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10:55 AM 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.
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:
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
“Don't Be Evil” Tool — Backed By Facebook & Twitter — Gets Them Into Google's “Search Plus Your World”
Sarah Lacy / PandoDaily:
Google: Do Yourself a Favor and Just Come Clean Already
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.
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.
Discussion: Daring Fireball and TUAW
RELATED:
Ed Bott / The Ed Bott Report Blog:
How Apple is sabotaging an open standard for digital books
Discussion: Daring Fireball and ZDNet
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.
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 …
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: JIMROMENESKO.COM
Bradley Horowitz / Google+:
Toward a more inclusive naming policy for Google+  —  With Google+, we aspire to make online sharing more like sharing in the real world.  And during the Google+ signup process, we've asked users to select the name they commonly use in real life.  —  Since launch we've listened closely …
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.
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 rolling out worldwide starting today.  According to the company, over the next few weeks, everyone will get the new Timeline.
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.
Discussion: Digital Trends
RELATED:
Reuters:   Analysis: Megaupload shutdown unlikely to deter piracy
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 …
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.
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) …
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.
Pui-Wing Tam / Wall Street Journal:
Average Silicon Valley Tech Salary Passes $100,000  —  Average annual salaries for Silicon Valley technology workers surpassed the $100,000 mark last year, according to a new survey, pushed higher by the strength of the region's latest boom.  —  Tech-jobs website operator Dice Holdings Inc …
Discussion: PhoneArena, Forbes, TechFlash and PandoDaily
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: AllTwitter and Weblogsky
Jake Smith / 9to5Mac:
A5 jailbreak 'Absinthe installed almost 1M times over the last 3 days  —  On Friday, the Chronic-Dev team (along with a few other contributors) released “Absinthe,” the long-awaited free unteathered jailbreak tool for the iPhone 4S and iPad 2.  Today, the team updated us with a few interesting statistics.
John Markoff / New York Times:
Google's Autonomous Vehicles Draw Skepticism at Legal Symposium  —  SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Even as Google tests its small fleet of self-driving vehicles on California highways, legal scholars and government officials are warning that society has only begun wrestling with the changes …
Discussion: Gizmodo
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
Fitness Tracker Fitbit Raises $12M To Market New Wi-Fi Enabled Smart Scale, Aria  —  Fitness technology startup and TechCrunch 50 finalist Fitbit has raised $12 Million in Series C funding from existing investors Foundry Group, True Ventures, SoftTech VC and Felicis Ventures.
 
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 More Items: 
Thomas Houston / The Verge:
Vimeo redesign offers cleaner interface, bigger videos, Tumblr-like feed for browsing
Scott M. Fulton, III / ReadWriteWeb:
Just in Time for “Anonymous” Attacks, U.S. NIST Drafts a New Readiness Plan
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
Trent Nouveau / TG Daily:
These semiconductors are cooled with laser light
Rich Miller / Data Center Knowledge:
Google Spent $951 Million on Data Centers in 4Q
 Earlier Items: 
Dan Graziano / BGR:
Office Depot now testing PayPal's new point-of-sale system
Discussion: SlashGear
Seth Weintraub / 9to5Mac:
Apple appoints Sony Ericsson Americas President Anderson Teixeira to Head of Apple Latin America
Discussion: IntoMobile, iLounge and Electronista
Claire Cain Miller / Bits:
Polyvore, the Fashion Site, Gets More Money and a New C.E.O.
Discussion: TechCrunch
Paul Graham / Y Combinator Posterous:
Welcome Garry and Aaron
Tom Loftus / Digits:
T-Mobile, AT&T File For FCC Approval Of Spectrum Transfer
Mike Butcher / TechCrunch Europe:
Evi arrives in town to go toe-to-toe with Siri
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Benjamin Mullin / New York Times:
Ben Sherwood and Joanna Coles take minority stakes in The Daily Beast; Sherwood will be CEO and publisher, and Coles will be chief creative and content officer

Laurence Peter / BBC:
Russia's Ministry of Justice labels BBC Russian correspondent Ilya Barabanov and science reporter Asya Kazantseva as “foreign agents”; both now live abroad

Sahil Patel / The Information:
Sources: Disney plans old-style TV channels within Disney+, with a continuous, scheduled stream of shows that are focused on certain genres like Star Wars

 
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