(Photo: flickr.com/86979666@N00)

This week Pinterest introduced a web analytics platform, while Twitter stepped up its ad insights game with more details for marketers. Really looking forward to seeing even more wedding dress ads. [Ad Week]

Twitter has also reportedly acquired the music delivery service We Are Hunted and plans to build a standalone music app. Can we get some Vine soundtracks going, here? [CNET]

To face Ellen Pao's gender discrimination claims, Kleiner Perkins has hired the same guy who represented Facebook against the Winklevoss twins. [Wall Street Journal]

Blame Google+ for the fact that you are losing your Google Reader, effective July 1. [The Next Web]

A startup called DeveloperAuction has raised $2.7 million to build a site where talent can literally auction themselves off to the highest bidder. sign up and if they're picked as one of the site's top 150 job seekers in a particular month, be deluged with interview offers from companies. That'll do wonders for the Valley's skyrocketing salaries, sure. [VentureBeat]

Chrome honcho Sundar Pichai is now going to lead Google's Android team, as well. Former Android boss Andy Rubin is going to stay at Google and do something that maybe involves moonshots. [Google]

This is what comes up when you Google image search "Butt-shaped cloud." (Photo: Drawception.com)

All innovationed-out following too many humblebraggy tweets about the tacos at SXSW? Feel like you might puke the next time you hear the word "panel?" This might've been the year of the hardware startup, but we're sure there were scores of bright-smiling marketing people in matching startup t-shirts preaching the gospel of the cloud.

Luckily, some hardworking developer named "panicsteve" has posted a delightful Chrome extension on GitHub that will forever rid you of the evilness of "the cloud." The "cloud-to-butt" extension does exactly what you think it does: every time the phrase "the cloud" appears in your browser, the extension automatically replaces it with the phrase "my butt." Genius?

Fellow engineers have already jumped into the fray with similarly amusing pull requests. One user suggests that every time "cloud storage" appears it's automatically replaced with "butt storage." Another wants to change "/.aaS/" to Ass, naturally.

Innovation, indeed.

Dream on, guys. (Screencap)

Microsoft is still plugging away, trying to convince us all to return to the bosom of Internet Explorer. Their latest volley in the company's ongoing campaign: An almost 2-minute-long video chronicling a stereotypical nerd's journey from hating on the world's least cool browser to finally accepting that it is the greatest.

If only Internet Explorer's perception problems were that simple.

The scene: A loner sits in a darkened room in front of his two monitors, surrounded by geek signifier after geek signifier: a lava lamp, a cat mug, an empty soda bottle that looks an awful lot like Mountain Dew. (A knock on programmers, perhaps?) He's leaving furious comments about IE all over the Internet, pouring forth haterade into every social media channel he can find. And every time Microsoft, cheerfully responds with some wonderful, geek friendly new feature. Finally, he sees the light and converts.

There’s just one big problem with this reading of events. It’s not just basement-dwelling losers who break out in hives at the site of Internet Explorer.

At this point, even your Grandma is probably seriously considering downloading Chrome, if she hasn't just switched wholly to an iPad. This seems less like an advertising campaign for more users and more like a corporate wish fullfillment exercise for Microsoft execs. Maybe that's why comments have been disabled.

http://youtu.be/lD9FAOPBiDk

(Photo: 4 the Media)

Ain't nobody can hold Kim Dotcom down. [Wired]

Celebs are flocking to a new Twitter-like site called "Pheed" which allows them to charge monthly subscriptions or pay-per-view for content. [Forbes]

Google announced a $249 lightweight, durable Chromebook that it's hoping can begin to corner the market on inexpensive laptops. [Google]

Airtime is flailing and its user stats are pretty depressing: "AppData, a service that collects data about sites and services that connect with Facebook, indicated that Airtime had just 400 users a day and 10,000 over the course of a month, but Mr. Parker and other executives at the company suggested those figures were off. Nielsen and comScore, two independent analytics firms, both said that traffic to Airtime was so small that it did not yet register on their charts." [New York Times]

Apple's logo is apparently considered blasphemous in Russia. [CNET]

(Screengrab)

Google Chrome users who think they're downloading a browser version of the Angry Birds-related Bad Piggies game could be in for a nasty surprise--just ask the 80,000 or more users who recently installed malicious Bad Piggies fakes directly from Google's Chrome Web Store.

Geek.com refers readers to the Barracuda Labs Internet Security Blog, which details conclusions researchers made once they started pulling apart the real payload accompanying the scammy games:

Users who give up such extensive permission run the risk of getting their browsers hijacked. The plugin authors can acquire all the web data when users browse the Internet with Chrome and then misuse users information, such as stealing and selling user email addresses and online credit card information.

Betabeat made a cursory search of Chrome's Web Store and there are still multiple fake games using Bad Piggies and Angry Birds images as well as text to lure users into installing them.

Geek.com notes that just as with malicious spam over social media, common sense can go a long way toward not falling for this kind of scam. Users should be alert for obvious trademark violations, such as a game with an Angry Birds or Bad Piggies-related icon but no other evidence it is made by Angry Birds creator Rovio.

Barracuda Labs also notes that Chrome users should be wary of any plugin's request for permissions. Global requests for access to user data on all websites, for instance, is sometimes a big red flag.

Another solution is to read reviews of the games. Most consist of one capslocked word: "FAKE!"

Leaky. (Screengrab)

If you own one of the world's billion or so Windows computers, we are sorry to inform you it probably contains a Java vulnerability that could allow a malicious attacker to sidestep Java security and exploit your browser.

According to Softpedia, most browsers are vulnerable:

The researchers have confirmed that Java SE 5 – Update 22, Java SE 6 – Update 35, and Java SE 7 Update 7 running on fully patched Windows 7 32-bit operating systems are susceptible to the attack.

The affected web browsers are Safari 5.1.7, Opera 12.02, Chrome 21.0.1180.89, Firefox 15.0.1, and Internet Explorer 9.0.8112.16421.

Researchers at Security Explorations, who have made it their business to pick out all the vulnerabilities in Java, have given Oracle a full breakdown of the problem complete with source code and proof-of-concept demonstrations of how the exploit might work.

Oracle doesn't issue critical patch updates for Java until the middle of October. Whether much of the planet's population waiting for this hole to be fixed will goose them into moving faster to fix the problem remains to be seen.