How Syria’s internet blackout could be blamed on their government

Google has added monthly Top Charts to its trends product to offer a visual representation of the things people are most interested in. Topics include actors, animals, Books, Cars, and TV shows among many others, with each including the ten most popular items within the category. [Source: Google]

OpenStack cloud company Cloudscaling has raised a $10 million Series B round from new investors Juniper Networks’ Junos Innovation Fund and Seagate, as well as early investor Trinity Ventures. The company’s customers, including Korea Telecom, turn to Cloudscaling to obtain an an on-premise private or public cloud comparable to Amazon Web Services. [Source: GigaOM]

Banking app Numbrs has raised 7.5 million Swiss francs ($7.7 million) from its parent company Centralway. The app is planning to launch in Germany, the UK and Switzerland. [Source: TechCrunch]

Blue Coat Systems, a company which sells network gear for security and WAN optimization, has acquired Solera Networks. Solera had raised $50 million in from Allegis Capital, Intel Capital, Signal Peak Ventures and Trident Capital. [Source: GigaOm]

Wanderful Media, which bills itself as an online local discovery shopping company, raised $9 million in additional funding to a round totaling $36 million from its existing investors. This addition brings the company’s total funding to $36 million. The company’s existing investors include Advance Digital, A. H. Belo Corporation, Community Newspaper Holdings Inc., Cox Media Group, The E. W. Scripps Company, Gannett Co. Inc., GateHouse Media Inc., Hearst Corporation, Lee Enterprises, MediaNews Group, The McClatchy Company, and The Washington Post Co. [Source: Wanderful Media]

London-based Urturn, an “app for self expression,” has launched today with a $13.4 million investment from Balderton Capital. Urturn was originally called Webdoc. [Source: Guardian]

Zalora, a flash sales site in SouthEast Asia backed by Rocket Internet, has raised $100 million in new funding from Summit Partners, Investment AB Kinnevik, Verlinvest and the Tengelmann Group. The company recently raised $26 million from Tengelmann, a German retail company. [Source: VentureBurn]

During Tim Cook’s senate testimony yesterday, the CEO talked about Apple’s proposed Mac-in-USA computer line. According to Cook the products will be assembled in Texas and the company has already invested $100 million in the product line. [Source: AllThingsD]

After Sprint decided to revise its bid to acquire a 50% stake in Clearwire yesterday at the eleventh hour, Clearwire decided to recess until May 30 to mull it over. Now it’s being reported that Clearwire’s board of directors has approved it, and recommends that the stockholders follow suit. [Source: GlobalNewswire]

Seattle-based startup Nine by Blue, founded by well-known entrepreneur Vanessa Fox, has sold to Virginia-based search marketing firm RKG. All six Nine by Blue employees will join RKG, and Fox will serve as chief product office. [Source: GeekWire]

Content delivery startup EdgeCast launched a new program today called EdgeCast Transact. Transact claims to be a CDN with features tailored for e-commerce companies. [Source: TechCrunch]

In what one former employee is calling an “utter freefall”, HTC executives continue to publicly quit the company. After many examples of internal and external problems, including the failure of the HTC First handset, many see a pessimistic outlook for the company. [Source: CNET]

Earlier today, Crain’s cited a PrivCo report stating that Union Square Ventures got a 5000% return on its Tumblr investment. It also said that employees #31 through #178 received $371,000 apiece. But in a comment on a Hacker News post, Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson calls the numbers “total garbage.” [Source: Hacker News via ShortFormBlog]

Earlier today, there were reports that Ferrero, the makers of the delicious chocolate hazelnut spread Nutella, sent a cease-and-desist order to one of its biggest fans because she had the audacity to throw a World Nutella Day event. The company, realizing it’s usually not a good idea to sue your biggest fans, has now worked out an arrangement where World Nutella Day can exist without threat of litigation. [Source: Techdirt]

A YouTube user named Nick Keck uploaded a video of himself locating supposedly “deleted” Snapchat photos sent to him. Did he need sophisticated software or hacking skills? Nope, just an app called iFile and a smartphone. [Source: Nick Keck via Motherboard]

Developer and Scrollkit founder Cody Brown created a “replica” of Snow Fall along with a video to show other news organizations how making something like it perhaps isn’t as difficult as it looks. The New York Times wasn’t pleased, sending a cease-and-desist letter followed by (and this is the ridiculous part) a second letter asking that Brown remove the following phrase from his website: “The NYT spent hundreads of hours hand-coding ‘Snow Fall.; We made a replica in an hour.” [Source: Cody Brown]

Shashi Seth, a former top product executive at Yahoo, has joined the Tribune Company as president of digital ventures. He will be based in Silicon Valley and report to CEO Peter Liguori. [Source: AllThingsD]

New York City officials originally asked Nigel Warren to pay $7,000 for violating a law that makes it illegal for New York residents to rent out their properties for less than 29 days. A judge dismissed building and zoning code violations, and so lowered the fine to $2,400. [Source: CNET]