Top Items:
Nick Wingfield / New York Times:
Microsoft, Defying Image, Has a Design Gem in Windows Phone — “GORGEOUS,” raves The Huffington Post. — “Best-looking smartphone operating system in the industry,” gushes Slate. — “Far superior to most if not all the Android smartphones,” says TechCrunch. — Sounds like the usual adulation for a gadget from Apple.
RELATED:
Dan Seifert / MobileBurn.com:
“Sleek, metallic” Nokia Lumia 900 to debut for AT&T next week — The New York Times is reporting that the long-awaited flagship Nokia Windows Phone smartphone for the U.S. will debut next week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Citing unnamed sources, the Times describes the phone as …
Jason Hiner / Tech Sanity Check Blog:
Why Android tablets failed: A postmortem — Takeaway: Android tablets were expected to give the Apple iPad fierce competition in 2011. It never happened. Here's why Android tablets flopped. — As I gear up for CES 2012 next week, I can't help but think back to CES 2011 where the big story was all about Android tablets.
Discussion:
SlashGear, Hardware 2.0 Blog and CNET, Thanks:abraham_pareja
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
2011: The Year Google & Bing Took Away From SEOs & Publishers — Increasingly over the years, search engines — Google in particular — have given more and more support to SEOs and publishers. But 2011 marked the first significant reversal that I can recall, with both linking and keyword data being withheld.
Discussion:
HubSpot's Inbound … and Marketplace …
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft Blog:
Microsoft: It's business as usual with Windows Phone updates — Summary: ‘Nothing has changed in regard to how we work with carriers to deliver Windows Phone updates to our customers,’ maintained a Microsoft official following a change in Microsoft's update disclosure policy.
Trevor / Electronic Frontier Foundation:
U.S. Government Threatens Free Speech With Calls for Twitter Censorship — “[T]he ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas....That at any rate is the theory of our Constitution.” — Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, dissent in Abrams v. United States, 1919
Joanna Stern / The Verge:
OLPC XO 3.0 tablet: an 8-inch tablet for $100, with Android and Sugar options for the children (update: pictures!) — It was over four years ago that OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte showed off images of an XO tablet, and promised it would ship to kids of the developing world in 2010 for $100 each.
Discussion:
TechCrunch, TeleRead, Digits, Examiner, FT Tech Hub, Liliputing, Daring Fireball, netbooknews.com, CNET, Electronista, Techie Buzz, Gizmodo UK, Liliputing, LAPTOP Magazine, VentureBeat, Gizmodo, IntoMobile, TechCrunch, Computerworld and Engadget
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
NinjaVideo “queen” gets 22 months in jail, owes $200,000 to Hollywood — NinjaVideo.net's “queen” is going to jail—and paying the MPAA over $200,000. — A federal judge today sentenced Hana Amal “Queen Phara” Beshara to 22 months in a West Virginia prison and enrolled her (at her request) in a drug rehab program there.
Discussion:
Deadline.com/hollywood, Reuters, Hollywood Reporter, Broadcasting & Cable and Company Town
Matt Brian / The Next Web:
Apple facing $1.88 million lawsuit in China over sales of illegal book downloads — Apple will be required to defend itself in a Beijing court after officials accepted a case filed by nine well-known Chinese writers against the company, demanding that it pays the authors 11.91 million yuan …
Discussion:
People's Daily Online, SlashGear, TeleRead, Electronista and ZDNet
Loic Le Meur:
Path is where the A list hangs out, don't tell anyone. — I was about to name them but no, Path is about privacy first, so I won't. Want to know where most influential and successful entrepreneurs, VCs and tech writers hide online these days? How they spent their new years eve and with whom?
Discussion:
@jspepper, @dannysullivan, @fredericl, Business Insider and Gizmodo
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
HTML5 cross-platform game company Moblyng shuts down (exclusive) — Moblyng was ahead of its time in making cross-platform HTML5 games for mobile devices. Too far ahead, it seems, as the company has shut down, VentureBeat has learned. — Just a year ago, the company said in a filing …
Steve Myers / Poynter:
How Google beat AP with Iowa caucus results (and why it matters) — WNYC's John Keefe decided to use Google's election results for his map tracking the results of Iowa's GOP caucus for three reasons: — Google's data were easier to deal with than the files provided by the Associated Press.
Discussion:
ReadWriteWeb and GigaOM, more at Mediagazer »
