Bloomberg reports that Facebook is to - probably - put off an eventual IPO until at least 2012, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. Waiting at least another year (and a half, approximately, to be clear) would reportedly give CEO Mark Zuckerberg more time to follow through on his vision without too much public scrutiny and the implications thereof, attract more users and developers, book more sales and work out other issues, such as the user privacy kerfuffle and legal matters. techcrunch.com | 7/30/10 11:49 AM

Ah, the good ol' patent minefield. According to Law360 , a paywall-shielded newswire for lawyers, Apple yesterday settled a patent infringement lawsuit with patent troll Minerva Industries, whose website is apparently currently, ahem, 'temporarily closed under repair' . This morning, Apple was hit with another patent infringement suit , brought on by Israeli technology holding Emblaze , which alleges the Cupertino company has refused to license its media streaming technology at issue. techcrunch.com | 7/30/10 11:05 AM

A few weeks ago, we were alerted to a new site currently in stealth mode called Voyurl . As the name implies, the idea behind it is to make it so you can see what other people are looking at on the web (and to make your clickstream seen). It sounds creepy as hell. It's like Blippy but with more potential porn. I love it. But when I tried to sign up for the service, they sent me a note back that it wasn't quite ready yet and that they were cranking on the beta. Fine, that happens from time to time. I can be patient. But I'm not sure I can quietly wait any longer when the site starts running ads like this . techcrunch.com | 7/30/10 9:06 AM

All this talk about the new Kindle reminded me that I still have some questions about Amazon's e-reader specifically, and ebooks generally. Why do people persist in comparing the Kindle to the iPad (something I first asked months ago); what is the relationship between hardback book sales and ebook sales (ditto ); if e-readers keep getting more accessible, is the end of the paper book nigh? Questions like that. In the hope of finally getting some answers, I hopped on to Skype with CrunchGear 's Devin Coldewey and interviewed him until he begged for mercy. Video below. techcrunch.com | 7/30/10 6:57 AM

Even if not everyone will admit it, everyone likes taking pictures of themselves. I suspect it's the not-so-secret reason why users are addicted to DailyBooth -- the service which asks you to take pictures of yourself (or something you care about) to document your life. With that in mind, it's almost as if the iPhone 4, with its front-facing camera, was built for such a service. And now the two can consummate that match made in heaven. DailyBooth's first iPhone app has just been approved by Apple and is now in the App Store. It's pretty basic -- but that's all it needs to be. You load it up and take a picture of yourself. And the app is smart enough to load the front-facing camera by default (assuming you have the iPhone 4 -- but it can work with any iPhone running iOS 4). Yeah, this is going to be huge for DailyBooth. techcrunch.com | 7/30/10 5:25 AM

With the debut of Groupon personalization , I have little doubt that the daily deal site will double the number of deals (and double its revenue run rate) in just a few months. According to CEO Andrew Mason , the service is churning out 75,000 transactions per day. Through personalization, Groupon will be able to offer 20, 30 or more deals per city per day. Assuming the current growth rate in subscribers --- in the last four months the site has more than doubled to 12 million registered users--- 2x is likely a prudish estimate. It's hard to fault a company that is making money hand over fist ; however, as a user, I do have one piece of advice: loosen that death grip on the daily deal mantra. techcrunch.com | 7/30/10 1:51 AM

Despite their clear commitment to the hardware version of the Kindle, Amazon continues to make the Kindle apps that run on the iPad and iPhone better. Today, version 2.2 of the app brings a full dictionary with it. This matches the functionality of Apple's own iBooks app, but the Kindle implementation is even a little better. Now in the Kindle app when you highlight a word, a definition will automatically appears at the bottom of the screen. And that's not all -- there you'll also find links to further investigate the word on Google or Wikipedia. Though this dumps you out of the app and into the iPhone/iPad web browser, it's a pretty nice feature. techcrunch.com | 7/30/10 1:40 AM

We've just received word from Google confirming that they are not currently blocked in China and that a server issue was most likely the cause of their dashboard misread. One month ago, Google put up their watered-down engine to avoid being shut down completely in China. Because the Chinese government did not like the auto redirect to Google Hong Kong which was previously in place, the new degraded version at the center of all today's confusion simply links to Google Hong Kong. techcrunch.com | 7/30/10 1:01 AM

