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, 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.

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.

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 …

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.

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.

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.

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 …

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.

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 …

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 …

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.

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.

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.

Nationwide Mutual hack leaves 1.1 million Americans' information exposed  —  More details are coming out about a massive October 3rd data breach at Nationwide Mutual Insurance.  The company reported to the North Carolina Attorney General that as many as 1.1 million Americans' personal information …

Lenovo exec: We didn't realize how big touch would be  —  Gerry Smith, Lenovo's recently named president of the North America region, tells CNET that the industry underestimated demand for touch on computers.  He also says Lenovo will eventually become the top PC vendor in the U.S., not just worldwide.

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.

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.

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 …