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• An Apple-Foursquare Hookup Could Mean The End Of Yelp Reviews In iOS
• Disney Mobile Plans Big Holiday Push With Three New Games: Monster's Inc. Run, Nemo's Reef, And Where's My Holiday?
• After Last Week's Worm, Tumblr Goes Dark Again; Company Says Outage Is Intentional To Resolve "Network Issue"
• More Than Privacy Controls, Facebook Needs Our Trust To Keep Growing
• President Bill Clinton at Dell World: We Need To Get Into The Tomorrow Business
• Mac Users Rejoice: An Actual Shipping Thunderbolt Docking Station Goes On Sale Tomorrow
• Kickstarter: Take High-Definition, 360-Degree Video With The Sphericam Camera Ball
• Canopy Labs Raises $1.5M To Make Customer Analytics More Accessible
• Gift Guide: Ten One Design Pogo Connect iPad Stylus
• Mozilla Launches Its Latest GameOn Competition, Wants You To "Reimagine The Web As The Console"
• Fear Not, Those Without Access To Other Avenues To Internet Porn, Google Is Not Really Censoring Results
• CEO Brian Chesky Says Airbnb Will Be Filling More Room Nights Than All Hilton Hotels By The End Of 2012
• I Love The Smell Of Sepia Tone In The Morning
• Soundtracking's New Twitter Cards Music Integration Lets You Hear Photos Within Tweets
• Google Revamps Its Currents Mobile Newsreader App To Make It Smarter And More Scannable
• Fly Or Die: Kindle Fire HD 8.9 Vs. Nook HD+
• He Who Controls The Mobile Photos, Controls The Universe
• Google's New Data Highlighter Lets You Add Structured Data To Your Sites Without Touching Any Code
• Mobile Gift Card App Gyft Arrives On Android
• FreedomPop Debuts In-Home Wireless Broadband With 1GB Free, Sees Nearly 50% Paid Conversions On Mobile

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An Apple-Foursquare Hookup Could Mean The End Of Yelp Reviews In iOS	Top
Apple SVP of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue sent an interesting 31st tweet today. It's a Foursquare check-in at Apple's HQ, indicating that Cue is trying out the service at work. Moreover, Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley is spending a week in San Francisco. These two circumstantial bits of information incite speculation: could they be talking about an acquisition, or a deep software integration in iOS?
Disney Mobile Plans Big Holiday Push With Three New Games: Monster's Inc. Run, Nemo's Reef, And Where's My Holiday?	Top
Disney Mobile, the maker of Where's My Water? (plus a bunch of games tied to Disney films), has some big plans for the next couple of weeks, with four updates to existing games and the launch three new games scheduled for the next week or so. Bart Decrem, who runs Disney's mobile division, told me that he's hoping the mix of updates and new titles will move his team back into Apple's charts for the top 20 free and paid apps. Thanks the purchase of new mobile hardware and gift cards, the holidays have always been a period of rapid growth for Disney (and for other app developers). For example, last year the company saw a 421 percent increase in downloads during the peak holiday period from December 20 to January 3, compared to the two weeks prior. But Decrem said this is the first time his team has coordinated such a big holiday push between all of its titles — in previous years, he said, "We just didn't have the network."
After Last Week's Worm, Tumblr Goes Dark Again; Company Says Outage Is Intentional To Resolve "Network Issue"	Top
As you may have heard by now, this afternoon, many users have reported being unable to access their favorite mixed media blogging platform, Tumblr. The company confirmed this afternoon that this is not in fact one of the first signs of the Mayan prophesy, tweeting that the site is "currently experiencing slow loading or intermittent errors on certain pages." While comforting to receive this confirmation, Tumblr didn't offer any explanation as to the cause behind the slow loading and outages. We've since learned from a Tumblr spokesperson that the company has "taken the site down in order to resolve a network issue," and that it will be updating as soon as it knows more.
