Techmeme: Google Weighs Mobile-Patent Antitrust Settlement (Amir Efrati/Wall Street Journal)

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October 20, 2012, 1:25 AM

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9to5Mac:

Estimated prices on 13-inch Retina MacBook Pros: Starts around U$1,699 — Alongside the new mini/iPads, Mac Minis, and iMacs, Apple will reveal a 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display on Oct. 23. We have now received pricing information on the base model and the “best” model.

More: VentureBeat, Ubergizmo, CNET, Mashable!, Redmond Pie, LAPTOP Magazine, Business Insider, Los Angeles Times, Apple Bitch, MacNN, iClarified, MacRumors and Edible Apple

Eric Slivka / MacRumors:

New Photos of 13-Inch Retina MacBook Pro Show Battery Layout, Ports, and More — Earlier this week, we pointed to a forum thread [Google translation] at Chinese site WeiPhone.com sharing a pair of photos of what was said to be the display assembly from Apple's upcoming 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro.

More: CNET, AppleInsider, 9to5Mac and Gizmodo. Tweets: @panzer

Alex Williams / TechCrunch:

Jeff Bezos: The Smart People Change Their Minds — Amazon.com Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos stopped by the 37signals office yesterday and offered some wise thoughts about strategy. His views are especially refreshing in a time when people who change their views often get portrayed as weak and lacking confidence.

More: Signal vs. Noise, GeekWire, Business Insider, Forbes and Daring Fireball. Tweets: @nytimesbits

Sean Ludwig / VentureBeat:

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff: Windows 8 is ‘the end of Windows’ — NEW YORK CITY — Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, always game for a little tech trash talk, said that Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system would be “the end of Windows” and that “Windows is irrelevant.”

More: Computerworld, Associated Press, Neowin, The Register, Business Insider and blogs.salesforce.com. Thanks:@seanludwig

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Facebook Officially Begins Shutting Down “Questions” Product, May Refocus On Search — It was no Quora. Today Facebook finally confirmed it is retiring Questions, which originally launched in July 2010. The Questions Dashboard and option to share a poll to the news feed are being removed.

More: AllFacebook, Inside Facebook, SlashGear, AllThingsD, WebProNews and CNET

John Walker / Rock, Paper, Shotgun:

Money Troubles: What Happens When Kickstarters Fail? — Since Kickstarting games became a thing, everyone has soothsayed the possibility of how it could go wrong. There are two significant ways, really. A high profile game comes out, and is a big pile of doo-doo. Or a high profile game never comes out at all.

More: BBC, Ars Technica, Kotaku, VG247, PC Gamer, The Verge, MCV: Home Stream and Forbes

Amir Efrati / Wall Street Journal:

Google Weighs Mobile-Patent Antitrust Settlement — Google Inc. is weighing whether to settle a potential claim by U.S. authorities that it violated antitrust law in the way it handles mobile-device patents, according to a person familiar with the matter. — At issue, according …

More: AppleInsider, SlashGear, CNET, Reuters, PhoneArena, Corporate Intelligence, Digits and MarketBeat

Amol Sharma / Wall Street Journal:

India, A New Facebook Testing Ground — BANGALORE—India is becoming a critical testing ground for Facebook as it strives to cash in on growth in emerging markets and better target mobile-phone users—two increasingly pressing goals for the social-networking firm.

More: India Real Time

Kim-Mai Cutler / TechCrunch:

Waze Is The Only App To Gain Meaningful Marketshare After Apple Maps Fail, Onavo Finds — The poor reception for Apple's new maps app temporarily boosted usage for other map applications. But it didn't actually increase longer-term marketshare for any of them — except for one.

