Pulling signal out of the noise is getting much more important. And the folks at Twitter are getting some help sorting through the flood of daily updates by buying Summify, a Vancouver, B.C.-based startup that counts RealNetworks founder Rob Glaser among its investors.

Summify analyzes a user’s media feeds, including social media and news syndication, to deliver a digest of top stories. But unlike a straight-up news reader, Summify uses algorithms to determine which stories are being passed around and talked about by the people a user interacts with.

There’s no word of the price Twitter paid for the service, just as the seed round from last spring didn’t have a price tag—and I couldn’t find an SEC filing for the company, either. Summify does say that it will be shutting down the service and relocating to San Francisco.

The company was started by a pair of Romanian former interns for Google and Microsoft, and is a product of Vancouver startup incubator Bootup Labs (which is apparently “defunct,” according to TechVibes).

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The evolution of Constant Contact continues. The Waltham, MA-based online marketing firm (NASDAQ: CTCT) said today it has acquired Boston-based CardStar, a maker of a mobile app that lets people consolidate their loyalty and rewards cards. Terms of the acquisition weren’t given.

The deal represents Constant Contact’s first foray into mobile rewards technology aimed at helping small businesses stay connected to consumers. CardStar’s app lets people create a digital version of their physical membership cards (for retail stores, gyms, and so on) all in one place, on their smartphone. CardStar started in late 2008 and has four employees joining Constant Contact, including founders Andy Miller and Danny Espinoza. The startup says it has more than 2 million active users.

“I was a user before I was an acquirer,” says Constant Contact CEO Gail Goodman.

And acquiring CardStar makes a lot of sense for Constant Contact, which has been working to transform itself from an e-mail marketing firm into a one-stop shop for small businesses trying to reach customers through social media, online marketing, rewards programs, and other methods.

“This acquisition is at the intersection of everything we do,” Goodman says. “As we look at what small businesses are trying to do, they are trying to use every possible channel to reach customers—e-mail, social, mobile. At the core of that is a loyalty program. Andy and his team will help us weave those pieces into a really simple, really impactful application on the merchant side.”

Goodman declined to give specifics on any upcoming mobile products, but she emphasized that CardStar’s app will continue to run, and that more is on the way. “We are on a pretty aggressive product roadmap,” she says. “Much of what we’ve done has loyalty at its heart. Our customers have always wanted to take that a step further. But without mobile, it’s pretty hard.”

As for why Constant Contact chose CardStar over other companies in the mobile couponing and rewards sector, Goodman pointed to the startup’s traction with consumers and the culture fit with her team.

Constant Contact says it has more than 450,000 customers, mostly small businesses, nonprofits, and associations. Last summer, I spoke with the firm about its plans for innovating as a young public company (IPO in 2007), and about the biggest technology shift in its 13-year history (integrating Web software with existing database systems, among other things).

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Turns out gambling with digital money can pay off pretty big, too. Seattle’s Double Down Interactive, maker of casino-style videogames for social networks, is being purchased by slot-machine giant International Game Technology for up to $500 million.

Rumors of the sale started trickling out this afternoon, and IGT (NYSE: IGT) confirmed the purchase just after markets closed. The price includes $250 million in cash, $85 million in retention payments over two years, and $165 million in performance incentives over the next three years.

Like many of the top Facebook games, DoubleDown Casino is free to play. Once they get hooked, players pony up for virtual currency to keep their streak going. They can’t cash it out, since that would be actual gambling—but rules on that front are changing quickly, which helped push IGT to grab the startup.

For years, the federal Justice Department has forbidden online gambling under an interpretation of the federal Wire Act. But the DOJ recently flip-flopped on that stance, opening the door for the possibility of regulated online gambling in the near future. That brings us to today’s Double Down deal.

Even without those regulatory factors, the startup was doing pretty well. Double Down’s sole game, which has several casino-style games inside it, was named by Facebook as its No. 4 most popular game of 2011. Independent tracking from AppData says the DoubleDown Casino had 4.7 million monthly active users. Earlier this year, Tricia Duryee of AllThingsD reported from unnamed sources that Double Down was on a path for about $50 million in annual revenue.

It’s a big win for Double Down, which was founded in 2010 and has about 80 people—including a pair of executives lured away from fellow Seattle casual game company BigFish Games. But it’s not a jackpot for the area’s VCs—Double Down was started with the profits from founders Greg Enell and Cooper DuBois’ previous gaming company, along with one other (unnamed) investor, but that’s it.

In its release, IGT says Double Down CEO Enell will remain in charge of the operation in Seattle, and that it will run the property with “the appropriate level of independence needed to continue to foster exceptional growth.”

We expect to hear more on this deal, and the dramatic rise of social gaming, tomorrow as the executives give interviews. But it’s safe to say that one of the Seattle area’s traditional tech strengths, gaming, is leading the pack these days—take a look back to 2011′s megabucks sale of PopCap Games to Electronic Arts, and a group of smaller acquisitions along the way.

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[Updated 12:20 pm] Here are a couple of notable Boston-area deals in digital advertising and marketing, each with a certain je-ne-sais-quoi European flair. Plus one more local company worth watching…

—Neolane, a social marketing tech company based in Paris with North American headquarters in Newton, MA, has closed a $27 million financing round led by Battery Ventures. The company’s previous investors also participated in the round. Neolane, which has 240 employees globally—just under 50 in New England—says it will use the money to expand its operations, particularly in North America. Neolane says it competes with IBM/Unica, Aprimo, and SAS.

—DataXu, the Boston-based digital advertising and marketing startup, has acquired U.K.- and Germany-based Mexad, a top European “demand-side platform” provider (meaning it gives advertisers tools to optimize when and where they place ads). Terms of the deal weren’t given. DataXu makes a software platform for advertisers who want real-time information and insights on consumer behavior across Web, mobile, and video channels. I spoke with CEO Mike Baker last year about DataXu’s recent growth and strategy in the ad-tech sector.

—ClickSquared, a Boston marketing software startup, has closed $9 million in equity financing led by Staley Capital, with existing investors also participating. The company, which started in 1999, does e-mail marketing and delivery, customer analytics, and campaign management, among other things. [This deal was added to the roundup after the first two were published---Eds.]

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Some business software news this morning. LogMeIn (NASDAQ: LOGM), the Woburn, MA-based remote access and customer support tech company, said it has acquired Kansas-based Bold Software for $16.5 million, including retention-based bonuses over time.

Bold makes software for live-chat systems and click-to-call customer service. The move is intended to strengthen and expand LogMeIn’s offerings in customer care and engagement. The company says it will continue selling Bold’s main product line as a stand-alone offering as well as integrate it with LogMeIn’s remote support software.

LogMeIn started in 2003 and is led by CEO Michael Simon, who spoke last fall about LogMeIn’s rise from being a “lifestyle business” to becoming a mid-size public company (a freemium business model was key). The company went public in 2009.

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—Consulting firm Deloitte has acquired Seattle mobile developer Ubermind, the companies announced Wednesday. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. Ubermind CEO Shehryar Khan and founder Donald Brady will join Deloitte Consulting as principals, according to Deloitte’s press release. On its blog, Ubermind says that Deloitte’s large footprint is a big opportunity for the smaller company, but “We are also focused on maintaining what was working. The key elements of our business that make us unique will remain the same: our people and culture.” Word of the deal was first reported by John Cook at GeekWire.

—Digital content licensing company iCopyright has raised $2.62 million of an equity round that could grow to $3.48 million, according to an SEC filing. Founder and director Mike O’Donnell says this was “an internal round, open only to existing shareholders.” Greg Lamm at TechFlash notes that iCopyright’s previous backers include Crosslink Capital, Menlo Ventures, and Times Mirror Ventures. iCopyright offers online publishers a way to protect and monetize their content, an area of great concern for many media companies. O’Donnell says the new money will be used to help broaden product offerings, including new content management system plugins and a new syndication system. The company was in the news in recent years for a legal fight with The Associated Press. [Updated from previous version to add company comment.]

—Portland, OR startup Vizify—a member of the 2011 Seattle TechStars class—says it has filled out a seed round at $1.2 million. Vizify, which is still in private beta testing, creates nice-looking Web pages that pull a person’s online activities and digital data together in one place. The simple example it’s showing off right now is called TweetSheet, which makes a sort of infographic out of a person’s Twitter activity. Investors include Jonathan Sposato, Geoff Entress, Dan Shapiro, Bill Bryant, and Bill McAleer. The startup plans to use the money for hiring designers and engineers.

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‘Tis the season for end-of-year acquisitions to be announced, now that everyone’s back at work. Hopkinton, MA-based VelQuest, a maker of pharmaceutical and medical device-related software, has been acquired by San Diego-based Accelrys (NASDAQ: ACCL), the scientific R&D software firm, for $35 million in cash.

VelQuest started in 1999 and is led by CEO and co-founder Ken Rapp. Its investors include GE and MedEquity Capital. The company makes software that helps life sciences organizations manage lab test procedures efficiently and in compliance with FDA regulations. “All key members” of the VelQuest management team are staying on post-acquisition, according to the press release.

Accelrys makes a wide range of modeling, simulation, lab management, workflow, and data management software. The VelQuest acquisition adds another piece to the corporate strategy that Accelrys CEO Max Carnecchia outlined last year. He said the company aspires to help its customers manage the entire process of scientific development by offering a range of software products that can harness the innovation, experiments, modeling and simulation, and other work being done in labs on a global basis, both within their own organizations and within their collaborators.

The company says it has more than 1,300 customers across pharma, biotech, energy, chemicals, aerospace, and other industries.

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Some big acquisition news before the holidays here. Cambridge, MA-based Akamai Technologies (NASDAQ: AKAM), the Web delivery and networking giant, said today it is acquiring a competitor, Sunnyvale, CA-based Cotendo, for $268 million in cash. The deal, which has been rumored for the past month, is expected to close in the first half of 2012.

Akamai has been positioning itself as a provider of a secure software platform for businesses to reach customers via Web, mobile, and cloud. Cotendo competes with Akamai in the realm of accelerating Web and mobile applications. The California-based company started in 2008 and has about 100 employees, more than half of them based in Israel.

About a year ago, Akamai and MIT filed a lawsuit against Cotendo alleging patent infringement. Presumably that case is resolved now.

This is a relatively rare case of a Boston tech company acquiring a Silicon Valley company. Most of the other big deals this year have gone the other way (such as Oracle-Endeca, Google-ITA, eBay-Where, and HP-Vertica).

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Now back on its own, T-Mobile stands to grow its coverage area with some assets from the breakup penalty that AT&T will pay for its failed buyout attempt. But most of the consolation prize will stay with T-Mobile’s German parent company, which has been looking for a way to exit the U.S. market, rather than go into supercharging T-Mobile’s market position.

In a statement, Deutsche Telekom outlines how it plans to use the breakup fee and associated assets that AT&T had to forfeit for scrapping the proposed $39 billion merger with T-Mobile. AT&T has valued the breakup fee at $4 billion, which includes $3 billion in cash and $1 billion in spectrum assets. As Deutsche Telekom noted, it’s “one of the highest payments ever agreed [to] between two companies for the termination of a purchase agreement.”

Deutsche appears to be keeping the cash. At the tail end of its statement, the company says the $3 billion payment “directly reduces Deutsche Telekom’s net debt.”

But Bellevue, WA-based T-Mobile will reap some rewards: It gets “a large package” of wireless spectrum in 128 markets, including 12 of the top 20 U.S. cities. T-Mobile also is getting a roaming deal with AT&T that lasts more than seven years, which improves coverage for existing customers and increases the company’s footprint by about 50 million potential customers, giving it a network that could cover some 280 million people.

That’s a significant boost to T-Mobile’s previous plans, which called for the company to cover 290 million people with its 3G and 4G networks by 2013.

Tom Huseby

What should be T-Mobile’s next move? Seattle investor and wireless industry veteran Tom Huseby says it’s back to building the business until a suitor can be found.

“I’d be surprised if T-Mobile is actually working on a Plan B very actively. I think the Plan B by default is to resume the activities that allowed them to compete in the first place,” Huseby says. “They have to go back to what they were doing before—they had a series of initiatives that I thought were doing a good job of positioning them relative to their larger competitors.”

After that, Deutsche Telekom can maybe move into the next phase of looking for a new owner, or some other creative way of unloading the T-Mobile business. In its statement today, Deutsche Telekom says its current fiscal year financial forecast remains unchanged, and says it “will go back to reporting T-Mobile USA as continuing operations in [the] future.”

