Bonnie Cha / Crave: The gadget blog:
Verizon officially rolls out BlackBerry Storm firmware update  —  Earlier on Friday, we reported on rumors that Verizon Wireless would release a firmware update for the RIM BlackBerry Storm, but it’s now official.  —  The carrier has begun rolling out the software upgrade via …

Erica Sadun / Ars Technica:
Hidden SDK features transform iPhone into TV gaming device  —  Look what we found  —  What do you do after uncovering undocumented SDK features?  I got in touch with Freeverse, makers of Moto Chaser, one of the top iPhone games in App Store.  After a few back and forth e-mails […]

Nick Wingfield / Wall Street Journal:
Ballmer: Yahoo Deal Better if Done Soon  —  Q&A: Steve Ballmer and Qi Lu  —  After a nearly five month search, Microsoft Corp. on Thursday said it has found a new executive to lead its charge against Google Inc. in the online search and advertising business: Qi Lu, a […]

Jim Dalrymple / Macworld:
Apple: 300 million iPhone apps downloaded  —  Apple on Friday said 300 million iPhone apps have been downloaded from its App Store since it opened in July.  —  The news comes in the form of two ads placed in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.  The ads highlight […]

PC World:
AT&T Hopes for Single Smartphone OS (PC World)  — AT&T hopes to standardize on a single operating system for AT&T-branded smartphones as part of a “dramatic consolidation” of its mobile platforms over the next few years, a company executive said Thursday.

Jim Goldman / Tech Check with Jim Goldman:
Apple Apps “Bubble” Talk Just That, As Downloads Soar  —  You may have seen the Apple advertisement in the New York Times this morning (back page of the Business section) extolling the virtues of the iPhone.  Nothing new there.  —  If you made it through the fine […]

David Rothman / TeleRead:
Gasp, MIGHT Sony have sold more e-readers than Amazon has?  And has Amazon bungled the ePub-creation question?  —  I should have picked up on this yesterday.  A CNN story says “more than a quarter million” Kindles have been sold.  Whose numbers are most helpful?  CNN or Forrester Research, which estimates 400,000?

Arielle Reinstein / Gmail Blog:
Get your Gmail stickers  —  Not too long ago, one of the Gmail engineers broke out her vinyl cutter and made some Gmail m-velope stickers.  Pretty soon, they were pasted to our desks, stuck on our laptops, and adorning the walls around the office.  Then other people started asking us […]

Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
Social Network Profile Costs Woman College Degree  —  Forget losing your job, apparently your MySpace or Facebook profile and photos can now cause you to lose your degree.  In what may be one of the most frightening rulings regarding social networks and privacy to date …

DigiTimes:
Acer branded smartphones to hit the market in 1Q09, company clarifies  —  Yen Ting Chen, Taipei; Meiling Chen, DIGITIMES [Friday 5 December 2008]  —  Despite a bleak economic outlook, Acer remains optimistic about its growth opportunities for 2009.  The company expects its notebook shipments …