News Corp. Shutters The Daily iPad App  —  The Daily, News Corp.'s attempt to create a newspaper for the iPad era, is shutting down after less than two years.  —  The media giant, which also owns this Web site, said it will “cease standalone publication” of the app on Dec. 15.

What's Up With Whatsapp?  Facebook Might Want To Buy It, That's What  —  Whatsapp, the multiplatform mobile messaging app that has been one of the runaway success stories for ad-free, paid services, has been in talks to be acquired by Facebook, according to sources close to the matter.

Texting SMS pioneer Matti Makkonen 20 years on  —  In a world first, on 3 December 1992, an engineer sent the message “Merry Christmas” from a PC to a mobile device using Vodafone's UK network.  —  But the origins of the idea date back further to Matti Makkonen.

Intel to slash power consumption on Ivy Bridge chip  —  Chip giant plans to make Ivy Bridge more power efficient than the versions that are currently used in the MacBook Air and Windows 8 ultrabooks.  —  Intel is on a mission to cut the power consumption of its chips.  But that's not only future silicon.

iTunes Event Taking Place In Moscow On Dec 4: Is Russia Finally Getting Apple's Music Service?  —  At long last, Apple appears to be approaching a launch date for iTunes in Russia — and it could come as soon as tomorrow.  A tipster has forwarded us an email, in Russian …

New filing: Apple knew almost nothing about jury foreman in Samsung case  —  There have been many, many post-trial machinations following this summer's $1.05 billion patent infringement verdict in Apple v. Samsung.  But the most provocative is surely Samsung's theory that the jury pool …

Microsoft claims 100% + increase in app downloads, developer revenue after WP8 debut  —  On Twitter Microsoft's Todd Brix, Senior Director, Windows Phone Apps Team, has announced that Windows Phone app downloads and developer revenue has more than doubled since the advent of Windows Phone 8 in November.

Same-Day Delivery Becomes a Costly Web Battleground  —  SAN FRANCISCO—To gain a competitive edge in online sales this holiday season, companies including eBay Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. are turning to a new weapon: people like Jaclyn Widtfeldt.  —  On a recent Tuesday just before 7 p.m. …

Apple announces iPhone 5 hitting South Korea on Dec. 7, 50 additional markets across December  —  Following its Chinese iPad announcements last week, Apple has announced that it will launch the iPhone 5 in South Korea on Friday, December 7, releasing the smartphone in more than 50 additional countries across December.

App Maker Uber Hits Regulatory Snarl  —  WASHINGTON — Summoning a taxi or car service with your smartphone feels like the future.  City governments around the world can agree on that.  But many of them are proposing new rules that would run Uber, one of the most prominent ride-requesting apps, off the road.

Keep the Internet free and open  —  Starting in 1973, when my colleagues and I proposed the technology behind the Internet, we advocated for an open standard to connect computer networks together.  This wasn't merely philosophical; it was also practical.  —  Our protocols were designed …

How Amazon Followed Google Into the World of Secret Servers  —  Chris Pinkham was walking through a data center that would one day house Amazon's seminal cloud computing service — the Elastic Compute Cloud — when he came face to face with a cage of Google machines.

Tim Berners-Lee's Open Data Institute Gets Its First Outside Investment, $750K From The Omidyar Network To Top Up UK's $16M  —  The Open Data Institute, a UK-based incubator and promoter of open-data businesses that was first conceived by Tim Berners-Lee and artificial intelligence pioneer Nigel Shadbolt …

Dropbox announces first international office in Ireland to offer increased support, more languages  —  Dropbox is following up its recent milestone of 100 million registered users with an announcement that it is to open an office in Ireland, which will become its first ever presence outside of the US.

Mobile Drives Adoption Of Social Media In 2012: Apps & Mobile Web Account For Majority Of Growth; Nearly Half Of Social Media Users Access Sites On Smartphones  —  Research firm Nielsen and NM Incite, a joint venture between Nielsen and McKinsey, today published a comprehensive look at the state of the social media ecosystem in 2012.

The product lens  —  There has been a lot of discussion lately about the markets for startup financing.  Many of the discussions use words like “valuations” “bubble” “crunch” etc.  Words like that generally mean the writer is discussing the world through the lens of finance.