Techmeme: Chitika says Kindle Fire web share jumped to 7.5% and iPad fell 7.1% over holidays in North America (Emil Protalinski/The Next Web)

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January 3, 2013, 10:00 AM

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Mike Butcher / TechCrunch:

Is Apple Plotting A Route To A Waze Acquisition? Rumours On The Road Point To Yes — There can be no doubt that one of the hottest startups of the last couple of years has been social sat-nav smartphone app Waze. Not surprising in an era when - largely due to Apple initially dumping Google Maps …

Amir Efrati / Wall Street Journal:

Google Requires People to Use the Google+ Social Network, Gains Ground Against Facebook — Google Inc. is gaining ground against Facebook Inc. thanks to a controversial tactic: requiring people to use the Google+ social network. — Google over the past year has boosted the Google+ operation …

More: Business Insider, Hillicon Valley, Softpedia News, Marco.org and BuzzFeed

Tweets: @gsterling, @benedictevans, @fxshaw, @brian_frank, @rubinafillion and @counternotions

Connie Guglielmo / Forbes:

Life After The iPhone: How AT&T's Bet On Apple Mobilized The Company — AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, who took over just as the iPhone was launched, talks about the fame, pain and change that's taken place under his leadership. (Photo credit: Matthew Hawthorne) — Steve Jobs needed some advice.

More: Redmond Pie, iPhone in Canada Blog and 9to5Mac

Vlad Savov / The Verge:

The Ubuntu phone has a speed problem, and I'm not talking about lag — If your hardware roadmap is measured in years rather than months, you may have a problem — As software launches go, yesterday's announcement of Ubuntu for phones was quite the success for parent company Canonical.

Vlad Savov / The Verge:

Ubuntu phone OS announced, first devices shipping in early 2014

Sharif Sakr / Engadget:

Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones, we go hands-on (video)

More: The Verge, Unwired View, iFans, DailyTech, FierceMobileContent News, VentureBeat and Pocketnow

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:

Andrew Sullivan's Ad-Free Publishing Experiment Sees Six-Figure Revenue In First Six Hours — When political blogger Andrew Sullivan announced this morning that he's leaving The Daily Beast and launching an independent company called Dish Publishing, the most provocative bit of news was his intended business model.

More: The Daily Dish, Felix Salmon, Guardian, memeburn, Media Decoder, The Verge, parislemon and GigaOM. See also Mediagazer

Jeremiah Rice / Android Police:

Sprint Will Begin Pay As You Go Service On January 25th, But Standard Sprint Phones Aren't Invited To The Party — If you want to use Sprint's network without signing a contract, there are a lot of options out there, including its subsidiary Boost Mobile, the American MVNO Virgin, and hybrid provider Republic Wireless, among others.

More: CNET, Engadget, DSLreports, IntoMobile, PhoneNews.com, PhoneArena and Electronista

Devindra Hardawar / VentureBeat:

Qualcomm CEO: Apple rejected our radio for the Newton, so we struck a deal with Palm — Here's a bit of pre-smartphone era history for you: Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs told Charlie Rose tonight that he tried to convince Apple to put a Qualcomm radio in the Newton PDA during the 90s, but was shot down.

More: BetaNews, Gizmodo, The Verge, App Advice and CNET

Farhad Manjoo / Slate:

Apple Killed the Netbook — And we're all better off for the demise of the $400 future of computing. — Netbooks are dead. Good riddance! Just a few years ago, these small, underpowered, ultracheap laptops were considered the future of the computer industry.

More: Computerworld, parislemon, Forbes and Business Week

Jason Del Rey / AdAge:

Buzzfeed Raises $19.3 Million to Make LOL Content for the Social Web — Building a Giant War Chest That Signals Greater Ambitions — Buzzfeed set out to re-invent the notion of content for the social web by allowing pictures of cute animals to co-exist with serious political coverage.

More: BuzzFeed, The Next Web, Betabeat, TechCrunch, Business Insider, Media Decoder and AllThingsD. Tweets: @rafat. Thanks:@delrey. See also Mediagazer

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

Barnes & Noble's bad holiday: Nook, store and BN.com sales down — As it had warned investors last week, Barnes & Noble announced disappointing holiday sales Thursday. For the nine-week period ending December 29, 2012, Nook device sales, in-store sales and BN.com sales were all down from the same period last year.

More: Business Wire, BGR, The Next Web, The Verge, CNET, GeekWire and Reuters. See also Mediagazer

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Oh, The Places Tumblr Can Go — Nothing says Internet opportunity like a social media juggernaut. Tumblr, the meme-olicious, gif-tastic, photo-fabulous, (but also occasionally) thoughtful blogging platform that attracted 167 million visitors and nearly 18 billion pageviews in December, is certainly no exception.

