Weekly Knowledge Dump: Tech News for 10.14.11

The Weekly Knowledge Dump is the weekly tech column that gives you the biggest news in the tech world for the past week, plus a guide to all of the interesting but non-news stories from the past week. It’s like backing up a dump truck of knowledge to your brain.

iPhone 4S Sales Begin

This morning, retailers around the world started selling the iPhone 4S. Apple’s flagship New York City stores had lines that stretched around the block. There were also lines at Best Buy, AT&T and Verizon stores across the country. The only store that seems to have been spared long lines is Sprint. That might be because Sprint customers wanted to make sure that they their hands on the iPhone 4S on launch day, so they pre-ordered theirs.

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Over 1,000,000 Pre-Orders for the iPhone 4S

Last week, customers could start to pre-order their iPhone 4S  to ensure that they would get one on launch day. According to a press release from Apple, they took in over 1,000,000 pre-orders in the first 24 hours. That’s nearly double the total amount of pre-orders for the iPhone 4 back in 2010. Take a look at the video above and you’ll see just how woefully out of touch with consumers most tech journalists are.

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Google Kills Off a Bunch of Services in “Fall Sweep”

In a blog post entitled “Fall Sweep”, Google announced that they were killing off a number of services, including Code Search and the University Research Program for Search. Both of these programs were meant to serve rather small audiences, but those that use them will still be upset about their phasing out. More importantly, Google announced that they were killing both Buzz and the social features of iGoogle. iGoogle proper will still remain, but the social features will no longer function. Google said the killing off of Buzz was natural, since they wanted people to share things via Google+ from now on.

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Roku Adding HBO Go Streaming to All of Its Boxes

Roku, the maker of numerous streaming devices, has announced that they will be adding HBO Go to all of their set-top boxes next month. This is great news for people who have HBO, but don’t have access to on demand channels (such as people who own TiVos). This is the first TV-connected device to get HBO Go, but it isn’t the only one. Microsoft announced that their Fall 2011 update for Xbox Live will include an HBO Go app as well.

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Bonus: Interesting Dispatches from the Past Week

Here is a small selection of interesting articles that aren’t really news, but are still worth reading anyway:

• Cleaning by Marco Arment (Marco.org)