Techmeme
February 15, 2012, 12:30 PM

Top News

Nick Wingfield / Bits:
Apple Chief Unveils a New Product: Himself  —  When he was alive, Steven P. Jobs, Apple's former chief executive, treated investors as if they were biohazards, rarely deigning to meet with them.  The disdain was not mutual, as an Apple stock chart for the last ten years shows.
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
iOS apps and the address book: who has your data, and how they're getting it  —  Over the course of the past week, a firestorm has erupted in the world of iOS apps, thanks to the discovery that Path was uploading data from your iPhone's address book without asking for explicit permission.
Matt Brian / The Next Web:
Congress sends letter to Apple questioning the Path debacle, developer data access  —  Having been the subject of questions regarding its collection of user locations in the past, Apple has been sent a letter over concerns that developers may be accessing and storing user data on its products.
Reuters:
Exclusive: Proview says any ban of iPad exports hard to impose  —  (Reuters) - A Chinese technology firm seeking to ban all shipments of Apple's popular iPad tablet into and out of the country has been told that China's customs authorities are unlikely to intervene in the trademark battle.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Clear: Why This Simple To Do List App Has Everyone Talking  —  Clear, the heavily-anticipated touch-based to-do list app, is launching in the iTunes App Store tonight.  And by heavily anticipated, I mean this app was getting tech blog coverage based on demos, previews and teaser videos.
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Exclusive: HTC rumored to be working on a streaming music service  —  HTC Corp., one of the earliest champions of Android-based smartphones seems to have fallen on hard times, thanks to growing power of Samsung and Apple.  But the Taiwanese phone maker isn't ready to call it quits …
Kunur Patel / AdAge:
Apple Slashes iAd Pricing Again as Mobile Ad Share Declines  —  Moves Are Reaction to Competition From Google and Realities of Mobile-Ad Market  —  Apple is once again slashing the minimum amount it charges advertisers to run a campaign on its iAd mobile ad system and boosting the amount …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Gartner: Apple's iPhone Stole The Smartphone Show In Q4, 2011  —  We've seen handset makers like HTC, LG and Nokia all warning of declines in smartphone sales.  But if there is a slowdown affecting some, it's not because people are not buying smartphones; it's because they're all buying iPhones.
Seth Weintraub / 9to5Mac:
Siri leaks her own upcoming ability to speak Japanese  —  Siri is many things, but it seems she is not a good secret keeper.  A few tipsters reached out and told us that Siri now speaks Japanese.  Rumors earlier this month said Apple's AI speech recognition interface would gain Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, and possibly Russian.
Wall Street Journal:
Apple's Size Clouds Market  —  To Get a Picture of Corporate Health, Analysts Cut Tech Giant Out of the Frame  —  In analyzing U.S. corporate earnings and stock-market trends, apples-to-apples comparisons may now require tossing out the Apple.  —  Apple Inc.'s success selling consumer gadgets …
More: 9to5Mac
John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
Walter Isaacson's ‘Steve Jobs’  —  What is Apple at heart: a software company, or hardware company?  —  This is a perennial question.  The truth, of course, is that Apple is neither.  Apple is an experience company.  That they create both hardware and software is part of creating the entire product experience.
Jon Mitchell / ReadWriteWeb:
Google+ For iPhone Gets Instant Photo & Video Uploads  —  Google has updated the Google+ iOS app today, adding a key mobile feature, which was previously only available to Android users.  Instant Upload, once enabled, automatically sends all photos and videos taken from the Google+ app to a private Google+ album.
More: eWeek and Anton Lopyrev
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Kindle Touch breakthrough: Startup debuts handwriting recognition in puzzle book  —  Puzzle technology startup Puzzazz is giving Amazon's Kindle Touch a capability that even Amazon didn't envision — letting users input numbers and letters by writing them naturally with a finger on the screen …
Jesse Hamilton / Bloomberg:
AT&T Must Let Beastie Boy Vote on Net Neutrality, SEC Says  —  Feb. 14 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has told AT&T Inc. and other telecommunications companies they must include a resolution supporting wireless net-neutrality in annual shareholder votes.
Ryan Kim / GigaOM:
Chirpify turns Twitter into a payment and commerce platform  —  Twitter has become a high-powered news, information and interest network but it hasn't really flexed its potential as a commerce platform.  But a new Portland, Ore. start-up called Chirpify is looking to leverage …
John Paul Titlow / ReadWriteWeb:
How Developers Are Shaping the Future of Music  —  That the music industry has radically changed in the last decade is a serious understatement.  Technology has altered everything from the creation of music to its distribution, upending retailers, studios and business models across the industry.
More: GigaOM
Timothy B. Lee / Ars Technica:
Copyright enforcement and the Internet: we just haven't tried hard enough?  —  Kaleidescape, one of the many examples of innovative products squelched by copyright restrictions  —  On Tuesday, Mother Jones blogger Kevin Drum suggested that we don't have effective copyright enforcement …

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning  —  SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds.  Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Cape:
Most carriers track everything.  Cape doesn't.  —  Unlimited talk, text & data, 24-hr metadata deletion, network ID rotation, SIM-attack defense, and more.  Switch today and get 29% off for life.
Zoho:
Do you need a Zoho Partner?  Here's why working with one can benefit you.  —  Zoho offers over 60 applications, each one built for a unique use case.  From sales and marketing to finance, HR, and customer support …
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:
Leopold Blows Up, OpenAI Drastically Cuts Prices, Microsoft's Best Day
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.
Hard Fork:
Open Model Wars + Claire Stapleton's Dishy Google Memoir + Substack's Slop Fight
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
Great Chat:
Tech's short-term era
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Access:
Meet the most AI-pilled CEO on Earth
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
The Upstarts Podcast:
Basis's Matt Harpe: Why AI Won't Replace Accountants — It'll Make Them Richer
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 12:30 PM ET, February 15, 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.

More News

Eric Eldon / TechCrunch:

Earlier Picks

Tim Conneally / BetaNews: