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March 19, 2012, 1:15 PM

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Apple:

Apple Announces Plans to Initiate Dividend and Share Repurchase Program — Expects to Spend $45 Billion Over Three Years — Apple® today announced plans to initiate a dividend and share repurchase program commencing later this year. — Subject to declaration by the Board of Directors …

More: Digits, Macworld, Digital Media Wire, GigaOM, Tech Trader Daily, Inquirer, TechEye, Inside Mobile Apps, Ars Technica, PC World, Computerworld, CNET, TechCrunch, The Apple Core Blog, Wired, Irregular Enterprise Blog, asymco, The New Persuaders, Fortune, Ars Technica, VatorNews, Wall Street Journal, VentureBeat, 9to5Mac, The Verge, BetaNews, The Register, Reuters, Guardian, 9to5Mac, New York Times, The Tech Trade, BGR, blogs.ft.com, Bloomberg, Fast Company, Business Insider, Marketing Land, Between the Lines Blog, VentureBeat, GigaOM, MacStories, Digital Trends, the Econsultancy blog, Gizmodo, Neowin.net, ITworld.com, AllThingsD, Wired.co.uk, Engadget, Macgasm, The Next Web, iFans, TUAW, Gotta Be Mobile, Mercury News, The Technology Chronicles, DailyTech, Business Insider, The Next Web, WebProNews, Techland, Techie Buzz, PhoneArena, Electronista, Current Editorials, MarketBeat, SlashGear, IntoMobile, Edible Apple, iPhone Hacks, The Tech Report, SplatF, Business Insider, Network World, NBC Bay Area, App Advice, The Daily Caller, GeekWire, Pulse2 Technology …, memeburn, everythingiCafe, MacDailyNews, Softpedia News and MacNN

Tweets: @lanceulanoff, @jsnell, @erickschonfeld, @tim, @asymco and @shervin

Chris Ziegler / The Verge:

Apple announces $10b share buyback starting in fiscal 2013, $2.65 dividend for Q4 — Ahead of a conference call this morning, Apple has announced a pair of initiatives for its massive stockpile of cash totaling approximately $100 billion: a stock buyback beginning in fiscal 2013 …

More: Business Insider, Digits, TechCrunch, Fortune and Macworld

Jillian Berman / The Huffington Post:

Apple Not Bringing Overseas Cash Back Home, Blames U.S. Tax Policy … FOLLOW: — Apple, Video, Business News, Repatriation Tax Holiday, Apple Announcement, Apple Cash, Apple u.s. Tax Law, Apple-Buy-Back, Apple-Cash-Plans, Tax Holiday, Tax Repatriation Holiday, Business News

More: The Next Web, The Tech Trade and MarketBeat

Todd Bishop / GeekWire:

Apple plans dividend, buyback — will pay out $45B over 3 years

More: Apple Conference Call and Computerworld

Avram Piltch / LAPTOP Magazine:

Tablet Chip Showdown: Nvidia Tegra 3 vs. the New iPad's A5X — When Apple announced the new iPad earlier this month, CEO Tim Cook claimed that the new iPad's new A5X chip offers four times the performance of Nvidia's quad-core Tegra 3 CPU. Now that the new iPad has hit the street …

More: Hardware 2.0 Blog, 9to5Mac, BuzzFeed, DailyTech, Techland, The Verge, WebProNews, netbooknews.com, MacNN, Android Phone Fans, iClarified and dailywireless.org

Mike Daisey:

Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated — “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” —another American monologist Many consider this week's THIS AMERICAN LIFE episode one of the most painful they've ever listened to. In particular the segment with me is excruciating …

More: CNET, Poynter, The Next Web and Gawker. See also Mediagazer

Faith Hung / Reuters:

Foxconn not to take legal action after retraction — (Reuters) - Foxconn Technology Group, the top maker of Apple Inc's iPhones and iPads, said on Monday it had no plans to take legal action over a U.S. radio program about its activity in China, parts of which have been retracted.

