Slash Lane / AppleInsider:
Steve Ballmer praises Apple for creation of iPhone App Store� —� Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer recently had positive words about Apple's success with the iPhone and its App Store, adding fuel to rumors of a potential alignment between Apple and Microsoft to bring Bing search to the iPhone.

Jay Yarow / Silicon Alley Insider:
February Search Results Are In: Bing Is Up Again, Yahoo Is Down Again (MSFT, YHOO)� —� Another month, another weak search performance from Yahoo.� —� The latest data from comScore on the US search market came out today.� —� It shows Bing had 11.5% of the search market in February, up from 11.3% in January.

Nilay Patel / Engadget:
Samsung E6 e-reader coming to Barnes and Noble this spring for $299� —� Samsung still hasn't committed to a formal launch date for the e-reader line it launched at CES, but the company narrowed down the launch date from “early 2010” to “this spring” this morning — which makes sense, seeing as spring has nearly, uh, sprung.

Paul Bonanos / GigaOM:
Apple's iTunes LP 6 Months Later: LP What?� —� When it was first unveiled, Apple's new iTunes LP format — codenamed “Cocktail” and introduced at a “rock and roll event” in San Francisco — promised to give consumers a new reason to buy albums instead of individual songs.

Jonathan Schwartz / What I Couldn't Say:
Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal� —� I feel for Google - Steve Jobs threatened to sue me, too.� —� In 2003, after I unveiled a prototype Linux desktop called Project Looking Glass*, Steve called my office to let me know the graphical effects were “stepping all over Apple's IP.”

Nick Saint / Silicon Alley Insider:
Cisco's New Router Could Let Everyone In China Make A Video Call At Once� —� Cisco's major news is finally out: a new large-scale core router, the CRS-3, capable of handling 322 Tbps.� —� That number — three times what Cisco's current best product, the CRS-1, can handle — is just a theoretical upper limit.

John Poirier / Reuters:
U.S. considers some free wireless broadband service� —� (Reuters) - U.S. regulators may dedicate spectrum to free wireless Internet service for some Americans to increase affordable broadband service nationwide, the Federal Communications Commission said on Tuesday.

Nick Bilton / Bits:
Foursquare Introduces New Tools for Businesses� —� Foursquare, a location-based social network, plans to distribute a new analytics tool and dashboard in the coming weeks that will give business owners access to a range of information and statistics about visitors to their establishments.

Nick Bilton / Bits:
Facebook Will Allow Users to Share Location� —� Starting next month, the more than 400 million Facebook users could begin seeing a new kind of status update flow through their news feed: the current locations of their friends.� —� Facebook plans to take the wraps off a new location-based feature …

MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Just In Time For The Location Wars, Twitter Turns On Geolocation On Its Website� —� When I wrote that location would be this year's Twitter at SXSW, I also meant that Twitter's geolocation would be this year's Twitter at SXSW.� The service has just turned on geolocation on its website today for the first time.