Techmeme
February 10, 2012, 11:15 AM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
Google Developing Home Entertainment System  —  Google Inc. is developing a home-entertainment system that streams music wirelessly throughout the home and would be marketed under the company's own brand, according to people briefed on the company's plans.  —  The effort marks a sharp shift …
Matt Rosoff / Business Insider:
Google's Foray Into Hardware Will Be A Total Disaster — Here's Why  —  It's finally clear: Google is getting into the hardware business.  —  Last week, word came out that it was testing some sort of mysterious entertainment device in employees' homes.  —  Today the Wall Street Journal reported …
More: New York Times and CNET
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines Blog:
Google's home entertainment foray: Why the Motorola deal may work  —  Summary: The search giant's Motorola acquisition, which on the surface looks like it's all about Android and patents, may ultimately turn out to be about the living room.  —  Google is reportedly developing …
Matthew Panzarino / The Next Web:
Apple is rushing to finalize apps for onstage iPad 3 demos and commercials  —  Now that the beans have been, mostly, spilled with regards to the early March announcement of the iPad 3, more information is coming forward about Apple's preparations for the event.
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft Blog:
Microsoft: No plug-ins allowed on Windows on ARM  —  Summary: Microsoft has changed direction and is now disallowing browser plug-ins on Windows 8 on ARM devices, according to a blog post from the president of the Windows division.  —  As we Microsoft watchers continue to parse the 8,600-word post …
Steven Sinofsky / MSDN Blogs:
Joe Mullin / Wired:
Texas Jury Strikes Down Patent Troll's Claim to Own the Interactive Web  —  TYLER, Texas — After threatening web companies for more than a decade, Michael Doyle and his patent-holding company Eola — named after the Irish word for knowledge — may be finished.
Florian Mueller / FOSS Patents:
Winning streak ends: Motorola Mobility fails to win 3G/UMTS-based injunction against Apple in Germany  —  Apple's Mannheim jinx has been broken: this morning, Judge Andreas Voss of the Mannheim Regional Court announced that a Motorola Mobility lawsuit over a patent declared essential …
Matt Burns / TechCrunch:
QWERTY FTW!  The Droid 4 Is Now Available, $199 From Verizon or $99 At Amazon  —  The Droid 4 has landed.  The fourth incarnation of the most important Android series is now on sale.  Verizon is hawking the phone for $199 with a two-year contact, but the phone is also available through Amazon where it's only $99 on-contract.
Katherine Noyes / PC World:
‘Do Not Track’ Tool Promises Page Loads Up to Four Times Faster  —  “Do Not Track” technologies have become an increasingly standard part of the Internet today, offering users a variety of ways to protect their privacy as they surf the Web.  —  Yet while there are numerous anti-tracking tools …
Stephen Shankland / CNET:
W3C co-chair: Apple, Google power causing Open Web crisis  —  The dominance of Apple and Google mobile browsers is leading to a situation that's even worse for Web programming than the former dominance of Internet Explorer, a standards group leader warned today.
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Music Labels' Joint Venture, VEVO, Shows Pirated NFL Game At Sundance  —  Over the last decade the major music labels — and their trade organization, the Recording Industry Association of America — have established a repeated pattern of attacking consumers in the name of squelching illegal file-sharing.
Los Angeles Times:
FBI: Steve Jobs had 2.65 GPA, avoided the gym, wasn't a communist  —  Steve Jobs shows off a Next computer in Redwood City, Calif., on April 4, 1991.  (Ben Margot / Associated Press)  —  We detailed the major tidbits from Steve Jobs' just-disclosed FBI files in an earlier post.
Ryan Lawler / GigaOM:
Amazon: No plans to launch a standalone video service soon  —  Amazon has aggressively grown its Prime Instant Videos service over the past year, more than tripling the amount of content available to subscribers since launch.  And as Amazon continues to add more content to Prime Instant Video …
Bryan Bishop / The Verge:
Kickstarter crosses threshold as two projects hit $1 million in donations  —  The crowdsourced funding site Kickstarter has been doing remarkably well recently, giving thousands of entrepreneurs the opportunity to bring their projects to life.  It also just hit a major milestone …
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Aviary bringing photo-editing tech to Windows Phone apps  —  Aviary, a photo-editing tech startup backed by investors including Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, is placing a bet on Nokia and Windows Phone with plans to expand its platform to the Microsoft mobile operating system …
Richard Lawler / Engadget:
Roku adds BBC iPlayer channel as it starts shipping in the UK  —  Just as Netflix is nearly ubiquitous on media streaming platforms in the US, BBC's iPlayer is pretty much a default app in the UK so it's no surprise to see it show up on Roku's boxes just as they start shipping across the Atlantic.

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