More: parislemon and WebProNews

Jeff Bercovici / Forbes:

Tumblr: David Karp's $800 Million Art Project

More: Elapsed Time, Daily Dot, Business Week, Mashable!, Betabeat, SocialTimes and SplatF. Tweets: @jwherrman

Kim-Mai Cutler / TechCrunch:

A Little Sleuthing Leads Nexus 4 Enthusiasts To Estimate About 400K In Sales Of The Device — Google and LG's Nexus 4 has been such a coveted item this past holiday season, that it's been in and out of stock since its release in mid-November. Because Google doesn't publicly comment on device sales …

More: The Verge, Electronista and PhoneArena

Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:

FTC Chairman Pushing for a Google Antitrust Decision This Week — It's likely that the Federal Trade Commission will rule on its antitrust investigation of Google this week, with a similar settlement to the one discussed before the December holidays, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.

More: The Register, FairSearch.org, Guardian, SocialTimes, Search Engine Land, Inquirer and PandoDaily

Brendan Sasso / Hillicon Valley:

Senate confirms FTC, FCC picks

More: The Next Web, WebProNews, The Next Web and Reuters

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

Chitika says Kindle Fire web share jumped to 7.5% and iPad fell 7.1% over holidays in North America — The Apple iPad may be doing too well for its own good, at least when it comes to measuring percentage changes in Web traffic. This holiday season, the tablet's Web usage share in the US …

More: Chitika Insights, LAPTOP Magazine, ZDNet, Electronista, CNET, PhoneArena, TUAW, VentureBeat and TechCrunch

Todd Bishop / GeekWire:

Skype updates Windows Phone app, temporarily nixes People Hub integration — Microsoft's Skype Division is temporarily removing integration with Windows Phone's People Hub in the latest update to its app for Microsoft's mobile platform, citing problems with “device stability.”

More: Skype Garage, Windows Phone, Inquirer, FierceMobileContent News, LiveSide.net, IntoMobile, wpcentral.com, Tech Policy Institute Blog, WMPoweruser, Neowin, The Verge, The Next Web, PalmAddict and WMPoweruser

Joe Mullin / Ars Technica:

Patent trolls want $1,000—for using scanners — When Steven Vicinanza got a letter in the mail earlier this year informing him that he needed to pay $1,000 per employee for a license to some “distributed computer architecture” patents, he didn't quite believe it at first.

More: TechEye, Boing Boing, Techdirt and The Verge

Cyrus Farivar / Ars Technica:

Judge can't order Yelp user to edit negative review — Jane Perez accused Christopher Dietz of improperly completing construction work on her property—then she gave him a negative Yelp review. — Jane Perez — The Virginia Supreme Court has overturned a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit …

More: AllThingsD, Computerworld, Public Citizen, Daily Dot, Techdirt, The Verge and digitaltrends.com

Bloomberg:

Huawei, Samsung, ZTE Named in New InterDigital Complaint — Huawei Technologies Co., ZTE Corp. (000063) and Samsung Electronics Co. (005930) were named in a new patent- infringement complaint filed by InterDigital Inc. (IDCC) over technology related to the latest mobile-phone standards.

More: Engadget

David Beren / TmoNews:

All T-Mobile Stores To Carry The Nexus 4 Beginning This Month — If you're still on the hunt for a Nexus 4 and we imagine you are since they are next to impossible to find then we've got some good news. T-Mobile stores are hoping to resolve the Nexus 4 inventory black hole …

More: TechCrunch, Engadget, PhoneArena and Gotta Be Mobile

Matt Brian / The Next Web:

Apple is partnering with Broadcom to bring super-fast 802.11ac networking to upcoming Macs — While it's believed that Apple's 2013 Mac lineup will feature the same designs as their late-2012 counterparts, they are set to include a range of updated internal features and hardware.

More: Softpedia News, PC Magazine, Techie Buzz, TheStreet.com, The Register, iMore.com, TUAW, Ubergizmo and digitaltrends.com

Ken Yeung / The Next Web:

WhatsApp processed a whopping (record) 18 billion messages on the last day of 2012 — Mobile messaging app WhatsApp has had a pretty remarkable 2012. It just announced that it had set a new single day record for the most messages published on December 31.

More: CNET, IntoMobile, Techie Buzz, iPhone in Canada Blog, BGR India and Forbes

Tweets: @whatsapp, @whatsapp and @benedictevans

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