Techmeme
October 19, 2012, 3:55 PM

Top News

Mike Rogoway / Oregonian:
Apple starts work on massive Prineville data center  —  Apple has begun work on the first, $68 million phase of its new Prineville data center, clearing and flattening land for the one of two, 338,000 square-foot buildings atop the bluff that overlooks town.  —  Each building is more than twice the size of a typical Costco store.
Jenna Wortham / New York Times:
Airtime, a Pedigreed Start-Up, Is Struggling  —  It sounds like a recipe for success for a new start-up: Two famed entrepreneurs, tens of millions of dollars in the bank and endorsements from celebrities like Alicia Keys and Jim Carrey.  —  But Airtime, the much-hyped video chat site created …
More: Business Insider and The AwlTweets: @pkafka
Will Oremus / Slate:
Minnesota bans Coursera: State takes bold stand against free education  —  Honorable mentions go to New York City's Taxi and Limousine Commission for driving out Uber's online taxi-hailing service and to automobile dealers' groups in four states for trying to have Tesla dealerships declared illegal.
Sam Byford / The Verge:
New Samsung Chromebook also available with 3G for $329.99  —  We were under the impression that Google's new Samsung Chromebook would only be able to hook up to the internet via Wi-Fi, but it seems that something got lost in the announcement.  A 3G model will in fact be available …
Ilya Pozin / Forbes:
Is Pheed the New Twitter?  —  Miley Cyrus seems to think so.  As does Ashley Tisdale, David Guetta, Paris Hilton, Chris Brown, and thousands of others who have joined the site in a matter of days.  —  So what is Pheed?  —  In short, think of it as Twitter, with a business plan.
Connor Simpson / The Atlantic Wire:
Watch Reddit's Biggest Troll Defend Himself  —  Michael Brutsch, a 49-year-old man who posted on Reddit under the name Violentacrez until Gawker's Adrian Chen outed him, went on Anderson Cooper 360 to defend himself on camera for the first time.  —  Brutsch's Reddit persona became famous …
Andy Greenberg / Forbes:
iPhone Uber-Hacker Comex Is Out At Apple  —  Apple's brief experiment in employing one of the most brilliant hackers to ever vivisect its machines seems to be over.  —  On Thursday the legendary iPhone hacker Comex, who I identified last year as 20-year old Brown University student Nicholas Allegra …
Jessica E. Lessin / Wall Street Journal:
Thiel in Talks to Invest in Airbnb at $2.5B Valuation  —  Online room rental service Airbnb Inc. is in discussions with venture capitalist Peter Thiel about a roughly $150 million investment that would value the company at around $2.5 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.
Ina Fried / AllThingsD:
Facebook: We Weren't Moving Fast Enough in Mobile  —  One of Facebook's mottos is “Move Fast.”  Indeed, there are posters extolling that mind-set throughout the company's offices.  —  But when it comes to mobile, even Facebook wasn't moving fast enough.  That was the message on Friday from Facebook Mobile VP Vaughan Smith.
Zack Whittaker / ZDNet:
Microsoft offers only one-year Surface warranty, despite EU law  —  Summary: Microsoft is offering only one-year warranty for the enterprise-favored Surface tablet, while EU law dictates it should be “at least two.”  Didn't Apple recently get stung for this kind of behavior?  —  Zack Whittaker
Rachel King / ZDNet:
Salesforce.com's Marketing Cloud adds 20 social analytics vendors  —  Summary: Salesforce's Marketing Cloud ecosystem expands to include social analytics vendors to enable more insights from a single dashboard.  —  Rachel King  —  Salesforce.com is expanding its new Marketing Cloud ecosystem already …
Dan Moren / Macworld:
iCloud: Sharing done wrong  —  Despite the prominent addition of sharing features in iOS 6 and Mountain Lion, the company's concept of “sharing” is actually a narrow one.  And in an increasingly interconnected era—when people are spending more and more time sharing words, images, files …
More: MacStories
Alex Wilhelm / The Next Web:
Microsoft announces Office 365 University, bringing subscription-based productivity apps to students  —  This morning Microsoft announced Office 365 University.  Due in the first quarter of calendar 2013, the product offering is the Office 365 suite, tweaked for students, and priced so that anyone heading into school can afford it.
Eric Mack / CNET:
Bitten: Apple's ‘blasphemous’ logo under fire in Russia  —  Some Russian Orthodox Christians see the iconic logo as a symbol of sin that they would like to see outlawed.  —  You might make the case that Apple is sinful based on the gluttony for gadgets it inspires, but some extreme Orthodox Christians …
Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:
How Many Techies Does It Take to Reelect a President?  T4O Launches “Innovator Series” Videos for Obama.  —  A large group of tech luminaries — including LinkedIn's Reid Hoffman, Path's Dave Morin, JLab's Judy Estrin, Dropbox's Drew Houston, Craigslist's Craig Newmark and Box's Aaron Levie …
More: Mashable!Thanks:@beet_tv
Ty Pendlebury / CNET:
Ultra High Definition officially replaces 4K  —  The Consumer Electronics Association has announced that the consumer name for 4K will be Ultra HD and gears up for displays to be shown off at next year's CES in Las Vegas.  —  The display format formerly known as 4K will now be called 'Ultra High Definition …
Matthew Panzarino / The Next Web:
Instagram now auto-translates @mentions of usernames when you share photos on Twitter  —  This is fantastic.  Instagram has just done something I've been wanting it to do from day one.  It translates the names of people you share photos with on Twitter to their appropriate Twitter name, even if their Instagram name is different.
John Callaham / Neowin:
Microsoft promises better IMAP support in Outlook 2013  —  Previous versions of Microsoft's Outlook email client have not pleased users who have been waiting for more support for the Internet Message Access Protocol, better known as IMAP.  Indeed, the recently launched email web service Outlook.com does not support IMAP.

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