Top Tech

AP - Deion Sanders said he wasn't worried. Joe Montana went in with his game face on and Jordin Sparks just hoped sand did not end up in her eyes.

Appolicious - NFL Kicker! is the sort of game you download innocently enough looking to kill a few spare minutes; then, by the time you finally look up, you’ve spent half an hour devoted to kicking digital field goals. That’s far from a bad thing; rather it feels exciting to have a sports game on a mobile platform feel so immediate and gratifying.

ContributorNetwork - Back when home video games were still new, every new console's controller was an experiment. And before people settled on things like the Atari 2600's joystick and the Nintendo Entertainment System's gamepad, which influenced everything that came after them, they tried out some ... unusual form factors. Like the Fairchild Channel F's hybrid paddle-joystick, or the Mattel Intellivision's disc-and-touchpad arrangement.

AP - Facebook's billionaire CEO Mark Zuckerberg calls himself a hacker.

AP - A group linked to the hacker network Anonymous says it has attacked the Swedish government's website and shut it down by overloading it.

AP - Trading jokes and swapping leads, investigators from the FBI and Scotland Yard spent the conference call strategizing about how to bring down the hacking collective known as Anonymous, responsible for a string of embarrassing attacks across the Internet.

Reuters - Micron Technology Inc Chief Executive and Chairman Steve Appleton died in a small plane crash on Friday, a major loss for a U.S. memory chipmaker already struggling with sluggish computer sales and declining prices.

AP - Hewlett-Packard Co. ushered in Meg Whitman as its CEO with a $16.5 million compensation package that hinges on the one-time politician's ability to lift the stumbling technology company's stock price during the next two years.

AP - Apple Inc. has temporarily blocked Motorola Mobility's attempt to have it withdraw several iPhone and iPad models from its Internet store in Germany, the latest twist in an extended legal duel over patents between the companies.

ContributorNetwork - COMMENTARY | They may not be the power company, but you won't find too many threats to their dominance. All three are not only at the top of their game, they have few, if any, competitors. And the law helps keep newbies out of the market.

Yahoo! News - The new mandatory Facebook Timeline is a surprisingly controversial feature. You either love it, or you hate it. And according to a new poll, it appears that almost all of you hate it. Overall, only 20% of those surveyed said they liked …

Yahoo! News - While many sports fans are preparing for Sunday's Super Bowl by organizing parties and shopping for TVs, the U.S. government is preparing in a different way. Just yesterday, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency seized 307 different domains suspected of violating NFL copyrights. …

Reuters - The Super Bowl is still two days away but some advertisers already are looking like winners as their yet-to-be-aired commercials score millions of hits online and rack up pre-game buzz.

ContributorNetwork - States-side fans of video game consoles, from the first Nintendo Entertainment System to its modern successor the Wii, know what it's like for a game that looks awesome to only come out in Japan.

Appolicious - Android got some good news this week. Firstly, numbers released by comScore suggest the platform grew in the fourth quarter of 2011 in the U.S. Secondly, the U.S. government has decided to use Android devices as secure phones.

The Cutline - More than 111 million people are expected to watch the Super Bowl between the New York Giants and New England Patriots on Sunday—roughly a third of the U.S. population and the largest television audience in television history. And virtually all of those viewers will be watching it live. "Live sports is the most DVR-proof programming [...]

Appolicious - Rovio Mobile has done a pretty impressive job of leveraging the runaway success of the game Angry Birds into a huge multimedia brand. But like Beanie Babies, Furbies and Tamagatchis before it, one figures that eventually, Angry Birds will lose steam and disappear into the annals of toy history.

Reuters - Welcome to the airport terminal of the future.

AP - The European Union's data protection authorities have asked Google to delay the rollout of its new privacy policy until they have verified that it doesn't break the bloc's data protection laws.

Appolicious - The touchscreen keyboard gets an upgrade with TouchPal’s Keyboard for Android tablets. It lets you easily switch between swiping and tapping, as well as gestures to get the most out of your finger follies. This week also brought some big name updates to the Android Market, including special upgrades from McAfee Security and Mint’s personal finance app. Salesforce debuted its Rypple app this week, as did Eventbrite for managing events on-the-go.