Top Items:
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
PopCap Games To Be Acquired For $1 Billion+ — Update: We've heard from multiple sources that the buyer is Electronic Arts. — Huge news in the gaming world: PopCap Games, the company behind such hits as Plants vs Zombies and Bejeweled, is in the process of being acquired …
RELATED:
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Sources: PopCap In Late Stage Acquisition Discussions With EA For $1 Billion+ — Following up on our story earlier this evening that PopCap Games is in late stage acquisition discussions for a sum of over $1 billion — we've now heard from two sources that the buyer is Electronic Arts.
Discussion:
Gizmodo, Ubergizmo, Geek.com, DigitalBattle.com, Softpedia News, Rock, Paper, Shotgun, VG247 and GrindGadget
Jenna Wortham / New York Times:
American Express Teams With Foursquare — Foursquare, which made its debut in 2009, quickly began popularizing the idea of “checking in,” or using a cellphone application to tell friends that you are at a particular restaurant, bar or park. — Then Facebook and Google borrowed the concept — and even the term check in.
Discussion:
Search Engine Watch, The Business Insider, Digital Trends, About Foursquare, RazorianFly, SocialTimes.com, WebProNews, Adotas, Gizmodo and VentureBeat
RELATED:
Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:
What Are Hulu's Owners Really Selling? — Yes, Hulu is for sale. The video site hired bankers from Morgan Stanley and Guggenheim Partners last week, people familiar with the company tell me. They've just started asking potential buyers if they'd like to sign an NDA and take a looksee.
Discussion:
@dannysullivan and @pkafka
RELATED:
Ben Fritz / Company Town:
Hulu puts itself up for sale, retains investment banks
Discussion:
The Business Insider, @jboorstin, GigaOM, Neowin.net, Mixed Media, Electronista, Gawker, CNET News.com, Engadget, L.A. Times Tech Blog, CNNMoney.com, ReadWriteWeb, Geek.com and Betabeat
Chris Chang / M.I.C. Gadget:
Apple's Tim Cook Visits China Mobile to Discuss 4G LTE iPhone — Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook is spotted in China Mobile headquarters this morning. A Chinese reporter from First Financial Daily (one of the most prosperous financial papers in China) managed to take a picture …
Discussion:
The Business Insider, Penn Olson, TUAW, Techie Buzz, iPhone Alley, MacGazette.net, RazorianFly, PhoneArena, MacRumors, Edible Apple, MacDailyNews, 9 to 5 Mac, iLounge, Electronista and AppleInsider
Nilay Patel / This is my next:
Apple granted patent on webpage scrolling behaviors, media granted patent on crazy — So Apple got yet another patent granted today, and now there's yet another media firestorm over whether it means Cupertino will be able to sue every other phone manufacturer out of business …
Bloomberg:
Apple Bid to Bar Amazon ‘Appstore’ Will ‘Likely’ Be Denied — Apple Inc. will “probably” lose its court bid to stop Amazon.com Inc. from using the term “Appstore” for a service selling programs for Android devices, a federal judge said. — Apple, whose top-selling product is the iPhone …
Discussion:
Reuters, Examiner, Bloomberg, MacRumors, T3.com News, RazorianFly, Ubergizmo, AppleInsider, Apple, PhoneArena, 9 to 5 Mac, The Loop, Gizmodo, Computerworld, TUAW, Electronista, MacNN, MobileBurn.com and iClarified
John Paczkowski / AllThingsD:
What's the Top-Selling Phone at Verizon and AT&T? — It's been about five months since Apple's iPhone debuted on Verizon's network and already it's the carrier's top-selling handset. This according to BTIG Research (registration required), which spent the past three weeks asking 250 Verizon …
Discussion:
AppleInsider, Computerworld, BGR, iPhone Download Blog, Electronista, 9 to 5 Mac, PhoneArena, MacGazette.net, TUAW, TiPb, The Business Insider and The Loop
RELATED:
John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
The Final Cut Pro X Backlash — Chris Foresman at Ars Technica: … The gist is that many professional editors see Final Cut Pro X as an improved version of iMovie, not an improved version of Final Cut Pro. This Twitter search, for example, is instructive.
Discussion:
Neowin.net, The Filmmaker Magazine Blog, 9 to 5 Mac, AppleInsider, TidBITS, @scobleizer and Gizmodo
RELATED:
Chris Foresman / Ars Technica:
Final Cut Express, Server going away as Apple improves Final Cut Pro X
Discussion:
TUAW, SlashGear, L.A. Times Tech Blog and AppleInsider
Jonathan Stempel / Reuters:
Winklevoss twins abandon appeal of Facebook ruling — (Reuters) - The Olympic rowing twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss have decided not to appeal to the Supreme Court a ruling upholding a $65 million cash-and-stock settlement reached with Facebook Inc. — The 2008 settlement was intended …
Greg Sandoval / CNET News:
Exclusive: Top ISPs poised to adopt graduated response to piracy — Some of the country's largest Internet service providers are poised to leap into the antipiracy fight in a significant way. — After years of negotiations, a group of bandwidth providers that includes AT&T, Comcast …
Discussion:
TorrentFreak, Music Ally, Between the Lines Blog, CNET News.com, The Next Web and SocialTimes.com
Phil Nickinson / Android Central:
Verizon's new data plans broken down in complete detail — Having a hard time wrapping your head around the upcoming changes to Verizon's smartphone data plans? We just got all the dirty details dropped in our laps. Charts, e-mails, the whole kit and kaboodle, folks. — Let's start with what you see above.
Discussion:
TiPb, pocketnow.com, Engadget, PhoneNews.com, MacRumors, TUAW, Droid Life, Android Phone Fans, CrackBerry.com blogs, Gizmodo and GrindGadget
Tim Fernholz / Fast Company:
BankSimple: A Bank That Doesn't Suck — BankSimple's dream team (left to right, from top): Thomas Lockney, engineer; Shamir Karkal, CFO; Bill DeRouchey, creative director; Josh Reich, CEO; Toby Sterrett, engineer; Brian Merritt, operations; Alex Payne, CTO; and Ian Collins, engineer.
Cory Doctorow / Boing Boing:
LEAKED: UK copyright lobby holds closed-door meetings with gov't to discuss national Web-censorship regime — A group of UK copyright lobbyists held confidential, closed-door meetings with Ed Vaizey, Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries to discuss a plan to allow industry groups to censor the Internet in the UK.
Discussion:
TechEye, ZeroPaid.com, Techdirt, Inquirer and Slightly Right of Centre
Manu Kumar / K9 Ventures:
The Making of Lytro — This is how I remember it: It's September 2005, and I was sitting in my office at Stanford in Gates 382. In walks Ren Ng, introduces himself and says something along the lines of “I hear you do startups, could we chat?” Ren, now Dr. Ren Ng, was a fellow PhD student with me at Stanford.
Discussion:
ITProPortal, USA Today and PC Magazine
John Ribeiro / PC World:
Apple May Face India Probe for Anticompetitive Practices — Apple may face scrutiny from an Indian regulator for alleged anticompetitive behavior in connection with iPhone 4 sales in India. — A Competition Commission of India official said on Wednesday that a case was filed against Apple about a month ago.
Discussion:
Wall Street Journal, ITProPortal, Digit - Tech News, Agence France Presse, TechEye, India IT Blog, MacNN, PhoneArena and Softpedia News
Tim Bradshaw / FT Tech Hub:
Google's Schmidt predicts widespread “tap and pay” within a year — Eric Schmidt, Google's executive chairman, believes that a third of check-out terminals in retail stores and restaurants will be upgraded to allow wireless “tap and pay” from mobile phones within the next year.
Discussion:
The Digital Home, AdAge, Computerworld, Electronista and Near Field Communications …
Janko Roettgers / GigaOM:
How PARC wants to reinvent the Internet — Xerox PARC's engineers developed the Ethernet, the mouse, the laser printer and many other staples of everyday computing back in the 1970s. Forty years later, the lab is back at it: Teresa Lunt, VP and director of the computing science lab at PARC …
Discussion:
Service-Oriented …
Stuart Dredge / Apps blog:
iPhone accounts for two thirds of UK connected app users — GSMA Mobile Media Metrics show Apple hugely over-indexing but woeful showing for Symbian — Should mobile app developers be putting more effort into porting their apps to Symbian smartphones? There's a large existing install base …
Discussion:
The Loop, The Next Web, MacStories, TUAW, The Next Web, Electricpig.co.uk and comScore, Inc.
Mark Suster / Both Sides of the Table:
On Bubbles ... And Why We'll Be Just Fine — This post originally ran on TechCrunch. — I recently spoke at the Founder Showcase at the request of Adeo Ressi. I asked what the audience most needed to hear. — He said, “They need an unbiased view of the fund raising environment …
Ben Popper / Betabeat:
Turntable.fm Hits 140,000 Users in Its First Month — We are blogging and DJing. At The Same Time — Betabeat was just settling down for some refreshing key lime pie and Vint Cerf's new inspirational autobiography, ICANN and so Can You!, when we received an after hours email from Turntable.fm co-founder Billy Chasen.
Discussion:
VentureBeat
Brian Proffitt / ITworld:
Oracle's patents case against Google weakening — Judge may stay case pending patents' reexamination — Oracle's Java infringement case against Google isn't going exceptionally well for the database giant these days, with another setback delivered by the US Patent and Trademark Office …
Discussion:
Groklaw and The Register
