Apple, Samsung Back in Court  —  Companies Battle Over $1.05 Billion Damages From Patent Trial's August Verdict  —  Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. return to a Silicon Valley courtroom Thursday, as Samsung fights to get a federal judge to throw out or soften a $1.05 billion patent judgment against the Korean company.

Tim Cook's Freshman Year: The Apple CEO Speaks  —  Prior to his death on Oct. 5, 2011, Steve Jobs made sure that the elevation of Tim Cook—his longtime head of operations and trusted deputy—to Apple chief executive officer would be drama-free.  “He goes, ‘I never want you to ask what I would have done,’” recalls Cook.

Apple loses $34.9 billion in market cap in its worst trading day in 4 years, but why?  —  Gene Munster has a target of $900 for Apple's stock, which is a touch awkward today as the company shed 6.43% of its value, to settle at a valuation of a mere $508 billion.

Guatemala detains software guru McAfee, to expel him to Belize  —  (Reuters) - Guatemalan police arrested U.S. software guru John McAfee on Wednesday for illegally entering the country and said it would expel him to neighboring Belize, which he fled after being sought for questioning over his neighbor's murder.

Lack of Distribution Is “Killing” Surface  —  If Microsoft is being coy about revealing Surface sales data, it may be for good reason.  Early demand for the company's first tablet is lousy.  How lousy?  Put it this way: If Microsoft really did manufacture three million to five million Surface tablets …

Patriot Act can “obtain” data in Europe, researchers say  —  European data stored in the “cloud” could be acquired and inspected by U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies, despite Europe's strong data protection laws, university researchers have suggested.

Google Now takes on Passbook, adds QR code airport check-in and camera search  —  Google promised that it would continue improving predictive search assistant Google Now to make it more powerful, and today it looks like the company has looked to Apple for some inspiration.

They Screwed Us.  Right Before They Screwed Us Again. #poohead  —  We just got screwed.  More on this below.  —  Nobody says “Web 2.0” anymore.  The term just didn't stand the test of time, long ago it became cliched.  —  But a handful of years ago it had real meaning to a lot of us.

Gestures as a New Dimension in Mobile Design  —  Something clicked in my head while writing my most recent article.  While looking at the various paradigms that have grown from Twitter's UI, I noticed an aspect of design that is oft overlooked.  That aspect is gestures.

The More Pandora Sells, the More It Loses  —  A tenth of a cent might not sound like a lot of money.  But Pandora Media Inc.'s 18% stock drop Wednesday is a sobering reminder that those fractions add up—especially when advertising sales don't keep pace.  —  Pandora's music royalty costs …

Zynga Takes Gambling Step in Nevada  —  Zynga Inc. has taken its first official step toward offering real-money gambling games in the U.S. by filing preparatory paperwork in Nevada, as the embattled firm maneuvers to take advantage of a shifting legal landscape.

U.N. summit votes to support Internet eavesdropping  —  Deep packet inspection standard adopted despite Germany's warning that it will “empower” censorship.  Other uses: detecting BitTorrent transfers and identifying “copyright protected audio content.”  —  A United Nations summit …

Skype confirms video messaging feature with legal change  —  The service will allow short video messages to be sent between subscribers  —  Skype hasn't officially confirmed rumors of a video messaging service that's supposed to be coming to its platform, but an update to its terms of service on Wednesday did the job.

Sophisticated botnet steals more than $47M by infecting PCs and phones  —  Behold—the Eurograbber, visualized.  —  Aurich Lawson / Thinkstock  —  A new version of the Zeus trojan—a longtime favorite of criminals conducting online financial fraud—has been used in attacks …

Blockbuster Is Said to Begin Selling Phones  —  Dish Network Corp. (DISH)'s Blockbuster will begin selling mobile phones in its movie-rental stores as a test for Dish's planned entry into the wireless business, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.

See Trends for 100 more cities  —  Today, we're bringing Trends to 100 more cities around the world including Istanbul, Frankfurt, Guadalajara and Incheon.  With this update, we now surface the ‘most breaking’ news in more than 200 locations.  To view Trends for different locations, just click “Change” in the Trends section.

Time Spent In Mobile Apps Is Starting To Challenge Television, Flurry Says  —  Now that usage of mobile apps has overtaken browsing on the desktop web, it's starting to challenge television, Flurry says.  The San Francisco-based mobile analytics startup says that consumers are spending 127 minutes per …

Rhapsody tries to steal thunder from Shazam with free SongMatch app  —  Music subscription service Rhapsody launched a free Android app dubbed SongMatch Wednesday that aims to compete with Shazam's music recognition app.  The app, which can be downloaded from Google Play …

Twitterrific 5 review: terrific new interface, some old flaws  —  Back in the summer of 2008, when I first joined Twitter, there weren't very many good Twitter apps around.  I had a Mac and an iPod touch, and I wanted a way to keep up with the few people I was following on those devices.

Building a better map of Europe  —  More than a billion people use Google Maps each month to find their way around town and around the world.  To help these people get exactly the information they need, the Google Maps team works constantly to ensure that the geographic data behind our maps is comprehensive and accurate.