Top Items:
Ina Fried / AllThingsD:
Exclusive: Microsoft Replaces Lees as Head of Windows Phone Business — Microsoft is moving the current head of its Windows Phone business, Andy Lees, to a new role, AllThingsD has learned. — Terry Myerson, the corporate VP who has led engineering efforts for the phone unit …
Discussion:
Microsoft, paidContent, Wall Street Journal, Seattle Times, IntoMobile, Digiday, ITProPortal, Reuters, Softpedia News, The Verge, SlashGear, Techie Buzz, GottaBeMobile, FierceDeveloper, WinRumors, PhoneNews.com, parislemon, Electronista, Inquirer, Pulse2, Business Insider, PhoneArena, Silicon Republic, BGR, The Seattle Times, VentureBeat, mocoNews, Bits, LiveSide.net and The Verge
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Joe Wilcox / BetaNews:
Did Steve Ballmer just promote or demote Windows Phone chief? — I'm scratching my head wondering. You want to answer that one? If you work for Microsoft, I'd love your anonymous response. — This afternoon, in an email sent to Microsoft employees, CEO Steve Ballmer announced …
Discussion:
WinRumors
Wall Street Journal:
Apple Softens Stance to Lure Mobile Ads — Apple Inc. is learning to compromise. — Facing challenges winning over advertisers for its iAd mobile advertising service, Apple is softening its approach to advertisers as it loses ground to Google Inc. in the fast-growing mobile ad market.
Discussion:
SplatF, Bloomberg, SlashGear, CNET News, The Verge, FierceDeveloper, AllThingsD, Electronista, App Advice, The New Persuaders, MacStories, Macgasm, SiliconANGLE and Business Insider
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Daniel Eran Dilger / AppleInsider:
IDC offers scathing prediction of certain death for Apple's iAd program
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Apple Reportedly Buying Flash Memory Company Anobit For $400 Million - $500 Million — Apple is reportedly going to use part of its enormous pile of cash to buy an Israeli fabless semiconductor company that specializes in flash storage solutions. Calcalist reports - in Hebrew …
Discussion:
The Tech Trade, BGR, Digital Trends, TechEye, CNET News, Computerworld, Reuters, Between the Lines Blog, 9to5Mac, Ynetnews, Storage Soup, PhoneArena, MacRumors, Softpedia News, VC Cafe, Electricpig.co.uk, SlashGear and Electronista, Thanks:srikardhanakoti
Michael Morisy / Muckrock:
FBI: Carrier IQ files used for “law enforcement purposes” — The spook in your pocket — A recent FOIA request to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for “manuals, documents or other written guidance used to access or analyze data gathered by programs developed or deployed by Carrier IQ” was met with a telling denial.
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John Paczkowski / AllThingsD:
Exclusive Interview: Carrier IQ Gets Transparent About Its Mobile Monitoring — It's been a tumultuous few weeks for Carrier IQ, the mobile analytics outfit at the center of a continuing privacy brouhaha over what its diagnostic software does and does not do.
Discussion:
Macworld, Engadget and Electronista
Brad McCarty / The Next Web:
The FBI is using Carrier IQ data in investigations? Not so fast...
The FBI is using Carrier IQ data in investigations? Not so fast...
Discussion:
Examiner
Tom Warren / WinRumors:
Windows Phone SMS attack discovered, reboots device and disables messaging hub — Microsoft's range of Windows Phone devices suffer from a denial-of-service attack that allows attackers to disable the messaging functionality on a device. — The flaw works simply by sending an SMS to a Windows Phone user.
Discussion:
InfoWorld, PC World, Hardware 2.0 Blog, Neowin.net, Pocket-lint, The Verge, SoMobile, CNET News, PhoneArena, IntoMobile, Electronista, Windows Phone Thoughts.com, Silicon Republic, 9to5Mac and SlashGear, Thanks:tomwarren
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
Wikipedia Mulls Total Blackout to Oppose SOPA — Later this week, the Senate's House Judiciary Committee will vote on the “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA). — Supporters of the bill say it's needed to safeguard the interests of rightsholders who claim their businesses are threatened by online piracy.
