Today in Tech: iPhone 5’s screen, Groupon in China

A curated selection of the weekend’s most newsworthy tech stories from all over the Web. Sign up to get the newsletter delivered to your inbox every morning.

Director David Fincher’s much-talked about Facebook biopic, The Social Network, failed to win Best Picture or Best Director at this year’s Academy Awards, but it did walk away with three statues for Best Film Editing, Best Original Score, and Best Adapted Screenplay. (Also, let’s not forget it recently picked up the Golden Globe for Best Picture, too.)

Elsewhere in Facebook-land, the social champ made a subtle, but notable tweak to its Recommendation system. When users “Like” or “Recommend” something on a third-party web site or in a Facebook app, Facebook publishes a more fleshed News Feed update like this: 

After hitting several patches, including a quickly aborted launch earlier this month, Groupon officially opened its virtual doors in China under the domain Gaopeng.com. Despite 1,000 or so local employees and some $950 million of funding to play around with, the joint venture with Chinese Internet portal Tencent faces stiff competition from 1,700 other “tuangou” (read: group buying) sites already in the market, including Lashou.com and Meituan.com, reportedly backed by Sequoia Capital. (Gaopeng.com and Coins2Day)

In other Groupon news, the leading daily deals site reportedly raked in a whopping $760 million revenues last year compared with just $33 million the year before. (Wall Street Journal)

Nobutoshi Kihara, known as “the wizard of Sony,” passed away recently at age 84. Kihara’s numerous innovations, like the transistor radio and television, the Betamax, eight-millimeter movie, and the digital still camera known as the Mavica, paved the way for 700-plus patents and Sony’s reputation during the late 20th century as an innovator in the consumer tech space. (New York Times)

All those rumors about JP Morgan trying to buy 10% of Twitter for $450 million are just plain wrong, likely because the firm already nearly owns that much of the social network, though not directly. According to TechCrunch, JP Morgan committed a significant chunk of money to a new $1 billion-plus fund started up by angel investor Chris Sacca, which recently snagged about $400 million in Twitter stock from current shareholders at prices of between $16 and $21 per share. So not only does JP Morgan already have vested interest in Twitter, but Twitter itself is now worth as much as $4.5 billion based on these latest numbers. (TechCrunch)

Motorola is suing TiVo, claiming the popular TV digital recording company infringed upon many DVR-related patents filed by Moto two years before TiVo was founded. (Wall Street Journal)

Book publisher HarperCollins is tinkering with its ebooks loaner policy: once a book has been borrowed some 26 times via online library distributor OverDrive, it can no longer be shared or alternatively, libraries will need to return the ebook or buy it again. (ReadWriteWeb via New York Times)

Apple rumor of the day… Thanks to our friends over at 9 to 5 Mac, we may — emphasis on may, here, folks — have our first look at the iPhone 5’s screen, a 4-inch display, likely “Retina,” aimed at competing with the the latest Android devices. Here’s the alleged screen panel, along with a mockup of what the iPhone 5 could look like based on the latest reports from other outlets. (9 to 5 Mac)

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