Techmeme
March 21, 2012, 5:20 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.
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.
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.
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 …
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.
David Kravets / Wired:
MPAA Wants Megaupload User Data Retained for Lawsuits — Updated  —  Hollywood studios want a federal judge to preserve data on all the 66.6 million users of Megaupload, the file-sharing service that shuttered in January in the wake of federal indictments targeting its operators on allegations …
More: Techdirt
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.
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 …
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 …
Jordan Kahn / 9to5Mac:
DirecTV iPad app update adds video streaming on the go  —  In October, the “DirecTV” app added the ability to stream video over home networks.  Today, an update to the app adds the ability to stream shows and movies over 3G and Wi-Fi anywhere.  The new feature is limited to video content …
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.
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.
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.
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 …

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Earlier Picks

Larry Dignan / Between the Lines Blog: