Week in review: Digg founder admits mistakes

Here’s our roundup of the week’s tech business news. First, the most popular stories VentureBeat published in the last seven days:

Digg founder: We let Digg stagnate — Digg, the pioneering social-news site that lets users vote on top headlines, began to lose momentum during the recession because it pulled engineers from designing new features to improving revenue, founder Kevin Rose said Wednesday.

New iPad designs surface in patent filings — Apple tipped its hand on future iPad designs by filing for patents in China.

Is it too late for a Digg comeback? — Digg is trying to work its way out of the traffic hole it created with its botched redesign attempt. This week it announced the return of several popular features from its previous version.

Google’s Mayer criticizes content “locked” inside Facebook — Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of search and user experience, talked about how she sees Facebook and about whether or not it’s a competitor.

RIM announces 7-inch BlackBerry PlayBook tablet — Research in Motion founder and co-CEO Mike Lazaridis hit the stage at RIM’s BlackBerry Developers Conference in San Francisco on Monday, where he unveiled the company’s long-awaited tablet — the BlackBerry Playbook.

And here are five more posts we think are important, thought-provoking, or fun:

Internet phone company Jajah aims to revamp the crooked calling card industry — Jajah, the internet phone company that was snapped up by Spanish telecom giant Telefonica for $207 million, is declaring war on calling cards.

Venture capitalist Khosla sour on electric cars — Vinod Khosla, dynamic founder of Khosla Ventures, said, “You can reduce more carbon by painting your roof white than you can by buying a Prius.”

Are Carol Bartz and Elon Musk !@#$ing menaces to shareholders? — How can you tell when a CEO is lying? It turns out that it’s slightly more complicated than monitoring the movement of their lips.

Confirmed: AOL acquires TechCrunch, founder Arrington to stay at least 3 years — AOL chief executive Tim Armstrong announced that he has acquired popular tech blog TechCrunch.

Google CEO: the Internet of things will augment your brain — For Google CEO Eric Schmidt, the next step in technology is the same that it has always been — augmenting humanity to handle information that a human brain couldn’t otherwise keep up with, and just make things work.