How Americans used their phones to assist with purchasing decisions this holiday season  —  Main Findings  —  How Americans used their phones to assist with purchasing decisions this holiday season  —  More than half of adult cell phone owners used their cell phones while they were in a store during …

Apple combats scalpers with new lottery system for iPhone reservations in Hong Kong  —  Apple has implemented an interested system to fight those pesky scalpers who spoiled a recent iPhone 4S launch in Mainland China.  A newly set up page on the Hong Kong Apple online store has a lottery system …

Verizon shared data plans show up in employee training materials, still on track?  —  Verizon said it was working on a shared data solution for 2012, and according to an anonymous tipster, the new packages could be rolling out soon.  We've been told that training material for an update …

Apple Puts New Engineers On Fake Products Until It Can Trust Them  —  Apple is so obsessed with secrecy, it sometimes puts new hires on fake products until they can be trusted.  —  Adam Lashinsky reported this tidbit in his new book “Inside Apple,” and a former Apple employee confirmed …

Obama and Romney Campaigns Adopt Square for Funding  —  Social media was the game-changing technology that altered the course of the 2008 presidential election.In 2012, mobile payments could be the transformational technology, as millions of political supporters are given the ability to collect money on smartphones for candidates.

Three Founders Are Out At Demand Media  —  Demand Media is known for churning lots of content through its sites, but today it's notable for another churn, of the executive kind: three of the people who helped found and build up the company are leaving.  —  Larry Fitzgibbon, Joe Perez …

Apple Releases iOS-like AirPort Utility 6.0 for Lion  —  Earlier today Apple pushed a series of updates for its AirPort Utility software, as well as a firmware update for AirPort Base Station and Time Capsule.  —  AirPort Utility has been updated to both version 5.6 (latest one was 5.5.3) …

Microsoft Office 15 technical preview kicks off  —  Summary: Microsoft is making available to select testers the technical preview of Office 15 client, server and services as of January 30.  —  Microsoft is kicking off the technical preview for its Office 15 client, servers and cloud services today, January 30.

Codecademy Becomes A Platform: Now Anyone Can Write Programming Tutorials  —  One of the most buzzed-about startups over the last few months has been Codecademy — a site that looks to make programming accessible to just about anyone, with a variety of interactive, web-based courses …

The Real Story of How Dick Costolo Kicked Investors Off Twitter's Board  —  The dribs and drabs of news about the shakeup of Twitter's board last year has produced a confusing picture.  The message I was hearing from sources while I was out on maternity leave amounted to: “Nothing to see here.

At Sundance, Kickstarter Resembled a Movie Studio, but Without the Egos  —  One night last week there was a late-night party at Sundance — one of many — this one hosted by an outfit that had helped finance 10 percent of the festival's slate, 17 movies in all, including four that were in competition.

AT&T to launch Samsung Galaxy Note on February 19th for $299.99 [video]  —  AT&T announced Monday that the Samsung Galaxy Note smartphone will be available in stores on February 19th for $299.99 on contact, a day after we recently reported.  Pre-orders are set to begin this weekend …

Rep. Markey releases draft of cellphone privacy bill  —  Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) released a draft of a cellphone privacy bill on Monday in response to the controversy surrounding cellphone tracking software, Carrier IQ.  —  The Mobile Device Privacy Act would require companies to disclose …

Angry Birds boss: ‘Piracy may not be a bad thing: it can get us more business’  —  Rovio's Mikael Hed tells music industry audience that embracing pirates can attract new fans  —  Rovio Mobile learned from the music industry's mistakes when deciding how to deal with piracy of its Angry Birds games …

Where's the Fire?  Kindle Sales Pushing Six Million for the Quarter.  —  Has anyone seen one of Amazon's new Kindle Fires in the wild?  I haven't.  But evidently they're everywhere.  You just need to know where to look to find them — like Stifel Nicolaus analyst Jordan Rohan.

FDA staffers sue agency over surveillance of personal e-mail  —  The Food and Drug Administration secretly monitored the personal e-mail of a group of its own scientists and doctors after they warned Congress that the agency was approving medical devices that they believed posed unacceptable risks to patients, government documents show.

Facebook: Over 5 billion songs have been shared since September's f8  —  Whether you like the idea of “frictionless sharing” or not, Facebook has made a strong case for the service on stage at the Midem conference.  Dan Rose, the VP of Partnerships for the company, says that over 5 billion songs …

As Anonymous protests, Internet drowns in inaccurate anti-ACTA arguments  —  After the Internet's decisive victory over the Stop Online Piracy Act earlier this month, online activists have been looking for their next target, and a growing number of them have chosen the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement …

Responding To Feedback, Microsoft Makes Changes To Windows 8 File Management  —  On last week's Windows Weekly, I raised a topic that I've been wondering about for some time: How much user feedback does Microsoft take into account while developing Windows 8?  After all, so much of the OS design seems to have been created in secret.

Apple Topples HP for Lead in Q4 ‘Client PC’ Sales, Says Canalys  —  Market research firm Canalys this afternoon offers its update on the PC market in Q4, in which the firm groups together tablet computers such as Apple's (AAPL) iPad among “client PCs,” as they term it.

BuzzFeed Bulks Up Again, With a Tech Section Run by Gizmodo's Matt Buchanan  —  Do we need more Web sites writing about tech?  Yes, yes we do.  —  Which is good, because here's another one: BuzzFeed, the online publishing start-up that's the toast of people who like to write …

Apparently Veoh Isn't Dead Enough For Universal Music; Asks For Rehearing Of Its Bogus Copyright Lawsuit  —  One of the key examples of what happens when you have bad, overly draconian copyright laws that burden companies falsely accused of infringement is Veoh.

SnagFilms Grabs $7 Million to Share Indie Movies Online  —  It's easy to find blockbusters like “Transformers” online.  What about movies like “Casino Jack and the United States of Money”?  —  That's where SnagFilms comes in.  The start-up has distribution rights to more than 3,000 indie movies …

Streaming held back  —  Over the last couple of weeks, I've looked at availability of movies and TV shows that came out in the past year.  But what about movies that came two years ago?  Are those more available today than they were a year ago?  Let's look at the data.  —  2010: Box Office Winners availability