The two remaining possible acquirers in the wireless industry are definitely not slam-dunks for Deutsche Telekom, either. Market leader Verizon clearly couldn’t make a buy for the same regulatory and anticompetitive reasons that No. 2 carrier AT&T got shot down. Third-place Sprint was previously rumored to be interested in a buyout of No. 4 T-Mobile, but the two companies have built their networks around incompatible technologies.

Then there are an entire group of suitors who aren’t really in mobile now, but want to be. That prominently includes the TV providers, who have been heading toward more direct competition with the mobile network providers for some time.

“But I think they [T-Mobile] should view that as a longer timeframe, personally,” Huseby says. “They should make sure they can get back to turning the crank on their business first,” before seriously considering another buyout possibility.

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After a brutal few months battling Obama administration officials on two fronts, AT&T has given up its blockbuster $39 billion bid to acquire Bellevue, WA-based T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom.

The end of an outright merger was clearly telegraphed a week ago, when the two companies and the Justice Department postponed a federal antitrust lawsuit. AT&T had earlier pulled its application from the Federal Communications Commission in the face of opposition from regulators and staff there.

What’s a little more unexpected is that AT&T is apparently ditching any sort of alternative deal that could have given the nation’s No. 2 wireless carrier access to T-Mobile’s assets, particularly wireless spectrum. That was held out as an option last week, when the two companies said they were “actively considering whether and how to revise our current transaction to achieve the necessary regulatory approvals.”

But today’s statement on the deal falling apart paints the breakup as pretty definitive, with AT&T saying that federal officials need to find some other ways to make sure the industry has the spectrum it needs to accommodate the growing hunger for broadband.

“First, in the near term, they should allow the free markets to work so that additional spectrum is available to meet the immediate needs of the U.S. wireless industry, including expeditiously approving our acquisition of unused Qualcomm spectrum currently pending before the FCC,” AT&T chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson said in a statement. “Second, policymakers should enact legislation to meet our nation’s longer-term spectrum needs.”

It should be noted that while AT&T painted the acquisition as mainly about spectrum needs, opponents pointed out the side benefit to AT&T of sweeping a scrappy competitor off the floor. Federal officials, both at the FCC and the Justice Department, said the deal would have concentrated too much power in the industry and made things worse for consumers. Regulators also didn’t buy any of the supposed benefits that the companies put forth to soften the blow.

The big question now is what happens to T-Mobile, a business that Deutsche Telekom clearly doesn’t want—or didn’t want, anyway. AT&T says it’s taking a $4 billion charge to pay for a breakup fee, and will also “enter a mutually beneficial roaming agreement with Deutsche Telekom.” Could that make the U.S. carrier an attractive option for Deutsche to continue owning?

There are other partners waiting in the wings, too. Last week, just as the lawsuit was being put on hold, Dish Network’s CEO told Bloomberg that his company would be interested in a tie-up with T-Mobile if the AT&T deal fell apart.

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Portable ultrasound maker SonoSite is being acquired by Japan’s Fujifilm for just under $1 billion. SonoSite will remain based in Bothell, WA, under its current leadership team, the companies said in a joint announcement.

The $995 million price represents a cash offer to purchase all SonoSite (NASDAQ: SONO) shares for $54 each, a 50 percent premium on the average closing stock price for the past three months. The price also includes payments in connection with SonoSite’s convertible debt. The companies’ boards have already approved the deal.

In the announcement, SonoSite President and CEO Kevin Goodwin said joining Fujifilm “will enable us to significantly accelerate our international business and product development efforts, and respond to the fast-evolving needs of physicians around the world.”

SonoSite was itself an acquirer last year, paying $71 million for Toronto-based Visualsonics, whose initial market was in preclinical biology labs. At the time of the deal, SonoSite said the ultrasound market for preclinical research was estimated to be worth $350 million with projected double digit annual growth rates.

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News flash: Another Massachusetts software company is joining Big Blue. Armonk, NY-based IBM (NYSE: IBM) said today it is acquiring Emptoris, a Burlington, MA-based maker of supply and contract management software. Terms of the deal weren’t given, but it is expected to close in the first quarter of next year. This will be the 20th acquisition IBM has made of a company based in (or with major operations in) Massachusetts since 2003, out of a total of 70-plus acquisitions since then.

