Joe Wilcox

Currently there are 11 4G LTE phones -- two from AT&T and 9 from Verizon -- available from major US Carriers, and they're all Androids. Even more are coming, some this month, and again they're all Androids. There is no LTE iPhone and until today's HTC Titan II announcement, nothing running a Microsoft operating system. Finally, prospective Windows Phone buyers can get super-fast cellular data. iPhone users are out of luck. Well, maybe. HTC says the LTE Windows Phone is coming to AT&T "in the coming months". Who knows, iPhone 5 LTE could come sooner.

Like its predecessor, Titan II will be available from AT&T, which is good for HTC, Microsoft and Windows Phone. The brawny 4.7-inch-display smartphone will only compete with two other LTE handsets there -- HTC Vivid and Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket. Better to be one of three at AT&T than one of 10+ at Verizon. That's assuming AT&T adds no other LTE smarphones "in the coming months", before Titan II goes on sale. Last week I posted the "7 things I really don't want to see at CES". Among them: Products announced that don't ship for many months later.

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Move over YouTube. Vimeo is finally making its big mobile splash, and it's way, way overdue. The online video pioneer has ceded too much to Google and, by comparison, latecomer YouTube for too long. Today that changes, with new mobile apps for Android, iPad, Kindle Fire and Windows Phone. Vimeo released an iPhone app 10 months ago.

I downloaded the Android app to Galaxy Nexus and XOOM LTE early this afternoon and must say that I'm impressed. The app is well-organized for video discovery -- much better than YouTube. Not surprisingly, the options are viewing/uploading and options are better for the tablet than the smartphone. Overall, the user interface is clean, uncluttered and responsive.

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One thing will be certain when the dust settles on Consumer Electronics Show 2012: Just how meaningless and pitiful is Microsoft's three-screen strategy. Good riddance, too, as Microsoft pulls out of CES following this year's event. After more than a decade working this three-screen thing -- PC, phone and TV -- Microsoft has taken leadership in the most bizarre way: Showing competitors what they shouldn't do.

The indictment against Microsoft's three-screen strategy started over the weekend, from Lenovo and Vizio, and will brutally continue over the next four days, headlined by Samsung, among others.

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Someone stole my daughter's iPhone 4S on Wednesday. We recovered it today, Saturday. The phone was a lost cause if not for Apple's cloud recovery service, which worked in an unexpected way overnight.

The saga started in the school office, where my daughter works for one period every other day. She often has out her phone and feels comfortable leaving it at the table where she busies; the teens working there are all fairly honest. On this particular day, she stepped out for five minutes and returned to find the phone gone. Sitting where she had been: Another teen applying to attend the school, with her mom close by. My daughter used a friend's phone to call hers, but the sound was off. The iPhone 4S was gone.

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Finally, after a two-day delay, we have a winner for a shiny, new Galaxy Nexus smartphone. We asked you to offer 2012 New Year's resolutions for Google -- and you did, and some too late to qualify (you missed the deadline, sorry). Among the many on-time submissions, we chose 25 resolutions that Google should consider for the year ahead.

The resolutions aren't as broad as we expected and perhaps the prize is reason. More of you offered suggestions about Android than anything else. In the list below, some submitters appear more than one time, but they were only considered once in the prize drawing. We randomly chose from among all submitters meeting the deadline. In the interest of time -- and preparation for next week's Consumer Electronics Show -- we didn't check to see if all submitters met the other qualifications. We qualified the winner only and would have drawn another name had he failed to meet them (The two absolutely required with the resolution submission: Tweet the post and follow BetaNews on Twitter).

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Next week, the biggest trade show of the year opens in Las Vegas. Tens of thousands of people will make the annual pilgrimage to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show. My inbox already bursts with press releases, and it can only get worse. I hate CES. Trade shows like this one are anachronisms. Microsoft is right to bow out after this year. There's too much noise and too many vendors trying to yell louder than the next one. Logistically, from a reporter's perspective, it's a nightmare to coordinate. There's too much to cover and not enough time.

So in that spirit, I've come to spit on CES and offer a list that juxtaposes colleague Tim Conneally's. Earlier this week, he posted: "10 things I genuinely want to see at CES 2012". Tim offers an excellent list of want-to-sees. I'm taking a different tact: Things I don't want to see -- or hear about -- during CES 2012.

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That's the gist of an advertisement running at CNET right now. It's the "first 4G LTE phone from Sprint", according to the banner advert, on the carrier's, ah, coming-sometime-really-soon LTE network. I dunno if the ad spills a pending CES 2012 announcement or what. But leaks don't get much funnier than this.

On the other hand, Sprint held a little event late this afternoon announcing big, splashy LTE network deployment. I suppose the carrier could offer Galaxy Nexus with LTE capability ahead of the bigger pipes. But the handsome smartphone may look a little old in the tooth when quad-core beauties start selling around the time Sprint offers LTE.

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AT&T LTE is now available in San Diego, which means I'll soon conduct speed test comparisons around the city against Verizon's 4G network. It will be the Wilcox household network speed test face-off, the wife's Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket against my Galaxy Nexus.

