Techmeme
December 14, 2012, 9:55 AM

Top News

Ryan Tate / Wired:
Why Google Just Made iPhone King: Ads  —  By releasing new versions of Google Maps and Gmail for iOS this month, Google helped make the iPhone the best mobile phone on the planet.  Why is Google, the owner of Android and Motorola, helping its ostensible rival?  —  The answer boils down to advertising.
Brian X. Chen / NYT Bits:
How Google's Maps App for iPhone Hurts Nokia  —  Apple isn't the only company that should feel nervous about Google's release of a new maps app for the iPhone.  Nokia may have lost whatever chance it had to get iPhone owners hooked on its mapping service.  —  Just hours after the Google Maps app …
BBC:
US, UK and Canada refuse to sign UN internet treaty  —  The UN's telecommunications treaty will not be ratified by the US, UK or Canada  —  The US, Canada and UK have refused to sign an international communications treaty at a conference in Dubai.  —  The three countries had objected …
Allen Huang / Google Mobile Ads Blog:
Combating accidental clicks in mobile ads  —  Ads on smartphones are effective, but many of us have at some point clicked on an ad by accident, which ultimately is a bad experience for the user, the publisher, and the advertiser who pays for clicks that may not be valuable.
Reuters:
Exclusive: Softbank caps Sprint's Clearwire bid; investors want more  —  (Reuters) - Sprint Nextel Corp's $2.1 billion offer to buy out Clearwire Corp appeared to be running into trouble on Thursday, as some shareholders said they wanted more money while Softbank Corp set a cap on how much Sprint could pay.
More: TechCrunch, ZDNet and Forbes
Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:
Guardian kills its Facebook social reader, regains control over its content  —  A little over a year ago, a big topic of discussion in the newspaper business — apart from the ongoing cataclysmic decline in print advertising revenue, of course — was how to leverage Facebook as a platform for content …
Peter Burrows / Business Week:
Samsung and Apple Duel in Enterprise Tech  —  Last summer, health-care startup Preventice asked Samsung Electronics if it would create a custom version of its popular Galaxy S II phone.  Preventice was putting the finishing touches on a product that used a smartphone to transmit data …
Tweets: @pburrows
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Josh Ong / The Next Web:
Apple kicks off iPhone 5 sales in China  —  Apple has begun sales of the iPhone 5 in China, its second-largest market.  Doors opened at official retail stores at 8am, though the company's reserve-and-pick-up system dampened launch crowds.  —  A rare Beijing snowstorm didn't help matters …
Anil Dash:
The Web We Lost  —  The tech industry and its press have treated the rise of billion-scale social networks and ubiquitous smartphone apps as an unadulterated win for regular people, a triumph of usability and empowerment.  They seldom talk about what we've lost along the way in this transition …
Mat Smith / Engadget:
EE introduces the UK's first 4G tablet: Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 LTE available starting today  —  Adding to its catalogue of flagship 4G slabs, EE's launched its first tablet for its relatively young network.  You can read up our thoughts on how the stylus-friendly tablet handled in our review …
Will Richmond / VideoNuze Analysis:
Comcast App Now Allows Video Downloads to Mobile Devices for On-The-Go Viewing  —  Comcast has announced that Xfinity TV subscribers who use the Xfinity TV Player app on their Android and iOS mobile devices can now download certain TV shows and movies, so they can watch when they're not connected to a broadband network.
Brendan Sasso / Hillicon Valley:
Senate panel approves Franken's location privacy bill  —  The Senate Judiciary Committee voted in favor of Sen. Al Franken's (D-Minn.) Location Privacy Protection Act on Thursday.  —  The bill would require companies to get a customer's consent before collecting or sharing mobile location data.
Alexis Santos / Engadget:
VeriFone retreats from mobile payments, says acquiring users ‘fundamentally unprofitable’  —  After joining the mobile payment bandwagon last spring with Sail, VeriFone is ready to scale back its efforts in the venture.  “Our experience through 2012 with tens of thousands of these micro-merchants tells us …
Steven Musil / CNET:
Microsoft investigating possible IE mouse-tracking flaw  —  All versions of the Web browser are vulnerable to flaw that allows attackers track cursor movements on the screen, a security researcher warns.  —  Microsoft is investigating a possible flaw in its Internet Explorer Web browser …
David Goldman / CNNMoney:
Massive bank cyberattack planned  —  Security firm McAfee on Thursday released a report warning that a massive cyberattack on 30 U.S. banks has been planned, with the goal of stealing millions of dollars from consumers' bank accounts.  —  McAfee's research upheld an October report from RSA …

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:
Zoho Books levels up with Apple Intelligence  —  The best accounting experience isn't really attainable if your software can't keep up with evolving technologies, is it?  That's why Zoho Books made sure to jump …
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

Sources:
Baseten's CEO on why every company will want to own its AI
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.
Training Data:
Box's Aaron Levie: On Reinventing Yourself in the AI Age and Enterprise Diffusion
Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.
Subscribe to Training Data.
Uncapped with Jack Altman:
Andrew Feldman from Cerebras
Conversations with people I admire about things I'm genuinely interested in.
Subscribe to Uncapped with Jack Altman.
Acquired:
The Home Depot
Learn the playbooks that built the world's greatest companies - and how you can apply them as a founder, operator, or investor.
Subscribe to Acquired.
Big Technology Podcast:
Special Report: Will AI Wipe Out Humanity? (And Who Profits)
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:
The Atlantic's CEO on AI, Billionaire Owners, and Moonlighting as a Creator
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 9:55 AM ET, December 14, 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

Matthew Panzarino / The Next Web: