Top technology news

Sean Hollister / The Verge:
HP redesigns Envy and Pavilion laptops for 2013, including one with a 3200 x 1800 screen  —  Last year, Hewlett-Packard decided to unify the design of every thin and light laptop it sold, applying the same basic curves across every keyboard, touchpad, hinge, lid, and frame.

Jon Fingas / Engadget:
AMD details Elite Mobility and mainstream APUs, we run early tests (hands-on)  —  AMD has been willing to tease its 2013 ultra-mobile APU (accelerated processing unit) strategy through PCs like the Acer Aspire V5, but today it's spilling the beans in earnest.

Wall Street Journal:
Wary of China, U.S. Steps Into Sprint's Board  —  SoftBank Corp. is readying a plan to allow the U.S. government an unusual level of influence over the operations of Sprint Nextel Corp., a concession to ease security concerns raised by the proposed cross-border takeover.

Bryan Bishop / The Verge:
Samsung Galaxy S4 hits 10 million units shipped, new colors coming this summer  —  Samsung has announced the Galaxy S4 has reached 10 million global channel sales less than a month after its commercial launch.  The figure sets a new record for Samsung's line of smartphones …

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:
Google Code's download option deprecated due to misuse, only existing project downloads to be kept after January 15  —  Google on Wednesday announced it is deprecating almost all download options for Project Hosting on Google Code.  The company is blaming “increasing misuse” for the move.

Jenna Pitcher / Polygon:
Next-generation Kinect will eventually see a release on Windows PC  —  The next-generation Kinect will come to Windows PC eventually, Ben Kilgore, corporate vice president of interactive entertainment business confirmed with Polygon today.  —  When asked if the new Kinect will see a release …

Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft recruits Siri to bad-mouth the iPad in new Windows 8 tablet ad  —  Whatever era you call it, post-PC or simply PC plus, the Mac vs. PC war has ignited once again today.  In a fresh Windows 8 ad, Microsoft is directly attacking Apple's iPad on price, an approach it took during the early Vista days with low-priced laptops.

Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:
The third screen: Will all Windows 8 apps run on Microsoft's Xbox One?  —  Summary: MS CRM on your Xbox One?  Will any and all Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 apps be allowed to run on the just-announced Xbox One?  —  Is it really so crazy to think that users will be able to run Microsoft CRM …

Chris Welch / The Verge:
Foursquare rolls out ‘super-specific’ filters to help you search out the perfect destination  —  Foursquare is getting more ambitious with the data it has on you and your friends: the company today debuted “super-specific search” for its iOS and Android mobile apps.

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
LinkedIn Has Definitely Acqui-Hired Maybe, Omar Hamoui's Polling Startup, Minus Hamoui Himself  —  Fresh from closing its purchase of newsreading app Pulse, LinkedIn has made another acquisition to dive deeper into the mobile space.  TechCrunch has found out, and confirmed …

Tomio Geron / Forbes:
Skyhigh Networks Raises $20M Series B To Find, Manage Cloud Services  —  Cloud services are increasingly how people get work done in businesses, small and large.  —  One startup banking on this trend is Skyhigh Networks, which has raised $20 million in Series B financing led by Sequoia Capital …

Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Voice Search Coming Soon to Chrome for iOS  —  Google has announced plans to roll out an update to the iOS version of Chrome that will enable voice searching.  The feature will function similarly to Siri on the iPhone, requiring a tap on the microphone to bring up the interactive search interface.

Ina Fried / AllThingsD:
Verizon Wireless, Jennifer Lopez Partner to Launch Viva Movil, Mobile Retailer Aimed at Latino Market  —  Jennifer Lopez is getting into the mobile business.  —  The star is the chief creative officer and majority owner in Viva Movil, a mobile retailer working with Verizon Wireless to target Latino customers.

Greg Sandoval / The Verge:
With downloads dwindling, music publishers throw a roadblock into Apple's iRadio plans  —  Streaming services, such as Pandora and Spotify, aren't as profitable for music publishers.  They want to change that.  —  For years, when it came to driving negotiations with internet music services over licensing …

Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:
Microsoft updates its YouTube Windows Phone app with some concessions to Google  —  Summary: The Microsoft-Google feud continues, with Microsoft meeting some — but not all — of Google's terms-of-service demands around the Microsoft's recently developed YouTube app.

Zee / The Next Web:
Google Trends now ranks most searched people, places and things in 40+ categories, releases visual trending product.  —  Google Search trends is arguably the most effective way of learning what the world is thinking about, and Google Trends, with Google's annual Zeitgeist, has always done a fairly decent job of illustrating this.

Rachel King / ZDNet:
HP's Whitman reiterates ‘multi-year journey’ amid Q2 revenue miss  —  Summary: Wall Street was expecting earnings of 81 cents a share on revenue of $28.08 billion for the second quarter.  —  Leading up to Hewlett-Packard's second quarter earnings report after the bell on Wednesday, analysts were expecting a mixed bag.

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Twitter Ups Web Security With Two-Factor Authentication Via SMS, But Shared Accounts May Still Be In Danger  —  After scores of accounts were potentially compromised a few months ago, Twitter today launched two-factor authentication through SMS to protect people from hacks and phishing scams on the web.

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Adobe Acqui-hires Thumb Labs To Make Mobile Apps For Behance And Its New Creative Cloud  —  Another step for Adobe in its bid to become the go-to place in the cloud for those working in design and other creative industries: it is acquiring Thumb Labs, a bootstrapped, New York-based mobile app design agency.

Jimio / Twitter Blog:
Getting started with login verification  —  Every day, a growing number of people log in to Twitter.  Usually these login attempts come from the genuine account owners, but we occasionally hear from people whose accounts have been compromised by email phishing schemes or a breach of password data elsewhere on the web.