Techmeme: The App Store: Good Deeds, Poor Communication (Jean-Louis Gassée/Monday Note)

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April 22, 2013, 12:00 AM

Top News

Matt Rosoff / CITEworld:

Microsoft's Surface strategy is doing what it was supposed to do — Yesterday Microsoft reported flat Windows revenue from the year before, despite an unprecedented drop in PC sales — IDC put the drop at 14%, and outgoing Microsoft CFO Peter Klein suggested during the company's earnings call …

More: Guardian, Forbes, BGR, ParisLemon, Xconomy, ExtremeTech and SiliconANGLE

Cyrus Farivar / Ars Technica:

Boston police chief: facial recognition tech didn't help find bombing suspects — While the whole country is relieved that this past week's Boston Marathon bombing ordeal and subsequent lockdown of the city is finally over, Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis told the Washington Post …

More: Felix Salmon, IPVM, Washington Post, CNET, AllThingsD, The Week Magazine, Tom Simonite, Businessweek, Mercury News and Boston Globe. Tweets: @nycjim. See also Mediagazer

Josh Ong / The Next Web:

Facebook Home passes 500,000 installations on Google Play one week after launch — Facebook's new Home Android launcher has passed the 500,000 download mark on the Google Play store after a little over a week in the wild, though it continues to accumulate mostly negative reviews and has sunk to an average rating of 2.2.

More: TechCrunch, The Verge, PhoneArena and The Droid Guy. Tweets: @benedictevans

Wall Street Journal:

The Dark Side of the Digital Revolution — Google's Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, fresh from a visit to North Korea in January, on why the Internet is far from an unalloyed good to the citizens of dictatorships around the world. — How do you explain to people that they are a YouTube sensation …

More: Guardian and Guardian. Tweets: @garyrosenwsj and @ericschmidt

Reuters:

Apple's dimming luster roils suppliers, investors — (Reuters) - Apple Inc marketing chief Phil Schiller let slip during last August's courtroom battle with Samsung that when setting forecasts for new iPhones, the inside joke was that people should assume sales would equal all previous versions combined.

More: Business Insider

Alistair Barr / Reuters:

Exclusive: EBay recruits users in push against sales tax legislation — (Reuters) - EBay Inc Chief Executive John Donahoe began emailing millions of users of the company's online marketplace on Sunday in an unprecedented lobbying effort to change looming Federal sales tax legislation.

More: Hillicon Valley, CNET, Ars Technica, The Verge, Wall Street Journal and Wall Street Journal

Jean-Louis Gassée / Monday Note:

The App Store: Good Deeds, Poor Communication — Apple does the right thing when striving to keep its App Store free from promotional trickery - but fails to shed light on the process and, as a result, damages its reputation. — Earlier this month, the Apple App Store removed the popular AppGratis application from its shelves.

More: Patently Apple. Tweets: @gassee

Chris Morris / GamesIndustry International:

Nintendo: Our digital sales are soaring — Reggie Fils-Aime tells us that Fire Emblem alone sold around 80,000 units digitally; also, the pace of Wii U releases will increase “dramatically” — Last August, Nintendo began to more fully embrace digital distribution as a way to get games in people's hands …

More: Engadget, T3 News, The Verge, Kotaku, BGR and Ubergizmo

Amy Chozick / New York Times:

Comedy Central to Host Comedy Festival on Twitter — Next week, Comedy Central will host a five-day comedy festival that includes a lineup of legends like Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner alongside popular young comics like Amy Schumer and the director Paul Feig. — But there will be no smoky comedy clubs.

More: CNET, The Next Web, The Verge and The Inquisitr

Marc Rogers / The Official Lookout Blog:

The Bearer of BadNews — Lookout has discovered BadNews, a new malware family, in 32 apps across four different developer accounts in Google Play. According to Google Play statistics, the combined affected applications have been downloaded between 2,000,000 - 9,000,000 times.

More: Ars Technica, Computerworld, TechSpot, T3 News, PC Magazine, AllThingsD, TechCrunch, Gizmodo, TECH.BLORGE.com, Softpedia News, PhoneArena, BBC, GamePolitics blogs, Help Net Security, AndroidGuys, SlashGear and Inquirer. Tweets: @marcwrogers

T.C. Sottek / The Verge:

Several CBS Twitter accounts hijacked by Syrian conflict propagandists (update) — CBS has confirmed on Twitter that several of its accounts were compromised earlier today, including those for 60 Minutes, 48 Hours, and a local Denver affiliate. While the perpetrator of the hijack is unknown …

More: AllThingsD, TechCrunch, Hollywood Reporter, Computerworld, VentureBeat, Techie Buzz, The Slanted, Social Zoo, Boston Globe, TheCelebrityCafe.com, The Inquisitr, CNET, Reuters, Deadline.com and Gizmodo

Tweets: @cbsmatt and @knowledgeisdeep

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