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Week in review: Android fragmentation, Windows Phone, and raising Venice

Ars looks back at the week's top stories.

Week in review: Android fragmentation, Windows Phone, and raising Venice

The best smartphones to carry with you into 2012: Looking to upgrade your phone with some unexpected holiday cash? Here are our picks for the best high-end and budget handsets of 2011.

There's no such thing as Android, only Android-compatible: Even to call Android "fragmented" assumes that it was or ought to be unified and singular from the beginning. It makes more sense to start talking about "Android-compatible" devices, rather than Android.

The Old Republic diaries: a newbie to MMOs learns dungeon basics at level 20: Ars continues its coverage of Star Wars: The Old Republic, as we continue our trek to level 50. Today we're going to talk about learning to work with a group, and why The Old Republic's community continues to impress.

Is Windows Phone's consumer focus killing it?: A former Microsoft and Windows Phone veteran has offered up his explanation of why the Windows Phone platform is struggling in the market. Where Android gives immense power to mobile operators and hardware OEMs, Windows Phone is much more restrictive. This provides a good user experience, but makes the platform unappealing to the companies who sell the hardware. Microsoft's challenge is to win over the carriers and manufacturers without ruining things for end users.

Under pressure: raising Venice above water (using... water?): Everyone knows that on a sinking ship, you want to pump water out. But what do you do with a sinking city? In the case of Venice, the plan might be to pump water in.

Windows 8 gesture login: Can screen smudges reveal your password?: Instead of typing letters and numbers, Windows 8 will let you log in to tablets by making gestures on the screen.

In the market for new games? Share the best deals of the season: Many gamers are flush with cash and gift cards after the holidays, so why not sit down and share your favorite ways to spend that gaming cash? The deals are thick out there, so share your favorite!

Huge portions of the Web vulnerable to hashing denial-of-service attack: A flaw common to most popular Web programming languages can be used to launch denial-of-service attacks against sites using PHP, ASP.NET, Java, Python, Ruby, Apache Tomcat, Apache Geronimo, Jetty, Glassfish, and V8.

Conservatives lining up in opposition to SOPA: This week saw growing signs of opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act on the American right, as the editor of the popular conservative blog RedState and a scholar at the influential Heritage Foundation both came out against the bill.

Hitting all the right marks: Acer Aspire S3 ultrabook review: Acer's ultrabook entry hits all the right marks for an ultraportable computer: good battery life, good performance, good trackpad and keyboard.

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