Techmeme: Facebook's Redesign Hopes to Keep Users Engaged (Somini Sengupta/New York Times)

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March 7, 2013, 9:30 AM

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Arik Hesseldahl / AllThingsD:

Read Carl Icahn's Letter to Dell's Board About the Buyout Plan — It's confirmed. Carl Icahn has an investment stake in Dell, and is gearing up for a fight against that company's proposal to go private in a leveraged buyout transaction. — Dell's board of directors confirmed what CNBC …

More: The Verge and Business Wire

Larry Dignan / ZDNet:

Why Icahn's Dell plan could be a FUD nightmare — Summary: Carl Icahn's proposal might severely damage Dell as a serious enterprise technology player when the fear uncertainty and doubt parade starts rolling. — Dell's move to go private has become very complicated as investor Carl Icahn …

More: CNET, Fortune, The Register and Deal Journal

Alex Wilhelm / The Next Web:

Inside Microsoft's decision to loan the Dell buyout consortium $2 billion — Dell's current expedition to go private is encountering turbulence in the form of investor discontent, leaving the details of the accepted deal somewhat obscured behind the smoke of shareholder battle.

More: Deal Journal. Thanks:@panzer

Sruthi Ramakrishnan / Reuters:

Dell shareholder Icahn opposes go-private deal, seeks payout

David Faber / CNBC:

Carl Icahn Takes Up to a 6 Percent Stake in Dell: Sources

David Meyer / GigaOM:

Google tipped off EU authorities over Microsoft's $732M browser boo-boo, report claims — If Google really did set off the process that led to Microsoft's mammoth fine, then this was in a way just another episode in an increasingly nasty war between the two companies.

More: Financial Times, The Verge, ZDNet, Deadline.com and Fudzilla

John Paczkowski / AllThingsD:

EU's Microsoft Fine a Warning to Google

More: ZDNet, Softpedia News, Computerworld, The Atlantic Wire, Quartz, TechCrunch and Reuters

Path:

A Brand New Language - Introducing Path 3 with Private Messaging, Stickers, and the Shop — When we speak with friends, share a joke, a quiet word, or a conversation over drinks, there is so much more than words that pass between us. A smile or nod or encouraging gesture - these allow for true connection and understanding.

More: AllThingsD, SlashGear, MacRumors, Forbes, The Next Web and Gizmodo. Thanks:@forrestkoba

Matthew Panzarino / The Next Web:

Path 3.0 adds private messaging and The Shop, with ‘handcrafted’ stickers and premium photo filters

More: CNET, Engadget, iMore, The Next Web, The Verge and GigaOM

Tweets: @beijingdou, @msquinn, @davemorin, @hunterwalk, @thinkmariya, @qthrul, @davemorin and @panzer

Somini Sengupta / New York Times:

Facebook's Redesign Hopes to Keep Users Engaged — SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook plans to announce on Thursday a substantial redesign of its News Feed — a makeover aimed at both keeping users glued to the social network and luring more advertising dollars. — Company executives have broadly …

More: ABCNEWS, Media Decoder, Hillicon Valley, SocialTimes, NYT Bits, Mobile Marketing Watch, AllFacebook and Business Insider

Reuters:

Analysis: Next Intel CEO to guide new business, maybe Apple deal — (Reuters) - Intel's next CEO is likely to shepherd the top chipmaker into a growing contract-manufacturing business, a strategic shift that could lead to a deal with Apple Inc and give it a fighting chance to make inroads in the mobile arena.

More: Tech Trader Daily, MacRumors, digitaltrends.com, Gizmodo, The Verge, iDownloadBlog.com, iPhone Hacks, Electronista, App Advice and bizjournals

Dan Levine / Thomson Reuters News and Insight Legal:

Apple attracts one friend in Samsung appeal: Nokia — (Reuters) - Nokia has filed a brief in support of Apple Inc's bid to secure permanent injunctions against several Samsung Electronics Co Ltd phones, making the Finnish smartphone maker the only outside group to come forward in backing the iPhone maker's appeal.

More: 9to5Mac, Inquirer, AppleInsider, Ars Technica, Neowin and MacRumors

Stephanie Bodoni / Bloomberg:

EU's Reding Says U.S. Tech Giants Can't Sidestep Rules — U.S.-based technology firms Google Inc. (GOOG), Facebook Inc. (FB), Apple Inc. (AAPL) and other non-European companies that offer services in the European Union must abide by its overhauled data-protection rules, according to the bloc's justice chief.

More: Betabeat

Zack Whittaker / ZDNet:

EU caves in to pressure on new data, privacy law changes; U.S. tech firms breathe sigh of relief

Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:

How two volunteers built the Raspberry Pi's operating system — When you buy a Raspberry Pi, the $35 computer doesn't come with an operating system. Loading your operating system of choice onto an SD card and then booting the Pi turns out to be pretty easy. But where do Pi-compatible operating systems come from?

