Apple releases iOS 6.1 with more LTE carrier support, Fandango movie ticket purchasing via Siri, iTunes Match individual song downloading  —  Apple has released iOS 6.1 to iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, and Apple TV users.  This public release follows five beta seeds to developers.

Crashlytics is joining forces with Twitter  —  What an incredible journey this past year has been — today, we're excited to announce: we're merging with Twitter to take our platform to an entirely new level!  —  Our Product  —  We started Crashlytics a little over a year ago to address a huge hole in mobile app development.

Vine begins censoring searches, weeds out #porn and more  —  In the latest development in today's pornography on Vine saga, Twitter's video-sharing app now blocks many searches for pornographic terms.  Trying to search for the #porn hashtag and other similar terms brings up no results at this time.

We're Testing Out A New Look!  —  We're excited to announce that we'll be testing an update to Pinterest.com with a small group of people soon.  With this update, we've tried to take your feedback into account.  We're eager to learn even more from some of you during this test.

Yahoo Ends 2012 With A Solid Q4: $1.22 Billion Revenue, Non-GAAP EPS 32 Cents  —  Yahoo today released its financial results for the fourth quarter of 2012, marking the end of a key year for the long-running web portal.  Q4 2012 was Yahoo's second full quarter with Marissa Mayer at the helm as CEO …

HP's first Chromebook revealed in leaked spec sheet  —  HP is preparing to launch its first entry into the Chromebook marketplace, if a PDF found on its site can be believed.  According to this listing, HP's currently-unannounced Pavilion Chromebook will feature a 1.1GHz Celeron processor …

Sales Talks Fell Through, So Ad Exchange AdBrite Shuts Down  —  Advertising exchange AdBrite is shutting down, after an attempt to find a buyer for the company failed.  —  CEO Hardeep Bindra is telling partners that the company, which has 26 employees, will close by the end of the month, and is selling off its assets.

Facebook is suffering an extended outage affecting many users in the US  —  Facebook is suffering from an extended outage that is causing downtime for users based in North America.  The site has been offline for many in the US this evening — including Texas, New York and others …

Acer Sees Success in Chrome; Windows Fails to Drive Sales  —  Acer Inc. (2353), the Taiwanese computer maker that's suffered two consecutive annual losses, posted strong sales of notebooks using Google Inc. (GOOG)'s Chrome platform after the release of Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)'s Windows 8 failed to ignite the market.

New Details On Apple's Budget iPhone 5  —  Backstage Categories:  —  Rumors of a budget “ready for China” iPhone have been circulating for some time, but apart from a possible price point ("low") and assumptions about its components ("plastic," “low-end"), no concrete details as to its look or feel have leaked out.

Marc Andreessen On The Future Of Enterprise  —  In doing research for a post on “The Enterprise Cool Kids” at the tail end of last year, I interviewed Silicon Valley veteran Marc Andreessen about where he thought the enterprise was headed.  —  While excerpts of that interview made it into the post …

Pebble smartwatch review  —  Can Pebble make the first smartwatch for regular people?  —  The Pebble smartwatch is a lot more than just a watch — it's the latest attempt to turn your wrist into the launchpad for a wearable computing revolution.  It's also the preeminent symbol of the Kickstarter hardware revolution.

WhatsApp violates privacy laws over phone numbers: report  —  (Reuters) - WhatsApp, one of the most popular apps in the world, contravenes international privacy laws because it forces users to provide access to their entire address book, Canadian and Dutch data protection authorities said.

Meet the man who would make BlackBerry apps cool  —  Alec Saunders has accomplished the seemingly impossible and gotten developers interested in RIM's new mobile operating system, which is set to be unveiled this week.  —  LAS VEGAS—Alec Saunders needed a little bait.

Intuit Acquires Facebook Ecommerce Platform Payvment's Team, Tech, And Patents While Ecwid Takes Its 200K Merchants  —  Earlier today Facebook ecommerce platform Payvment announced it was shutting down and transitioning its 200,000 merchants to competitor Ecwid, but we've just discovered that's …

Barnes & Noble to Whittle Stores for Years  —  Barnes & Noble Inc. expects to close as many as a third of its retail stores over the next decade, the bookseller's top store executive said, offering the most detailed picture yet of the company's plans for the outlets.

Facebook app for iOS gets voice and video recording, voice message support and improved Nearby tab  —  The Facebook app for iOS has gotten the ability to record voice and video right in the app, as well as Messenger's voice messaging support and an improved Nearby tab.

Apple's iOS 6.1 Maps Search API is its official alternative to Google Places for local results  —  With the release of iOS 6.1, Apple has also announced a new Search API that will allow developers to query its Maps servers to get back point-of-interest and location data.

Seagate invests $40 million in Virident, forges flash pact  —  Summary: Seagate gets a board seat and Virident grabs access to the storage giant's channel.  Seagate will offer Virident's flash-PCIe storage products.  —  Seagate Technology said Monday that it will invest $40 million in Virident …

Nick Denton Is Resurrecting Valleywag  —  Valleywag, a Silicon Valley gossip blog Gawker killed off in 2009, is making a comeback.  —  Nick Denton, Gawker's CEO and founder, says he'll be bringing the site back to life, and he's currently hunting for an editor or two to run it.