Week in review: iPhone 5 cases point to a bigger, thinner device

Here’s our roundup of the week’s top tech business news. First, the most popular stories VentureBeat published in the last seven days:

iPhone 5 cases point to 4″ screen — bigger, thinner than iPhone 4 — Cases already available for Apple’s upcoming iPhone 5 suggest that it will feature a 4-inch screen, as well as a longer and thinner design than the iPhone 4…

Paintball arena recreates multiplayer map from Call of Duty game (video) — Activision Blizzard recreated the Scrapyard multiplayer battlefield from Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 as a paintball arena where teams of 16 players could square off against each other with faux M4 assault rifles squirting green paint pellets.

Here’s what the lucky bastards got to do at Call of Duty XP event (photo gallery) — The Call of Duty XP event took place in a giant hangar on Friday and Saturday in Los Angeles. It was the place to be for 6,000 die-hard Call of Duty fans who are anxiously anticipating the Nov. 8 launch of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3.

SF police helped Apple search for iPhone 5 prototype — The San Francisco police department admitted that it did in fact help Apple employees search a Bay-area home for a “lost item,” which most reports say was a missing iPhone 5 prototype.

Major League Gaming’s Raleigh competition draws record crowd — Videogame broadcaster and event producer Major League Gaming’s (MLG) most recent competitive event in Raleigh, N.C., drew more than 130,000 concurrent subscribers, not including streaming video delivered by MLG partner sites. That’s a new record for the company.

And here are five more posts we think are important, thought-provoking, fun, or all of the above:

Any big surface becomes a touchscreen with Visualplanet’s “touchfoil” — Visualplanet is launching a transparent film called “touchfoil” today that can turn any surface into an interactive touchscreen. The foil can turn large regions of wood, plastic, glass, tabletop, and shop window into giant interactive surfaces that behave just like tablet touchscreens.

Nike auctions Marty McFly’s awesome shoes from Back to the Future II — Nike has unveiled an incredible looking replica of the high-tech shoes featured in 1989′s Back to the Future II. The shoes will be auctioned to raise money for Parkinson’s disease.

Google drops legal bomb in its own front yard as Oracle goes after Android — This week, three surprising scenarios emerged in initial depositions in the ongoing Google/Oracle lawsuit.

Carol Bartz says Yahoo “f—ed me over,” and f—s over Yahoo in the process — Barely 24 hours after getting fired from her position as CEO via a phone call from Yahoo’s chairman of the board, Carol Bartz says ”These people fucked me over.”

AOL reportedly drops TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington for real this time, techies chime in — Michael Arrington, founder of technology blog TechCrunch and known for his fiery personality and zero tolerance for corporate authority, is no longer with the San Francisco-based tech news publication.