More: ZDNet and Inquirer

Brier Dudley / The Seattle Times:

Big layoffs at T-Mobile headquarters, ahead of merger — A significant round of layoffs is happening at the Bellevue headquarters of T-Mobile USA just ahead of its merger with MetroPCS, according to people inside the company. — Employees are expecting the cuts, which may affect …

More: BGR, PR Newswire, TmoNews, ZDNet, AllThingsD, TechSpot, PC Magazine, PhoneArena, SlashGear, GigaOM, CNET, The Register, Electronista and The Verge

Anton Troianovski / Wall Street Journal:

Apps: The New Corporate Cost-Cutting Tool — TRUMBULL, Conn.—The biggest mall in town stopped staffing its customer-service desk in January. But perched on that same desk recently was a plastic cutout of a hand holding a smartphone. “Download the free app,” it said.

Facebook Engineering / Facebook:

Under the Hood: Building out the infrastructure for Graph Search — By Sriram Sankar, Soren Lassen, and Mike Curtiss, who are building Graph Search's infrastructure. — In the early days, Facebook was as much about meeting new people as keeping in touch with people you already knew at your college.

More: GigaOM and The Register

David Kravets / Wired:

Aaron Swartz Case Was ‘a Good Use of Prosecutorial Discretion,’ Attorney General Says — Holder, the nation's top prosecutor, is the highest-ranking member of the President Barack Obama administration to defend the indictment and prosecution of the former director of Demand Progress …

More: Politico, Ars Technica, Boston Globe, CNET and Hillicon Valley. Tweets: @tprophet

Marco Arment / Marco.org:

A Mac Pro Mini — For years, geeks have wanted Apple to make an “xMac”: an expandable desktop tower like the Mac Pro, but much cheaper, generally achieved in theory by using consumer-class CPUs and motherboards instead of Intel's expensive, server-grade Xeon line.

Tweets: @panzer

Naomi Tajitsu / Reuters:

Megaupload founder can sue New Zealand spy agency: court — WELLINGTON (Reuters) - A court ruled on Thursday that Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom can sue New Zealand's spy agency for illegal surveillance, opening the government up to more scrutiny over its role in an unlawful 2011 police raid on the internet entrepreneur's home.

More: TorrentFreak, New Zealand Herald, Techdirt, CNET, BBC, ZDNet and Bloomberg

Terje Langeland / Bloomberg:

Samsung's Patent Spat With Apple Spurs U.S. Lobbying Push — Samsung Electronics Co. (005930) has doubled mobile-phone sales in the U.S. since 2008. As the company faces anti-dumping measures and a protracted court battle with Apple Inc. (AAPL), its U.S. lobbying bill is growing even faster.

More: CNET, The Verge and bizjournals

Wall Street Journal:

Microsoft Backs School Privacy Bill Taking Aim at Google — Massachusetts lawmakers could soon consider a bill that would restrict the commercial use of data gathered while children use computers at public schools. — Its stated purpose is protecting privacy.

More: The Verge and TechNet Blogs

Sarah Maslin Nir / New York Times:

Internet Marriages on Rise in Some Immigrant Communities — With a red embroidered veil draped over her dark hair, Punam Chowdhury held her breath last month as her fiancé said the phrase that would make them husband and wife. After she echoed them, they were married.

More: digitaltrends.com, Ubergizmo, Gizmodo, The Verge and Betabeat

Tweets: @amyvirshup and @sarahmaslinnir

MIT Technology Review:

Computer Scientists Measure the Speed of Censorship On China's Twitter — Censorship on Weibo, China's version of Twitter, is near real-time and relies on a workforce of over 4000 censors who stop work during the evening news, according the first detailed analysis of censorship patterns

More: PC Pro, The Register, Web 2.0 Asia Blog, Quartz and The Verge

Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:

Microsoft to update its core Windows 8 apps well before ‘Blue’ — Summary: Microsoft may have refreshes of its Mail, Calendar, Music and Games apps for Windows 8 and Windows RT in its app store as soon as this month. — There's been some worry that Microsoft's Windows team may be waiting until the …

More: BetaNews, The Box Blog, The Register, WinBeta, Neowin, The Next Web and Softpedia News

Arik Hesseldahl / AllThingsD:

Series Seed, an Open Source Set of Investment Documents, Moves to GitHub — If you're involved in building software, there's a pretty good chance you use GitHub, the social repository for software code known for the surprise round of funding it took from Andreessen Horowitz last year.

More: Wired, VentureBeat and Venture Capital Dispatch

Kai Lukoff / TechRice:

Year of the ChinaDroid — Nestled in the hills of Shenzhen in southern China, stands a factory that churns out smartphones day and night. Migrant workers labor for fourteen-hour shifts, six days a week. Most welcome the overtime, which is usually paid. Components stand around …

More: Quartz. Thanks:@niubi

Brian Crecente / Polygon:

EA won't have microtransactions in all future games, exec clarifies — Electronic Arts chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen clarified today that while all of EA's future games will support the ability to include microtransactions, that doesn't mean that all of them will actually have them.

More: SlashGear, The Verge, Softpedia News, Joystiq, Massively, VG247, gameinformer.com, Blue's News and MCV: Home Stream

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