The weekend is here again, but this may feel more like Black Friday for the folks at online gaming company OnLive, who is rumored to have let its entire staff go today amidst rumors that the company is filing for bankruptcy and rebooting as a new entity. Quite sad if true, and our hearts go out to anyone affected by the situation. So without further ado, let's recap that and four other stories making headlines on this Friday, August 17, 2012.
Mashable is reporting that there's trouble afoot at cloud gaming startup OnLive, with a source claiming the company "called an all hands meeting at 10am PDT, at which the entire staff was fired." This caused a ripple of rumors claiming the company was closing its doors, but according to OnLive director of corporate communications Brian Jaquet, that's not quite the case. ”No comment on the news other than to say, the OnLive service is not shutting down," the statement to Mashable reads. Of course, that doesn't mean the layoff rumors are true, but it definitely sounds like OnLive is going through some kind of upheaval today nonetheless.
Following up on the recent report about Steve Jobs' Palo Alto home being burglarized, MercuryNews.com today has the bizarre tale of how the late Apple co-founder's stolen iPad wound up in the hands of Kenny the Clown, who briefly used the tablet as part of his act before cops showed up at his door and whisked it away. Turns out Kenny's friend is the one responsible for breaking into the Jobs home, who gifted the stolen iPad to the clown so he could load The Pink Panther theme and Michael Jackson songs onto it to entertain Bay Area kids and tourists with his antics. So did Kenny the Clown glean any corporate secrets from the device? Apparently not, claiming "I didn't notice anything special or anything like that." The clown, whose real name is Kenneth Kahn, was not charged in the theft.
Who's up for a mobile game based on The Incredible Hulk? We sure are, and judging from a mysterious tweet linking back to the above image on the Marvel website, it seems the comic book legend may soon have something along those lines in store for us. "Something massive is smashing onto mobile from Marvel," the message reads, with a rather angry image of the Hulk towering over silhouetted figures of Thor, Captain America and Iron Man. Does that mean an awesome mobile Avengers game is upon us, or something just for Hulk? There's no clue beyond the image, but you can bet we'll be unleashing our own word on the subject when this mystery app finally makes its debut.
Tweebot developer Tapbots has taken to its blog today to soothe fears and anxiety about the new Twitter API changes we reported on Friday morning, and the headline "Don't Panic" would seem to indicate that the developer isn't too worried about whatever headaches the microblogging service will be tossing their way. "I wanted to let everyone know that the world isn’t ending, Tweetbot for Mac is coming out soon, Tweetbot for iOS isn’t going anywhere," Tapbots boss Paul Haddad writes. "So sit down, grab a towel and let’s go over some of these API changes." Time will tell how sweeping these changes might be, but in the meantime let's all chill out and let the developers sort it out with the folks at Twitter HQ.
9to5Mac is reporting that Apple has seeded a second build of OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.1 to developers today, which again comes with no known issues. Build 12B13 once again asks developers to focus on "Active Directory, iCal, Microsoft Exchange in Mail, PAC proxies in Safari, SMB, USB, and WiFi and audio when connected to an Apple Thunderbolt Display," with no other release notes included. Sounds like this one will be coming down the pike pretty soon to fix whatever ails you with the latest big cat, so stay tuned.
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(Image courtesy of Marvel.com)
