Insights into how technology and the outsourcing of R&D are changing the software industry

The week was pretty much dominated by the launch of Facebook Places, but a few other things happened too…including a $7B acquisition by Intel that I only partially get as a lot of dollars must have gone for parts of Intuit’s business that’s far afield from Intel’s chip business. But who am I to judge. Anyway, here’s this week’s list:

1. I really liked this article on how to identify productive, creative types (hat tip to Forrester analyst Mike Gaultieri).
2. Yet another travel search contender with a quirky name and a unique twist on presentation of results – Hipmunk.  Ding-dong, the fare matrix is dead? Check ‘em out and decide for yourself.  Pretty ballsy to start up a company like this, just weeks after Google buys the leader in the space.
3. Excellent analysis and insight into the Oracle-Google patent fight from RoughlyDrafted. This is not the simplistic money-grab as one might think. So if Google has to pay royalties for Java, can they still give Android away for free?
4. It’s looking more and more like NFC is coming to the iPhone next year and other devices. I’m still not sold on the use case.
5. The opening weekend didn’t go so well for RIM’s Blackberry Torch? Should RIM start marketing the Torch as a “Limited Edition”?
6. The list of iPad-versaries continues to build. Up next: what I’m calling the “EvilPad” from Google and Verizon. The twist? It’s based on Google’s much anticipated Chrome OS, not Android. I wonder if Verizon will prioritize traffic for EvilPad users J
7. Facebook announces Places.  This is perhaps the most reported announcement of the week and there are a ton of articles about what it means, but the best was probably from Altimiter Group’s Charlene Li.  Much of the initial focus was on what this means for Foursquare or Gowalla (and perhaps how quickly they can sell themselves to Google, Apple or Microsoft), but others think that Yelp has the most to fear. From a travel perspective, you can find good insights from Tnooz and Troy Thompson at the Travel 2.0 blog.
8. Intel buys McAfee for $7.68 Billion…that’s with a “B”.  I can understand the need to add security directly onto the chip, but that’s a pretty penny to pay for it and so much of McAfee’s revenues seem off-task for Intel. It certainly can’t be that Intel felt they needed to augment their brand recognition. Maybe they just felt they needed the deal to remind people that they’re still here?
9. Travel rewards startup Topguest, which only went into beta a few weeks ago, is the first travel related company to integrate with Facebook Places.
10. Product quality is a big issue and there are a number of ways to improve it.  CIO Magazine’s Thomas Wallgum recaps 7 steps to improve software quality from Forrester’s latest report.