Editor’s note : Contributor David Kirkpatrick the author of The Facebook Effect and founder of the Techonomy Conference , taking place Nov. 13-15 in Arizona

A little while back, I got an email from Atmel, one of the leading touchscreen makers, asking if I wanted to check out their latest creation: a new active stylus that works with an improved touchscreen, for stylus actions alongside normal finger-touches and technologies like palm rejection. I passed, because to be honest, it didn’t sound very exciting.

Adobe’s mobile Flash efforts have recently gone the way of the western black rhino, and Principal Product Manager Mike Chambers isn’t too pleased with how the Adobe chose to broke the news. In fact, he feels so strongly about it that he’s offered up his own clarifications on the matter . “Our goal was to be very clear about WHAT we were doing, but in doing so, we didn’t pay enough attention to explaining WHY we were doing it,” he said on his blog today.

Within minutes of our big ol’ Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) demo video going online , one question barraged my inbox: could the new facial recognition-based unlocking feature be tricked with a photo? Google’s response on this was anything but solid.

Look out, Sanrio. After dominating the mobile world for just shy of two years (haters be damned), Angry Birds is movin’ on up into its own retail space. While Rovio plans on opening up shop in China (where the brand is huge, but next to all of the available merchandise is fake) sometime next year, this first store is on their home turf in Helsinki, Finland

As you’ve likely heard by now, today is Nigel Tufnel day. Tufnel, who revolutionized the music world in the early-80s with the introduction of volume knobs that go to 11 (rather than a mere 10), is being honored worldwide because of today’s date: 11/11/11. It’s a nice gesture, but Tufnel’s current employer, Google, apparently isn’t giving him the day off: he just sent me an email invite to a special event that’s being held next week in Los Angeles

The Droid RAZR was only just released today, but silly things like release dates don’t mean anything to the folks at iFixit . In a strange departure from their usual process, they’ve taken a giant knife to Motorola’s latest and greatest to show us all exactly what’s lurking under the hood. Photos like this have limited appeal, I’m sure, but it’s a perfect opportunity to feast your eyes on a Qualcomm MDM6600 baseband chip or a Skyworks 77449 power amplifier module if you haven’t already.

Facebook has just begun the application process for selecting the next batch of Preferred Developer Consultants. It began accepting permissions yesterday and will close at 5 p.m

As the co-founder of Priceline, serial entrepreneur Scott Case is a natural startup guy. Indeed, his fever for startups is so intense that he is now CEO of StartUp America Partnership, a “movement of entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs” designed to inspire young companies with expertise, capital and talent.

Instead of actually doing something productive this weekend (like getting a long overdue haircut), I may just lay around playing Atari’s new iOS-friendly take on the Asteroids franchise.