Top Items:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Groupon Closing $950 Million Round, Valued At $4.75 Billion — Lots of excitement today about Groupon's intention to raise a new monster round of financing, with speculation that the valuation of the still-young startup reaching nearly $8 billion. That speculation is only partially right …
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Erin Griffith / VC Experts:
Groupon Raising Up to $950 million Series G — Fresh off the heels of Groupon's widely publicized Google rebuff, the discount e-commerce company has filed a certificate to authorize a $950 million Series G round of preferred stock. The certificate, which gives Groupon the capacity to raise $950 million, was filed on December 17.
Discussion:
L.A. Times Tech Blog, PC Magazine, Venture Capital Dispatch, TechCrunch, VatorNews, eMoney, DealBook, ReadWriteWeb, NBC Bay Area, CNET News, Mashable!, Fortune, VentureBeat, SAI and Screenwerk
Kellex / Droid Life:
Exclusive: 12 Photos of the HTC Thunderbolt on Verizon — Take a look at that beauty. Say hello to the HTC Thunderbolt, which will be the first 4G LTE device to land on Verizon after its unveiling next week at CES. As you can see, it really just looks exactly like the Desire HD …
Discussion:
Engadget, LAPTOP Magazine, IntoMobile, Electronista, PhoneArena, PhoneDog.com, BGR, Erictric, MobileCrunch and Android Phone Fans
Kontra / counternotions:
The Unbearable Inevitability of Being Android, 1995 — According to soldiers of the Android Crusade, 2011 is the year Google will crush iOS to declare its inevitable suzerainty over mobile territories. — Let's meet this week's crusaders: Seth Weintraub (2011 will be the year Android explodes) …
Threat Level:
Putting the Record Straight on the Lamo-Manning Chat Logs — Editor's note: This is a two-part article, in which Wired.com editor-in-chief Evan Hansen and senior editor Kevin Poulsen respond separately to criticisms of the site's Wikileaks coverage. — The Case for Privacy
Discussion:
p2pnet, WL Central, Salon and Boing Boing, more at Mediagazer »
Brooks Barnes / New York Times:
Disney Tackles Major Theme Park Problem: Lines — ORLANDO, Fla. — Deep in the bowels of Walt Disney World, inside an underground bunker called the Disney Operational Command Center, technicians know that you are standing in line and that you are most likely annoyed about it.
Discussion:
VatorNews, Newlaunches.com, Engadget, GMSV and Company Town
Ionut Arghire / Softpedia News:
New Android Market Stats Out, Over 200k Apps Available — Google's Android operating system already attracted a lot of developers on its side, which came up with applications in excess of 200,000, the latest stats on the Android Market show. — Apple's App Store for the iPhone …
Discussion:
BGR, The Next Web, WebProNews, Electronista, Techie Buzz, IntoMobile, Examiner and Know Your Cell, Thanks:keithdsouza
Horace Dediu / asymco:
The parable of the the PDA: predicting the smartphone's future — When reading the comments disputing the possible end of the voice-phone era I'm reminded of similar comments disputing the end of the PDA era. — Although the Apple Newton pioneered the market in 1992 and John Sculley came …
Dan Primack / Fortune:
SecondMarket: The SEC has not asked us for anything — The SEC “wants to learn more” about secondary stock trades in private companies like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Zynga, according to a report in today's New York Times. No specifics as to the inquiry's primary goal …
Brian X. Chen / Gadget Lab:
Apple Doesn't Want Coders Messing With iPhone Buttons — Sometimes — Apple can't stick to its own rules with the gigantic iOS App Store. — The company recently approved an iPhone camera app that carries a special feature: the ability to snap a photo by pressing the physical Volume button rather than tapping the touchscreen.
Discussion:
AppleInsider, Pulse2, App Advice, The Apple Core Blog, BlogsDNA, MacRumors, Technovia, MacNN and PC World
Brier Dudley / The Seattle Times:
Paul Allen tries again with suit against Apple, Google, Facebook ... Mercer Island billionaire Paul Allen today renewed his effort to sue Apple, Google, Facebook, eBay, AOL and other companies for patent infringement. — Allen's case was rejected on Dec. 10 by a federal judge in Seattle who said it was too vague.
Discussion:
AppleInsider and Electronista
Donald Melanson / Engadget:
Researchers create ultra-fast ‘1,000 core’ processor, Intel also toys with the idea — We've already seen field programmable gate arrays (or FPGAs) used to create energy efficient supercomputers, but a team of researchers at the University of Glasgow led by Dr. Wim Vanderbauwhede now say that they have …
Discussion:
SlashGear
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Q: What Does Quora Mean For The Future Of Blogging? A: Business As Usual — As many of you have noticed, we (and by “we”, I mainly mean “me") have been using Quora a lot as a source of inspiration for story ideas. Some people seem to think this is a great idea.
