A curated selection of the day’s most newsworthy tech stories from all over the Web.
- Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is planning even more executive management changes at the Redmond-based software giant to add senior product executives with an engineering background and with experience executing product plans. So far, four top execs have left the company since May, including 23- year company veteran Bob Muglia. (Bloomberg Businessweek)
- After temporarily halting shipments of its Sandy Bridge platform due to design issues, the chip company plans to resume shipping but only for use in computers not affected by said issues, due in large part to requests from computer makers. Likely because of the whole kerfuffle, Intel said it will begin moving a new version of the chip in mid-February, a bit earlier than previously expected. (Wall Street Journal)
- Forget the fact we’ve already covered a near-final build of Android 3.0 (codenamed “Honeycomb”) running on Motorola’s reportedly expensive Xoom tablet. Looks like Android 2.4, geared towards smartphones like ViewSonic’s ViewPad, is due out in April. Confused by the odd numbering system yet? It’s OK — so are we. (Pocket Lint)
- Remember that Groupon commercial with actor Timothy Hutton that aired during the Super Bowl? Turns out you might not have been the only one questioning its bizarre lack of sensitivity towards Tibetans. A general uproar caused the popular daily deals site to eventually pull the ad. CEO Andrew Mason also took to a blog post to address the controversy. “We would never have run these ads if we thought they trivialized the causes — even if we didn’t take them as seriously as we do, what type of company would go out of their way to be so antagonistic?” (AllThingsD and Groupon)
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- Google’s top Middle East executive and political activist Wael Ghonim was released from jail after being blindfolded and held for 12 days for organizing protests against Egypt president Hosni Mubarak’s regime. Watch the entire interview, with English subtitles, here. (TechCrunch and Alive in Egypt)
- Smartphone market HTC plans to buy 5.33 million OnLive shares for a total investment of $40 million in the cloud-based gaming company, as well as acquire London-based mobile platform company Saffron Digital for $48.6 million. (Wall Street Journal)
- An early preview of the latest Kindle software update allows owners to make their book notes and highlights public, real honest-to-blog page numbers (finally!), sharable page numbers, messages and recommendations via social networks, and a new newspaper and magazine layout that gives a snapshot previews of articles. (Amazon)
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