Techmeme: How former Microsoft tech chief Nathan Myhrvold could have created the iPhone (Todd Bishop/GeekWire)

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April 15, 2012, 1:55 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: Pulse2 Technology …, Friending Facebook Blog, VentureBeat, Android Phone Fans, The Verge, VentureBeat, Business Insider 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

Charlie Stross / Charlie's Diary:

What Amazon's ebook strategy means — It seems to me that a lot of folks in the previous discussion don't really understand quite what makes Amazon so interesting—and threatening, for that matter—to the publishing industry. — So I'm going to take a stab at explaining.

More: Beyond Search, Forbes, TechCrunch and Wired

Tweets: @hfiguiere and @aweissman

Amy Schatz / Wall Street Journal:

FCC Proposes $25,000 Fine on Google — WASHINGTON—The Federal Communications Commission proposed a $25,000 fine on Google Inc., accusing the search giant of deliberately obstructing an investigation into whether the company violated federal rules when its street-mapping service collected …

More: PC World, Geekosystem, TechCrunch and Bits

Danny Sullivan / Marketing Land:

FCC Clears Google Over Wifi Eavesdropping But Fines It $25,000 For “Noncompliance” With Requests — The US Federal Communications Commission has cleared Google of any legal wrong-doing over its Street View cars that intercepted wifi transmissions. That's the good news for the company. The bad news?

More: Los Angeles Times, VentureBeat, Business Insider, Between the Lines Blog, New York Times and SlashGear

Todd Bishop / GeekWire:

How former Microsoft tech chief Nathan Myhrvold could have created the iPhone — Myhrvold's ‘consumer computer’ vision in 1991, as published by Men's Journal. — Nathan Myhrvold is back in the national spotlight again, but in a very different way this time. — Myhrvold in his chef's garb

More: Men's Journal, The Verge, Neowin and Slashdot

Ian Katz / Guardian:

Web freedom faces greatest threat ever, warns Google's Sergey Brin — Exclusive: Threats range from governments trying to control citizens to the rise of Facebook and Apple-style ‘walled gardens’ — The principles of openness and universal access that underpinned the creation …

More: CNET and AJE. Tweets: @ajkeen

Dante D'Orazio / The Verge:

Steve Jobs movie starring Ashton Kutcher to cover Apple from 1971 to 2000, filming starts next month — We've got a few more details on the recently-revealed Steve Jobs movie starring Ashton Kutcher, thanks to a Neowin interview with the producer, Mark Hulme.

More: AppleInsider, Gizmodo, CNET, Business Insider, iClarified, Redmond Pie, App Advice and Neowin

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.

Tweets: @tcarmody. Thanks:@jason

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

Google Finally Gets Right To Gmail Trademark In Germany — When Google launched Gmail in Germany in 2005, it was quickly barred from using the Gmail name for its email product there. German entrepreneur Daniel Giersch, after all, had registered the ‘G-mail’ trademark (short for Giersch mail) …

More: GMANetwork.com and imediamonkey. Thanks:@fredericl

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

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: PC World, The Next Web, The Verge and Cult of Mac

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