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11:30 PM ET, January 19, 2012

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Dan Wineman / venomous porridge:
The Unprecedented Audacity of the iBooks Author EULA  —  Apple just released iBooks Author, a free Mac app for creating digital books for the new version of iBooks.  I haven't played with it much, but so far it looks like a very good tool.  However, a curious thing happens when you go to export your work in iBooks format:
RELATED:
Tom Neumayr / Apple:
Apple Unveils All-New iTunes U App for iPad, iPhone & iPod touch  —  Entire Courses from Top Universities Now Available in One App  —  Apple® today announced an all-new iTunes® U app, giving educators and students everything they need on their iPad®, iPhone® and iPod touch® to teach and take entire courses.
Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:
Apple's New Math.  Or: Why A $15 E-Book Equals a $75 Paper Book.  —  McGraw-Hill normally sells high-school textbooks for $75 a pop. Now it says it will sell electronic versions of the same books, via Apple, for $15 apiece.  How can the publisher make that work?
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Kno CEO Osman Rashid To Apple: “Now We Will Fight On Who Has The Better Product”  —  Apple's latest foray into digital textbooks today raises a lot of questions about the future of the textbook publishing industry and digital textbook startups who now find themselves going up against Apple.
Megan Garber / The Atlantic Online:
A Brief History of Textbooks, or, Why Apple's ‘New Textbook Experience’ Is Actually Revolutionary
Discussion: CNET and AnandTech
Paul Carr / PandoDaily:
iBooks Author Is Not Going To Hurt Publishers. It Might Even Help Them
Darrell Etherington / GigaOM:
Apple announces new iPad textbook experience with iBooks 2
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
Why the feds smashed Megaupload  —  The US government dropped a nuclear bomb on “cyberlocker” site Megaupload today, seizing its domain names, grabbing $50 million in assets, and getting New Zealand police to arrest four of the site's key employees, including enigmatic founder Kim Dotcom.
Discussion: TeleRead
RELATED:
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
Justice Department calls MegaUpload an ‘international organized criminal enterprise,’ founder Kim Dotcom arrested in New Zealand  —  The United States Justice Department filed charges against MegaUpload today, calling the file-sharing service an “international organized criminal enterprise …
Devlin Barrett / Wall Street Journal:
FBI Charges Seven With Online Piracy  —  WASHINGTON—The Federal Bureau of Investigation moved against a group of suspected online pirates Thursday, targeting the popular file-sharing website megaupload.com a day after Washington lawmakers were besieged by complaints about legislation designed …
Chris Ziegler / The Verge:
Anonymous claims DOJ and record label site takedowns in response to MegaUpload suit  —  By all appearances, Anonymous isn't too happy with the Department of Justice's move to take down file sharing site MegaUpload today, because it's now claiming that it's knocked the DOJ's site off the internet …
Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
Before shutdown, Megaupload ate up more corporate bandwidth than Dropbox  —  Before being shut down by the feds today, the file-sharing site Megaupload was extraordinarily popular with home Internet users—so much so that the file downloading habit was spilling over into the workplace in a significant way.
Discussion: Gizmodo and Palo Alto Networks …
Billboard:
Swizz Beatz's Resume: The History of a Multi-Tasker
Discussion: BET.com
Google Investor Relations:
Google Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2011 Results  —  Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced financial results for the quarter and the fiscal year ended December 31, 2011.  —  “Google had a really strong quarter ending a great year.  Full year revenue was up 29% …
RELATED:
Dan Gallagher / MarketWatch:
Google earnings rise 6%, but miss targets
Discussion: Bloomberg
Summify:
Summify Joins The Flock At Twitter!  —  You've probably noticed we've been quiet lately.  Well, we're extremely excited to announce that Summify has been acquired by Twitter!  I know, right?  We can hardly believe it ourselves!  —  Roughly 2 years ago, we moved from Romania to Vancouver …
RELATED:
Mike Davidson / mikeindustries.com:   Twitter Buys Summify, Gives Everyone a Reason to Use It
Stuart Miles / Pocket-lint:
Bing Maps to get Nokia branding on all devices - including rivals'  —  Nokia CEO, Stephen Elop, has told Pocket-lint that we shall soon be seeing the Nokia brand name within other devices and not just the company's own phones.  —  “You'll starting seeing the word ‘Nokia’ on a map …
David Edwards / The Raw Story:
After Internet blackout, all GOP candidates agree SOPA sucks  —  Following the protests Wednesday that saw dozens of websites go dark in opposition to federal anti-piracy legislation, the four remaining Republican presidential candidate said the U.S. House's bill would be a disaster for freedom on the Internet.
Discussion: Alexander Howard
RELATED:
New York Times:
Dodd Calls for Hollywood and Silicon Valley to Meet
Discussion: TechCrunch
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Why Kodak's bankruptcy should scare Nokia  —  Yesterday, a friend of mine, someone who is quite savvy about technology and the startup landscape stopped by for a chat.  Our conversation veered towards the state of the web, media and of course Silicon Valley.
Discussion: The Economist and Forbes
Antonio Rodriguez / The Grain:
How iOS can lose: the independent developer as a canary in the coal mine  —  Try as I might to find objective data in their financials to show the slow of the platform, I found it difficult to observe any cracks in the iOS money-making machine.  Apple is continuing to spend fewer dollars …
Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:
The Valley Girl Takes On Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg (Video)  —  Double snaps to Jesse Draper, whose kookified online interview show, “The Valley Girl Show,” managed to get a very decent interview with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.  —  And by decent, I mean that Draper actually elicits …
Discussion: TechCrunch
Adrianne Jeffries / Betabeat:
Layoffs at Lot18: 15 Percent of Employees Were Just Let Go From Fast-Growing Luxury Discount Site  —  Lot18, the membership-based luxury item site that raised a whopping $45 million over the last year, just laid off 14 people, or 15 percent of the staff.  —  “A lot of this is a natural part …
Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:
Microsoft Reports Record Revenue: Up 5% To $20.9B, Earnings At $0.78 Per Share  —  Microsoft just reported its second quarter 2012 earnings with revenues of $20.9 billion, an 5% increase from the same period of the prior year.  Microsoft's operating income, net income, and diluted earnings per share …
Matt Lynley / Business Insider:
Path Is Raising A Big Funding Round To Go With Its Shiny New App  —  Find out more out the future of disruptive technology and companies like Facebook, Google, Zynga, Disney, NBC and more at IGNITION West!  —  Path is in the beginning stages of raising a new funding round, Business Insider has learned.
David Goldman / CNN Money:
At $400 billion, Apple is worth more than Greece  —  NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Apple's value on the stock market briefly rose to $400 billion on Thursday, a record high for what was already the world's most valuable technology company.  —  The company's market cap slipped below the $400 billion mark …
Discussion: 9to5Mac, AllThingsD and CNNMoney.com
Krystal Peak / VatorNews:
Nike announces FitBit, JawboneUP competition ‘FuelBand’  —  As consumers demand more from mobile health, Nike pours fuel on the fire  —  With everyone trying to uphold their New Year's resolutions — or resuscitate them — Nike took some time out on Thursday to announce a new tool to track …
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
Pages With Too Many Ads “Above The Fold” Now Penalized By Google's “Page Layout” Algorithm  —  Do you shove lots of ads at the top of your web pages?  Think again.  Tired of doing a Google search and landing on these types of pages?  Rejoice.  Google has announced that it will penalize sites with pages that are top-heavy with ads.
 
