Open Links In New Tab
Mobile Archives Advertise Site News
Techmeme
December 21, 2012, 6:35 PM
Mediagazer memeorandum WeSmirch
Home River Leaderboards About Events Newsletter

Top News

Facebook Newsroom:
Introducing Poke for Mobile  —  Today we're announcing Poke, an iPhone app that makes it fun and easy to say hello to friends wherever you are.  The poke feature has been a part of Facebook since 2004.  Now we're excited to share a new poke experience for mobile.
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Facebook Launches Snapchat Competitor “Poke”, An iOS App For Sending Expiring Text, Photos, And Videos  —  Facebook has just announced its newest standalone app called “Poke” which lets people send photos, videos, pokes, or text Facebook messages to their friends that expire after a few seconds.
More: PetaPixel.  Thanks:@ryanlawler
Amir Efrati / Wall Street Journal:
Google Designing ‘X Phone’ to Rival Apple, Samsung  —  Engineers at Motorola are hard at work on a sophisticated handset, to be released next year, that parent Google Inc. hopes will provide more potent competition for devices like Apple Inc.'s iPhone, said people familiar with the matter.
Reuters:
Steve Jobs superyacht impounded over unpaid Starck designer bill  —  (Reuters) - A superyacht built for Apple Inc's late co-founder Steve Jobs has been impounded in Amsterdam because of a dispute over an unpaid bill to designer Philippe Starck, a lawyer said on Friday.
Nokia:
Nokia and RIM enter into new patent license agreement  —  RIM payments to Nokia settle all legal actions between the companies  —  Espoo, Finland - Nokia has entered into a new patent license agreement with Research In Motion.  The agreement will result in settlement of all existing patent …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Apple Reaches Highest-Ever U.S. Smartphone Sales Share At 53.3%; Android Consolidates In Europe  —  Apple's shares, as you may have seen, have been sliding in the market on the back of strong competition from Android device makers.  Today, some new figures on recent smartphone sales …
Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:
Apple lifts block on combo 30-pin+Lightning charging accessories  —  The POP station from Kickstarter aimed to combine Lightning and 30-pin connectors into a single charging device.  —  The Kickstarter campaign that was “shut down” by Apple for creating a charging station that had both Lightning …
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
Why the Instagram debacle just taught every tech company to be shadier than ever  —  Last night Instagram announced that it was retracting a controversial terms of service change that was widely and inaccurately interpreted to mean that the company would be selling user photos.
Nielsen Wire:
Nielsen Tops of 2012: Digital  —  Smartphone owners became the majority of mobile phone users for the first time this year, growing from 49 percent of mobile subscribers in Q1 2012, to 56 percent by Q3 2012.  Mobile app usage also continued to grow.  Among the top 10 mobile apps …
Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:
Google Poaches a Partner's Top Marketer: Samsung Exec Brian Wallace Goes to Motorola  —  Samsung has done a very good job selling its brand of Google's Android phones.  And apparently Google has paid attention: It is bringing over the guy who headed up Samsung's marketing to do the same job at its Motorola unit.
More: The Verge and Business Insider.  Tweets: @pkafka
Matt Brian / The Next Web:
Merry Christmas from Google: Employees get to choose from a free Chromebook, Motorola RAZR M or Nexus 7  —  Every year, just before the company closes for the festive period, Google likes to give its employees a little something for Christmas, just to say thank you for all their hard work.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Groupon Buys CommerceInterface To Improve How Vendors Sell On Groupon Goods  —  Groupon wants to be the king of local commerce, but with Groupon Goods it has a platform for online sales that compete with the likes of Amazon to sell goods from everyone everywhere.
Romain Dillet / TechCrunch:
Adobe Acquired Portfolio Service Behance For More Than $150 Million In Cash And Stock  —  Adobe announced yesterday that it had acquired New York-based company Behance.  With 1 million members, the startup developed a LinkedIn for artists, allowing users to showcase their visual work.
Reuters:
EU charges Samsung with abusing vital telecoms patent  —  (Reuters) - The European Commission charged Samsung Electronics on Friday with abusing its dominant position in seeking to bar rival Apple from using a patent deemed essential to mobile phone use.  —  The Commission sent a …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Zynga Confirms It Will Close Its Japan Operation At The End Of January As Consolidation Continues To Bite The Social Gaming Company  —  Social gaming giant Zynga has now confirmed that it will be closing down its Japan operation, as it continues to consolidate its operations and cut less profitable parts of its business.
Phil Muncaster / The Register:
Apple shifts iTunes to HTTPS, sidesteps China's censors  —  Great Firewall foiled ... for now  —  Apple has adopted HTTPS for searches and downloads on the version of iTunes used in China.  The move comes at a time when China's government prepares to step up regulation of online app stores and continues its crackdown on VPNs.
Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:
Dropbox Poaches Top Sales Execs From Salesforce, Apple and Google  —  Dropbox has been aggressively staffing up as the year comes to a close, with talent acquisitions of Audiogalaxy and Snapjoy, and hires of the creator of the programming language Python and the designer of the Facebook “Like” button.
DSLreports:
It's Clear Verizon Is Blocking Google Wallet Anti-Competitively - Google Wallet Delayed to Give Isis Development Time  —  Verizon has been trying to justify their blocking of Google Wallet on Verizon phones, insisting the app is blocked because Google Wallet uses the “secure element” on devices to store a user's Google ID.
Eli Dourado / Ars Technica:
Behind closed doors at the UN's attempted “takeover of the Internet”  —  Eli Dourado is a research fellow with the Technology Policy Program at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, a co-founder of WCITLeaks, and a member of the US delegation to the WCIT.  The views expressed here are his own.
More: The Verge
Megan Geuss / Ars Technica:
Extradition trial for Kim Dotcom?  Not until August 2013  —  On Thursday, a New Zealand court decided to reschedule the extradition hearing sought by the US for Kim Dotcom.  The hearing is now set to take place in August 2013, after being postponed once already.

