iPhone 5: 1 million pre-orders in first 24 hours [WIRED]

Whether you find the iPhone 5 boring or exciting, it’s certainly struck a chord with consumers. The iPhone 5 sold a whopping 2 million units in its first day of pre-order sales, according to a Sept. 17 press release issued by Apple.

That’s double the pre-order sales of the iPhone 4S, which sold one million units in its first 24 hours, and more than three times as many as first-day sales for the iPhone 4 (600,000 units).

The return of Facebook’s Winklevoss twins [THE WALL STREET JOURNAL]

Flush with at least $65 million from the settlement of a legal battle with Mr. Zuckerberg and Facebook, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are backing fellow Harvard alumnus Divya Narendra, their ally in the Facebook fight, in the investment website. The Winklevosses have put $1 million into SumZero, which was founded by Mr. Narendra and another Harvard alum Aalap Mahadevia, in 2008.

Failure is a feature: how Google stays sharp gobbling up startups [THE VERGE]

Since its early days, Google has looked outside itself for inspiration on new directions its business could take. The search giant’s mergers and acquisitions team set new records in 2010 and 2011 for the sheer number of companies it acquired. Last year alone it bought up 25 companies, one every two weeks. If you count the firms acquired for patents and intellectual property, the total number is a whopping 79. Taking a look at Google’s peers, it becomes clear just how astonishing these numbers are. Facebook bought just ten companies in 2011; Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft only three apiece.

Despite a slowdown, smartphone advances are still ahead [THE NEW YORK TIMES]

But big innovations in smartphones are not a thing of the past. Incremental improvements can add up over a span of years, providing the computing horsepower to enable big advances in software. Breakthroughs in smartphone materials, software and even batteries could lead to substantial changes in how smartphones look and function in the years ahead.