Techmeme: Forget the Web, Start-Ups Get Real (Wall Street Journal)

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August 19, 2012, 8:25 PM

Top News

Eugene Wei / Remains of the Day:

The Facebook - Amazon comparison — Henry Blodget gives some healthy perspective on Facebook's stock price in Dear Facebook Employees Here's the Truth About Your Stock Price. Don't I wish that Business Insider had a social reader on Facebook so I could see how many Facebook employees had read the article.

Tweets: @pkafka and @infoarbitrage

Henry Blodget / Business Insider:

And Now Facebook's Bankers Are Divvying Up The $100 Million They Made Shorting Facebook's Stock — Boy it doesn't suck to be a banker. — Every time I forget how much it doesn't suck, I'm reminded of some other magical cash-printing tool I had forgotten about that allows Wall Street to coin money no matter what.

More: VentureBeat, Wall Street Journal and AllFacebook

Henry Blodget / Business Insider:

DEAR FACEBOOK EMPLOYEES: Here's The Truth About Your Stock Price

More: AllThingsD, MarketWatch, BGR, NBC Bay Area and Washington Post

Wall Street Journal:

Forget the Web, Start-Ups Get Real — Entrepreneurs Design Appliances, Guitars as Economics of Electronics Change — A long-shunned Silicon Valley technology sector - consumer-electronics start-ups - is showing some surprising signs of life. One San Francisco couple is making …

Tweets: @laureni

Amy Feldman / Reuters:

Crowdfunded businesses may owe taxes, too — (Reuters) - When Julie Uhrman, chief executive of gaming start-up Ouya Inc, went looking for funding to launch a new video gaming console, she turned to crowdfunding site Kickstarter Inc. — The goal: $950,000.

Tweets: @glennf

John Markoff / New York Times:

New Wave of Adept Robots Is Changing Global Industry — DRACHTEN, the Netherlands — At the Philips Electronics factory on the coast of China, hundreds of workers use their hands and specialized tools to assemble electric shavers. That is the old way. — At a sister factory …

More: VentureBeat. Tweets: @levie and @benioff

Brooke Crothers / CNET:

Microsoft to build more than 3 million Surface tablets, says IDC — Redmond is getting set to build millions of Surface tablets, an IDC analyst tells CNET. And the price? Only Microsoft knows but IDC has some thoughts on the subject. — Microsoft is expected to build a little …

More: VentureBeat, windows8update.com, The Next Web, Windows 8 Beta, T3 News, fiercemobileit.com and Don't Be Iffy. Tweets: @asymco

Dante D'Orazio / The Verge:

AT&T kills on-contract pricing for tablets, effective today — Subsidized pricing for tablets has never made much sense — saving $100 upfront in exchange for getting locked in to a very expensive data plan isn't what we'd call a good deal — and now AT&T is getting rid of the option for good.

More: TechCrunch, CNET and Engadget

Tim Stevens / Engadget:

Apple responds to iPhone text message spoofing, reminds us how secure iMessage is — If you're a frequent texter, and the iPhone is your weapon of choice, there's a good chance you've been a wee bit concerned since yesterday's report that the device is vulnerable to a certain SMS spoofing attack.

More: A Few Thoughts …, The Loop, Business Insider, DaniWeb IT Discussion …, Examiner, TechnoBuffalo, CNET, everythingiCafe, The Next Web, App Advice, PhoneArena, The Verge, iDownloadBlog.com, Redmond Pie, 9to5Mac, Softpedia News, Edible Apple and iClarified

Katie Fehrenbacher / GigaOM:

A rare look inside Facebook's Oregon data center [photos, video] — Follow along our tour as we take you on a rare journey through Facebook's first data center in Prineville Oregon, which houses its Open Compute servers. We'll bring you along the air flow route, and down into the secret server room:

Tweets: @omelnikov

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

Motorola's Patent Lawsuit Against Apple Goes After Siri, Location Reminders, Email Notifications & More — On Friday, Google's Motorola Mobility unit filed a patent-infringement lawsuit against Apple with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) in Washington.

More: Fortune, Ars Technica, VentureBeat, Examiner, Wall Street Journal and FOSS Patents

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

Google Files New Patent Lawsuit Against Apple, Seeks To Block iPhone, iPad & Mac Imports To U.S.

More: Marketing Land, eWeek, digitaltrends.com, VatorNews, Android News, Rumours …, Forbes and Gizmodo

Tracey Lien / The Verge:

OnLive's bankruptcy protection filing leaves former employees in the dark — “OnLive ... will continue to operate,” the statement read. “...there is no expected interruption of any OnLive services.” — It was a statement that read as an assurance: everything is fine, we're still here, it's business as usual.

More: TweakTown, Kotaku, TechCrunch, The Verge, T3 News, GamePolitics blogs, GamesIndustry International and VentureBeat

Joe Pollicino / Engadget:

Sony quietly outs Xperia SL: dual-core 1.7GHz Snapdragon S3, four hues — That oft-rumored successor to the Sony Xperia S smartphone, the Xperia SL? Sony's now officially listing the 4.3-inch GSM device as “coming soon” on its website, along with full details and specs.

More: PhoneArena, TechRadar.com, The Droid Guy, The Verge, Pocketnow, Phones Review, Eurodroid and TechnoBuffalo

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