Edited by T. Trent Gegax & Woody Leonhard | September 3, 2013 06:00 PDT | 09:00 EDT | 13:00 UTC
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>>NOKIA'S NEW MASTER: Microsoft finally pulled the trigger -- first thoughts about the Nokia deal, by Matt Rosoff: "Microsoft believes its best shot at being competitive in the smartphone space is to ape Apple and own a set of integrated hardware-software-services experiences... Owning Nokia won't fix Windows Phone's flaws... what if the [rumored Nokia Windows RT] tablet actually runs Windows Phone 8 instead?... HTC and Samsung have taken a few shots at building Windows Phones, but placed most of their effort and energy into Android. With this move, kiss those efforts goodbye... The best chance for Windows Phone is feature phone users in emerging markets... I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft tries to find a buyer for [the Xbox] business... The rapid succession of events... sure makes it seem like something big and dramatic changed in Microsoft's thinking a few months back, and the company is now executing on a set of plans that were drawn up some time ago." CITEWorld
gt;>>> The next chapter: An open letter from Steve Ballmer and Stephen Elop: Official Microsoft Blog
>>>> Trying the Apple strategy: Microsoft buys Nokia's mobile business, by Galen Gruman: InfoWorld
>>>> With the Nokia deal, Microsoft becomes a juggernaut in patents for smart devices, by Daniel Rubino: Windows Phone Central
>>>> Barcelona rendezvous, 50 Nokia board meetings led to Microsoft deal, by Ina Fried: AllThingsD
>>>> Letter from Steve Ballmer to Microsoft employees on Nokia Devices & Services acquisition: Microsoft News Center
>>>> With $7.17 billion Nokia buy, Microsoft brings its Trojan horse home, by Cade Metz: Wired
>>>> Nine questions about Microsoft's Nokia acquition, by Harry McCracken: Time
gt;>>> Was Microsoft forced into buying Nokia? "I theorize that Nokia was either going to switch to Android or was on the verge of going bankrupt… had Nokia abandoned Windows Phone, then Windows Phone would be dead." Stratechery
gt;>>> Why I think the $7.2 billion Microsoft-Nokia deal is a terrible idea, by Om Malik: GigaOM
gt;>>> Windows Phone Market Share Up Around The World, But American Sales Still Weak, by Ewan Spence Forbes
>>>> Doubling down on the existing, failing strategy, or a foundation for a new one? by Benedict Evans
>> SCORE ONE FOR SWISHER: One Microsoft on, Ballmer out, ValueAct in -- get ready for the next shoe to drop at Microsoft, by Kara Swisher: "Indeed, it's dead clear that Ballmer is going to be increasingly perceived as a lame duck, although he has insisted to the execs he has been meeting with over the last week that he is decidedly not." AllThingsD
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>> HOW IT'S TWEETING
gt;>>> "Probably better than buying Yahoo" @rabois
gt;>>> "Was this the grand-master Ballmer plan? Send Elop to $NOK to drive into ground to re-buy Elop+Nokia devices later? #dreaming" @firstadopter
>>>> "Lets just face it -- iPhone and Android ecosystem did disrupt two major companies -- Microsoft and Nokia -- both ignored winds of change" @OM
>> DATAVIZ: US smartphone shipments by platform Kantar
>> WIRED WASHINGTON: Anti-drug Hemisphere program gives DEA data on calls passing through AT&T switches, by David Meyer: "The New York Times continues the surveillance theme with a scoop about a project called Hemisphere, which involves the collection and long-term retention of phone metadata by AT&T in order to aid local and federal anti-drug law enforcement efforts. The length of the retention time (as much as 26 years) far outstrips anything the NSA is doing... the biggest mass surveillance operations are being carried out in the name of unwinnable, unending wars, namely those on terror and drugs." GigaOM
>> MICROSOFT MISCHIEF: Microsoft abruptly pulls 'masters' certification; hints a replacement may come, by Mary Jo Foley: "Microsoft's surprise phase-out of its highest-level certification programs has angered a number of those who have trained or are in the midst of training to be 'masters' across a variety of the company's products." ZDNet
>> STAT DU JOUR: Windows 8 rockets to 7.41% market share as Windows XP falls below 35% mark , by Emil Protalinski: "The latest market share data from Net Applications shows that August 2013 was a massive one for Windows 8, which gained 2.01 percentage points (from 5.40 percent to 7.41 percent) while Windows 7 recovered 1.14 percentage points (from 44.49 percent to 45.63 percent)... Windows XP dropped a huge 3.53 percentage points." Pirate Windows 8.1 RTM could be part of the Win8 spike. TheNextWeb
>> REACHING FLOW: From collaborative coding to wedding invitations, GitHub is going mainstream, by Robert McMillan: "With 3.4 million users, the five-year-old site is a runaway hit in the hacker community, the go-to place for coders to show off pet projects and crowdsource any improvements. But the company has grander ambitions: It wants to change the way people work. It's starting with software developers for sure, but maybe one day anyone who edits text in one form or another -- lawyers, writers, and civil servants -- will do it the GitHub way. " Wired
>> #EPICFAIL: When phone vendors stop making money, they usually die (merge, liquidate, get acquired) quickly, by Horace Dediu: "In June of 2011 I asked 'Does the phone market forgive failure?' ... the trigger [event I used for this analysis was] when the vendor began making losses... the score so far is about 18 triggers, 15 exits and three pending." Asymco
>> MEET THE NEW BOSS: Jeffrey Bezos, Washington Post's next owner, aims for a new 'golden era' at the newspaper, by Paul Farhi: "We've had three big ideas at Amazon that we've stuck with for 18 years, and they're the reason we're successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient," Bezos told The Washington Post. "If you replace 'customer' with 'reader,' that approach, that point of view, can be successful at The Post, too." WaPo
>> SHOT: New Zealand just abolished software patents. Here's why we should, too, by Timothy B. Lee: "What's wrong with the patent system? Most people cite problems with patent trolls or low patent quality. But a recent study by the Government Accountability Office makes it clear that the real problem is more specific: Patents on software don't work... study is chock-full of evidence that most of the patent system's problems are really problems with software patents." WaPo
>> CHASER: New Zealand patent offices and judges don't interpret patent law like geeks do, by Florian Mueller: "Most media reports on the decision have been misguided, and have in turn misguided the readers of those articles." FOSS Patents
>> FEEELTHY LUCRE: Hacking the coding interview, by Philip Youssef: "If I have a big pipeline of companies all using this interview technique then if I screen at Company A on Tuesday and bomb out on a question, I may well get the same question on Thursday from Company B. Company A evaluates me to be low skill and Company B evaluates me to be high skill. Sooner or later, someone will ask me questions I know and I'll be evaluated as high skill." Restless Programmer
>> HARDTHINGS: Lenovo outs five new ThinkPads, including a 15-inch business Ultrabook Engadget
>> GEEK ALERT: Visual Studio 2013 RC1 reportedly leaked Neowin
>> FACT OF LIFE: The 10 most embarrassing, exploitative, soul-killing, downright dangerous tech jobs InfoWorld
>> KIM DOTCOM gets political: Kim Dotcom prepares for presidency of new NZ political party. TorrentFreak
>> TWEET O' THE DAY: "Given the current rate of technological adoption, everyone preaching disruption will have their ass handed to them by a 23-year-old in 2019 @ftrain
FEED ME, SEYMOUR: Comments? Questions? Tips? Shoot mail to Trent or Woody. Follow @gegax or @woodyleonhard.
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