Goldman Sachs and a Sale Gone Horribly Awry  —  THE business deal from hell began to crumble even before the Champagne corks were popped.  —  The deal, the $580 million sale of a highflying technology company, Dragon Systems, had just been approved by its board and congratulations were being exchanged.

Zuckerberg Says Mobile Shift Is His Biggest Challenge  —  Facebook Inc. (FB) Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said his hardest job right now is figuring out how to adapt the world's largest social network to mobile devices.  —  Bringing Facebook's features to handheld gadgets …

Finland team uses Earth's magnetic field for phone indoor positioning system  —  (Phys.org) — Finland-based engineers have worked up a novel approach toward an indoor positioning system (IPS) inspired by the way certain animals—from homing pigeons to spiny lobsters—navigate their way with the help …

In Defense Of Free  —  I have written so much about free here at AVC that it should be called AVFree.  In fact, I've even written a post with this exact same title (almost exactly seven years ago, the summer we invested in twitter, zynga, and tumblr).  —  I haven't touched this subject …

How Kate Middleton's Wedding Gown Demonstrates Wikipedia's Woman Problem  —  According to Wikipedia's 2011 Editor Survey, just 9 percent of Wiki editors are women.  While the gender gap is better than it was—in the early '00s, it was more like 3 percent—and the proportion of new editors …

Nokia Cuts U.S. Price of Flagship Phone in Half  —  The price of Nokia Corp.'s flagship Lumia 900 Windows phone has been cut in half in the critical U.S. market, a little more than three months after the launch of the smartphone at AT&T Inc. stores.  —  The Lumia 900 hit the market …

Facebook endorses Google's SPDY networking protocol  —  Facebook has settled on a networking protocol for speeding up web content delivery.  In a W3 mailing list post titled “HTTP2 Expression of Interest,” Facebook engineer Doug Beaver outlined why the company has started implementing the SPDY protocol …

Requiem For A Digg  —  To me, the most interesting aspect of the Digg story is just how much of a central role the service has played in the larger story of our current tech scene.  It was a key catalyst in the era of social that we now live in.  And the company's diaspora has seeded many of the current crop of services we all use.

Microsoft Isn't The Only Tech Company Doing Forced Employee Ranking  —  Microsoft has been taking a lot of heat over its employee review process known as “forced ranking” or “stack ranking.”  —  But Microsoft is far from the only tech company doing it.  —  We've heard from employees at Dell …

Insight: Despite sanctions, Apple gear booms in Iran  —  (Reuters) - At its gleaming store, RadanMac offers the latest Apple gear - the new iPad, iPhones, iPods, laptops, all-in-one desktop computers and more.  —  But this is no ordinary Apple store.  It's in Tehran, where Apple …

Don't Root for Aereo, the World's Most Ridiculous Start-up  —  Aereo, the controversial television streaming company backed by Barry Diller, may be the stupidest high-profile tech start-up ever launched.  —  In my years of covering the tech business, I certainly can't remember coming across …