A round-up of the companies, deals, and trends that made headlines.
Every day, the Fortune staff spends hours poring over tech stories, posts, and reviews from all over the Web to keep tabs on the companies that matter. We’ve assembled the morning’s most newsworthy bits below.
- Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg granted The New Yorker unprecedented access for a profile in the latest issue. Among the revelations: Zuckerberg has 879 Facebook friends, his favorite show was The West Wing until he realized Social Network screenwriter Aaron Sorkin was the show’s creator, Facebook’s conference rooms were named after bad ideas like “Subprime Mortgage” and “Beacon,” and that trademark blue interface stems from the fact that Zuckerberg is red-green color blind. (The New Yorker)
- Wal-Mart (WMT) is entering mobile with the Wal-Mart Family Mobile plan. Though $45 gets you one line with unlimited calling and texting, subscribers will only have five handsets to choose from, with the lone smartphone option being Motorola’s (MOT) less-than-stellar Cliq. (Gizmodo)
- Despite the announcement of several top-level exec departures, Nokia (NOKBF) remained upbeat as it unveiled several new smartphones, including the much-delayed N8, which will include an aluminum chassis, a 12-megapixel camera, and an estimated cost of 370 euros, or $474, when it hits later this month. (Wall Street Journal)
- Intel (INTC) revealed more hardware details about its upcoming Sandy Bridge chip architecture. While the platform will include the company’s most advanced graphics chip technology to date, it still won’t support DirectX11. (Some AMD and Nvidia chips already do.) (CNet)
- Chattanooga, Tennessee will be the first U.S. city to break the one-gigabit speed barrier courtesy of local power utility provider EPB. The service will cost $350 per month and become available by the end of the year. As for that exorbitant monthly cost? EPB CEO Harold DePriest responds simply, “Because we can.” (Technologizer)
- Cloud storage solutions provider StorSimple will announce this week that it’s raised $13 million during its second round of funding. Lead investor Mayfield Fund is also an investor in recently-acquired 3Par as well. (VentureBeat)
- TechCrunch speculates that AOL (AOL) is in final negotiations to snatch up Things Labs, the developers behind the Twitter/Facebook app Brizzly. (TechCrunch)
- HP (HPQ) CTO of Gaming Rahul Sood Tweets that everyone will want a webOS device once they finally see the hardware. (CrunchGear)
- Despite telling Fortune several months ago that he doesn’t view the iPad as direct competition, Jeff Bezos and Amazon (AMZN) have clearly changed their tunes — at least if the latest Kindle commercial is anything to go by. (9to5Mac)
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