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4:50 PM ET, January 4, 2012

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Yahoo! Inc.:
Yahoo! Appoints Scott Thompson Chief Executive Officer  —  SUNNYVALE, Calif.—(BUSINESS WIRE)— Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO), the premier digital media company, today announced the appointment of Scott Thompson as Chief Executive Officer, effective January 9, 2012, at which time Tim Morse will resume his role as Chief Financial Officer.
RELATED:
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Brand new CEO, same old messed up Yahoo  —  Yahoo has finally found a new chief executive to replace Carol Bartz (who left in a huff) and he is Scott Thompson, who till recently was the president of the PayPal division of eBay A surprise candidate, it is not very clear what his strategy …
Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:
Confirmed: Yahoo Names PayPal Head Scott Thompson as New CEO  —  As I reported late last night, Yahoo said it had named PayPal President Scott Thompson as its new CEO.  The exec is currently in charge of the large eBay online payments unit.  —  He'll start next week, but there are staff …
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines Blog:
Yahoo's new CEO Thompson: Five big challenges
Paul Thurrott / WindowsITPro:
Exclusive: Microsoft and Nokia's Plans for Marketing Windows Phone in 2012  —  With predictably parroting that information—I thought it might be worthwhile to set the record straight.  Microsoft and Nokia will not spend “in the neighborhood of $100 million” to market Windows Phone this year.
RELATED:
Wall Street Journal:
Kodak Preparing for Chapter 11 Filing  —  Eastman Kodak Co. is preparing for a Chapter 11 bankruptcy-protection filing in the coming weeks should efforts to sell a trove of digital patents fall through, people familiar with the matter said.  —  The struggling photography icon …
Tiuri van Agten / Distimo:
Google Android Market Tops 400,000 Applications  —  Google Android Market gave itself a nice new year's present last weekend.  The total number of active applications worldwide in the Android Market reached the 400,000 milestone.  Android Market has topped the 200K and 300K available apps milestones …
Elad Blog:
How Pinterest Will Transform the Web in 2012: Social Content Curation As The Next Big Thing  —  The most interesting wave hitting the social web in 2012 is social curation.  This was kicked off in 2011 as Pinterest's growth was noticed by Silicon Valley and a number of companies quickly followed suit …
Lauren Goode / AllThingsD:
Roku to Launch Cordless Streaming Stick for TVs  —  Roku, maker of competitively priced set-top boxes that stream Web video on TVs, is introducing a new device it thinks will offer a simpler option for Internet connectivity than some “smart” TVs.  —  Today, the company is unveiling plans …
Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:
The Case of the Unfortunate Underscore: How Twitter Verified the Fake Wendi Over the Real Wendi  —  I went all Encyclopedia Brown yesterday after I and many others had been led astray by an account — @wendi_deng — that Twitter had verified with its famous blue check mark over the holiday weekend …
Kevin Lincoln / Business Insider:
The Guys Behind The Verge Just Went On Another Huge Talent Raid For A New Gaming Site  —  For the last week, there's been buzz about a new gaming site coming from Vox Media, the parent company of The Verge and SB Nation.  —  We can confirm that Vox is about to launch a big gaming vertical later …
Darrell Etherington / GigaOM:
Apple's long silence on call mute issue raising ire of iPhone owners  —  Apple's iPhone 4S wasn't without its share of launch troubles, including complaints of poor battery life.  But while Apple was quick to address said issues in an update (and then promised to do so again in another) …
Julie Bort / Business Insider:
Cisco's Alternative To Skype Has Quietly Been Killed  —  Cisco has quietly pulled the plug on its ill-fated consumer home videoconferencing system, Umi.  This could be the final blow to the company's once-grand consumer plans.  —  Umi was introduced a little over a year ago, in October, 2010.
Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:
Disney and Comcast Link Up For Another 10 Years  —  Comcast has re-upped its distribution deal with Disney, which means the country's largest cable company will continue to pipe programming from ABC, ESPN and other channels into its subscribers' homes for another ten years.
