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December 18, 2012, 11:00 AM

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, The Next Web, FOSS Patents, MacRumors, VentureBeat, Computerworld, 9to5Mac, GigaOM, BGR, Inquirer, CNET, Engadget, TechCrunch, MobileBurn.com, OSNews, iDownloadBlog.com, MacDailyNews, SamMobile, SlashGear, Softpedia News and iClarified

Tweets: @fosspatents and @wsj

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: Business Insider, Serious Compacts and PetaPixel

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.

@twitter:

There are now more than 200M monthly active @twitter users. You are the pulse of the planet. We're grateful for your ongoing support!

More: TechCrunch, VentureBeat, The Next Web, CNET and Business Insider

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 …

Reed Morse / YouTube Blog:

Film and share videos instantly with YouTube Capture for iPhone and iPod touch — Life moves fast. To speed up recording, enhancing and sharing videos with your friends or the whole world, you can now use the YouTube Capture app on your iPhone or iPod touch. — Making sharing fast and easy

More: Mashable!, SocialTimes, BGR India, The Appside, ITProPortal, 1001 Noisy Cameras, everythingiCafe and iPhone Alley. Tweets: @theromit. Thanks:@hunterwalk

Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:

Hands-on: YouTube Capture app one-ups Apple's video sharing options

More: iMore.com and Pocketnow

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

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

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, CNET, Mashable!, Ars Technica and SlashGear

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

Loek Essers / ITworld.com:

German privacy regulator orders Facebook to end its real name policy — Facebook said it would vigorously fight the order — A German privacy regulator ordered Facebook to stop enforcing its real name policy because it violates a German law that gives users the right to use nicknames online.

More: CNET, TechCrunch, The Register, datenschutzzentrum.de, Engadget, The Next Web, Softpedia News, bizjournals, MediaPost and SlashGear

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 …

Tweets: @remic and @trenti

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Hands On With Facebook Nearby, A New Local Biz Discovery Feature That Challenges Yelp And Foursquare — Each month 250 million Facebook users tag posts with location. Today that data goes to work for you in a major revamp of Facebook's Nearby feature for its iOS and Android apps.

More: Scobleizer, Facebook Newsroom, Marketing Pilgrim, AllThingsD, Fortune, iDownloadBlog.com, memeburn, Gotta Be Mobile, Forbes and digitaltrends.com. Thanks:@drizzled

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Josh Williams On Why Facebook Acqhired His Startup Gowalla To Put A “Nearby” Lens On 250M Geo-Posts Per Month

More: ReadWrite

Federico Viticci / MacStories:

Letterpress 1.2 Brings HTML5 Replay Feature — Loren Brichter's Letterpress is my favorite iOS game. It's no surprise that the game has been adopted so quickly and listed by Apple as a runner-up for Game of the Year on the “Best of App Store” list for 2012. Letterpress is fun, clever, and incredibly addictive.

More: The Next Web and iPhone Hacks

evleaks / Unwired View:

HTC M7, successor to the One X, detailed: 4.7-inch 1080p, Sense 5, much more — HTC is once again preparing the launch of a flagship Android handset, according to a previously reliable source, among whose cutting-edge components will reportedly be several industry firsts.

More: Gizmodo, Gizchina, SlashPhone, AndroidOS.in, Pocket-lint, Techie Buzz, Phones Review and Softpedia News. Thanks:@uvstaska

Jon Russell / The Next Web:

Sony confirms 10 of its Xperia range will get Jelly Bean from February 2013, 4 will miss out — Sony has provided an update on where it stands on providing Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) updates for its Xperia family of devices, reiterating that most of the smartphones will be upgraded within the first few months of next year.

More: Blog Portal, Ars Technica, BetaNews, Electronista, Techie Buzz, Pocketnow, Mashable!, Phones Review and Engadget

Sharif Sakr / Engadget:

Trustonic: a way for mobile apps to benefit from ARM's hardware-level security — This here narrative begins back in April, when ARM, Giesecke & Devrient and Gemalto teamed up and gave themselves precisely nine months in which to find the perfect brand name for their newly merged mobile security platform.

More: VentureBeat, Wall Street Journal, ZDNet and AllThingsD

Brittany Hillen / SlashGear:

Sony Yuga phablet prototype detailed, boasts 5-inch full HD display — Sony's Yuga smartphone has been rumored for awhile now, and we've seen it pop up on various parts of the Internet, including on the German website Android Schweiz on November 2. Now the smartphone has surfaced again …

More: Pocket-lint, Pocketnow, IntoMobile, The Verge, Xperia Blog, AndroidOS.in, Electronista and PhoneArena

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: Tumblr Staff, Engadget, BetaNews, SlashGear and Bijan Sabet

Matt Brian / The Next Web:

Tweet your emergency: London Fire Brigade plans to accept callouts over Twitter — In the very near future, the London Fire Brigade might actually want you to tweet about a fire before leaving the building, after it announced that it is looking to set up the world's first 999 emergency Twitter feed.

More: London Fire Brigade, BetaNews, BBC, Betabeat, digitaltrends.com and Telegraph

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: Xbox Live's Major Nelson, BGR 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: ZDNet and WebProNews

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