Top Items:
Liz Gannes / GigaOM:
Facebook Acquires Contact Importing Startup Octazen — Octazen's contact importer helped Facebook make its userbase viral. — Facebook last week acquired a small Malaysian startup called Octazen Solutions, maker of a contact importer that the social network had already been using to grow …
Discussion:
All Facebook, Octazen Solutions, Softpedia News, Inside Facebook, Mashable! and VentureBeat
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Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Octazen: What The Heck Did Facebook Just Buy Exactly, And Why? — Facebook has acquired its third company, Malaysian startup Octazen Solutions. Facebook says this is largely a talent acquisition, according to GigaOm. Octazen has a slightly different story on their home page …
Nick Saint / Silicon Alley Insider:
Apple's War On Porn Is Just Getting Started (AAPL) — Apple means business this time — apps that sell sex are being tossed out of the App Store en masse. — For the past 12 hours, app developers have been getting notices from Apple saying that their apps have been taken down …
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Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Why Apple's New Ban Against Sexy Apps Is Scary — Last night, we reported on a new restriction that was being applied to Apple's App Store: no more applications with “overtly sexual content”. At this point, the exact nature of that ban is unclear. But it's a policy shift that may alarm …
Mike Masnick / Techdirt:
School District Says It Only Turned Spy Cameras On 42 Times; FBI Now Investigating — More details are coming out about the case we wrote about yesterday concerning the school district that could (and did) turn on webcams on student laptops. The district is now claiming that, yes …
RELATED:
Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:School backs off on laptop spying policy in wake of lawsuit
Discussion:
CNET News, Financial Times, Computerworld, Electronista, Neowin.net, ITworld.com and Between the Lines
Matt Buchanan / Gizmodo:
Motorola Doesn't Love Android That Much After All — Talking to the WSJ about the new Motorola, CEO Sanjay Jha had some interesting stuff to say. Like, if Motorola wasn't poor, they'd develop their own OS. And now that Windows Phone doesn't suck, they're open to using it again.
Margaret Lyons / PopWatch:
Couple marries in Apple store, quotes Steve Jobs in their ceremony — “Just had an unauthorized wedding in the apple store. Priest dressed as Steve Jobs. Read vows from iPhone.” So tweeted my friend Raygan Sunday night. Apple wedding? On Valentines Day? Indeed:
Dave Heiner / Microsoft On The Issues:
The Browser Choice Screen for Europe: What to Expect, When to Expect It — Vice President and Deputy General Counsel — Over the next few weeks, Microsoft will begin offering a “Web browser choice screen” to Internet Explorer users in Europe, as required by the European Commission.
Discussion:
BBC, paidContent, VentureBeat, Computerworld, internetnews.com, Softpedia News, ChannelWeb, Graham Cluley's blog, All about Microsoft, CNET News, The Open Road, AppScout, The Next Web, Webmonkey, Electronista, gdgt, TechSpot, The Microsoft Blog, Digital Trends, Download Squad, Maximum PC, Ars Technica, Engadget, Silicon Alley Insider, Sophos, BetaNews, Mashable!, The Official Microsoft Blog, Erictric, DailyTech, Digital Daily, The Toybox, iGeneration, Tim Anderson's ITWriting and The Register
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Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Will You Pay for Hulu on the iPad? It May Be Your Only Choice. — Will Hulu come to the iPad? Probably. One day. But you had better get ready to pay for it. — Hulu and its owners, three of the big broadcast TV networks, want to bring some version of the Web video service to Apple's device.
Discussion:
Mashable!, Ars Technica, iPadInsider, MWD Tech News, Gizmodo, Fast Company, AppleInsider, App Advice, TiPb, Edible Apple, Daring Fireball, EverythingiCafe, NewTeeVee, DVICE, Technologizer, MacRumors, Electronista, 9 to 5 Mac and I4U News
Darren Murph / Engadget:
New Chromium OS build brings full NVIDIA Ion acceleration, hope for the future — Chrome OS. Man, seems like Google has gotten its hands into quite a few things since we last heard of that, but the underground is keeping things lively with new builds of Chromium OS — you know, to keep us satisfied while we wait for the real deal.
Kasper Jade / AppleInsider:
Apple plans dual graphics enhancements on future MacBook Pros — One of the advances Apple plans for future MacBook Pro models is an improvement to the handling of the notebooks' dual graphics chips, AppleInsider has learned. — Dual-graphics auto switching
Discussion:
SlashGear, The Toybox, Obsessable, MacRumors, Pocket-lint, Gizmodo, Electronista, O'Grady's PowerPage, Erictric, I4U News, Macsimum News and LOOPRumors
Brad Burnham / Union Square Ventures:
Software patents are the problem not the answer — Nathan Myhrvold and I have exactly the same goal. We'd both like to promote useful innovations that have a positive social impact. But we have very different opinions about how to do it. Nathan believes the patent system is the answer …
Michelle Quinn / Bay Area:
Making Computer Science More Enticing — The top 10 companies in Silicon Valley employed a lower percentage of Hispanics, African-Americans and women in 2005 than they did a decade ago, according an article earlier this week. — It's an issue I've covered over the years …
Chris Lefkow / Agence France Presse:
NY Times executives discuss plan to charge online readers — NEW YORK (AFP) - Top New York Times executives expressed confidence Friday that a plan to start charging readers of the newspaper's website from next year will not result in a significant loss of traffic.
Greg Sterling / Search Engine Land:
Google: “With Buzz We Failed To Appreciate That Users Have Differing Privacy Expectations” — Google scheduled a privacy discussion for reporters and bloggers at its San Francisco offices a couple of weeks ago. The timing turned out to be unexpectedly ironic.
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider
Richard Lai / Engadget:
Dell Mini 5 prototype impressions — Dell's puzzled the world for quite some time with its outlandish Mini 5 — at first glance it's just another Android-based MID, but a quick fiddle with it reveals the full-fledged 3G phone inside. So will it fit in a pocket? Can we carry it around like a normal phone?
PewResearch.org:
Does Google Make Us Stupid? — Respondents to the fourth “Future of the Internet” survey, conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project and Elon University's Imagining the Internet Center, were asked to consider the future of the internet-connected world between now and 2020 and the likely innovation that will occur.
