Techmeme: Microsoft Scrutinized by EU Privacy Watchdogs for Policy Changes (Stephanie Bodoni/Bloomberg)

December 18, 2012, 1:05 PM

Top News

Aaron Souppouris / The Verge:

Samsung drops Apple injunctions in Europe — Samsung has today announced it will drop its inunction requests against Apple for standards-essential patent infringement in Germany, the UK, France, Italy and the Netherlands. In a statement given to The Verge, the manufacturer said:

More: Bloomberg, FOSS Patents, The Next Web, The Next Web, SiliconBeat, Marketing Land, Ars Technica, MacRumors, VentureBeat, Computerworld, GigaOM, CNET, BGR, Inquirer, iPhone Hacks, Electronista, FierceWireless, Engadget, iLounge, TechCrunch, MobileBurn.com, OSNews, iDownloadBlog.com, MacDailyNews, SamMobile and SlashGear

Tweets: @wsj and @fosspatents

Florian Mueller / FOSS Patents:

Judge denies Apple permanent injunction, throws out Samsung's jury misconduct claims — Judge Lucy Koh, the federal judge presiding over the Apple v. Samsung litigation in the Northern District of California, just entered two important post-trial orders. Within minutes of each other …

NYT Bits:

What Instagram's New Terms of Service Mean for You — Instagram released an updated version of its privacy policy and terms of service on Monday, and they include lengthy stipulations on how photographs uploaded by users may be used by Instagram and its parent company, Facebook.

Alexis C. Madrigal / The Atlantic Online:

Why You Should Want to Pay for Software, Instagram Edition — If you want to stop social networking services from exploiting your likeness for advertising, you've got to start paying up. — Instagram is changing its terms of use in January. Included in the new legalese is one section …

More: Serious Compacts

Tom Warren / The Verge:

Instagram backlash is Flickr's gain — Users look elsewhere after Instagram changes its policies — Popular photo sharing service Instagram is facing a user backlash after the company revealed new terms of service this week. The fine print, that takes effect on January 16th …

More: BuzzFeed. Tweets: @nickbilton, @dhh, @mike_ftw, @willsmith and @safesolvent

Roger Cheng / CNET:

Nokia CEO: We have to move with more urgency (Q&A) — Stephen Elop speaks to CNET and weighs in on the cultural shift at Nokia, why he went with AT&T as an exclusive partner, and what keeps him up at night. — Nokia has undergone a significant cultural and identity shift under the leadership of CEO Stephen Elop.

More: Tech Trader Daily, Business Insider, SlashGear, The Verge, Bloomberg, My Nokia Blog, Nokiapoweruser, PhoneArena and Ubergizmo

Wall Street Journal:

Apple in Preliminary Talks with Foursquare About Data-Sharing Deal — Apple Inc. is in early discussions to integrate local data from Foursquare Labs Inc. into its mapping application, according to people familiar with the talks, as the company continues to build an arsenal of local data to try to take on Google Inc.

Matt Brian / The Next Web:

Samsung unveils new 5-inch dual-SIM Galaxy Grand, with dual-core 1.2GHz processor and 8MP camera — Adding yet another Galaxy S III (or maybe Note) clone to its collection of Android smartphones, Samsung today launched its new Galaxy Grand handset, offering a dual 1.2 GHz processor …

Jessica Guynn / Los Angeles Times:

Federal Trade Commission to data brokers: Show us your data — The Federal Trade Commission has ordered nine data brokerage companies to tell the agency how they harvest and use data on consumers, toughening its stance toward the multibillion-dollar industry.

More: Federal Trade Commission, The Hill, The Verge and TPM IdeaLab

Jason Del Rey / AdAge:

Facebook Prepares to Bring Video Ads to News Feed, Aims for TV Dollars — But Will TV Ads Disrupt Social Experience? — Facebook is set to unveil a new video-ad product in the first half of next year in its largest attempt to date to attract big swaths of ad dollars from TV advertisers …

More: The Verge. Thanks:@cottondelo

Wayne Lam / iSuppli:

Samsung Displaces Nokia as Top Cellphone Brand in 2012 and Takes Decisive Smartphone Lead Over Apple — For the first time in 14 years, wireless communications giant Nokia will not sit atop the global cellphone business on an annual basis at the end of 2012—with Samsung set to seize the mobile handset market's top rank.

More: The Next Web, 9to5Google, ZDNet, Mercury News, PhoneArena and CNET

Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:

Twitter Passes 200M Monthly Active Users, A 42% Increase Over 9 Months — Twitter has announced via its own official Twitter account that the service now has more than 200 million monthly active users, an increase of 60 million from the 140 million milestone it shared back in March.

