Tom Neumayr / Apple:
Ping Users Top One Million in First 48 Hours  —  Apple® today announced that in less than 48 hours since its launch on Wednesday, more than one million users have joined Ping, its new social network for music which lets users follow their favorite artists and friends to discover …

Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
Google Announces Can't Be Missed Press Event On Search - What's Up?  —  Google's announced a special press event for next Wednesday on search that “you won't want to miss.” What big news could there be?  Let's speculate — but I wouldn't get too excited.  —  Here's what the invite says:

A gamer, a rabbity-thing, a heavy-weapons expert and a Mexican wrestler walk into a casino … Telltale Games will release an all-star poker game built around just such an unlikely mix of videogame characters, the publisher said Thursday. Poker Night at the Inventory will seat Tycho from Penny Arcade, Sam of Sam & Max fame, internet celebrity [...]

Drought has cut Peru's Amazon River to its lowest level in 40 years and it is already below the minimum set in 2005, when a devastating dry spell damaged vast swaths of South American rainforest in the worst drought in decades.

The money people in tech love check-in companies. VCs are funneling funds into Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, and other apps that let users check-in and then broadcast their locations to friends and businesses. Why? On the Roundtable today we discuss these start-ups, as well as Facebook's entry into this market, with Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times, and Adrianne Jeffries of ReadWriteWeb.

Square Enix announced that it is releasing Wakfu, an upcoming free-to-play tactical MMORPG from French developer and publisher Ankama Games (Dofus series), to North America. Wakfu features an anime-style world, 12 character classes (each with a total of 25 spells), customizable characters, and a turn-based, tactical combat system. Players actions also affect the game's environments, in that killing a particular monster or mining an ore can prevent that creature/resource from appearing again. In France, Ankama's ...

With new Galaxy Tabs and Wave phones coming, Samsung executives expect double-digit profit from its third-quarter mobile sales. - At the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin, JK Shin, head of Samsung's mobile communications division, told journalists he expects the company's mobile business to reach a double-digit profit margin during the third quarter of 2010. Samsung company executives also expect to ship 25 million sma...

Google Public Policy Blog:
Texas inquires on our approach to competition  —  We've always worked hard to ensure that our success is earned the right way — by building great products, not locking in our users or advertisers.  That said, we recognize that as Google grows, we're going to face more questions about how our business works.

ANALYSIS: CEO David Scott and venture capital firms Menlo Ventures, Worldview Technology Partners and Mayfield Fund will come away with many dollars when the deal is done. - In the aftermath of the out-of-control bidding war that recently concluded with Hewlett-Packard out-spending Dell at $2.35 billion for storage maker 3PAR, the winners undoubtedly are enjoying one of the sweetest Labor Day weekends of their lives. Those victors include CEO David Scott and venture ...

Sam & Max episodic game developer Telltale Games has followed up on the teaser it posted to Gametrailers last week with an announcement of a brand new title called Poker Night at The Inventory. The game will feature "a new style of poker" and feature high profile characters from games and comics, including Homestar Runner's Strong Bad, Penny Arcade's Tycho, Sam & Max's Max and The Heavy from Team Fortress 2. Telltale CEO Dan Connors ...

Over the years, Windows has gotten progressively better at laptop power management--but it still doesn't tell you much about your battery.

Google says Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott is investigating whether its Web search rankings are fair.