Top Items:
Joshua Topolsky / The Verge:
The truth about Microsoft and CES — There's been a bit of back and forth today over Microsoft's announcement that it would be ending its long-standing CES keynote role, and will no longer have a booth at the show as it's done for many years. Head of Microsoft's corporate communications …
Discussion:
Electronista, SlashGear, Neowin.net, blog.chron.com, Geek News Central, Mobile Marketing Watch, LiveSide.net, I4U News, Network World and LAPTOP Magazine
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MG Siegler / parislemon:
F**k Me? No. F**k You. — This morning, Microsoft made waves with a big move: they're pulling out of CES. Frank Shaw, Microsoft's head of communications, made the announcement on the company blog, noting that this year's CES (which is in a few weeks) would be the last one featuring …
Discussion:
Bits, TechNet Blogs, PhoneArena, WinRumors, SlashGear, VG247 and IntoMobile
Barb Darrow / GigaOM:
Mystery: Who killed the Microsoft CES keynote? — So, just who nixed future Microsoft keynotes at the big Consumer Electronics Show? It's a sticky question. — Microsoft said Wednesday that Steve Ballmer's keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show next month will be the company's …
Discussion:
PhoneArena, msnbc.com, eWeek, Neowin.net, memeburn, Pocket-lint, The Next Web, iPhone, VentureBeat, The Verge, PC World, CNNMoney.com, TechSpot, PC Magazine, Mashable!, @parislemon, Electronista and Business Insider
Sam Biddle / Gizmodo:
All the Companies Supporting SOPA, the Awful Internet Censorship Law—and How to Contact Them — Who's officially on the record backing what could be the worst thing to ever happen to the internet? All of these companies listed below. Don't take our word for it—this list comes straight from Congress.
Discussion:
CNET News and Neowin.net
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Adam Savage / Popular Mechanics:
MythBuster Adam Savage: SOPA Could Destroy the Internet as We Know It
Discussion:
A+K, @dannysullivan, Techdirt, WebProNews and TechCrunch, more at Mediagazer »
Declan McCullagh / CNET News:
How SOPA's ‘circumvention’ ban could put a target on Tor
Discussion:
Dennis Fisher, The Next Web, The Firewall and Boing Boing
John Markoff / New York Times:
Jacob Goldman, Founder of Xerox Lab, Dies at 90 — Jacob E. Goldman, a physicist who as Xerox's chief scientist founded the company's vaunted Palo Alto Research Center, which invented the modern personal computer, died on Tuesday in Westport, Conn. He was 90. — The cause was congestive heart failure, his son Melvin said.
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Anton Troianovski / Wall Street Journal:
How the iPhone Zapped Carriers — Americans are glued to their mobile devices, obsessively calling, texting, emailing and downloading applications. So why is the U.S. wireless industry in such straits, as shown by AT&T Inc.'s crucial but failed plan to buy T-Mobile USA?
Shayndi Raice / Wall Street Journal:
Facebook's Goal: To Be a Blue Chip — As Company Readies 2012 IPO, It's Getting All Grown Up: Zuckerberg Swaps Flip-Flops for Real Shoes — Mark Zuckerberg spent Facebook Inc.'s early years trying to keep it cool. But the founder and CEO of the social-networking giant has spent …
Discussion:
the Econsultancy blog
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Tricia Duryee / AllThingsD:
Surprise — The Most Popular Facebook Game of 2011 Wasn't Made by Zynga — Facebook has released its list of the 10 most popular social games for 2011, and while the chart was dominated by Zynga titles, other companies received the top two slots. — The list revealed some other surprises, too.
Discussion:
Facebook, Mashable!, @joshconstine, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Business Insider, All Facebook and Inside Social Games
Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:
Aol Shareholders Freak Out Over Exec Departures — As They Should — More than a fair amount of business success hinges on telling stories about the future. The reason Yahoo's market cap is down to $19.83 billion from a high of $55 billion is because shareholders don't believe that it has a future.
Discussion:
@evelynrusli, Betabeat, Tech Trader Daily and Deal Journal, more at Mediagazer »
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Nicholas Carlson / Business Insider:
Here's The Damning Letter A Massive AOL Shareholder Just Sent Tim Armstrong
Discussion:
paidContent, AOL Corp, VentureBeat, Wall Street Journal, WebProNews and Reuters
Kevin C. Tofel / GigaOM:
Kindle Fire no longer blocks Android Market website — Earlier this week, I grilled Amazon for attempting to control web browsing activities on its Kindle Fire. Any attempts to browse Google's Android Market website were redirected to Amazon's own AppStore on the tablet.
