Techmeme
March 21, 2012, 6:45 PM

Top News

Dan Porter / Zynga Blog:
OMG, Zynga Welcomes a New Member to the Family  —  Put down your smartphones and iPads for just a sec. I've got some big news.  Today I'm excited to tell you about a new addition to the Zynga family, OMGPOP.  This New York-based developer of social mobile games has recently received a lot …
Kim-Mai Cutler / TechCrunch:
Done Deal: Zynga Gets “Draw Something” Phenom By Acquiring OMGPOP.  (We're Hearing $210M.)  —  Zynga agreed to buy OMGPOP, the maker of massive Pictionary-like hit Draw Something, winning out over several other large gaming companies who had taken a look at the deal.
Ryan Lawler / GigaOM:
What Zynga really wants from OMGPOP's Draw Something  —  Zynga made a huge acquisition Wednesday, snapping up Draw Something producer OMGPOP for a reported $200 million-plus price tag.  But let's be clear: What Zynga is picking up isn't just a hit game, the team that built it …
Peter Farago / Flurry Blog:
China Now Leads the World in New iOS and Android Device Activations  —  Flurry recently quantified China's meteoric adoption of iOS and Android applications.  While China ranked 10th in application sessions at the beginning of 2011, it finished the year in 2nd place, only behind the United States.
Olga Kharif / Bloomberg:
Google Said to Rethink Wallet Strategy Amid Slow Adoption  —  Google Inc. (GOOG) is weighing changes aimed at improving its Google Wallet mobile-payment system following slow adoption and the departure of two key managers, according to people with knowledge of the project.
Austin Carr / Fast Company:
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.
Jim Dalrymple / The Loop:
iPhoto for iPad, iPhone hits 1 million users in less than 10 days  —  iPhoto for iPad, iPhone hits 1 million users in less than 10 days  —  Apple told me today that its newest iOS app, iPhoto, hit 1 million users in less than 10 days after its release.  It's important to note that figure is users, not downloads.
Drew Olanoff / The Next Web:
YouTube launches “one click fix” to improve the quality of your videos  —  When we're trying to capture something really funny, awesome, or downright amusing with our camera, the video quality is the last thing we're thinking about.  Capture the moment is the goal, and if you do it right …
Bloomberg:
Microsoft Says Windows Phone Will Pass Apple in China  —  Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), the world's largest software maker, said its Windows Phone operating system will propel it past Apple Inc. (AAPL) in China's smartphone market as its partners release devices costing as little as $158.
Jordan Kahn / 9to5Mac:
DirecTV iPad app update adds video streaming on the go  —  In October, the “DirecTV” app added the ability to stream video over home networks.  Today, an update to the app adds the ability to stream shows and movies over 3G and Wi-Fi anywhere.  The new feature is limited to video content …
Anton Troianovski / Wall Street Journal:
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.
Kim-Mai Cutler / TechCrunch:
The Hong Kong Firm Behind Those Quirky Animated News Shorts Bets $5M On Red Robot Labs  —  The Yakuza, Chinese Triads and more.  There's just so many more mafias for Benchmark-backed mobile gaming studio Red Robot Labs to infiltrate.  —  So the gaming company, which has made a huge bet on location …
Sarah Mitroff / VentureBeat:
Recipe search engine Yummly grabs $6M to find mouth-watering recipes  —  Yummly, a recipe search engine that would make any recipe hoarder and home chef happy, announced Wednesday it has raised $6 million is its first round of funding.  The site compiles recipes from several popular recipes sites …
Jason Fagone / Wired:
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.
More: The Verge
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
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.
Eileen Brown / Social Business Blog:
Microsoft Lifebrowser captures the important landmarks in your life  —  Summary: Using Machine Learning, Lifebrowser from Microsoft Research learns to predict ‘memory landmarks’, events of life that you consider important and it uses these landmarks to help you navigate your past.
Victoria Barret / Forbes:
Silicon Valley's Hottest VC Is a Rug Dealer  —  It's a balmy February evening in Palo Alto, and Pejman Nozad is sipping tea on the deck of the Rosewood Hotel, the hot spot of venture capital's capital, Sand Hill Road.  He's chosen a table situated just central enough so that he can see everyone who walks in.
More: Forbes
Florian Mueller / FOSS Patents:
Ten things Oracle v. Google tells us about the judge presiding over Yahoo v. Facebook — UPDATE: 10 hours later, the case was reassigned to a different judge  —  [Update] Approximately ten hours after this post went live, Yahoo v. Facebook was reassigned to Judge Jeffrey White.

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Earlier Picks

Larry Dignan / Between the Lines Blog: