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Listen to Music With Your Friends — Music is one of the most powerful and fun ways to connect. Whether it's at a concert with a bunch of people or on a long car ride with your best buddy, we love listening to music with our friends. But what if you could listen to music with your friends …
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Facebook introduces ‘listen with friends’ feature for Spotify users, other services coming soon
Discussion:
VentureBeat


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:
CNET, Business Insider, ReadWriteWeb, GeekWire, All about Microsoft Blog, Computerworld, AllThingsD, Seattle Times and Slate


Google Tying Google Plus and Many More — Disclosure: I serve as a consultant to various companies that compete with Google. But I write on my own — not at the suggestion or request of any client, without approval or payment from any client. — This week Google announced Google Search Plus Your World …
Discussion:
Gizmodo, SplatF, GigaOM, Between the Lines Blog, @dannysullivan, Slate, ReadWriteWeb, Search Engine Land, TechCrunch and parislemon
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Google Attempts to Take Down Facebook With ‘Search Plus Your World’ Feature
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Nieman Journalism Lab, Real Dan Lyons Web Site, Uncrunched, All Facebook, SiliconANGLE, Inquirer, Technology Liberation Front, PC Magazine, eWeek, LEWIS 360°, Computerworld, Softpedia News, Marketing Pilgrim, Techland, TechCrunch, Search Engine Land, CNET, Gizmodo, Ben Parr's Entrepreneurial …, PC World, Mashable! and SiliconFilter

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 and TorrentFreak
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Time Is Running Out For SOPA Opponents Congressmen Warn At CES 2012
Discussion:
ReadWriteWeb, Betabeat, Mashable!, AllThingsD, Fox Business, Techdirt, The Register, Computerworld and NBC Bay Area

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:
Inquirer, LiveSide.net, Neowin.net, TechSpot, BGR, Engadget, The Tech Trade, @akovacs, AllThingsD, MobileSyrup.com, @tim_stevens, WebProNews and Softpedia News
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LG in talks on phone partnerships: executive
Discussion:
Bloomberg, paidContent, PhoneArena, Electronista, Appolicious Advisor and Mobilized

Microsoft Claims Patent Licenses on 70% of Android Phones
Discussion:
PC World, GeekWire, Business Insider, PC Magazine, Digital Trends, Seattle Times, @fxshaw, Unbiased Tech, Ars Technica, SiliconANGLE, eWeek, mocoNews, Microsoft, Mercury News, IntoMobile, TechCrunch, Business Insider, SlashGear, The Next Web, Android Police, 9to5Google, SlashGear, WMPoweruser, PhoneArena, Techie Buzz, FOSS Patents, GigaOM and TechCrunch


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:
Pulse2, Techie Buzz, TUAW and PhoneArena


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, Digital Trends, Bloomberg, InvestorPlace, Softpedia News and The Next Web

ARM chief not impressed with Intel phone chips — (Reuters) - The head of British chip designer Arm Holdings plc has shrugged off the latest attempt by Intel Corp to muscle its way into the expanding market for low-power processors used in smartphones and tablets, which ARM dominates.
Discussion:
VentureBeat, Neowin.net, PhoneArena, SlashGear, TG Daily, PC Magazine, dailywireless.org and Globe and Mail


Improvements to the Gmail offline Chrome app — When we first announced Gmail offline last August, we told you that it was only the beginning of our HTML5-powered offline journey. Since then, we've been listening to your feedback and today, we want to let you know about some of the key updates we've made to the Chrome Web Store app.
Discussion:
9to5Google, Webmonkey and The Next Web


Foursquare's mobile recommendation engine, Explore, hits the web — Chances are that the insights gathered from one-and-a-half billion check-ins and 15 million tips are better than your own eyes and ears at sleuthing out the best places to eat, drink and see nearby or afar.
Discussion:
About Foursquare, The Verge, Search Engine Land, Business Insider, Betabeat, TechCrunch, Bits, Foursquare Blog and Mashable!


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:
Mashable!, VentureBeat, Friending Facebook Blog, The Next Web, memeburn, FT Tech Hub, MarketingVox News & Trends and The Sociable


Amazon Kindle Owners Are “Borrowing” Nearly 300,000 Electronic Books A Month — Amazon is releasing new data on its Kindle Lending Library, which the e-commerce site says now has over 75,000 books. The Kindle Owners' Lending Library is a collection of books that Amazon Prime members who own …
Discussion:
GeekWire, Business Wire, ReadWriteWeb, Between the Lines Blog, WebProNews, Mashable!, The Next Web and paidContent, more at Mediagazer »

Forecasting next week's Apple education event — iBooks, ebooks, and iWork could be on the agenda for the January 19 event — All we know for certain about Apple's upcoming press event on January 19 is what it says on the invitation: It's at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, and it's focused on education.


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:
ZDNet, BGR, The Verge, New York Times, Reuters, GigaOM, MarketWatch, AllThingsD, 9to5Mac, SlashGear and PadGadget


Introducing the Android Design site — Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) is our biggest redesign yet — both for users and developers. We've enhanced the UI framework with new interactions and styles that will let you create Android apps that are simpler and more beautiful than ever before.
Discussion:
TechCrunch and Gadget Lab


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. While Microsoft has released a number of apps for the iPad …


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.”

Amazon enables sending documents from the PC to Kindle — Summary: Amazon's new “Send to Kindle” option makes it possible to transfer files from Windows applications to the Kindle. — Amazon just added a huge new piece of functionality to the Kindle, making it more useful for all sorts of personal and business purposes.
Discussion:
Kindle Post US, Gizmodo, The Verge and Ars Technica


Bigger than Google+, MySpace isn't dead yet — MySpace, the grand daddy of social services is still wheezing along, comScore says in its latest social media report. In fact it is bigger than Tumblr and Google Plus. I have no idea where (and why) MySpace is getting so much traffic - still.
Discussion:
hypebot and The Next Web


Facebook Gives Politico Deep Access to Users' Political Sentiments — Counting Twitter mentions would have you believe that Ron Paul is the most popular Republican candidate in the ongoing U.S. primaries. Umm, right. — But some social media analysis of politics is going beyond that.
Discussion:
All Facebook, Facebook, Reuters, The Politico, TechCrunch, Mashable!, The Next Web and Poynter


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 …


Microsoft Beefing Up CeBit Presence Even as It Pulls Back on CES — This may be Microsoft's last year with a keynote and booth at the Consumer Electronics Show, but the company is actually stepping up its investment in the biggest European technology show. — Microsoft is planning …


Update on our plan to integrate location and context services into our push messaging platform — We announced the acquisition of SimpleGeo at the end of October 2011. Since then we've been evaluating how to proceed in a way that benefits all parties involved: SimpleGeo and Urban Airship customers plus both companies.