Techmeme: Amazon's Quidsi appears to be working on Casa.com (Andrew Allemann/Domain Name Wire)

6:55 PM ET, January 6, 2012

Top Items:

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:

iOS 5.1 beta reveals Apple's plan to soon ship iPads, iPhones with quad-core chips — Speed increases are an expected part of Apple's iOS device hardware upgrades, but what Apple has up their sleeves for speed enhancements is typically up for debate. The first-generation iPad clocked around 1GHz …

Jun Yang / Bloomberg:

Samsung Profit Rises to Record on Galaxy Sales — Samsung Electronics Co. (005930), Asia's largest consumer-electronics company, reported a record quarterly profit on surging sales of Galaxy phones and proceeds from selling its hard-disk drive business. — Operating profit (005930) …

John Gruber / Daring Fireball:

Spaghetti Against the Wall — Jun Yang, reporting for Bloomberg on Samsung's quarterly results: … So Jony Ive leads the design team at the two most-profitable phone makers. Impressive. … In what regard can Apple be considered behind Samsung, other than unit sales …

Discussion: IntoMobile

Tim Culpan / Bloomberg:
HTC Has First Profit Drop in Two Years

Ingrid Lunden / paidContent:
Samsung/HTC: Two Sides Of An Android Coin. Why's Samsung Winning The Toss?

Discussion: SlashGear, Thanks:ingridlunden

Daniel Eran Dilger / AppleInsider:

Apple to open new store-within-a-store outlets inside Target this year — Apple will be opening new store-within-a-store locations in select Target locations later this year, enabling the company to expand its retail reach into smaller metro areas. — According to a source familiar with Apple's plans …

Discussion: TechFlash, L.A. Times Tech Blog, iPhone, Apple Gazette, ITworld.com, Geek.com, PC Magazine, Techland, GottaBeMobile, PadGadget, Mobile Marketing Watch, MacDaddyNews.com, SlashGear, GigaOM, Epicenter, TUAW, MacRumors, The Next Web, MacNN and PhoneArena

Steve Kovach / Business Insider:

WARNING: All That Free Spotify Music You've Been Enjoying Is Going To End Soon — Spotify made its big U.S. debut on July 14, 2011. — In one week, we'll be marking the streaming music service's six-month anniversary. — And in one week, all those users who signed up for the free …

Discussion: Gizmodo, TechSpot, GadgeTell, Between the Lines Blog, WebProNews and Evolver.fm, Thanks:jfedor

Carey Gillam / Reuters:

Sprint ousts 4 executives, merges consumer/business — (Reuters) - Sprint Nextel (S.N), the No. 3 U.S. mobile service, is merging sales and marketing for its business and consumer operations as part of a streamlining that includes the departures of four top executives, according to Sprint CEO Dan Hesse.

Discussion: The Verge, Between the Lines Blog, Reuters, Engadget, AllThingsD, Sprint Community, Sprintfeed and Electronista

Ina Fried / AllThingsD:
Sprint: We're Not Really Throttling Our Customers

Discussion: BGR, Daring Fireball, The Verge, MobileBurn.com, GigaOM and Android and Me

Jonathan Browning / Bloomberg:

Apple's Voice Recognition Siri Doubles IPhone Data Volumes — Apple Inc. (AAPL)'s voice recognition software Siri has prompted users of the iPhone 4S to use almost twice as much data compared with the handset's predecessor, placing greater pressure on operators, network firm Arieso said.

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes / Hardware 2.0 Blog:
iPhone 4S ‘doubles’ data usage ... but is Siri really to blame?

Discussion: BGR and MacRumors

Kevin J. O'Brien / New York Times:
Top 1% of Mobile Users Consume Half of World's Bandwidth, and Gap Is Growing

Discussion: Memex 1.1, dailywireless.org, Betabeat and Technologizer

Mike Masnick / Techdirt:

Al Gore Comes Out Against SOPA/PIPA — Well, check this out. Al Gore has come out strongly against SOPA and PIPA, angrily denouncing the bill and its supporters. It's a quick 2-minute video taken at a CareerBuilder event, and it's in response to an audience question.

