Tim Cook at the D Conference: Between the Lines  —  Apple boss Tim Cook spoke Tuesday night at the D10 conference, his first major public interview since becoming CEO of Apple last year.  His chat touched on everything from what he learned from Steve Jobs to his big-picture goal for Apple: to build great products, of course.

Google Places Is Over, Company Makes Google+ The Center Of Gravity For Local Search  —  When Google+ and Google+ Pages for business were introduced a little less than a year ago many people in the local search arena began anticipating the day when Google would merge or integrate Google Places and Google+ Pages.

Apple Store now selling Nest Learning Thermostat for $249.95  —  It turns out the rumors were true: Apple has begun selling the Nest Learning Thermostat in its online store for $249.95.  It's the second large retail expansion for Nest in the past 24 hours, with the company announcing Canadian availability …

That's Amore: Has Apple Bought Italian Music Editing Startup Redmatica?  —  Everyone is focused on what hardware product Apple might launch next, but out of Italy comes reported news of a software development: the company has bought Redmatica, a small startup that specializes in digital music-editing apps.

Skype's present is secure, its future is not  —  It has been over six months since Microsoft officially became an owner of Skype, one of the biggest communication services in the world.  The company has been growing quietly, thanks to its “Skype everywhere” strategy.

Mary Meeker Explains the Mobile Monetization Challenge  —  Looming over the Internet industry is the mismatch between the growth in mobile usage and mobile monetization.  —  Most recently, it was the risk factor that helped take down Facebook's ill-fated IPO roadshow, when the company warned …

Wasting Time Is New Divide in Digital Era  —  In the 1990s, the term “digital divide” emerged to describe technology's haves and have-nots.  It inspired many efforts to get the latest computing tools into the hands of all Americans, particularly low-income families.  —  Those efforts have indeed shrunk the divide.

Netflix agrees to delete data on ex-customers  —  Turns out that nobody has to know about that copy of Bad Girls of Red Light District 6: The Extended Cut you rented from Netflix just over a year ago.  —  U.S. District Court papers filed Friday revealed greater detail as to how Netflix settled …

Salesforce Set to Snap Up Facebook Friend Buddy Media for More Than $800 Million  —  Enterprise, meet social: Cloud-computing pioneer Salesforce.com is close to a deal to acquire Buddy Media, the five-year-old company that helps brands manage their Facebook presence.

Google Nexus tablet appears in benchmarks, appears to run on quad-core Tegra 3  —  ASUS's seven-inch MeMo tablet has just ducked under the FCC's gates, but some benchmark results for a purported Google and ASUS team-up could tally with the same device.  According to the listing …

Top that, cable!  Verizon offers 300 Mbps home broadband  —  Bored with your 100 Mbps connection?  Verizon plans to offer customers up to 300 Mbps down via its FiOS fiber service next month.  That's double Verizon's current top speed of 150 Mbps down and a slam against cable companies trying to compete with Big Red.

Schematic Purportedly Shows Next-Generation iPhone Front Panel Design with 4-Inch Display  —  Earlier today, Japanese blog Macotakara pointed to a blog post [Google translation] from repair firm iLab Factory showing what is claimed to be a design schematic for a next-generation iPhone front panel part.

Facebook HQ expansion plan approved; new limit of 6,600 workers, will pay Menlo Park up to $15m  —  At a meeting last night, Menlo Park officials approved a deal that will let Facebook employ thousands more people at its headquarters in the Silicon Valley city.

Once Deemed Evil, Google Now Embraces “Paid Inclusion”  —  Back when Google was an upstart search engine, one way it distinguished itself was to fight against a pay-to-play business model called “paid inclusion.”  Indeed, paid inclusion was one of the original sins Google listed as part of its “Don't Be Evil” creed.

Mitt Romney's New App Misspells America, Twitter Goes Wild  —  Mitt Romney's new iPhone app, With Mitt, “lets you customize photos with a variety of Mitt-inspired artistic frames.”  Slogans like “Believe in America,” “Obama Isn't Working,” and “I'm a Mom for Mitt” are just a few …

Sweep the Sleaze  —  Promising to make you look wired and magically promote your content in social networks, the Like, Retweet, and +1 buttons occupy a good spot on pretty much every page of the World Wide Web.  Because of this, almost every major site and world brand is providing free advertising for Twitter and Facebook.

Sony Considers—but Rejects—Online-Only Game Console  —  Sony is looking to the next generation of its gaming consoles.  Above, a 2009 poster of the Sony Playstation logo.  —  Sony Corp. considered but ultimately rejected a download-only plan for its next videogame console …

Intel ultrabooks and tablets to get access to nearly eight million free, open Wi-Fi connections  —  The majority of laptops these days still aren't equipped with mobile internet connections, so most users need to rely on tethering, MiFi devices, or good old-fashioned Wi-Fi connections when on-the-go.

White House Unveils Initiative To Fight Computer Viruses  —  Internet-service providers and financial-services companies would share data about networks of infected computers known as botnets under a pilot program announced today by the Obama administration.

WiFi, cellular data to account for 60% of all Internet traffic by 2016  —  Cellular's share of worldwide Internet traffic will increase fivefold.  —  WiFi will account for more than half of all Internet traffic by 2016, and cellular data will grow by leaps and bounds to take a 10 percent share, according to Cisco.

Facebook's Cognitive Dissonance with Sharing  —  Two philosophies  —  One of Facebook's core philosophies is that a user's privacy is paramount.  Part of that privacy is the data you create by browsing Facebook is never shown to other users.  You'll never see a newsfeed story that says, “Joe viewed your profile 1,024 times.”

Intellectual Ventures' Nathan Mhyrvold defends patent trolling, calls tech industry immature  —  Intellectual Ventures' CEO and founder Nathan Mhyrvold, who previously spent some 14 years at Microsoft Research, took the stage here at D10, and as predicted, his interview with Walt Mossberg was quite the invigorating one.

Badgeville raises $25M, shows gamification has legs  —  While skeptics still scoff at the term gamification, Badgeville keeps gaining the trust of big companies and investors, who believe in its power.  Badgeville announced Wednesday it raised $25 million in a round led by Interwest Partners …

Amazon-Owned LOVEFiLM, The Netflix Of Europe, Signs Streaming Deal With NBCUniversal  —  In the midst of Amazon's recent moves to rapidly grow its content collection on Amazon Prime Instant Video, the company has also been brokering deals for another one of its video properties: European Netflix competitor LOVEFiLM.