More: This American Life Updates, The Register, 9to5Mac, CNET, Electronista, iPhone Buzz, SlashGear, TechEye, Betabeat, everythingiCafe, Business Insider and PhoneArena. See also Mediagazer

Stephen Chapman / Between the Lines Blog:

New iPad feature ‘Dictation’ sends/stores private data to Apple servers — Summary: Dictation is one of the key features of the new iPad; however, using it requires more than meets the eye. Read all about it in this post. — After spending a solid weekend with the new iPad …

More: App Advice, SlashGear and WebProNews

Kim-Mai Cutler / TechCrunch:

Zynga Is In Talks To Buy “Draw Something” Maker OMGPOP — Zynga is in talks to acquire OMGPOP, the maker of massive hit Draw Something, according to a source with direct knowledge of the discussions. Talks are still in an earlier stage and it's my understanding that there may be other foreign buyers …

More: PC Magazine and Mobile Entertainment

Ellen McGirt / Fast Company:

“Boy CEO” Mark Zuckerberg's Two Smartest Projects Were Growing Facebook And Growing Up — Mark Zuckerberg, oft-parodied young CEO, didn't build the most important company of the Internet era by accident. How he fashioned Facebook—and himself—for success.

Richard Lawler / Engadget:

Linux kernel 3.3 released with merged Android code and more — The latest refresh of the Linux kernel, 3.3, is now available, and the second release of 2012 brings with it the long-awaited merging of code from Google's little side project. While that is particularly interesting …

More: Inquirer, CNET, InfoWorld, WebProNews, DeWitt Clinton, Techie Buzz, Liliputing and Slashdot. Tweets: @androiddev

AppleInsider:

AT&T sets single-day record for iPad sales, activations — AT&T announced on Monday that the launch of the new iPad set a new single-day record for sales and activations of Apple's touchscreen tablet. — The new 4G LTE-capable iPad went on sale last Friday, March 16, and in that 24-hour span …

More: Macgasm, TUAW and MacNN

Jack Clark / ZDNet:

Netflix: How we got a grip on AWS's cloud — Q&A — In 2011, Netflix's online video rental service regularly accounted for 30 percent of all US download internet traffic. — To support this combination of huge traffic and unpredictable demand spikes, Netflix has spent the past few years developing …

More: Between the Lines Blog

Dwight Garner / New York Times:

The Way We Read Now — The case against electronic books has been made, and elegantly, by many people, including Nicholson Baker in The New Yorker a few years ago. Mr. Baker called Amazon's Kindle, in a memorable put-down, “the Bowflex of bookishness: something expensive that …

More: BuzzFeed

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Twitter and Facebook Are Tomorrow's News Service. For Now, Though ... If you're like me, you increasingly rely on Twitter and Facebook as your news editors. But that means we're in a small minority. — Just 9 percent of American adults frequently get their news from their pals at the two services.

More: GigaOM, PC World, paidContent, The Verge, All Facebook, stateofthemedia.org, Poynter, WebProNews, broadstuff, Adam Sherk, Adweek, Broadcasting & Cable, Associated Press, MediaPost, Online NewsHour, The State of the News … and The Register. See also Mediagazer

John Paczkowski / AllThingsD:

With “Coveted Brand,” Dell Will Breach Tablet Market … - Dell CEO Michael Dell on what has surprised him most about the evolution of the tech industry — 2012 isn't going to be another year of the iPad, if Dell can help it. Though it was forced to beat a humbling retreat from the tablet market …

More: Reuters and The Verge

Brian Womack / Bloomberg:

Facebook Mimics Apple by Spending Less on R&D Than Rivals — Facebook Inc. (FB) spends a smaller percentage of revenue on engineering than other Internet companies, mimicking Apple (AAPL) Inc.'s strategy of keeping costs low by relying on outside developers for research and development.

More: WebProNews

Robert Andrews / paidContent:

Chinese Writers' Apple Book Piracy Claims Grow Louder — Twenty-two Chinese authors now plan to sue Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) for 50 million yuan ($7.9 million), claiming 95 of their books were published without authorisation in iTunes Store apps, according to China's state-owned Xinhua news agency.

More: The Verge, SiliconANGLE, PC Magazine, Xinhua News Agency, Inquirer, BBC, Associated Press, The Register and SlashGear

Myriam Joire / Engadget:

NetZero launches ‘4G’ wireless service, we go hands-on — Remember NetZero? Today the company announced that it's launching NetZero 4G Mobile Broadband, a wireless service rolling out in 80 US cities and offering value-priced monthly data plans without activation fees, contracts, commitments or overage charges.

More: GeekWire, VentureBeat, Gizmodo, CNET, Ars Technica, The Verge, Associated Press, PC Magazine, BGR, SlashGear, IntoMobile and GigaOM

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