Techmeme
December 14, 2012, 5:25 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 …
Alexis C. Madrigal / The Atlantic Online:
Why Google Maps Is Better Than Apple Maps  —  There's a simple answer: people.  —  For all of Google's reputation as a data-data-data company, the company's famed mapping product, which arrived on iOS early this morning, is good for a different reason: people.
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.
Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:
Max Levchin Says Marissa Mayer's “Very Ballsy Move” to CEO of Yahoo Was the Reason He Finally Took Board Seat  —  When I asked him to talk to me about why he decided to finally became a director at Yahoo, after what was a very long mulling that started even before former Google exec Marissa Mayer became CEO …
Eric Eldon / TechCrunch:
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Facebook Speeds Up Android App By Ditching HTML5 And Rebuilding It Natively Just Like The iOS Version  —  Facebook's HTML5 app nightmare is over.  Later today it's releasing Facebook for Android 2., which replaces the hybrid native/webview code with an all-native infrastructure to answer years …
BBC:
US, UK and Canada refuse to sign UN internet treaty  —  The UN's communication treaty will not be ratified by the US, UK or Canada  —  The US, UK and Canada say they will not sign an international communications treaty under discussion in Dubai.  —  The three countries had objected to calls …
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 …
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 …
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.
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: Forbes
Reuters:
China party chief stresses reform, censors relax grasp on internet  —  (Reuters) - China must deepen reforms to perfect its market economy and strengthen rule of law, Communist Party chief Xi Jinping said in southern Guangdong, echoing groundbreaking comments by reformist senior leader Deng Xiaoping in the same province 20 years ago.
Matthew Panzarino / The Next Web:
Apple rolls out new, far more detailed, status page for general Services, Stores and iCloud systems  —  Apple has today launched a new status page for its iCloud, store and general services that provides far more detail about status and uptimes of its various cloud and backend components.
Rip Empson / TechCrunch:
With $46M Now In The Bank, textPlus Looks To Go Big Abroad, Launches Cheap International Calling On Android  —  It's been a big year for the artist formerly known as GOGII.  Back in October, the Southern California-based startup raised $18 million in series D financing from The Raine Group …
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.
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 …
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 …
More: The Verge and Reuters
Bill Callahan / Bloomberg:
Apple, LG Electronics Defeat Alcatel-Lucent Patent Claims  —  Apple Inc. (AAPL) and LG Electronics Inc. (066570) didn't infringe an Alcatel-Lucent SA (ALU) unit's patents for electronic devices including phones and computers, a jury said.  —  The verdict today came after a trial that began Nov. 27 …
Kevin Fitchard / GigaOM:
T-Mobile completes iPhone-friendly upgrade in 23 cities  —  T-Mobile on Thursday officially activated its overhauled HSPA+ systems in five more regions of the country, including the greater Chicago area, bringing it that much closer to fielding a nationwide network that can fully support Apple's iPhone.
Ellis Hamburger / The Verge:
Mailbox for iPhone: a next-generation email app inspired by Sparrow and Clear  —  Cloud to-do list company Orchestra today announced Mailbox, an email client for the iPhone it's been building for the last year.  I've been testing Mailbox for the last few weeks and it's nothing short of spectactular.

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Kim Yoo-chul / The Korea Times: