Techmeme
April 18, 2012, 9:10 PM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
In Facebook Deal for Instagram, Board Was All But Out of Picture  —  On the morning of Sunday, April 8, Facebook Inc.'s youthful chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, alerted his board of directors that he intended to buy Instagram, the hot photo-sharing service.
Sergey Brin / Google+:
I believe the internet has been one of the greatest forces for good in the world over the past quarter century.  So when the Guardian requested that I speak to them over the past few months about internet freedom, I decided it was important to participate.  —  I think the article is a pretty …
Walt Mossberg / AllThingsD:
Permission to Procrastinate: Wait to Get a New Laptop  —  If you're thinking of buying a new laptop this spring, my advice is to think again.  Unless your laptop is on its last legs and you have to move quickly, there are compelling reasons to wait until at least the summer, and probably the fall …
Leslie Horn / Gizmodo:
AT&T Stores Are Almost Completely Out of Lumia 900 Stock  —  Both Nokia and Microsoft need the Lumia 900 to succeed.  Windows Phone is struggling.  So is the once-top handset maker.  But while they and AT&T has been pushing the Lumia 900 hard it looks like the carrier just doesn't have enough to go around.
Stuart Dredge / Guardian:
Draw Something gets more social with chat and Facebook/Twitter sharing  —  Dan Porter talks new features, TV possibilities and localisation plans for popular game.  By Stuart Dredge  —  50m downloads and a $180m acquisition by Zynga later, hit mobile game Draw Something is getting even more social with its latest update.
Horace Dediu / asymco:
Apple Stores have seventeen times better performance than the average retailer  —  Thanks to RetailSails we have some data on retailers in the US which can be used to calibrate the performance of Apple retail.  RetailSails compiled a table of the top 20 chains by sales per square foot (annual basis).
Laura Stampler / Business Insider:
Tumblr Will Start Selling Ad Units On May 2  —  In a 2010 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Tumblr CEO and founder David Karp said, “We're pretty opposed to advertising.  It really turns our stomachs.”  —  How times have changed.  Karp announced at Ad Age's Digital Conference that on May 2 …
Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:
Facebook Targets May 17th For IPO Date  —  This just in: According to multiple sources close to the company, Facebook is eyeing IPO on May 17th — depending on whether the SEC agrees that all the reams of paperwork (including those concerning its recent acquisition of Instagram) are in order.
More: CNETTweets: @pkedroskyThanks:@chasinggodot
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Mystery company backed by James Cameron and Google executives may be an asteroid mining project  —  MIT's Technology Review has just gotten news of a mysterious new project that claims it will “create a new industry and a new definition of ‘natural resources.’” Space exploration company Planetary Resources …
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Alexis Madrigal / The Atlantic Online:
The Jig Is Up: Time to Get Past Facebook and Invent a New Future  —  After five years pursuing the social-local-mobile dream, we need a fresh paradigm for technology startups.  —  We're there.  The future that visionaries imagined in the late 1990s of phones in our pockets and high-speed Internet in the air: Well, we're living in it.
Ben Kuchera / Penny Arcade Report:
The ugly side of Kickstarter: the risks in backing game dev campaigns are greater than you think  —  The Penny Arcade Report has an email address for story leads and tips, and a significant percentage of those “tips” are solicitations for coverage of indie game Kickstarter projects.
Biz Stone / Obvious:
Why Obvious Invested in Neighborland  —  We need only glance at the headlines—from Arab Spring to Occupy—to understand that people are passionate about connecting over issues.  We all have issues, big and small.  Toppling oppressive regimes and protesting corruption are appropriately top of mind.
Robert McMillan / Wired:
Amazon's Secretive Cloud Carries 1 Percent of the Internet  —  An Amazon data center in Sterling, Virginia.  Photo: Eric Hunsaker/Flickr  —  Amazon's cloud computing infrastructure is growing so fast that it's silently becoming a core piece of the internet.
More: GeekWire
Chris Welch / The Verge:
AT&T unveils new GoPhone data packages: twice the bandwidth or better for the same price  —  AT&T just announced new GoPhone data packages for prepaid customers that essentially offer double the bandwidth (or better) at the same pricing tiers as before.  The new monthly rates take effect April 22nd …
Greg Sterling / Marketing Land:
Time's “Most Influential” List Snubs Zuckerberg, Googlers, Includes Tim Cook, Marc Andreesen  —  People love rankings, lists — and awards.  And publishers love them too because the sell issues and drive page views.  Lists and awards inspire jealousy and envy and they're often controversial accordingly.
Ryan Paul / Ars Technica:
Google Cloud Print can now “print” to an Android device or local FedEx store  —  Although modern computing devices and software offer much richer ways to consume, manipulate, and share content, there are still people who prefer to put their documents and images on slices of dead tree.
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Facebook Revamps Preferred Marketing Developer Program To Make It Easier To Find “Real” Social Media Experts  —  Facebook doesn't want your company to get burned by shady “social media gurus”, so today it expanded its Preferred Developer Consultant program into the new Preferred Marketing Developer program …
Fred Wilson / A VC:
The Twitter “Patent Hack”  —  Yesterday Twitter announced that they plan to amend the assignments agreements that they sign with their employees.  They call this proposed amendment the Innovator's Patent Agreement.  I've been aware of this effort inside of Twitter for a while and I like to call …

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Earlier Picks

Erin Bury / BetaKit: