Techmeme
August 16, 2012, 7:05 PM

Top News

Matt Jarzemsky / Wall Street Journal:
Facebook Shares Fall to New Lows as Lockup Ends  —  Facebook Inc. shares sank 6.3% to a record low on Thursday, falling below $20 a share on a day when some early investors were allowed to unload their stakes, adding further pressure on the beaten-down stock.
Julianne Pepitone / CNNMoney.com:
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
Square Debuts Monthly Pricing Option For Small Businesses With Zero Swiping Fees  —  On the heels of announcing a mega-deal with Starbucks, mobile payments processing company Square is announcing another piece of key news—specialized, lower pricing per swipe for small businesses.
Matt Brian / The Next Web:
Why Apple really bought AuthenTec: It wanted “new technology” for upcoming products, and quickly  —  On July 27, seemingly out of nowhere, security company AuthenTec announced in a regulatory filing that it had agreed to a $356 million acquisition offer from Apple, making it one of the Apple's biggest mergers in its 36 year history.
Matthew Panzarino / The Next Web:
Apple says Retail Stores still hiring, recent staffing changes were a ‘mistake’, are being reversed  —  Apple says that recent reports about Retail Store employee hours being cut and hiring events being halted were misleading.  Still, it says that some staffing changes were made, but that they were a mistake.
Jim Dalrymple / The Loop:
Apple boss tries to gut retail operation  —  One of the smartest decisions that Apple made over the last decade was to open retail stores worldwide, giving users a chance to get some hands on time with its products.  One of the worst decisions came recently when the new vice president …
Jenna Wortham / NYT Bits:
Braintree, a Payments Company, Buys Venmo for $26.2 Million  —  The mobile payments war continues to escalate.  —  Braintree, a payments company that supplies technology to process credit card transactions on a mobile phone, said it purchased Venmo, a start-up that lets people send and receive money to their friends.
Ina Fried / AllThingsD:
Yes, We Need All These Witnesses, and No, I'm Not Smoking Crack  —  Already frustrated with the amount of paperwork in the Apple vs. Samsung case, Judge Lucy Koh boiled over with frustration on Thursday after lawyers for the sides filed a new round of objections over witness testimony.
Phil Nickinson / Android Central:
Google Play gift cards are real - and here's what they look like  —  We've already seen the Google Play Store app getting prepped for gift cards — and now we've scored the cards themselves.  (Or, at least, a look at the outer wrapping.)  We've been slipped a few pics of $10 and $25 gift cards …
Artem Russakovskii / Android Police:
Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:
Three years later, deleting your photos on Facebook now actually works  —  It has been more than three years since Ars first started covering Facebook's inability to remove “deleted” photos from its servers, but this particular saga appears to be coming to an end.
Michael Arrington / Uncrunched:
Why I Changed My Mind On Klout (And Invested)  —  Klout has been one of my go to punchlines for some time now.  For example - in May I wrote a post titled “My Detailed Thoughts On Klout” that contained a single word in the post itself: “Why?”  —  The problem I had with Klout …
Ellis Hamburger / The Verge:
Instagram 3.0 bets on location with Photo Map, adds infinite scrolling  —  Looking forward, Systrom envisions an Instagram that instantly pipes photos into one location-tagged stream for concertgoers, or one stream of photos tagged in front of the Eiffel Tower.  “All sorts of cool things hapen once people use geodata,” he said.
Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:
Diaspora's Next Act: Social Remixing Site Makr.io  —  If you were to come across a group of people sitting in a room together, all with their own laptops out, sending each other jokes online, you might think that was a little weird, right?  —  “Antisocial” is one word that comes to mind.
More: The Verge and Betabeat.  Tweets: @kessler and @andythegiant
Jeff John Roberts / GigaOM:
‘Friends’ can share your Facebook profile with the government, court rules  —  A federal judge has ruled that investigators can go through your Facebook profile if one of your friends gives them permission to do so.  The decision, which is part of a New York City racketeering trial …
More: Engadget.  Thanks:@gnagesh
Jack Purcher / Patently Apple:
Boom!  Apple Invents Next-Gen Virtual Drawing App to Take on Adobe's Photoshop & Illustrator  —  In June, Macworld reported that Apple CEO Tim Cook confirmed in an email to an Apple customer that the company is working on “something really great” to address the professional market.
Zack Whittaker / CNET:
WikiLeaks' Julian Assange granted asylum in Ecuador  —  Julian Assange has been granted political asylum by the Ecuadorian government after taking refuge in its London embassy in June.  —  LONDON — Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been granted political asylum by the Ecuadorian government …

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.
Cloudflare:
Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference  —  Stop preparing for agents.  Start running them.  100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.
Zoho:
The 90-day recognition cliff: Why praise programs fade, and what keeps them alive  —  Recognition programs often start with enthusiasm.  Employees participate, managers share shoutouts, and teams have a new way to celebrate achievements.
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:
SAP CEO: AI Won't Kill Software, But It Will Change Your Job — With Christian Klein
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.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
David Ellison's Paramount-Warner Empire & The Fight That Comes Next
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Sources:
Factory CEO on why AGI is already here
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
Subscribe to Sources.
Invest Like the Best:
Noah Shinn - Building Instinct: The Personal Agent
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Lenny's Podcast:
The grief, loneliness, and burnout sweeping through the tech industry right now | Molly Graham
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Great Chat:
Doomers at Dreamforce
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 7:05 PM ET, August 16, 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

Earlier Picks