Motorola to Cut 20% of Work Force, Part of Sweeping Change  —  SUNNYVALE, Calif. — Motorola Mobility, the ailing cellphone maker that Google bought in May, told employees Sunday that it would lay off 20 percent of its work force and close a third of its 94 offices worldwide.

We did it.  —  As I write this, join.app.net just met our 500K goal, with 38 hours left.  —  Data Export  —  When you are logged into the App.net alpha, we provide a button which will email you a .zip file of all of your content in a structured format.  If you are an alpha tester, go ahead and try it out.

A Steep Climb Back for Facebook's Stock  —  SAN FRANCISCO — The Facebook spring is over.  The dog days of August have taken hold.  —  In May, when investors tripped over themselves to buy a piece of Facebook, not even the skeptics predicted what has happened.

Groupon Sales Force Cracks Under Pressure  —  Groupon Inc. is facing a new hurdle: strains on its sales force.  —  Such pressures are a boon to people like Mike Silagadze.  The chief executive of education-software firm Top Hat Monocle Inc. said that over the past month …

Kim Dotcom promises that disruptive new music service, Megabox, will launch this year  —  Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom has dropped the biggest hint yet that his disruptive new music project is on schedule to launch before the end of the year, according to a tweet from the German …

Google: Many Popular Sites Will Escape Pirate Penalty, Not Just YouTube  —  Google says that YouTube isn't going to somehow solely escape its new “pirate penalty.”  Any popular site may be OK, as the penalty works off of more than pure copyright infringement reports.

Struggling GameStop reinventing itself  —  In an effort to avoid the fate of Blockbuster, Circuit City and others in the remainder bin of failed retailers, GameStop has embarked on a daring, if inglorious, strategy: refashioning itself from a console-game purveyor into a repairer and reseller …

Demonoid Domains Go Up For Sale  —  With an army of passionate fans, Demonoid was spoken about fondly by many in the torrent community.  Just two weeks ago it was one of the world's largest and most thriving torrent sites but a DDoS and hacker attack followed by a police raid brought it to its knees.

How Big Data Became So Big  —  THIS has been the crossover year for Big Data — as a concept, as a term and, yes, as a marketing tool.  Big Data has sprung from the confines of technology circles into the mainstream.  —  First, here are a few, well, data points: Big Data was a featured topic …

Barnes & Noble cuts prices across its Nook lineup, vies for your budget tablet affection  —  In what could be seen as a response to the positive reaction that Google's $200 Nexus 7 has garnered, Barnes & Noble has just cut down the prices on all three of its Android-based, seven-inch Nook Tablets.

RadioShack Mobile leak suggests Cricket Wireless-based MVNO on the way  —  Tired, perhaps, of juggling mainstream cellular carriers, RadioShack may be launching its own wireless branding.  According to a tip we've received, the Shack is gearing up to launch RadioShack Mobile, a no-contract MVNO based on Cricket Wireless.

Malaria is no excuse for patent trolling, Mr. Myhrvold  —  Nathan Myhrvold, CEO of Intellectual Ventures, took issue with GigaOM this week after we expressed skepticism about his company's plans to hire a “VP of Global Good.”  —  In an interview with tech site Geekwire, Myhrvold said …