At Google I/O in May, the search giant indicated that they were about to take their commitment to location to the next level. Sure, Latitude had been around for a while, but everyone knew that Google could do more in the space. The announcement of some new location APIs seemed to a big part of the solution. And now comes the fun part. Today on their Geo blog , Google is announcing that they're beginning to open the Places API for business. The first developers getting access? Those working on check-in services. techcrunch.com | 7/30/10 12:52 AM

Panasonic announced today that it will buy out two of its subsidiaries, Sanyo and Panasonic Electric Works, for $9.4 billion. Sanyo is the largest lithium-ion rechargeable battery producer and 11th-largest solar cell producer in the world with a quickly-growing solar panel manufacturing arm according to company statements. techcrunch.com | 7/30/10 12:49 AM

I honestly laid in bed last night thinking about the Chevy Volt's $41k price tag. Seriously. When I got the press release shortly before it crossed the wire yesterday, the price seemed about right for a first-gen Voltec vehicle. The $350 lease program looked even better. I was already totally sold on the Volt after driving an early mule over a year ago and the price tag didn't even bother me one bit. It's not like I planned on buying one, but I could see where GM was coming from. Then my post went up at 12:00 pm yesterday and quickly filled with commentors railing against the $41,000 price tag. That was followed by nearly every national news program claiming the Volt's price invokes a bit of sticker shock. I thought, "Did these people really think the Volt was going to be the same price as a Malibu?" Apparently. But then Rush Limbaugh opened-up on the Volt today and two things became clear. One, many people including Rush (and previously Letterman) do not fundamentally understand the Volt's capabilities. I believe most consumers expected the Volt to be a mass-market vehicle and an instant hit in a sort of iPhone way. Yeah, that's just not how the auto industry works. techcrunch.com | 7/30/10 12:48 AM

According to the Mainland China service availability page it looks like Google Web Search, Google Images and Google News are down in China, again. In fact if you parse the chart it looks like just about the only thing still up is Gmail. However reports on Twitter say other wise, as many users claim that the service is working fine. We also tested Google.com on Webpulse and received a big thumbs up in terms of availability. techcrunch.com | 7/30/10 12:17 AM

When asked about Google's partnership with Zynga, Mr. Schmidt said "we haven't announced it" but "you can expect a partnership with Zynga" in the future. Google's partnership with Zynga was reported earlier by the blog TechCrunch.

That sure sounds like an announcement to me, buried 13 paragraphs deep in an article summarizing an interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt with the Wall Street Journal. Or an announcement of an announcement. Or perhaps an announcement of an expectation of an announcement. techcrunch.com | 7/29/10 11:28 PM

Peixe Urbano means, in Portuguese, "Urban Fish". That's a fun fact. Here are a few more: Peixe Urbano is a Rio-based Groupon clone that's doing very nicely indeed by tailoring its service precisely to a Brazilian audience. The site offers 30 deals a week, across multiple cities. According to the company's own numbers, they're averaging a little over 1000 purchases per deal: 30,000 sales a week. Peixe Urbano takes 50% commission on every sale. The site's popularity is growing fast amongst traders too: 300 companies a day apply to have their deals sold through Peixe Urbano. techcrunch.com | 7/29/10 11:26 PM

Last night, Amazon unveiled the latest edition of the Kindle, which sports a better screen, slimmer profile, and — most important — a relatively affordable $139 pricetag for a Wifi only version (the 3G version still goes for $189). To mark the occasion, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos made an appearance on the Charlie Rose show, where he discussed the future of the E-book, and why there's plenty of room for the Kindle in a world where tablet PCs like the iPad are on the rise. You can watch the full episode right here , and the show has graciously provided us with the clips and transcripts below. The overarching theme of the conversation is that Bezos wants the Kindle to remain a device that's dedicated to reading, especially long-form reading. Bezos explains that with the Kindle, Amazon isn't looking to "create an experience" —  they want the author to create the experience. This, he believes, makes the Kindle a differentiated device from the iPad and slew of tablets that will be hitting the market by the end of the year. Because unlike other devices, he says, the Kindle's lack of glare and other design choices help it disappear from the reader's mind as they get wrapped up in a new book: techcrunch.com | 7/29/10 11:14 PM

