The Thursday Tech Roundup!!

The Wall Street Journal tracks and creates a cool visualization of Foursquare check-ins, digital book sales on Amazon creams printed book sales on Amazon, greener & tech-savvy pastures for Condé Nast and Apple's pretty close to closing deals for its iCloud music licensing service. Check these out and much more in today's tech round-up!

1. The good techies at the Wall Street Journal have really created something magical. Using a collection of Foursquare check-ins from around NYC, a visualization of a week's worth of check-ins was born. Starting at noon Eastern on Friday, Jan. 21 until noon on Friday Jan. 28, WSJ collected every check-in. Location-sharing service Foursquare provided the data. But don't fret, they removed all material that could identify individual users. NYC, being a metropolis for young, vibrant and active technology users, was the original location for the start of the Foursquare app. San Francisco was charted and rounded up of its foursquare check-ins as well. With about an 92% correlation, it seems as if the Bay Area's Foursquare check-ins are proving to be very similar to NYC's pattern of active check-ins. Categories like gyms, parks, American food, trains, movie theaters and dessert places were most similar between both cities. Check out the Top 80 Foursquare check-Ins chart, gender breakdown of check-ins and be sure to press play on their vivid hour-by-hour check-ins tracker! [WSJ]

2. Amazon began from the sale of printed books, now the Kindle obliterates it! The amount of digital book sales for Amazon Kindle officially trumps the site's sale of printed books. Seems like the future is here to stay. And with more reading tablets springing up, you're likely to see less and less people flipping through actual pages in the future. From April 1st, for every 100 print books that Amazon has sold (of any kind) the company sold about 105 Kindle books! [Engadget]

3. New Condé Nast headquarters will be greener and the most technologically-sophisticated buildings in the world. One World Trade Center is slated to become HQ to the epicenter of the world's most popular magazines. Condé Nast is close to reaching a deal with Port Authority of NY &NJ to lease the 1 million square ft of space. Port Authority explains:

“Through unprecedented collaborations with technology and energy leaders throughout the world, One World Trade Center’s design team used the latest methods to maximize efficiency, minimize waste and pollution, conserve water, improve air quality and reduce the impacts of the development." [Wired]

4. It's looking like Apple is close to signing an iCloud music deal! According to CNET and music industry sources, Apple has recently signed a cloud-music licensing agreement with EMI Music. The company is also close to closing its deals with Universal and Sony Music Entertainment adding to its current deal with Warner Music Group. Surpassing Amazon and Google with their iCloud deals, it would place Apple at the forefront of online licensed cloud-music services. [HuffPost]

5. Speaking of Apple, not only do their iPhones & iPods get revamped, so do the stores. The Apple store is slated for an upgrade to Apple Store 2.0. The retail stores' 2.0 versions are planned to have new signage, new customer service offerings and new iPad displays in place of paper usage.  [HuffPost]

6. There is also a rumor floating about that the "iPhone 4S" is likely to hit stores this Fall! The rumor is fueled by recent reports regarding Apple's lowered iPhone 4 shipments for the 2nd Quarter of 2011. [HuffPost]

7. The new LG AH-IPS displays are a visual feast! LG's ultra-high resolution Advanced High Performance In-Plane Switching displays range from 3.5 inches to a grandiose 84-inch panel. No word on when these will be available. [Engadget]

8. Check out Lomography's New 103 Degree LC-Wide Film Camera! Continuing from the Lomography LC A+ camera, this new addition has been upgraded from its previous model. It has the ability to take photos with a wider angle than the LC-A+'s 32mm lens. You can also choose between 17 x 24mm half-frame shots, 24 x 24mm square shots and 36 x 24mm full shots! If you want to take a break from your digital camera and the savvy Instagram app on your iPhone, try this gadget out! [Gizmodo]