Techmeme: U.S. Department Of Defense Signs New Deal With Microsoft To Bring Windows 8 To 75% of Employees (Frederic Lardinois/TechCrunch)

January 4, 2013, 4:15 PM

Top News

The FTC and Google: A Missed Opportunity — Vice President & Deputy General Counsel, Microsoft — The FTC took steps today to address some of Google's improper business practices. We find it troubling that the agency did not adhere to its own standard procedures that call for the agency …

Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:

What Happens Now on Standards-Essential Patents?

More: Telegraph and MobileBurn.com

Rik Henderson / Pocket-lint:

Spotify suspends music download service in the UK — EXCLUSIVE: No longer supporting purchases — Spotify is no longer allowing users to buy music through its streaming service, Pocket-lint has discovered. — When trying to buy tracks, even Premium subscribers are met with a notice that states …

More: TechCrunch, digitaltrends.com, VatorNews, CNET, Evolver.fm, Electronista, Softpedia News, AllThingsD, Engadget, The Next Web, hypebot, Inquirer, The Verge, Know Your Cell and WebProNews. Tweets: @ingridlunden. Thanks:@stuartmiles. See also Mediagazer

Hyunjoo Jin / Reuters:

Samsung expected to widen smartphone lead over Apple this year — (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co Ltd is expected to widen its lead over Apple Inc in global smartphone sales this year with 35 percent growth, helped by a broad product lineup, market researcher Strategy Analytics told Reuters on Friday.

More: GadgeTell, iDownloadBlog.com, TechCrunch, TechSpot, InvestorPlace, everythingiCafe, LAPTOP Magazine, App Advice, IntoMobile, BGR, DailyTech, PhoneArena and The Next Web

Katie Notopoulos / BuzzFeed:

How Almost Anyone Can Take You Off Facebook (And Lock You Out) — Getting your buddy's Facebook account turned into a “Memorial” state is surprisingly easy — and locks them out of Facebook . Warning: this will seriously mess up someone's account. — Source: brotographs.com

More: Business Insider, GigaOM, The Next Web and The Verge

Matt Brian / The Next Web:

Apple did offer to buy Waze, but Waze politely declined — Rumors of the potential Apple acquisition of Waze lit up the blogosphere this week, only to be extinguished the very next day. However, a deal was very much on the cards, but the Israeli startup politely declined Apple's offer.

More: Business Insider, VentureBeat, IntoMobile, Ubergizmo, Macgasm, FierceMobileContent News, TUAW and SlashGear. Tweets: @sal19

Aries Poon / Wall Street Journal:

HTC Vows to Step Up Innovation — TAIPEI—The head of HTC Corp. said the beleaguered Taiwanese smartphone maker didn't market their products aggressively enough last year, but vowed to win consumers back by developing more innovative products. — HTC had one of its worst years in 2012 …

Tom Warren / The Verge:

Surface Pro release date set for late January — Microsoft's Surface Pro tablet is set to go on sale in late January. After unveiling the pricing for its Windows 8 tablet late last year, Microsoft has remained relatively quiet about the exact timing of release outside of a promised January timeframe.

More: CNET, AllThingsD, PC World, Electronista, ExtremeTech, dailywireless.org, Softpedia News, Softpedia News, DailyTech, SlashGear, Redmond Pie, Neowin and WinBeta

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

U.S. Department Of Defense Signs New Deal With Microsoft To Bring Windows 8 To 75% of Employees — For the most part, the news about Windows 8 hasn't been very positive for Microsoft, but the company today announced a major win. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) just signed a new three-year

More: Microsoft, PC Magazine, Forbes, GeekWire, Business Insider, TechNet Blogs, TechNet Blogs, Neowin and DailyTech

Dante D'Orazio / The Verge:

Amazon Prime Instant Video adds A&E, History, and Lifetime after Netflix's deal falls through — Months after Netflix users lose access, Amazon strikes a deal with A&E — Amazon's Prime Instant Video streaming service is continuing to fill out its selection with today's announcement …

More: Business Wire, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, GeekWire, CNET, Engadget, The Next Web, Mashable!, WebProNews, Geek News Central and paidContent

Eric Slivka / MacRumors:

Best Buy Complains About Walmart's iPhone 5 Holiday Sale, Claims $65,000 Profit Loss in One Day — The Wall Street Journal notes that several retailers including Best Buy and Toys “R” Us have complained to attorneys general in a handful of states about advertising practices of Walmart.