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 More Items: 
Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:
Apple Store coming to London's world-famous Harrods department store
Discussion: MacRumors
T.C. Sottek / The Verge:
US military to crowdsource software testing with games
Discussion: Nextgov.com
Kevin Woodward / Internet Retailer:
Shoppers convert as often on tablets as on PCs
Discussion: Fast Company and Business Wire
Matthew Panzarino / The Next Web:
High-res images in iBooks 2 are no accident, they're for the iPad 3′s Retina display
Discussion: 9to5Mac, @sonnydickson and Gizmodo, Thanks:padandquill
Matt Wirz / Wall Street Journal:
Icahn Buys LightSquared Debt as Distressed Investors Circle
Discussion: Wall Street Journal and GigaOM
Nancy Messieh / The Next Web:
Death sentence for Iranian programmer accused of developing software used by porn sites
Discussion: Gizmodo
J.B. / Fusible.com:
Facebook registers domains for something called “FB Origin”
 Earlier Items: 
Melanie Lee / Reuters:
China's challenge to the iPad raises a red flag
Discussion: CNET, Techland and PadGadget
Kathleen De Vere / Inside Mobile Apps:
Exclusive: Xbox Live games coming to other platforms
John Paczkowski / AllThingsD:
Amazon Makes More Than $100 Off Each Kindle Fire
Paul Graham:
A Word to the Resourceful  —  A year ago I noticed a pattern …
Jack Purcher / Patently Apple:
Apple introduces us to Siri, the Killer Patent
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Jonathan Stempel / Reuters:
A New York judge finds Sirius XM liable for a difficult subscription cancellation process; Sirius says it will appeal but abide by a new “click-to-cancel” rule

Ashley Carman / Bloomberg:
A growing number of podcasters, including Tim Ferriss, are moving away from interviews to monologues or co-hosts, as some well-known guests can be overexposed

Brian Steinberg / Variety:
Sources: NBCUniversal Vice Chairman Bonnie Hammer plans to leave the company at the end of the year; she has been with the company since 2004

 
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