1. Amazon may have got off an impressive first shot in the cloud war with Apple, but it also may have done too much too soon: Numerous reports suggest Amazon's cloud systems couldn't supply the demand for Lady Gaga's priced-to-move latest release and are suffering some failures. In particular they seem unable to route enough traffic through their grid, and commenters are confirming to us that it's been over 12 hours and album downloads are incomplete.

2. Apple has spoken up to defend its app community against legal threats from patent law firm Lodsys, which has been sniping at certain developers for allegedly violating its patents relating to the way in-app upgrades occur. Apple's stance is that it has licensed the technology from Lodsys and has thus "undisputedly" sub-licensed it on behalf of its developers. It's demanding Lodsys "cease its false assertions" and stop harassing its coders.

3. Twitter has continued its inward-pulling development and has bought third-party app TweetDeck for over $40 million in cash and stock, ending weeks of speculation. Simultaneously, Twitter has shaken up its developer family by announcing some new email systems that alert users when their content has been retweeted--a service that some third party apps also provide--the two moves underline Twitter's move to consolidate its own platform despite its large third-party network.

4. Apple has acted to defend its IP and has bought over 200 patents and pending applications from Freescale Semiconductor. The patents tend to cover Wi-Fi and cellular encoding technology, and include ones filed as recently as 2010. It's unclear exactly how Apple acquired them from former Motorola division Freescale, likely it leveraged its large cash fund. We can expect the ongoing legal battles with Nokia and Samsung to get more complex.

5. Barnes & Noble is expected today to refresh its hardware lineup in its e-reader battle with Amazon. A new e-ink based device is rumored to be revealed, with a touch-screen display that uses the improved Pearl e-ink tech and has Wi-Fi only, in order to keep its price down. That price is apparently around $140, pitched to match the Kindle Wi-Fi edition, though the Kindle lacks a touchscreen.

( Source: Fast Company )