Discussion:
Elias Bizannes, TeleRead, Stay N' Alive and Skeptic Geek, Thanks:alexia
Zach Epstein / BGR:
BlackBerry PlayBook battery issues could delay launch, says analyst — According to Kaufman Brothers analyst Shaw Wu, RIM may be forced to delay the release of its first tablet computer, the BlackBerry PlayBook. Wu claims he is hearing that the PlayBook “needs to improve its relatively poor battery life …
Discussion:
Electronista, Bloomberg, Digital Daily, Tech Musings, GottaBeMobile, SlashGear, ITworld.com, PhoneDog.com, IntoMobile, SAI, Tech Trader Daily, MobileBurn.com, TiPb and Examiner
Enigmax / TorrentFreak:
RapidShare Shows MPAA/RIAA: We Can Lobby Lawmakers Too — Last month RapidShare discovered that they had been reported by the MPAA and RIAA to the US Government for being one of the world's “most notorious pirate markets”. Now, on the heels of reports that the entertainment industries spent …
Discussion:
Deutsche Welle, ZeroPaid.com and Ars Technica
Digital Chosunilbo:
Samsung to Unveil New Galaxy S at Mobile World Congress — The successor to Samsung Electronics' hit Galaxy S smartphone will be released in February. — Samsung announced Monday that it will unveil the device at the 2011 Mobile World Congress, the world's largest mobile communications exhibition …
Discussion:
Pulse2, Android Phone Fans, PhoneDog.com, MobileWhack.com, Samsung Hub, SlashGear, pocketnow.com, Mobile Knots, Softpedia News, PhoneArena and The Korea Times
Mike Masnick / Techdirt:
France Wants To Extend Private Copying Levy To Tablets... But Not If They Run Microsoft Windows — from the say-what-now? dept — Kurata points us to the news that French politicians are debating extending the “you must be a criminal” private copying levy to tablet computers — but …
Discussion:
SAI
Joseph Tsai / DigiTimes:
Apple prepares three versions of iPad 2 for 2011, says sources — Apple is expected to release three versions of iPad 2, supporting either or a combination of Wi-Fi, UMTS and CDMA, for 2011 with mass production to start as early as the later half of January.
Discussion:
Digital Trends, Gadget Lab, Mashable!, Electronista, Fast Company, PhoneDog.com, L.A. Times Tech Blog, BGR, MacRumors, Pulse2, LAPTOP Magazine, NBC Bay Area, TiPb, The Toybox Blog, VatorNews, Examiner, Electricpig.co.uk, IntoMobile, Geek.com, Computerworld, Gadgetell, TechSpot, PadGadget, MediaPost, The Digital Home, WebProNews, VentureBeat, The Apple Core Blog, Softpedia News, Techland, Tech Trader Daily, AppleInsider, eWeek, Erictric, GottaBeMobile, Mobile Knots, ITworld.com, AfterDawn.com, GeekSugar, Edible Apple, The Next Web, SAI, CrunchGear, MacStories, SlashGear, The Huffington Post, iClarified, lalawag, The Loop, everythingiCafe, Tech Report, Gearlog and 9 to 5 Mac
Michael Oliveira / Globe and Mail:
Canadians spend more time online than any other country — Canadians were curating their Facebook profiles long before the rest of the world got hooked, many were experimenting with the limitations of writing in 140-character snippets at Twitter's launch in 2006, and we watch online video more than any other web surfers.
Discussion:
All Facebook and The Next Web
McAfee, Inc.:
McAfee Labs Predicts Geolocation, Mobile Devices and Apple Will Top the List of Targets for Emerging Threats in 2011 — McAfee Researchers Also Foresee Attackers Targeting Shortened URL Services and Internet TV Platforms; Increase in Politically Motivated Hacktivisim
Discussion:
SFGate, The Social, Macworld, L.A. Times Tech Blog, MacStories, Digital Trends, Examiner, TechCrunch, VatorNews, ReadWriteWeb, MarketingVOX and Pulse2
Edmond Lococo / Bloomberg:
Ebay's Paypal to Set Up International Hub in Chongqing, China — Dec. 29 (Bloomberg) — EBay Inc.'s PayPal business said it agreed with the municipal government in Chongqing, China, to set up an international e-commerce hub to help Chinese merchants conduct faster cross-border trade.
Discussion:
Dow Jones Newswires
Julian Lee / Sydney Morning Herald:
Groupon to enter Australia as daily deals sites explode — THE world's largest daily deals website, Groupon, which Google tried to buy this month for $US6 billion, has confirmed it is entering the Australian market. — The company is recruiting people to sign up to its email database …
Vanessa Dennis / Online NewsHour:
Delete Older Facebook Apps — or Risk Everyone's Privacy — If you have a Facebook page, you've probably added quite a few apps. If you've linked your YouTube account, New York Times account, or just about any mobile app to your Facebook profile, you've also installed their app …
Discussion:
Switched, Help Net Security and All Facebook
