A curated selection of the day’s most newsworthy tech stories from all over the Web. Sign up to get the newsletter delivered to you everyday.
Army private Bradley Manning Army private Bradley Manning (right), the soldier who reportedly gave WikiLeaks 500,000-plus classified materials like video of a Baghdad helicopter air strike in which 12 people were killed, faces 22 additional charges that accuse him of aiding the enemy. Though such charges could mean the death penalty for him, military prosecutors say they’ll likely push for life in prison. (CBS News and Ars Technica)
- Facebook introduced its rumored commenting system plug-in upgrade which offers beefed up moderatation features — for instance, publishers can make certain comments private — and better sharing so users can show comments they’ve made on third-party sites in their News Feeds, too. (PBS)
- Daily deals site LivingSocial introduced its second national deal yesterday: two Fandango movie tickets for $9, some 70% off the normal sales price. So far, more than 730,000 have been purchased. Two catches, though: the sale ends later today, and the two tickets have to be purchased for the same movie and showtime when ever the deal is redeemed. In other words, if you’re interested, act now. (LivingSocial)
- Square, the credit card transaction startup from Jack Dorsey that turns your mobile device into a credit card scanner, is now processing $1 million worth of transactions each day. Square also recently made news by raising $27.5 million and dropping the $.15 per transaction charge it had been charging users. (TechCrunch)
- Salesforce.com updated its service with Service Cloud 3. Features include deeper social media integration like the conversion of Facebook wall posts/comments into cases, a new Radian6 AppExchange app that lets agents work entirely within Service Cloud 3 but still engage with customers via social networks, blogs, video and photo sharing sites, as well as social dashboards for ID-ing trends and the addition of analytics that generate social channel reports. (TechCrunch and Salesforce.com)
- Troubled actor Charlie Sheen got more than 900,000 Twitter followers in one day, way faster than digital shock jock Howard Stern, who signed onto the social network about a month ago and still only has 355,000. (Ad Age)
- We have a clearer idea of what to expect from iOS 4.3, the software update to Apple’s mobile operating system. Chief among them: a Safari web browser that’s twice as fast thanks to the Nitro JavaScript engine used in the desktop Safari 5.0 version, iTunes “Home Sharing” of music among mobile devices also, wider AirPlay support so you can listen/view music, movies and photos on the TV, Personal Hotspot (read: 3G data tethering for up to five devices), and the ability to make that iPad side button either a mute switch or landscape/vertical view orientation lock. (Mashable)
- And in case you somehow missed all the iPad 2 brouhaha in San Francisco yesterday afternoon, here’s a quick recap. Steve Jobs made a surprise appearance and walked the audience through the next-generation Apple tablet himself. Come March 11 in the U.S., the iPad 2 will come in both black and white versions, be 33% thinner (thinner even than the iPhone 4), .2 ounces lighter, rock a dual-core ARM processor that’s at least twice as fast, have the same screen resolution (1,024 x 768), two onboard 720p-resolution cameras, and sell for the same price points as its predecessor. Meanwhile, the new “smart case” is a cover that magnetically adheres to the side of the iPad 2, wakes it up when opened and puts it to sleep when closed, and will come in 10 flavors: 5 colors made of polyurethane and 5 crafted from leather. (Fortune)
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