New Zealand Apple retailer — YouBee — apparently today confirmed that Apple would be bringing out some great new products, such as the iPhone 5 and more. Read more…

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Twitter made an interesting acquisition on Thursday, when it bought a young Canadian startup called Summify, a company whose service (as its name implies) was designed to cut through the noise of all those social-media streams and summarize the content that matters. More than anything, this is perhaps the single biggest hole that exists not just in Twitter but Facebook and other services as well: the need to give users more ways of filtering the massive amounts of information that keep flooding their activity streams and other social-media inboxes. There are so many ways of producing and sharing content but so few good ways of filtering.

As has been reported elsewhere, Summify says it’s mothballing its service (a decision that was not received warmly by many users), and the team of five will join the growing ranks at Twitter’s new headquarters. The two co-founders, who are originally from Romania, moved to Vancouver, B.C. when they were accepted into an incubator program called Bootup Labs and later received angel funding (according to one report, a Summify investor posted a message that suggested the Twitter acquisition was an all-stock transaction, but the tweet was later deleted). Like some other services such as News.me, Summify filtered a user’s activity streams, then used an algorithm to produce a daily email with links to the most-shared content in their social networks.

While the service is being closed down, it seems fairly obvious that Twitter bought the company to try to incorporate that kind of semantic filtering into its offerings — likely by beefing up its new “Discover” tab, which uses trending topics and other features to try and suggest interesting content to users. As it exists now, the Discover option isn’t very comprehensive or well-organized, and it makes sense for Twitter to try to do that better. One of the service’s challenges has always been to figure out how to keep new users engaged, since it isn’t clear to many what exactly Twitter is for.

As we’ve described before, the need for that kind of curation — whether human-driven or algorithmic, or a combination of both — is hardly unique to Twitter. Facebook also suffers from an information overload problem, one likely to be exacerbated by the launch of hundreds of new “social sharing” apps that will fill users’ feeds with oceans of “news” about things their friends and acquaintances bought or read or ate. Even Google hasn’t been able to solve the information-overload problem, despite its launch of Circles for its Google+ network: a feature many find cumbersome.

In some ways, services like Summify seem like a throwback to the early days of the web, when people wrote blogs that consisted solely of half a dozen links to interesting posts or news articles or websites. In fact, one of the earliest examples of a blog — Jorn Barger’s site Robot Wisdom, which he called a weblog and later shortened to “blog” — was exactly that, and the tradition continues today with link-blogs such as Kottke.org or Brainpickings. The principle is the same as it was when Barger started doing it: to filter the massive amounts of information on the web in some usable way, to make sense of the flood.

In a blog post on the Summify acquisition, Mike Davidson — founder and CEO of an early social-news community called Newsvine, which was later acquired by MSNBC– said his ideal news site would look very much like a Summify email, but on the web: half a dozen links to the most interesting or relevant content available, changing daily. And Summify and News.me are hardly the only ones trying to fill this need. Others, including individual efforts such as Dave Pell’s excellent NextDraft newsletter, are aimed at solving the same problem.

The same impulse is behind apps like Flipboard, which recently started to incorporate more curation elements, both human and algorithmic — and it’s the driving force behind new startups such as Pinterest, as Om pointed out in his coverage of the red-hot newcomer. Smart aggregation and curation that makes sense of the flood of social data we have all around us is the Holy Grail, and it’s also one of the few remaining justifications for traditional media, since journalists have been doing that kind of curation and filtering for decades. But who will ultimately win this race — and how — is still an open question.

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr users Luc Legay and See-ming Lee

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Target will soon offer store-within-a-store type setups in 25 of its locations, the company revealed during a presentation Thursday. The move backs up a report from last week that suggested Apple may be extending its partnership with the U.S. retail chain.

Apple’s special displays were announced alongside a program of deploying small boutiques within Target’s larger stores called “The Shops at Target,” the retailer revealed. These pop-up type shops seem to be temporary locations that will sell Target-specific goods. The arrangement with Apple is separate from the “Shops at Target” initiative, but full details are not yet known about what exactly it includes.

Target spokeswoman Dustee Jenkins told MarketWatch that Target will “have 25 stores with unique display and assortment [of inventory]” for Apple goods, but it isn’t clear where or when the stores will appear first. We’ve requested more information from Target and Apple, and will update this story if we find out more about what’s being offered and what the timeline is for the arrival of these stores.

An in-store partnership with Target should help Apple reach more markets in areas where dedicated Apple retail locations don’t make financial sense. If they do end up resembling Best Buy mini-stores, they’ll be staffed with knowledgeable, Apple-specific personnel and offer Mac computers and more in addition to the iOS devices currently available at Target.

Photo: Some rights reserved by Chris Coyier

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Apple finally confirmed its rumored purchase of Anobit, an Israeli company that makes digital signal processing tech to improve the performance of NAND flash used in the iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Air, among other devices. The official confirmation follows reports made first in December of 2011, and could indicate that Apple is looking to extend its edge over the competition when it comes to flash memory.

Apple now has a guaranteed steady supply of high-performance controllers made by Anobit that make the NAND flash used in its mobile devices, especially in higher capacities, perform better. Anobit’s expertise could potentially help Apple improve battery life and storage capacity in future devices, and also lower costs related to flash components, which are traditionally some of the most expensive single components used in the production of iOS hardware.

As usual when it comes to these strategic acquisitions, Apple wouldn’t comment on its plans for Anobit. “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time,” a spokesman told Bloomberg in an interview. “We generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.”

In this case, however, we have a precedent we can look to; Apple used its purchase of PA Semi and Intrinsity to help further its own in-house designed A-series of ARM-based processors. Custom NAND flash modules that have unique optimizations based on Anobit tech could help Apple deliver an even more tightly-integrated device/software combo that pushes its existing advantages in terms of power consumption, speed and product margins further still.

