Google Developing Home Entertainment System  —  Google Inc. is developing a home-entertainment system that streams music wirelessly throughout the home and would be marketed under the company's own brand, according to people briefed on the company's plans.  —  The effort marks a sharp shift …

Apple is rushing to finalize apps for onstage iPad 3 demos and commercials  —  Now that the beans have been, mostly, spilled with regards to the early March announcement of the iPad 3, more information is coming forward about Apple's preparations for the event.

Microsoft: No plug-ins allowed on Windows on ARM  —  Summary: Microsoft has changed direction and is now disallowing browser plug-ins on Windows 8 on ARM devices, according to a blog post from the president of the Windows division.  —  As we Microsoft watchers continue to parse the 8,600-word post …

Texas Jury Strikes Down Patent Troll's Claim to Own the Interactive Web  —  TYLER, Texas — After threatening web companies for more than a decade, Michael Doyle and his patent-holding company Eola — named after the Irish word for knowledge — may be finished.

Big News: Germany Says It Won't Sign ACTA  —  Okay, things just got serious over ACTA.  In our post on Latvia bailing on signing ACTA, we noted that in joining with Poland and the Czech Republic, these were still much smaller European states, and unlikely to have too much of an impact.

‘Do Not Track’ Tool Promises Page Loads Up to Four Times Faster  —  “Do Not Track” technologies have become an increasingly standard part of the Internet today, offering users a variety of ways to protect their privacy as they surf the Web.  —  Yet while there are numerous anti-tracking tools …

QWERTY FTW!  The Droid 4 Is Now Available, $199 From Verizon or $99 At Amazon  —  The Droid 4 has landed.  The fourth incarnation of the most important Android series is now on sale.  Verizon is hawking the phone for $199 with a two-year contact, but the phone is also available through Amazon where it's only $99 on-contract.

Winning streak ends: Motorola Mobility fails to win 3G/UMTS-based injunction against Apple in Germany  —  Apple's Mannheim jinx has been broken: this morning, Judge Andreas Voss of the Mannheim Regional Court announced that a Motorola Mobility lawsuit over a patent declared essential …

Music Labels' Joint Venture, VEVO, Shows Pirated NFL Game At Sundance  —  Over the last decade the major music labels — and their trade organization, the Recording Industry Association of America — have established a repeated pattern of attacking consumers in the name of squelching illegal file-sharing.

Fire in the Hole!  Amazon May Ship 9-Inch Kindle by Midyear.  —  There's no question that Amazon's going to sell a lot of Kindle Fires this year.  And it might sell even more if it rolls out new and larger versions of the device.  And according to some, that's the plan.

FBI: Steve Jobs had 2.65 GPA, avoided the gym, wasn't a communist  —  Steve Jobs shows off a Next computer in Redwood City, Calif., on April 4, 1991.  (Ben Margot / Associated Press)  —  We detailed the major tidbits from Steve Jobs' just-disclosed FBI files in an earlier post.

Kickstarter crosses threshold as two projects hit $1 million in donations  —  The crowdsourced funding site Kickstarter has been doing remarkably well recently, giving thousands of entrepreneurs the opportunity to bring their projects to life.  It also just hit a major milestone …

Apple Working on Hot 3D Eye-Tracking Interface for Gaming & iPhone!  —  On Date, the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that reveals a hot 3D eye-tracking based interface that will be used for gaming, digital photography and videography …

Amazon: No plans to launch a standalone video service soon  —  Amazon has aggressively grown its Prime Instant Videos service over the past year, more than tripling the amount of content available to subscribers since launch.  And as Amazon continues to add more content to Prime Instant Video …

Aviary bringing photo-editing tech to Windows Phone apps  —  Aviary, a photo-editing tech startup backed by investors including Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, is placing a bet on Nokia and Windows Phone with plans to expand its platform to the Microsoft mobile operating system …

W3C co-chair: Apple, Google power causing Open Web crisis  —  The dominance of Apple and Google mobile browsers is leading to a situation that's even worse for Web programming than the former dominance of Internet Explorer, a standards group leader warned today.

Greg Kumparak Is Joining PandoDaily!  —  We're thrilled to announce our next big hire: Greg Kumparak — former Mobile Editor at TechCrunch — is joining PandoDaily.  —  Greg will be joining the Pando team as our editor in charge of incubators and accelerators.

Download a Copy of The Pirate Bay, It's Only 90 MB  —  Last month The Pirate Bay announced that it will stop hosting torrents in the very near future.  —  This change is expected to go into effect before the end of the month.  From then on, Pirate Bay users can only download files through magnet links.

Cars That Tweet, Buy Tickets  —  As Distracted-Driving Push Fades, Auto Makers Will Let Drivers Check Facebook, Buy Movie Tickets  —  Undaunted by fear of safety regulations, auto makers are piling new technologies into their vehicles: everything from 17-inch dashboard screens to services that check Facebook and buy movie tickets.