Discussion:
Hacks and Thoughts, Macworld, Softpedia News, Mike Linksvayer, VentureBeat, @dannysullivan, Hillicon Valley, @eff, Techdirt and Gawker, more at Mediagazer »
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Mike Masnick / Techdirt:
Lamar Smith Proposes New Version Of SOPA, With Just A Few Changes
Lamar Smith Proposes New Version Of SOPA, With Just A Few Changes
Discussion:
Electronic Frontier Foundation, Hillicon Valley, ITworld.com, CNET News, Threat Level and TechCrunch
Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
iTunes Music and Movies Debut in 16 Latin American Countries, Brazil Gets iTunes Match — Following closely after a previously-rumored launch date of December 8th, Apple has now turned on new iTunes Store music and movie content in 16 Latin American countries.
Discussion:
Apple, MacStories, paidContent, Engadget, MacGazette.net, App Advice, 9to5Mac, AppleInsider and Softpedia News
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Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
Apple Releases iTunes 10.5.2 with iTunes Match and Audio Distortion Fixes
Apple Releases iTunes 10.5.2 with iTunes Match and Audio Distortion Fixes
Discussion:
iPhone in Canada Blog, 9to5Mac, iPhone, SlashGear, Redmond Pie and BGR
Jeff Bertolucci / PC World:
Study: Tablet Buyers Use Wi-Fi, Not Cellular Data — Tablet owners overwhelming prefer Wi-Fi-only devices over those with cellular connections, according to a new study by Connected Intelligence, a service from market research firm The NPD Group. — Slate users are relying more and more on Wi-Fi for a number of reasons.
Discussion:
Connected Intelligence, PhoneArena, Electronista and MacRumors
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
WordPress 3.3 Released To The Masses; Includes iPad Optimization, Tumblr Importer And More — After 14 million downloads of WordPress 3.2, WordPress 3.3 is being released to the wild today. Codenamed “Sonny” in honor of the jazz saxophonist Sonny Stitt, WordPress 3.3 is available for download …
Discussion:
WordPress News, VatorNews, Black Web 2.0 and VentureBeat
Asher Moses / Sydney Morning Herald:
Kevin v the world: reformed pirate sues tech giants for millions — Asher Moses — The Sydney entrepreneur who created Kazaa is a shareholder and chairman of a US company that is suing the biggest names on the internet, including Google and Amazon, for patent infringement in a case …
Discussion:
The Register and Silicon Republic
Elinor Mills / CNET News:
Google Wallet stores too much unencrypted data in a rooted device—report — ViaForensics gives a report card of sorts to Google Wallet, noting that it securely stores passwords but doesn't encrypt other data that could be used in a social engineering attack.
Discussion:
viaForensics, The Verge, Softpedia News, MobileBurn.com, American Banker, PhoneArena, SlashGear and Android Phone Fans
Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:
Rara Sells Streaming Music to Everyone Who Hasn't Heard of Streaming Music — You get your legal music on the Web from services like Apple, Amazon, Google, Spotify, and Pandora. Also, perhaps, from services like Rhapsody, MOG and Rdio. Etc. — Yet here comes one more, via Rara.com.
Discussion:
PC Magazine, Inquirer, Telegraph, mocoNews, Reuters, Ubergizmo and Pocket-lint
Wall Street Journal:
Facebook Doesn't Need to ‘Like’ Wall Street — Mark Zuckerberg should unfriend Wall Street. — Facebook's founder has come a long way from his Harvard University dorm room, where the idea of a social-networking site first took shape. As The Wall Street Journal reported recently …
Discussion:
memeburn
Jeff Roberts / paidContent:
A Closer Look At Apple's Role In The E-book ‘Conspiracy’ — In the mushrooming controversy over e-books, it's easy to understand the publishers' motives. But what about Apple? (NSDQ: AAPL) Did the company want to raise book prices in order to protect its iPad and blunt the rise of Amazon?
