Google Fiber launches in Kansas City, promises 1000 Mbps up and down  —  Google Fiber has finally arrived in Kansas City, offering crazy-fast broadband speeds and a new television service on both sides of the Kansas / Missouri state line.  After hinting that it would be unveiled today, the company has made it official.

Come on Down, Mark Zuckerberg!  How to Read Facebook's First Earnings Report.  —  Okay, Mark.  Sheryl.  David.  You're up.  Have fun!  —  After a string of unpleasant tech earnings reports this week, Facebook gets its shot this afternoon.  The big picture is easy: To perform well …

Introducing the Recommendations Bar  —  Today we're launching the Recommendations Bar, a new social plug-in that helps people find articles based on what their friends like and share from your site.  —  As a person reads an article, a small pop-up surfaces at the bottom …

No API For You: Twitter Shuts Off “Find Friends” Feature For Instagram  —  Instagram has just announced 80 million users and a new app update; Noticeably missing in the update?  The “Find Your Friends” on Twitter feature, which allowed users to follow the same people they follow on Twitter on Instagram.

Meet the Man Engineering Facebook's Revenues  —  Gokul Rajaram is a patient man.  Which is fortunate, because the Facebook advertising product director has a lot of teaching to do.  —  Outsiders can't seem to wrap their heads around how Rajaram's technologies are going to generate profits for his employer.

3D imagery now available on iPad and iPhone  —  Today, we're happy to announce the availability of 3D imagery for Google Earth on the new iPad, iPad 2 and iPhone 4S.  —  A map must be comprehensive and accurate no matter where you are or what device you use.  We also believe maps can be useful in ways you might not have imagined.

The Mac App Store's future of irrelevance  —  Postbox's exit from the Mac App Store should sound very familiar to anyone who buys Mac software.  If you read between the lines a bit, I think the real story there is one we've seen a lot since June 1: they tolerated the App Store's lack …

Here Are The Zynga Insiders Who Cashed Out Just Before The Stock Crashed...  In April, Zynga conducted a “secondary stock offering” in which insiders dumped 43 million shares of stock at $12 a share, raking in about $516 million.  —  Yesterday, four months later, Zynga reported a horrible quarter, and the stock plunged to $3.

Twitter currently ‘experiencing issues,’ engineers working on a fix (update: service restore in progress)  —  Just as Google was able to restore service to Google Talk, Twitter has gone down for many users.  The company acknowledged the issue on its site status page, saying that engineers were working hard on a fix.

Google Handwrite lets us scribble our way through mobile searches (video)  —  Not eager to hunt and peck on a keyboard?  Google Handwrite is here: the search engine's mobile pages will now let you draw letters on the page to conduct searches with the writing method you learned before this whole computer fad took hold.

Bump launches Flock so you never have to ask “Can you send me that photo?” again  —  I'm a big fan of photosharing apps, and I mean fanatical.  I shared my thoughts a while back in a piece called “What are we going to do with all of these photos?” and popular app and company Bump has come up with an answer.

Sprint Q2 2012 Earnings: Net Loss Widens To $1.4B, 1.5M iPhones Sold  —  U.S. wireless carrier Sprint Nextel has just posted its results for Q2, and while it continues to prepare for a brighter future ahead, it reported widening losses.  The loss was $1.4 billion, with negative EPS of $.46 per share …

No, Microsoft's Entry-Level Surface Will Not Cost $1000  —  Microsoft's announcement last month that they're making their own tablet hardware — and directly competing with the very OEMs and partners that they license their software to — was huge in revealing a radical step forward for the company.

Samsung: universal search removal was ‘inadvertent’ on UK Galaxy S3  —  Exclusive Will be restoring soon  —  We didn't mean it, honest guv.  —  Samsung has confirmed to TechRadar that it accidentally removed Google's universal search function on its flagship handset.

Roku Becomes Pay TV's Streaming Box Of Choice, Raises $45 Million From News Corp, BSkyB, And Others  —  When Roku first entered the streaming video market, it was seen as a boon for cord cutters, who could watch streaming content from online distributors like Netflix and Hulu Plus on TV.

Facebook Is Said To Work With HTC On Mobile Phone For Mid-2013  —  Facebook Inc. (FB), owner of the largest social network, is working with HTC Corp. to build its own smartphone for release as soon as mid-2013, people with knowledge of the matter said.  —  The companies had intended to release …

Female-only VC firm Forerunner Ventures raises $40M fund  —  Amid sweeping accusations that Silicon Valley venture capital firms have failed to attract female talent, one women-only firm has been quietly raising millions for its first institutionally-backed fund.

Simplifying printing in Windows 8 … Of all the peripheral devices that you can connect to your Windows PC, printers are one of the most popular, and have been supported for the longest time.  In fact, Windows 1.0 (shipped in 1985) supported “a number of printers and plotters” and included a …

Facebook Widens ‘Bug Bounty’ Program To Combat Internal Breaches  —  Facebook (FB) Inc.'s computer-security team faced a quandary after getting an unexpected tip in May.  —  An outside researcher unearthed a weakness in the company's network that left internal communications vulnerable to eavesdropping.

EBay To Target Under-18 Set  —  EBay Inc. is exploring ways to harness an untapped class of buyers: Kids.  —  The Internet company may allow consumers who are under 18 years old to set up accounts and access the eBay.com website to buy vintage T-shirts, jewelry, school supplies or other products …

Sony Xperia ‘Mint’ leaked and reviewed: 4.3-inch (?) HD screen, 13MP camera, 1.5GHz S4 processor  —  While we've been fussing over the Xperia GX (aka the LT29i), it seems Sony's been working on something one integer higher.  Mobile-review has published a run-down of a device it claims is called the LT30p …

Entrepreneurs Have Control When Things Work, VCs Have Control When They Don't  —  I did an interview yesterday in Buffalo, NY where I was the past couple days for the launch of the Z80 incubator.  Grove Potter, the Business Editor for the Buffalo News, interviewed me for something like an hour.