Verge Open Thread: August 9th, 2012

Posted by Sam Sheffer on August 9, 2012 09:43 am 7

Hello and welcome to Thursday's edition of the Verge Open Thread. As always, fasten your seat-belts, keep all body parts inside the vehicle, and most importantly, enjoy the ride!

90 Seconds on The Verge

Nathan Ingraham: Wednesday, August 8th, 2012

News from The Verge

Apple officially suspends over-the-phone password resets for iCloud

Following a devastating hack of writer Mat Honan's iCloud account, Apple has confirmed that it's stopped offering password resets over the phone. "We’ve temporarily suspended the ability to reset AppleID passwords over the phone," spokeswoman Natalie Kerris told Wired.

Google Search to integrate Gmail results, field trial signup begins today

Gmail results, like Knowledge Graph results, will appear in a small box on the righthand side. The content won't be shown by default (in case anybody's looking over your shoulder), but you can click "show results" to see more.

Pinterest now offering open registration, no invite required

Pinterest has dropped its invite-only policy, opening its doors to all comers. The photo-sharing social network had previously kept its population in check by requiring invites, but CNET reports that Pinterest has increased its capacity to accept new users.

Zynga COO John Schappert resigns

Zynga's chief operating officer John Schappert has resigned from the social games maker, according to an SEC filing from the company. The resignation comes a week after Schappert was reportedly stripped of his duties in overseeing Zynga's game development.

Apple v. Samsung skewered in Conan O'Brien parody

Conan O'Brien debuted a video on last night's episode of Conan that takes a fair number of shots at Samsung, portraying the company as slavishly cribbing designs from Apple for everything from washing machines to vacuum cleaners.

Ouya Kickstarter campaign ends with more than $8.5 million raised

Ouya's Kickstarter campaign ended today, with the project raising $8,596,178 from 63,413 backers at the time of publishing, smashing their target goal by 900 percent.

T-Mobile loses half a million contract customers, mitigates with 227,000 new prepaid users

The income growth is despite a net loss of 205,000 customers over the quarter; nearly four times the number it lost over the same period a year ago, and a far cry from the 187,000 new customers it added last quarter.

Lenovo announces ThinkPad Tablet 2, its first Windows 8 tablet (hands-on)

Lenovo has just revealed most of the details on the ThinkPad Tablet 2, a 9.8mm-thick Windows 8 Pro tablet first shown earlier this year in prototype form whose details we published recently. 3G and AT&T LTE models will be available along with an optional digitizer (for "precision" pen input), keyboard, and dock.

Nikon launches 1 J2, a $549.95 mirrorless camera with a new screen and new features

The new model has a few key upgrades over the J1: the J2's 3-inch LCD is now filled with 921,000 dots, it has a new metallic body, and there's now a Creative Mode stop on the mode dial offering the scene modes and filters that were previously (and oddly) absent from the camera.