Techmeme
April 19, 2012, 5:30 AM

Top News

Joshua Schnell / Macgasm:
Apple Now Giving Away Snow Leopard To MobileMe Customers For Free  —  Haven't upgraded to Lion or iCloud because you still haven't forked out money for Snow Leopard yet?  No worries, Apple has your back.  Apple is now giving away Snow Leopard to potential iCloud customers.
Rip Empson / TechCrunch:
With Help From Facebook Timeline, Viddy Becomes Top Free iPhone App  —  With the skyrocketing popularity and billion-dollar sale of Instagram, there's an ongoing race to apply Instagram's wildly successful photo sharing model to mobile video.  There are a number of startups vying to claim the …
More: CNET
Leslie Horn / Gizmodo:
AT&T Stores Are Almost Completely Out of Lumia 900 Stock  —  Both Nokia and Microsoft need the Lumia 900 to succeed.  Windows Phone is struggling.  So is the once-top handset maker.  But while they and AT&T has been pushing the Lumia 900 hard it looks like the carrier just doesn't have enough to go around.
Evelyn M. Rusli / DealBook:
Talks With Instagram Suggest a $104 Billion Valuation for Facebook  —  To win over Instagram, Facebook was forced to show its hand.  —  Facebook bought the photo-sharing service for $1 billion in early April, agreeing to pay roughly 30 percent in cash and 70 percent in stock …
Don Reisinger / CNET:
Microsoft aims to make iPad an underdog with Windows 8  —  Will Windows 8 tablets hurt iPad market share?  —  (Credit: Brooke Crothers)  —  Microsoft reportedly hopes to push Apple's worldwide iPad market share under 50 percent by the middle of 2013 with Windows 8-based tablets, Digitimes reports today, citing unnamed sources.
Florian Mueller / FOSS Patents:
Samsung asserts eight more patents against Apple in California, including two FRAND patents  —  There's further escalation between Apple and Samsung.  —  In February, Apple brought a new U.S. federal lawsuit against Samsung, the second of its kind in the Northern District of California.
Julie Bort / Business Insider:
These Guys Are Making Over $1,000 A Day On Windows Phone Game  —  Here's a great success story for Windows Phone 7.  —  A year ago, FourBros Studio launched a free Windows Phone game called Taptitude.  As of today, the company has pulled in over $100,000 of revenue on the game, with more than 300,000 users.
Vlad Savov / The Verge:
Digital ecosystems: an in-depth comparison  —  Putting the six biggest digital ecosystems to the test to find out who excels where There was once a time when the business of consumer technology was conducted with tangible goods.  You bought a thing, whether it was a Sony VCR or a Sega console …
Sergey Brin / Google+:
I believe the internet has been one of the greatest forces for good in the world over the past quarter century.  So when the Guardian requested that I speak to them over the past few months about internet freedom, I decided it was important to participate.  —  I think the article is a pretty …
Scott Lowe / The Verge:
Game consoles consumed nearly 70 percent of their energy idling in 2010, study finds  —  A new study from a group of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University estimates that that roughly 68 percent of all energy consumed by game consoles in 2010 was spent in idle mode, wasting 10.8 TWh of energy …
More: CNET and VG247
Laura Stampler / Business Insider:
Tumblr Will Start Selling Ad Units On May 2  —  In a 2010 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Tumblr CEO and founder David Karp said, “We're pretty opposed to advertising.  It really turns our stomachs.”  —  How times have changed.  Karp announced at Ad Age's Digital Conference that on May 2 …
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
RingCentral Launches New Mobile, Cloud-Based Phone System For Businesses  —  Cloud-based phone systems provider RingCentral is debuting a new version of its platform that allows businesses to setup, manage and use their phone system from mobile devices.  —  RingCentral, which is backed …
Ben Sisario / Media Decoder:
Sony Is Said to Gain Europe's Approval on $2.2 Billion EMI Bid  —  Sony has won European regulators' approval for its $2.2 billion takeover of EMI Music Publishing, which would create the largest catalog of songs in the world, according to a person briefed on the process.
Greg Sterling / Marketing Land:
Time's “Most Influential” List Snubs Zuckerberg, Googlers, Includes Tim Cook, Marc Andreesen  —  People love rankings, lists — and awards.  And publishers love them too because the sell issues and drive page views.  Lists and awards inspire jealousy and envy and they're often controversial accordingly.
Rachel King / Between the Lines Blog:
SkySQL raises $4 million for database product development  —  Summary: SkySQL shores up more VC funding as it prepares to shift towards becoming a fully-fledged database products and solutions provider.  —  MySQL solutions provider SkySQL has just completed another successful round of venture capital fundraising.
Alexis Madrigal / The Atlantic Online:
The Jig Is Up: Time to Get Past Facebook and Invent a New Future  —  After five years pursuing the social-local-mobile dream, we need a fresh paradigm for technology startups.  —  We're there.  The future that visionaries imagined in the late 1990s of phones in our pockets and high-speed Internet in the air: Well, we're living in it.

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