Techmeme
October 16, 2012, 8:10 PM

Top News

Microsoft:
Microsoft Announces New Surface Details  —  Microsoft Corp. today released new details about its highly anticipated Microsoft Surface, a tablet PC designed to be the ultimate stage for Windows.  In addition to pricing and market availability, the company announced a special limited-quantity pre-order …
Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:
Microsoft Surface RT Priced: 32GB For $499 Without Touch Cover, $599 With; 64GB For $699  —  Microsoft today detailed pricing for its Surface tablets, at least those running the scaled down RT version of its upcoming Windows 8 operating system designed for use on low-power processors.
Jim Dalrymple / The Loop:
Apple announces special event for Oct. 23  —  Apple on Tuesday announced a special event to be held on October 23, 2012 in San Jose.  The event is scheduled to take place at 10:00 am PT.  —  Unlike other recent events that have been held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco …
Jordan Kahn / 9to5Mac:
Apple to launch 24 new iPad models, comprised of iPad minis and perhaps Lightning iPad 3  —  9to5Mac received the above list of iPad mini SKUs today that shows Apple could be set to launch 24 models of the new device.  According to the list that shows four variants (P101, P103, P105, and P107) …
Travis Kalanick / Uber Blog:
UberTAXI in NYC Shutting Down for Now - NO CHANGES to UberNYC Black Car Service  —  We want to thank all of New York's UberFaithful for giving our NYC TAXI beta a shot over the last month.  It was pretty exciting - for the first time in 30 years, New Yorkers could get a cab without going to the street and putting your arm out.
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
Google Launches Disavow Links Tool  —  Google has launched a new and widely anticipated “disavow links” tool.  The tool was announced by the head of Google's web spam team Matt Cutts, when speaking during a keynote at the Pubcon conference today.  —  The tool is live and can be found here.
Ryan Gavin / The Windows Blog:
IE Comes to the Living Room with Xbox  —  Today the Xbox team announced an update to the Xbox 360 dashboard that marks the beginning of some exciting stuff on the biggest screen in the house.  Internet Explorer has come to Xbox 360.  —  Starting today Internet Explorer will begin being rolled …
Graham Spencer / MacStories:
Mapping The Entertainment Ecosystems of Apple, Microsoft, Google & Amazon  —  The choice of what phone or tablet to buy is one that often involves many considerations, chief amongst those is the physical device and the operating system that it runs.  But I think there is a third fundamental consideration …
More: App Advice
Eugene Kaspersky / Nota Bene:
Kaspersky Lab Developing Its Own Operating System?  We Confirm the Rumors, and End the Speculation!  —  Hi all!  —  Today I'd like to talk about the future.  About a not-so-glamorous future of mass cyber-attacks on things like nuclear power stations, energy supply and transportation control facilities …
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
Can Boxee reinvent cable with the help of a TV antenna?  —  The new Boxee TV offers unlimited recording, Netflix, and movies for $99  —  Input one.  It is the most valuable connector on the back of the average American television — and by extension, the most valuable connector in the average American home.
Declan McCullagh / CNET:
Verizon draws fire for monitoring app usage, browsing habits  —  “We're able to view just everything that they do,” Verizon Wireless exec has boasted.  Privacy groups say the initiative — including linking databases showing whether customers own pets — may violate wiretap law.
Reuters:
EU gives Google four months to amend privacy policy  —  (Reuters) - Google has four months to make its privacy policy comply with requests from European Union data protection watchdogs or start facing the possibility of disciplinary action at a national level.
Arik Hesseldahl / AllThingsD:
Intel's Q3 Beats Street's Lowered Expectations  —  Chipmaker Intel just reported its earnings for the third quarter, and given the fact that it warned of declining sales last month, it could have been worse.  —  Per-share earnings were 60 cents on sales of $13.5 billion.
Nicole Perlroth / New York Times:
Quick, Hide the BlackBerry, It's Too Uncool  —  Rachel Crosby speaks about her BlackBerry phone the way someone might speak of an embarrassing relative.  —  “I'm ashamed of it,” said Ms. Crosby, a Los Angeles sales representative who said she had stopped pulling out her BlackBerry at cocktail parties and conferences.
Jon Russell / The Next Web:
Foxconn admits it breached Chinese labor laws by hiring 14-year-old interns  —  Apple supplier Foxconn has admitted that it did take on intern students as young as 14 years old at its factories after the Taiwanese manufacturing giant published the findings of a report that followed media reports from September.
Jason Del Rey / AdAge:
Yahoo Chief Revenue Officer Michael Barrett to Exit  —  Leaves in Wake of Appointment of Google Exec Henrique de Castro As COO  —  Yahoo Chief Revenue Officer Michael Barrett is on his way out at Yahoo, according to a person familiar with the situation.  Mr. Barrett is in the process of negotiating his exit, this person said.
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
Video Surveillance And Retail Analytics Startup Prism Skylabs Raises $7.5M Andreessen Horowitz, Triangle Peak And Others  —  Prism SkyLabs, a cloud-based service that allows business owners to bring video feeds online, capture images from these feeds and share this data with consumers and the public …

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