Techmeme
January 31, 2012, 2:50 PM

Top News

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
Andreessen Horowitz Closes $1.5 Billion New Fund  —  Last week, we heard from Evelyn Rusli at the New York Times that Andreessen Horowitz was in the process of raising $1.5 billion for the venture firm.  Today, partner Ben Horowitz has confirmed that the fund has closed …
Douglas MacMillan / Bloomberg:
Facebook's Sandberg in Spotlight En Route to IPO  —  Facebook Inc.'s Sheryl Sandberg recently threw a fundraiser for President Obama, dining with Lady Gaga and the president himself.  Last week, she was a highly visible co-chair of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Pablo Chavez / Google Public Policy Blog:
Changing our privacy policies, not our privacy controls  —  Last week we heard from members of Congress about Google's plans to update our privacy policies by consolidating them into a single document on March 1.  Protecting people's privacy is something we think about all day across the company …
Bobbie Johnson / GigaOM:
Who is Apple's new retail boss, and what will he do?  —  Tim Cook has made his first major appointment since taking the reins at Apple, bringing in the head of British technology retailer Dixons, John Browett.  He comes in to fill the gap left by the departure of Ron Johnson …
EU Press Room:
Antitrust: Commission opens proceedings against Samsung  —  The European Commission has opened a formal investigation to assess whether Samsung Electronics has abusively, and in contravention of a commitment it gave to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) …
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Amazon S3 Reports Staggering Growth in 2011  —  Amazon Web Services just reported jaw-dropping growth in the number of objects stored in Amazon S3 year over year.  —  “As of the end of 2011, there are 762 billion (762,000,000,000) objects in Amazon S3.  We process over 500,000 requests per second …
Wall Street Journal:
The Coming Tech-led Boom  —  Three breakthroughs are poised to transform this century as much as telephony and electricity did the last.  —  In January 1912, the United States emerged from a two-year recession.  Nineteen more followed—along with a century of phenomenal economic growth.
Florian Mueller / FOSS Patents:
German appeals court upholds Galaxy Tab 10.1 injunction — but on different legal basis than Apple's design right  —  This morning, the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court (an appeals court) announced that it has upheld a preliminary injunction against the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and has confirmed …
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Zynga CEO: We aren't the copycats on Bingo social game (exclusive interview)  —  Mark Pincus, chief executive of social gaming giant Zynga, denied that Zynga copied a rival's Bingo game on Facebook.  Instead, he said in an exclusive interview with VentureBeat that the accuser in this case borrowed from Zynga.
Ina Fried / AllThingsD:
Twitter's Dick Costolo on Ads, Censorship and Google (Video)  —  Twitter CEO Dick Costolo kicked off D: Dive Into Media with a bang on Monday, defending its ability to block tweets by country, rejecting the need for a stock offering and declaring 2012 to be the year of the Twitter election.
Zach Epstein / BGR:
Can these four superheroes rescue RIM?  —  Research In Motion's newly appointed CEO Thorsten Heins said during his first day on the job that hiring a new marketing boss and revamping the company's marketing strategy was among his first orders of business.  If some of us were unsure why finding …
Jim Dalrymple / The Loop:
Apple updates Final Cut Pro X with multicam, broadcast monitoring  —  Apple updates Final Cut Pro X with multicam, broadcast monitoring  —  Apple on Tuesday updated its professional workflow application, Final Cut Pro X, adding a number of significant features.
Alex Chitu / Google Operating System:
Country-Specific Blogger URLs  —  Google found an interesting trick to defend Blogger blogs against local laws: redirect readers to country-specific domains and only remove those URLs if required.  —  “Over the coming weeks you might notice that the URL of a blog you're reading has been redirected …
Reuters:
Mexicans overcharged billions for phone, web: study  —  (Reuters) - Mexicans have been overcharged $13.4 billion a year for phone and internet services as the industry dominated by billionaire Carlos Slim gouges customers and keeps the economy from growing, a study released on Monday said.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Rumor: Office 15 for Windows 8 will be desktop apps, not fully Metro style  —  Microsoft's next generation of Office, codenamed Office 15, will receive interface tweaks to make it more touch friendly on Windows 8, including a radial menu system, but won't be rebuilt as full “Metro style” apps using the new WinRT programming model.
Nick Bilton / Bits:
Obama and Romney Campaigns Adopt Square for Funding  —  Social media was the game-changing technology that altered the course of the 2008 presidential election.In 2012, mobile payments could be the transformational technology, as millions of political supporters are given the ability to collect money on smartphones for candidates.
Wall Street Journal:
Verizon's Tangled Web  —  As Phone Giant Battles Cable in FiOS Fight, Wireless Unit Supports Comcast  —  As Verizon Communications Inc. pushes for more cable-television and high-speed Internet subscribers, a new competitor is emerging: its own subsidiary, Verizon Wireless.
Greg Sterling / Marketing Land:
Seeking To Banish “Distraction” Microsoft Replaces Hotmail Display Ads With Deals  —  Microsoft is trying to make ads in Hotmail better.  The company is replacing conventional display ads in its webmail service with deal ads that it believes will be more relevant and interesting to users.

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