Back in July, Microsoft “accidentally” published a teaser for a social network being worked on by Microsoft Research. Socl.com appeared to be focused on search and sharing, but what little they showed was quickly pulled down and we didn’t hear anything more — until today, when The Verge posted some new details after apparently being given early access by the Socl team. To duplicate their description in detail would be tedious and unnecessary(likewise reposting their screenshots), but the short version appears to be that it has a familiar layout (and color scheme) with a central feed, tags and feeds on the left, and invites and video chat on the right

Well, it looks like Intel is really putting its money where its mouth is when it comes to mobile. Intel’s global investment and M&A branch, Intel Capital , today officially announced the creation of its new “AppUp” Fund — a $100 million fund that will be used to invest in startups and enterprises developing apps and software tools for mobile devices and PCs.

Based on official blog posts that were apparently posted early (and then pulled), developers will soon be able to access some key features of Google+ via the service’s API: photos and videos. Google announced the news on both the Google+ platform blog and its Photos blog, only to take the posts down shortly thereafter — but not before they were copied by Google’s cache, syndicated to Twitter, and spotted by TC reporter Robin Wauters. You can find a cached version of the blog post here , and I’ve included an image below

The good news about information technology, according to Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, the authors of Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy is that it’s making America more innovative, productive and richer.

Josh Elman has been in the trenches of product development since mid-1990s, with his resume reading like a who’s who of major web companies today. He started at Homestead and RealNetworks in the 1990s, and went on to hold key product roles at LinkedIn, Zazzle, Facebook and most recently Twitter.

Facebook picks up two veterans of Second Life-maker Linden Lab today in announcing a talent acquisition of MailRank. Given the background of MailRank’s co-founders, we would bet that Facebook’s director of engineering Cory Ondrejka, who Linden Lab’s chief technology officer, had a hand in sourcing or facilitating this deal. With the acquisition, Facebook gets two former directors of engineering at Linden Lab: Bethanye McKinney Blount and Bryan O’Sullivan

Facebook has just acq-hired the two founders of MailRank, Bryan O’Sullivan and Bethanye Blount, as they’ve just announced on their blog…. We’re thrilled to announce that MailRank’s co-founders will be joining Facebook in December! “We started MailRank to focus on the email that matters, combining powerful technology with a simple interface.

iFixit, bless their hearts, have taken a Kindle Fire to pieces , though as it turns out, there aren’t too many pieces to begin with. The battery is one huge unit, and all the processing and I/O occurs on a single PCB at the bottom of the device.

Christmas is right around the corner, and what could be a better complement your gingerbread and eggnog than a full month of Christmas music. Nothing, right?

Current Apple board member and Genentech CEO Arthur D.