How One Response to a Reddit Query Became a Big Budget Flick  —  James Erwin, 37, works for a financial services firm in Des Moines, Iowa, writing software manuals.  He's been doing that for a couple of years, and he enjoys it.  It's a pretty low-stress job for a person with a methodical turn of mind—good pay, short commute.

Our test finds new iPad hits 116 degrees while running games  —  The new iPad can run significantly hotter than the earlier iPad2 model when running an action game, Consumer Reports testers have found.  —  Using a thermal imaging camera, Consumer Reports engineers recorded temperatures …

Microsoft banning Mac, iPad purchases by its sales and marketing group?  —  Summary: An alleged internal Microsoft e-mail claims the company's marketing and sales organization is about to halt Mac and iPad purchases made with company funds.  Smart or pointless?

HP combines printer, PC units; Analysts question synergy  —  Summary: HP said in a statement that the combination will help the company's go-to-market strategy, branding, supply chain and customer support.  —  HP on Wednesday made it official: It is merging its PC and printing units in a bid …

What's Coming In Microsoft Outlook 15  —  I make no apologies for my refusal to use Microsoft Outlook, but hundreds of millions of business users and consumers rely on this multi-functional solution every day.  In fact, it's the center of many people's computing experience, period, the dashboard by which they manage their daily lives.

Video Speed Trap Lurks in New iPad  —  Users Find the Superfast 4G Link Carries a Big Cost: Churning Through Data Limits in Mere Hours  —  Brandon Wells got the new iPad last Friday, started wirelessly streaming March Madness games the next day and by Saturday night was out of gas.

$1.5 billion: The cost of cutting London-Toyko latency by 60ms  —  Starting this summer, a convoy of ice breakers and specially-adapted polar ice-rated cable laying ships will begin to lay the first ever trans-Arctic Ocean submarine fiber optic cables.  Two of these cables …

Eventbrite's New iPad Credit Card Reader Allows Event Organizers To Collect Ticket Payments At The Door  —  Online ticketing platform Eventbrite is making a big push towards reaching $1 billion in gross ticket sales in 2012; after doubling both the number of events on platform in 2011 …

FreedomPop's New iPhone Case Promises Users Free Wireless Data  —  Skype founder Niklas Zennstrom's new FreedomPop project was initially shrouded in secrecy, but they've recently become a bit more talkative about how the company plans to offer “free wireless broadband” to their customers.

Adobe Expands Its Social Analytics Lineup With Adobe Social  —  Must be something in the air.  Less than a day after Google announced that it's adding social media reports to Google Analytics, Adobe is unveiling its own social analytics tools.  —  Even though the company is best known …

Exclusive: Hipstamatic, Instagram To Unveil Photo-Sharing Partnership  —  Last week, Instagram hit 27 million users, solidifying it not only as one of the most popular photo-sharing services on the market, but as one of the world's fastest-growing social networks.

NSA Chief Denies Wired's Domestic Spying Story (Fourteen Times) In Congressional Hearing  —  In his recent bombshell story for Wired magazine, National Security Agency chronicler James Bamford writes that the joke that the agency's acronym stands for “never say anything” applies now more than ever.

Linus Torvalds: The King of Geeks (And Dad of 3)  —  The license plate on Linus Torvalds' Mercedes SLK convertible says it all.  The frame running around the outside of the plate reads “Mr. Linux.  King of Geeks.”  But the plate itself says “Dad of 3.”  —  If you meet Linus Torvalds …

Siri Gets A Slight Update, Expanded Yelp Functionality.  —  Back when Siri was first introduced to us, we were informed that she would constantly be receiving updates.  More recently, the few noticeable updates have included how she dictates our voice searches, as well as how she reads back words to us.

Current Google Wallet customers given $5 on pre-paid cards for all the provisioning hassles  —  If you opened up Google Wallet today, you may have noticed there's an extra $5 sitting on your pre-paid card.  It turns out it's not a glitch, it's compensation from Google Wallet in exchange …

Apple fighting Motorola, Nokia, and RIM over nano-SIM standard  —  Perhaps to SIM card inventor Giesecke & Devrient's surprise, its nano-SIM proposal introduced late last year didn't fly through the standardization process unopposed: instead, the process for crafting a next-gen SIM standard …

Louis C. K. and Others Take Stand-Up to the Web  —  Stand-up comedians of a certain era knew they had arrived when Johnny Carson invited them to a desk-side seat on “The Tonight Show.”  A generation later, the gold standard was getting a solo comedy special on HBO.

Nokia patents a tattoo that vibrates when you get a call  —  Nokia is taking steps to make sure you never miss another phone call, text or email alert again: The company has filed a patent for a tattoo that would send “a perceivable impulse” to your skin whenever someone tried to contact you on the phone.

BSkyB announces Now TV, offering pay-as-you-go Internet TV to the masses  —  The Next Web is at the Guardian Changing Media Summit this week, a conference promising to deliver insights from the organisations and individuals capitalising on disruption within the digital content space.

Fragmentation bomb wounds Android in developer war  —  Devs losing interest in the li'l green guy  —  A new study conducted by IDC and mobile-developer platform and services company Appcelerator has determined that as Google's open source Android operating system becomes more and more fragmented …

In-Stat: Apple to be top mobile processor company  —  Apple could overtake Intel as the world's top mobile processor company by the end of the year  —  Apple is an iconic consumer electronics company with a string of massively successful products, but it could also become …

Walmart steps up with Angry Birds Space promotion  —  Angry Birds Space, Rovio's next big game in the phenomenal mobile game series, launches on Thursday with some major promotions from Walmart.  —  Angry Birds Space will debut in a variety of app stores, but this event marks Walmart's first in-store promotion with a mobile app.

Tablet game revenue to hit $3.1B by 2014  —  The tablet game market is expected to grow to $3.1 billion worldwide, according to a new report from analyst firm Juniper Research.  —  The spending on tablet games is expected to account for a third of all mobile game revenue by 2016 …