Techmeme: Ten million users is the new one million users (Chris Dixon)

August 3, 2012, 6:40 PM

Top News

Ina Fried / AllThingsD:

Apple Loses Bid to Keep Customer Survey Secret — The judge overseeing Apple's patent lawsuit against Samsung said Apple can't keep secret a marketing survey it took of its customers. — Apple argued that the survey's release would aid competitors as the data is not available elsewhere.

More: Network World, CNET, Macworld, CNET, Macgasm, The Next Web, BGR, ZDNet, CNET, SlashGear, Examiner, PhoneArena, 9to5Mac, VentureBeat, Pocketnow, SlashGear, Mashable!, The Verge, App Advice, everythingiCafe, Electronista, FOSS Patents, TechCrunch and MacRumors

Ina Fried / AllThingsD:

Top Apple Executive Saw Market for 7-Inch Tablet in 2011, Said Company Should Do One — Apple executive Eddy Cue sent an e-mail in January 2011 to CEO Tim Cook and others recommending that the company build its own 7-inch tablet. — “I believe there will be a 7-inch market and we should do one …

More: The Verge, The Next Web, GigaOM, 9to5Mac, MacRumors, VentureBeat, 9to5Mac, Engadget, Business Insider and Gotta Be Mobile. Tweets: @jonfortt

Ina Fried / AllThingsD:

Apple's Scott Forstall on How “Project Purple” Became the iPhone — Apple iOS head Scott Forstall testified on Friday that he had a really tough challenge as he tried in 2004 to assemble a team to build the iPhone, or “Project Purple” as it was known then. — Adam Tow / AllThingsD.com

More: AppleInsider, CNET, 9to5Mac, Gizmodo, CNET, Business Insider, The Next Web, TUAW and iDownloadBlog.com

Eric Slivka / MacRumors:

Phil Schiller on History of the iPhone, Advertising, and Market Research — Phil Schiller is currently on the witness stand in the trial of Apple versus Samsung, and Apple's marketing chief is offering a bit of insight into the history of the iPhone, making the argument that Apple revolutionized …

More: CNET, AllThingsD and 9to5Mac

Chris Dixon:

Ten million users is the new one million users — Entrepreneurs and investors have been enamored with consumer internet startups for the last few years. But there are signs this is ending. — Some observations: — Thousands of early-stage consumer web/mobile companies were started and funded in last 24 months.

More: TechCrunch and Business Insider. Tweets: @abrams, @shontelaylay and @cdixon

Thomas Gryta / Wall Street Journal:

AT&T Ending 2G Network by 2017 — AT&T Inc. is shutting down its second-generation, or 2G, wireless networks by 2017 as it continues to upgrade its systems to faster technology and better use its limited airwaves. — The telecom giant said about 12% of its contract wireless customers …

More: PC Magazine, The Next Web, VentureBeat, BGR, Ars Technica, The Verge, Engadget, FierceWireless, ZDNet, Gotta Be Mobile, Pocketnow and Slashdot

Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:

Electronic Arts Sues Zynga for Copyright Infringement Over The Ville — After loudly complaining that Zynga had ripped off one of its biggest hits, Electronic Arts is taking its rival to court. — Filing a copyright infringement lawsuit against Zynga, Electronic Arts charged today …

More: CNNMoney.com, The Register, The Next Web, Computerworld, Mashable!, Macworld, CNET, VentureBeat, The Next Web, Inside Social Games, Pulse2 Technology …, EA Games and Forbes

Chris Foresman / Ars Technica:

Mountain Lion having mysterious effect on battery life for some users — A large number of Mac users are reporting that installing OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) is causing a major drop in battery life on MacBook Pros and Airs. Those users have been posting about battery life problems …

More: digitaltrends.com, PC Magazine, AppleInsider, 9to5Mac, Business Insider, Gotta Be Mobile and Engadget

Brian X. Chen / NYT Bits:

Prepaid Cellphones Are Cheaper. Why Aren't They Popular? — Prepaid phone plans, where you pay the full price for a cellphone and then pay lower monthly rates without a contract, seem to offer what most budget-conscious people want. So why haven't they really caught on?

