Techmeme: Zynga Appoints DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg to Board (Tricia Duryee/All Things Digital)

3:05 PM ET, April 4, 2011

Top Items:

Patents and innovation — The tech world has recently seen an explosion in patent litigation, often involving low-quality software patents, which threatens to stifle innovation. Some of these lawsuits have been filed by people or companies that have never actually created anything …

Larry Dignan / Between the Lines Blog:

Google bids $900 million for 6,000 Nortel telecom patents — Nortel said that it is selling all of its remaining patents and applications for $900 million to Google. — With the move, Google gets about 6,000 patents covering wired, wireless and digital communications technologies.

Discussion: BGR, Financial Post, NBC Bay Area and silicontap.com

Joshua Topolsky:

This is my next project — As you may have already heard (or read), there's some activity going on in the world of Joshua Topolsky. Earlier this evening, David Carr published a piece in the New York Times about a new project that I'm embarking on... and I want to just say a few things about it.

Discussion: Digital Trends, New York Times, TechCrunch, paidContent, Daring Fireball, Guardian, PC Magazine, VatorNews, Stowe Boyd, Mixed Media, @bankoff and GottaBeMobile, more at Mediagazer »

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:

SB Nation Raids AOL's Engadget for New Tech Content Site — Jim Bankoff, the fomer AOL exec responsible for buying Engadget for the Internet portal, has grabbed eight staffers who had recently left the huge tech site amid tensions, in order to start a new gadget property.

Discussion: SAI, VentureBeat, Nilay Patel, TDW Geeks, mediabistro.com, louisgray.com, Guardian, broadstuff, @danshanoff, everwas, @futurepaul, @dannysullivan, @benhuh, SAI and Geekosystem, more at Mediagazer »

Sarah Lacy / TechCrunch:

Milk: Kevin Rose's New Company Aims to Solve Big Problems on the Mobile Web — Well by Silicon Valley standards, that certainly wasn't a long “stealth” period. Just weeks after he quit Digg, Kevin Rose is announcing details of his new startup. Knowing Rose, I can tell why he's so excited to get started.

Discussion: VentureBeat and NetworkEffect

Zach Epstein / BGR:

AT&T confirms early upgrade price changes for iPhone 4, other smartphones — AT&T has confirmed to BGR that it has made changes to early upgrade pricing for its smartphones. The changes impact customers who wish to upgrade to a new smartphone but are not yet eligible for an upgrade at fully discounted two-year contract prices.

Discussion: PC Magazine, BetaNews, App Advice, Gizmodo, MacRumors, iLounge, MobileCrunch, Gadgetell, iPhone Download Blog, Techland, Mashable!, Android Phone Fans, PhoneDog.com, FierceWireless, TUAW, TiPb and everythingiCafe

John Paczkowski / Digital Daily:

The MacBook Air: A $2.2 Billion-a-Year “Quasi-Tablet” — With all the chatter over the iPad 2, the iPhone 4 and its successor, it's easy to forget that Apple has another ultra-portable device that's doing quite well at market: the MacBook Air. — Nearly six months after it launched …

Discussion: AppleInsider, TUAW, MacNN, MacStories and iClarified

Greg Kumparak / MobileCrunch:

10 Things That Simply Need To Be In iOS 5 — WWDC. It's like Christmas for OS X and iOS developers. Each year, they flock to San Francisco's Moscone Center, anxiously awaiting the pair of gifts that Apple annually bestows: the new iPhone, and a bundle of new features upon which they'll build their next big thing.

Discussion: Technologizer

Greg Bensinger / Bloomberg:

Sprint Plans Tap-and-Go Payment Service This Year to Get a Jump on Rivals — Sprint Nextel Corp. (S) plans to start a service this year that will allow customers to make purchases with their mobile phones, ahead of a similar initiative from rivals Verizon Wireless, AT&T Inc. (T) and T-Mobile USA.

Discussion: CNET News, mocoNews, Electronista, IntoMobile and ReadWriteWeb

Thomas Ricker / Engadget:

Sony's Howard Stringer confirms Honeycomb tablet in US by summer — Ready for a taste of a sweet Honeycomb tablet with a Sony twist? You'd better be — Japan's Nikkei is quoting Sony chief executive, Sir Howard Stringer, saying that the company's first Android 3.0 tablet will be on sale by the end of summer.

