Replying to App Store reviews  —  In the wake of the recent announcement that Google Play will allow developers to respond to user reviews of apps (Google Play being the Android version of Apple's iOS App Store, iBookstore and iTunes Store combined), there's been a resurgence of sentiment amongst iOS …

Could Instagram And Other Sites Avoid Going Down With Amazon's Ship?  —  When we heard about Instagram (and other sites) going down when Amazon Web Services' North Virginia hub was hit by a storm — not the first time AWS has gone down (April 2011 was another notable outage) we couldn't help but wonder: could it have been avoided?

waywire, Cory Booker's Personalized News Startup, Uses Video To Give Youth A Voice  —  “There's an oligarchy in the media and that needs to be broken up” Newark, NJ mayor Cory Booker tells me.  So he's building #waywire, a news site that features original and syndicated video content …

Microsoft's Parker to Replace PC-Maker Liaison Guggenheimer  —  Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) (MSFT) said Steven Guggenheimer, a vice president who oversees the software maker's relationships with computer makers, is leaving the position and will be replaced by Nick Parker.

Twitter Cuts Off LinkedIn — Who's Next?  —  Throughout Twitter's infancy, the company had a loose philosophy toward its APIs.  In the quest for a user base, developers were welcome to do much anything they wanted in integrating with Twitter, which often mean creating spin-offs that muddied Twitter's original intended experience.

Cellphone Companies Will Share Your Location Data - Just Not With You  —  Cellphone companies hold onto your location information for years and routinely provide it to police and, in anonymized form, to outside companies.  As they note in their privacy policies, Verizon, Sprint, AT&T …

ITC defers ruling on Motorola's Xbox ban  —  The International Trade Commission's six-member deciding panel deferred judgment today on a patent dispute between Google's Motorola Mobility and Microsoft, pushing the possibility of a ban on the Xbox 360 out of likelihood this year.

MobileMe rides into the sunset by Sunday  —  The sun is setting on the MobileMe era.  By the time Sunday rolls around—on June 30 at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time to be precise—the cloud storage and syncing service that Apple debuted in 2008 will fade away.  Apple's iCloud service …

Now on Identity  —  As of July 1, I'm moving from Google's Android team to our Identity group, to work on OAuth, OpenID, and that sort of stuff.  Back to being a full-time Web guy, for a while anyhow.  —  Why?  —  Several reasons.  First, it was made increasingly obvious …

Tumblr Introduces New Ad Product: Pinned Posts  —  Tumblr introduced a new ad product Thursday — one that enables users to pin their posts to the top of their followers' dashboards for 24 hours, thereby giving their content more exposure.  —  This is the fourth ad product Tumblr has rolled out since the beginning of the year.

South Carolina passes bill against municipal broadband  —  The anti-municipal broadband bill now awaits the governor's signature.  —  State of South Carolina  —  South Carolina has become the latest state in the union to pass a state-level bill that effectively makes it difficult …