Former Yelp VP of Finance/Administration Vlado Herman takes a step up the ladder and becomes, as of today, Yelp's Chief Financial Officer. The Yelp Blog introduces his promotion with an adorable poem: techcrunch.com | 7/29/10 10:39 PM

Just a couple hours ago, news broke of the $99 Copia Wave5 e-reader , or tablet, or whatever you want to call a 5" LCD-based device focused on reading. That isn't the extent of the lineup, however: Copia has two more LCD-based tablets coming out soon, as well as two E-ink-based readers with Kindle-esque designs. As they've said since their CES debut, the draw is supposed to be their unique social platform , which allows a community of readers to exchange reviews, recommendations, and so on — and although it will start as an exclusive to Copia-branded devices, they're trying to go OEM and make the Copia service the premier social layer for e-books. techcrunch.com | 7/29/10 10:31 PM

As you're undoubtedly aware, location is one of the hottest fields out there right now. Startups, services, devices, and advertisers are all hovering around it. As you're also likely well aware, Apple likes to be in control of their own devices. So it should come as no surprise to hear that Apple is moving to be in complete of their own location database. Back in June, Apple changed its privacy policy to reflect some of the newer things they were doing with regard to location. This worried some people -- including two U.S. Congressmen who sent a letter to Apple asking about the change. A couple weeks ago, Apple responded to that inquiry with a letter from Apple's general counsel, Bruce Sewell. The overall main points of that letter have already been covered quite a bit (basically, none of the data Apple collects is linked to a specific user or device and no data is shared without consent). But buried on page 5 of the 13-page letter is a bit of information that's rather interesting. techcrunch.com | 7/29/10 9:56 PM

Yesterday, mobile security firm Lookout announced at the Black Hat security conference that it had discovered a seemingly benign wallpaper application for Android that had been downloaded millions of times — and allegedly harvested user data like text messages and browsing history, which was being sent to servers in China. At least, that's what was reported . Turns out, it looks like the press jumped the gun on reporting this as a major security issue, and the company has posted a clarification to its blog. According to the post, while there is something suspicious going on here, the data these applications are accessing is not nearly as sensitive as some of the initial reports would have you believe (it isn't grabbing your text messages and browsing history). The apps are apparently sending some potentially sensitive data like your subscriber identifier, but even then, the Lookout team says that there is no concrete evidence of malicious behavior: techcrunch.com | 7/29/10 9:50 PM

Google's Search Stories campaign is meticulously engineering to be relatable and tug at your heartstrings. Their latest, "New Baby," portrays the "joys and costs" of parenting perhaps a little too well, heavy on the latter. So you're clueless and your wife is pregnant and crazy and you have to sell your precious vinyl collection to be able to afford twins, which are an "expensive proposition"? techcrunch.com | 7/29/10 9:07 PM

There are few more creative writers than the San Francisco-based Po Bronson . The author of four best-selling non-fiction books, two novels, a book of short stories and many articles for Newsweek, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, Bronson’s work has been translated into 19 different languages and his 2005 bestselling What Should I Do With My Life , social commentary about the meaning of work and identity was on the New York Times bestselling list for 10 months. Bronson’s creativity is manifold. Not only has he written hit books about Silicon Valley both in non-fiction (Nudist on the Night Shift ) and fiction (The First $20 Million is Always the Hardest ) , but he has also authored best selling analyses of family (Why Do I Love These People ) and, with Ashley Merryman, of education and bringing up children (Nurture Shock ). techcrunch.com | 7/29/10 8:47 PM

With the announcement of the $99 Ocean Reader Copia Tablet we are entering familiar territory. As you probably remember, netbooks went through the same race to the bottom as ebooks and this Ocean Reader is the first of the lot to hit our shores with any fanfare. While I'm sure a mention in the WSJ is fairly important, the Copia and the Alex and the Farfenugen or whatever is next to ride down the ereader/tablet pike will enter a strange market. There are currently two - if not three - popular platforms. I'd say the Kindle is far and away the most robust followed by the Sony ereaders beloved by PDF downloaders and trailed by the Nook whose viability I'm bearish on. While a multi-purpose device like the Streak can exist in this ecosystem, any ereader that advertises itself as primarily an ereader will be sunk. techcrunch.com | 7/29/10 8:44 PM

