Exclusive: Microsoft's Ballmer Throws Down Gauntlet Against Apple  —  Declaring that Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) and its partners had in the past “ceded some of the boundary between hardware and software innovation” to Apple (NSDQ:AAPL), Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told CRN in an exclusive interview Monday …

Apple Seeds Golden Master of OS X Mountain Lion to Developers  —  “200 New Features” Mountain Lion slide shown at WWDC  —  Apple released the Golden Master (GM) version of OS X Mountain Lion to developers today.  The “golden master” designation indicates that this version of the software …

RIM CEO on What Went Wrong and the Future of BlackBerry  —  In an exclusive Q&A, CIO.com's Al Sacco chats with RIM CEO Thorsten Heins on the current state of BlackBerry and how it fell from grace, what the company is doing to ensure things in Waterloo don't get worse, and the product delay problems that have plagued RIM.

Google, FTC Near Settlement on Privacy  —  Google Inc. is close to a deal to pay $22.5 million to settle charges related to its surreptitious bypassing of the privacy settings of millions of Apple Inc. users, according to officials briefed on the settlement terms.

Next Issue brings its all-you-can-read magazine store to the iPad, plans start at $10 a month  —  The last time we heard about Next Issue, the all-you-can-read magazine store was launching on Android, with an iOS version said to be coming “soon.”  Three months later, the startup's made good on its promise …

Let's Try to Think This iPad Mini Thing All the Way Through  —  We're Talking About a Smaller iPad, Not a Bigger iPod Touch  —  I've seen a fair bit of speculation that, if Apple produces a 7-inch iOS device, then maybe it would be a bigger iPod Touch, not a smaller iPad.

Apple launches new iPad in China on July 20th  —  Apple is about to complete an important part of the puzzle for the new iPad's world rollout: it just confirmed that its Retina display-packing tablet will reach mainland China on July 20th.  The company isn't specific about local pricing …

Should (And Will) Kleiner Perkins Settle Its Gender Discrimination Fight?  —  High-profile venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers faces off in San Francisco court later today against its partner Ellen Pao in what will be the first public face-off in one of the most closely watched stories of the past months in Silicon Valley.

Why GitHub abandoned the bootstrapper's ship for a $100M Series A  —  After half a decade of preaching about the virtues of bootstrapping, the GitHub founders are finally getting in bed with a major VC firm to the tune of $100 million — that's $1 million per employee at the still-small startup.

Kim Dotcom's Extradition Hearing Postponed Until March 2013  —  In this Feb. 22, 2012 file photo, Kim Dotcom, the founder of the file-sharing website Megaupload, comments after he was granted bail and released in Auckland, New Zealand.  The U.S. wants to extradite Dotcom from New Zealand …

Apple's $74B overseas cash hoard leads all U.S. tech companies  —  A report released on Monday from investment bank Moody's revealed that Apple leads a list of technology U.S. companies holding overseas cash with some $74 billion, up from $64 billion in December and $35 billion at the end of 2010.

Eric Schmidt: The Great Firewall of China will fall  —  Technology and information penetration in China will eventually force the Great Firewall of China to crumble and even lead to the political opening of the Chinese system, according to Google Chairman Eric Schmidt.

Steve Wozniak Shares His Thoughts On Google Glass And Microsoft's Surface Tablet  —  Steve Wozniak recently spoke at the Entel Summit in Chile, and as usual, expressed his thoughts on emerging technology.  Wozniak offered his opinion on Google Glass, Microsoft's Surface tablet, and even the Kim Dotcom case surrounding Megaupload.

One-bit Internet: The iPad is/isn't a content creation device  —  In the conclusion to my Retina MacBook repairability post, I wrote: “on the Internet, it often seems that everything must be compressed to a one-bit image: black or white, triumph or catastrophe, the very best or the absolute worst.”

Paydiant Gets $12M More To Build Out Its White-Label Mobile Payments API  —  Paydiant, one of the more recent entrants in mobile payments, has closed a $12 million round of funding that it plans to use to build out its white-label, API-based product for banks and merchants to offer …

Firefox Developer: ‘Everybody Hates Firefox Updates’  —  Look, Yet Another Firefox Update.  Screenshot: Webmonkey  —  Mozilla's Jono DiCarlo has come out to say what many a Firefox user has long been thinking: the rapid release cycle is killing Firefox.  —  DiCarlo has a long …

Samsung Tops Apple on Fortune Global 500 List  —  Placing below the top 50 on Fortune's Global 500 list may not be every company's dream, but Apple can still count this year's No. 55 slot as an accomplishment.  —  Rising from number 111 last year, Apple's profits grew by almost $12 billion …

Reddit lifts its ban on “The Atlantic”  —  The Atlantic has returned to Reddit.  —  A month after the social news site kicked out the news magazine and dozens of other sites —including Bloomberg BusinessWeek, and Discovery News—for spam, Reddit has welcomed many back into the warm embrace of its monster traffic, with little fanfare.

AT&T Exclusive: Lumia 900 is pretty in pink  —  The Nokia Lumia 900 stands apart in the smartphone market with solid polycarbonate construction, a beautiful ClearBlack Display, stunning design, and with the simple and beautiful Windows Phone operating system.

Google Chrome 21 beta can interact with cameras, mics, and game controllers  —  The latest beta version of Google Chrome adds two new APIs that allow web developers to do a few interesting things.  They can write web apps that will use your computer's mic or camera without a plugin.

Porn Studios Accused of Screwing Their Fans in BitTorrent Lawsuits  —  A handful of pornography producers are being accused of racketeering, fraud, defamation and other charges in connection to their BitTorrent online litigation trolling strategies.  —  The program is simple …