John Browett Joins Apple as Senior Vice President of Retail  —  Apple® today announced that John Browett will join the company as senior vice president of Retail, reporting to Apple CEO Tim Cook.  Browett comes to Apple from European technology retailer Dixons Retail, where he has been CEO since 2007.

Facebook's Sandberg in Spotlight En Route to IPO  —  Facebook Inc.'s Sheryl Sandberg recently threw a fundraiser for President Obama, dining with Lady Gaga and the president himself.  Last week, she was a highly visible co-chair of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Andreessen Horowitz Closes $1.5 Billion New Fund  —  Last week, we heard from Evelyn Rusli at the New York Times that Andreessen Horowitz was in the process of raising $1.5 billion for the venture firm.  Today, partner Ben Horowitz has confirmed that the fund has closed …

Antitrust: Commission opens proceedings against Samsung  —  The European Commission has opened a formal investigation to assess whether Samsung Electronics has abusively, and in contravention of a commitment it gave to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) …

Changing our privacy policies, not our privacy controls  —  Last week we heard from members of Congress about Google's plans to update our privacy policies by consolidating them into a single document on March 1.  Protecting people's privacy is something we think about all day across the company …

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.

Twitter's Dick Costolo on Ads, Censorship and Google (Video)  —  Twitter CEO Dick Costolo kicked off D: Dive Into Media with a bang on Monday, defending its ability to block tweets by country, rejecting the need for a stock offering and declaring 2012 to be the year of the Twitter election.

Amazon S3 Reports Staggering Growth in 2011  —  Amazon Web Services just reported jaw-dropping growth in the number of objects stored in Amazon S3 year over year.  —  “As of the end of 2011, there are 762 billion (762,000,000,000) objects in Amazon S3.  We process over 500,000 requests per second …

Thousands Line Up For Foxconn's Jobs in Zhengzhou (video)  —  On the 30th of January, thousands of hopefuls stood for hours outside a labour agency located in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou.  The lines stretched more than 200 meters along the road, and the people who were waiting in line …

The Coming Tech-led Boom  —  Three breakthroughs are poised to transform this century as much as telephony and electricity did the last.  —  In January 1912, the United States emerged from a two-year recession.  Nineteen more followed—along with a century of phenomenal economic growth.

Salesforce launches Desk.com, slick social customer support software based on Assistly  —  Enterprise cloud powerhouse Salesforce has launched Desk.com, a savvy customer support application that connects agents with e-mail, phone calls, and social channels, the company announced Tuesday.

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 …

Mexicans overcharged billions for phone, web: study  —  (Reuters) - Mexicans have been overcharged $13.4 billion a year for phone and internet services as the industry dominated by billionaire Carlos Slim gouges customers and keeps the economy from growing, a study released on Monday said.

German appeals court upholds Galaxy Tab 10.1 injunction — but on different legal basis than Apple's design right  —  This morning, the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court (an appeals court) announced that it has upheld a preliminary injunction against the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and has confirmed …

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.

The Only Thing Less Stable Than Working at a Start-Up: Working at a Start-Up Co-Working Space  —  The city of Mountain View, Calif., is threatening to shut down Hacker Dojo, a co-working and events space for coders, because it isn't up to code.  —  Hacker Dojo already halted a planned expansion …

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 …

Sky Will De-Couple Pay-TV Content From Satellite For IPTV Era  —  BSkyB (NYSE: BSY) is acting to head off rising City concerns about the threat from over-the-top connected TV services, by announcing it will launch, by the summer, its own such service that does not require a satellite subscription.

Feature Phones Now More Profitable Than Mid-tier Smartphones  —  For many handset vendors, the world has turned upside down.  Nokia's $40 feature phones are vastly more profitable than Sony Ericsson's $200 Android models.  This is not how the smartphone revolution was supposed to turn out.

Unannounced HTC Ville with Android 4.0 and Sense 4.0 shown off in leaked video  —  HTC's upcoming smartphone code-named the HTC Ville just stared in a leaked video ahead of an official announcement, which is expected to come at next month's Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona, Spain.

Facebook launches Timeline Movie Maker  —  Summary: Facebook has launched Timeline Movie Maker, an app that creates a movie out of content on your new Facebook Timline.  Does the movie change your opinion of Timeline?  —  Facebook today launched Timeline Movie Maker, which creates a movie highlighting moments from your Timeline.

Feds: We obtained MegaUpload conversations with search warrant  —  One of the most curious aspects of the U.S. government's case against MegaUpload is the large number of the company's internal communications acquired by the FBI.  —  Kim DotCom  —  In one exchange, MegaUpload managers …