The next generation of Instapaper  —  When I launched Instapaper in 2008, it was a very basic web app.  It quickly expanded to define the pillars of the read-later market: a one-click “read later” bookmarklet, a web sync service, an adjustable text view optimized for reading, and an iPhone app with offline saving.

End WWDC  —  Not long ago, when Apple's WWDC conference dates were announced, a slow trickle of registrations would occur as developers consulted with spouses, bosses, and co-workers to determine, in their own sweet time, whether or not they would attend.  There was never any rush, because the conference never sold out.

New improvements to Twitter for Mac  —  Today we're announcing a few improvements to Twitter for Mac: Photos: It's easier than ever to share photos.  Simply click the camera icon in the lower-left corner of the Tweet compose box, and choose a photo to share.  If you prefer, you can still drag and drop photos from the desktop.

Facebook Buys Parse To Offer Mobile Development Tools As Its First Paid B2B Service  —  Facebook has just acquired Parse, marking its entry into a whole new business category: paid tools and services for developing mobile apps.  —  The company is buying the mobile-backend-as-a-service startup …

Yahoo's Chairman Is Out Because Marissa Mayer Was Not His First Choice For CEO  —  Yahoo just announced that chairman Fred Amoroso will step down in June.  —  We've communicated with three Yahoo sources since the news broke.  —  Given what they told us, we think this why Amoroso is out:

Twitter Testing New Local Discovery Features — And It's About Time  —  Twitter may be the best way to figure out what's happening around the world right now.  But it sure ain't great at telling me what's going on in my world — that is, what's happening down the block from me.  —  That may change.

Amazon beats Wall Street estimates with $0.18 EPS, sales at $16.07B in Q1 2013, a 22% growth YoY  —  Amazon announced its first quarter financial performance and it has $16.07 billion in net income and earnings per share of $0.18.  Its sales were up 22 percent from last year.

AT&T finally brings its Digital Life home automation service to 15 markets  —  AT&T has been showing off and talking about its Digital Life home automation service for the better part of a year now, but after missing its March launch target, it's finally making the service available in 15 markets this week.

Exclusive: Yahoo's Marissa Mayer Officially Joins Jawbone Board  —  As I had reported last fall that she might, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has officially joined the board of Jawbone, the high-profile wireless gadget maker whose nifty products include Jawbone wireless headsets …

Court Denies Motorola the Billions It Wanted From Microsoft for Standards-Essential Patents  —  A federal court in Seattle issued a ruling Thursday that could help settle the question of just how much a company can expect to reap from standards-essential patents.  —  Source: Microsoft

Margin Call 2  —  I expected Apple's margins to improve last quarter.  They didn't and so the question I needed to answer is why.  Here is a history of Apple's gross margin and operating margin as reported since late 2005:  —  For a company selling hardware these are extraordinarily high margins.

Pirate Bay Finds Safe Haven in Iceland, Switches to .IS Domain  —  It has been a busy month for The Pirate Bay's IT department thus far, with the site skipping from domain to domain.  —  Two weeks ago the notorious BitTorrent site traded in its .SE domain for the Greenland-based .GL TLD.

Microsoft to release ‘Switch to Windows Phone’ Android app [Update]  —  Microsoft's Joe Belfiore, manager of the Windows Phone team, touts the platform's apps at an October event.  —  Microsoft is hoping to take a bite out of Google's Android platform by releasing a “Switch to Windows Phone” …

Attorney General calls T-Mobile's no-contract plans ‘deceptive’, carrier agrees to offer refunds and change advertising  —  Following the launch of T-Mobile's new “Uncarrier” strategy alongside the $99 iPhone 5 and new no subsidy pricing plans last month, today the Washington State Attorney General …

Google Brings Its New And Improved File Viewer For MS Office Documents To Chrome Beta  —  If you regularly need to open Microsoft Office documents in the browser, Google now offers you a new Chrome extension that renders Word, Excel and PowerPoint files directly in the browser.

Time Warner Cable sees the Google Fiber threat and offers Austin free Wi-Fi  —  Competition is grand.  With Google planning to build out a fiber-to-the-home network in Austin, Texas next year, the local incumbent broadband providers are tweaking their models.

AT&T: Antitrust Regulators Playing Favorites With Airwaves  —  WASHINGTON—AT&T Inc. accused antitrust regulators Thursday of playing favorites as they seek to steer some of the country's most valuable airwaves toward smaller wireless carriers.  —  The government plans in coming years …

How Ray Kurzweil Will Help Google Make the Ultimate AI Brain  —  Google has always been an artificial intelligence company, so it really shouldn't have been a surprise that Ray Kurzweil, one of the leading scientists in the field, joined the search giant late last year.

Group Led By Google Wants More Speed On The Web, Releases Nginx PageSpeed Module In Beta  —  Google really cares about the web being faster.  In 2010 it led a group of contributors in releasing a module for Apache web servers called PageSpeed.  Today, the same group has released a version for Nginx …

Mailbox fans, rejoice: iPad build in the works, Mac app under consideration  —  Unlike Sparrow, the popular iPhone email client whose chances of seeing a native iPad version went down the drain after Google acquired the team back in July 2012, Orchestra's Mailbox will make the leap to the iPad, developers confirmed Thursday on Twitter.