U.S. Senator Charles Schumer, Google CIO To Unveil Free WiFi In NYC's Chelsea Neighborhood  —  Google has slowly been building up its service provider cred, with an ambitious fiber project in Kansas City and free WiFi initiatives through a partnership with Boingo.

AT&T sold a record 10m smartphones in Q4 2012, helped by best-ever sales of Android and Apple devices  —  US operator AT&T announced today a new for sales of smartphones by the company, after it saw sales top the 10 million unit market for the first time in its history in the fourth quarter of 2012 …

“The telephone network is obsolete”: Get ready for the all-IP telco  —  Two months ago, AT&T petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to plan for the retirement of traditional phone networks and transition to what AT&T sees as an inevitability: the all-IP telco.

Airbnb's growing pains mirrored in New York City, where half its listings are illegal rentals  —  Apartment rental site Airbnb's revolutionary simplicity has made it easy for tens of thousands of people to both list and discover lodging options in private residences and book them easily, quickly, and safely.

Sony Goes Big Into 4K: OLED Ultra HD, 4K Video Service and Consumer Camcorder  —  Image: Sony.  —  LAS VEGAS — You're not surprised, are you?  Sony took the stage this evening at its press conference at CES 2013 to unveil a whole array of electronics, including, yes, a 4K TV.

Exclusive: A first look at Netflix's test of personalized profiles  —  Netflix recently started to test personalized profiles with a limited subset of its subscribers, allowing them to create a separate profile for each member of their family.  The company has talked about eventually doing …

Valve and Xi3's ‘Steam Box’ codenamed Piston, early specs detailed at CES  —  The “Steam Box” modular computer announced by hardware maker Xi3 and Valve at CES is codenamed “Piston” and is modeled after the PC maker's X7A line of pint-sized computers, Xi3 reps tell Polygon.

Target will now price-match Amazon, other retailers year-round  —  Matching Amazon's pricing during the holidays is one thing, but Target today announced it plans to continue the practice on a year-round basis.  The extended policy will apply to competitors other than the internet retailer …

Tablet PC Market Forecast to Surpass Notebooks in 2013, NPD DisplaySearch Reports  —  Tablet PC shipments are expected to reach more than 240 million units worldwide in 2013, easily exceeding the 207 million notebook PCs that are projected to ship, according to NPD DisplaySearch Quarterly Mobile PC Shipment and Forecast Report.

Firefox 18 gets up to 25% faster JavaScript with IonMonkey, built-in PDF viewer, and Retina support  —  Mozilla on Tuesday officially launched Firefox 18 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android.  The improvements include a new JavaScript compiler, a built-in PDF viewer, as well as Retina support (on Macs) and touch events (for mobile).

Svbtle funding  —  Just a quick update: we've recently raised a round of financing from great investors like CrunchFund, Betaworks, Y Combinator, and more, including some fantastic angels.  Now we have the resources and absolute focus that will allow us to build not only a great collection of people …

The new guard: Look at who is buying technology companies now  —  A few days ago, I pointed out the inevitability of the Internet and how it was going to play an increasing role in the companies that have traditionally not been classified as technology companies.

Is Facebook worth it?  Film execs confide they may cut movie ads  —  Some movie executives are increasingly skeptical that Facebook ads and promotional campaigns that ask users to ‘like’ a movie can deliver big box-office returns.  —  Major studios are taking a hard look at the cost of winning friends on Facebook.

Apple CEO Tim Cook meets high-level officials, US ambassador on visit to China  —  While Google chairman Eric Schmidt is enjoying a much-criticised visit to North Korea, Apple is coordinating an Asia visit of its own, after its CEO Tim Cook met with China's Minister of Industry and Information Technology …

Panasonic shows off 20-inch Windows 8 tablet with insane 4K resolution  —  4K's unquestionably the buzzword of CES 2013, but it's typically used in conjunction with “TV.”  Panasonic's taking it a different direction, though, using its keynote at the show to introduce a 20-inch Windows 8 tablet with 4K resolution.

