Thomas Erdbrink / Washington Post:
Iran increasingly controls its Internet — TEHRAN — Whenever Maysam, a prominent Iranian blogger, connects to the Internet from his office in the bazaar, he switches on a special connection that for years would bypass the Islamic republic’s increasingly effective firewall.

Florian Mueller / FOSS Patents:
Apple sues Samsung in Mannheim over patent based on which Munich court denied preliminary injunction last week — Apple does not let anyone off the hook too easily when it comes to patent litigation. Samsung, which has so far also shown quite some perseverance, knows exactly what I mean.

Miguel Helft / Fortune:
Ron Conway is a Silicon Valley startup’s best friend — The prolific angel investor has rarely met an Internet startup he didn’t like. When it comes to picking the next big thing, there’s a right way and a wrong way. And then there’s the Conway. — Ron Conway, with Coco, his rescue dog, photographed at their San Francisco home

Mike Ramsey / Wall Street Journal:
Cars That Tweet, Buy Tickets — As Distracted-Driving Push Fades, Auto Makers Will Let Drivers Check Facebook, Buy Movie Tickets — Undaunted by fear of safety regulations, auto makers are piling new technologies into their vehicles: everything from 17-inch dashboard screens to services that check Facebook and buy movie tickets.

Florian Mueller / FOSS Patents:
Winning streak ends: Motorola Mobility fails to win 3G/UMTS-based injunction against Apple in Germany — Apple’s Mannheim jinx has been broken: this morning, Judge Andreas Voss of the Mannheim Regional Court announced that a Motorola Mobility lawsuit over a patent declared essential …

Sascha Segan / PC Magazine:
Moto Exec on Android Upgrade Delays: It’s The Hardware — Don’t blame manufacturers’ software customizations for holding up mobile phone upgrades to the new version of Google’s mobile operating system, Android 4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich” (ICS), a top executive at Motorola said Wednesday.

Matt Rosoff / Business Insider:
Google’s Foray Into Hardware Will Be A Total Disaster — Here’s Why — It’s finally clear: Google is getting into the hardware business. — Last week, word came out that it was testing some sort of mysterious entertainment device in employees’ homes. — Today the Wall Street Journal reported …

Bryan Bishop / The Verge:
Kickstarter crosses threshold as two projects hit $1 million in donations — The crowdsourced funding site Kickstarter has been doing remarkably well recently, giving thousands of entrepreneurs the opportunity to bring their projects to life. It also just hit a major milestone …

Twitter Blog:
Twitter SMS: Now available for satellite providers — Twitter began as an SMS service. Today, we continue to build out SMS capability because we recognize the importance and value of making our service available to every person on the planet. No matter what device people use …

Matt Lynley / Business Insider:
LinkedIn Just Hit 150 Million Registered Users — LinkedIn now has more than 150 million registered users, the company announced today. — Around 6.1 million LinkedIn members live in New York — more than any other state — and more than 5 million of them are based in the city, according to the company.