Techmeme: Microsoft confirms Messenger will be retired and users migrated to Skype on March 15 (Emil Protalinski/The Next Web)

January 9, 2013, 12:50 PM

Top News

Sinead Carew / Reuters:

T-Mobile USA to soon sell iPhones, cut subsidies: CEO — (Reuters) - Deutsche Telekom AG (DTEGn.DE) unit T-Mobile USA will start selling the Apple Inc (AAPL.O) iPhone in about three to four months and will enforce its plan to get rid of cellphone subsidies in a similar timeframe, according to Chief Executive John Legere.

Chris Ziegler / The Verge:

T-Mobile will launch refreshed Galaxy S III with LTE support

More: TmoNews, IntoMobile, LAPTOP Magazine, Gotta Be Mobile, The Next Web, Engadget and FierceWireless

Kevin C. Tofel / GigaOM:

T-Mobile appeals with free 4G in laptops; no-contract unlimited smartphone data

More: T-Mobile News, ZDNet, BGR, AllThingsD, Phone Scoop, PhoneArena and Gizmodo

Eric Slivka / MacRumors:

T-Mobile USA Now Supporting 1.9 Million iPhones, Adding 100,000 Per Month

More: TmoNews, AppleInsider, Electronista, PhoneArena, LAPTOP Magazine, Engadget, Examiner, Macgasm and Mashable!

Nathan Ingraham / The Verge:

T-Mobile launching nationwide HD Voice, plans to cover 100 million people with LTE by mid-2013

More: T-Mobile News, PC Magazine, PhoneArena, digitaltrends.com, Engadget, PhoneArena, PC Magazine and Engadget

Jessica E. Lessin / Wall Street Journal:

Apple Working On a Less-Expensive iPhone — Apple Inc. is working on a lower-end iPhone, according to people briefed on the matter, a big shift in strategy as its supremacy in smartphones has slipped. — While Apple has explored such a device for years, the plan has been progressing …

Brian Barrett / Gizmodo:

Bloomberg: That Cheaper iPhone Would Cost $100-$150 — Piling on the Wall Street Journal's cheap iPhone rumor resurrection, Bloomberg is reporting that the budget-friendly device Apple is working on will cost in the $100-$150 range. It would debut, at the very earliest, at the end of this year.

More: Bloomberg, CNET, Tech Trader Daily, digitaltrends.com, BGR, Business Insider, Macgasm and iDownloadBlog.com

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

Microsoft confirms Messenger will be retired and users migrated to Skype on March 15 — Microsoft on Tuesday mass emailed its 100 million+ Messenger users to let them know that the service is officially being retired on March 15, 2013. On that date, all users will be migrated to Skype …

More: The Verge, PC Magazine, InfoWorld, The Register, Mashable!, PC World, Macgasm, Geek.com, WebProNews, Engadget, LiveSide.net, Softpedia News, BetaNews, Electronista, SlashGear, memeburn, WinBeta, ZDNet, Neowin, CNET and Pocket-lint

New York Times:

Onlike Banking Attacks Were Work of Iran, U.S. Officials Say — SAN FRANCISCO — The attackers hit one American bank after the next. As in so many previous attacks, dozens of online banking sites slowed, hiccupped or ground to a halt before recovering several minutes later.

More: Betabeat, ZDNet, SiliconANGLE, CNET, DailyTech, Gizmodo, The Verge, SlashGear, 24/7 Wall St. and Hillicon Valley

T.C. Sottek / The Verge:

Exclusive interview: Valve's Gabe Newell on Steam Box, biometrics, and the future of gaming — A rare and candid talk with Valve's boss — We just sat down for a rare and wide-ranging interview with Valve CEO Gabe Newell, who opened up to The Verge with details about the company's upcoming …

More: Engadget, AllThingsD, ExtremeTech, PC Gamer, Network World, PR Newswire, Inquirer, Neowin, T3 News, Polygon, ITworld.com, Gamasutra, WebProNews, VG247, Geek.com, gameinformer.com, Kotaku, Softpedia News, Edge Online, Gizmodo, GamesIndustry International and Kotaku

Tweets: @stroughtonsmith and @viticci

Poornima Gupta / Reuters:

Samsung's big push for 2013: content, corporates — (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics, the global leader in consumer smartphones, is planning two major thrusts in 2013: bulking up mobile content and moving faster into the corporate market dominated by Research in Motion.

Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:

Google Withdraws Patent Claims Against Microsoft — Google today filed with the U.S. International Trade Commission to terminate its attempt to stop Microsoft from using video-compression technology on the Xbox. — Microsoft wants to license two standards-essential patents for H.264 that Google controls …

More: CNET, Reuters, The Register, Ars Technica, TechNet Blogs, Wall Street Journal, 9to5Google, FOSS Patents, DailyTech, GamePolitics blogs, memeburn, PhoneArena, FOSS Patents, Electronista, The Next Web, Gizmodo and Engadget

Dieter Bohn / The Verge:

Pebble smartwatch finally shipping January 23rd, we talk to CEO about its future — From Kickstarter to the biggest tech show on earth, and soon on your wrist — The Pebble smartwatch is best-known for being a smash hit on Kickstarter. It broke records and leapt to a total of 85,000 orders by the time the campaign ended.

More: The Verge, ABCNEWS, VentureBeat, NYT Bits, Digits, Business Insider, Engadget, The Next Web and AllThingsD

Vlad Savov / The Verge:

It's official: 3D is dead — The tech industry's annual hot air balloon show is dead, and the world's better for it — There's something about 2013's Consumer Electronics Show that's different from every other iteration this decade. You might not realize it immediately …

More: Mercury News and Guardian

David Kravets / Wired:

Student Suspended for Refusing to Wear RFID Tracker Loses Lawsuit — A Texas high school student who claimed her student identification was the “Mark of the Beast” because it was implanted with a radio-frequency identification chip has lost her federal court bid Tuesday challenging her suspension …

More: Mashable!

Lucas Mearian / Computerworld:

Dropbox to be included on all Samsung flagship phones and camera — Users get 50GB of cloud capacity for two years for free — LAS VEGAS — Dropbox on Wednesday announced tighter integration of its cloud storage and file-sharing service with Samsung products, from smartphones to televisions.

More: InfoWorld, TechRadar.com and The Droid Guy

Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:

LinkedIn Hits 200 Million Users Worldwide — Adding New Users At Rate Of Two Per Second — LinkedIn has announced it has reached 200 million user registrations worldwide — with new users being added at an average rate of two per second (or 172,800 per day).

More: Official LinkedIn Blog, VatorNews, 9to5Mac, CNET, DailyFinance.com, Forbes, VentureBeat, The Verge, Digits, The Next Web, Softpedia News, memeburn, WebProNews, Mashable! and BostInno

Diane Bartz / Reuters:

Justice Department against most sales bans for infringing key patents — (Reuters) - Companies that own a key patent, such as those that ensure mobile and other electronic devices work together, should be allowed to win sales bans as a punishment for infringement only in rare, very specific cases …

More: CNET, The Verge, AppleInsider and MacNN

Steve Lohr / NYT Bits:

Justice Department and Patent Office Issue Policy Statement on Patents

Richard Sandomir / New York Times:

Baseball Dumping Dugout-to-Bullpen Landlines — The reserve clause is dead. And so are wool uniforms. There are no longer eight teams in each league. And the Houston Astros have departed the National League. — Major League Baseball is now about to disconnect the landlines that link dugouts to bullpens.

More: T-Mobile News, CNET, FierceMobileContent News, ESPN, WebProNews, Electronista and GeekWire. Thanks:@justwalden

Daniel Cooper / Engadget:

Panasonic launches two new Toughpads, offers a choice of Windows or Android — Panasonic's launching a pair of Toughpads that'll take none of your nonsense — no matter what you throw at it. The FZ-G1 is a 10-inch version that runs Windows 8 Pro, while the seven-inch JT-B1 runs Ice Cream Sandwich.

More: ZDNet, LAPTOP Magazine, The Seattle Times, Inquirer, Pocketnow, Mashable! and Ubergizmo

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Facebook Removes Instagram User Counts From Developer API After Holiday Traffic Confusion — In the aftermath of a controversial story claiming Instagram's traffic numbers were down, the data that was the source of the story has now disappeared altogether. — Instagram was in the spotlight …

More: AllFacebook, PetaPixel and Gizmodo

Zack Whittaker / ZDNet:

Verizon: 9.8 million activations during Q4 — Summary: In its latest regulatory filing, Verizon says it will see record activations during the fourth quarter, driven mostly by the iPhone. — Zack Whittaker — Following AT&T's move yesterday to dish out the latest details on the state of its affairs …

More: AppleInsider, The Verge, ReadWrite, The Next Web and Edible Apple

Damaster / LiveSide.net:

Microsoft account enables Sina Weibo connection, integrates into Windows Phone, Windows 8, SkyDrive, and more — We reported as early as February last year that Microsoft is working on connecting Chinese micro-blogging service Sina Weibo to Microsoft account.

More: Market Wire, Engadget, WMPoweruser and All About Windows Phone

James Trew / Engadget:

Samsung announces eight-core Exynos 5 ‘Octa’ chip at CES — Samsung's second keynote, and the news keeps coming. The mobile giant has just annouced a new Exynos 5 Octa chip, based on the ARM big.LITTLE / Cortex A15 architecture. Designed to be a low powered, high performance mobile processor.

More: The Verge, BGR and Gizmodo

Ryan Gallagher / Slate:

U.S. Spy Law Authorizes Mass Surveillance of European Citizens: Report — Participants work at their laptops at the annual Chaos Computer Club computer hackers' congress in Hamburg, Germany. They probably would not be pleased with FISA. — Europeans, take note: The U.S. government …

Ernesto / TorrentFreak:

Certified BitTorrent Box Brings uTorrent to Your TV — With a quarter billion active users a month BitTorrent is without a doubt the most used file-sharing platform. — The vast majority of these BitTorrent users download video files, but despite these staggering statistics it can still …

More: Ars Technica

Sponsor Posts

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Inside NuGet for C++ — NuGet support for C++ projects in Visual Studio has arrived in NuGet 2.5! It's been around for about a month now so we figured we'd go talk to one of the developers who helped make it happen, Garrett Serack.

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:

Hadoop, Hadoop, Hurrah! HDP for Windows is Now GA! — Today we are very excited to announce that Hortonworks Data Platform for Windows (HDP for Windows) is now generally available and ready to support the most demanding production workloads.

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“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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