Discussion: Hillicon Valley and @davezatz

Ben Dimiero / Media Matters for America:
REPORT: News Networks Ignore Controversial SOPA Legislation

Discussion: ReadWriteWeb and WebProNews

Marco Arment / Marco.org:

The limited world of auto-renewable subscriptions — Apple's In-App Purchase system permits two types of subscription purchases. The documentation suggests that Auto-Renewable subscriptions are the right choice in almost every case: … When developing Instapaper 4.0 …

John Fontana / Identity Matters Blog:

FTC asked to probe Facebook Timeline for privacy violations — Facebook again finds itself in the cross hairs of privacy advocate the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) just about a month after a high-profile settlement between the social networking site and the Federal Trade Commission.

Discussion: VentureBeat, The Not-So Private Parts, Mashable!, @joshconstine and WebProNews

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Facebook Says Privacy Advocates Should Applaud Timeline, EPIC FTC Probe Unnecessary

Discussion: Friending Facebook Blog

Jeff Roberts / paidContent:

Steve Jobs Doll Legal In Most States, Not Indiana — Apple's lawyers have a fearsome reputation for defending the company's intellectual property. But it sure looks like they're bluffing in the controversy over a new Steve Jobs doll. — A UK newspaper caused a stir yesterday when it reported that Apple …

Discussion: InfoWorld, Forbes, MacDailyNews, Redmond Pie, NBC Bay Area, 9to5Mac, WebProNews, Inquirer and MacNN

Matt Alexander / The Loop:

The E-Reader, as we know it, is doomed — The E-Reader, as we know it, is doomed — Matt Alexander is the owner and editor of ONE37.net, a writer, a technology enthusiast and a contributing writer for The Loop. — In November I reviewed the Kindle Touch, and I was a fan.

Discussion: Fortune and Digiday, more at Mediagazer », Thanks:jdalrymple

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:
B&N CEO: 'The Nook Will Continue To Be Barnes & Noble's E-Reader'

Discussion: Between the Lines Blog, The Verge and WebProNews

Mike Lennon / SecurityWeek:

Symantec Confirms Hackers Accessed Source Code of Two Enterprise Security Products — On Thursday evening, SecurityWeek and other news outlets reported on news that hackers claimed to have accessed the source code to an unspecified version of Symantec's Norton Antivirus product.

Wall Street Journal:

Yahoo Seeking New Board Members — Yahoo Inc. is searching for several new board candidates to replace possible outgoing directors and has hired executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles International Inc. to assist in that effort, people familiar with the matter said.

Discussion: Business Insider, Between the Lines Blog, Tech Trader Daily and Reuters

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

PayPal's First In-Store, Brick And Mortar Mobile Payments Integration Is At Home Depot — As we've reported in the past, PayPal announced an in-store payments technology both via mobile and point of sale systems that is currently being tested on a ‘friends and family’ basis in a national retailer.

Discussion: The Verge, AllThingsD, Reuters and Wall Street Journal

Zachary Wolff / the dialog:

Twitter: To log or not to log: Is that the question? — As Twitter continues to thrive as the communications tool of choice amongst activists, dissenters and occupiers worldwide it should be no surprise that the San Francisco-based company is drawing heightened attention from US law enforcement agencies.

T.C. Sottek / The Verge:

Dijit universal remote and TV guide app launches for iPad today — Dijit is a media navigation app with a gob of features, and its creators have announced that a universal version of the app with iPad support will launch sometime today. The app allows users to find and filter what's on TV …

Discussion: VatorNews, GigaOM, Engadget, IntoMobile, Electronista, PhoneArena and TechCrunch

Peter Bright / Ars Technica:

Windows 8 Storage Spaces detailed: pooling redundant disk space for all — When Microsoft killed Windows Home Server's “Drive Extender” technology, we mourned its loss but held up hope that the company would persevere with the concept. The company has done just that with a new Windows 8 …

Discussion: eWeek, Computerworld, Network World, MSDN Blogs, AnandTech, The Verge, SlashGear and Microsoft News

Jennifer Van Grove / VentureBeat:

Facebook and Moo partner to print Timeline photos on business cards — What happens when the world's largest social network hooks up with a beloved social business card maker? The birth of beautiful, Facebook-infused business cards. — Digital print shop Moo, long-celebrated for its ability …

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