An anonymous reader writes “A recurring theme in comments on Slashdot since the 9/11 attacks has been concern about the use of government power to monitor or suppress political activity unassociated with terrorism but rather based on ideology. It has just been revealed that the IRS has in fact done that. From the story: “The Internal Revenue Service inappropriately flagged conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election . . . Organizations were singled out because they included the words ‘tea party’ or ‘patriot’ in their applications for tax-exempt status, said Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups. In some cases, groups were asked for their list of donors, which violates IRS policy in most cases, she said. ‘That was wrong. That was absolutely incorrect, it was insensitive and it was inappropriate. That’s not how we go about selecting cases for further review,’ Lerner said . . . ‘The IRS would like to apologize for that,’ she added. . . . Lerner said the practice was initiated by low-level workers in Cincinnati and was not motivated by political bias. . . . she told The AP that no high level IRS officials knew about the practice. Tea Party groups were livid on Friday. … In all, about 300 groups were singled out for additional review. . . Tea Party groups weren’t buying the idea that the decision to target them was solely the responsibility of low-level IRS workers. … During the conference call it was stated that no disciplinary action had been taken by those who engaged in this activity. President Obama has previously joked about using the IRS to target people.” So it’s not how they choose cases for review (except when it is), and was not motivated by political bias (except that is was). Also at National Review, with more bite.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
China’s e-commerce market racked up a whopping 1.3 trillion RMB ($ 190 billion USD) worth of transactions in 2012, according to a report by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) (linked article is in Chinese), an increase of 66.5 percent over 2011′s total. Last year, 242 million Internet users purchased goods online, and e-commerce transactions accounted for 6.1 percent of total retail sales of consumer goods. The growth was driven in large part by mobile users: during the last half of 2012, 40.7 percent of online shoppers used a mobile device to browse e-commerce merchandise. More than half–53.6 percent–browsed a merchandiser’s mobile app instead of accessing its main Web site through their device’s Internet browser. 53.3 percent of the respondents who used their mobile devices to shop said they did so while at home, and many stated that their smartphones had begun to replace their home PCs. 26.2 percent said they browsed items on their smartphones while at work or school, and 10.6 percent said they spent their commutes or time waiting in queues to shop. In addition to mobile, social media platforms also drove e-commerce sales. 41.8 percent of shoppers said they had first seen information or promotions for a product on a social media site before deciding to purchase it. Each shopper spent an average of 5,203 RMB (or about $ 843 USD), an increase of 1,302 RMB ($ 211 USD), or 25 percent, from the year before. According to the report, the most frequently purchased items were clothing and shoes, which 81.8 percent of online shoppers bought during the last six months of 2012. General merchandise accounted for 31.6 percent of sales, while consumer electronics made up 29.6 percent of the total. While the latest figures from CNNIC are impressive, China’s e-commerce market still has plenty of room to grow and is set to overtake America’s. As this Economist story notes, the Chinese e-commerce market is currently dominated by Alibaba, which last year handled 1.1 trillion yuan ($ 170 billion USD) in sales through two of its portals, Taobao and Tmall, and is on its way to becoming the first online retail company in the world to handle $ 1 trillion a year in transactions. Taobao is a C2C marketplace with more than 800 million product listings and 500 million registered users, according to Alibaba. B2C platform Tmall counts major international brands like Microsoft, Nike and Unilever among its 50,000 merchants.
Up a steep hill, far away from the hustle and bustle of the Plaça d’Espanya in Barcelona is a small Luthier shop called Jerzy Drozd Basses.
Editor’s note: Brad Garlinghouse is CEO of YouSendIt, the cloud file collaboration service. He is an avid angel investor in and advisor to several consumer and enterprise tech companies.
Mobile photo messaging app 
Towers Watson’s M&A practice recently published the results of Quarterly Deal Performance Monitor (QPDM) which is conducted in partnership with Cass Business School, and has examined all the data on all deals over $ 100 million completed in 2012. The results are really interesting, especially when you take look at what was happening in the public markets. In 2012, there were 94 deals in the tech sector with an average value of $ 717 million. In 2012, there were 768 M&A deals across all sectors above $ 100 million.