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Actually, Searches For “Google+” Are Petering Out — Just last week, Google was promoting the fact that “Google+” was the No. 2 fastest-growing search term of the year in its annual Zeitgest list. And it did have an amazing pop when it hit “10 million members” a couple weeks after launch last summer.
Jon Mitchell / ReadWriteWeb:
Evernote's ‘Clearly’ Clean-Reading Extension Comes to Firefox — Evernote has expanded its read-later browser extension, Clearly, to Firefox. The extension first launched on Chrome in November. Clearly slides in a cleaned-up view of Web articles without ads or navigation, making content more pleasant to read.
Discussion:
Evernote Blogcast and TechCrunch
Vlad Savov / The Verge:
Radeon HD 7970 official: 28nm, 2,048 Stream processors, and a $549 price for January 9th — AMD today launches the Radeon HD 7970, its first graphics card built at a 28nm production process and the first member of its Southern Islands family of GPUs. As its name suggests …
Discussion:
Softpedia News, AnandTech, Engadget, VentureBeat, SlashGear, Electronista, Neowin.net, Icrontic, The Register and Gizmodo
Thomas Ricker / The Verge:
Sony Ericsson LT28at Xperia ‘super phone’ has 4.55-inch 720p Reality Display, LTE and 13-megapixel camera — A 4.55-inch Android phone with 720p Reality Display from Sony Ericsson has just appeared on the official Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) site of certified Bluetooth devices.
Discussion:
Digital Trends, Gizmodo, SlashGear, BGR, Engadget, GottaBeMobile, IntoMobile and PhoneArena
Chris Dixon:
The TripAdvisor IPO — Great startup story. Raised a total of $4.2m in venture capital, sold to IAC/Expedia for $210M, and had some interesting adventures and pivots along the way. They started out by trying to aggregate reviews from other websites and white label their product to Expedia and other large travel websites.
Discussion:
TechCrunch
Sean Hollister / The Verge:
Hasbro sues Asus over Transformer Prime tablet — Don't say we didn't tell you so: Hasbro sued Asus over the name of its Transformer Prime tablet last week, in a Los Angeles court. The toymaker is no doubt worried that the name could be confused with that of its Transformers franchise …
Tony Hicks / Contra Costa Times:
People: Steve Jobs awarded a Grammy — Steve Jobs has won a Grammy. — Which makes sense, since he revolutionized the music industry by managing to shrink everyone's record collection into something that will fit in their pocket, among other achievements.
Discussion:
GRAMMY.org, GRAMMY.com, CNET News, AppleInsider, Mashable!, MacRumors, 9to5Mac, iPodNN, The Next Web, Silicon Republic, MacStories, SlashGear and Gawker
Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:
The Facebook “Frictionless” Sharing Apps Trickle Out: Digg Is Next — Facebook took its sweet time this fall; now, in winter, it's launching two interlinked products: Revamped profile pages, now called Timelines (which are being deployed this week), and “frictionless” open-graph apps that share user activity to Facebook automatically.
Discussion:
The Verge, ReadWriteWeb, Mashable!, Business Wire and TechCrunch, more at Mediagazer »
DealBook:
Yahoo to Consider Sale of Asian Assets — Yahoo's board will consider a deal to sell its holdings in Alibaba Group and its Japanese affiliate back to their majority owners in a complicated tax-free deal valued at about $17 billion, according to people briefed on the matter.
T.C. Sottek / The Verge:
Exclusive: a look at Kinect Fusion and Lightspace from Microsoft labs — As you might have seen in our second episode of On The Verge, our own Joshua Topolsky recently toured Microsoft's Building 99, where the company conducts a variety of wild research. Today we're pleased to share a look …
Discussion:
TechNet Blogs
Emily Glazer / Digits:
A Start-Up Program for Women in Mobile Tech — When it comes to programs that nurture new start-ups, women often don't make the cut. A new “start-up accelerator” hopes to combat that gender disparity in at least one booming market: mobile technology. — Women Innovate Mobile opened …
Discussion:
451 CAOS Theory, TechCrunch and The Next Web
Rip Empson / TechCrunch:
Tracks Grabs $1 Million To Build “The Experience Graph”; Adds Photobucket Founder To Its Board — The photo-sharing market is saturated, and, by and large, we don't need more players. The players that are there, if they're not leading, are trying to differentiate themselves from the rest in a host of different ways.
