Techmeme
August 28, 2012, 4:45 PM

Top News

Sam Biddle / Gizmodo:
How To Be a Genius: This Is Apple's Secret Employee Training Manual  —  We recently showed you just how badly some of Apple's retail elite behave when no one's watching, but surely they were taught better, right?  You bet they were: Apple tells its new recruits exactly what what to think and say.
Mike Torres / The Windows Blog:
SkyDrive for Android phones now available  —  A few weeks ago we announced our intention to release an official SkyDrive app for Android phones.  Today we're excited to announce that the app is now available for download.  We want to ensure that you're able to have your files accessible across …
AnandTech:
Preparing for the iPhone Next: Rumors Analyzed  —  While we typically don't comment on rumors we don't know to be true at AnandTech, we often get requests to help set rational expectations ahead of major iDevice launches.  The shroud of secrecy around major Apple launches can pave the way for both sensible and unrealistic conclusions.
More: The Verge
Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
No NFC in Next-Generation iPhone  —  With Apple having announced its new Passbook digital wallet for iOS 6, speculation regarding the potential for the incorporation of near field communications (NFC) in the next-generation iPhone has ramped up.  The technology would allow for contactless payments …
David Beren / TmoNews:
T-Mobile Adding microSIM Kits For iPhone 4/4S, Training Employees For “Selling Against The iPhone”  —  Based on both pieces of information that just came into our inbox, we're trying to draw two conclusions, one that T-Mobile isn't getting the iPhone 5, which shouldn't surprise anyone.
Evan Ramstad / Wall Street Journal:
Samsung Vows to Fight Ban  —  SEOUL—Samsung Electronics said Tuesday it would fight Apple Inc.'s attempt to ban the sale of some of its smartphones in the U.S. with “all necessary measures.”  —  After winning a jury verdict for patent infringement against Samsung in a U.S. court last week …
Roger Cheng / CNET:
Google's Nexus 7 tablet pops up in rare home page ad  —  In a first, Google is actually touting a product on its home page, which is typically free of advertisements.  —  Google really wants people to take a look at its Nexus 7 tablet.  —  The $199 tablet started popping up on Google's home page today …
Ina Fried / AllThingsD:
Half of All Mobile Phones Will Be Smartphones by 2013, Two Years Earlier Than Forecast  —  Those smartphones are growing up so fast.  —  It seems like just yesterday they were sending their first emails from their baby keyboards, and now they are poised to take over the world.
Sarah Frier / Bloomberg:
IBM Envisions Watson As Supercharged Siri For Businesses  —  International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) researchers spent four years developing Watson, the computer smart enough to beat the champions of the quiz show “Jeopardy!”  Now they're trying to figure out how to get those capabilities into the phone in your pocket.
More: VentureBeat, Fortune and CNET.  Thanks:@sarahfrier
Sebastian Anthony / ExtremeTech:
Firefox 15 available to download, finally fixes add-on memory leak  —  Mozilla has released Firefox 15 for PCs, smartphones, and tablets.  The most standout features are a completely silent background updater (like Chrome), significant memory footprint improvements, a built-in PDF reader …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Death To The Restaurant Buzzer: NoWait Raises $2 Million For iOS-Based Waitlisting System  —  NoWait, a mobile waitlisting management service based in Pittsburgh, is announcing today it has closed on a $2 million Series A round of funding led by Birchmere Ventures.
Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:
It appears Google has quietly killed its weather API  —  Last month, Google announced plans to shutter iGoogle, among a bunch of other services.  Many developers and users were (and still are) outraged, but at least they have some time to breathe: iGoogle isn't going away until November 1, 2013.
Larry Dignan / ZDNet:
Lexmark to exit inkjet printers, cut 1,700 jobs  —  Summary: Lexmark will close an inkjet manufacturing facility in the Philippines and cease development as it eyes high-end imaging.  —  Larry Dignan  —  Lexmark on Tuesday said it will exit its inkjet printer business and cut 1,700 jobs around …
Alex Williams / TechCrunch:
Rackspace Acquires Mailgun, A Y Combinator Startup That Gives App Developers An API For Creating And Managing Online Mailboxes  —  Rackspace has acquired Mailgun, a San Francisco-based Y Combinator startup that has developed an API for creating and managing online email inboxes for apps and websites.
Brad Molen / Engadget:
Motorola RAZR M 4G LTE pics and specs revealed: 4.3-inch qHD display, ICS, 1.5GHz dual-core  —  We've been hearing about the Motorola XT907 — an LTE device bound for Verizon — for quite some time now, but we just got our hands on a full set of specs and even a few pics to go along with it.
Quentin Hardy / New York Times:
Active in Cloud, Amazon Reshapes Computing  —  SEATTLE — Within a few years, Amazon.com's creative destruction of both traditional book publishing and retailing may be footnotes to the company's larger and more secretive goal: giving anyone on the planet access to an almost unimaginable amount of computing power.
Terrence O'Brien / Engadget:
Apple strikes licensing deal with Motorola in Germany, heralds more peaceful times?  —  Motorola's war with Apple has certainly been overshadowed by the showdown with Samsung.  But, with the latter melodrama shifting into quiet mode, focus is coming back to the battle with Moto.

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