Jesus. Maybe literally. Fox News has a long and illustrious history of saying some fairly outrageous things. A story today on FoxNews.com may be one of the best yet -- certainly from a tech perspective. The post entitled "For Apple Followers, It's a Matter of Faith, Academics Say " argues that while people may joke about Apple being a religion (JesusPhone, etc), to some, it may actually be a religion. Better, they wonder if Apple shouldn't pursue that path. Here's Fox News' keys as to why Apple is similar to a religion: techcrunch.com | 7/29/10 7:20 PM

You've normally got two choices in site heatmapping (figuring out where eyeballs land on your site), you can either buy costly specialized equipment ($40K) or pay a consultant to come into your office and use their own equipment, which costs upwards of 5k dollars. Y Combinator funded GazeHawk has figured out a more pared down and innovative solution: Why not use webcams? Co-founded by Brian Krausz and Joe Gershenson, newly launched GazeHawk is less expensive than most already existing eyetracking services at 1/10 the price. And heatmapping, something that required custom hardware and bringing people into a lab, now requires simple consumer hardware and proprietary software. techcrunch.com | 7/29/10 7:19 PM

Tomorrow, Friday, is our fifth annual yearly blowout party at August Capital - the event I look forward to all year. Tickets to that event are long gone, but a handful are left for the all day conference we hold prior to the party, the Social Currency CrunchUp. Here's five reasons why you'll want to attend: techcrunch.com | 7/29/10 6:23 PM

For years, YouTube has allowed its users to upload however many videos they wanted, but with a catch: unless you were part of one of YouTube's special partner programs, no video could be more than 10 minutes in length. Today, YouTube is changing that: it's boosting the maximum upload length to fifteen minutes, giving the site's millions of amateur directors a bit more leg room. YouTube imposed the 10 minute restriction to help cut back on piracy (of course, it's always been possible to simply string together multiple 10 minute clips to create a longer video, but that's harder to distribute and has a worse viewing experience). Obviously the fifteen minute limit is still going to be irritating in some case, but it's good to know that YouTube is actively working to extend it. In its blog post , YouTube explains why it can finally make the change: techcrunch.com | 7/29/10 6:23 PM

Google's mobile ads are becoming more location-aware. Today, Google is introducing mobile display ads for both the iPhone and Android phones which can be geo-targeted. Advertisers will be able to check a "location extension for display" box and their ads will become geo-enabled when viewed in mobile browsers or apps.  A little double-arrow will open up the ad and show the business pinned on map with two big blue buttons to get directions or call the business.  Google will only charge for calls or clicks. Google already offers so-called "location extension" ads for mobile search , but this is the first time it is expanding the concept to mobile display ads.  Google says that mobile ads that offer a location generally see an average 8 percent increase in click-through rates over plain-vanilla mobile ads, and click-to-call mobile ads see a 6 percent increase in clicks. techcrunch.com | 7/29/10 6:00 PM

Mr. and Mrs. President Bashar al-Assad: At the tender age of 17 months my severely ill daughter Sofia, an American citizen, was abducted by her mother on Monday, July 26, in Istanbul, Turkey, and taken to Syria. I was informed yesterday by Sofia's mother that she will not be coming back to the United States nor will she allow Sofia to return home. Sofia has been diagnosed with a severe medical condition that requires immediate treatment in the United States. It was scheduled to start on July 27, 2010, in New Jersey, the day after her abduction and was supposed to last until she reaches the age of 3. Any delay in the urgently needed treatment will result in a life-long disability for Sofia and make her dependent for the whole of her adult life. The treatment is not available in Syria. Mr. President, I grew up in Turkey listening to the evening news during our family dinners where I used to hear your father Hafez al-Assad's name more often than the names of my own family together with Menachem Begin, Golda Meir, Anwar Sadat, and Yasser Arafat. I plead with you on behalf of my daughter Sofia to learn of her whereabouts and see her safely and speedily returned home. I also respectfully request a visa to Syria to meet her at the United States Embassy in Damascus to bring her home. Mrs. President, parents around the world have only the Hague Convention to rely on in international child abduction cases. I urge your humanitarian consideration, as the mother of a precious child, to fight for Syria to be a part of the Hague Convention. Thank you in advance.

