Techmeme
January 7, 2013, 12:55 PM

Top News

Apple:
App Store Tops 40 Billion Downloads with Almost Half in 2012  —  Apple® today announced that customers have downloaded over 40 billion apps*, with nearly 20 billion in 2012 alone.  The App Store has over 500 million active accounts and had a record-breaking December with over two billion downloads during the month.
Ben Gilbert / Engadget:
NVIDIA unveils Project Shield, a Tegra 4-powered Android gaming handheld  —  A video shown on-stage during NVIDIA's press conference just unveiled “Project Shield,” a gaming controller / portable console running the just announced Tegra 4.  The controller looks an awful lot like a PlayStation 3 DualShock 3 …
Aaron Souppouris / The Verge:
Om Malik / GigaOM:
My conversation with ex-Facebook CTO and Quora co-founder Adam D'Angelo  —  To say that I have had a contentious relationship with former Facebook chief technology officer Adam D'Angelo's three-year-old startup Quora would be an understatement.  I've had my reasons for disagreeing with some of its policies relating to the content.
More: Business Insider.  Tweets: @eghosao
John Paczkowski / AllThingsD:
Apple Can't Afford Buyer's Remorse With Next Retail Hire  —  John Browett, the Dixons exec tapped to oversee Apple's retail operations last January, was Tim Cook's first big hire after taking up the CEO reins at the company.  Nine months later, he would be among Cook's first big fires …
More: MacRumors
Reuters:
Year-end Wii U sales steady, says Nintendo chief  —  (Reuters) - Nintendo Co Ltd's year-end sales of its Wii U games console were steady, though not as strong as when its Wii predecessor was first launched, the Japanese game maker's top executive told Reuters on Monday.
Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:
Roku Now Has 700 Channels, Including Time Warner Cable; Also Has 14 TV Manufacturers Compatible With Its Streaming Stick  —  Roku is announcing at CES today a significant milestone both in the amount of content and the number of devices that are compatible with its USB-sized streaming stick.
Miyoung Kim / Reuters:
Hitting a high Note: ‘phablets’, chips to drive Samsung fourth quarter profit  —  (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics, the world leader in mobiles and memory chips, likely earned a quarterly profit of $8.1 billion, as it sold close to 500 handsets every minute and as demand picked up for the flat screens …
Rip Empson / TechCrunch:
Following AMD & Asus, BlueStacks Strikes Distribution Deal With Lenovo To Bring 750K Android Apps To Its PCs  —  The good news keeps rolling in for BlueStacks, the startup best known for making technology that enables one and all to download and use Android applications on their desktop PCs — and more recently, their Macs.
Tim Culpan / Bloomberg:
HTC Posts Lowest Net Income in Eight Years After Revenue Drops  —  HTC Corp. (2498), Asia's second-largest smartphone maker, posted its lowest profit in eight years as a lack of new models prompted a loss of market share.  —  Fourth-quarter net income was NT$1 billion ($34 million) …
Tamar Lewin / New York Times:
Massive Open Online Courses Prove Popular, if Not Lucrative Yet  —  MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — In August, four months after Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng started the online education company Coursera, its free college courses had drawn in a million users, a faster launching than either Facebook or Twitter.
More: Betabeat
Amir Efrati / Digits:
Ex-Yahoo CFO Tim Morse Joins Fast-Growing Video-Ad Company  —  Tim Morse spent the past 20 years working at companies that generate billions of dollars a year in revenue, most recently as the chief financial officer at Web pioneer Yahoo .  —  Now he's trying to build one.
David Jolly / New York Times:
Ad Blocking Raises Alarm Among Firms Like Google  —  PARIS — Xavier Niel, the French technology entrepreneur, has made a career of disrupting the status quo.  —  Now, he has dared to take on Google and other online advertisers in a battle that puts the Web companies under pressure to use …
More: The Equity Kicker.  Tweets: @csoghoian
Brad Molen / Engadget:
Alcatel intros the One Touch Idol Ultra, the 'world's slimmest phone' at 6.45mm (hands-on video)  —  Yes, there's a bit of a contest going on among smartphone manufacturers to determine which one has the thinnest device.  As proof that Alcatel can play that game, too, the company has just jumped …
Mat Smith / Engadget:
Windows RT ‘code integrity mechanism’ gets sidestepped, allows unsigned desktop apps to run  —  As Microsoft continues to promote and push its RT apps and programs, Windows tinkerer Clrokr at SurfSec has detailed how he managed to circumvent Redmond's controls on what can run …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Shutterfly Acquires ThisLife's Photo Organization And Sharing Platform  —  Confirming TechCrunch's earlier report, photo and personal publishing company Shutterfly is announcing this morning that it is acquiring the cloud-based photo and video organization platform ThisLife.
Andrew Longstreth / Reuters:
Google pact with FTC could affect other patent disputes  —  (Reuters) - While the focus of last week's agreement between the Federal Trade Commission and Google Inc was search, the deal's restrictions on how Google uses its patents could have a broader impact on the technology industry.

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