More: The Next Web, Mashable!, The Next Web, CNET, Business Insider, VentureBeat, GeekWire, iPhone in Canada Blog, memeburn, WebProNews and Softpedia News. Tweets: @twitter

Paul Mozur / Wall Street Journal:

Foxconn Workers Say, ‘Keep Our Overtime’ — SHENZHEN, China—Nets to catch would-be jumpers still sag ominously from Hon Hai Precision Industry Co.'s buildings. — But two years after a spate of suicides at the Apple Inc. supplier's campus here, workers are more concerned …

More: Digits

Mat Smith / Engadget:

NVIDIA Tegra 4 processor details leaked: 4-plus-1 cores, 28nm, six times the power of Tegra 3 — NVIDIA's next superhero-themed mobile chipset has possibly made an early appearance in a leaked side in China, and it looks like it wants to go toe-to-toe with the latest processors from Samsung and Qualcomm.

Bill Rigby / Reuters:

Microsoft, Motorola millions apart on royalty payment case — (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp and Google Inc's Motorola phone unit remain millions of dollars apart in their respective valuations of video and wi-fi patents at issue in a pivotal case before a federal judge in Seattle.

More: CNET and CNET

Geoffrey A. Fowler / Wall Street Journal:

Tor: An Anonymous, And Controversial, Way to Web-Surf — For more than four years, William Weber has helped run a free service called Tor that makes Web surfing anonymous for anyone. — Then on Nov. 28, the police showed up at the 20-year-old's home in Graz, Austria, and accused him of distributing child pornography.

Matthew Panzarino / The Next Web:

Instagram's latest app update fixed my biggest pet peeve, and people hate it — As a long time user of Instagram, I have come to loathe a certain thing that people do on the service. No, it's not duckface or Throwback Thursdays. It's not even the fact that most people will never …

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

What The Twitter/Instagram Standoff Has Meant For Traffic To Instagram — When Instagram began to pull its inline previews of photos out of Twitter almost two weeks ago, many did not take that turn of events too well. Consumers like things easy, and clicking out of one app or site to go elsewhere is not always the best experience.

More: Business Insider

Jon Russell / The Next Web:

Google starts putting Meebo to use: New Google+ social sharing bar spotted on the Web (Updated) — Update at foot of post. — It looks like Google has begun putting its acquisition of Meebo to use after a chat bar looking very much like that of the advertising startup was spotted in the wild — screenshot below.

More: Mashable!

Kevin Fitchard / GigaOM:

Cisco buys BroadHop to start prioritizing packets — Cisco Systems plans to try its hand at shaping mobile data traffic with a new acquisition. The networking giant revealed on its blog Tuesday that it will buy up policy vendor BroadHop for an undisclosed sum.

More: Cisco Blog, ZDNet, AllThingsD, Light Reading and Broadband Traffic Management

Drew Olanoff / TechCrunch:

Twitter Isn't Leaving Out BlackBerry Users, Updates Its App To Include “Connect” Interactions — Just because geeks might not think BlackBerry is a fun platform doesn't mean that people still don't use it. Today, Twitter announced a 4. update to its BlackBerry app, and included …

More: The Next Web, The Verge and Inside BlackBerry

Sebastian Anthony / ExtremeTech:

DARPA begins work on 100Gbps wireless tech with 120-mile range — DARPA has begun development of a wireless communications link that is capable of 100 gigabits per second over a range of 200 kilometers (124mi). Officially dubbed “100 Gb/s RF Backbone” (or 100G for short) …

More: The Verge, Mashable!, CNET, Ars Technica and SlashGear

Taylor Soper / GeekWire:

Xbox introduces SportsPicks app, new SmartGlass experience for ESPN, NBA — For sports fans, the Xbox was once just a device for scoring touchdowns on Madden or making birdies with Tiger Woods. — But as Microsoft continues to turn the Xbox into an entertainment hub, its sports content is following a similar path.

More: The Next Web and SlashGear

Jon Russell / The Next Web:

Tumblr for Android adds support for tablets, as the wait continues for iPad owners — Tumblr has pushed an update to its Android app that brings support for tablet devices, such as Google's Nexus 7. That's a nice win for Android since it wasn't long ago that newer devices — like said Nexus 7 …

More: Engadget, WebProNews and SlashGear

Stephanie Bodoni / Bloomberg:

Microsoft Scrutinized by EU Privacy Watchdogs for Policy Changes — Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)'s policy changes for its Internet products including Hotmail and Bing are being formally examined by European data protection regulators for potential privacy issues.

More: Marketing Land, Computerworld, The Verge, ZDNet and WebProNews

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