After The U.K. Censors It, Pirate Bay Site Sees Traffic Boom

Just the other day the torrent-source website Pirate Bay saw 12 million more daily visitors than it has ever had before. The news comes in the immediate aftermath of a U.K. High court decision to order local ISPs to block access to Pirate Bay's site, and it looks like some--such as Virgin Media--have already complied. A site spokesman is quoted as thanking the British Phonographic Institute, responsible for pressuring the courts to enforce the ban, for free advertising that rapidly spread throughout Europe. In the interim period between the decision and broad site-blocking, the site is said to plan educational tips for users on how to circumvent the ban. The move illustrates the technical complexities of trying to enforce blocks on parts of the Internet, and comes just as the high court in Pakistan rules that censoring the Internet is actually illegal.

MIT And Harvard Team Up For Online Education Platform EdX

Nokia Sues HTC, RIM, Viewsonic Over Patent Abuse

Nokia has just announced that it's pressing lawsuits in the U.S. and Germany against rival phone makers HTC and RIM, plus Viewsonic for violating "a number" of patents it owns. Nokia's press statement argues that the move is "to protect its innovations and intellectual property," and only comes after what seem to be failed licensing talks--the firm's chief legal officer is quoted saying "We have already licensed our standards essential patents to more than 40 companies. Though we'd prefer to avoid litigation, Nokia had to file these actions to end the unauthorized use of our proprietary innovations and technologies, which have not been widely licensed." Specifically the IP covers dual-function antennas, power mangement and multimode radios and enhancements to application stores, multitasking, and a short list of other services that sound typical on current smartphones. Nokia was once king of cell phones, but recently saw its crown stolen by Samsung, and also Apple in terms of smartphone sales.


Instagram Hitting 50 Million Users About Now

According to some pretty simple math, Instagram's user base is topping 50 million people about now, a mere handful of days since it was sold to Facebook for a staggering billion-dollar price. Considering at the start of this year the user count was only around 15 million, this represents staggering growth. Some of this growth has come from the new Android compatibility (that caused such a rapid uptick in numbers it may have spurred the Facebook buyout), but as Mashable notes it seems that since this event the growth in numbers has been roughly shared by iPhone users and Android owners.


Spotify Launches An iPad App

Social music streaming service Spotify has finally released an app for the iPad, accessible to subscribers of its paid Premium service. The app has been a long time coming, as almost all its music streaming competitors seem to have an app out already. It was expected to surface at the recent Ad Age conference in New York City, but CEO Daniel Ek announced various app and big-name advertising partnerships instead. But then again, Spotify seems to be making quite the habit of late releases--the service itself only became available in the U.S. last summer, well after it was a hit in Europe.


Twitter's First University Collaboration, To Co-teach Berkeley Data Course 

In its first partnership with a university, Twitter is sending engineers to advise a data class for computer science students at UC Berkeley this fall. Students will learn how to manipulate real Twitter data and build apps for the social netwok, something companies like Bluefin Labs tackle in earnest. The class, Analyzing Big Data With Twitter, is led by computer scientist and Berkeley faculty member Marti Hearst. Twitter is also inviting students to present their final projects at Twitter's HQ at the end of the course.


Baby Naming Gets Social, With Facebook-Linked Name Maker App.