Apple has released its 2013 Supplier Responsibility Progress Report, and it features a number of updates from last year, including Apple’s decision to join the Fair Labor Association (a notable first), and conduct audits of its suppliers in tandem with that outside watchdog organization. The results seem to be a tightening of Apple’s code of conduct for suppliers all around, in terms of monitoring, penalties and programs to improve conditions.
The growing popularity of free mobile content — largely in the form of apps — is having a big impact on mobile advertising, the route that many developers and publishers are taking to monetize that content. Gartner has 
Crowdfunding site IndieGoGo shared some exclusive details regarding their past year with TechCrunch, and the stats essentially back up what Matt Burns said about 2012: In many ways, this was the year of crowdfunding. Campaigns raised more money in shorter periods, with fewer people involved in their creation, and more than half met their funding goal.
So we’ve tabulated the nominations and the votes are in for the 2012 Crunchies. More than 600,000 nominations were calculated across 20 categories, and, along with our partners GigaOm and VentureBeat, we are very proud to announce the finalists for 2012′s best in technology. Voting begins now. We’ve also updated our categories this year. For the first time, we’ll recognize enterprise, education, hardware, e-commerce, content discovery, collaborative consumption, and ye old hockey stick growth. We’ve seen Felix Baumgartner risk it all for a jump from space in his crazy suit, the Curiosity land on Mars with some epic tweets, and Google record our lives through Glass. It should be quite the match-up for Best Technology Achievement. Newcomers like FiftyThree’s Paper, as well as Medium from Ev Williams and Biz Stone’s Obvious, have caught our attention for design, joining Facebook Timeline, Square, and Svbtle in the Best Design category. Jim Goetz, Marc Andreessen, and Ben Horowitz will vie for your votes along with Matt Cohler, Michael Moritz, and Peter Thiel for VC of the Year. Goetz knocked it out of the park with the IPOs of Palo Alto Networks and Ruckus, as well as the acquisitions of Karma by Facebook and eMeter by Siemens. Matt Cohler continued to prove his understanding of the consumer Internet with the substantial acquisition of Instagram by Facebook. Michael Moritz saw the value in Kayak long before industry incumbents decided it was better to purchase, rather than compete with them. Thiel continues to take big risks and reaped the benefits of his Facebook investment in 2012. He’s the chairman and sits on the board of Palantir, arguably one of the hottest companies of 2012. And Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz continue to shake up Sand Hill Road with their modern operating style and key investments. Sexy enterprise companies will take the stage by storm with their vertical’s resurgence in popularity. Asana offers organizational nirvana while Box gives us our place in the cloud. Cloudera, Plexi and Zendesk round out the group. This year’s Best Mobile App category pits previous 2011 Crunchies winner for Best Location App, Grindr, against Google Maps – every iOS device owner’s first love – and Evernote, Instagram, and Square. Speaking of good match-ups, the CEO of the Year competition includes some of the Valley’s finest: Twitter’s Dick Costolo, Evernote’s Phil Libin, Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer, Google’s Larry Page, and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. It’s going to be a
In the early days of TechCrunch, Mike Arrington used to share a list of his favorite products – those he couldn’t live without – which he had used over the course of the year. Want to flashback? Check out 
Twenty twelve was 
There we were, circled around a bachelor party campfire and drunk on keg beer, discussing the viability of using Kickstarter to fund a sex toy startup. My buddy Dan (he goes by Dangerous D at karaoke) had designed and handmade a compact speed controller for small vibrators (pic below). He was selling them at $ 75 a pop and apparently – I have yet to see or try one – they were getting rave reviews. Dangerous D’s Magic Box, he called it. Another friend and I were passionately trying to convince him to quit his job as a bank manager and start a sex toy startup. We were positive, and a bit drunk, that all he needed was a successful Kickstarter campaign. The video would obviously be key.
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