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web2.sys-con.com | 7/29/10 5:57 PM

TechCrunch reader Saul Lustgarten checks in to tell us he logged on to Facebook this morning and noticed that the list of his friends who are having their birthday today was preceded by a crude message, reading "fuck you bitches". Yeah right, we thought. I checked it out on my Facebook profile and didn't notice anything off. Then, I followed Saul's suggestion of switching my main language to Spanish instead of English, and lo and behold (click for full-size image): techcrunch.com | 7/29/10 5:29 PM

Amazon announced the Kindle 3 last night, and it doesn’t look too shabby at all. The most important part is the inclusion of the next-generation E-Ink display , previously only found in the too-big-for-casual-use Kindle DX . (The low price, $139 for the Wi-Fi version, certainly doesn’t hurt.) Immediately following the announcement, I saw something that confused me. For whatever reason, it seems plenty of people are comparing the Kindle to the iPad , almost as if these people want the Kindle to be the iPad. Why is that? techcrunch.com | 7/29/10 5:03 PM

How's this for absolutely dominating an increasingly lucrative and fast-growing segment? Google currently boasts a mobile search market share of 98.29% , with it closest competitor Yahoo taking up just over 0.8% of market share and Microsoft's Bing barely touching even half that, according to recent data from StatCounter as relayed by Pingdom . techcrunch.com | 7/29/10 5:02 PM

App store analytics provider Distimo in its latest report once again focuses on in-app purchases across a variety of mobile application stores, Apple's App Store in particular. According to Distimo, the percentage of applications with in-app purchases is significantly higher in the App Store for iPad (10%) compared to that for the iPhone (2%). techcrunch.com | 7/29/10 4:16 PM

“All I've done is compile public information into a nice format for statistical analysis.” So says the man who is being called the Facebook hacker. Ron Bowes, a security consultant who’s also an nmap developer, is under fire from certain sections of the Internet for creating and uploading a torrent that contains more than 100 million Facebook users’ information . The thing is, all of this information was already publicly available in the Facebook directory. So to call him a “hacker,” well, would be incorrect. techcrunch.com | 7/29/10 3:33 PM

Elon Musk certainly hasn't been on the down-low lately. Well, with the Tesla's IPO and then Toyota huge investment and manufacturing deals . Then there's the lawsuits and his devoice . So yeah, it's no wonder that Jon Favreau modeled his Tony Stark character after Elon -- or so says Wikipedia . But last night he had a friendly fireside chat with Stephen Colbert, where it was really nothing more than reading of the man's resume and talking about his ventures. Of course Colbert talked circles around the PayPal co-founder as he tends to do. It's not like The Colbert Report is known as a hard-hitting news program anyway. That's more the style of The Daily Show . Click through for the video. techcrunch.com | 7/29/10 3:10 PM

Google is looking to build its own Facebook to defend against Facebook and its 500 million members running off with too many ads or even starting an ad network across other sites à la Google’s AdSense according to the Wall Street Journal. The search giant has reportedly been talking to online game companies about it like Electronic Arts, Playdom – just bought by Disney for $563.2 million – and Zynga – where Google is investing over a $100 million in aid of its plans according to the New York Times, which jumped on the Journal’s story.

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web2.sys-con.com | 7/29/10 2:30 PM

According to GetJar , its eponymous mobile app store is now seeing three million downloads per day . GetJar reiterated that its stats put it second only to Apple iTunes, with over 1 billion total downloads to date. At current (self-reported) growth rate, the company should hit 2 billion downloads in about a year, if calculated on the back of a virtual envelope. techcrunch.com | 7/29/10 1:29 PM

Lovefilm , the Netflix-of-Europe, looks set to beef up its multi-platform play via a newly signed agreement with DRM and adaptive streaming technology provider Widevine . The deal will see the US-based company become Lovefilm's "preferred provider of digital rights management and video optimisation solutions", enabling the video subscription service to continue to break out from its 'DVDs by post' legacy into the video-on-demand market, ensuring that its digital content is "playable on many new devices." techcrunch.com | 7/29/10 12:52 PM