John P. Mello Jr. / PC World:
Adults Now Spend More Time With Mobile Devices Than With Print Media — Adults are spending more time with their mobile devices than they're spending with print media, according to a report released Monday by eMarketer. — According to the New York-based market research firm …
Discussion:
Betabeat, MediaPost, eMarketer, Marketing Land, IntoMobile, Peter O'Kelly's Reality Check, Silicon Republic, BizReport, Digits and mocoNews
Nick Bilton / Bits:
Modern Warfare 3 Passes $1 Billion in Sales in 16 Days — Modern Warfare 3, the first-person shooter video game, passed $1 billion in sales in just 16 days, according to Activision Blizzard, the game's distributor. Modern Warfare 2, an earlier installment of the game, took 60 days to reach the same milestone.
Discussion:
Media Decoder, Pulse2, investor.activision.com and Softpedia News
AppleInsider:
Apple adds ability to delete individual Photo Stream pics in iOS 5.1 beta 2 — Apple on Monday provided developers with a second beta of iOS 5.1, with the latest update granting the ability to delete individual photos synced to the iCloud Photo Stream feature.
Discussion:
Gizmodo, The Verge, FierceDeveloper, Pulse2, MacRumors, GottaBeMobile, MacDailyNews, Softpedia News and O'Grady's PowerPage
Nicholas Carlson / Business Insider:
Why Twitter Engineers And Execs Keep Quitting - One Insider's Explanation — From the outside, Twitter seems like it's doing very well. It has 2,400 advertisers and 100 million active users, 50 million of whom send 250 million tweets every day. The company is worth $8 billion on secondary markets.
Discussion:
TechCrunch
Adrianne Jeffries / Betabeat:
Pay-to-Pitch Comes Creeping Back: How Much Is Too Much? — Entrepreneurs and other startup economy workers have started complaining about rising fees of events around town—the sheer abundance of tech events in New York has us habituated to all-star panels and pizza for $0 to $5.
Chris Martin / Inquirer:
O2 starts an Apple Iphone 4S rental scheme — UK MOBILE OPERATOR O2 has announced it has started a rental scheme for the Iphone 4S smartphone. — The service is called O2 Lease, which it claims is the UK's first smartphone leasing service. The system allows customers to rent specifically …
Discussion:
IntoMobile, TUAW, MacGazette.net and MobileBurn.com
Jon Mitchell / ReadWriteWeb:
Blogger Gets “The First of Many Google+ Features” — Blogger has announced “the first of many Google+ features” today, launching an automatic +snippet sharing box after you publish a blog post. It only saves a few clicks, but this makes it as easy as humanly possible to share Blogger posts to your Google+ circles.
Discussion:
Blogger Buzz, Softpedia News, Mashable! and 9to5Google
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Fast Society Deadpools Its Messaging App, Preps Cameo For Launch — Fast Society today announced it will shut down its group messaging app and instead devote resources to its new app Cameo that will launch next month. Group messaging seemed like such a big opportunity a few years ago.
Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:
Bottlenose Is a Web-Based Twitter Client for Power Users — It was nine months ago that Twitter told outside developers they should stop building new Twitter clients. Since then Twitter bought and integrated power-user client TweetDeck, and tried to make all of its own clients simpler and more new-user-friendly.
Discussion:
VentureBeat, Mashable!, Nova Spivack, SiliconANGLE and ReadWriteWeb
Kathleen De Vere / Inside Mobile Apps:
How Many Downloads Does an App Need to Reach The Top of The Free Charts on iOS? — It's a question we often get from developers: how many downloads does it take to make it to the top? — App tracking company Distimo has revealed data for top apps on a country-by-country basis for the biggest markets.
Discussion:
Distimo and Web 2.0 Asia Blog