Techmeme: Do Our Gadgets Really Threaten Planes? (Wall Street Journal)

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September 9, 2012, 10:00 PM

Top News

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Yes, Spotify Is Headed to the Web. No, Spotify Isn't Cutting Its Prices. — Waiting to use Spotify on the Web? Hang on a few weeks. — Waiting to pay $8 a month for Spotify's premium service? Don't hold your breath. — Yes, as TechCrunch reported yesterday, the streaming music company …

More: TechCrunch. See also Mediagazer

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Spotify Will Launch A Browser-Based Version

More: PC Magazine, CNET, PC World, paidContent, GadgeTell, Pulse2 Technology …, Business Insider, The Verge, digitaltrends.com, Gizmodo, VentureBeat, PC World and Cult of Mac

Wall Street Journal:

Do Our Gadgets Really Threaten Planes? — The ban on electronic devices rests on anecdotes, not on hard evidence—because there isn't any — WAS ALEC BALDWIN RIGHT? When the actor tussled with American Airlines personnel last December over his desire to continue playing a game …

More: SiliconBeat and Technology Liberation Front

Nick Bilton / NYT Bits:

Teaching the F.A.A. That Dogs Don't Buckle Up — If you've ever flown Virgin America, you will have seen the cartoonlike safety video that plays before the flight takes off. — In one scene, about a minute into the video, a man is shown sitting next to a large bull as he fumbles with his seat belt.

Tweets: @digiphile

Paul Graham:

Black Swan Farming — I've done several types of work over the years but I don't know another as counterintuitive as startup investing. — The two most important things to understand about startup investing, as a business, are (1) that effectively all the returns are concentrated in a few big winners …

Tweets: @tophtucker, @carnage4life, @erickschonfeld, @codinghorror and @arrington

Farhad Manjoo / PandoDaily:

The Royal Nokia Screw-Up That Shouldn't Have Been — Anyone who cares about fostering a dynamic, competitive tech industry should be rooting for Nokia. Even if you're not as gaga for Windows Phone as I am—I think it's the best-designed mobile OS on the market—you've got to concede …

More: Pulse2 Technology …, Wall Street Journal and eWeek

Dieter Bohn / The Verge:

Exclusive photos: We put Nokia's controversial Lumia 920 PureView camera to the test

More: Wall Street Journal, SlashGear, PC World, CNET, PetaPixel, 1001 Noisy Cameras, Softpedia News, WMPoweruser, PandoDaily and My Nokia Blog. Tweets: @benedictevans

Klint Finley / Wired:

As Heroku Boss Flees to Olive Farm, Where's the Platform Cloud Going? — Sometimes, people call it “platform-as-a-service.” But more often than not, they just point to Heroku, the San Francisco company that pioneered this oh-so-hard-to-explain technology.

More: GigaOM

Nick Wingfield / New York Times:

Valve, a Video Game Maker With Few Rules — THIS is no Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3. — Every way I look, the scene shifts, the battle unfolds. I have a crazy contraption strapped to my head: a boxy set of goggles that looks like a 22nd-century version of a View-Master. It immerses me in a virtual world.

More: Engadget, Pulse2 Technology …, VG247, Forbes, PC Magazine, The Verge, Joystiq, Blue's News, rc3.org and Kotaku

Chris Velazco / TechCrunch:

Meet The Disrupt SF 2012 Hackathon Winners: Livebolt Takes Grand Prize, Auctopus And HeatData Are Runners Up — The night has been a long one for our intrepid crew of hackers, and all their arduous, caffeine-fueled work has led to this moment. A stunning 147 teams have taken the stage …

More: TechCrunch

John Biggs / TechCrunch:

Amazon Kindle HD Will Allow Users To Opt-Out Of “Special Offers” For $15 — If you've been put off by the (arguably obtrusive) Special Offers on the Kindle Fire HD, Amazon has just announced that they will allow users to pay $15 to opt-out of the ads for the life of the device. — An Amazon spokesperson wrote:

More: CNET, Ars Technica, AllThingsD, Gizmodo, Engadget, Pulse2 Technology …, PC Magazine, Geek News Central, Techland, The Verge, Business Insider and Examiner

Matthew Panzarino / The Next Web:

Amazon's Kindle Fire won't be a threat to the iPad until it remembers the rest of the world

More: iMore.com, 9to5Google and Kindle Review

Zee / The Next Web:

This letter from PayPal's President might just make you believe in the company again — It began in May with a frustrated customer, Andy McMillan, discovering his PayPal had been locked. Nothing new. Frustrating, but usually remediable with a phone call or a couple of emails.

More: CNET, AllThingsD, Storify, VentureBeat, The Loop, Gizmodo and PandoDaily. Tweets: @davidmarcus

Brendan Sasso / Hillicon Valley:

FCC backpedals from Internet tax — The Federal Communications Commission is rapidly backpedalling from a proposal to tax broadband Internet service after a public outcry over the issue. — Democrats and Republicans at the agency are now blaming each other for pushing the idea in the first place.

Juro Osawa / Wall Street Journal:

Alibaba's New Goal: Taking On Android — HANGZHOU, China—While the technology industry is closely watching Apple Inc.'s patent war against rivals using Google Inc.'s Android mobile operating system, China already has homegrown software that is trying to take on Android in the country's fast-growing smartphone market.

More: The Droid Guy

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