More: looking out from down under, iPhone, PhoneArena, brian s hall and parislemon

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

CBS Loves Apple TV, in Theory — CBS boss Les Moonves gets asked a lot about his willingness to do business with Apple. And his answer is always the same: “Sure! As long as it's on our terms.” — Yesterday's earnings call was no exception. Here's the full exchange between the CBS CEO …

More: MacRumors, iDownloadBlog.com, 9to5Mac, iPhone in Canada Blog and MacDailyNews. See also Mediagazer

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:

AT&T stores will start moving to iPad-based Point of Sales by early next year — Over the past couple of years, Apple has been taking steps to overhaul its retail operations and customer experience with the iPad. From iPads for employees equipped with RetailMe and Concierge software …

More: Computerworld, Macgasm, IntoMobile, PadGadget, CNET, iDownloadBlog.com, Gotta Be Mobile, PhoneArena, iLounge, The Next Web and The Pondering Primate

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

Revolving Door: Yahoo Departures Begin, Even as Mayer's Team Still TBD — After former interim CEO Ross Levinsohn departed Yahoo earlier this week, I noted that it was only a matter of time before more execs headed out the door with the changeover to new leader and former Googler Marissa Mayer.

More: Courthouse News Service, Betabeat, Pulse2 Technology …, Business Insider and VentureBeat. Tweets: @allansaro. See also Mediagazer

Rachel Dodes / Wall Street Journal:

Twitter Goes to the Movies — Hollywood is digging deep into new ways of using social media; the selling of ‘Ted’ — The teddy bear's first tweet, from an account called @WhatTedSaid set up by the Universal Pictures marketing department, was “Hello, Twitter. Kindly go f— yourself.”

More: Speakeasy and Marketing Pilgrim

Sharif Sakr / Engadget:

Logitech launches TV Cam HD for living room video chats: built-in Skype, 720p, $200 — If Cisco's ill-fated Umi video conferencing system had been more like this, would it have survived? Logitech is about to find out, one way or the other, once its TV Cam HD — recently spotted at the FCC — arrives in the US this month.

More: The Big Blog, WebProNews, Gizmodo, The Next Web and The Verge

Hyunjoo Jin / Reuters:

Samsung to unveil new Galaxy Note in late August — (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics is set to take the wraps off a sequel to its popular Galaxy Note smartphone at an event on August 29, about two weeks before the possible debut of Apple's new iPhone. — The two arch rivals are bracing …

Sponsor Posts

Channel 9:

Defrag Tools: WPT - Command Line — Andrew Richards, Chad Beeder, and Larry Larsen continue walking you through the Windows Performance Toolkit (WPT).

Cloud Foundry:

Static.com Adds Hadoop Support for Cloud Foundry — In this guest post, Jake Farrell, CTO for Static.com, explains how the major shift in the hosting industry towards platforms for high developer productivity …

Rackspace Blog:

Love, Magic, & APIs — I will confess, I am old enough to remember my GeoCities page. Don't hate. It was amazing, it was... this transformative moment in which I took real, actual information, and transformed it into something visible and memorable.

Hortonworks » Blog:

Hadoop, Hadoop, Hurrah! HDP for Windows is Now GA! — Today we are very excited to announce that Hortonworks Data Platform for Windows (HDP for Windows) is now generally available and ready to support the most demanding production workloads.

Unison's blog:

“Yammer sucks” — Not to be mean to Yammer, or anything — it's a very good tool for some use cases — but that's what a customer told me recently (and others feel the same way).

Sponsor Techmeme

Who's Hiring In Tech?

Google: Do cool things that matter.

Automattic: 17% down, 83% to go. WordPress.

CBSi: Have your people call our people.

@WalmartLabs: A thin line between work and play.

Disqus: Build something worth talking about.

FancyCorp: We are real fancy.

imo: Awesome People. Awesome Products.

Zoosk: Fall in love. With your job.

Facebook: Best place to build & make an impact.

Amazon: Work hard. Have fun. Make history.

Square: Come simplify the complex.

Twitter: Less characters; more fulfilling.

Add your company here

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 6:40 PM ET, August 3, 2012.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.