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Asus has confirmed it will release an ARM-based tablet that will run Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system sometime in 2012., along with other product announcements. Read more…

Neowin.net

This afternoon (pacific time), Microsoft took some of the wraps off the Windows 8 store, and although journalists and bloggers not at the event scrambled to get the news as it was happening (Thanks, @InaFried at AllThingsD, it may have been painful, but you were all we had!), and much of the news had already been announced at Build, there were a few new tidbits of information.

The first, and probably most newsworthy, is that Microsoft confirmed a “late February 2012” launch date for the beta of Windows 8, confirming speculation by The Next Web and others.  The Windows Store will launch at the same time, presumably with at least some of the apps demoed: eBay, Evernote, a game called “Cut the Rope, and Disney Digital Books, to name a few.

Microsoft’s Windows Web Services VP Antoine Leblond made quite a big deal about the scope of Windows, pointing out that there are some 1.25 billion Windows machines out there (more than there are cars!), with another 400 million Windows 7 devices expected to be sold in the next year.  Of course exactly none of those devices will be able to run the Metro style apps natively, but still, it’s an impressive number.

Leblond then went on to compare Windows to Android and Apple (both with similar “App stores”):

(photo credit: Engadget)

Funny, they didn’t include Windows Phone in there (or wait, maybe they did and it’s just too small to see!)

After that it was demo time, and after that, a bit of news on what developers can expect.  Here’s a list of some tidbits we were able to glean, thanks to All Things D:

• Windows Store will be localized in all (more than 100) Windows languages
• Payment mechanisms for 230 markets
• Top 40 markets will have local pricing
• Developers will be able to be paid in one of 20 different currencies
• IE 10 (built in to Windows will include a button in the browser for apps that are in the Windows Store
• In-app purchases and trial app support built into the store, developers can use if they wish
• Apps can use their own subscription back-ends, unlike Apple store
• Developers are free to choose whichever ad platform they want for ad supported apps
• Developers will be able to check on their apps through the approval process, as was shown at Build
• App prices can range from $ 1.49 to $ 999.99 (!!)
• Microsoft will take a 30% cut for the first $ 25k, then the cut will drop to 20%

Microsoft has paid a lot of attention to marketing both products and apps in recent times, with emphasis on the Microsoft Stores, the Windows Phone Marketplace, and more, and it’s no surprise that the new Windows Store is well thought out and comprehensive.  Of course how well it does will depend entirely on Windows 8 sales, and sales of Metro style apps, but having the store in place is going to be vital if Windows 8 is to succeed.

A bit of an update: Microsoft has (finally) in the last few minutes blogged about the new Windows Store, and posted additional details over at the Microsoft News Center with a Fact Sheet, screenshots and event photos, and a video.

LiveSide.net

A Lenovo product manager has revealed that the company does have plans to release a new phone based on Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system but it’s not due out until the second half of 2012. Read more…

Neowin.net

Back in October, President of Microsoft’s Windows Phone division Andy Lees mentioned that new OEMs will be coming on-board with Windows Phone in 2012. Shortly after we saw leaks of a Lenovo-branded smartphone running the Windows Phone OS, suggesting that Microsoft may be in talks with Lenovo to launch devices in the Chinese market.

Today Chinese website iMobile (via WMPU) got the chance to interview Lenovo’s LePhone Product Manager Yue Chen, shortly after the company has launched the Android-based LePhone S2. During the interview, Chen confirmed that the previously leaked images of a Windows Phone-based LePhone S2 (shown below) were indeed real. Below is an excerpt from the interview:

When asked about the previously leaked images of a LePhone S2 device running Windows Phone, Chen confirmed that the images were in fact real.

“We are indeed currently considering a Windows Phone-based LePhone product, and we already have a clear release schedule – it will be released during the second half of 2012,” Chen told the reporters.

While the leaked images showed a LePhone S2 running Windows Phone OS, there is no guarantee that this device will ever be sold to the public (it’s probably just a prototype). Lenovo just showed off its fourth device in the LePhone series – the LePhone K2 – an Android device with a 4.3” display and 1.5 Ghz dual-core ship, so who knows what the company will have in store in 7 month’s time.

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Steve Ballmer has said at its annual shareholder meeting that Windows 8 will be coming to the phone. This path has long been speculated and the confirmation by Ballmer may seal the deal on the rumors. Read more…

Neowin.net

At today’s Annual Meeting of shareholders, Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer went through the usual spiel on how well the company is doing, despite the stock price (which of course is what shareholders are most interested in).  But then in a question and answer period, when a shareholder asked about being in a “post-PC era”, Ballmer let slip something that we’ve been hearing lots of rumors about, as noted by Business Insider’s Matt Rossoff:

"We are driving Windows down to the phone with Windows 8."

There has been much speculation about Microsoft moving to a single Windows core to drive PCs, tablets, phones, and even Xbox, but up to now nothing has been officially announced about the next versions of Windows Phone.  Of course, with a strong push coming for Windows Phone 7.5 (“Mango”), including the introduction of new Nokia Windows Phones around the world and soon here in the U.S., Microsoft may not be so keen on letting it be known that a new version of Windows Phone may be just around the corner.

Sales of Windows Phones have actually fallen in the last quarter, according to Gartner, and even though there has been a positive buzz about Mango, it has yet to show up in terms of sales.  And while a new unified stable of Windows 8 devices may be quite compelling, it’s not going to do much to boost sales of existing phones.  Can we wait another year (or more) for a unified Windows 8 experience?

LiveSide.net