More Than Privacy Controls, Facebook Needs Our Trust To Keep Growing	Top
If you don't trust Facebook, you might keep an account, but you won't share as much. So Facebook is aiming to educate users about privacy in the hopes that they'll keep doubling the amount they share each year and uphold Zuckerberg's Law. Facebook privacy can't just be "good enough." It needs us confident in our control because as it runs low on people to sign up, attracting more data is the main way it will grow
President Bill Clinton at Dell World: We Need To Get Into The Tomorrow Business	Top
At Dell World in Austin, Texas, today, President Bill Clinton delivered a keynote address discussing the importance of collaboration and how society needs to get into the tomorrow business. Silicon Valley, the startup community, big data vendors -- all of them are in the business of tomorrow. All of these communities live in the future. But only slivers of society are showing signs that we are preparing for it. Clinton cited recent studies that show fourth graders are now just behind South Korea and Singapore in math and science test scores. That's a good sign but compare 11th grade test scores and there's a gaping difference.
Mac Users Rejoice: An Actual Shipping Thunderbolt Docking Station Goes On Sale Tomorrow	Top
After a lengthy delay, there will finally be a Thunderbolt expansion dock ready for actual purchase tomorrow, according to MacRumors. The Matrox DS1, first unveiled back in June and then updated in September, will be a real shipping device beginning tomorrow, with a $249 price tag.
Kickstarter: Take High-Definition, 360-Degree Video With The Sphericam Camera Ball	Top
A few years ago in Prague I met a guy named Jeffrey Martin who is one of the world's best panoramic photographers. At that time he had a bunch of weird hardware that took mostly panoramic photos but he's since branched out to video, building his own methods for capturing 360-degree scenes. The Sphericam is his invention and it looks pretty amazing.
Canopy Labs Raises $1.5M To Make Customer Analytics More Accessible	Top
Canopy Labs, a Y Combinator-incubated startup promising to help mid-sized businesses identify their most valuable customers, has raised $1.5 million in its first round of venture funding. Co-founder and CEO Wojciech Gryc told me that following the completion of YC in August, the team decided to return to Toronto, and it raised money from "Canada-friendly" investors. The round was led by BDC Venture Capital IT Fund, with participation from Valar Ventures (which is backed by Peter Thiel) and various angels.
Gift Guide: Ten One Design Pogo Connect iPad Stylus	Top
The number of options out there for iPad stylii at this point is almost crazy. But Ten One Design has always made solid ones, and the Pogo Connect also adds pressure sensitivity via Bluetooth 4.0. It's a slightly different take than others in this space, and one that benefits immensely from extremely low power consumption.
Mozilla Launches Its Latest GameOn Competition, Wants You To "Reimagine The Web As The Console"	Top
Mozilla just announced the launch of its GameOn competition for web-based games built on top of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and other open web technologies like WebGL and WebRTC. Developers can submit their games until February 24, 2013. There are three categories (hackable games, multi-device games and web-only games) and the winners will get an all-expense paid trip to San Francisco for GDC 2013.
Fear Not, Those Without Access To Other Avenues To Internet Porn, Google Is Not Really Censoring Results	Top
Be brave, heroes, for the hour is at hand: Google, in their wisdom, is now filtering - or selectively showing - hardcore porn with a bit heavier hand. This means looking up "boobs" on Google brings far fewer bare breasts than before but looking up "orgy facial sex" will definitely bring up some of the sweet stuff.
CEO Brian Chesky Says Airbnb Will Be Filling More Room Nights Than All Hilton Hotels By The End Of 2012	Top
Quoting Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, Mike Olson told the crowd that, by the end of this year (December 31st), the company will be filling more room nights than Hilton Hotels. For those unfamiliar, Hilton operates an international chain of luxury hotels and resorts, which according to its corporate overview, currently operates more than 3,200 hotels and 525,000 rooms in 77 countries, including more than 135,000 team members across the globe. (Although Hilton's Wikipedia page indicates the number of hotels worldwide is closer to 540, for what it's worth.)
