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1:50 PM ET, January 24, 2012

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Jennifer Van Grove / VentureBeat:
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales: MPAA chairman Christopher Dodd should be fired  —  Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales had fighting words for Motion Picture Association of America chairman Christopher Dodd, calling the former Senator and current lobbyist out on his recent threats and pronouncing that the MPAA should fire its chief.
RELATED:
Jay A. Fernandez / Hollywood Reporter:
Sundance 2012: MPAA's Chris Dodd Calls Piracy Defeat a ‘Watershed Event’  —  Speaking at the festival's daily Cinema Cafe series, Dodd said the tech community's ability to mobilize the public was a game-changing phenomenon that he hadn't seen in more than three decades in public office.
Mike Thompson / The Escapist:
Petition Demands White House Investigate SOPA Supporter  —  Chris Dodd was a big supporter of SOPA.  After an angry comment last week, a petition wants him investigated for bribery charges.  —  Former senator Chris Dodd left office in January, 2011.  A month later, he was hired …
Discussion: PC World
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Facebook Timeline Now Pushed To Everyone, Users Get A Week To Clean Up Profiles  —  You can run, but you can't hide.  Facebook's biggest user interface overhaul since the Wall, the Facebook Timeline, is now becoming mandatory for all users.  According to the company, over the next few weeks, everyone will get the new Timeline.
RELATED:
Dan Graziano / BGR:   Facebook forcing Timeline on users ‘over the next few weeks’
Chris Foresman / Ars Technica:
iBooks Author EULA restrictions invite antitrust concerns  —  Apple's end user license agreement for the iBooks Author app has generated extensive controversy among authors and publishers.  Namely, the agreement restricts paid distribution of “works” created with the software to the iBookstore only.
RELATED:
John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
I'ma Set It Straight, This Watergate
Discussion: @lessien
Ed Bott / The Ed Bott Report Blog:   How Apple is sabotaging an open standard for digital books
Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:
Steve Jobs looked to reinvent Apple's iPhone photography with instant capture system, advanced light-field sensors  —  “He had three things that he wanted to reinvent: the television, textbooks and photography,” said biographer Walter Isaacson in an interview following the release of his biography on Steve Jobs.
Gartner:
Gartner Says Apple Became the Top Semiconductor Customer in 2011  —  Top 10 Original Equipment Manufacturers Represented $105.6 Billion of Semiconductor Demand, Accounting for 35 Percent of Total Semiconductor Chip Revenue in 2011  —  Leading electronic equipment manufacturers remained …
Kathleen De Vere / Inside Mobile Apps:
Exclusive: Microsoft to discontinue its virtual currency system Microsoft Points  —  Microsoft's proprietary virtual currency system, Microsoft Points, will be phased out by the end of the year, according to a source with knowledge of the company's decision.
Jennifer Van Grove / VentureBeat:
Facebook added $15.3B and 230k jobs to European economy in 2011  —  Facebook added $15.3 billion in value to the European economy in the past year, COO Sheryl Sandberg said at the Digital Life Design conference in Munich Tuesday.  —  Sandberg, in her closing keynote on how social media …
RELATED:
Benny Evangelista / San Francisco Chronicle:
Sheryl Sandberg - Facebook's grown-up face
Discussion: ReadWriteWeb
Florian Mueller / FOSS Patents:
Dutch appeals court says Galaxy Tab 10.1 doesn't infringe Apple's design right  —  Apple's enforcement of design-related rights against Samsung's Galaxy Tab range of tablet computers has suffered yet another setback, with the Gerechthof 's-Gravenhage (an appeals court in The Hague, Netherlands) …
Jason Fried / Get Real:
When It's Time to Start Over  —  Sometimes, the best way to improve something is to begin again from scratch.  Even if it's your top-selling product.  —  In 2004, 37signals, the software company I co-founded, released a Web-based project-management and collaboration tool called Basecamp.
Neil Daswani / Dasient Blog:
Dasient Has Been Acquired by Twitter  —  The Dasient team is excited to announce that we have been acquired by Twitter!  Effective immediately, we will be bringing our technology, tools, and team to the revenue engineering team at Twitter.  —  Since its inception, Dasient has been focused …
Andrew Kippen / Boxee Blog:
Boxee Live TV now available for $49 - let the cord cutting begin!  —  Boxee 1.5 rolls out to Boxee Boxes today and Boxee Live TV tuners have begun shipping!  Order one now for your Boxee Box!  With the addition of Live TV, the Boxee Box holds the distinction of being the only mainstream set top box …
MG Siegler / PandoDaily:
Evil, Greed, And Antitrust Aren't Google's Real Problems, Relevancy Is  —  It seemed like this week could finally be the week when Google didn't make headlines for their decision to inject Google+ results right into Search.  That hope lasted until Monday.  Now the story is back — with a vengeance.
RELATED:
Ray Walters / ExtremeTech:
The Pirate Bay declares 3D printed “physibles” as the next frontier of piracy  —  While the subject of online piracy is certainly nothing new, the recent protests against SOPA and the federal raid on Megaupload have thrust the issue into mainstream media.  More than ever, people are discussing …
Thomas Houston / The Verge:
Vimeo redesign offers cleaner interface, bigger videos, Tumblr-like feed for browsing  —  Search is great when it comes to video, but how should a video service best show videos to users that they don't necessarily know they want to see?  YouTube's recent redesign opted for a visually busy route …
Matt Burns / TechCrunch:
Was Megaupload Targeted Because Of Its Upcoming Megabox Digital Jukebox Service?  —  Last Thursday the US Justice Department came down hard on Megaupload and its mega founder, Kim Dotcom.  In the days since, there has been a shake-up of sorts in the digital storage realm.
RELATED:
Reuters:   Analysis: Megaupload shutdown unlikely to deter piracy
Frederic Lardinois / SiliconFilter:
Ubuntu Wants to Replace Menus with a HUD  —  Ubuntu, the popular Linux distribution, has been experimenting with a number of interface designs lately.  Today, the project's founder Mark Shuttleworth announced that the next major version of Ubuntu, 12.04 LTS, will feature a replacement for the menu bar.
BBC:
Star Wars crowdsourced film reaches million YouTube views  —  A feline cast member delivers a creditable performance in Star Wars Uncut  —  A “directors cut” of a fan-made version of Star Wars has passed one million views on YouTube.  —  The film, uploaded on 18 January …
Discussion: PC World and Slate
Joseph Volpe / Engadget:
Droid RAZR Maxx hits Verizon on January 26th for $299 on contract  —  While good handsets do tend to come in small packages, longer lasting ones are undoubtedly a bit fatter.  And so, dear chubby phone chasing fans, Verizon's girthy revamp on its branding mash-up — the Droid Razr Maxx — is set for an official bow.
Mike Orcutt / Technology Review:
Twitter Bots Create Surprising New Social Connections  —  Researchers show how simple programs posing as real people can shape interactions on Twitter.  —  You might have encountered a “Twitter bot” before: an automated program that perhaps retweeted something you wrote because it had particular keywords.
Discussion: ReadWriteWeb
Declan McCullagh / CNET:
Judge: Americans can be forced to decrypt their laptops  —  American citizens can be ordered to decrypt their PGP-scrambled hard drives for police to peruse for incriminating files, a federal judge in Colorado ruled today in what could become a precedent-setting case.
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines Blog:
Verizon rides iPhone 4S, LTE in Q4 at expense of profit margins  —  Summary: Verizon Wireless posted strong growth for the fourth quarter, but margins were hit in the short-term due to the iPhone.  —  Verizon's wireless unit rode an iPhone 4S upgrade cycle and Long-Term Evolution 4G devices to a strong fourth quarter.
Richard Allan / Facebook:
Measuring Facebook's economic impact in Europe  —  Facebook's users already know what the power of social means to them.  —  Whether it is finding old friends, keeping up with family, planning events or sharing special moments; the ability to connect is a precious thing.
Discussion: CNET, ZDNet and All Facebook
Jennifer Van Grove / VentureBeat:
Parse.ly launches predictive analytics dashboard for publishers  —  Online publishing is about to get a lot smoother for publishers.  Whether that's a good thing for readers is another question, however.  —  New York-based startup Parse.ly is releasing its flagship product, Dash, into general availability Tuesday.
 
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 More Items: 
Jason Del Rey / AdAge:
Social TV Startup Bluefin Labs Lands $12 Million Investment
John Markoff / New York Times:
Google's Autonomous Vehicles Draw Skepticism at Legal Symposium
Discussion: Gizmodo and Mashable!
 Earlier Items: 
Hunter Walk / TechCrunch:
BlackoutSOPA: How 87,000 People Taught Us About The Future of Online Activism
Rebecca J. Rosen / The Atlantic Online:
Why the Jones Supreme Court Ruling on GPS Tracking Is Worse Than It Sounds
Discussion: ReadWriteWeb
Rich Miller / Data Center Knowledge:
Google Spent $951 Million on Data Centers in 4Q
Dan Graziano / BGR:
Office Depot now testing PayPal's new point-of-sale system
Discussion: SlashGear
Pui-Wing Tam / Wall Street Journal:
Average Silicon Valley Tech Salary Passes $100,000
Discussion: Business Insider and PhoneArena
Bradley Horowitz / Google+:
Toward a more inclusive naming policy for Google+