Apple removed products from German online store due to Motorola injunction based on FRAND patent  —  There are two big Apple-Motorola news items from Germany today:  — As I reported earlier, Motorola Mobility today won a permanent injunction against the push email feature of Apple's iCloud and the related client devices.

Advertisers' Free Ride May End On Facebook  —  For advertisers on Facebook Inc., the free ride may be coming to an end.  —  When the social network filed for its initial public offering on Wednesday, the spotlight shifted from the site's exponential user growth to a metric that may have more bearing on its market value: ad sales.

Windows Phone 8 Preview  —  Thanks to a recent leak which has revealed some interesting information about the next major Windows Phone version, I can now publicly discuss Windows Phone 8 for the first time.  —  Windows Phone 8, codenamed Apollo, will be based on the Windows 8 kernel and not on Windows CE as are current versions.

EU regulators want Google to halt new privacy policy  —  A group of European regulators has written to Google Inc calling on it to halt the introduction of its new privacy policy, saying it needs to investigate whether the proposals sufficiently protect users' personal data.

I switched to Bing on my iPhone and I kind of liked it  —  By the time that Microsoft announced its Bing search engine in 2009, Google had long since become a verb and several failed attempts at the search game were under the bridge.  But Bing was something different, a visually appealing …

Skype rolls out update for Windows with full HD video calling, group screen sharing  —  Skype rolled out its version 5.8 software update for Windows users today, and it brings with it a couple of fairly notable features.  That includes full HD video calling (provided you have a suitable webcam …

RIM Offering Free PlayBook Tablets to Woo Android Developers  —  Research In Motion plans to give away tablets to Android developers who quickly port their apps to run on the PlayBook device.  —  RIM developer executive Alec Saunders mentioned the program in a Twitter message on Thursday …

Megaupload Founder Accuses Police of Assault, Denied Bail Again  —  Today, Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom appeared at New Zealand's High Court to continue his fight against extradition to the United States on copyright infringement, racketeering and money laundering charges.

Nokia Lumia 900 now available for pre-order at Microsoft's retail stores with $25 downpayment  —  We're still not sure when we'll see Nokia's Lumia 900 (signs currently point to March), but if you want to ensure you'll be among the first to have it, you can pre-order the handset now at Microsoft's retail stores.

The Dirty Little Secret Of Silicon Valley's Startup Boom...  In San Francisco cafes and bars, even on the street, I overhear people talking about their startup ideas, business plans, and goals.  And there are tons of incubators, Angels, wannabe Angels, VC firms, making investments in startups.

Why Piracy Is Indispensable For The Survival Of Our Culture  —  Last Year Techdirt wrote about the case of the huge collection of historic jazz recordings that had been acquired by the US National Jazz Museum.  The central problem is that even if the recordings can be digitized before they deteriorate …

Yammer Time: In 2011 “Pretty Much Everything Tripled”  —  Yammer grew like crazy last year.  How crazy?  Product VP Jim Patterson just tweeted out the Yammer 2011 Year in Review infographic below with the comment: “Pretty much everything tripled.”  —  Paid seats went from 300,000 to 800,000 …

Peek a boo!  As it abandons U.S. devices, Peek raising $15M for Asian expansion (exclusive)  —  Gadget blogs pounced on Peek yesterday when the company announced it was killing of service for its devices running on T-Mobile.  What they missed was a $15 million fund raise from Peek …

Super Bowl XLVI releases free official app for iOS and Android  —  If you're going to the Super Bowl, you've probably already spent plenty of money.  Fortunately, the NFL isn't asking anything for its official Super Bowl XLVI app, released yesterday.  While it's out on both iOS and Android …

Tim Cook boasts about Apple's charitable contributions during internal all-hands meeting  —  Apple CEO Tim Cook held a town hall meeting last week to celebrate Apple's record quarter, and in addition to giving employees deep discounts on Apple products, we're now hearing that he spent quite …

Corning and Samsung to marry Lotus Glass with OLED displays in new joint venture  —  We've been waiting to find out which manufacturers Corning would woo with its new Lotus Glass, and it's just announced that the first will be Samsung.  Corning and Samsung have signed up for a new joint venture …

Apple researching social fitness tech sporting real-time sharing of performance data for competitive workouts  —  In the future, hitting the gym along with your iPhone-toting pals could spur competitiveness in ways unlike ever before.  Apple's mobile devices run a variety of fitness apps …

Amazon's Junglee.com Goes Live In India As An “Advertising Service”; Our Take  —  Well, looks like we were right about Amazon launching in India as Junglee.com: the site has gone live and features 120 million products from 14,000 brands, reports BGR India.  What's particularly interesting …

Facebook Tests Photo Viewer That Encourages Comments, Google+ Comparisons  —  Facebook is testing a new photo viewer layout that mounts engagement buttons and comments to the right rather than beneath images.  See, Facebook doesn't want you to just view comments, it wants you to start a conversation.

Judge complains of too many patents in Apple case against Motorola  —  Circuit Judge Posner has expressed dissatisfaction with the number of patents Apple is arguing against Motorola, asking the company to “winnow” its claims.  —  Apple originally brought 15 patent claims against Motorola …