Techmeme
November 7, 2012, 9:15 PM

Top News

Michael Scherer / TIME:
Inside the Secret World of Data Crunchers Who Helped Obama Win  —  “The cave” at President Obama's Election headquarters in Chicago  —  In late spring, the backroom number crunchers who had powered Barack Obama's campaign to victory noticed that George Clooney had an almost gravitational tug on West Coast females ages 40 to 49.
Daniel Terdiman / CNET:
Obama's win a big vindication for Nate Silver, king of the quants  —  Despite some incredulous political pundits, the FiveThirtyEight statistician appears to have correctly predicted the winner in all 50 states in the presidential election.  —  In the end, big data won.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Exclusive: Microsoft Office for iPhone, iPad, and Android revealed  —  Office Mobile will arrive in early 2013  —  Microsoft's Office for iPad, iPhone, and Android is a reality.  Although Office Mobile has been rumored and reportedly spotted in the wild, Microsoft has remained persistently quiet about its plans for the product.
Mazen Rawashdeh / Twitter Engineering:
Bolstering our infrastructure  —  Last night, the world tuned in to Twitter to share the election results as U.S. voters chose a president and settled many other campaigns.  Throughout the day, people sent more than 31 million election-related Tweets (which contained certain key terms and relevant hashtags).
Mike Isaac / AllThingsD:
On Election Day 2012, Twitter Kills the Great White Fail Whale  —  In one pithy, three-word sentence, Twitter creative lead Doug Bowman summed up the microblogging service's election day perfectly:  —  “RIP Fail Whale.”  —  Indeed, all throughout Nov. 6, that cutesy, once-ubiquitous cartoon …
Reuters:
Foxconn's Gou says tough to cope with iPhone demand  —  (Reuters) - Taiwan's Foxconn Technology Group said on Wednesday the company's flagship Hon Hai unit is finding it difficult to cope with the massive demand for Apple Inc's iPhones.  —  “It's not easy to make the iPhones.
Jacqueline Seng / CNET:
MasterCard rolls out credit card with display and keypad  —  The next-generation 2-in-1 card features an embedded LCD display and touch-sensitive buttons for generating one-time passwords.  —  Next time you get a new card from your bank, don't be surprised if it has a keypad and an LCD on it.
Roger Cheng / CNET:
AT&T will spend $14B to pump up wireless, wireline network  —  The telecommunications giant is investing heavily in its infrastructure in a bid to spark accelerating growth.  —  AT&T today laid out a broad plan to upgrade both its wireline and wireless networks and keep its growth moving.
Susan Decker / Bloomberg:
Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:
Airbnb Partners With NYC.gov To Provide Free Housing For Hurricane Sandy Victims  —  Last week, Airbnb waived fees for users affected by Hurricane Sandy.  It also encouraged hosts with listings in affected areas to lower their prices and take in those without food, power, or housing.
Paul Sawers / The Next Web:
The rumour was true: UK Prime Minister and senior government figures have their own app  —  Remember those reports from last year, suggesting British Prime Minister David Cameron was to receive a personal iPad app, providing real-time access to key public data?
Timothy B. Lee / Ars Technica:
Judge denies Fox's request to stop Dish's commercial-skipping service  —  A federal judge refused to issue a preliminary injunction in a case pitting the Dish satellite network against the Fox media empire.  The dispute is over the legality of Dish's Hopper DVRs, especially its “AutoHop” feature.
Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:
Microsoft to fold in-memory database technology into SQL Server Next  —  Summary: Hekaton, Microsoft's coming in-memory database engine, will be built into the next version of SQL Server.  And SQL Server 2012 SP1 is now generally available.  —  Just a few months after launching SQL Server 2012 …
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Fortune:
Did Apple use $2 billion to bail out Sharp last quarter?  —  Explaining a curious discrepancy in Apple's projected and actual capital expenditures  —  FORTUNE — Sharp was in serious trouble last summer.  —  It had hemorrhaged 103 billion yen ($1.3 billion) in cash in the first half of 2012.
Victoria Barret / Forbes:
Payroll Tax Be Gone: Angel Investor Ron Conway Discusses Election Victory In San Francisco  —  “This is about jobs,” angel investor Ron Conway told me earlier today as he anxiously awaited the vote tally on the proposition he backed in San Francisco.  Conway might just be tech's most prolific early-stage investor.

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