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.

Surprise!  OS X Mountain Lion Roars Into Existence (For Developers Today, Everyone This Summer)  —  Confirmed: Apple can still surprise.  —  On July 20 of last year, Apple began a journey.  With OS X Lion (aka OS X 10.7), the company started taking some of what they had learned from iOS …

Facebook Launches Verified Accounts and Pseudonyms  —  Facebook, a service built on real names and real identities, will tomorrow start allowing prominent public figures to verify their accounts and then opt to display a preferred nickname instead of their birth name.

Apple finally talks, says Proview refuses to honor agreement to transfer iPad trademark  —  Numerous online stores in China took the iPad off their shelves after Proview said Apple was breaking its trademark on the term “iPad.”  The fight continues in court, but Apple released a statement today …

Google may launch Android 5.0 in 2Q12, say Taiwan makers  —  Viewing that the adoption of Android 4. has fallen short of original expectations and Microsoft will launch Windows 8 in the third quarter of 2012, Google is likely to launch Android 5. (Jelly Bean) in the second quarter and appeal …

Intel to postpone mass shipments of Ivy Bridge processors  —  Intel recently notified its partners about plans to postpone mass shipments of its upcoming Ivy Bridge processors.  Despite that the company will still announce the new products and ship a small volume of the processors in early April …

Pinterest's Rite of Web Passage - Huge Traffic, No Revenue  —  If you haven't heard of Pinterest, you likely will soon.  —  Traffic to the website—which lets users create online scrapbooks to share images of projects or coveted products—has grown tenfold over the past six months.

LightSquared blew it, and here's why  —  LightSquared may have had a great case for building its wireless network, but the fledgling company lacked the political tact to see it through.  —  LightSquared CEO Sanjiv Ahuja delivers a speech at CTIA 2011.  —  LightSquared today fired …

DuckDuckGo Has Its First Million-Search Day  —  The growth chart continues to trend in the right direction for DuckDuckGo.  —  It was just about three weeks ago that we wrote about the search engine setting its own record with 731,000 searches in a single day.  To go from that to more than a million in a few weeks is impressive.

Book Publishers Force Down Piracy Sites (Updated)  —  Faced with a proliferation of unauthorized book-sharing sites, the publishing industry is embracing some of the same legal tactics as their counterparts in the music and movie industry.  —  On Wednesday morning, an international coalition …

Facebook to Release Timeline for Brands This Month  —  Launch Announcement Expected at Company's Feb. 29 Marketer Conference  —  Facebook will be bringing its new Timeline profile pages to brands this month in the U.S., according to executives briefed on the company's plans.

Insanely Simple: A new book about Apple and Steve Jobs that should be better than the bio  —  Ken Segall served as Apple's agency creative director under Steve Jobs from the NeXT years on through, including some years under John Sculley's disastrous reign.  Now he's written a book …

EU Court: Social Networks Can't Be Made To Filter Content  —  BRUSSELS (Dow Jones)—The owner of a social network cannot be made to install monitoring systems to prevent illegal downloads of copyrighted material, the European Court of Justice, the European Union's highest court, ruled Thursday.

Sony completes Ericsson buyout, Sony Mobile Communications is born  —  With regulators signing off, we knew it was just a matter of time before Sony's buyout of mobile partner Ericsson was complete, and it looks like today's the day.  Sony has announced that it has completed its acquisition …

FCC requires VoIP services to report outages, mirroring landline rule  —  In a US Federal Communications Commission meeting today, the Commission ruled that internet telephony (i.e. VoIP) providers are subject to the same outage reporting rules as other service providers. 31 percent …

NPR Launches An Answer To Spotify On The iPad With Streaming, Concerts, Offline Playlists  —  Today, NPR launched the NPR Music app for the iPad, a new platform that gives listeners access to streaming content, first-listen albums, and live concerts.  But why should a nonprofit care about this kind of innovation?

Opera Acquires Two Mobile Ad Networks  —  Browser maker Opera said late Wednesday that it has acquired London-based 4th Screen Advertising and San Francisco-based Mobile Theory, two mobile advertising networks.  Opera said the moves should help the company “better monetize the traffic” from its Opera Mini and Opera Mobile browsers.

All Web Developers Should Stop Doing This Immediately  —  Why do websites insist on treating tablets like second class citizens?  —  A friend sends me a link to a 60 Minutes segment she feels it's important I watch.  I'm on an iPad — not that it matters, because it's just as much a PC …

HP CEO: Google-Motorola deal could close-source Android  —  HP CEO Meg Whitman said a closed-source Android and iOS could create a big opportunity for webOS in the long run  —  WebOS could be an important player in the long run as an open-source mobile operating system because Android …