How Americans used their phones to assist with purchasing decisions this holiday season  —  Main Findings  —  How Americans used their phones to assist with purchasing decisions this holiday season  —  More than half of adult cell phone owners used their cell phones while they were in a store during …

Apple Puts New Engineers On Fake Products Until It Can Trust Them  —  Apple is so obsessed with secrecy, it sometimes puts new hires on fake products until they can be trusted.  —  Adam Lashinsky reported this tidbit in his new book “Inside Apple,” and a former Apple employee confirmed …

Verizon shared data plans show up in employee training materials, still on track?  —  Verizon said it was working on a shared data solution for 2012, and according to an anonymous tipster, the new packages could be rolling out soon.  We've been told that training material for an update …

Apple combats scalpers with new lottery system for iPhone reservations in Hong Kong  —  Apple has implemented an interested system to fight those pesky scalpers who spoiled a recent iPhone 4S launch in Mainland China.  A newly set up page on the Hong Kong Apple online store has a lottery system …

Microsoft Office 15 technical preview kicks off  —  Summary: Microsoft is making available to select testers the technical preview of Office 15 client, server and services as of January 30.  —  Microsoft is kicking off the technical preview for its Office 15 client, servers and cloud services today, January 30.

The Obama Campaign Is Now Using Mobile Payments Device Square For Fundraising  —  The latest technology to be adopted by the Obama campaign—Square.  The mobile payments device is now being used by the Obama for fundraising, says the company.  Staff, fundraisers and others are being equipped …

Apple Releases iOS-like AirPort Utility 6.0 for Lion  —  Earlier today Apple pushed a series of updates for its AirPort Utility software, as well as a firmware update for AirPort Base Station and Time Capsule.  —  AirPort Utility has been updated to both version 5.6 (latest one was 5.5.3) …

All Change At Content Farm Demand Media: Three Of The Founders Are Out  —  Content farm Demand Media is known for churning lots of content through is sites, but today it's notable for another churn, of the executive kind: three of the people who helped found and build up the company are leaving.

The Real Story of How Dick Costolo Kicked Investors Off Twitter's Board  —  The dribs and drabs of news about the shakeup of Twitter's board last year has produced a confusing picture.  The message I was hearing from sources while I was out on maternity leave amounted to: “Nothing to see here.

Where's the Fire?  Kindle Sales Pushing Six Million for the Quarter.  —  Has anyone seen one of Amazon's new Kindle Fires in the wild?  I haven't.  But evidently they're everywhere.  You just need to know where to look to find them — like Stifel Nicolaus analyst Jordan Rohan.

AT&T to launch Samsung Galaxy Note on February 19th for $299.99 [video]  —  AT&T announced Monday that the Samsung Galaxy Note smartphone will be available in stores on February 19th for $299.99 on contact, a day after we recently reported.  Pre-orders are set to begin this weekend …

Rep. Markey releases draft of cellphone privacy bill  —  Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) released a draft of a cellphone privacy bill on Monday in response to the controversy surrounding cellphone tracking software, Carrier IQ.  —  The Mobile Device Privacy Act would require companies to disclose …

FDA staffers sue agency over surveillance of personal e-mail  —  The Food and Drug Administration secretly monitored the personal e-mail of a group of its own scientists and doctors after they warned Congress that the agency was approving medical devices that they believed posed unacceptable risks to patients, government documents show.

Facebook: Over 5 billion songs have been shared since September's f8  —  Whether you like the idea of “frictionless sharing” or not, Facebook has made a strong case for the service on stage at the Midem conference.  Dan Rose, the VP of Partnerships for the company, says that over 5 billion songs …

Amazon unit may be moving into sporting goods  —  (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc's Quidsi unit may be getting into sporting goods, challenging retailers in this niche, including Dick's Sporting Goods, Hibbett Sports and Cabela's, analysts at Credit Suisse said Monday.

Attorney General set to destroy tens of millions of users' legitimate MegaUpload files  —  An attorney for MegaUpload — which was shut down by the US government earlier this month, and whose assets have been frozen, following copyright complaints from the entertainment industry …

SnagFilms Grabs $7 Million to Share Indie Movies Online  —  It's easy to find blockbusters like “Transformers” online.  What about movies like “Casino Jack and the United States of Money”?  —  That's where SnagFilms comes in.  The start-up has distribution rights to more than 3,000 indie movies …

Codecademy Becomes A Platform: Now Anyone Can Write Programming Tutorials  —  One of the most buzzed-about startups over the last few months has been Codecademy — a site that looks to make programming accessible to just about anyone, with a variety of interactive, web-based courses …

Apparently Veoh Isn't Dead Enough For Universal Music; Asks For Rehearing Of Its Bogus Copyright Lawsuit  —  One of the key examples of what happens when you have bad, overly draconian copyright laws that burden companies falsely accused of infringement is Veoh.

Meet Bill Gates, the Man Who Changed Open Source Software  —  The meeting took place a week before Bill Gates retired from Microsoft, and the topic was open source software.  —  It was the summer of 2008, and for years, the open source community had viewed Microsoft as public enemy number one.

Apple Topples HP for Lead in Q4 ‘Client PC’ Sales, Says Canalys  —  Market research firm Canalys this afternoon offers its update on the PC market in Q4, in which the firm groups together tablet computers such as Apple's (AAPL) iPad among “client PCs,” as they term it.

Google Fires Kenya Lead Over Mocality  —  Google has reportedly fired its Kenya country manager, Olga Arara-Kimani, over a fraudulent use of Mocality's data.  —  Nairobitech reported: … Sponsor  —  Nelson Mattos, who had earlier made a statement expressing the company's mortification …

Streaming held back  —  Over the last couple of weeks, I've looked at availability of movies and TV shows that came out in the past year.  But what about movies that came two years ago?  Are those more available today than they were a year ago?  Let's look at the data.  —  2010: Box Office Winners availability

Verizon Says More Than 600 Websites Used In Cybersquatting Scam  —  In a case that shines light on the world of professional cybersquatters, Verizon is suing a website and a domain name registrar that placed ads on hundreds of sites with Verizon-like names.  —  In a complaint filed …