Top Items:
Ashlee Vance / Business Week:
Steve Ballmer Reboots — Cooler tech, more energy, higher profit—the Microsoft CEO is out to prove Steve Jobs wrong and make Redmond relevant again — They had his dining room waiting. Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive and one of the richest men in the world …
Discussion:
All about Microsoft Blog, Computerworld, AllThingsD and Seattle Times
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Farhad Manjoo / Slate:
The Year of Microsoft — How the former tech giant can reclaim its throne in 2012.
Discussion:
Guardian, Nokia Conversations and BrianMadden.com
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Google And The Monopoly Paradox — We've been over this. A lot. And this story is going to continue for some time to come. It sure looks like Google is almost asking for an inquiry into potentially anti-competitive practices (and it's coming). Which is insane. So the next logical question is why?
Discussion:
Marketing Pilgrim, ZDNet and The Next Web
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Benjamin Edelman / Ben Edelman:
Google Tying Google Plus and Many More
Discussion:
Between the Lines Blog
John Battelle / John Battelle's Search Blog:
Compete To Death, or Cooperate to Compete?
Discussion:
Inquirer, Softpedia News, Business Insider, Search Engine Land, Mashable!, WebProNews, Ben Parr's Entrepreneurial … and TechCrunch
Jessica Guynn / L.A. Times Tech Blog:
Google likely to face FTC complaint over ‘Search Plus Your World’
Discussion:
PC Magazine, eWeek, Digits, Technology Liberation Front, The Register, Computerworld, ITProPortal, Washington Post, Fast Company, Beyond Search, Techland, Gizmodo, WebProNews, Scripting News, PC World, SiliconFilter, CNET, Interactive Marketing, Andy Beard, paidContent, TechCrunch, TechFlash, WebProNews, Marketing Land and Between the Lines Blog
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
Real-Life Examples Of How Google's “Search Plus” Pushes Google+ Over Relevancy
Eric Eldon / TechCrunch:
Google+ Search = A Way To Call The Feds In On IPO-Bound Facebook (?)
Discussion:
The Daily Beast, parislemon and Slashdot
Mike Masnick / Techdirt:
If SOPA's Main Target Is The Pirate Bay, It's Worth Pointing Out That ThePirateBay.org Is Immune From SOPA — In looking over Eric Goldman's excellent “linkwrap” of a bunch of recent SOPA/PIPA stories, it pointed me to a News.com article from last month, about how SOPA was really about going after one single site: The Pirate Bay.
Discussion:
ExtremeTech, WatchingTV Online, PC Magazine, The Register, DSLreports and TorrentFreak
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E.D. Kain / Forbes:
Time Is Running Out For SOPA Opponents Congressmen Warn At CES 2012 — Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) showed up at CES 2012 in Las Vegas to issue a stark warning: we're running out of time to stop legislation aimed at cracking down on copyright infringement.
Discussion:
Techdirt, Fox Business, AllThingsD, The Register and NBC Bay Area
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft Blog:
LG signs Android, Chrome OS patent deal with Microsoft — Summary: LG Electronics is the latest Android vendor to license Microsoft patents in order to head off potential legal issues. — It's been a couple of months since Microsoft has touted any new Android/Chrome OS vendors agreeing to license its patents.
Discussion:
GigaOM, PC Magazine, Digital Trends, eWeek, paidContent, CNET, Inquirer, BGR, LiveSide.net, FOSS Patents, Microsoft, 9to5Google, Seattle Times, TechCrunch, Business Insider, AllThingsD, The Tech Trade, MobileSyrup.com, PhoneArena, @tim_stevens, Softpedia News, WebProNews, Techie Buzz and ZDNet
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Miyoung Kim / Reuters:
LG in talks on phone partnerships: executive
Discussion:
Bloomberg, Electronista, Appolicious Advisor, paidContent, PhoneArena and Mobilized
Curt Woodward / Xconomy:
Microsoft Claims Patent Licenses on 70% of Android Phones
Discussion:
Ars Technica, Mercury News, @fxshaw, Unbiased Tech, Engadget, TechCrunch, WMPoweruser, The Next Web and SlashGear
Stephen Rosenman / Seeking Alpha:
Apple's Foreign Cash Hoard — Apple (AAPL) is piling up boatloads of cash: just not here. — Those boatloads are increasing becoming docked in Apple's foreign subsidiaries and cannot be repatriated without incurring additional hefty U.S. taxes. A whopping $54 billion of Apple's $82 billion cash …
Discussion:
Techie Buzz, TUAW and PhoneArena
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
MPAA attacks Ars for “challenging efforts to curb content theft” — The Motion Picture Association of America doesn't like us. According to the MPAA blog on Tuesday, “Arts Technica” is a “tech blog with a long history of challenging efforts to curb content theft.”