Emptoris has 725 employees worldwide, and IBM says the company will be integrated into its software group. A Big Blue spokesman declined to comment on whether Emptoris will move into IBM’s Mass Lab in Littleton, MA, since the acquisition hasn’t closed yet. Prior to this deal, Emptoris was majority-owned by Marlin Equity Partners. The software firm is led by CEO Patrick Quirk.

The deal is being spun as part of IBM’s “smarter commerce” initiative, which seeks to help businesses adapt to shifting customer buying patterns. Emptoris’s software includes cloud-based analytics tools that are specialized for procurement and supply chain operations.

IBM’s recent Massachusetts acquisitions include Netezza in business analytics and data warehousing, Q1 Labs in software security, and Unica in marketing and e-commerce software.

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AT&T’s $39 billion takeover of T-Mobile is on hold in the federal courts as the parties look for a new way to structure a deal that could get approval from regulators. The merger is currently tied to a federal antitrust lawsuit, which was postponed today. AT&T and Deutsche Telekom, the parent company of Bellevue, WA-based T-Mobile USA, asked for the delay along with the Justice Department.

In a joint statement on their website dedicated to promoting the transaction, AT&T said it was still working with Deutsche Telekom to find a deal—even if that’s different than the wholesale purchase first contemplated.

“We are actively considering whether and how to revise our current transaction to achieve the necessary regulatory approvals so that we can deliver the capacity enhancements and improved customer service that can only be derived from combining our two companies’ wireless assets,” the AT&T statement says.

The judge in the case is asking the companies to come back with an update by Jan. 12, although generally speaking those deadlines can be changed if parties ask for more time. If you see that deadline getting delayed, especially if the DOJ is among those asking for more time, it’s a sign of a possible resolution in the works.

This story probably goes one of two ways at this point: Either AT&T comes up with a new kind of transaction that satisfies the feds and leads to a lawsuit settlement and FCC approval, or it gets called off and AT&T ponies up its hefty $4 billion breakup fee.

Maybe there are two and a half possible outcomes, since I guess Deutsche Telekom could let AT&T off the hook on at least some of the cash and spectrum at stake for a failed merger—but that would still leave the nagging question of what to do with a fourth-place carrier (T-Mobile) that its owner does not want.

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Some interesting news from the business software world today. Bedford, MA-based Progress Software has acquired decision management firm Corticon of Redwood City, CA. Terms of the deal weren’t announced, but the companies said Corticon’s business rules engine will be integrated into Progress’s responsive process management software package. Mark Allen, the founder and CEO of Corticon, is joining Progress along with his team.

The deal makes sense, given Progress Software’s focus on helping its corporate customers be more operationally responsive—that is, able to handle logistical problems on the fly, such as emergency transportation routes for an airline or travel agent, billing and services issues for a telecom firm, and changes in the financial market for a bank.

Progress (NASDAQ: PRGS) is one of the largest software companies in Massachusetts. The firm just announced this week it has appointed Jay Bhatt as its new chief executive. Bhatt, a veteran of Autodesk and Buzzsaw.com, succeeds former CEO Richard Reidy, who stepped down this past summer.

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Seattle file-sharing startup TappIn, formerly known as Homepipe Networks, has been acquired by San Antonio, TX-based GlobalSCAPE (AMEX: GSB), a company that provides file transfer software.

GlobalSCAPE is paying $9 million up front for TappIn, with another $8 million in possible payments over the next three years if the new property hits revenue and development targets, the companies said in their announcement.

TappIn had raised about $2 million since its founding in 2009. It originally focused on a consumer service that would let users store their digital files on a home computer or drive and access them remotely, but changed the company’s name earlier this year after extending the service to businesses.

TappIn has distinguished itself from other file-storage companies, including big names like Dropbox and Box, by emphasizing that files remain on a user’s personal storage system rather than being uploaded to cloud storage. TappIn is, however, now adding some cloud-storage features to its offering.

GlobalSCAPE says TappIn will be a wholly owned subsidiary, with all of TappIn’s employees remaining in Seattle. TappIn executives Chris Hopen, Parvez Anandam, Doug Wheeler, and Andrew Tull will also remain on the job. The acquisition closed Dec. 2.

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Pixtronix, an Andover, MA-based maker of low-power displays, has been acquired by San Diego tech giant Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM), according to Scott Kirsner’s Innovation Economy blog. Terms of the purchase weren’t disclosed, but the report cites a price range of $175-200 million, based on sources close to the deal. A source of mine confirmed the deal but couldn’t provide any details on the record.

Pixtronix started in 2005 and has raised a little more than $50 million in venture funding from Atlas Venture, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and other investors. The company reportedly has 45 employees, and they’ll stay in Andover. Pixtronix is led by CEO Anthony Zona.

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A Boston cleantech-software startup is making some noise today in a burgeoning market. Retroficiency announced it has raised $3.32 million in new financing led by Point Judith Capital. As part of the deal, the startup has acquired the energy efficiency division of Nexamp, a North Andover, MA-based solar power producer that is also backed by Point Judith.

Retroficiency appears to be growing, with several new hires also being announced today, including Hugh Gaasch, Paul Gagne, and Richard Huntley at the vice president level, and Karim Bibawi (from Nexamp) as chief operating officer.

The company started in 2009 and provides software as a service that helps real estate firms, energy service companies, and commercial property owners gauge the energy-cost impact of upgrading things like lighting systems and insulation. This is an alternative to site visits and energy audits, which can be expensive and slow. Retroficiency previously raised an $800,000 seed round from energy management firm World Energy (NASDAQ: XWES) and angel investors.

Retroficiency CEO and co-founder Bennett Fisher told me back in March that the market for commercial building retrofits was growing, and that this year and next would be important for the startup to gain traction with big customers.

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The Federal Communications Commission gave AT&T and T-Mobile USA a little kick on the way out the door today, releasing its staff report on the companies’ proposed $39 billion merger. AT&T and T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom pulled their merger application last week (on Thanksgiving!), choosing instead to focus their regulatory fight where it really matters—the antitrust lawsuit from the Justice Department.

The companies didn’t want the FCC report to be made public, but they lost that battle, so we now have some extremely detailed reading to dive into. You can check it out for yourself over at the FCC site. The document is chock full of technical detail and legal analysis, but it really boils down to a broad rejection of the claims made by the two companies to support their deal.

The upshot is on pages six and seven, where the staff report tears apart the justifications for the buyout. There are three basic areas of concern—first and most broadly, the report says the effects on competition would be too severe, with a higher likelihood of coordination among the remaining players and questions about the markets for handsets along with roaming, wholesale, and other wireless services.

The report also slaps aside the economic and engineering models that AT&T and Deutsche Telekom used to claim that the buyout would drive down wireless industry prices and network costs. And finally, the report says any savings from the combined operations of the two carriers could result in poorer customer service rather than lower prices, and wouldn’t drive any increase in jobs.

Of course, lots of the really interesting information is redacted—but I did find one fun spot where someone messed up and forgot to white out some things that are marked confidential. It’s in the footnotes on page 12, where the commission is discussing T-Mobile’s strength as an independent competitor.

“Indeed an email exchange argues that ‘T-Mobile’s 4G network is much faster than AT&T’s network,’” the unredacted material says, citing December 2010 email between Paul Weisbecker of AT&T and Kelsey Joyce of T-Mobile. Here’s a screenshot of that passage, in case it gets pulled later:

As you can see, a second area that appears to be unintentionally published immediately follows that, saying that T-Mobile’s network expansion “puts T-Mobile ahead of its competitors in terms of network speeds.” That citation points to Network Business Quarterly, an industry report by the analysts at Technology Business Research, so I’m not sure why it would have been designated for redaction in the first place.

The report’s discussions of small, regional wireless carriers has some new weight amid the New York Times report that AT&T’s hope now is to carve off chunks of T-Mobile  to prop up a new No. 4.

The discussion on pages 33-38 of the FCC report lays out just how tiny these small wireless providers are in relation to the big guns—if measured by revenue, the three largest of those also-rans only makes up about 6.5 percent of the national wireless market combined, compared to T-Mobile’s 11 percent.

“To provide service comparable to a nationwide provider, and thus be able to compete effectively and prevent competitive harm, a regional provider would most importantly need to obtain a nationwide spectrum footprint and the resources to build it out,” the report says. “In only one of the top ten markets to Leap, MetroPCS and U.S. Cellular, the largest regional firms, have half as much spectrum combined as T-Mobile’s spectrum holdings.”

That’s a pretty big gap to make up with pieces from a dismembered T-Mobile. If AT&T can get a deal in place with the feds to make a new fourth-place carrier, this report would provide plenty of ammo for evaluating whether the deal passes the smell test.

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While most of us were sleeping off the effects off too much turkey and pumpkin pie, AT&T and federal regulators were engaging in a very public spat over Ma Bell’s $39 billion bid for T-Mobile USA. But now that things have simmered down a bit, it actually looks like the prospects for this deal haven’t changed a whole lot.

AT&T and Deutsche Telekom’s announcement that they were pulling their application from the FCC—expertly issued on Thanksgiving—was a counterpunch to the FCC chairman’s decision to send the case to an administrative law judge for a hearing. As The Associated Press succinctly explained, “that’s what the FCC does when it opposes a merger.”

But the real focus for this deal is the U.S. Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit blocking the merger (you can check out the latest filings in the case at this DOJ site). As I wrote when the lawsuit was filed back in August, the DOJ’s civil suit essentially “yanks the merger away from regulators at the Federal Communications Comission and puts the whole thing in the court system.”

It’s kind of like that moment in a TV cop drama when the hardened detectives arrive at a crime scene and send the beat cop out to work crowd control. Yes, they’re separate agencies. And yes, the FCC would have to bless any deal that might be worked out. But the DOJ’s lawsuit is the main event.

So, while it has been fun to see the FCC and AT&T quibble over arcane procedural details—the FCC saying it will consider the withdrawal, and AT&T threatening to sue if the application isn’t dropped—the DOJ lawsuit has always been the place where this deal would really be killed or allowed to stand.

What could happen in that process is still anybody’s guess. A failure would definitely cost AT&T, though—the company said it would charge a breakup fee of $4 billion to this quarter’s earnings, a precaution that some analysts are saying is probably required by accounting principles at this point, given the lingering uncertainty.

Reading through all of the coverage of AT&T and T-Mo’s wild weekend is a very informative primer on the current state of the wireless industry, where big, traditional carriers are trying to consolidate scale and spectrum while cable companies and even software players like Google hint at greater involvement.

Among the mounds of excellent reporting out there, I recommend this overview by The New York Times and a breakdown of several industry analysts’ takes at The Wall Street Journal. Greg Lamm at TechFlash also gets great regional reaction from the CEO of a Portland, OR-based small carrier.

But it’s also remarkable to see how closely all of those possible ideas are tracking to this piece from GigaOm’s Ryan Kim, who rounded up the possible next steps for T-Mobile if the deal fails. Kim wrote his piece back on Aug. 31, the day the DOJ lawsuit was filed. The fact that we’re still talking about the same kinds of outcomes gives you a good idea of how little has changed in the big picture.

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The folks who put sonic wave technology in the Sonicare toothbrush have hit another homerun, and a major consumer brand couldn’t sit by and watch any longer. Pacific Bioscience Laboratories, the unassumingly named makers of the Clarisonic skin-cleansing brush, is being acquired by cosmetics powerhouse L’Oreal USA, the companies announced today.

Terms were not disclosed, but L’Oreal indicated that it will be keeping Clarisonic’s new Redmond headquarters and manufacturing facility—in a release, the company said it plans to “create in Redmond an outstanding center of innovation for L’Oreal.” The senior management team at Pacific Bioscience Laboratories also has committed to stay on board after the acquisition “to maintain the continuity of excellence,” L’Oreal said.

Clarisonic was founded in 2001 by electrical engineer David Giuliani and a team of people he’d worked with at Optiva, the company that developed the sonic-wave-powered Sonicare toothbrush before being sold to Royal Philips Electronics. The Clarisonic device works by employing the same kind of sonic-wave technology, but applying it to the face to gently but powerfully remove makeup, dirt, surface bacteria, dead skin cells, and oils.

It’s not hard to see why a major brand would want to snap up the Clarisonic device and its team. As Luke detailed in this story, Clarisonic topped $100 million in annual sales last year, more than doubling its performance from two years earlier.

At that time, president Jack Gallagher said the company was “very profitable” and had added about 100 employees in the previous 18 months, bringing its staff up to about 300 people. The device, which retails in three versions at prices ranging from $149 to $225, has picked up a long list of celebrity fans, including Oprah and Lady Gaga.

Early investor Dan Rosen, chairman of Seattle’s Alliance of Angels, even predicted that “Clarisonic will be one of the great success stories of Seattle entrepreneurship.”

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