This 15-Year-Old Built An App To Help His High School Debate Team.  It Could Do Much More Than That  —  Tanay Tandon, high school sophomore, put out a Flipboard-like app last week called Clipped.  What's it like to be a teen prodigy hacker juggling the demands of high school?

Aereo Raises $38 Million to Take Its Cord-Cutting Service to 22 More Cities  —  Right now you can only watch Aereo, the Web TV service the TV networks hate, if you live in New York City.  —  That will change soon, Aereo says: The startup plans to roll out 22 more U.S. cities this year, starting in “late spring.”

Chinese man pleads guilty in $100 million stolen software sting  —  (Reuters) - In a case U.S. officials say is the first of its kind, a Chinese businessman pleaded guilty Monday to selling stolen American software used in defense, space technology and engineering - programs prosecutors …

Netflix Announces Major ISPs Deploying Their CDN Caches; New 3D Streaming  —  Last June, Netflix announced plans to build out their own content delivery network by giving ISPs free caches to place inside their networks.  Called Open Connect, Netflix's new platform allows network operators …

Verizon, Sprint to offer new Windows Phone 8 models  —  There were two big Windows Phone-related announcements today at the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas.  —  First, Samsung said that the ATIV Odyssey will go on sale at Verizon Wireless in the “coming weeks.”

Verizon Says Buying Out Wireless Venture ‘Feasible’  —  Verizon Communications Inc. Chief Executive Lowell McAdam believes the company could pull off the acquisition of its wireless joint venture with Vodafone Group PLC.  —  In an interview Monday ahead of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas …

Game discovery platform Chartboost is on fire, scores Sequoia in $19 million Series B  —  There are two principal challenges facing mobile game developers today.  The first is app discovery.  Amid an increasing sea of choices, it's never been more difficult to gain user mind share and crucial mobile device home screen real estate.

Mobile Ad Network InMobi Buys Overlay Media To Improve Ad Personalization, And More  —  Mobile ad network InMobi continues to make use of the $200 million in financing it received in 2011 from Softbank: today it is announcing the acquisition of Overlay Media, a UK-based developer of “context-aware” computing technologies.

Galaxy phones power Samsung to record $8.3 billion profit  —  (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics, the world leader in mobiles and memory chips, said it likely earned a quarterly profit of $8.3 billion, as it sold close to 500 handsets a minute and as demand picked up for the flat screens it makes …

FreedomPop, textPlus team up to offer freemium voice, SMS service  —  FreedomPop is delivering on its promise to become a voice as well as mobile data provider.  At CES 2013, it revealed it's partnering with IP voice and messaging startup textPlus, bundling the latter's freemium text and calling app with its freemium broadband service.

Microsoft's Ballmer Makes Cameo at Qualcomm Opening Keynote  —  A symbolic changing of the guard at the Consumer Electronics Show featured a surprise appearance by the old guard-Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, who helped Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs kick off his first-ever opening keynote at the show.

Consumers pay the hidden costs for the ‘free’ app ecosystem  —  Can mobile developers find a way to make paid apps work at scale?  —  Time is money, and apps don't last forever.  You're never going to get back the hours you spent Oinking that hip record shop in Williamsburg or Stamping the bars with the best absinthe martinis.

There Are 181,000 Social Media ‘Gurus,’ ‘Ninjas,’ ‘Masters,’ and ‘Mavens’ on Twitter  —  A Growth Industry: That's Up From Just 16,000 In 2009  —  As a public service, I like to periodically check in on the number of self-proclaimed social media “gurus,” “ninjas,” “masters” and “mavens” on Twitter.

Mozilla's Firefox OS demoed, coming to emerging markets later this year (hands-on)  —  Mozilla is at CES showing off its upcoming Firefox mobile OS on a prototype device.  It's come a long way since we saw it as “Boot to Gecko” back at MWC last February, and now looks a bit …