Apple's Forstall Refused to Apologize  —  Apple Inc. executive Scott Forstall was asked to leave the company after he refused to sign his name to a letter apologizing for shortcomings in Apple's new mapping service, according to people familiar with the matter.

Massive Flooding Damages Several NYC Data Centers  —  Flooding from Hurricane Sandy has hobbled two data center buildings in Lower Manhattan, taking out diesel fuel pumps used to refuel generators.A third building at 121 Varick is also reported to be without power.

Ballmer's New Mission for Microsoft  —  Chief Executive Steve Ballmer is betting on one of Microsoft Corp.'s busiest years ever to keep the company relevant in a new age of mobile technology.  —  On Monday, Microsoft formally introduced new smartphones that will use a revamped version of the company's mobile-phone operating software.

Google Says 700,000 Applications Available for Android  —  Google Inc. (GOOG) said there are about 700,000 applications available for downloading onto mobile devices that run the Android operating system, challenging Apple Inc. (AAPL)'s lead in the race for software tools.

Introducing the new compose in Gmail  —  We're always trying to make Gmail faster and easier to use, so today we're introducing a completely redesigned compose and reply experience that does just that.  —  Faster  —  How many times have you been writing an email and had to reference something in another message?

4th Generation iPad Benchmarks Show 1.4GHz Dual Core Processor, 1GB of RAM  —  John Poole of Primate Labs posts about some 4th Generation iPad benchmarks that appeared in their Geekbench database on Sunday night.  —  True to Apple's claims, the 4th Generation iPad benchmarks about twice as fast as the 3rd Generation iPad.

EMC to Acquire Silver Tail Systems  —  Data storage giant EMC just announced that it has reached a deal to acquire Silver Tail Systems.  —  This is the privately held company that specializes in detecting fraud on the Web, and the reason that venture capitalist Marc Andreesseen was speaking …

Nook HD review: a high-def tablet with the heart of a reader  —  Barnes & Noble knows where it stands in the tablet race.  Sure, the company has been plugging away at the space since the day the Nook Color made its transformation into a full-fledged tablet, but the Nook, it seems …

EverySignal's smart social alerts mean you never need to miss an important life moment again  —  The volume of content passing through most social networks is growing more unmanageable by the day.  The average Facebook Newsfeed has become an overwhelming deluge of (mostly superficial) content.

Andreessen-Backed Start-Up ItsOn Raises $15 Million to Help Make Mobile Service More Flexible  —  Just recently, major carriers such as Verizon and AT&T started allowing customers to share a pool of data among several devices.  But that's just the start of how flexible cellular options could be.

Startup Weekend looks to stamp out 30,000 entrepreneurs in new 4-week training program ‘Next’  —  Call it Startup Weekend on steroids.  —  The Seattle nonprofit today is unveiling a new four-week training program that's designed to get people off their duffs, pursuing that entrepreneurial idea that's been gathering dust for too long.

Twitter is building an official app for Windows 8, says it will be ‘great’  —  Twitter has just announced via the Twitter Mobile account that it is building a Twitter app for Windows 8, and that it will be ‘great’.  There is currently a dearth of good Twitter apps for Windows 8 …

UK's first 4G mobile service launched in 11 cities by EE  —  4G networks mean far greater internet speeds while on the move  —  The first UK's first fourth generation (4G) mobile service has gone live in 11 cities.  —  London, Manchester, Bristol, Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Leeds …

Nokia partners up with Inneractive on cross-platform ad exchange  —  Nokia has launched the Nokia Ad Exchange (NAX) in collaboration with mobile advertising company Inneractive to help developers better monetize their software on any platform.  The exchange will work with over 120 ad networks …