Techmeme: Many health apps are based on flimsy science at best, and they often do not work (Rochelle Sharpe/Washington Post)

November 18, 2012, 11:35 AM

Top News

David Streitfeld / New York Times:

As Boom Lures App Creators, Tough Part Is Making a Living — ROSEDALE, Md. — Shawn and Stephanie Grimes spent much of the last two years pursuing their dream of doing research and development for Apple, the world's most successful corporation. — But they did not actually have jobs at Apple.

More: Business Insider, NextBigWhat and iPhone in Canada Blog

Tweets: @hunterwalk and @bxchen

Ben Gilbert / Engadget:

Nintendo Wii U review — Nintendo's new console is an anomaly in the game console ecosystem, but not for Nintendo. The company that — in just the last decade — popularized stylus-powered gaming, microphone-powered gaming and motion-based gaming, is once again pushing game control inputs forward.

More: CNET, The Verge, TechCrunch, Kotaku, Gizmodo, Joystiq, ABCNEWS, VentureBeat, TIME, Polygon, Ars Technica, Polygon, Softpedia News, GamesIndustry International, MTV Multiplayer, Mashable! and destructoid

Tweets: @justinmcelroy, @geoffkeighley, @tcarmody and @aegies

Wall Street Journal:

Nintendo's Wii U Puts Hardware Strategy to the Test — Like its famous videogame character Super Mario in his latest game, Nintendo Co. is trying to outrun its enemies. — The company, coming off of its first annual loss in more than three decades, will start selling the Wii U in U.S. stores Sunday …

More: Los Angeles Times, Rough Type, Ars Technica, AllThingsD, Washington Post, BGR, PC World and Digits. Thanks:@mattlynley

Alexis Madrigal / The Atlantic Online:

When the Nerds Go Marching In — How a dream team of engineers from Facebook, Twitter, and Google built the software that drove Barack Obama's reelection — Three members of Obama's tech team, from left to right: Harper Reed, Dylan Richard, and Mark Trammell (Photo by Daniel X. O'Neil).

More: New York Times

Rochelle Sharpe / Washington Post:

Many health apps are based on flimsy science at best, and they often do not work — When the iTunes store began offering apps that used cellphone light to cure acne, federal investigators knew that hucksters had found a new spot in cyberspace. — “We realized this could be a medium for mischief …

Mat Honan / Wired:

Kill the Password: Why a String of Characters Can't Protect Us Anymore — You have a secret that can ruin your life. — It's not a well-kept secret, either. Just a simple string of characters—maybe six of them if you're careless, 16 if you're cautious—that can reveal everything about you.

More: digitaltrends.com, Quartz, BuzzFeed and The Verge

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

New York Techie Chris Dixon in Talks to Be Next Partner at Andreessen Horowitz — According to sources, well-known New York techie Chris Dixon is in the final stages of discussions to become a partner at the high-profile Silicon Valley venture firm Andreessen Horowitz.

Tweets: @mathewi, @semil and @mediaredef

Larry Downes / CNET:

Russia demands broad UN role in Net governance, leak reveals — commentary Leaked document from upcoming treaty negotiations reveals Russia wants transfer of authority over Net to national governments. UN's increasingly shrill denials that treaty has anything to do with taking over Net are ringing ever more hollow.

More: TheDomains.com, The ITU Blog, thenewamerican.com and NEWS.com.au

Tweets: @opiapr and @carlesdijous

Mike Masnick / Techdirt:

That Was Fast: Hollywood Already Browbeat The Republicans Into Retracting Report On Copyright Reform — So, late Friday, we reported on how the Republican Study Committee (the conservative caucus of House Republicans) had put out a surprisingly awesome report about copyright reform.

More: Techdirt, TorrentFreak, The Volokh Conspiracy and Joho the Blog. Tweets: @digiphile. See also Mediagazer

Brendan Sinclair / GamesIndustry International:

Xbox Live Turns 10: Reflecting On An Online Revolution — We chat with members of the original Xbox team and Bungie in this special look back at the origins of a service that forever changed console gaming — Ten years ago today, Microsoft officially launched Xbox Live.

More: Xbox Live's Major Nelson, The Next Web, The Escapist, Bungie.net, Kotaku, MCV: Home Stream, TechSpot, WebProNews, Polygon, Softpedia News, Gizmodo and Engadget

New York Post:

JFK worker busted in $1.9M iPad mini heist — He could star in “Dumbfellas.” — An airport worker has been accused of being the less-than-master-mind behind the theft of $1.9 million in iPad minis from JFK Airport, court papers revealed yesterday. — Federal agents were able …

More: Fortune, AllThingsD, PC Magazine, Examiner, PhoneArena, CNET, 9to5Mac, iClarified and Gothamist

Matthew Panzarino / The Next Web:

Twitter and developers, a love story — To say that Twitter and third-party developers have had an ambivalent relationship over the last couple of years is a massive understatement. Twitter has been undergoing a deep transformation of its business to one that makes sustainable sense as a public company.

More: Signal vs. Noise, Daring Fireball, Forbes, Marco.org, VentureBeat and BuzzFeed. See also Mediagazer

Sponsor Posts

Microsoft BizSpark:

Featured Startup - FormVerse — If there was one tool not made for effective work, it would have to be email. If you take silos of information, and a chronological effect, where old or new is piled on top of each other …

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 11:35 AM ET, November 18, 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.