Techmeme
June 19, 2012, 12:40 AM

Top News

Microsoft Corporation:
Microsoft Announces Surface: New Family of PCs for Windows  —  Microsoft-made hardware to be available starting with release of Windows 8 and Windows RT.  —  Today at an event in Hollywood, Microsoft unveiled Surface: PCs built to be the ultimate stage for Windows.
Microsoft:
Surface by Microsoft  —  From touch to type, office to living room, from your screen to the big screen, you can see more, share more, and do more with Surface.  Create, collaborate, and get stuff done with Office.  Explore your world with fast, fluid Windows 8 apps.
Matthew Panzarino / The Next Web:
Microsoft announces new 10.6″ Microsoft Surface tablets, running Windows 8 in RT and ‘Pro’ flavors  —  Microsoft held an event today at Milk Studios in Hollywood CA, where it announced its new line of Microsoft Surface tablets, devices that it calls a ‘whole new family of computing devices’.
Darren Murph / Engadget:
Microsoft Surface tablets: the differences between Windows RT and Windows 8 Pro models  —  Surfaces.  Turns out, the plural form of Microsoft's new tablet range rolls off of the tongue with ease, but understanding the differences between the first two models may not be quite as easy — particularly for the everyman.
Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:
Microsoft's First Surface Video Is Super Serious, in a Techno-Funk Kinda Way  —  What does Microsoft's Surface tablet look like?  What kind of specs does it boast?  Head over to Ina Fried's liveblog, for all of those details, right now.  —  How does Microsoft want you to feel about the Surface?
More: CNET and Neowin
Ina Fried / AllThingsD:
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on Where Microsoft's New Surface Tablet Fits in PC Ecosystem  —  While there are plenty of unknown details about Microsoft's Surface tablet, perhaps the biggest open question is what this means for Microsoft and its decades-long relationship with the PC industry.
Dan Frommer / SplatF:
Microsoft Finally Has A Tablet Business Model With Surface  —  Microsoft just unveiled its new tablet, Surface.  It actually looks pretty nice, though I obviously have no idea if it works well or is worth buying.  You can find the details, as they become available, on Techmeme.
Sam Grobart / Bits:
Microsoft's Not Competing With the iPad — Not Entirely  —  Microsoft's new Surface tablet computer is not an iPad competitor.  It's an ultrabook competitor.  —  I mean, of course it's an iPad competitor, but it would appear Microsoft is going after other segments of portable computing as well.
Gil Hirsch / face.com:
Awesome News - Facebook Acquires Face.com  —  Facebook has acquired Face.com!  Our mission is and has always been to find new and exciting ways to make face recognition a fun, engaging part of people's lives, and incorporate remarkable technology into everyday consumer products.
Mg Siegler / TechCrunch:
The MacBook Pro Strikes Back (With Retina Power)  —  It was nearly two years ago that I said goodbye to my MacBook Pro.  I loved the device, but the new MacBook Air was that good.  My Pro — which was only six months old at the time! — seemed like total overkill for my computing needs.
Basil Katz / Reuters:
Ex-AT&T employee admits leaking Apple, RIM info  —  (Reuters) - A former AT&T (T.N) employee admitted on Monday to sharing company secrets such as sales numbers for Apple Inc's (AAPL.O) iPhone to traders who illegally bought shares on the information.  —  Alnoor Ebrahim, 57 …
Peter Farago / The Flurry Blog:
Microsoft May Be Closer Than It Appears in Android's Rearview Mirror  —  This week, wedged between Apple's WWDC and Google I/O is Microsoft's Windows Phone Summit in San Francisco on Wednesday, June 20.  Additionally, Microsoft is holding a last-minute press conference that “you don't want to miss” tonight in Los Angeles.
Henry Blodget / Business Insider:
Don't Look Now, But Facebook's Stock Is Up 20% In 2 Weeks!  —  Remember two weeks ago, when Facebook's stock had crashed all the way to ~$25?  —  Yes, back then, everyone was absolutely certain that it was going to, say, $18, and they were telling everyone who would listen about that.
Matt Stroud / The Verge:
Backpage.com and the prostitution law that could take down Twitter, YouTube, and Wikipedia  —  If you want to pay for sex in the United States — or offer sex services for a fee — and you'd rather not troll derelict city street corners late at night, chances are you're going to use backpage.com.
More: Gizmodo
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Twitter slowly unfolding its search ambitions  —  It has been fairly obvious for a few years that the search-driven, URL-centric web would converge with the web of social objects.  It is something that is driving Google's paranoia.  It is also something Facebook dreams about.
More: WebProNews
Matt Thompson / The Mozilla Blog:
Introducing Thimble: webmaking made easy  —  Today we are proud to launch a new Mozilla Webmaker app to the world.  Meet Thimble, the new tool that makes it incredibly simple for anyone to create and share their own web pages and other projects in minutes.  —  Thimble is webmaking made easy.
Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:
Sonos Raises $135 Million From KKR, Redpoint, Elevation  —  Wireless music systems maker Sonos has a round of primary and secondary financing of $135 million, a figure that is more than double what it has previously raised in total, according to sources close to the situation.
Goodfilms:
Netflix Quietly Smothers 3rd Party App Ecosystem  —  On Friday afternoon, Netflix published a blog post announcing a breaking change to their API, and dedicated a small paragraph to the fact that their API terms of use had been updated.  On a technical level, these changes will cripple …
Victor Agreda, Jr / TUAW:
Apple removes hints of future products from a key file in iOS 6  —  Once upon a time eager rumormongers would download the latest iteration of the next generation of iOS, and like examining goat entrails to determine the next Caesar, they would delve into the USBDeviceConfiguration.plist to divine upcoming hardware products from Apple.

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Earlier Picks

Phil Nickinson / Android Central: