Top Items:
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Groupon Closing $950 Million Round, Valued At $4.75 Billion — Lots of excitement today about Groupon's intention to raise a new monster round of financing, with speculation that the valuation of the still-young startup reaching nearly $8 billion. That speculation is only partially right …
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Erin Griffith / VC Experts:
Groupon Raising Up to $950 million Series G — Fresh off the heels of Groupon's widely publicized Google rebuff, the discount e-commerce company has filed a certificate to authorize a $950 million Series G round of preferred stock. The certificate, which gives Groupon the capacity to raise $950 million, was filed on December 17.
Discussion:
MediaPost, Examiner, P Morgan Brown, TechCrunch, Mashable!, L.A. Times Tech Blog, PC Magazine, eMoney, PE Hub Blog, NBC Bay Area, DealBook, VatorNews, Venture Capital Dispatch, VentureBeat, ReadWriteWeb, CNET News, Screenwerk, Fortune and SAI
Kellex / Droid Life:
Exclusive: 12 Photos of the HTC Thunderbolt on Verizon — Take a look at that beauty. Say hello to the HTC Thunderbolt, which will be the first 4G LTE device to land on Verizon after its unveiling next week at CES. As you can see, it really just looks exactly like the Desire HD …
Discussion:
VentureBeat, Engadget, The Next Web, PhoneNews.com, BGR, IntoMobile, Erictric, LAPTOP Magazine, MobileCrunch, Android Phone Fans, Electronista and PhoneArena
Brier Dudley / The Seattle Times:
Paul Allen tries again with suit against Apple, Google, Facebook ... Mercer Island billionaire Paul Allen today renewed his effort to sue Apple, Google, Facebook, eBay, AOL and other companies for patent infringement. — Allen's case was rejected on Dec. 10 by a federal judge in Seattle who said it was too vague.
Discussion:
ZDNet, Search Engine Land, Mobilized, TechFlash, Wall Street Journal, Electronista, FOSS Patents, AppleInsider and SAI
Kontra / counternotions:
The Unbearable Inevitability of Being Android, 1995 — According to soldiers of the Android Crusade, 2011 is the year Google will crush iOS to declare its inevitable suzerainty over mobile territories. — Let's meet this week's crusaders: Seth Weintraub (2011 will be the year Android explodes) …
Discussion:
SAI
Brooks Barnes / New York Times:
Disney Tackles Major Theme Park Problem: Lines — ORLANDO, Fla. — Deep in the bowels of Walt Disney World, inside an underground bunker called the Disney Operational Command Center, technicians know that you are standing in line and that you are most likely annoyed about it.
Discussion:
Mashable!, VatorNews, Newlaunches.com, Engadget and GMSV
Dan Primack / Fortune:
SecondMarket: The SEC has not asked us for anything — The SEC “wants to learn more” about secondary stock trades in private companies like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Zynga, according to a report in today's New York Times. No specifics as to the inquiry's primary goal …
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Threat Level:
Putting the Record Straight on the Lamo-Manning Chat Logs — Editor's note: This is a two-part article, in which Wired.com editor-in-chief Evan Hansen and senior editor Kevin Poulsen respond separately to criticisms of the site's Wikileaks coverage. — The Case for Privacy
Discussion:
p2pnet, WL Central, Boing Boing and Salon, more at Mediagazer »
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Q: What Does Quora Mean For The Future Of Blogging? A: Business As Usual — As many of you have noticed, we (and by “we”, I mainly mean “me") have been using Quora a lot as a source of inspiration for story ideas. Some people seem to think this is a great idea.
Discussion:
Elias Bizannes, Wap Review, TeleRead, Stay N' Alive and Skeptic Geek, more at Mediagazer », Thanks:alexia
Patton Oswalt / Wired:
Wake Up, Geek Culture. Time to Die — I'm not a nerd. I used to be one, back 30 years ago when nerd meant something. I entered the '80s immersed, variously, in science fiction, Dungeons & Dragons, and Stephen King. Except for the multiple-player aspect of D&D, these pursuits were not …
Darren Murph / Engadget:
BMW Connected app hits iOS App Store, ‘Apps’ function hitting vehicles next year — Like son, like father? Evidently that's exactly how things are playing out, with papa BMW following the footsteps of MINI in the run-up to 2011. Just days after the MINI Connected app found itself situated …
Ionut Arghire / Softpedia News:
New Android Market Stats Out, Over 200k Apps Available — Google's Android operating system already attracted a lot of developers on its side, which came up with applications in excess of 200,000, the latest stats on the Android Market show. — Apple's App Store for the iPhone …
Discussion:
BGR, The Next Web, Electronista, IntoMobile, PhoneArena, Techie Buzz, WebProNews, Examiner and Know Your Cell, Thanks:keithdsouza
Horace Dediu / asymco:
The parable of the the PDA: predicting the smartphone's future — When reading the comments disputing the possible end of the voice-phone era I'm reminded of similar comments disputing the end of the PDA era. — Although the Apple Newton pioneered the market in 1992 and John Sculley came …
Donald Melanson / Engadget:
Researchers create ultra-fast ‘1,000 core’ processor, Intel also toys with the idea — We've already seen field programmable gate arrays (or FPGAs) used to create energy efficient supercomputers, but a team of researchers at the University of Glasgow led by Dr. Wim Vanderbauwhede now say that they have …
Discussion:
SlashGear
Michael Oliveira / Globe and Mail:
Canadians spend more time online than any other country — Canadians were curating their Facebook profiles long before the rest of the world got hooked, many were experimenting with the limitations of writing in 140-character snippets at Twitter's launch in 2006, and we watch online video more than any other web surfers.
Discussion:
The Next Web and All Facebook
Tim Hornyak / Crave: The gadget blog:
Korean schools welcome more robot teachers — Teacher's pet? An Engkey robot educates kids in Korea — If you thought your English teacher was a robotic bore, spare a thought for kids in South Korea. They're being taught by real robots. — The city of Daegu introduced 29 robot teachers …
Discussion:
PhysOrg.com, joongangdaily.joins.com, AOL News and Engadget
Enigmax / TorrentFreak:
RapidShare Shows MPAA/RIAA: We Can Lobby Lawmakers Too — Last month RapidShare discovered that they had been reported by the MPAA and RIAA to the US Government for being one of the world's “most notorious pirate markets”. Now, on the heels of reports that the entertainment industries spent …
Discussion:
Deutsche Welle, ZeroPaid.com and Ars Technica
Shayndi Raice / Wall Street Journal:
Fiber-Optic Networks Regain Some Glow — Data Traffic Turns Regional Operators Into Buyout Targets — After the telecom bubble burst a decade ago, fiber was a dirty word. — Now, the fiber-optic network business is enjoying a resurgence, particularly for metro fiber …
Discussion:
Tech Trader Daily
Serkan Toto / MobileCrunch:
Report: Playstation Phone Is Based On the PSPgo, Will Go On Sale This Spring — We've spent quite a few posts on Sony's Playstation Phone in the last few months, and today the Asahi Shimbun (one of Japan's biggest newspapers) is reporting [JP] that the device will be released in spring next year.
Brian X. Chen / Gadget Lab:
Apple Doesn't Want Coders Messing With iPhone Buttons — Sometimes — Apple can't stick to its own rules with the gigantic iOS App Store. — The company recently approved an iPhone camera app that carries a special feature: the ability to snap a photo by pressing the physical Volume button rather than tapping the touchscreen.
Discussion:
AppleInsider, The Apple Core Blog, Pulse2, App Advice, MacRumors, BlogsDNA, Technovia, MacNN and PC World
Digital Chosunilbo:
Samsung to Unveil New Galaxy S at Mobile World Congress — The successor to Samsung Electronics' hit Galaxy S smartphone will be released in February. — Samsung announced Monday that it will unveil the device at the 2011 Mobile World Congress, the world's largest mobile communications exhibition …
Discussion:
Pulse2, MobileWhack.com, Android Phone Fans, Samsung Hub, SlashGear, Mobile Knots, pocketnow.com, Softpedia News and PhoneArena
Reuters:
Clooney, Google, U.N. watch Sudan using satellites — NEW YORK (Reuters) - Groups including the United Nations, Harvard University, Google Inc and an organization co-founded by actor George Clooney are launching a project using satellites to “watch” Sudan for war crimes before a vote that could split the African country in two.
Discussion:
Associated Press, Time and Boston Globe
Mike Masnick / Techdirt:
France Wants To Extend Private Copying Levy To Tablets... But Not If They Run Microsoft Windows — from the say-what-now? dept — Kurata points us to the news that French politicians are debating extending the “you must be a criminal” private copying levy to tablet computers — but …
Discussion:
SAI
Vanessa Dennis / Online NewsHour:
Delete Older Facebook Apps — or Risk Everyone's Privacy — If you have a Facebook page, you've probably added quite a few apps. If you've linked your YouTube account, New York Times account, or just about any mobile app to your Facebook profile, you've also installed their app …
Discussion:
Switched, Help Net Security and All Facebook
