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AP – Microsoft Corp. slammed search rival Google Inc. with full-page newspaper ads Wednesday, saying that recent changes at Google that allow it to internally merge the data it collects on user activity across services such as YouTube and Gmail are meant to allow advertisers to better target customers.

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Reuters – Electronic Arts’ told investors on Wednesday that its highly anticipated “Star Wars” game was off to a strong start and dismissed reports that players were leaving the new Internet game in droves, and its shares rose 6 percent after the market closed.

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AP – Facebook said Wednesday that it hopes to raise $5 billion in an initial public offering of stock. It would be the largest IPO ever for an Internet company. Here are the top 10 so far, according to Renaissance Capital, an IPO investment adviser:

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Appolicious – When it comes to apps that help you manage your money, Mint.com Personal Finance has been a popular fixture in the Android Market (as well as online and via iOS devices) for a few years now. Today, the folks at Intuit released a great update which makes the app optimized for Android Honeycomb tablets and increases its usefulness too.

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Reuters – A city panel in the U.S. capital voted on Wednesday to repeal a first-in-the-nation Internet gambling law for Washington, D.C., a spokeswoman said.

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Reuters – Planned changes to Google Inc’s privacy policies that have caught the attention of U.S. lawmakers would not take away the control its customers have over how data is collected and used, the company said in a blog post on Tuesday

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Appolicious – When it comes to shopping, most mobile apps offer options. RedLaser from eBay, for example, is used for scanning barcodes on products in order to comparison shop between brick-and-mortar retailers and online offers. Amazon Mobile, another example, also contains a barcode reader and allows users to purchase products directly from the online retailer.

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AP – A group of Internet hackers said Wednesday it took down the website of the Banco do Brasil, Brazil’s largest state-run bank. It’s the third such attack against financial institutions in a week.

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Reuters – The websites of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich and the former Soviet republic’s interior ministry were put out of action on Wednesday as disgruntled Internet users hit back at the government after it shut down a popular file sharing site.

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AP – Ukrainian authorities have shut down a popular file-sharing website saying it violates copyright laws, officials said Wednesday.

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Appolicious – Apple is still feeling backlash from recent negative attention directed at factories in its device-making supply chain overseas, with the most recent fallout centering around customers creating an online petition asking for an “ethical” iPhone.

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AP – Shoppers spent more money online this holiday season than ever before, and yet, Amazon _the world’s largest Internet retailer_ failed to meet Wall Street’s sales expectations with its latest financial results.

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Reuters – An ambitious private project to unlock wireless access across Mexico appears to be stuck in a stalemate with the developer and the government unable to agree on terms.

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AP – Silicon Valley entrepreneur-turned-venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and his partners have raised another $1.5 billion to invest in technology startups as they prepare to profit from a previous bet on Internet social network Facebook.

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AP – A group of Internet hackers said Tuesday it took down the website of Brazil’s second largest private sector bank, one day after it did the same with the country’s largest private bank.

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Mashable – Yen Lee is the founder and president of Uptake, a social travel company that pairs personalized recommendations from friends with an extensive, searchable catalog of expert and consumer travel insights.
Yelp, TripAdvisor and Amazon user reviews aren’t enough anymore. Crowd insights are no longer meaningful to the individual simply because they’re “user generated.” People don’t care about finding the needle in the haystack — unless they trust the needle in the first place.

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Mashable – Two online petitions beseech Apple to improve working conditions in the Chinese factories that make its products.
The petitions, both filed within the last two weeks, follow a renewed round of criticism directed at the company over labor practices at overseas facilities like the Foxconn factory in Shenzhen, China.

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Reuters – Planned changes to Google Inc’s privacy policies that have caught the attention of U.S. lawmakers would not take away the control its customers have over how data is collected and used, the company said in a blog post on Tuesday

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Mashable – File-sharing site The Pirate Bay caused an Internet stir last week when it introduced a new content category called “Physibles,” essentially designed to allow people to pass one another physical objects for download. The term refers to data files that are actually able to become physical objects via 3D printing technology.
Before long, The Pirate Bay said in a blog post, “you will print the spare parts for your vehicles.”

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AP – iTunes’ Official Music Charts for the week ending Jan. 30, 2012:

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Reuters – Co-founders of online U.S. payment service PayPal, now owned by eBay Inc, donated to the Super PAC funding group supporting Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, the group Endorse Liberty disclosed on Tuesday.

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AP – The amulet and mask were a 13-year-old boy’s virtual possessions in an online fantasy game. In the real world, he was beaten and threatened with a knife to give them up.

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Reuters – BSkyB, Britain’s dominant pay-TV group, is to launch an online offering to enable it to better take on the likes of Lovefilm and Netflix, following some signs of slowing growth at its main satellite business.

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Reuters – Twitter Chief Executive Dick Costolo said the company’s recently announced online content policy was meant to be a transparent way to handle government requests for the removal of certain content and did not mean it is actively monitoring Tweets, the Wall Street Journal reported.

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Reuters – 888 Holdings Plc said a unit of private equity-owned Caesars Entertainment Corp extended its UK software licensing agreement with the British online gaming company to the United States.

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Reuters – Mexicans have been overcharged $13.4 billion a year for phone and internet services as the industry dominated by billionaire Carlos Slim gouges customers and keeps the economy from growing, a study released on Monday said.

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AP – A New Jersey waitress cried in court Monday as she heard a prosecutor accuse her of “extreme sexual assault” on a 5-year-old girl she was baby-sitting and of streaming video of the abuse online.

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Reuters – Demand Media Inc said on Monday that three executives left the online media and advertising company to pursue other business opportunities.

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Mashable – The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.
Name: Quipol

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Appolicious – This week’s top apps are quite media-centric. There are apps to make your Oscars viewing more enjoyable and apps to make your general TV watching more rewarding, too. There are even apps to keep up on digital media news and online videos. It’s the middle of winter, so you might as well pop down on the couch and enjoy these apps. It looks awfully windy outside, anyway.

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AP – A New Jersey waitress cried in court Monday as she heard a prosecutor accuse her of “extreme sexual assault” on a 5-year-old girl she was baby-sitting and of streaming video of the abuse online.

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Reuters – French art database and ad specialist Artprice.com expects sales to soar this year on the back of the launch of an online auction service, its chief executive told Reuters on Monday.

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Mashable – Microsoft says it’s started a private preview program of the next version of Office to a “select group” of customers. Going far beyond just refining and enhancing existing applications, the next version of Microsoft Office, codenamed “Office 15,” will unite the software suite with the company’s cloud and mobile platforms.
Announcing the move in a blog post, Microsoft says this is the first time the next version of Office will be seen by anyone outside the company, though it didn’t identify any of its partners for the technical preview and mentions that they’re all bound by non-disclosure agreements. Microsoft says its sales team nominated the participants, and they represent a broad range of industries and customer profiles.

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Mashable – President Barack Obama called for the protection of intellectual property rights in a Google+ hangout Monday evening, but said such protection must be done “in a way that’s consistent with Internet freedom.”

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Appolicious – When it comes to the video game world, it’s nearly impossible to discuss a game without talking about all the other titles that came before it. Every game on the market, be it store shelves or the iTunes App Store, has built off the foundations of games that have come before, and that creates a tough spot for many game developers. At what point does a game stop building off another title’s ideas or being “inspired” by another work, and start being theft of an idea?

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AP – “Purple Naked Ladies,” The Internet (Odd Future)

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Appolicious – Start your week with a dose of Hamlet, thanks to our leading iPhone app, Hamlet in Bits. The app brings you all kinds of information that helps to understand Shakespeare’s play, including audio and animated performances and the text to go with it. We’ve also got a big update to Fanhattan, which can help you find new shows and movies to watch on Netflix, iTunes, Hulu and more. Hank Hazard, a physics-based puzzle game about a daredevil hamster, will keep your thumbs busy this week, as will turn-based strategy title RoboHero.

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Reuters – The Netherlands plans to crack down on Internet service providers that allow access to file-sharing sites such as Pirate Bay, though it will not make it an offence for individuals to download from these sites.

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Reuters – Republican White House hopeful Mitt Romney’s lead over rival Newt Gingrich edged up to 12 percentage points in Florida, according to Reuters/Ipsos online poll results on Sunday, as Romney’s front-runner status stabilized and Gingrich continued to slip.

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Reuters – Republican White House hopeful Mitt Romney’s lead over rival Newt Gingrich edged up to 12 percentage points in Florida, according to Reuters/Ipsos online poll results on Sunday, as Romney’s front-runner status stabilized and Gingrich continued to slip.

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Reuters – In the age of Twitter and Facebook, many Super Bowl viewers will use the commercial breaks to go online and see what people are saying about the game. This year, advertisers want them to tweet about their favorite commercials as well.

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Mashable – When volunteers return home from service with The Peace Corps, they often want to stay in touch with fellow Corps members. Can social media help them do that?
Yes, says Erica Burman, director of communications at The National Peace Corps Association (NPCA).

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Mashable – Pinterest, a two-year-old social bookmarking site that lets users collect and share things they like on the web, is driving increasingly significant amounts of traffic to retailers’ websites.
The service enables users to create online bulletin boards, or “pinboards,” for popular categories such as home decor, food and wedding inspiration. Members can use Pinterest’s “Pin It” bookmarklet tool and iPhone app to save things they see online and offline, and explore and repin the images their friends collect via their personal newsfeeds. The website is especially popular among women, who account for 58% of Pinterest’s traffic, according to Experian Hitwise.

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Mashable – Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom can’t defend his top-spot score in the game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 from behind bars — he was recently bumped to the no. 2 spot by a player named Azaros.
On Wednesday, a judge denied Dotcom bail, meaning he likely won’t be able to usurp Azaros’ Modern Warfare 3 title anytime soon.

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Reuters – White House hopeful Mitt Romney widened his lead over rival Newt Gingrich to 11 percentage points in Florida, according to Reuters/Ipsos online poll results on Saturday, up from 8 points a day earlier, as he cemented his front-runner status in the Republican nomination race.

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Reuters – It was only two weeks ago that Twitter was protesting online censorship in the form of anti-piracy bills SOPA and PIPA. Now the social networking site faces a surge of opposition to its own censorship practices.

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Reuters – The activist hacker group Anonymous attacked three Mexican government websites on Friday in protest at a proposed bill that seeks to toughen local laws about online file-sharing.

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AP – Twitter, a tool of choice for dissidents and activists around the world, found itself the target of global outrage Friday after unveiling plans to allow country-specific censorship of tweets that might break local laws.

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AP – The Detroit Symphony Orchestra has launched a webcast player that will allow music lovers to enjoy an upcoming performance of Mozart’s Horn Concerto No. 4 and other concerts online for free in the comfort of their homes.

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AP – The federal government’s plan to expand computer security protections into critical parts of private industry is raising concerns that the move will threaten Americans’ civil liberties.

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