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August 9, 2012, 2:45 PM

Top News

Federal Trade Commission:

Google Will Pay $22.5 Million to Settle FTC Charges it Misrepresented Privacy Assurances to Users of Apple's Safari Internet Browser — Privacy Settlement is the Largest FTC Penalty Ever for Violation of a Commission Order — Google Inc. has agreed to pay a record $22.5 million civil penalty …

Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:

In Fight Over Largest Fine Ever, FTC Commissioners Disagreed Over Whether Google Should Admit Fault — As expected, Google will pay $22.5 million to settle with the FTC over violating its October 2011 privacy settlement. — Google is in trouble because it told users of the Safari browser …

More: The Next Web, Marketing Land and CNET. Tweets: @applespotlight

Amir Efrati / Wall Street Journal:

Borrowing from Google, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Begins Makeover — Yahoo Inc.'s rookie chief executive Marissa Mayer has made one thing clear to employees at the outset of her bid to revive the Internet company: Product comes first. — Since taking over Yahoo three weeks ago …

More: CNET, 9to5Google, VentureBeat, Pulse2 Technology …, Business Insider and The Verge. See also Mediagazer

Kim Zetter / Wired:

Flame and Stuxnet Cousin Targets Lebanese Bank Customers, Carries Mysterious Payload — A newly uncovered espionage tool, apparently designed by the same people behind the state-sponsored Flame malware that infiltrated machines in Iran, has been found infecting systems in other countries in the Middle East, according to researchers.

More: PC Magazine, NYT Bits, Securelist, CNNMoney.com, Reuters, Securelist, Guardian and BetaNews

Joe Pollicino / Engadget:

OUYA's Kickstarter funding is complete: over $8.59 million raised, starts shipping in March — It's a wrap! Suffice it to say, it's a been a relatively short, yet astoundingly fruitful — and initially record-breaking — funding run for OUYA, the hackable, Android-based gaming console.

More: Ars Technica, Guardian, Business Insider, Forbes, CNET, digitaltrends.com, BBC, Geek.com, The Next Web, WebProNews, VG247, NYT Bits, Joystiq, The Verge, VentureBeat and The Verge

Cyrus Farivar / Ars Technica:

Burner wants to help you temporarily obfuscate your phone number — “Burning” a communication device has been a mainstay of those interested in privacy, from the IMF (you know, from Mission: Impossible), the corner boys on The Wire, and everyone in between.

More: Examiner, The Verge, LAPTOP Magazine, Gotta Be Mobile, Technabob, Burner Blog, SiliconANGLE, GadgeTell, MacNN, iClarified, Engadget, Mashable!, SlashGear, Lifehacker, Cult of Mac, The Next Web, GigaOM, iDownloadBlog.com and Laughing Squid

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

Pulse Comes To The Web (With A Little Help From Microsoft) — Pulse, the popular news reading app for iOS and Android, is finally available on the web. The service, which launched two years ago and now has over 15 million users, only focused on mobile platforms until now.

More: GeekWire, The Verge, CNET, AllThingsD, BetaKit, Pulse, 9to5Mac, WebProNews, The Next Web and VentureBeat

Matthew Panzarino / The Next Web:

The long-delayed TextMate 2 text editor has been open-sourced under GPL 3 — The long-delayed TextMate 2 text editor has been open-sourced under the GPL 3 license, says its creator Allan Odgaard. The editor, after being announced years ago, was released as an alpha in December of last year.

More: TextMate Blog, TUAW and Marco.org

Tweets: @command_tab and @chrisdejabet

Robin Wauters / The Next Web:

A win for RIM: Mformation patent ruling overturned, BlackBerry maker doesn't have to pay $147.5m after all — Remember when BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) was ordered to cough up $147.2 million after a company called Mformation succesfully won a patent lawsuit against the smartphone and tablet maker in a U.S. court?

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Amazon Confirms Cloud Player, Its Would-Be iTunes Killer, Now Works On Sonos, More Devices Coming Later This Year — At the end of July, Amazon updated its Cloud Player to be in fighting form as an iTunes killer, with a load of new audio features like Scan and Match technology and licensing deals with a number of labels.

