Techmeme
August 2, 2012, 12:25 PM

Top News

Tim Kelly / Reuters:
Sharp to start shipping iPhone screens to Apple this month  —  (Reuters) - Japan's Sharp Corp. said it will start shipping screens destined for a new Apple iPhone that is widely expected to be released in October ahead of the pre-Christmas shopping season.  —  “Shipments will start in August …
Sharif Sakr / Engadget:
Apple seeks patent for Smart Cover with embedded secondary display  —  According to an application to the USPTO this morning, Apple believes it's possible to build a flexible display into an iPad cover in order to “greatly enhance” the functionality of the tablet itself.
Dalton Caldwell:
Timothy B. Lee / Ars Technica:
Bill would force patent trolls to pay defendants' legal bills  —  A new bill introduced in the House of Representatives attempts to deter frivolous patent litigation by forcing unsuccessful patent plaintiffs to cover defendants' legal costs.  Introduced by Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) …
Matt Warman / Telegraph:
BlackBerry: other manufacturers could license our new BB10 platform  —  Thorsten Heins, chief executive of Research in Motion, has told the Telegraph that manufacturers such as Sony or Samsung could licence the new BlackBerry operating system.  —  New RIM CEO Thorsten Heins introduced BlackBerry 10 in Florida
Emil Protalinski / CNET:
Facebook: 8.7 percent are fake users  —  Facebook estimates that 4.8 percent are duplicate accounts, 2.4 percent are user-misclassified accounts, and 1.5 percent are undesirable accounts.  —  Follow @emilprotalinski  —  Does she have a Facebook account?  —  Last week, during …
Jon Russell / The Next Web:
3-week old Jelly Bean hits 0.8% Android device adoption, as Ice Cream Sandwich reaches 15.9%  —  It's been just over a month since Google officially announced Jelly Bean (Android 4.1) and barely three weeks since the first rollout, but already the latest flavor of Android is installed …
Mike Isaac / AllThingsD:
With Three Key Exits, Facebook's Top Talent Departures Continue  —  The question on everyone's minds after Facebook's May IPO — How long till the brain drain starts?  —  Apparently, not that long.  Ethan Beard, director of platform partnerships at Facebook, announced on Wednesday via Facebook that he will soon leave the company.
Vlad Savov / The Verge:
Dead Trigger goes free on iOS, where piracy is apparently also a problem  —  Madfinger Games, the studio behind mobile first-person shooter Dead Trigger, earned a fair bit of notoriety recently by making its game free on Android in response to what it called an “unbelievably high” piracy rate.
More: Gamezebo
Ryan Mac / Forbes:
Professor Billionaire: The Stanford Academic Who Wrote Google Its First Check  —  David Cheriton wrote a $100,000 check to Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998.  Today that check is now worth more than $1 billion in Google shares.  (Martin Klimek / Getty Images)
Thanks:@gerryshih
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Google Acquires Wildfire, Will Now Sell Facebook And Twitter Marketing Services [Update: $350M Price]  —  Google has just bought social marketing software developer Wildfire, which lets brands serve marketing and ad campaigns on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube and LinkedIn.
More: ZDNet
Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:
Parking Payment Startup QuickPay Raises $3.5M, Powerset Founder Barney Pell Becomes CEO  —  QuickPay, a startup that helps drivers find and pay for parking, has brought on a new CEO — Barney Pell, the founder of semantic search company Powerset (which was acquired by Microsoft in 2008 for a reported $100 million).
Billy Gallagher / TechCrunch:
Kevin Rose Responds To Reddit AMA: Biggest Digg Regrets, Thoughts On New Digg, More [Video]  —  Last night, I wrote about Kevin Rose not responding to questions on his AMA on Reddit.  Rose was at a birthday party last night but has returned to Reddit today and has posted YouTube responses to five Redditers' questions.
Digits:
Past Apple-Twitter Investment Talks Were Tied to Product Integration  —  Apple Inc. floated the idea of investing in Twitter Inc. as the companies discussed integrating the social service into Apple's mobile operating system last year, according to people familiar with the discussions.
Stuart Miles / Pocket-lint:
4G LTE BlackBerry PlayBook announced, on sale in Canada 9 August  —  Research In Motion has confirmed that it will be launching a 4G version of the BlackBerry Playbook on the 9 August in Canada.  —  The new 4G LTE?  BlackBerry PlayBook?tablet will available in Canada on select carriers beginning August 9th …
Paul Sawers / The Next Web:
AT&T acquires NextWave Wireless for $25m up front, to boost mobile Internet capacity  —  US telecommunications powerhouse AT&T has announced that it has agreed to acquire NextWave Wireless, which holds key licenses in the Wireless Communication Services (WCS) and Advanced Wireless Service (AWS) bands.
Wall Street Journal:
Businesses Leap on Fiber Bandwidth Wagon  —  Google's Plan for a High-Speed Data Network in Kansas City Area Starts Gears Turning Among Region's Entrepreneurs  —  As Google Inc. starts to roll out its elaborate Fiber project in Kansas City, the area's entrepreneurs are plotting how to capitalize …
Jesse Hicks / The Verge:
High and low: what RIM's failure is doing to the people of Waterloo  —  That entrepreneurial spirit doesn't always come naturally to Canadians, says Iain Klugman, maybe half-jokingly.  “The American dream is to make it big, to build a big company, to become a rock star,” he says.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
FabKids Launches Subscription-Based Kids Clothing Service, Actress Christina Applegate Partners  —  San Francisco-based FabKids is the latest startup to try its hand at subscription-based e-commerce, taking on competitors like Wittlebee in the kids' apparel space, but with a slightly different twist.

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