San Diego joins 10 other cities, which LTE service AT&T announced today. They are: Austin, Texas; Chapel Hill, N.C.; New York City metro area; Los Angeles; Oakland; Orlando, Phoenix; Raleigh, N.C.; San Diego; San Francisco; and San Jose. They join 15 others: Athens, Ga.; Atlanta; Baltimore; Boston; Charlotte, N.C.; Chicago; Dallas-Fort Worth; Houston; Indianapolis; Kansas City; Las Vegas; Oklahoma City; San Antonio; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and Washington, DC. AT&T claims its LTE network reaches 74 million people; Verizon, 200 million.

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Last week, we asked you to put a caption to the photo above -- for a chance to win an HP TouchPad -- and, whoa, did you ever. We received about 300 responses in comments and by email. Many of the best caption contenders came by mail, while many others came too late to qualify; deadline was December 28, 2011 at 11:59:59 pm ET. Actually, among the late-comers there were some well-deserving contest considerations. :(

We reduced the number of candidates to 15; originally we planned 10 but there were so many good entries. We used a polyhedral dice from my old Dungeons & Dragons game -- yes, there was role playing before the Internet and Xbox 360 -- to cut the contenders to 12, nine, six and three. Then one -- so the winner was randomly chosen from among the top 15.

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Microsoft and Mozilla simply couldn't ask for a better situation. At a time when usage share for their respective browsers sinks, the world's No. 1 search engine has effectively stripped up-and-comer Chrome from meaningful search ranking. Google demoted Chrome, following a sponsored-link scandal that violates its own policies about paid links. If you Google "browsers" today, unlike yesterday, Chrome won't appear among top results and is buried pages below.

From one perspective, Google did the right thing, treating itself and its own product like any of its search customers. Throughout 2011, Google was on a tear to purify search rankings of shenanigans like this one. But from another viewpoint, Google had no other choice. Its business is about trust, and the company can't be doing what it prohibits others from doing. Then there's that pesky antitrust investigation and allegations Google favors its own stuff in searches.

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Four months after unceremoniously firing Carol Bartz over the phone, Yahoo's board today named PayPal president Scott Thompson as chief executive. Thompson will assume the new role on January 9, when he also joins Yahoo's board of directors.

Thompson comes to Yahoo amid great turmoil. The company is undergoing something of an identity crisis as it struggles to reinvent itself. Right now, Yahoo's strongest asset is a commanding brand, but its identity is increasingly amorphous, and the company considers unloading web properties in markets where its products are best known, such as Asia. Many challenges face Thompson, none the least convincing shareholders he can bring focus back to the struggling Internet giant. Yahoo shares nudged down about 3 percent in early trading -- $15.84, off the $16.11 opening and $16.25 close yesterday.

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Here's what you do at Microsoft when you can't boast about how high Internet Explorer usage share is: You trumpet about how low it is. In what has to be one of the strangest blog posts coming out of Microsoft in weeks, Roger Capriotti proclaims: "IE6 usage in the US has now officially dropped below 1 percent!" Well, it's nearly 8 percent globally, Bud, but what kind of cheerleading is this? Generally companies tout who uses their products, not who doesn't.

But that's the strange state of Internet Explorer 6, which Microsoft can't seem to kill -- and not for want of trying. Days like this, I want to be an artist (sadly, capable stick figures exceed my drawing capabilities). It's so past time for someone to portray the browser that won't die as some kind of undead creature.

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It's my annual ritual. Rather than make predictions for the new year, I arrogantly tell Companies X, Y or Z what they should do. This year, I asked colleague Ed Oswald to offer Apple resolutions, and Google's will come from you. I've got Microsoft, but, sadly, my list looks too much like last year's, and that's disturbing. If the world doesn't end for the rest of us in 2012, as Mayans predicted, it could for Microsoft, if CEO Steve Ballmer and top execs don't take the post-PC era more seriously.

In mid December 2010, I warned that "2011 will be make or break" for Microsoft. Viewed from perception, the year was more "make", as Microsoft marketing, successful BUILD conference and Xbox Kinect helped lift a long sagging image. Last year I put forth: "Perception management is a good 2011 priority for Microsoft, with no new versions of its flagship products planned for the year. The company needs to give consumers, developers and IT Pros reasons to get excited again about Microsoft software and OEM products". There, Microsoft succeeded.

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Sony Electronics rang in 2012 with a surprising discount that may foreshadow much about the tablet market this year. Overnight I received email from a Sony spokeswoman saying the company "has permanently dropped the price of the Sony Tablet S by $100 starting today". This follows what seemed like a temporary $50 discount right before Christmas. If you paid $499.99 or $599.99 before Santa's sleigh ride, 16GB Sony S is now $399.99 and 32GB 499.99.

SonyStyle Store doesn't yet list the new pricing as permanent, merely "save $100 instantly". "On top of these savings, Sony is also currently offering (for a limited time) a store credit and five free Video Unlimited movie rentals, five free PlayStation Store game downloads and 180 days of free Music Unlimited service with the purchase of a Tablet", the spokeswoman says.

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BetaNews reader-appreciation week continues with a third contest. We'd like to give one lucky reader the Google-branded, Samsung-manufactured Galaxy Nexus. But you'll have to work for it, by, first, offering New Year's resolutions that Google should make in 2012. We're giving away a Google phone after all.

Earlier today, Colleague Ed Oslwald offered resolutions for Apple, and I'm working on my annual list for Microsoft. Google will come from you, and we ask that you make serious resolutions -- things that could improve the core business, Google products and services and relationship to customers, among others. This is your chance to tell Google execs what you want from the company this year and possibly win Galaxy Nexus in the process.

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