(via Foursquare)

Last week, Om Malik broke the news that Pivotal Labs, which is based in San Francisco but has an outpost in Union Square, was in talks to be acquired by a major technology company. At the time, a source told Betabeat that Pivotal had been contemplating a sale for years. “The thinking behind this move, is to scale pivotal to Sapient levels of huge,” another source familiar with Pivotal told Betabeat.

Well, late Friday, GigaOm got the exclusive: EMC Corporation, a publicly-traded Fortune 500 company that helps IT departments "accelerate the journey to cloud computing," bought Pivotal Labs, the agile development pioneer known for its work with Twitter. (Startups bring in their tech team, who get paired with staffers called "Pivots," who teach them agile development while working together on their product.)

EMC, based in the Hopkinton, Massachusetts, manufactures and sells cloud and storage hardware. "It is not clear to me why EMC acquired Pivotal, though a reasonable guess would be to take agile development and Pivotal methodology into the enterprise," wrote Mr. Malik.

What does this mean for Pivotal NYC, we asked one local techie? "Hire Pivots!" the source wrote back. (Jack Dorsey's Square, which is 10 minutes away from Pivotal SF by foot, has been known to poach Pivots.

After the news broke, Pivotal CEO Rob Mee wrote on the company's blog:

"Looks like the word is out. We'll have more news on Tuesday but we want you to know we're excited about the future. Same services, same Pivotal Tracker, same industry leading development practices - now paired with more resources than ever."

We'll update you on how the acquisition will affect life at 841 Broadway on Tuesday.

It's like Groundhog Day round here

You got to hand it to these real estate reporters. For the last two decades they've been discovering a budding tech scene in the real estate around Union Square. Call it Silicon Alley if you like, but this start-up hamlet never seems to get old.

"The emergence of Union Square as a destination for technology firms got its start several years ago. But the neighborhood's tech community received a boost this year with the arrival of household names such as computer giant Apple Inc. and the impending arrival of user-review site Yelp," reports the Wall Street Journal.

Are you kidding me? Apple and Yelp are about the least important pieces of the tech scene around Union Square that you could think of, despite being national names. Hysterically, the map of the tech scene which accompanies the story, entitled "Silicon Square," can't seem to find a single tech spaces integral to the area, like Dogpatch, Pivotal or General Assembly.

The story does manage to mention these places in the text, but its lack of historical awareness is jarring, especially for a beat as tectonic as real estate. "Many in the tech community say the arrival of venture capital firm Union Square Ventures in 2003 deserves credit for jump-starting the neighborhood's momentum."

Right, except Flatiron Partners, Mr. Wilson's first venture fund and the one that really kicked off New York as a center for investing in web start-ups, was in practically the same location as Union Square Ventures, just seven years earlier.

Memo to real estate reporters at the big dead tree publications. This is not a new or interesting story, don't assign it unless you're truly desperate, or Facebook opens an office inside Shake Shack.

Citibank is taking the free lollipops to the next level.

Citibank opened The Bank of the Future in Union Square today, a flagship branch featuring technology from Singapore and Hong Kong that makes simple financial transactinos look  like something out of Minority Report.

Customers can browse banking products at one of six touchscreen "sales walls" or watch TV on one of the "media walls," Mashable reports.

And whenever a certain amount of people check in to the branch on Foursquare, a video panel shows which users are inside the branch.

"We want this branch to be more than just a bank," Brad Dinsmore, Citigroup's head of retail banking in North America, said in a speech at the opening ceremony. "We want this branch to be a place where customers view it as a hub, a center of the community, if you will. A place where they feel warm and welcome, that they can come in and experience our free Wi-Fi access."

Sounds cozy—we're adding Citibank to the list of places to get free Wi-Fi.

ajeffries [at] observer.com | @adrjeffries