Techmeme: Just in time: Facebook restores New Year's messaging service after plugging privacy loophole (Robin Wauters/The Next Web)

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December 31, 2012, 3:30 PM

Top News

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Game Over: Zynga Shuts Down PetVille And 10 Other Titles To Cut Costs — Executing the cost-reduction plan CEO Mark Pincus announced in November, Zynga has shut down, pulled from the app stores, or stopped accepting new players to 11 games, with some turning off today.

More: Digits, VentureBeat, PC Magazine, CNNMoney.com, Geek.com, GamesIndustry International, GamePolitics blogs, ValueWalk, Betabeat, SlashGear and destructoid

Tweets: @carnage4life and @adamdempsey

Thanks:@ryanlawler

Gabe Rivera / Techmeme News:

Techmeme's biggest (i.e. tallest) stories of 2012 — Now that we've examined the year's trending terms, our final retrospectacular tour of 2012 examines the stories themselves. On Techmeme, the biggest stories usually become the tallest stories as different angles of reporting and analysis pile up …

Tweets: @mathewi and @fmanjoo

Jon Russell / The Next Web:

Samsung reportedly set to sell its first Tizen-based smartphone in 2013 — The world will finally see the fruits of Tizen, the open sourced mobile operating system that has support from Samsung, DoCoMo, Vodafone and others, in 2013, according to a report from Japan's Daily Yomiuri …

More: Daily Yomiuri Online, PC Magazine, CNET, Engadget, AllThingsD, Gizmodo, BGR, LAPTOP Magazine, TechCrunch, Electronista, SlashGear, PhoneArena and Pocket-lint

Keith Teare / TechCrunch:

Unnatural Acts And The Rise Of Mobile — Editor's note: Keith Teare is General Partner at his incubator Archimedes Labs and CEO of recently funded just.me. He was a co-founder of TechCrunch. — As all predatory, or formerly predatory, men and women know, if you're at a party and still …

More: Distribution Hacks and LAUNCH. Thanks:@stormbridges

Steve Stecklow / Reuters:

Exclusive: Huawei partner offered embargoed HP gear to Iran — (Reuters) - A major Iranian partner of Huawei Technologies offered to sell at least 1.3 million euros worth of embargoed Hewlett-Packard computer equipment to Iran's largest mobile-phone operator in late 2010, documents show.

More: PC Magazine, The Register, CNET, Gizmodo, ZDNet, SlashGear, ValueWalk, Electronista, AllThingsD and TechCrunch

Associated Press:

Obama Signs FISA Warrantless Wiretapping Program Extension Into Law — WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has signed into law a five-year extension of the U.S. government's authority to monitor the overseas activity of suspected foreign spies and terrorists.

More: Hit & Run, The Verge and Hillicon Valley

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

Microsoft releases temporary fix for vulnerability in IE6, IE7, and IE8, security patch coming soon — Microsoft on Monday released a temporary one-click “Fix it” tool for old versions of Internet Explorer. Running it will prevent the recently-discovered vulnerability in IE6, IE7 …

Sebastien Page / iDownloadBlog:

Hackulous shuts down: piracy app Installous is gone — In what seems like a small victory against app piracy, the Hackulous team announced today on its site that it is shutting down, bringing down its most popular apps in the process: Installous and AppSync.

More: TorrentFreak, The Verge, AppleInsider, PandoDaily, MacRumors, MacDailyNews, DailyTech, MacNN, SlashGear, Gizmodo, Geek.com, everythingiCafe, TUAW, Macgasm, MobileBurn.com, Techie Buzz, App Advice and TechCrunch. Tweets: @idannyocean

Justin Rubio / The Verge:

Instagram rings in the new year with desktop-optimized NYE photo stream — As the world rolls into 2013, Instagram is showcasing celebrations from around the globe with the help of a New Years Eve photo stream that can be viewed from mobile devices and desktop browsers.

More: The Next Web, Instagram, VentureBeat, Mashable! and App Advice

Hunter Walk / Elapsed Time:

Trying to be the one true social graph is like trying to hold water in your fist — Facebook needed to buy Instagram because it was creating a mobile-first photo-centric social network. Snapchat is interesting to Facebook because it's creating a mobile-first ephemeral content social network.

More: Bijan Sabet, Business Insider and Medium

Tweets: @davemcclure, @elizakern and @joshconstine

Tom Warren / The Verge:

Microsoft offers up free month of Xbox Live following Cloud Saved Games outage — Microsoft says it will provide affected users with an automatic one-month extension to the company's Xbox Live gold service following an outage related to a Cloud Saved Games feature.

More: Xbox Live's Major Nelson, CNET, Kotaku, Neowin, SlashGear, WinBeta, Geek.com and Joystiq

Nick Bilton / NYT Bits:

Disruptions: The Real Hazards of E-Devices on Planes — A pilot uses the FlySmart with Airbus app on an Apple iPad. The F.A.A. has no proof that electronic devices can harm a plane's avionics, but it still perpetuates such claims. — Over the last year, flying with phones and other devices has become increasingly dangerous.

More: DailyTech, Gawker, Guardian, Business Insider, avherald.com, The Verge, Gizmodo and Boing Boing

Tweets: @qthrul and @brianstelter

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