Twitter Loses Ability to Properly Display Instagram Photos  —  Welcome to the Photo Wars.  —  Instagram on Wednesday disabled the ability for Twitter to properly display Instagram photos on its Web site and in its applications.  The move escalates tensions between the two companies …

Software guru John McAfee arrested in Guatemala: interior minister  —  (Reuters) - Anti-virus software guru John McAfee was arrested by Guatemalan police on Wednesday, for illegally entering the country, interior minister Mauricio Lopez Bonilla said.  —  McAfee crossed into Guatemala …

House approves resolution to keep Internet control out of UN hands  —  The House on Wednesday unanimously passed a Senate resolution introduced by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) that calls on the U.S. government to oppose government control of the Internet.  —  The 397- vote was meant to send …

Why First Round Capital funded a lawsuit  —  You can imagine the scene in the board room.  —  The CEO of our portfolio company, Techforward, is discussing a “make the company opportunity” — Best Buy wants us to to power their nation-wide buyback program.  And Best Buy is talking about launching it with a Super Bowl commercial!

Apple loses $34.9 billion in market cap in its worst trading day in 4 years, but why?  —  Gene Munster has a target of $900 for Apple's stock, which is a touch awkward today as the company shed 6.43% of its value, to settle at a valuation of a mere $508 billion.

Lack of Distribution Is “Killing” Surface  —  If Microsoft is being coy about revealing Surface sales data, it may be for good reason.  Early demand for the company's first tablet is lousy.  How lousy?  Put it this way: If Microsoft really did manufacture three million to five million Surface tablets …

Blockbuster Is Said to Begin Selling Phones  —  Dish Network Corp. (DISH)'s Blockbuster will begin selling mobile phones in its movie-rental stores as a test for Dish's planned entry into the wireless business, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.

Google Now adds travel destination weather, local events, song ID by voice, and more  —  On Wednesday, Google updated Google Now with a myriad of new features that will be especially useful for those who like to, or at least need to, travel.  You can download the latest update of Google Search …

Time Spent In Mobile Apps Is Starting To Challenge Television, Flurry Says  —  Now that usage of mobile apps has overtaken browsing on the desktop web, it's starting to challenge television, Flurry says.  The San Francisco-based mobile analytics startup says that consumers are spending 127 minutes per …

Building a better map of Europe  —  More than a billion people use Google Maps each month to find their way around town and around the world.  To help these people get exactly the information they need, the Google Maps team works constantly to ensure that the geographic data behind our maps is comprehensive and accurate.

See Trends for 100 more cities  —  Today, we're bringing Trends to 100 more cities around the world including Istanbul, Frankfurt, Guadalajara and Incheon.  With this update, we now surface the ‘most breaking’ news in more than 200 locations.  To view Trends for different locations, just click “Change” in the Trends section.

AT&T: We've sold 6.4M smartphones in Q4 already  —  Mobility chief Ralph de la Vega says AT&T is on a record pace for the quarter, and is on track to exceed its expectations for full-year smartphone sales.  —  AT&T is hoping for a happy holiday when it comes to smartphone sales.

Facebook snubs ‘Subscribe’ button in favor of Twitter-esque ‘Follow’ on all profile pages  —  Facebook today announced that on every user's Timeline profile page, it's changing “Subscribe,” to “Folllow,” evidently a term it hopes will resonate more with users.

Sophisticated botnet steals more than $47M by infecting PCs and phones  —  Behold—the Eurograbber, visualized.  —  Aurich Lawson / Thinkstock  —  A new version of the Zeus trojan—a longtime favorite of criminals conducting online financial fraud—has been used in attacks …

Times of London offers $80 Nexus 7 to new digital subscribers  —  News readers in the UK now have the chance to sign up for one heck of a good deal on a tablet bundle.  The Times of London is offering a 32GB Nexus 7 for around $80 with an 18-month commitment to its digital pack.

Zynga Takes Gambling Step in Nevada  —  Zynga Inc. has taken its first official step toward offering real-money gambling games in the U.S. by filing preparatory paperwork in Nevada, as the embattled firm maneuvers to take advantage of a shifting legal landscape.

Citrix acquisition of Zenprise shines spotlight on mobile app management  —  In a sign that the focus of mobile management is shifting from device to app management, Citrix today said it agreed to buy Zenprise.  —  The combination of technologies from both companies means that IT managers …

Skype confirms video messaging feature with legal change  —  The service will allow short video messages to be sent between subscribers  —  Skype hasn't officially confirmed rumors of a video messaging service that's supposed to be coming to its platform, but an update to its terms of service on Wednesday did the job.

Time Warner Cable to expand usage-based broadband billing option nationwide  —  Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) will offer a usage-based billing option to cable modem customers in every state it offers service except Hawaii by the end of December, CEO Glenn Britt said Monday.

IDC Raises Tablet Forecast For 2012 And Onward: 122.3M By Year-End, 172.4M By 2013; Android Gains, eReaders Lose  —  Analysts at IDC have today upped their tablet forecast for 2012 and onward, now predicting 122.3 million units for 2012, up from the firm's previous forecast of 117.1 million units.

Rethinking Mobile First  —  I wrote the Mobile First Web Second blog post a few years ago.  In that post, I talked about apps that were designed to be used on mobile primarily with the web as a companion.  —  There have been a number of startups that have taken that approach and done well with it.

FTC Supports Apple, Decries Motorola Attempts To Ban iPhone, iPad  —  The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Wednesday rushed to the aid of Apple, Inc., filing an amicus brief in the U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals arguing that Google-owned Motorola's attempts to ban the sale …

ShopKeep, The ‘East Coast Square,’ Raises $10 Million  —  ShopKeep, a New York-based startup that builds a point-of-sales app for the iPad, has raised $10 million in its second round of funding.  —  The comparison to Square is easy to make, given that both plug credit card readers into an iPad.