Sponsor Posts

Google:
Try Gemini 3 Pro  —  Google's newest and most intelligent AI model that helps you bring any idea to life
Shopify:
Transform ML Experimentation with Tangle  —  Save months of compute time with Tangle, built by Shopify.  Try this open-source platform to simplify ML workflows, ensure reproducibility, and seamlessly share with collaborators.
Zoho:
Introducing Zoho Spend: A unified platform for the next gen finance teams.  —  Effective business spend management is a direct lever for profitability.  When organizations gain visibility into where money flows …
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.
Sponsor Techmeme

Featured Podcasts

Invest Like the Best:
 Gavin Baker - Nvidia v. Google, Scaling Laws, and the Economics of AI
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Uncapped with Jack Altman:
 Pat Grady & Alfred Lin from Sequoia
Conversations with people I admire about things I'm genuinely interested in.
Subscribe to Uncapped with Jack Altman.
Big Technology Podcast:
 AI Device Wars Heat Up, RIP Metaverse?, Netflix Acquires Warner Brothers
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Decoder with Nilay Patel:
 Square's product chief on the death of the penny and the future of money
A show from the Verge about big ideas - and other problems.
Subscribe to Decoder with Nilay Patel.
The Social Radars:
 Blake Scholl, Founder & CEO of Boom Supersonic
Come be a fly on the wall as Y Combinator's Jessica Livingston and Carolynn Levy talk to some of the most successful founders in Silicon Valley about how they did it.
Subscribe to The Social Radars.
Grit:
 The Pull to Build: Joubin Mirzadegan on Grit and Starting Roadrunner
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
Add your podcast here
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 6:35 PM ET, December 21, 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.

From Mediagazer

Tim Wu / New York Times:
WBD merging with either Netflix or Paramount should be challenged by US antitrust authorities and would be bad for US streaming market competition

Tyler Falk / Current:
The Public Media Bridge Fund awards $26M across 74 organizations that operate more than 180 public radio and TV stations

Reporters Without Borders:
At least 53 of the 67 journalists killed in the past 12 months were victims of war or criminal networks; 503 journalists are detained globally, 121 in China

More News

Earlier Picks

Bloomberg:
HTC Said to Plan Windows Tablets to Challenge Apple-Led Market
Mediagazer memeorandum WeSmirch
Home River Leaderboards About Events Newsletter