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8:50 AM ET, December 13, 2011

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Ina Fried / AllThingsD:
Exclusive: Microsoft Replaces Lees as Head of Windows Phone Business  —  Microsoft is moving the current head of its Windows Phone business, Andy Lees, to a new role, AllThingsD has learned.  —  Terry Myerson, the corporate VP who has led engineering efforts for the phone unit …
RELATED:
Joe Wilcox / BetaNews:
Did Steve Ballmer just promote or demote Windows Phone chief?  —  I'm scratching my head wondering.  You want to answer that one?  If you work for Microsoft, I'd love your anonymous response.  —  This afternoon, in an email sent to Microsoft employees, CEO Steve Ballmer announced …
Discussion: WinRumors and BGR
Wall Street Journal:
Apple Softens Stance to Lure Mobile Ads  —  Apple Inc. is learning to compromise.  —  Facing challenges winning over advertisers for its iAd mobile advertising service, Apple is softening its approach to advertisers as it loses ground to Google Inc. in the fast-growing mobile ad market.
RELATED:
Daniel Eran Dilger / AppleInsider:   IDC offers scathing prediction of certain death for Apple's iAd program
Michael Morisy / Muckrock:
FBI: Carrier IQ files used for “law enforcement purposes”  —  The spook in your pocket  —  A recent FOIA request to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for “manuals, documents or other written guidance used to access or analyze data gathered by programs developed or deployed by Carrier IQ” was met with a telling denial.
RELATED:
John Paczkowski / AllThingsD:
Exclusive Interview: Carrier IQ Gets Transparent About Its Mobile Monitoring
Discussion: Engadget and Electronista
Brad McCarty / The Next Web:
The FBI is using Carrier IQ data in investigations? Not so fast...
Discussion: Examiner and SlashGear
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Apple Reportedly Buying Flash Memory Company Anobit For $400 Million - $500 Million  —  Apple is reportedly going to use part of its enormous pile of cash to buy an Israeli fabless semiconductor company that specializes in flash storage solutions.  Calcalist reports - in Hebrew …
Tom Warren / WinRumors:
Windows Phone SMS attack discovered, reboots device and disables messaging hub  —  Microsoft's range of Windows Phone devices suffer from a denial-of-service attack that allows attackers to disable the messaging functionality on a device.  —  The flaw works simply by sending an SMS to a Windows Phone user.
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
Wikipedia Mulls Total Blackout to Oppose SOPA  —  Later this week, the Senate's House Judiciary Committee will vote on the “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA).  —  Supporters of the bill say it's needed to safeguard the interests of rightsholders who claim their businesses are threatened by online piracy.
RELATED:
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Asher Moses / Sydney Morning Herald:
Kevin v the world: reformed pirate sues tech giants for millions  —  Asher Moses  —  The Sydney entrepreneur who created Kazaa is a shareholder and chairman of a US company that is suing the biggest names on the internet, including Google and Amazon, for patent infringement in a case …
Discussion: The Register and Silicon Republic
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
WordPress 3.3 Released To The Masses; Includes iPad Optimization, Tumblr Importer And More  —  After 14 million downloads of WordPress 3.2, WordPress 3.3 is being released to the wild today.  Codenamed “Sonny” in honor of the jazz saxophonist Sonny Stitt, WordPress 3.3 is available for download …
Alex Sherman / Bloomberg:
Dish Network Seeks to Partner With T-Mobile USA If AT&T Acquisition Fails  —  Dish Network Corp. (DISH), the second largest U.S. satellite-TV provider, is seeking to partner with T-Mobile USA if AT&T Inc. (T)'s takeover bid fails, Chief Executive Officer Joseph Clayton said in an interview.
RELATED:
Reuters:
AT&T mulling whether, how to revise T-Mobile deal
Discussion: Bloomberg
Jeff Roberts / paidContent:
A Closer Look At Apple's Role In The E-book ‘Conspiracy’  —  In the mushrooming controversy over e-books, it's easy to understand the publishers' motives.  But what about Apple?  (NSDQ: AAPL) Did the company want to raise book prices in order to protect its iPad and blunt the rise of Amazon?
Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:
Rara Sells Streaming Music to Everyone Who Hasn't Heard of Streaming Music  —  You get your legal music on the Web from services like Apple, Amazon, Google, Spotify, and Pandora.  Also, perhaps, from services like Rhapsody, MOG and Rdio.  Etc.  —  Yet here comes one more, via Rara.com.
