Techmeme: Celebrity endorsements: Turning tech companies around since 2010 (Peter Bright/Ars Technica)

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August 18, 2013, 3:05 PM

Top News

New York Times:

Expecting the Unexpected From Jeff Bezos — EARLY employees of Amazon still remember the day the company took away their aspirin. — It was late 1999. After years of heady excess, the Internet boom was beginning to falter. Amazon, among the most celebrated of the dot-coms, was burdened with debt and spiraling losses.

More: Business Insider and Daring Fireball. Tweets: @mathewi, @jfdulac, @bussgang, @stevekovach, @herbgreenberg and @erik_hayden. See also Mediagazer

Louis Kowolowski / Silent Circle Blog:

Why can't email be secure? — Coming on the heels of our announcement that we had shut down our Silent Mail service, we received a comment about securing email communications. “In a recent press release, your company stated it was impossible to secure email communication ‘as we know it’.

More: The Verge and Forbes. Tweets: @marypcbuk and @carnage4life

RT:

Hacker posts Facebook bug report on Zuckerberg's wall — A Palestinian information system expert says he was forced to post a bug report on Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook page after the social network's security team failed to recognize that a critical vulnerability he found allows anyone to post on someone's wall.

More: Khalil, ArabCrunch, Business Insider, The Drum and The Verge. Tweets: @georgiebc

Laura Hazard Owen / GigaOM:

Barnes & Noble drops Nook with GlowLight price to $99. New model on the way? — Barnes & Noble dropped the price of its front-lit e-reader, the Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight, to $99 on Sunday, from $119. This makes the Nook with GlowLight the only front-lit reader on the market under $99.

More: VentureBeat, Engadget, SlashGear and TechCrunch

Jack Hitt / New York Times:

An Inventor Wants One Less Wire to Worry About — SOMETIMES, there is an actual eureka moment. For Meredith Perry, it was in late 2010, during her senior year studying astrobiology at the University of Pennsylvania. She was searching for an idea to enter into the college's innovation competition.

Tweets: @meredithperry, @ladybits and @cdixon

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

Microsoft apologizes for three-day Outlook.com outage, says caching issue was to blame — Microsoft today confirmed it has finally resolved an issue with Outlook.com that has been affecting some users for up to three days. The company apologized multiple times to those affected …

More: TechHive, Business Insider, Computerworld, BetaNews, Engadget, The Verge, WinBeta, T3 News and ZDNet

Peter Bright / Ars Technica:

Celebrity endorsements: Turning tech companies around since 2010 — HTC is struggling. Second quarter revenue fell sharply and the company is warning investors that it'll post a loss for the third quarter of this year. — But Chief Marketing Officer Ben Ho has big plans to turn the company around.

Gregg Keizer / Computerworld:

Mozilla to ship ‘Metro-ized’ Firefox Dec. 10 — If all goes well, touch-enabled Windows 8 browser will ship as part of Firefox 26 — Mozilla will launch Firefox for Microsoft's Windows 8 “Modern” user interface in mid-December, more than a year after the operating system's launch …

More: Business Insider, The Next Web, TechnoBuffalo and WinBeta

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:

Apple opens graphics card replacement program for some mid-2011 iMacs — Apple has opened up one of its rare replacement programs for the graphics card in some mid-2011 iMac configurations, according to a notice issued to Apple Support employees. The iMac in question is the model released …

More: AnandTech, Redmond Pie, TUAW, Engadget, I4U News, MacRumors and Softpedia News. Thanks:@sarahg1113

Steve Wozniak / Gizmodo:

Jobs, Reviewed by Steve Wozniak — In the discussion section of our Jobs review, Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak weighed in with his own impressions of the movie—and how he and others were portrayed. What follows is Woz's unedited take on Jobs: — I saw Jobs tonight. I thought the acting throughout was good.

More: Rotten Tomatoes, Mashable, AllThingsD, tbreak, 9to5Mac, VentureBeat, The Verge, Electronista, TechCrunch, TechnoBuffalo, GeekWire, Wired, Betabeat, Macworld, Computerworld, iPhone Hacks, iDownloadBlog.com, BetaKit, TUAW, PhoneArena, Inquirer and Rolling Stone

Tweets: @yoware, @nickbilton and @davewiner

Vijith Assar / Slashdot:

Early Apple Employees Talk Memories of Steve Jobs, New Movie

More: 9to5Mac, iClarified, I4U News, TUAW, Business Insider, AppleInsider, SiliconBeat, MacRumors and Softpedia News

Tweets: @tcarmody, @harrymccracken and @sdkstl

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

As Court Releases Files In Case Alleging Google Tracked UK Safari Users, Search Giant Wants To Move Case To U.S. — Some new developments this weekend in the case of 12 people in the UK who want to sue Google for secretly tracking their online activity by working around privacy settings in Apple's Safari web browser.

More: Group Action against Google …

Dylan Tweney / VentureBeat:

Big-data ad platform Rocket Fuel plans $100M IPO — Ad network and data-analysis company Rocket Fuel is planning a $100 million initial public offering, according to documents filed with the SEC. The S-1 filing is still missing a few key details, such as the anticipated price of the stock or the hoped-for valuation of the company.

More: Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch and Reuters

Alex Colon / GigaOM:

If you're single, your mom is more likely to use an iPad than you are — A new study from Flurry Analytics is out, filled with data about iPhone and iPad usage collected randomly from 44,295 users during the month of May. This data is helpful for advertisers, but it's pretty interesting for everyone else as well.

More: Forbes, FOLIO, The Flurry Blog, BetaNews, AppleInsider, PadGadget, Mobile Marketing Watch, iDownloadBlog.com, LAPTOP Magazine, The Next Web, PandoDaily and TechCrunch. Tweets: @stevesi

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