Techmeme
March 21, 2012, 8:15 PM

Top News

Dan Porter / Zynga Blog:
OMG, Zynga Welcomes a New Member to the Family  —  Put down your smartphones and iPads for just a sec. I've got some big news.  Today I'm excited to tell you about a new addition to the Zynga family, OMGPOP.  This New York-based developer of social mobile games has recently received a lot …
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.
Olga Kharif / Bloomberg:
Google Said to Rethink Wallet Strategy Amid Slow Adoption  —  Google Inc. (GOOG) is weighing changes aimed at improving its Google Wallet mobile-payment system following slow adoption and the departure of two key managers, according to people with knowledge of the project.
Jim Dalrymple / The Loop:
iPhoto for iPad, iPhone hits 1 million users in less than 10 days  —  iPhoto for iPad, iPhone hits 1 million users in less than 10 days  —  Apple told me today that its newest iOS app, iPhoto, hit 1 million users in less than 10 days after its release.  It's important to note that figure is users, not downloads.
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.
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.
Drew Olanoff / The Next Web:
YouTube launches “one click fix” to improve the quality of your videos  —  When we're trying to capture something really funny, awesome, or downright amusing with our camera, the video quality is the last thing we're thinking about.  Capture the moment is the goal, and if you do it right …
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft Blog:
Microsoft details how iPad app development compares to Windows 8  —  Summary: In an apparent attempt to attract iPad developers, Microsoft has posted a case study comparing iPad app development to Windows 8 Metro-style tablet development.  —  Microsoft officials have posted to the Windows Dev Center …
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 …
Kim-Mai Cutler / TechCrunch:
The Hong Kong Firm Behind Those Quirky Animated News Shorts Bets $5M On Red Robot Labs  —  The Yakuza, Chinese Triads and more.  There's just so many more mafias for Benchmark-backed mobile gaming studio Red Robot Labs to infiltrate.  —  So the gaming company, which has made a huge bet on location …
Eileen Brown / Social Business Blog:
Microsoft Lifebrowser captures the important landmarks in your life  —  Summary: Using Machine Learning, Lifebrowser from Microsoft Research learns to predict ‘memory landmarks’, events of life that you consider important and it uses these landmarks to help you navigate your past.
Ellis Hamburger / The Verge:
Spotify announces 12 ‘next generation’ apps like TweetVine, Def Jam, Matador, and Domino  —  When Spotify launched its first wave of “apps” in November 2011, it made clear its goal to become “the OS of music,” a place to find, browse, and listen to million of songs.
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
Alex Wilhelm / The Next Web:
US Senate votes 76-22 to limit debate on JOBS Act, move bill forward  —  The US Senate voted today to limit debate on the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (JOBS Act).  The motion cleared the 60 vote hurdle, scoring some 76 votes.  That ample victory gives the bill momentum as it moves towards formal adoption.
Tricia Duryee / AllThingsD:
Amazon's Gift Card Promotion Nets $5 Million and Lots of New Subscribers  —  In just 17 hours yesterday, AmazonLocal sold one million Amazon gift cards for $5 million, making it the company's most successful promotion in the daily deals space to date.  —  That's not a big surprise …
More: CNET, Savvr and GeekWire
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.
Yew Jin Lim / Docs Blog:
Spell checking powered by the web  —  One of my early projects at Google was to improve the suggestions that are made when a query is misspelled in Google Search.  The neat thing about that system is that it's adaptive: our suggestions get smarter and smarter based on the words Googlebot sees as it explores the web.
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.

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Earlier Picks

Larry Dignan / Between the Lines Blog: