A curated selection of the day’s most newsworthy tech stories from all over the Web.
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The Jeopardy contestants, including IBM supercomputer Watson. The first (of three) days of Jeopardy featuring the IBM supercomputer Watson as a contestant ended in a tie. Watson and competitor Brad Rutter wrapped up the evening with $5,000 each on the scoreboard, while Ken Jennings, who had bested Watson in the much-publicized practice match, ended up with $2,000. (AllThingsD)
- AOL CEO Tim Armstrong invested more than $10 million in 477,000 shares of his company’s stock, nearly doubling his stake to 4% after the stock dropped on news of AOL’s $315-million Huffington Post acquisition. (Los Angeles Times)
- Google introduced the Personal Blocklist Google Chrome extension yesterday, which lets Google Chrome browser users click a “block url” button to block an unwanted Web site so they won’t see search results from that domain again. (Could such a feature spell the end of content farms?) (eWeek)
- More Apple iPhone buzz, only this time, it’s all about the iPhone 5. According to Digitimes, it will reportedly sport a 4-inch display — half an inch more than the current iPhone — as well as a faster processor and more RAM to better compete with the onslaught of Android devices. Another rumor claims Apple is actually working on three iPhone 5 prototypes, with one of them sporting a physical, slide-out keyboard, and another housing a faster chip with an 8-megapixel camera. (9 to 5 Mac)
- Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers is in the process of investing $38 million in Facebook at a $52 billion valuation. (Wall Street Journal)
- A company called Gemalto has developed what it calls “the world’s only Facebook-certified SIM based application,” which apparently gives owners access to the social network over any GSM-based handset without the need for a proper data plan. The new tech doesn’t require a monthly fee, but uses a subscription-based model where users have unlimited access to Facebook for a set amount of time. (ReadWriteWeb)
- HTC took the lid off the Flyer, a 7-inch Android-loving tablet with a 1.5 Ghz single-core Snapdragon processor, 32 GB of storage, 5 megapixel rear camera, 1.3 megapixel front cam, Android 2.4, aluminum unibody chassis, a tablet-friendly version of the company’s Sense user interface, and a stylus for a new note-taking system and doodling. (MobileCrunch)
- Popular photo-sharing/photo-filter start-up Instagram reached two million users, just six weeks after it reached the million user milestone. (For some context, it took Foursquare one year to achieve that and Twitter two years.) (TechCrunch)
- Netflix finally arrived on the Boxee Box via firmware update. The app appears to have the same user interface featured in the Google TV and Playstation 3 versions with a proper search feature, though for now, Netflix titles won’t be integrated into the Boxee movie library. (GigaOm)
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