Techmeme
June 18, 2012, 8:50 PM

Top News

Microsoft Corporation:
Microsoft Announces Surface: New Family of PCs for Windows  —  Microsoft-made hardware to be available starting with release of Windows 8 and Windows RT.  —  Today at an event in Hollywood, Microsoft unveiled Surface: PCs built to be the ultimate stage for Windows.
Microsoft:
Surface by Microsoft  —  From touch to type, office to living room, from your screen to the big screen, you can see more, share more, and do more with Surface.  Create, collaborate, and get stuff done with Office.  Explore your world with fast, fluid Windows 8 apps.
Matthew Panzarino / The Next Web:
Microsoft announces new 10.6″ Microsoft Surface tablets, running Windows 8 in RT and ‘Pro’ flavors  —  Microsoft held an event today at Milk Studios in Hollywood CA, where it announced its new line of Microsoft Surface tablets, devices that it calls a ‘whole new family of computing devices’.
Gil Hirsch / face.com:
Awesome News - Facebook Acquires Face.com  —  Facebook has acquired Face.com!  Our mission is and has always been to find new and exciting ways to make face recognition a fun, engaging part of people's lives, and incorporate remarkable technology into everyday consumer products.
Mg Siegler / TechCrunch:
The MacBook Pro Strikes Back (With Retina Power)  —  It was nearly two years ago that I said goodbye to my MacBook Pro.  I loved the device, but the new MacBook Air was that good.  My Pro — which was only six months old at the time! — seemed like total overkill for my computing needs.
Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
Benchmarks for New 13-Inch MacBook Pro Beat MacBook Air, Previous MacBook Pro by 10-15%  —  Last week, Primate Labs summarized its Geekbench 2 database results for Apple's new MacBook Air and 15-inch MacBook Pro models, but did not address the 13-inch MacBook Pro as not enough data had been collected at that time.
Basil Katz / Reuters:
Ex-AT&T employee admits leaking Apple, RIM info  —  (Reuters) - A former AT&T (T.N) employee admitted on Monday to sharing company secrets such as sales numbers for Apple Inc's (AAPL.O) iPhone to traders who illegally bought shares on the information.  —  Alnoor Ebrahim, 57 …
Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:
Sonos Raises $135 Million From KKR, Redpoint, Elevation  —  Wireless music systems maker Sonos has a round of primary and secondary financing of $135 million, a figure that is more than double what it has previously raised in total, according to sources close to the situation.
Matt Thompson / The Mozilla Blog:
Introducing Thimble: webmaking made easy  —  Today we are proud to launch a new Mozilla Webmaker app to the world.  Meet Thimble, the new tool that makes it incredibly simple for anyone to create and share their own web pages and other projects in minutes.  —  Thimble is webmaking made easy.
Goodfilms:
Netflix Quietly Smothers 3rd Party App Ecosystem  —  On Friday afternoon, Netflix published a blog post announcing a breaking change to their API, and dedicated a small paragraph to the fact that their API terms of use had been updated.  On a technical level, these changes will cripple …
Zachary Lutz / Engadget:
Nokia 808 PureView announced for US, available soon through Amazon at $699  —  Color us surprised — or whatever the antonym of that word may be — but Nokia has announced the availability of its 41-megapixel 808 PureView smartphone for the United States, which will be distributed through Amazon.
Sarah Frier / Bloomberg:
Facebook Readying Location-Based Mobile Ad Product  —  Facebook Inc. (FB), owner the world's largest social network, says it's working on a location-based mobile-advertising product that will allow companies to target users with real-time data showing their whereabouts.
Matt Stroud / The Verge:
Backpage.com and the prostitution law that could take down Twitter, YouTube, and Wikipedia  —  If you want to pay for sex in the United States — or offer sex services for a fee — and you'd rather not troll derelict city street corners late at night, chances are you're going to use backpage.com.
Jessica E. Vascellaro / Wall Street Journal:
App Developers Who Are Too Young to Drive  —  Paul Dunahoo went on a business trip to San Francisco last week, where he attended technical sessions at Apple Inc.'s developer conference, networked with other programmers and received feedback from Apple engineers on his six productivity apps.
Janko Roettgers / GigaOM:
Ikea TV goes on sale in Europe, comes with DVR add-on  —  Ikea's Uppleva TV is arriving in select European Ikea stores and the company just shared some more technical data about the device, revealing that it will also be able to record programming on separately sold flash memory.
Adam Lashinsky / Fortune:
Where LinkedIn is headed next  —  CEO Jeff Weiner discussed the volatility of the stock's first year, as well as the company's plans for future growth. … ADAM LASHINSKY: Okay, so extremely exciting time here a year after your IPO.  IPOs are all the rage again with Facebook's IPO.
Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:
Enterprise Perks Management Startup ChoicePass Acquired By Salesforce, Will Shut Down June 30  —  Enterprise perks management platform ChoicePass has been acquired by Salesforce, according to a blog post on the company's website.  As a result of the acquisition, the team will be joining …
More: ChoicePass
Andrew Keen / CNN:
Should we fear mind-reading future tech?  —  Editor's note: Andrew Keen is a British-American entrepreneur and professional skeptic.  He is the author of “The Cult of the Amateur,” and “Digital Vertigo.”  Follow @ajkeen on Twitter.  —  (CNN) — I know where to find the future.
More: Rough TypeThanks:@loic
Derrick Harris / GigaOM:
Ex-Facebookers launch MemSQL to make your database fly  —  With Facebook engineers, it appears the high-performance database apple doesn't far fall from the tree.  On Monday, former Facebookers Eric Frenkiel and Nikita Shamgunov (who also spent six years as a senior engineer on Microsoft SQL Server) …
More: DBMS 2
Stephen Shankland / CNET:
Unity 4 gives game coders animation, Flash, Linux support  —  Unity Technologies, maker of a widely used video-game engine, today announced that its fourth-generation product will introduce new animation technology and extend its support for Adobe Systems' Flash Player, Linux, and Microsoft's DirectX 11.

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Phil Nickinson / Android Central:
Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica: