Techmeme: Google Wallet boosted by EC probe into rival phone payment project (Katherine Rushton/Telegraph)

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April 14, 2012, 11:35 PM

Top News

New York Times:

Instagram Founders Were Helped by Bay Area Connections — SAN FRANCISCO — Past midnight, in a dimly lighted warehouse jutting into the San Francisco Bay, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger introduced something they had been working on for weeks: a photo-sharing iPhone application called Instagram.

More: Friending Facebook Blog, Android Phone Fans, VentureBeat, Business Insider, The Verge, VentureBeat and MacNN

Tweets: @cdixon, @eldon, @pkafka, @jonathanwald and @hunterwalk

Matt Brian / The Next Web:

Twitter Wanted to Buy Instagram, But Facebook Beat it to it — Facebook may have secured the $1 billion acquisition of Instagram last week but it appears it wasn't the only social network that was interested in the service, with a recent New York Times report suggesting that Twitter was also in the running.

More: Business Insider. Tweets: @davezatz

Ellis Hamburger / The Verge:

Paper for iPad hits 1.5 million downloads in first two weeks — FiftyThree has just announced that its first app, Paper for iPad, has hit 1.5 million downloads in the App Store. In comparison, an app like iPhoto (which is available for both iPhone and iPad) hit about one million downloads its first ten days on the App Store.

More: The Verge, The Next Web and Cult of Mac

Katherine Rushton / Telegraph:

Google Wallet boosted by EC probe into rival phone payment project — Google has been handed a major headstart on cornering the UK's ‘swipe and pay’ mobile phone payments market with its Google Wallet, after the European Commission delayed a rival project by Britain's biggest mobile operators.

More: Reuters, The Drum, Android Phone Fans, Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg

Agam Shah / PC World:

Asus to Ship Quad-core Transformer Pad 300 Tablet on April 22 — Asus' latest Transformer Pad 300 will start shipping in the U.S. on April 22, the company said Friday. The tablet is being pitched as a laptop replacement with 4G LTE network capabilities. — The new Transformer Pad …

More: Good E-Reader, Phones Review, Liliputing, TechnoBuffalo, The Verge, Electronista, PhoneArena, Engadget, Android Phone Fans and Android Community

Jason Calacanis / LAUNCH:

The One Product That Makes Apple a Trillion-Dollar Company Overnight — Apple will become a trillion-dollar company based not on iPads and Apple TV, but payments. — Imagine taking out your iPhone and instead of buying Angry Birds you bought the latest Groupon.

Thanks:@jason

Ernesto / TorrentFreak:

Pirate Party Ordered to Shut Down Pirate Bay Proxy — After two Dutch ISPs were ordered to censor The Pirate Bay earlier this year, there was an influx of visitors to Pirate Bay proxy sites. — These proxies render the court order useless, which is a thorn in the side of local anti-piracy outfit BREIN.

More: VentureBeat

Matt Rosoff / Business Insider:

EXPLAINER: Everything You Need To Know About Google's Weird Stock Split — Yesterday, in the second paragraph of the press release announcing its Q1 2012 earnings, Google said its board had unanimously approved “a stock dividend proposal.” — But as the company explained in a letter from its founders, it's not a dividend.

More: Datamation.com, SiliconANGLE, parislemon and The CIO Report. Thanks:@mattrosoff

Felix Salmon / Reuters:

Google's evil stock split

More: Digits, Mobile, Pulse2 Technology …, Forbes and Examiner

Jamillah Knowles / The Next Web:

Wikileaks announces new Assange TV show to launch on April 17 — According to a statement on the Wikileaks Twitter account, Julian Assange has completed filming twelve episodes of his forthcoming show, “The World Tomorrow”. The first episode will be aired on RT and released online on Tuesday 17 April 2012 …

More: TwitLonger, Sydney Morning Herald, CNET, Reuters, WikiLeaks World Tomorrow, The Lede, Mashable!, WL Central, Guardian, Deadline.com and AllThingsD. See also Mediagazer

Greg Sandoval / CNET:

U.S. says MegaUpload's hosting service is no innocent bystander — MegaUpload's U.S. legal team leaves courts following a hearing about preserving the company's data servers. From left to right: Jared Smith, William Burck, Derrick Shaffer and Ira Rothken. — (Credit: Greg Sandoval/CNET)

More: Electronista, ITworld.com, Wired, WatchingTV Online, Ars Technica, The Verge, BGR and CNET

AppleInsider:

Apple releases Flashback removal tool — Coming on the heels of its Thursday Java update, Apple has released a separate program to remove the so-called Flashback trojan that has affected over 600,000 Macs worldwide. — Apple on Friday released version 1.0 of its “Flashback malware removal tool” …

More: Quick Online Tips, Fortune, Ars Technica, Softpedia News, MacRumors, MacDailyNews and TUAW

Damon Poeter / PC Magazine:

Scientists Build First Working Quantum Network — Scientists at the Quantum Dynamics division of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) in Garching, Germany announced Wednesday that they have built the very first, elementary quantum network comprised of a pair of entangled atoms …

Sean Hollister / The Verge:

Valve reveals mystery hardware project: wearable computing — This morning, Valve Software set the world of gaming news abuzz by attempting to hire hardware engineers. Now, Valve developer (and well-known programmer) Michael Abrash has revealed what kind of hardware the company is prototyping: computer technology you can wear.

More: Kotaku, Valve, Geekosystem, VentureBeat, Electronista, IGN, Engadget and Inquirer

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