Activist: Rockets rip through Syrian city

Intense blasts echoed through the ravaged Syrian city of Homs on Monday after a weekend bloodbath ended in hundreds of deaths there, local activists said.
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One dead, dozens injured in fifth day of Egypt clashes

Violent clashes near Egypt's Interior Ministry on Monday left at least one person dead and 72 injured, a health ministry official said.
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Australians urged to flee flooding

Australian authorities on Monday pleaded with hundreds of people who had chosen to remain in a town in the path of rising flood waters to vacate their homes.
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Aftershocks rattle Philippines; quake death toll climbs

A 6.8-magnitude earthquake struck Monday off the third-largest island in the Philippines, killing at least 12 people, an official said.
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President: Tuareg fighters from Libya stoke violence in Mali

Tuareg tribesman who reportedly fought for Moammar Gadhafi in Libya have returned to Mali with weapons, stoking violence and forcing thousands to flee, Mali's president said.
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Official: Libya's Saif Gadhafi could be tried within weeks

Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, the son of Libya's deposed leader Moammar Gadhafi, could go on trial "within weeks or months," Libya's interior minister said Sunday.
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Hearing set for Italian cruise ship captain

A closed-door hearing to determine whether the captain of the Costa Concordia cruise ship should remain under house arrest is set for Monday.
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Mexico's ruling party picks woman as presidential candidate

Mexico's conservative ruling party has picked a former education secretary as its nominee for the nation's top job. If she wins, she will become Mexico's first female president.
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Elizabeth celebrates 60 years as queen

Sixty years ago Monday, a 25-year-old woman got a message that her father had died -- and that she was now Queen Elizabeth II.
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Foxconn story shrouded in secrecy

We meet her by chance on the side of a road. She looks the very model of a Chinese factory worker: young, vibrant, dressed in the cheap brand-name knockoff fashions so common of poor rural villages.
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Groupon Buys eCommerce Data Targeting Startup Adku

I love the smell of acquisitions in the morning! We've just heard that Groupon has acquired Adku, a stealth startup that uses big data in order to personalize the online shopping experience for people visiting eCommerce sites like eBay, Amazon and Zappos. The company built their personalized targeting technology in three months, and have basically been in stealth since they launched at the Angelpad Demo day a year and a half ago. Adku is backed by Greylock Partners, Battery Ventures and True Ventures in addition to being an Angelpad startup.
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Lip Reading, 3D Desktops, And NUI: Microsoft Plans To Reinvent User Interaction

Deep in the skunk works of its Research and Labs divisions, secreted around the Seattle area, Microsoft is working on totally reinventing the way people interact with their computers. Very little is out in the open or in more than a prototype form, but the work is unquestionably being done. Last week it transpired that Microsoft is working on building Kinect into the bezels of laptops, and after that, presumably, tablets and eventually mobile phones. But it's not just about building out the install base for Dance Central 3. It's enabling the next generation of awareness in our electronics. The iPhone ushered in an era where our devices know when we touch them. Microsoft is working on the next one, in which our devices will simply know us.
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Backplane To Hold Music Hackathon At SXSW, With Top Industry Managers As Judges

A few weeks ago we wrote about Backplane — a platform for creating interactive, highly visual communities — that counts Lady Gaga as one of its backers, along with plenty of the Valley's most well-known investors. Now the company is harnessing its star power to hold a unique (and potentially awesome) event at SXSW: the SXSW Managers Hack — a hackathon that will be judged by some of the most accomplished managers in the music industry, including: Scooter Braun, best known for facilitating Justin Bieber's rise to fame; Jay Brown, President of Jay-Z's Roc Nation; and Troy Carter, manager of Lady Gaga (Carter is also one of Backplane's cofounders).
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‘Transparent Screen’ Android App Lets You Text And Walk Without Fear

I used to scowl when I saw people walking down the street with eyes locked on their phones, but necessity has gotten me in the habit of doing it too. Thanks to a new app called Transparent Screen though, now I can do it free from the fear of falling into an open manhole or into a large fountain. No, that’s not a hastily Photoshopped image you see here, that's more or less exactly what you’ll see when the app is running. I say “more or less” because while all of the Android UI goes translucent upon launch, you’re afforded with quite a bit of a control over how dramatic the effect is. It’s in your best interest to get familiar with the settings if you plan on using Transparent Screen for a while too, because you'll soon have some choices to make.
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Can Startups Learn Anything From Linux?

Linux is the world's largest collaborative software development project. People from all over the world have influenced the Linux kernel code, and it runs on everything from mainframe computers to wristwatches. Linux, and free software development in general, provides some tremendous insights into what makes a successful project. Can today's startups learn anything from the history of Linux? The history of Linux proves that collaborative development speeds true innovation. If Linus Torvalds were left to work on Linux alone, there's no way it would be the success it is today. A great many of the things that Linux does today are a direct result of people scratching their own itches, and then contributing their work back upstream to Linus. Many people focusing on their own little (and not-so-little) problems have made Linux the powerhouse that it is today.
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Appoxee Raises Funding, Helps Mobile App Developers Boost User Engagement

Israeli startup Appoxee has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from early-stage investment firm Cyhawk Ventures. The company offers a service that helps app developers and publishers increase user engagement through rich push notifications and helps them with things like audience segmentation, targeting, analytics and reporting. Read more over at TechCrunch Europe.
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Circuit Playground App Helps Makers Build Electronics

If you don't know a resistor from a Mister Mister, this is the app for you. Built by Adafruit, creators of DIY Arduino gear, Circuit Playground is a $2.99 app designed to help you identify and understand various electronic components. For example, the app includes a resistor identification system based on the colored bands painted on the casing as well as a field guide to many electrical components.
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Keen On… SOPA: Mob Rule or Direct Democracy? (TCTV)

My own views about SOPA and the need to protect online intellectual property are well-known. But even I acknowledge that SOPA was a flawed bill that didn't represent a viable solution to policing the Internet against intellectual property theft. So is there life after SOPA? How can the technology and content communities carve out a compromise which will simultaneously protect innovation and the rights of the creative community? In the spirit of compromise, I invited Larry Downes, one of SOPA's most articulate critics, into our San Francisco studio to talk about what comes next.
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Brands Scored 2X Facebook Likes By Posting About Super Bowl

Want to win some extra visibility for your brand on Facebook? Post about current events. Brands grabbed 99.7% higher engagement on their Page posts by talking about the Super Bowl yesterday, and 60% higher engagement over the past 6 weeks compared to the average post. The data from a Buddy Media study of 1,400 of the world's largest brands indicates they should make sure to post about holidays, sporting events, breaking news, and other trending topics. Here's how this strategy works:
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When Will The Post-PC Era Arrive? It Just Did.

There has been much debate about what the post-PC era is, when it will arrive, or whether it's already here. But key pieces of new data, emerging last week, are making the case that we crossed the imaginary line from the "PC" era to the "post-PC" era at the end of 2011. According to analysts at Canalys, two major computing milestones were achieved at the end of this year: smartphone shipments outpaced PCs for the first time ever, and Apple became the world's largest PC maker, if you count iPads as PCs (as well you should). Combined, what these numbers tell us is that the post-PC era is happening now. Right now. And maybe we need to think about how we define "PC."
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