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
File-Sharing Recognized as Official Religion in Sweden  —  All around the world file-sharers are being chased by anti-piracy outfits and the authorities, and the situation in Sweden is no different.  While copyright holders are often quick to label file-sharers as pirates …
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft Blog:
More on Windows 8's new refresh and reset options  —  Summary: Microsoft is readying some under-the-hood changes for reset/restoring Windows 8 PCs, some of which will be part of the February 2012 beta.  —  It feels like eons ago, but back in June 2010, when the first massive batch of information …
Krystal Peak / VatorNews:
Netflix's 20M members streamed 2B hours in Q4 of 2011  —  Down from 25M+ streaming subscribers, Netflix is poised for growth again in 2012  —  As Netflix continues to wrangle the conversation on its future, the video viewing and rental company announced that more than two billion hours …
Chetan / Always On Real-Time Access:
2012 Mobile Industry Predictions Survey  —  First things first.  From all of us at Chetan Sharma Consulting, we wish you and yours a very happy, healthy, and prosperous 2012.  My thanks to all who participated in our 2012 Mobile Predictions Annual Survey.  It gives our community an insider's view of trends.
Discussion: Phones Review, Thanks:chetansharma
Michael Arrington / Uncrunched:
Nobody Goes to Facebook Anymore.  It's Too Crowded.  —  A year ago Steven Levy suggested that Facebook should give us each a single “friend-list do-over.”  —  A lot of commenters challenged him.  “Grow some balls and just unfriend people,” said one of the more even tempered readers.
Discussion: NBC Bay Area and @loic
Dennis K. Berman / Wall Street Journal:
So, What's Your Algorithm?  —  We are ruined by our own biases.  When making decisions, we see what we want, ignore probabilities, and minimize risks that uproot our hopes.  —  What's worse, “we are often confident even when we are wrong,” writes Daniel Kahneman, in his masterful new book …
Sean Hollister / The Verge:
Samsung Series 5 Ultra up for pre-order in the US, brings optical media to the ultrabook for $949  —  Koreans won't be the only ones sticking DVDs into exceptionally thin laptops this year: Samsung's Series 5 Ultra laptops are now available for pre-order at J&R. The first time we heard …
Bloomberg:
Quanta Sues AMD Over Allegedly Unsuitable Chips for NEC Notebook Computers  —  Quanta Computer Inc. (2382), the world's largest contract maker of notebook computers, sued Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) for breach of contract, alleging the chipmaker sold defective products.
Élyse Betters / 9to5Google:
Android platform distribution statistics updated: .6-percent or around a million devices on ICS  —  The latest Android platform versions distributions chart was announced yesterday after the Android Developers' website collected data for two weeks, and the share results reaped a few surprising figures.
Eric Eldon / TechCrunch:
IFTTT, A Glue Gun For Sticking Together The Web, Raises $1.5M Seed Round From Top Investors  —  Want to instantly save all your Instagram photos to Dropbox when you take them?  What about automatically updating your Twitter profile when you update your Facebook profile?
Discussion: AllThingsD
Roger Cheng / CNET:
MetroPCS to offer live local TV on its smartphones  —  MetroPCS said today it was partnering with a consortium of broadcasters to bring live local television to its wireless customers later this year.  —  The prepaid mobile service provider is working with Mobile Content Venture …
Discussion: 9to5Google and TechCrunch
 
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 More Items: 
Pui-Wing Tam / Wall Street Journal:
Some Venture Funds Hit ‘Pause’ on Big Deals
Kashmir Hill / The Not-So Private Parts:
Rick Santorum's Iowa Performance Helps His ‘Google Problem’
Discussion: Mashable! and Search Engine Land
Austin Carr / Fast Company:
Proust, IAC's Social Network For Sharing Eternal Memories, To Shut Down
Discussion: AllThingsD
Florian Mueller / FOSS Patents:
Oracle's lawsuit against Google to go to trial on or after March 19, 2012
Stephanie Clifford / New York Times:
Online Sales Buoy U.P.S. And FedEx
 Earlier Items: 
Wall Street Journal:
Spam Finds New Target
Discussion: Marketing Land and WebProNews
David Kravets / Threat Level:
No Warrant Needed for GPS Monitoring, Judge Rules
Vlad Savov / The Verge:
Microsoft sues UK retailer Comet for ‘creating and selling’ counterfeit Windows Vista and XP CDs
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Codecademy's CodeYear Attracts 100,000 Aspiring Programmers In 48 Hours
Discussion: TechPinions
Larry Downes / Forbes:
Why Best Buy is Going out of Business...Gradually