Motorola has just announced its financial results for Q2 2010, reporting total sales of $5.4 billion, which is slightly below what it recorded in the same period last year. Earnings came in at $162 million or $0.07 per share, compared to GAAP earnings of $26 million or $0.01 per share in Q2 2009. Zooming in on its Mobile Devices unit, Motorola reported sales of $1.7 billion, down 6 percent compared with the year-ago quarter. The company shipped a total of 8.3 million handsets last quarter, 2.7 million if which were smartphones - its line-up consists of 12 such devices, including the Droid and Droid X . techcrunch.com | 7/29/10 12:19 PM

Double rainbow awesome. There's no other modern way to describe this . I won't spoil it too much, but whatever you do today, visit this website and select some of your closest friends from your Facebook graph when prompted. You won't be disappointed. techcrunch.com | 7/29/10 11:04 AM

Mobile phone maker HTC this morning announced a series of executive promotions and newly created management positions. The Taiwanese company said it had poached two senior execs from rival Sony Ericsson and that it had promoted three others to its management team. Buried in the press release, however, is that a senior executive of its own has quit the company. techcrunch.com | 7/29/10 9:18 AM

Zynga issued a press release tonight confirming the more than month-old news of an investment by Softbank - $150 million - and are announcing a joint venture to "develop and distribute social games across Japan." Zynga didn't talk about the other $150 million they took from Google in connection with a partnership over the new Google Games property. Although they soft-confirmed it to the New York Times in a recent article about the company. Zynga has raised a whopping $519 million in venture capital, including that chunk from Google. Here's the press release: techcrunch.com | 7/29/10 7:57 AM

The network industry could be entering yet another new stage of innovation and growth, fueled by a flood of new demands and an increasingly likely new tech refresh cycle driven by increasing network infrastructure automation and control.  At the core of this new cycle is a flood of new devices being attached to the network.

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web2.sys-con.com | 7/29/10 5:15 AM

People don't send postcards anymore. Why bother when you can photo MMS a friend? Attempting to restore some of the social experience behind photography. SwingVine has created SwingVine Gallery an app that attempts to bring back some of the mystique and enjoyment of social photo sharing, sort of like a mobile photo game of tag. Using your iPhone's camera and GPS, the SwingVine Gallery app allows you to send a photo to a friend "secretly," which they are unable to see unless they also participate by sending a photo back. techcrunch.com | 7/29/10 3:29 AM

Amazon's Kindle has always been an interesting device to me. When I first heard about it in late 2007, I was sure I wouldn't want one. It was awkward looking and at $399, way too expensive. But when the second iteration came in 2009 with a sleeker look, I decided to buy one to see what all the fuss was about. I quickly learned to love it. That said, I still didn't see any real future for such a product. At $359, it was still absurdly expensive. And with all the rumors swirling about Apple's impending tablet device, it seemed like it was a temporary niche product, at best. But on the eve of the unveiling of the third iteration of the device , Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is making things more interesting. techcrunch.com | 7/29/10 3:01 AM

Local deal goliath Groupon is launching a major new feature today: deal personalization, giving the site the ability to send you the deals it thinks you'll be most interested in. Before now, Groupon has always offered one or two deals per city per day to its users. That's still going to be true, but with a twist: the site will be sending different deals to users based on criteria like their gender, buying history, and their interests. The change may sound fairly minor, but it will likely have a big impact on Groupon's bottom line. Groupon's simplicity has no doubt contributed to its success, but this is one case where it has some very good reasons for introducing a few extra options: personalization will help the site fend off the 500 clones that are gunning for it, it will allow Groupon to offer an unlimited number of deals, and the site can now offer deals from businesses located outside of large cities. Local personalization is rolling out to six cities for now (Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, San Jose, and Seattle), with the rest on the way. techcrunch.com | 7/29/10 2:28 AM

Security specialist Ron Bowes has once again proven how easy it is to glean valuable user information from Facebook , by spidering Facebook's online directory and compiling it all into one neat little torrent that could be downloaded off his site, SkullSecurity.com. Bowes created a torrent containing over 171 million entries with links to profiles that provide access to the names, addresses and phone numbers of 100 million users, one fifth of Facebook. Bowes accessed Facebook's directory , which has the default dictum "Anyone can opt out of appearing here by changing their Search privacy settings." Yeah, but should they have to? techcrunch.com | 7/29/10 1:22 AM