Discussion:
MPAA Blog
Walter S. Mossberg / AllThingsD:
Working In Word, Excel, PowerPoint On an iPad — Although Apple's popular iPad tablet has been able to replace laptops for many tasks, it isn't a big hit with folks who'd like to use it to create or edit long Microsoft Office documents. — [ See post to watch video ]
Cade Metz / Wired Enterprise:
Google's Data Center Engineer Shares Secrets of ‘Warehouse’ Computing — Luiz André Barroso doesn't see Google's data centers as data centers. He sees them as computers the size of warehouses. Barroso is a distinguished engineer at Google and a former researcher at the once …
Gregory Lyons / iCrossing:
Facebook to Hit a Billion Users in the Summer — Last summer we took a look at Facebook usage around the world, and with Facebook recently announcing that they're currently at over 800 million active users we thought it would be interesting to extrapolate their current grown rate and estimate …
Discussion:
The Next Web, Friending Facebook Blog, Mashable!, MarketingVox News & Trends, memeburn, FT Tech Hub and The Sociable
Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
Target Confirms Plans to Bring Dedicated Apple Shops to 25 Stores — Reuters reports that Target has confirmed its plans to launch “store-within-a-store” concepts for Apple products in 25 of its stores around the United States. The announcement comes alongside a broader effort called …
Discussion:
GigaOM, AllThingsD, 9to5Mac, MarketWatch, PadGadget, SlashGear, New York Times and Reuters
Enigmax / TorrentFreak:
EMI Sues Irish State For Not Implementing Piracy Blocking Provisions — The place where breaking news, BitTorrent and copyright collide — EMI Sues Irish State For Not Implementing Piracy Blocking Provisions — After failing last year in its attempt to force a local Internet service provider …
Discussion:
Inquirer, PC Magazine and TechEye
Seth Weintraub / 9to5Mac:
The MacBook Air Samsung SSD is about to get twice as fast — I had a chance to meet with Samsung Storage solutions at CES 2012 this week and got the low down on its new OEM SSDs that Apple tends to buy in large numbers. Samsung and Toshiba are the OEMs that provide the SSDs in MacBook Airs.
Discussion:
SlashGear
Janko Roettgers / GigaOM:
First numbers: How successful are Spotify's apps? — Are Spotify's new apps the missing piece to the social music puzzle, or merely gimmicks that are ignored by the majority of the company's users? It's been a month this week since Spotify rolled out its app platform to all of its users …
Wall Street Journal:
Google Renews Push in China — Two Years After Censorship Clash, Company Renews Push to Expand in World's Biggest Internet Market — Google Inc., which pulled its Web-search engine out of mainland China two years ago after a confrontation with Chinese authorities over censorship …
Discussion:
CNET, Search Engine Land, Business Insider, Computerworld, The Next Web, TechEye, WebProNews, Hillicon Valley, Media Decoder and Forbes, more at Mediagazer »
David Barboza / New York Times:
Foxconn Resolves Pay Dispute With Workers — SHANGHAI — Foxconn Technology, the largest contract electronics manufacturer in the world, said Thursday that it had resolved a pay dispute with scores of workers at one of its factories in central China, following a large protest that involved threats …
Discussion:
The Atlantic Wire, GeekWire, The Verge, PC Magazine, The Next Web, Bloomberg and Softpedia News
John Biggs / TechCrunch:
Why Samsung Is The Next Apple — For most of the ten years I've been coming to CES, every presentation, every booth, has had one goal: to create an ecosystem in order to encourage consumer to lock in. Year after year, presentation after presentation, someone has come out to show how the phone …
Discussion:
Macgasm, MacStories and Business Insider
Julie Bort / Business Insider:
Amazon Web Services Now Available Without That Messy ‘Web’ Part — Data doesn't have to travel over the messy, dangerous public Internet to use Amazon's cloud. — Amazon today expanded its AWS “direct connect” service to Northern California and three other global locations.
Discussion:
Computerworld
Jamie Keene / The Verge:
Boxee's Live TV joins the Facebook Open Graph party — Boxee has announced a new level of Facebook integration to its service, using the Open Graph auto-sharing feature to post what you're watching in Live TV dongle direct to your Timeline. The integration runs a little deeper than this …
Discussion:
Betabeat, Boxee Blog, ReadWriteWeb and Engadget