Mat Honan / Wired:

Why Windows Just Can't Win — Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer talks about the future of Windows at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2011. Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com — Microsoft is about to have its biggest product release in nearly 20 years. Before the end of the month, Windows 8 …

More: Business Insider, Gizmodo, LAPTOP Magazine, Techland, Slashdot and Pocket-lint

Fruzsina Eördögh / ReadWriteWeb:

YouTube Networks: An Inside Look At Their Unsavory Business Practices — Ray William Johnson, the world's most successful YouTuber, announced he is leaving his signed network Maker Studios earlier this week via video. The news sent the YouTube-o-sphere abuzz with gossip as both Johnson …

More: New Media Blog

Mike Rogoway / Oregonian:

Apple starts work on massive Prineville data center — Apple has begun work on the first, $68 million phase of its new Prineville data center, clearing and flattening land for the one of two, 338,000 square-foot buildings atop the bluff that overlooks town. — Each building is more than twice the size of a typical Costco store.

Sam Oliver / AppleInsider:

Apple's expansions credited with boosting US office development

More: Bloomberg

Jessica E. Lessin / Wall Street Journal:

Thiel in Talks to Invest in Airbnb at $2.5B Valuation — Online room rental service Airbnb Inc. is in discussions with venture capitalist Peter Thiel about a roughly $150 million investment that would value the company at around $2.5 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.

More: Reuters, VentureBeat, CNET, Business Insider, Quartz, Forbes, CNET and Quartz

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

GitHub hit by DDoS attack second day in a row — GitHub is having one hell of a week, with four outages in five weekdays. The social coding site is currently being hit by a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, the second one in two days. The site's engineers are working on fixing the issue …

More: CNET, The H Security and Softpedia News. Tweets: @github

Ina Fried / AllThingsD:

Facebook: We Weren't Moving Fast Enough in Mobile — One of Facebook's mottos is “Move Fast.” Indeed, there are posters extolling that mind-set throughout the company's offices. — But when it comes to mobile, even Facebook wasn't moving fast enough. That was the message on Friday from Facebook Mobile VP Vaughan Smith.

More: Business Insider, AllFacebook and TechCrunch

Justin Rubio / The Verge:

TSA switching to faster, less-invasive X-ray body scanners in larger airports — The TSA has started removing the controversial X-ray body scanners, known as backscatters, from larger airports in the United States in exchange for faster millimeter-wave scanners.

More: ProPublica, Mashable!, Thoughts of A Technologist, Gizmodo and Slashdot

Pamela Parker / Search Engine Land:

Google Gives Update On Shopping Going Full Paid Inclusion, Hints At AdWords' Future On Q3 Call — Now that Google's new pay-for-play Shopping is in full swing (the changeover took place October 17), the company used its earnings call to share thoughts on its success thus far, and its future vision for the product.

Alex Wilhelm / The Next Web:

Microsoft announces Office 365 University, bringing subscription-based productivity apps to students — This morning Microsoft announced Office 365 University. Due in the first quarter of calendar 2013, the product offering is the Office 365 suite, tweaked for students, and priced so that anyone heading into school can afford it.

More: VentureBeat, The Microsoft Office Blog, ITProPortal, TechCrunch and Engadget

Will Oremus / Slate:

Minnesota bans Coursera: State takes bold stand against free education — Honorable mentions go to New York City's Taxi and Limousine Commission for driving out Uber's online taxi-hailing service and to automobile dealers' groups in four states for trying to have Tesla dealerships declared illegal.

More: The Loop, The Verge, GamePolitics blogs, Ars Technica, TechCrunch, PandoDaily, GigaOM, WebProNews, bizjournals, Forbes, Examiner, The Register, VentureBeat, Techdirt, Geekosystem, Popehat and Slashdot. See also Mediagazer

Matthew Panzarino / The Next Web:

Google launches Campaigns, a progress bar on YouTube for nonprofits with video view goals — Google has launched a new tool for its YouTube Nonprofit Program users called Campaigns. This acts as a progress bar that takes on the role of the ‘thermometer’ that nonprofits raising money have used …

More: SlashGear, ZDNet, TechCrunch, YouTube Blog, Mashable!, The Verge and WebProNews

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