Microsoft To Compete Against Spotify With Xbox Music, Available Soon On Xbox, Windows 8, And Windows Phone Devices  —  Microsoft will soon become the next player to enter the streaming music business, with a service that will see it competing against the likes of Spotify and Rdio.

13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display confirmed for Apple event  —  Alongside the smaller iPad, Apple will debut a 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display, according to a consistently reliable source at a high-profile U.S. retailer.  —  This new 13-inch MacBook Pro with a Retina Display …

Softbank Confirms It Is Buying 70% Of Sprint For $20.1B  —  Softbank has confirmed the news that it is buying Sprint, the third-largest wireless carrier in the U.S., for $20.1 billion (¥1.571 trillion).  The announcement comes just ahead of Sprint holding a conference call to also announce the news.

Google ‘to be told to unravel privacy policy’  —  French data protection commissioner's ruling that web giant must separate user data could have global impact, say sources  —  Google will be told on Tuesday to unravel the controversial changes introduced in March to its European privacy policy, legal sources have told the Guardian.

Amazon in talks to buy Texas Instruments' smartphone & tablet OMAP chip activity: Report  —  Texas Instruments (TI), which recently announced that it will wind down its operations in smartphone and tablet oriented OMAP chips and instead focus on embedded platforms, is engaged in 'advanced negotiations …

Dark Social: We Have the Whole History of the Web Wrong  —  Here's a pocket history of the web, according to many people.  In the early days, the web was just pages of information linked to each other.  Then along came web crawlers that helped you find what you wanted among all that information.

Kleiner Perkins On The Past, Present And Future  —  Forty years ago, Eugene Kleiner and Tom Perkins set out to disrupt the then nascent venture capital industry.  Kleiner, who was one of the founders of Fairchild Semiconductor, and Perkins, who was a member of Hewlett-Packard's early computer …

Cable Operators Can Fight Theft by Encrypting Signals, FCC Rules  —  Cable companies led by Comcast Corp. (CMCSA) won U.S. permission to encrypt their basic service to fight theft and reduce service calls.  —  The Federal Communications Commission voted 5-0 to allow encryption, the agency said in an order released yesterday.

Do-Not-Track Movement Is Drawing Advertisers' Fire  —  THE campaign to defang the “Do Not Track” movement began late last month.  —  Do Not Track mechanisms are features on browsers — like Mozilla's Firefox — that give consumers the option of sending out digital signals asking companies …