Mac News: New Apple patent may offer clues to future mobile payment solution  
A newly-granted patent could point to how Apple will handle mobile payments if and when the company decides to enter the market. U.S. Patent No. 8,255,323 for “Motion based payment confirmation” may seem innocuous at first glance, but the invention could very well be implemented into an NFC-driven mobile payment solution.     
Read full story => AppleInsider

Technology News: Data, Not Ads, Will Make Social Networks Profitable   
We’ve been watching lately as the major social networks go through growing pains of one sort or another as they all struggle to find ways to translate their massive popularity into financial success.    
Read full story => Internet Evolution

Programming News: SOA (the term) is dead, but SOA (the architecture) lives on   
SOA, according to analyst Jason Bloomberg, is a bad word. “There’s perception and there’s reality,” he began. “The perception in the market is it’s yesterday’s news. It’s too difficult. Web services had too many complexities. We’ve moved on to the cloud, so SOA’s dead.    
Read full story => SD Times

Other News: Usenet – what have you become?   
Usenet is 32 years old. You’d be forgiven for thinking that it’s a near-dead, cobweb-covered discussion forum platform, but actually it’s more popular today than ever before, and it’s thriving as an alternative to Bittorrent. Yes, people are using it for piracy, which in itself is not particularly remarkable.    
Read full story => 90 Percent of Everything