More: Wall Street Journal, Gizmodo, Ars Technica, VentureBeat, SlashGear, TUAW, iPhone Hacks, ValueWalk and Business Insider

Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:

Google Quietly Removes Censorship Warning Feature For Search Users In China (Updated) — Google has quietly disabled a feature that notified users of its search service in China when a keyword had been censored by the Chinese government's internet controls, according to censorship monitoring blog GreatFire.org.

More: GreatFire.org, The Verge, Guardian, Softpedia News and The Next Web. Thanks:@chris_beaumont

Alex Williams / TechCrunch:

Forrester Report Says Apple Will Sell $39 Billion In Macs and iPads To Businesses Over Next 2 Years — Forrester Research is reporting that Apple will sell $39 billion in Macs and iPads through 2014. — According to the firm's latest report, Apple will sell $7 billion worth of Macs …

More: MacNN, Forrester.com, CNET, PadGadget, ZDNet and Forrester Blogs

Anna Heim / The Next Web:

Hulu CEO Jason Kilar and CTO Rich Tom to leave company in Q1 — Hulu CEO Jason Kilar and CTO Rich Tom are set to depart the company in Q1, Kilar announced in an email to the company's staff, which he made public on Hulu's official blog:

More: Hulu Blog, The Verge and Business Insider. Tweets: @bloombergnews

Don Melton:

Keeping Safari a secret — For much of the time we spent developing Safari — long before it was called by that name — it pretended to be Microsoft Internet Explorer. Specifically, Internet Explorer for Mac, which Apple had provided with the OS since 1998.

More: Fortune, The Verge, iMore, GigaOM, VentureBeat, Daring Fireball, Neowin, MacRumors, iPhone Hacks and iPhone in Canada Blog

Tweets: @spencerchen, @richdemuro and @counternotions

Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:

Zipcar Adds A New No-Fee Membership Option In Canada, But Limits Driving To Weekdays — Hot on the heels of an acquisition by Avis announced earlier this week, Zipcar will be piloting a no-fee membership option beginning today in Toronto and Vancouver. The new ‘Access Plan’ pilot project carries …

More: PR Newswire and The Next Web

Rip Empson / TechCrunch:

Now 2.5M Users Strong, Crowdsourced Learning Platform StudyBlue Grabs $9M To Help Students Study On The Go — Founded in 2009, Wisconsin-based startup StudyBlue set out with a simple and straightforward mission: Leverage technology to help students improve their academic performance.

More: GigaOM, VentureBeat, The Next Web, Tech Cocktail, VatorNews and AllThingsD

Kim Zetter / Wired:

Write Gambling Software, Go to Prison — In a criminal case sure to make programmers nervous, a software maker who licenses a program used by online casinos and bookmakers overseas is being charged with promoting gambling in New York because authorities say his software was used by others for illegal betting in that state.

More: The Verge

Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:

Kim Dotcom: US “planted” evidence to obtain illegal search warrants — Kim Dotcom living large in happier times. — Handout — Megaupload has accused US investigators of “planting” evidence the government used to prove that Megaupload knowingly kept copyrighted files on its servers and ultimately shut the file-sharing site down.

More: TorrentFreak, Techdirt, Computerworld, Web Host Industry Review, hypebot, Bloomberg, Betabeat and Inquirer

Jungah Lee / Bloomberg:

Samsung, LG Display Fined by China for Fixing LCD Panel Prices — Samsung Electronics Co. (005930) and LG Display Co. (034220), the world's biggest makers of flat panels, were among six companies fined by China's government for participating in a price-fixing scheme.

More: Yonhap News Agency, Engadget, AppleInsider, ZDNet, SlashGear and Computerworld

Sponsor Posts

Channel 9:

Windows Store Weekly — This week we take a look at: Star Trek App, Box, Fling Theory, StumbleUpon, and wordBrush.

Cloud Foundry:

Static.com Adds Hadoop Support for Cloud Foundry — In this guest post, Jake Farrell, CTO for Static.com, explains how the major shift in the hosting industry towards platforms for high developer productivity …

Rackspace Blog:

An Army Is Forming To Battle Patent Trolls — For the past several months, we've exposed the flaws in the patent system and how they're being exploited by opportunistic patent trolls looking to extort a quick buck …

Hortonworks » Blog:

Mobile Telco Dials In and Harnesses Big Data with Hadoop — Smartphones have transformed our daily lives. A key indicator of this trend is our increased spend on data plans versus voice.

Unison's blog:

“Yammer sucks” — Not to be mean to Yammer, or anything — it's a very good tool for some use cases — but that's what a customer told me recently (and others feel the same way).

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