Google's Larry Page on Why Moon Shots Matter  —  Larry Page lives by the gospel of 10x.  Most companies would be happy to improve a product by 10 percent.  Not the CEO and cofounder of Google.  The way Page sees it, a 10 percent improvement means that you're basically doing the same thing as everybody else.

After Reports of User Revolt, Instagram Releases Monthly Active User Data for the First Time  —  After weeks of accusations that Instagram has seen a sharp drop in its user numbers, the photo-sharing service released new data that gives better insight into the actual number of people using the service on a regular basis.

Apple's iOS Newsstand Now Offers Hearst Magazines Days Before Print And Other Digital Stores  —  Apple today quietly launched a new feature for Newsstand, whereby publications by partner Hearst (covering their entire catalog) will now be available to subscribers days before they come to print, or other digital editions.

Google Nexus 7 tops iPad in Japan: Is this a trend?  —  Google's Nexus 7 is making serious market-share headway against Apple in Japan, according to Nikkei.  —  Google's Nexus 7 is gaining market share in Japan and topped Apple's iPad in one survey.  —  Japanese digital device consumers are some of the savviest in the world.

HBO comedy “Silicon Valley” is a lot better than Bravo reality show “Silicon Valley”  —  SAN FRANCISCO, California—Last month came word that HBO, Time Warner's premium cable network, had ordered the pilot episode of Silicon Valley, a half-hour comedy skewering the US technology industry.

Box CEO Levie Targets 2014 IPO After Global Expansion This Year  —  Box Inc., the Web-storage provider with more than 140,000 business customers, is planning to hold its initial public offering in 2014, Chief Executive Officer Aaron Levie said yesterday in an interview.

Still More About The Death Of Aaron Swartz  —  United States Attorney Carmen Ortiz, who still has political ambitions beyond her current station, and her husband, and some unfortunate media enablers, have finally organized a response to the torrent of criticism she and her office have received …

Company emails are key in Apple, Google hiring case, judge says  —  (Reuters) - Internal emails show that executives at tech companies such as Apple and Google believed that an agreement to refrain from poaching each other's workers would bring real financial benefits, a U.S. judge said on Thursday.

Apple Looks to Improve Siri's Script  —  Apple's virtual assistant Siri may have its roots in a Pentagon-funded artificial intelligence research project, but algorithms aren't everything and the Cupertino company is now turning to writers to make Siri smarter.

California Budget Hurt by Facebook's Stock-Price Slump  —  Facebook Inc.'s disappointing IPO has claimed another victim: California's budget.  —  Aides to Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown last week lowered their estimate of how much revenue the state will get from Facebook's initial public offering …

Lenovo announces ThinkPad Chromebook for schools  —  Summary: Lenovo will offer a Chromebook version of its ThinkPad X131e for the education sector.  The Chromebook will be sold only to schools for grades K-12.  —  James Kendrick  —  The folks at Lenovo are going into the Chromebook space …

‘Rogue clouds’ giving IT staffs nightmares  —  Inefficient storage methods also seen as raising costs in cloud, survey finds  —  h(f)){c=a.createElement('script'); c.type='text/javascript';c.src='http:// ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/'+ g+'/jquery.min.js';c.onload=c.onreadyst atechange= function(){if(!b&&(!(d=this.readySt ate)||

Kim Dotcom reveals Mega will offer 50GB of free storage, hopes to offer Megaupload data transfer  —  Kim Dotcom on Thursday used Twitter to reveal some interesting new tidbits in regards to his upcoming Mega service, which will be hosted at the New Zealand-based domain Mega.co.nz.

Intel posts strong Q4 performance with revenue of $13.5 billion, and EPS of $0.48 despite low PC demand  —  Today Intel reported its fourth quarter financial performance: including revenue of $13.5 billion and earnings per share of $0.48.  Intel had a total net income of $2.5 billion for the quarter.

Google to build £1bn UK headquarters at London's King's Cross  —  Technology giant plans to relocate two offices and move into new 2.4 acre complex by 2016  —  Google has completed a £1bn property deal to move its UK headquarters to a brownfield site in London's King's Cross area.

Amazon looks to reduce Apple's hold on music sales with launch of MP3 web store for iPhone and iPod touch  —  Amazon has taken another step at reducing Apple's hold over on-device music sales, today announcing the launch of its HTML5 MP3 web store specifically for iPhone and iPod touch …

Microsoft's Bing social sidebar gets more context with Facebook status updates, links, and comments  —  Microsoft on Thursday announced it is expanding its Facebook integration in Bing.  The company says significantly more content from your Facebook friends' is now searchable in Bing's sidebar …

MediaFire debuts for Android, offers users 50GB of free cloud storage  —  No, really: 50 gigabytes.  The app has a few limitations, but it's still a major score for any Android user with an eye to the cloud.  —  Back in August, I wrote about cloud-storage service MediaFire …

Mobile Video App Montaj Makes Editing As Easy As Shaking Your Phone  —  The latest entrant into the mobile video segment is Montaj, a new app launching next week that seeks to be a kind of “Instagram for Video.”  Montaj was founded by Demir Gjokaj and Dan Long, a couple of New York-based entrepreneurs …

Microsoft pushes ahead with its own take on WebRTC  —  Microsoft's Open Technologies unit published a prototype implementation of browser-based video chat today that allows a user of a Mac OS-based Chrome browser to chat with a user running IE 10 on Windows.

Dish Network Asks FCC to Pause Its Sprint-Softbank Review  —  Dish Network Corp. (DISH) asked U.S. regulators to pause their consideration of Softbank Corp. (9984)'s proposed $20 billion purchase of Sprint Nextel Corp. (S) as the satellite-television provider pursues Sprint partner Clearwire Corp. (CLWR)