I Love The Smell Of Sepia Tone In The Morning	Top
In three short weeks it will be 2013. Someone may want to send a fax to Flickr and Twitter to let them know. Over the past couple of days, both of these services have pulled a move straight out of 2010: they launched new versions of their mobile apps with — get this — filters. Filters! These guys have millions of dollars and thousands of employees at their disposal and this is the kind of innovation they're dicking around with.
Soundtracking's New Twitter Cards Music Integration Lets You Hear Photos Within Tweets	Top
While Instagram has pulled its photos out of the Twitter stream, tweets from Soundtracking now stream music in-line. The music moment-sharing app joins a small club including YouTube, Rdio, Official.fm, and Soundtracking that are pushing the limits of multi-media tweets. They hope a full-featured experience on Twitter will pull in traffic to their apps better than hoarding rich media.
Google Revamps Its Currents Mobile Newsreader App To Make It Smarter And More Scannable	Top
Google just launched an update to Google Currents, the company's Flipboard competitor, that makes it easier to scan through categories and editions from Google publisher partners like The Guardian and Forbes in the app. In addition, Google says it also brought some of its search technology to the app to power its breaking news sections.
Fly Or Die: Kindle Fire HD 8.9 Vs. Nook HD+	Top
Short of an iPad, the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 and Nook HD+ are about as good as it gets in the 10-inch media tablet space, so we thought it only fitting to Fly or Die these bad boys side-by-side. Though John and I did disagree a bit on which is best, we can both agree that either of these media tablets is an excellent buy for the avid reader and movie lover. Both have excellent displays — the Nook HD+ technically has a slightly higher ppi and laminated screen, while the Fire HD offers stereo speakers. In almost every way, though, it comes down to software.
He Who Controls The Mobile Photos, Controls The Universe	Top
A funny, and somewhat unexpected, thing happened today. Yahoo, now with Marissa Mayer at the helm, decided that it was time to bring an all-new experience to the world when it comes to photo sharing and hosting. It's a whole lot of new for Flickr's site and iOS app, and a bit of old nostalgia at play today, which is quite refreshing. One of the killer features of the new Flickr app that most people haven't picked up on yet is the fact that it's super simple to build up, and update, your social graph on Flickr. Yes, playing nice with other companies does have its upside. By simply tapping into your Facebook, Twitter, and address book contacts, you can completely bring Flickr back to life for your friends and for yourself.
Google's New Data Highlighter Lets You Add Structured Data To Your Sites Without Touching Any Code	Top
Google wants website owners to add as much structured data to their sites as possible in order to improve its search results and Knowledge Graph boxes with rich snippets like event listings, reviews and other information. Adding this kind of metadata to a site, however, isn't always trivial and many small businesses don't really have the expertise to add microdata or RDFa markup to their sites. Starting today, however, you won't have to fiddle with your code to report this data to Google. The company's new Data Highlighter now offers a point-and-click tool for tagging your site to its specifications without having to touch any code.
Mobile Gift Card App Gyft Arrives On Android	Top
Good things come in threes. Today, a third TechCrunch Disrupt alumni - in this case, Gyft - is launching on Android. Its debut follows news from earlier this morning which saw two other former participants, the Siri-like Maluuba app and Vocre's translation app, also arriving on Google's mobile platform.
FreedomPop Debuts In-Home Wireless Broadband With 1GB Free, Sees Nearly 50% Paid Conversions On Mobile	Top
FreedomPop, the wireless broadband company that started out offering free mobile data plans with 500MB of bandwidth for free, today began offering its Hub Burst modem for pre-order with an early 2013 expected arrival date. The modem uses Clearwire's WiMAX network to provide customers with in-home broadband connections at speeds it claims exceed DSL connections, and comes with 1GB per month of free service.

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