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The Phone Stacking Game: Let’s Make This A Thing

So it’s Saturday night and you’re out with friend. Are they the inconsiderate jerk who can’t stop checking their smartphone? Or is that you

Investors Drive $ZNGA Up 26% In Two Days Following Facebook IPO Filing

Those of us who have been following the social gaming industry already know that Zynga makes up a big portion of Facebook’s revenues. But lots of public investors only seem to have gotten the memo on Wednesday evening, when Facebook’s S-1 filing revealed that the developer accounts for 12% of its total revenues , or $445 million. In the two days since, Zynga’s stock has gone up more than 26%, to close at $13.39 this evening.

I Use Wikipedia More Than Makeup

I just donated $40 to Wikipedia, because I promised myself I would every time I poked fun at its holiday donation drive and then just never got around to it. Did you know that you could actually donate during the off-season (Via the covert “Donate to Wikipedia” link at the far left of each individual entry page)? I didn’t, before I asked Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales whether it was possible to donate in the off-season.

Google Adjusts Political Posture With Sponsorship Of Conservative Conference

In interesting but ultimately not very shocking news, Google has signed on as a major sponsor of the Conservative Political Action Conference , which is more or less what it sounds like. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Kelihos botnet remains very much dead after all

A spam botnet brought down four months ago, which was once capable of pumping out almost four billion spam messages a day,?remains very much dead, two of the companies behind the takedown said. That determination, announced late Friday by Microsoft and Kaspersky Lab representatives, contradicted published reports, including one from Ars , that claimed the network of infected computers had been resurrected. There’s no evidence that control of Kelihos, which also went by the name Hlux, has returned to the control of its creators, the companies said. Read the comments on this post

Upgrade and Speed Up Your Computer This Weekend [Weekendhacker]

It’s a sad fact of life that over time, all of our computers get a little bit slower. Before you start shelling out for a new machine, take some time this weekend to perform some maintenance tasks, upgrade a single piece of hardware, or even overclock your machine for a little speed boost.

Week in tech: TV paywalls, the future of Windows, and LightSwitch

Jul 30th, 2011

Fox challenges cord-cutters by sticking TV shows behind paywall : If you’ve made a habit of watching TV shows from Fox online the day after they air, get ready for a rude awakening. The network has decided to put all of its online offerings behind a paywall for eight days after broadcast, and you can only access them if you have an acceptable cable or satellite subscription. And this is only the beginning. Rogue academic downloader busted by MIT webcam stakeout : An arrest report reveals more details on how former Reddit employee Aaron Swartz was caught downloading millions of academic papers.

Simplenote-Syncing Extensions Mark Up the Web [Downloads]

Jul 30th, 2011

Chrome: The combined powers of Syncpad for Simplenote and Syncpad Webnotes lets you place sticky notes directly on web pages that sync with all of your Chrome installations. More??

Microsoft Updates Core System Fonts To Fix Blurred Fonts Issues In Windows

Jul 30th, 2011

Internet Explorer and Firefox users have criticized the font rendering under recent versions of Windows in the past. Some Firefox users for instance began to notice a difference after the Firefox 4 installation or upgrade. Internet Explorer users after the Internet Explorer 9 installation.

Week in science: water of the past and lighting of the future

Jul 30th, 2011

Astronomers find largest water reservoir ever, 12 billion years in the past : Astronomers have found the largest reservoir of water ever discovered in the Universe orbiting a distant black hole. The future of lighting: walls of light, LEDs, and glowing trees : Innovation has come to the humble lightbulb, and the future belongs to color-changing LEDs, walls of glowing OLED panels, and… bioluminescent trees? Here’s what’s next in lighting tech

Firefox, Focus Last Selected Tab Add-On

Jul 30th, 2011

I like to limit the open tabs in the Firefox browser, actually in every browser, to the visible space. While it is sometimes unavoidable to add more tabs to the browser than can be displayed without scrolling, it is an unpleasant experience that I try to avoid as best as I can. Why? First, it is bad for keeping an overview of all open websites in the browser.

360: TeliportMe Brings Its Killer Panorama App To Android (Oh, And It Works On Over 200 Phones)

Jul 30th, 2011

Last November, TechCrunch’s own Sarah Lacy sat down with Vineet Devaiah from “social streetview” startup, Phototour.in , which, at the time, had just received term sheets from a number of high-profile U.S. investors and had recently been awarded the “Top Emerging Technology Company of 2010″ by Nvidia . The startup was the first international, non-funded, under-20-member company to win the award, according to Devaiah. Since then, Phototour added Academy Award certificate-winner and entrepreneur Bala S

MPEG LA: 12 companies own patents essential to Google’s VP8 codec

Jul 29th, 2011

MPEG LA, the self-styled one stop shop for motion video patent licenses, says that 12 different companies have come forward with patents “essential” to the VP8 algorithm championed by Google as a royalty-free compression standard. The organization met with these companies in June to discuss the formation of a patent pool, though there has not yet been a decision to determine whether a pool should be formed, or what its terms and conditions might be.