Techmeme
February 15, 2012, 5:40 PM

Top News

John Paczkowski / AllThingsD:
Apple: App Access to Contact Data Will Require Explicit User Permission  —  After a week of silence Apple has finally responded to reports that dozens of iOS applications have been accessing, transmitting and storing user contact data without explicit permission.
David Sarno / Los Angeles Times:
Twitter stores full iPhone contact list for 18 months, after scan  —  Twitter Inc. has acknowledged that after mobile users tap the “Find friends” feature on its smartphone app, the company downloads users' entire address book, including names, email addresses and phone numbers, and keeps the data on its servers for 18 months.
Matt Brian / The Next Web:
Congress sends letter to Apple questioning the Path debacle, developer data access  —  Having been the subject of questions regarding its collection of user locations in the past, Apple has been sent a letter over concerns that developers may be accessing and storing user data on its products.
Terril Yue Jones / Reuters:
Apple iPad plant conditions better than the norm: agency  —  (Reuters) - Working conditions at Chinese manufacturing plants where Apple Inc's iPads and iPhones are made are far better than those at garment factories or other facilities elsewhere in the country, according to the head of a non-profit agency investigating the plants.
Reuters:
Exclusive: Proview says any ban of iPad exports hard to impose  —  (Reuters) - A Chinese technology firm seeking to ban all shipments of Apple's popular iPad tablet into and out of the country has been told that China's customs authorities are unlikely to intervene in the trademark battle.
Joel Rosenblatt / Bloomberg:
Apple Asks for Court Approval to Sue Bankrupt Kodak in N.Y. Over Patents  —  Apple Inc. (AAPL) asked a bankruptcy judge for permission to sue Eastman Kodak Co. (EK) over allegations it's infringing patents that Apple says cover technologies used in printers, digital cameras and digital picture frames.
Paul O'Brien / MoDaCo:
EXCLUSIVE: LG to attack the high-end with Tegra 3 powered P880 / X3 (screenshots!)  —  Well, it looks like the HTC Endeavor (or whatever it shall eventually be called) won't be the only device appearing at MWC sporting a Tegra 3 chip... as it will be joined by the LG X3 (internal name P880), LG's new flagship device!
Dante D'Orazio / The Verge:
Motorola Android 4.0 upgrade schedule released, many have a long wait ahead  —  Motorla has just updated its large chart detailing its upgrade plans, including specifics on what part of the upgrade process each phone is at and rough availability dates by region.
Arik Hesseldahl / AllThingsD:
Cisco Appeals Europe's Approval of Microsoft's $8.5 Billion Skype Acquisition  —  Networking giant Cisco Systems today appealed to European regulators to reconsider their approval of Microsoft's $8.5 billion acquisition of the Internet calling service Skype.  The EU approved the deal without conditions in October.
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Judge: Microsoft's Android tactics were ‘hard bargaining,’ not patent misuse  —  We learned a couple weeks ago that Barnes & Noble lost a key preliminary decision to Microsoft in their patent dispute.  A new court filing explains the judge's reasoning, and sheds light on some of the legal …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Gartner: Apple's iPhone Stole The Smartphone Show In Q4, 2011  —  We've seen handset makers like HTC, LG and Nokia all warning of declines in smartphone sales.  But if there is a slowdown affecting some, it's not because people are not buying smartphones; it's because they're all buying iPhones.
Timothy B. Lee / Ars Technica:
Copyright enforcement and the Internet: we just haven't tried hard enough?  —  Kaleidescape, one of the many examples of innovative products squelched by copyright restrictions  —  On Tuesday, Mother Jones blogger Kevin Drum suggested that we don't have effective copyright enforcement …
Sascha Segan / PC Magazine:
RIM: PlayBook 2.0 Likely Coming During MWC  —  The BlackBerry PlayBook's new 2.0 OS will likely arrive as a giant over-the-air update during the Mobile World Congress trade show at the end of this month, BlackBerry senior brand manager Jeff Gadway said in a meeting with PCMag today.
Ben Sisario / Media Decoder:
Sony Says Price of 2 Whitney Houston Albums Was Raised by Mistake  —  Updated  —  Sony Music has responded to accusations that it was exploiting the death of Whitney Houston by raising the prices of two of her albums just hours after her death on Saturday.
Brittany Darwell / Inside Facebook:
Open Graph launch partners see early success with Timeline apps  —  A number of sites and applications, including Pinterest, Foodspotting and Rockmelt, experienced significant increases in referral traffic and activity in the month since launching Timeline apps, according to a blog post by Facebook.
Ben Popper / VentureBeat:
Engagio goes from the comment section to a $540K seed investment  —  Engagio, a Toronto startup founded by William Mougayar that helps people keep track of the conversations they are having in comment threads across the web, has raised $540,000 in a seed round led by Rho Canada and New York investor Fred Wilson.
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Kindle Touch breakthrough: Startup debuts handwriting recognition in puzzle book  —  Puzzle technology startup Puzzazz is giving Amazon's Kindle Touch a capability that even Amazon didn't envision — letting users input numbers and letters by writing them naturally with a finger on the screen …

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