Top Items:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Groupon Raises, Like, A Billion Dollars — Groupon has closed what remained of that huge $950 million financing round which we first reported on in late December. They closed on roughly half of it then, from DST, Fidelity and Morgan Stanley. We then learned that Kleiner Perkins was also in the round.
Discussion:
Bits, Between the Lines Blog, eMoney, paidContent, Business Wire, ReadWriteWeb, Bloomberg, SAI, Mashable!, Pulse2, DealBook and MediaNama
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Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:
Muglia's e-mail to the Microsoft troops: 'I'm moving on to new opportunities outside of Microsoft' — We've seen Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's January 10 e-mail to the troops about Server and Tools Business (STB) Unit President Bob Muglia's unexpected departure from the company.
Discussion:
The Register, ConceivablyTech and V3.co.uk
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Arik Hesseldahl / All Things Digital:
Microsoft Server Business Head Bob Muglia To Leave This Summer
Discussion:
Datamation, Bloomberg, SAI, TechCrunch, Pulse2, The Next Web and Reuters
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines Blog:
Verizon's iPhone: Here comes the fallout — Verizon Wireless will finally get Apple's iPhone on Tuesday and the network and sales machine appears to be ready to roll. — But Tuesday is only the beginning. While the iPhone is an obvious boon for Apple and Verizon Wireless there are other ripple effects to consider.
Discussion:
Fortune, Digital Trends, MediaPost and Open Source Blog
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John Paczkowski / Digital Daily:
AT&T Prepared for Loss of iPhone Exclusive
Discussion:
Bits, BGR, DSLreports, Forbes and SAI
Roger Cheng / Wall Street Journal:
T-Mobile Smartphones to Head Down Market
Discussion:
FierceWireless, TmoNews and The Toybox Blog
Pui-Wing Tam / Digits:
Square Raises $27.5 Million — Square Inc., the mobile payments service co-founded and led by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, has just closed a new $27.5 million round of funding led by Sequoia Capital. — The funding, which also is set to include some strategic and individual investors …
Discussion:
GigaOM, L.A. Times Tech Blog, VentureBeat, eMoney, ReadWriteWeb, SAI, TechCrunch and Pulse2
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Michal Lev-Ram / Fortune:
Intuit takes a swipe at Square
Discussion:
L.A. Times Tech Blog, MediaPost, Mobile Marketing Watch, ReadWriteWeb and GigaOM
Philip Rha / Facebook Blog:
The New Profile Is Here — Last month, we introduced the new profile, which now makes it even easier for you to tell your story and learn about your friends. For the month of December, we gave people the option to upgrade to the new profile early, and hundreds of millions of you made the switch.
Discussion:
Inside Facebook, TechCrunch, Gearlog, The Next Web and Erictric
Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:
The Day of The Daily: Murdoch's iPad Thingy Coming Jan. 19 — Mark your calendars, media nerds. Wednesday, Jan. 19, 2011 is the day it all changes. Maybe. — That's the planned launch date for The Daily, the iPad-only publication News Corp. has been feverishly developing.
Discussion:
NewsGrange, MediaPost, App Advice, Yahoo! News, SlashGear, CrunchGear, MacRumors, RazorianFly, PadGadget, Electronista, everythingiCafe, Poynter and iClarified, more at Mediagazer »
New Zealand Herald:
Google billionaire buys Kiwi's superyacht — Sir Douglas Myers has lost his Senses: he's sold the 59m luxury superyacht to Google billionaire Larry Page. — The luxury motor boat sold last month to the Google co-founder after being listed on the boat international website for €35 million ($60.5 million).
Ben D'Angelo / Google Code Blog:
Google URL Shortener gets an API — When we launched Google's URL shortener externally back in September, there was no accompanying API to allow people to integrate goo.gl into their applications and web pages. However, we said that we were working on one, and today we're happy to announce …
Discussion:
NewsGrange
Liz Gannes / NetworkEffect:
Myspace Plans to Lay Off 550 to 600 Employees Tomorrow — Myspace, which has been struggling to revitalize itself, is expected to lay off 550 to 600 of its staff of just over 1,000 tomorrow, according to several sources. — NetworkEffect first reported news of the large-scale cuts at the end of December.
Discussion:
The Next Web, Digital Trends, MediaPost, SiliconANGLE, paidContent, Techie Buzz, Between the Lines Blog, SlashGear, Tech Report, Electronista, Techland, Softpedia News, Geek.com and SAI
NVIDIA Press Room:
Intel to Pay NVIDIA Technology Licensing Fees of $1.5 Billion — New Six-Year Cross-License Renews Previous Agreement — SANTA CLARA, CA — (Marketwire) — 01/10/2011 — NVIDIA announced today that it has signed a new six-year cross-licensing agreement with Intel.
