Funny or Die Makes a Steve Jobs Movie  —  LOS ANGELES — Techies have been keeping a hot eye on dueling Steve Jobs biopics, one an indie starring Ashton Kutcher and the other, written by Aaron Sorkin, in the works at Sony, which made “The Social Network.”  —  But it turns out there was also a joker …

BlackBerry chief lays out survival plan and says iPhone is old news  —  BlackBerry chief exectutive officer Thorsten Heins has said the rapidly advancing global smartphone market has left Apple's iPhone in its wake, and predicted his company would have 100,000 native apps available …

T-Mobile Plans March 26 Event to Tout Big Changes Coming  —  T-Mobile USA is planning a March 26 event in New York where it is expected to detail further changes to both its technology and business.  —  The No. 4 U.S. carrier is in the midst of readying an LTE network for commercial launch.

Andrew ‘weev’ Auernheimer sentenced to 41 months for exploiting AT&T iPad security flaw  —  Following prison term, Auernheimer will be subject to three years of supervised release; ordered to split $73,000 restitution to AT&T  —  Security researcher Andrew ‘weev’ Auernheimer was today sentenced …

Forget the Cellphone Fight — We Should Be Allowed to Unlock Everything We Own  —  While Congress is working on legislation to re-legalize cellphone unlocking, let's acknowledge the real issue: The copyright laws that made unlocking illegal in the first place.  Who owns our stuff?

An In-Depth Comparison Between iOS Map Frameworks: Apple MapKit vs. Google Maps SDK  —  “When we first got sight of Apple's maps in the iOS 6 SDK beta at WWDC 2012, we were excited,” says Lee Armstrong, developer of the popular Plane Finder app, which tracks planes in flight all over the world.

Meet the tiny, Florida-based phone maker that thinks it can beat Samsung  —  One cheap, high-end, unlocked smartphone at a time  —  Sammy Ohev-Zion starts our chat with an economics lesson.  It costs every company about the same amount to manufacture a phone, he says …

Behold: Google's Stunning Street Views From the Top of the World  —  While on the Everest Base Camp Trek in Nepal you can stand face to face with Mount Everest, the “Goddess Mother of the Earth”, from the easily reached high-point of 18,192-foot Kala Pattar.

Zynga Looks To Revive Draw Something With A Sequel That's Much More Of A Social Network  —  Zynga's biggest acquisition to date — the $180 million deal to buy Draw Something-maker OMGPOP last year — was the one it ended up being the most pilloried for.  At its peak, Draw Something …

Apple Attack Backfires for State Broadcaster … A report by China Central Television questioning the integrity of Apple Inc. has instead ended up shining an unkind spotlight on the state broadcaster's own reputation thanks to what appears to be a poorly edited post on the country's most popular Twitter-like microblogging service.

Flattr now lets you make money from your Twitter Favorites, Instagram Likes and more  —  Swedish startup Flattr has been running its ‘online tipjar’ service for a few years now, and yet it's failed to gain much traction.  However, it's now taking a new direction that may finally make it click with a mainstream audience.

Microsoft delivers first public preview of its Hadoop on Windows Azure service  —  Summary: Microsoft is making available its first public preview of HDInsight, the Hadoop big-data framework on Windows Azure technology it is developing with Hortonworks.  —  Microsoft made available …

Facebook Hires Co-Founders Of Trustworthiness Verification Startup Legit  —  Legit, a startup working on a universal reputation system that could help sharing economy services verify whether users are trustworthy, has announced its team will join Facebook.  Specifically, co-founders Jeremy Barton …

EA CEO John Riccitiello steps down  —  Electronic Arts announced today that John Riccitiello will step down as chief executive officer and as a member of the Board of Directors effective March 30.  —  Riccitiello will be replaced by Larry Probst “to ensure a smooth transition” …

State Of The News Media: Everything In Decline But Digital  —  The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism's has served up its annual and comprehensive “State of the News Media” report.  It offers a mostly pessimistic assessment of the condition and trajectory of various news media in the US today.

AT&T rolls out monstrous 30GB, 40GB, and 50GB shared data tiers starting at $300 monthly  —  It's unlikely you'll ever see unlimited data from AT&T again, but the carrier today rolled out three new Mobile Share packages for its most data-hungry customers.  The company's previous shared tiers topped …

Short Term Thinking vs Long Term Thinking  —  One of the mistakes I often see in business is short term thinking vs long term thinking.  It struck me over the weekend when I saw this tweet: … Sure Samsung is making a killing on handset sales right now.  So is Apple.

Gmail app for Android updated with reply/archive/delete from notifications, faster search & more  —  Google announced today on its Official Gmail Blog that it has released an update to the Android app for Gmail that brings new features, faster search, and other enhancements for certain users.

Amazon Publishing promises authors faster royalty payments  —  Amazon Publishing said in a letter to literary agents Monday that it will start paying its authors royalties on a monthly basis, up from every three months.  —  “In this digital age, we don't see why authors should have to wait six months …

Tensions Rise Between Facebook, Developers  —  The Social Network Steps Up Efforts to Curb Spam, But Developers Say It Is Blocking Competing Apps  —  Last month in Paris, developer Antoine Morcos received an unexpected email: Facebook Inc. said it was cutting ties with his photo-sharing application, Vintage Camera.

Mozilla Plans To Improve Firefox Developer Tools With In-Browser Editing, Better Firebug Integration, Network Panel & More  —  Last week, Mozilla technology evangelist Paul Rouget asked web developers what improvements they wanted to see in Firefox's developer tools.

Messaging Service WhatsApp To Extend Subscription Model To iOS This Year, But Don't Hold Your Breath For A Desktop App  —  WhatsApp, the popular mobile messaging app that eschews advertising in favor of a paid model, is getting ready to bring its iOS app in line with the apps it makes …