Windows Phone 8 Preview  —  Thanks to a recent leak which has revealed some interesting information about the next major Windows Phone version, I can now publicly discuss Windows Phone 8 for the first time.  —  Windows Phone 8, codenamed Apollo, will be based on the Windows 8 kernel and not on Windows CE as are current versions.

Is Facebook Really a Good Business?  —  It's nothing without its users, and we're a fickle bunch.  —  Facebook is the strangest Internet company ever to make it big.  Compare Mark Zuckerberg's site with Amazon, which just wants to sell you stuff—an old business in a new medium.

Apple removed products from German online store due to Motorola injunction based on FRAND patent  —  There are two big Apple-Motorola news items from Germany today:  — As I reported earlier, Motorola Mobility today won a permanent injunction against the push email feature of Apple's iCloud and the related client devices.

RIM Offering Free PlayBook Tablets to Woo Android Developers  —  Research In Motion plans to give away tablets to Android developers who quickly port their apps to run on the PlayBook device.  —  RIM developer executive Alec Saunders mentioned the program in a Twitter message on Thursday …

Tim Cook boasts about Apple's charitable contributions during internal all-hands meeting  —  Apple CEO Tim Cook held a town hall meeting last week to celebrate Apple's record quarter, and in addition to giving employees deep discounts on Apple products, we're now hearing that he spent quite …

Google not ‘forthcoming’ during congressional questioning  —  House lawmakers grilled Google officials for two hours on Thursday about the company's recent privacy changes, but Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.) said she wasn't satisfied with their answers.  —  “At the end of the day …

Nokia Lumia 900 now available for pre-order at Microsoft's retail stores with $25 downpayment  —  We're still not sure when we'll see Nokia's Lumia 900 (signs currently point to March), but if you want to ensure you'll be among the first to have it, you can pre-order the handset now at Microsoft's retail stores.

Super Bowl XLVI releases free official app for iOS and Android  —  If you're going to the Super Bowl, you've probably already spent plenty of money.  Fortunately, the NFL isn't asking anything for its official Super Bowl XLVI app, released yesterday.  While it's out on both iOS and Android …

Key Internet operator VeriSign hit by hackers  —  (Reuters) - VeriSign Inc, the company in charge of delivering people safely to more than half the world's websites, has been hacked repeatedly by outsiders who stole undisclosed information from the leading Internet infrastructure company.

Amazon's Junglee.com Goes Live In India As An “Advertising Service”; Our Take  —  Well, looks like we were right about Amazon launching in India as Junglee.com: the site has gone live and features 120 million products from 14,000 brands, reports BGR India.  What's particularly interesting …

Why Piracy Is Indispensable For The Survival Of Our Culture  —  Last Year Techdirt wrote about the case of the huge collection of historic jazz recordings that had been acquired by the US National Jazz Museum.  The central problem is that even if the recordings can be digitized before they deteriorate …

Apple researching social fitness tech sporting real-time sharing of performance data for competitive workouts  —  In the future, hitting the gym along with your iPhone-toting pals could spur competitiveness in ways unlike ever before.  Apple's mobile devices run a variety of fitness apps …

Judge complains of too many patents in Apple case against Motorola  —  Circuit Judge Posner has expressed dissatisfaction with the number of patents Apple is arguing against Motorola, asking the company to “winnow” its claims.  —  Apple originally brought 15 patent claims against Motorola …

GSM Galaxy Nexus Receives Google Wallet Access on AT&T, Still Nothing for the LTE Variant on Verizon  —  By now, most of you know the story behind Google Wallet and the fact that it has only been officially available to the Nexus S 4G on Sprint, something that irritates the hell out of all new Galaxy Nexus owners.

The DeanBeat: Billionaire Mark Pincus breaks out of quiet period (exclusive interview)  —  Mark Pincus is the newest billionaire in Silicon Valley, thanks to the December initial public offering of Zynga, the social game giant he founded in 2007.  —  For much of last year …

How Marc Andreessen makes Silicon Valley magic  —  There's no question that Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital firm headed up by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, has become a major force since it was founded back in 2009.  The young VC firm has funded some of the best and brightest companies …

Microsoft Continues Sniping at Google's Snooping … Microsoft Corp. expanded its gorilla marketing against Google Inc. with a YouTube video spoofing changes to Gmail privacy policies.  —  The “Gmail Man” video pokes fun at the changes at Google with a fictional snooping mailman who misinterprets …

Exclusive Look Inside The MTA-MasterCard PayPass Pilot: 17,000 NYC Customers In Six Months  —  For the first time ever, the results of the pilot have been provided, offering insight into just how much traction this technology is seeing among consumers—and how far it is from entering the mainstream.

I switched to Bing on my iPhone and I kind of liked it  —  By the time that Microsoft announced its Bing search engine in 2009, Google had long since become a verb and several failed attempts at the search game were under the bridge.  But Bing was something different, a visually appealing …

Apple working on fix for iTunes Match bug that matches explicit songs as clean  —  Cult of Mac today publicized a bug in iTunes Match that matches explicit tracks to clean versions.  The issue resides in Apple's iTunes Match software that is sometimes unable to distinguish clean versions …

Exclusive: Hacked companies still not telling investors  —  (Reuters) - At least a half-dozen major U.S. companies whose computers have been infiltrated by cyber criminals or international spies have not admitted to the incidents despite new guidance from securities regulators urging such disclosures.

Skype rolls out update for Windows with full HD video calling, group screen sharing  —  Skype rolled out its version 5.8 software update for Windows users today, and it brings with it a couple of fairly notable features.  That includes full HD video calling (provided you have a suitable webcam …