plan for online privacy ‘bill of rights’ — The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee will examine the Obama administration's plan to protect users' online privacy at a hearing on May 9, committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) announced Wednesday.

More: Digital Trends

Paul Sloan / CNET:

Frustrated advertisers to Facebook: Take our money — please! — With the social network's huge IPO getting nearer, this is the sort of news that Mark Zuckerberg doesn't need to hear just now. With a reach approaching 15 percent of the world's population, Facebook is a thriving media business.

More: Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog, The New Persuaders, ReadWriteWeb, TechCrunch and GigaOM

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Twilio Rising: Microsoft Inks Deal To Offer Voice, Messaging APIs To ‘Tens Of Thousands’ Of Azure Developers — A potentially big move forward for cloud-based telephony API startup Twilio — and an intriguing development for Microsoft, given its would-be ownership of Skype …

More: VentureBeat, MarketWatch, ZDNet, MSDN Blogs, WebProNews and WMPoweruser. Thanks:@twilio

Jon Russell / The Next Web:

Google introduces ‘VC Office Hours’, Google+ hangouts with top Silicon Valley figures — Google+ is often lamented for failing to capture the attention of mainstream social network users and, almost in response to that accusation, Google is launching an interesting initiative that will see top figures …

More: VentureBeat and Bradley Horowitz. Thanks:@jonrussell

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

DEV, NYC's New Seed Fund For Digital Media Startups, Announces First Investments — Here comes money for media startups: former MediaNet CEO Alan McGlade and VC Michael Yang are announcing the launch of a new NYC-based firm called DEV (Digital Entertainment Ventures) whose early stage capital fund …

More: DEV Blog, Betabeat and Business Wire

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:

OS X Mountain Lion update adds helpful ‘Do Not Disturb’ option for notifications — Apple's update to OS X Lion Preview 3 adds a very helpful new “Do Not Disturb” feature for notifications. The feature is a toggle accessible at the top of Notification Center that allows users to block incoming alerts and banners.

More: WebProNews, Ars Technica and Gotta Be Mobile. Thanks:@markgurman

Billy Steele / Engadget:

Amazon outs Cloud Drive desktop app for Windows and Mac, allows easy access to your digital wares — If you've been storing part of your digital library on Amazon's Cloud Drive, access to your goods just got easier. The outfit has released a desktop app for both Mac and Windows machines enabling uploads …

More: The Register, PC World, VentureBeat, GeekWire, CNET, Forbes, ReadWriteWeb, Liliputing and MacRumors

Mary Jo Foley / CNET:

Microsoft to drop Windows Live branding with Windows 8 — Microsoft's perpetually confusing Windows Live branding is about to get a long-overdue clean up. — Microsoft is doing away with the Windows Live brand, according to a May 2 post on the Building Windows 8 blog.

More: Computerworld, Network World, GeekWire, MSDN Blogs, Business Insider, LiveSide.net, SuperSite for Windows, parislemon and WMPoweruser

Tweets: @theromit and @theromit

Tamar Lewin / New York Times:

Harvard and M.I.T. Team Up to Offer Free Online Courses — In what is shaping up as an academic Battle of the Titans — one that offers vast new learning opportunities for students around the world — Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Wednesday announced …

More: Engadget, CNNMoney.com, MIT, AllThingsD, Boston Globe, CNET, Technology Review, Xconomy, OStatic blogs and The Next Web

Jennifer Van Grove / VentureBeat:

Prezi zooms past 10M users, releases PowerPoint import tool — In building an intuitive and fluid alternative to PowerPoint, startup Prezi is helping presenters reimagine their productions. Tuesday, the company announced that it surpassed 10 million users, and released a PowerPoint import tool …

More: The Next Web

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Down, Not Out: Nokia Goes On The Offensive With 11 Lawsuits Against HTC, RIM And ViewSonic Covering 45 Patents — As Nokia continues to try to turn itself around as a mobile phone business, it is also playing on the offense in the legal game: today it announced that it has filed fresh round …

More: CNET, FOSS Patents, The Next Web, GigaOM, The Verge, Nokia, MobileSyrup.com, VentureBeat, InfoWorld, Reuters, Pulse2 Technology … and Inquirer

Tero Kuittinen / Forbes:

Is the OMGPOP Acquisition Haunting Zynga? — Zynga's much-anticipated quarterly report was very close to being a non-event - ten minutes after the press release, the share price was within 0.3% of the close. Yet ZNGA declined from nearly $16 to $8 between early March and late April.

More: CNET, BGR, New York Times, Gotta Be Mobile, The Atlantic Wire and Pocket-lint

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