More: Engadget, Amazon.com, SlashGear, The Next Web, Forbes and GadgeTell

Mat Smith / Engadget:

Google Translate app gets weighty update, will translate signs through your smartphone camera — Google's multi-lingual translation app decided that (online) words were not enough. Beyond digital text, a new update to Translate will let Google's bots translate what you're looking at …

More: Inside Mobile Apps, TechCrunch, Android Central, GigaOM, Gizmodo, The Verge, 9to5Google, dailywireless.org and Softpedia News

Cade Metz / Wired:

If Xerox PARC Invented the PC, Google Invented the Internet — The truth about Jeff Dean appeared on April Fool's Day 2007. — Somewhere inside Google, a private website served up a list of facts about Dean, one of Google's earliest employees and one of the main reasons the web giant handles …

Robin Wauters / The Next Web:

Mobile tech firm Vringo to sell $31.2m worth of stock to buy over 500 Nokia patents for (at least) $22m — Vringo, a publicly-listed mobile technology company that's really mostly about ‘protecting’ the intellectual property its owns in that space, this morning announced that it will raise $31.2 million …

More: ZDNet, Business Wire, Vringo, Benzinga, PhoneArena, SlashGear, fiercemobilecontent.com, My Nokia Blog, The Verge and Engadget

Ernesto / TorrentFreak:

New Data Exposes BitTorrent Throttling ISPs — Hundreds of ISPs all over the world limit and restrict BitTorrent traffic on their networks. Unfortunately, most companies are not very open about their network management solutions. — Thanks to data collected by Measurement Lab (M-Lab) …

Tweets: @piecritic and @mylespeterson

Phil Muncaster / The Register:

PayPal parts company with major China partner — Payments giant on lookout for fresh blood — Global payments behemoth PayPal could be in for a spot of bother in Asia after a much heralded partnership with Chinese e-commerce platform DHGate.com, its biggest in the region, ended this week.

More: CNET

Ryan Paul / Ars Technica:

Digia to acquire Qt business from Nokia, port it to Android and iOS — Up to 125 Qt personnel at Nokia will join Digia to continue Qt development. — Finnish software company Digia announced today that it is acquiring the Qt software business from Nokia.

More: The Verge, BGR, Bloomberg, TechCrunch, Neowin, MacNN, TechEye, ZDNet, Guardian, CNET, Inquirer, Engadget, Reuters, AllThingsD and Pulse2 Technology …

Jon Fingas / Engadget:

Akamai: peak internet speeds jumped 25 percent year-to-year in Q1, Germany tops the mobile world — If you thought world internet access speeds were facing a large-scale slowdown, you can stop fretting for now. Data from Akamai suggests that average speeds were just 2.6Mbps …

More: Akamai, PC World, DSLreports, TechSpot and TechCrunch

Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:

Zachary Bogue And Matt Ocko Launch Data Collective, An Early Stage Fund For Big Data Startups — Founders Den co-founder and angel investor Zachary Bogue has joined forces with seasoned big data VC Matt Ocko, Metamarkets founder Michael Driscoll and Prismatic CEO Bradford Cross to launch Data Collective …

More: VentureBeat, GigaOM, PE Hub Blog and PandoDaily. Tweets: @marissamayer

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Competition Weighs On T-Mobile USA: Q2 Sales Down To $4.9B, Customer Figures ‘Continue To Present Challenge’ — With parent company Deutsche Telekom posting its quarterly earnings today, T-Mobile USA has reported its Q2 operating results. Despite moves it is making to ramp up its network …

More: VentureBeat, Deutsche Telekom, GigaOM, Bloomberg, Reuters, PhoneArena and The Verge

Rip Empson / TechCrunch:

Amid Lawsuits From Publishers, Boundless Launches A Free, Open Alternative To Textbooks — Since it first appeared earlier this year, Boston-based educational startup Boundless has been on a mission to ensure that college students have a free alternative to the pricey and bulky world of physical textbooks.

More: Hack Education, BostInno, GigaOM and Xconomy

Joanna Stern / ABCNEWS:

ThinkPad Celebrates 20 Years, Announces Windows 8 ThinkPad Tablet 2 — 1992 was a big year. Bill Clinton was elected president. Price Charles and Diana separated. And the first ThinkPad laptop was released by IBM. — Twenty years have passed now and a lot has changed.

Nathan Ingraham / The Verge:

Lenovo's ‘ultra-portable’ ThinkPad T430u will be available later this month for $779

More: Engadget and GadgeTell

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Pinterest Finally Ditches Invitations, Now Lets Anyone Sign Up — Calling all chefs, wedding planners, stylists, and crafty-types: Pinterest has just opened registration to the public after two years of requiring an invite to join. Anyone can now sign up with Twitter, Facebook, or just an email address.

More: Oh, How Pinteresting!, IntoMobile, Los Angeles Times, VentureBeat, Mobile Marketing Watch, Betabeat, Business Insider, Marketing Land, I4U News, The Next Web, Mashable!, Gizmodo, AllThingsD, Macgasm, The Verge and PandoDaily. Tweets: @semil

Grant McCool / Reuters:

U.S. will not challenge computer fraud case to high court — (Reuters) - The government has decided not to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review a divided appeals court ruling in a criminal case that drew attention to a 28-year-old computer hacking law that critics argue is being used too broadly.

More: The Verge and CNET

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