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12:55 PM ET, January 12, 2012

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Ashlee Vance / Business Week:
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 …
RELATED:
Farhad Manjoo / Slate:
The Year of Microsoft  —  How the former tech giant can reclaim its throne in 2012.
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Google And The Monopoly Paradox  —  We've been over this.  A lot.  And this story is going to continue for some time to come.  It sure looks like Google is almost asking for an inquiry into potentially anti-competitive practices (and it's coming).  Which is insane.  So the next logical question is why?
RELATED:
Benjamin Edelman / Ben Edelman:
Google Tying Google Plus and Many More
Jessica Guynn / L.A. Times Tech Blog:
Google likely to face FTC complaint over ‘Search Plus Your World’
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
Real-Life Examples Of How Google's “Search Plus” Pushes Google+ Over Relevancy
Mike Masnick / Techdirt:
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.
RELATED:
E.D. Kain / Forbes:
Time Is Running Out For SOPA Opponents Congressmen Warn At CES 2012  —  Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) showed up at CES 2012 in Las Vegas to issue a stark warning: we're running out of time to stop legislation aimed at cracking down on copyright infringement.
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft Blog:
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.
RELATED:
Stephen Rosenman / Seeking Alpha:
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: Techie Buzz, TUAW and PhoneArena
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
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.”
Discussion: MPAA Blog
Walter S. Mossberg / AllThingsD:
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.  —  [ See post to watch video ]
Cade Metz / Wired Enterprise:
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 …
Gregory Lyons / iCrossing:
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 …
Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
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 …
Enigmax / TorrentFreak:
EMI Sues Irish State For Not Implementing Piracy Blocking Provisions  —  The place where breaking news, BitTorrent and copyright collide  —  EMI Sues Irish State For Not Implementing Piracy Blocking Provisions  —  After failing last year in its attempt to force a local Internet service provider …
Discussion: Inquirer, PC Magazine and TechEye
Seth Weintraub / 9to5Mac:
The MacBook Air Samsung SSD is about to get twice as fast  —  I had a chance to meet with Samsung Storage solutions at CES 2012 this week and got the low down on its new OEM SSDs that Apple tends to buy in large numbers.  Samsung and Toshiba are the OEMs that provide the SSDs in MacBook Airs.
Discussion: SlashGear
Janko Roettgers / GigaOM:
First numbers: How successful are Spotify's apps?  —  Are Spotify's new apps the missing piece to the social music puzzle, or merely gimmicks that are ignored by the majority of the company's users?  It's been a month this week since Spotify rolled out its app platform to all of its users …
Wall Street Journal:
Google Renews Push in China  —  Two Years After Censorship Clash, Company Renews Push to Expand in World's Biggest Internet Market  —  Google Inc., which pulled its Web-search engine out of mainland China two years ago after a confrontation with Chinese authorities over censorship …
David Barboza / New York Times:
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 …
John Biggs / TechCrunch:
Why Samsung Is The Next Apple  —  For most of the ten years I've been coming to CES, every presentation, every booth, has had one goal: to create an ecosystem in order to encourage consumer to lock in.  Year after year, presentation after presentation, someone has come out to show how the phone …
Julie Bort / Business Insider:
Amazon Web Services Now Available Without That Messy ‘Web’ Part  —  Data doesn't have to travel over the messy, dangerous public Internet to use Amazon's cloud.  —  Amazon today expanded its AWS “direct connect” service to Northern California and three other global locations.
Discussion: Computerworld
Jamie Keene / The Verge:
Boxee's Live TV joins the Facebook Open Graph party  —  Boxee has announced a new level of Facebook integration to its service, using the Open Graph auto-sharing feature to post what you're watching in Live TV dongle direct to your Timeline.  The integration runs a little deeper than this …
 
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 More Items: 
ICANN:
New gTLDs Update: Applications Accepted Today; New Guidebook Posted; Financial Assistance for Qualifying Applicants
Alex Wilhelm / The Next Web:
Microsoft: Windows Phone will not battle Android on specs, will instead fight for ‘quality’
Discussion: WMPoweruser and The Verge
Eric Eldon / TechCrunch:
NewsGator Has Quietly Built An Enterprise Social Networking Business On Top Of SharePoint
Jack Purcher / Patently Apple:
Sharp is Reportedly Out of the Race for iPad 3 Display Production
Jenna Wortham / Bits:
Beyond Siri: Voice Recognition Pops Up in More Gadgets
Discussion: PC World
 Earlier Items: 
Chris Foresman / Ars Technica:
Will 2012 be Thunderbolt's year? Devices arrive in force at CES
Alicia Eler / ReadWriteWeb:
Study: Your Facebook Personality Is The Real You
Mark Hosenball / Reuters:
Homeland Security watches Twitter, social media
Chris Ziegler / The Verge:
Motorola's Sanjay Jha: 'Verizon and AT&T don't want seven stock Android devices on their shelves'
Facebook:
Bringing Facebook Comments to Mobile
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Benjamin Mullin / New York Times:
Authentic Brands licenses Sports Illustrated's publishing rights to The Players' Tribune owner Minute Media for 10 years, with plans to keep the print edition

Charlotte Tobitt / Press Gazette:
Ofcom rules that five GB News programs presented by Conservative politicians have broken its due impartiality rules and puts the channel “on notice”

Todd Spangler / Variety:
YouTuber MrBeast announces a deal with Prime Video for Beast Games, a reality-competition show with 1,000 contestants, promising the winner a $5M cash prize

 
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