Techmeme
June 13, 2012, 3:45 PM

Top News

ICANN New gTLDs:
Reveal Day 13 June 2012 - New gTLD Applied-For Strings  —  ICANN developed the New generic Top-Level Domain Program to increase competition and choice by introducing new gTLDs into the Internet's addressing system.  What is a gTLD?  It is an Internet domain name extension such as the familiar .com, .net, or .org.
Devindra Hardawar / VentureBeat:
Retina MacBook Pro is the least repairable laptop ever, says iFixit  —  Apple's new MacBook Pro with Retina Display is ridiculously fast and thin — but you can forget about ever taking it apart.  —  The repair gurus at iFixit unveiled their teardown of the Retina MacBook Pro this morning …
Dan Levine / Reuters:
Analysis: Apple's big enemy in smartphone wars: delay  —  (Reuters) - Apple Inc has spent nearly three years fighting its rivals in a global smartphone patent war.  Now, setbacks in two key U.S. court cases are laying bare why a drawn-out battle could be bad news for the iPhone maker.
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Fortune:
The high-school blogger who's been cracking Apple's secrets  —  In the walk-up to this week's big keynote, nobody had more scoops than Mark Gurman FORTUNE — Trying to scope out Apple's (AAPL) product plans in advance is serious business for a small army of tech journalists …
Edgar Alvarez / Engadget:
Aviary launches photo editing application on iOS, turns Android plugin into an app  —  Last we heard, Aviary was being chosen to replace the deceased Picnik as the main photo editor on Flickr, and now the startup is getting ready to launch its first iOS app and give its previous Android offering a major boost.
Dennis K. Berman / Wall Street Journal:
Tin Pan Valley: The Coming Shakeout for App Makers  —  Like the Early Music Industry, Today's Apps Are ‘Made’ By Marketing, Sales  —  They were 20-somethings emboldened by new technology.  If they were shrewd, they just might get rich.  —  These inventors and wheedlers, dreamers and hucksters …
Wall Street Journal:
HTC Resists Push Toward Low-End Phones  —  TAIPEI—Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC Corp. will stick to its strategy of selling medium- to high-priced phones, even though it has been struggling to compete in that price range where Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. are increasingly dominant.
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Skype For Windows Now Features “Conversation Ads”  —  Skype just announced that it will now begin to show some of its users ads during 1:1 audio calls.  These so-called “conversation ads” will only appear for users who don't have Skype credit or a subscription and, for the time being …
Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:
DreamWorks Incubates a Mobile Video Editing App Called PTCH  —  A team spun off from the studio behind “Shrek” and “Madagascar” wants to make the next Instagram.  —  DreamWorks Animation is incubating a new social photo and video app called PTCH, which is being independently built …
Richard MacManus / ReadWriteWeb:
Why Zynga is Shedding Users  —  Social gaming company Zynga had an outstanding 2011, leading to a well-hyped IPO in December.  But Zynga's biggest risk was always an over-reliance on Facebook, with most of its revenue and users coming from the social network.
John Paczkowski / AllThingsD:
Apple's Ping to End With a Thud in Next Release of iTunes  —  Apple has finally acknowledged what the market has been telling it since it first debuted Ping, its social network for music, in September of 2010.  The service is a failure.  —  And rather than continue to maintain Ping …
Sarah Silbert / Engadget:
Samsung aiming for complete mobile domination with rumored Facebook competitor  —  Samsung's made no secret of its ambitions to commandeer all aspects of mobile tech — from devices themselves to processors and software like ChatON and the recently announced Siri competitor S Voice.
Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:
State Department speaks out on Amazon Kindle deal  —  On Monday, I reported that the U.S. State Department was signing a $16.5 million agreement with Amazon to provide Kindles, content and service for overseas English language programs.  Yesterday I was able to get on the phone …
Jonathan Stempel / Reuters:
Apple fails to fend off mobile tracking lawsuit  —  (Reuters) - Apple Inc must defend against a lawsuit accusing it of letting advertisers secretly track the activity of millions of mobile device users, a federal judge ruled, but Google Inc and several other defendants were dismissed from the case.
Mike Masnick / Techdirt:
Apple Steps Into Patent Fight To Unnecessarily Silence A Little Girl  —  We've covered plenty of stories concerning Apple's ridiculously arbitrary nature as the gatekeeper for iOS apps, approving or pulling them with little reason.  And, of course, we've discussed a variety of ridiculous patent lawsuits …
Aaron Ricadela / Bloomberg:
Dell Seeks $2 Billion In Cost Cuts Over Next Three Years  —  Dell Inc. (DELL), the world's third-largest maker of personal computers, will focus on data-center gear as well as computing software and services while seeking to cut costs by more than $2 billion over the next three years.
Daniel Rubino / wpcentral:
Supposed leaked screenshots of Windows Phone 8 Apollo appear, show off Skype and Lenses  —  With less than week before Microsoft is expected to show off Windows Phone 8 in San Francisco, some leaked (and terrible looking) screenshots have appeared on the site Nokia Innovation.
Erin Bury / BetaKit:
Cvent Acquires Seed Labs for $4.2M to Bolster Consumer and Mobile Event Apps  —  Today cloud-based event management company Cvent announced that it has acquired Seed Labs, a startup that specializes in mobile apps for consumer and social events including concerts, festivals and sporting events, for $4.2 million.
Evan Rodgers / The Verge:
US lawmakers create website to crowd-source a ‘digital bill of rights’  —  Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA) have started drafting a crowd-sourced digital bill of rights in hopes of preventing piecemeal laws like SOPA and CISPA from over-regulating the internet.

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