Techmeme
March 21, 2012, 4:25 PM

Top News

Kim-Mai Cutler / TechCrunch:
Done Deal: Zynga Gets “Draw Something” Phenom By Acquiring OMGPOP.  (We're Hearing $210M.)  —  Zynga agreed to buy OMGPOP, the maker of massive Pictionary-like hit Draw Something, winning out over several other large gaming companies who had taken a look at the deal.
Henry Blodget / Business Insider:
“OMGPop Sold Way Too Early — They Left $800 Million On The Table”  —  In the speakers room at Ignition West (our conference in San Francisco today), there has been a lot of chatter about Zynga buying OMGPop, the maker of the smash-hit app game “Draw Something.”
More: parislemon
Austin Carr / Fast Company:
Exclusive: Hipstamatic, Instagram To Unveil Photo-Sharing Partnership  —  Last week, Instagram hit 27 million users, solidifying it not only as one of the most popular photo-sharing services on the market, but as one of the world's fastest-growing social networks.
Peter Farago / Flurry Blog:
China Now Leads the World in New iOS and Android Device Activations  —  Flurry recently quantified China's meteoric adoption of iOS and Android applications.  While China ranked 10th in application sessions at the beginning of 2011, it finished the year in 2nd place, only behind the United States.
Anton Troianovski / Wall Street Journal:
Video Speed Trap Lurks in New iPad  —  Users Find the Superfast 4G Link Carries a Big Cost: Churning Through Data Limits in Mere Hours  —  Brandon Wells got the new iPad last Friday, started wirelessly streaming March Madness games the next day and by Saturday night was out of gas.
Chris Velazco / TechCrunch:
FreedomPop's New iPhone Case Promises Users Free Wireless Data  —  Skype founder Niklas Zennstrom's new FreedomPop project was initially shrouded in secrecy, but they've recently become a bit more talkative about how the company plans to offer “free wireless broadband” to their customers.
Andy Greenberg / The Firewall:
Meet The Hackers Who Sell Spies The Tools To Crack Your PC (And Get Paid Six-Figure Fees)  —  At a Google-run competition in ­Vancouver last month, the search giant's famously secure Chrome Web browser fell to hackers twice.  Both of the new methods used a rigged ­website …
Jason Fagone / Wired:
How One Response to a Reddit Query Became a Big Budget Flick  —  James Erwin, 37, works for a financial services firm in Des Moines, Iowa, writing software manuals.  He's been doing that for a couple of years, and he enjoys it.  It's a pretty low-stress job for a person with a methodical turn of mind—good pay, short commute.
More: The Verge
Victoria Barret / Forbes:
Silicon Valley's Hottest VC Is a Rug Dealer  —  It's a balmy February evening in Palo Alto, and Pejman Nozad is sipping tea on the deck of the Rosewood Hotel, the hot spot of venture capital's capital, Sand Hill Road.  He's chosen a table situated just central enough so that he can see everyone who walks in.
More: Forbes
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Walmart steps up with Angry Birds Space promotion  —  Angry Birds Space, Rovio's next big game in the phenomenal mobile game series, launches on Thursday with some major promotions from Walmart.  —  Angry Birds Space will debut in a variety of app stores, but this event marks Walmart's first in-store promotion with a mobile app.
Rachel King / Between the Lines Blog:
PayPal Here's first day: 1,000 sign-ups per hour  —  Summary: The competition between PayPal and Square is on as PayPal Here received 1,000 sign-ups per hour within the first day alone.  —  Last week, PayPal introduced its new mobile payments solution that will compete directly with Square.
Agam Shah / InfoWorld:
In-Stat: Apple to be top mobile processor company  —  Apple could overtake Intel as the world's top mobile processor company by the end of the year  —  Apple is an iconic consumer electronics company with a string of massively successful products, but it could also become …
Brooke Crothers / CNET:
LED backlight a likely culprit in iPad heat issue, says expert  —  Reported heat issues with new iPad are most likely due to a combination of more backlights and more power needed to drive the backlights, an expert told CNET.  This follows a CNET report attributing extra heat to the new iPad's A5X chip, also.
Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:
Adobe Expands Its Social Analytics Lineup With Adobe Social  —  Must be something in the air.  Less than a day after Google announced that it's adding social media reports to Google Analytics, Adobe is unveiling its own social analytics tools.  —  Even though the company is best known …
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines Blog:
HP combines printer, PC units; Analysts question synergy  —  Summary: HP said in a statement that the combination will help the company's go-to-market strategy, branding, supply chain and customer support.  —  HP on Wednesday made it official: It is merging its PC and printing units in a bid …
Sarah Mitroff / VentureBeat:
Recipe search engine Yummly grabs $6M to find mouth-watering recipes  —  Yummly, a recipe search engine that would make any recipe hoarder and home chef happy, announced Wednesday it has raised $6 million is its first round of funding.  The site compiles recipes from several popular recipes sites …
Florian Mueller / FOSS Patents:
Ten things Oracle v. Google tells us about the judge presiding over Yahoo v. Facebook — UPDATE: 10 hours later, the case was reassigned to a different judge  —  [Update] Approximately ten hours after this post went live, Yahoo v. Facebook was reassigned to Judge Jeffrey White.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
More Money For Big Data And The Cloud: OpenView Raises New $200M Fund  —  There has been a bit of a landrush of late on enterprise companies focused on big data and how best to harness that in the cloud, and today sees the launch of a new fund that will fuel the growth of even more companies working in that space.

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