Discussion:
NewEnterprise, Tech Trader Daily, VentureBeat, MacRumors, News Stories, Engadget, HotHardware.com News, NBC Bay Area and Bloomberg
DigiTimes:
Motorola expected to ship 700,000-800,000 Xoom tablet PCs in 1Q11 — Motorola, with assistance from Google, has showcased its new Android 3.0-based Xoom tablet PC and has placed orders for about 700,000-800,000 units with four color options for the first quarter of 2011, according to sources from upstream component makers.
Discussion:
Gearlog, Examiner, PC World, Softpedia News, CNET News, TechSpot, Android Community, eWeek, VentureBeat, Techie Buzz, Droid Life, Electronista, Inquirer, SlashGear, The Next Web, Forbes and Erictric
Tom Krazit / CNET News:
AMD CEO resigns; search on for new leader — AMD CEO Dirk Meyer will step down after reaching an agreement with the company's board over his departure, AMD said today. — Thomas Siefert, AMD's CFO, will fill Meyer's spot on a temporary basis as the company searches for a new CEO.
Discussion:
VentureBeat, Between the Lines Blog, Digital Daily, Bloomberg and AMD Press Room
Hiroko Tabuchi / New York Times:
Facebook Wins Relatively Few Friends in Japan — TOKYO — Mark Zuckerberg. Who? — Mr. Zuckerberg, the 26-year-old Facebook chief executive and co-founder, may be the man of the moment in the United States and much of the rest of the online world. But here in Japan …
Discussion:
All Facebook, Pulse2, SAI, Asiajin, The Bivings Report, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim and Tech Report
BBC:
Microsoft investigates ‘phantom’ Windows Phone 7 data — Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer has promised updates to the operating system soon — Microsoft has told BBC News that it is investigating why some handsets running its Windows Phone 7 software are sending and receiving “phantom data”.
Discussion:
CNET News, Inquirer, Smartphones …, ITProPortal, THINQ.co.uk, MobileCrunch, The Next Web, Engadget and WMPoweruser.com
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Google Goggles Can Now Read Print Ads. Oh, And Play Freaking Sudoku! — Of all the mobile applications that Google has come out with in the past couple of years, Google Goggles is definitely one of the coolest. You point your smartphone at any object, and Google attempts to figure out what it is …
Sam Oliver / AppleInsider:
Apple follows AT&T, drops official US iPhone 3GS price to $49 — Apple has quietly dropped the price of its entry-level 8GB iPhone 3GS to $49 with a new two-year contract with AT&T, matching the new low price that last week was offered exclusively by the carrier.
Discussion:
Engadget, App Advice, CNET News, Examiner, Macgasm, everythingiCafe, O'Grady's PowerPage, Know Your Cell and TUAW
Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:
Foodspotting Scoops Up $3 Million From BlueRun Ventures — Location-based food discovery tool, Foodspotting has just picked up 3 million in series A funding from BlueRun Ventures, days shy of its one year anniversary on January 15th. Angels from the previous $750k seed round will also be following …
Discussion:
VatorNews, ReadWriteWeb, NetworkEffect, The Social, Beet.TV, PE Hub Blog and Mashable!
Alexandra Topping / Guardian:
Twitter endorsements face OFT clampdown — Watchdog says online companies who did not disclose paid-for promotions by celebrities and bloggers were deceptive — How does a celebrity declare their affiliations to certain brands in fewer than 140 characters?
Discussion:
MediaPost, Digits, ITProPortal, T3.com News, Fast Company, THINQ.co.uk, Pocket-lint, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, BBC, GigaOM, The Atlantic Online and Techland
New York Times:
1986 Privacy Law Is Outrun by the Web — SAN FRANCISCO — Concerned by the wave of requests for customer data from law enforcement agencies, Google last year set up an online tool showing the frequency of these requests in various countries. In the first half of 2010, it counted more than 4,200 in the United States.
Discussion:
The Atlantic Online
Brad Sams / Neowin:
Microsoft is working on a FaceTime competitor for Windows Phone [Update] — Microsoft had a solid CES appearance with the announcement of many new key products. But sometimes it's not what's said at the main events but in side conversations that can provide a peek into the upcoming products from the company.
Discussion:
The Microsoft Blog, Redmond Pie, PhoneArena, LiveSide.net, Techie Buzz, Go Rumors, pocketnow.com, WMPoweruser.com and WPCentral.com