Adam Satariano / Bloomberg:

Pandora Discloses Privacy-Related Grand Jury Probe of Apps — Pandora Media Inc., the Internet music service, said it had been served with a subpoena in connection with a grand jury probe that may be investigating the information-sharing processes of smartphone applications that run on Apple Inc. and Google Inc.'s Android platforms.

Discussion: paidContent, Wall Street Journal and TechCrunch

Henry Blodget / The Wire:

IT'S OFFICIAL: AOL Fires Freelancers* — A couple of weeks ago, AOL threw its freelance journalists into purgatory: — They were supposed to sit tight and wait to hear from their editors on their roles in the post-merger Huffington Post Media Group. — The freelancers, naturally …

Discussion: Guardian, more at Mediagazer »

Tricia Duryee / All Things Digital:

Zynga Appoints DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg to Board — Zynga is beefing up its board of directors by announcing today that it has added Jeffrey Katzenberg, the CEO and co-founder of DreamWorks Animation. — Katzenberg, who created the animation studio along with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen …

Discussion: TechCrunch, VentureBeat, SAI, Inside Social Games, Hollywood Reporter, DealBook and @markpinc

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry / SAI:

The Libyan War Derails Letter.ly, Will More .ly Startups Be Threatened? — Letter.ly, a startup that helps set up and manage paid email newsletters, had its service briefly shut down by the Libyan war and has had to move its service to the domain Letterly.net.

Discussion: TechCrunch, Domain Name Wire, CircleID, Betabeat and silicontap.com

Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Fortune:

Android is a mess, say developers — A new survey analyzes the pros and cons of writing for various mobile platforms — On the heels of the debate played out over the weekend between Union Square Ventures' Fred Wilson and Instapaper's Marco Arment about whether it's wiser to be writing apps for Apple's …

Discussion: Electronista, SAI, 9 to 5 Mac, Mobile Entertainment and TNL.net, Thanks:hornokplease

Christian Zibreg / 9 to 5 Mac:

Untethered iOS 4.3.1 jailbreak is out, supports all devices except iPad 2 and Verizon iPhone — Fans of jailbreaking have long known that Sundays are traditionally reserved for major iPhone jailbreaks. Following yesterday's tweet by a team member MuscleNerd, Dev-team released a set …

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:

Myspace Bake-Off Starts Wednesday and-Despite Reports-No Bidder in Lead (and No Zynga Interest Either) — While no one inside or outside Myspace owner News Corp. expects fireworks and giant piles of money, the tire-kicking for the long-troubled social-networking-turned-entertainment site actually starts Wednesday.

Discussion: hypebot

Christian Zibreg / 9 to 5 Mac:

iAd rival: Unofficial app store Cydia lands advertising deal with Toyota — Companies are keeping a close eye on the jailbreaking community as at least one big brand demonstrates willingness to advertise on Cydia, the unofficial store for unsanctioned third-party programs which can be installed on jailbroken iPhones, iPods and iPads.

Discussion: GigaOM, MarketingVOX, The Next Web, Phones Review and ZDNet Australia

Digital Chosunilbo:

N.Korean Delegation Inspect Google Headquarters — A North Korean economic delegation that has been visiting the U.S. since March 21 toured the Google headquarters in Mountain View, California on Friday. Google, with its massively successful search engines, is one of the leading U.S. IT companies.

Discussion: PC Magazine, Search Engine Watch and SAI

Audrey Watters / ReadWriteWeb:

What Do Kids Say Is The Biggest Obstacle To Technology At School? — iPads. Interactive Whiteboards. Netbooks. Video games. Although educational technologies are being implemented more and more in classrooms across the country, we don't often stop and ask students - or their parents - what they think their technology needs are.

Mark Milian / CNN:

Why Nintendo isn't making a phone — Playing Super Mario on a Nintendo phone will remain a pipe dream. — Although Microsoft and Sony — Nintendo's rivals among the “Big Three” gaming companies — have branched into mobile phone development, Nintendo isn't planning to build a phone …

Discussion: Digital Trends, SAI, SlashGear, Electronista and GeekWire

Sarah Lacy / TechCrunch:

How We All Missed Web 2.0′s “Netscape Moment” — On May 26, 2009 Mike sat down with Yuri Milner, Mark Zuckerberg and a Flipcam to talk about the then-scandalous $200 million investment DST made in Facebook, at a price that valued the company at about $10 billion. The camera-work is Blair-Witch-Project-like at best.

Discussion: broadstuff

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