AppleInsider:
Apple adds ability to delete individual Photo Stream pics in iOS 5.1 beta 2  —  Apple on Monday provided developers with a second beta of iOS 5.1, with the latest update granting the ability to delete individual photos synced to the iCloud Photo Stream feature.
Nicholas Carlson / Business Insider:
Why Twitter Engineers And Execs Keep Quitting - One Insider's Explanation  —  From the outside, Twitter seems like it's doing very well.  It has 2,400 advertisers and 100 million active users, 50 million of whom send 250 million tweets every day.  The company is worth $8 billion on secondary markets.
Discussion: TechCrunch
Nick Bilton / Bits:
Modern Warfare 3 Passes $1 Billion in Sales in 16 Days  —  Modern Warfare 3, the first-person shooter video game, passed $1 billion in sales in just 16 days, according to Activision Blizzard, the game's distributor.  Modern Warfare 2, an earlier installment of the game, took 60 days to reach the same milestone.
Adrianne Jeffries / Betabeat:
Pay-to-Pitch Comes Creeping Back: How Much Is Too Much?  —  Entrepreneurs and other startup economy workers have started complaining about rising fees of events around town—the sheer abundance of tech events in New York has us habituated to all-star panels and pizza for $0 to $5.
Wall Street Journal:
Facebook Doesn't Need to ‘Like’ Wall Street  —  Mark Zuckerberg should unfriend Wall Street.  —  Facebook's founder has come a long way from his Harvard University dorm room, where the idea of a social-networking site first took shape.  As The Wall Street Journal reported recently …
Discussion: memeburn
Chris Martin / Inquirer:
O2 starts an Apple Iphone 4S rental scheme  —  UK MOBILE OPERATOR O2 has announced it has started a rental scheme for the Iphone 4S smartphone.  —  The service is called O2 Lease, which it claims is the UK's first smartphone leasing service.  The system allows customers to rent specifically …
Jon Mitchell / ReadWriteWeb:
Blogger Gets “The First of Many Google+ Features”  —  Blogger has announced “the first of many Google+ features” today, launching an automatic +snippet sharing box after you publish a blog post.  It only saves a few clicks, but this makes it as easy as humanly possible to share Blogger posts to your Google+ circles.
J.B. / Fusible.com:
Microsoft using So.cl domain hack for private beta of its new social network  —  If you have been hoping to catch a glimpse of Microsoft's new social network, called Socl, you won't have any luck with the web address socl.com.  The service, which is in private beta, is currently only available to a very limited audience.
Discussion: SlashGear and Microsoft News
Jeff Bertolucci / PC World:
Study: Tablet Buyers Use Wi-Fi, Not Cellular Data  —  Tablet owners overwhelming prefer Wi-Fi-only devices over those with cellular connections, according to a new study by Connected Intelligence, a service from market research firm The NPD Group.  —  Slate users are relying more and more on Wi-Fi for a number of reasons.
 
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 More Items: 
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Fast Society Deadpools Its Messaging App, Preps Cameo For Launch
Discussion: Betabeat and GigaOM
Elinor Mills / CNET News:
Google Wallet stores too much unencrypted data in a rooted device—report
Sharon Gaudin / Computerworld:
Holiday online spending up 15% as Green Monday hits
Discussion: BGR and AllThingsD
Siobhan Gorman / Wall Street Journal:
U.S. Probe Ties Chinese Cyberspying to Military
Discussion: The Verge, ZDNet and SC Magazine US
Brittany Darwell / Inside Facebook:
Facebook Testing Private Messages Between People and Pages
Steve Lohr / Bits:
Are We Suffering Global Gadget Fatigue?
Discussion: The Verge, TechCrunch and MediaFile
 Earlier Items: 
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
News Aggregator Thoora Shuts Down After Taking 2 Years To Launch
Discussion: Mark Evans Tech
Roger Cheng / CNET News:
AT&T, Verizon test 4G LTE Nokia Lumia phone
Jesus Diaz / Gizmodo:
A Very Rare Video of Steve Jobs Telling the History of Apple
LucianParfeni / Softpedia News:
Firefox Source Code Is So Big, It Hit the 32-Bit Virtual Address Space Limit