Techmeme: FreedomPop, textPlus team up to offer freemium voice, SMS service (Kevin Fitchard/GigaOM)

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January 8, 2013, 12:35 PM

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Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

U.S. Senator Charles Schumer, Google CIO To Unveil Free WiFi In NYC's Chelsea Neighborhood — Google has slowly been building up its service provider cred, with an ambitious fiber project in Kansas City and free WiFi initiatives through a partnership with Boingo.

More: CNET, Business Insider, Data Center Knowledge, Reuters, BGR, AllThingsD, ZDNet, Hillicon Valley, The Verge, Betabeat, Bloomberg, Mashable!, Betabeat, Softpedia News and WebProNews

Janko Roettgers / GigaOM:

Exclusive: A first look at Netflix's test of personalized profiles — Netflix recently started to test personalized profiles with a limited subset of its subscribers, allowing them to create a separate profile for each member of their family. The company has talked about eventually doing …

More: PC World and VentureBeat

Matt Brian / The Next Web:

AT&T sold a record 10m smartphones in Q4 2012, helped by best-ever sales of Android and Apple devices — US operator AT&T announced today a new for sales of smartphones by the company, after it saw sales top the 10 million unit market for the first time in its history in the fourth quarter of 2012 …

More: Business Wire, Reuters, VentureBeat, BGR, ReadWrite, CNET, Business Insider, 9to5Google, MacRumors, The Verge, ZDNet, Examiner, iPhone Hacks, Bloomberg, Mashable!, everythingiCafe, Electronista and PhoneArena

Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:

“The telephone network is obsolete”: Get ready for the all-IP telco — Two months ago, AT&T petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to plan for the retirement of traditional phone networks and transition to what AT&T sees as an inevitability: the all-IP telco.

More: PhoneArena and PC Magazine. Tweets: @aconconi

Jason Clampet / Skift:

Airbnb's growing pains mirrored in New York City, where half its listings are illegal rentals — Apartment rental site Airbnb's revolutionary simplicity has made it easy for tens of thousands of people to both list and discover lodging options in private residences and book them easily, quickly, and safely.

More: SocialTimes and GOOD.is

NPD DisplaySearch:

Tablet PC Market Forecast to Surpass Notebooks in 2013, NPD DisplaySearch Reports — Tablet PC shipments are expected to reach more than 240 million units worldwide in 2013, easily exceeding the 207 million notebook PCs that are projected to ship, according to NPD DisplaySearch Quarterly Mobile PC Shipment and Forecast Report.

More: PandoDaily, Internet2Go, CNET, ZDNet, The Register, Mashable!, Quartz and The Next Web

Om Malik / GigaOM:

The new guard: Look at who is buying technology companies now — A few days ago, I pointed out the inevitability of the Internet and how it was going to play an increasing role in the companies that have traditionally not been classified as technology companies.

More: Business Insider. Tweets: @joshuamcclure and @hunterwalk

Joanna Stern / ABCNEWS:

Sony Goes Big Into 4K: OLED Ultra HD, 4K Video Service and Consumer Camcorder — Image: Sony. — LAS VEGAS — You're not surprised, are you? Sony took the stage this evening at its press conference at CES 2013 to unveil a whole array of electronics, including, yes, a 4K TV.

More: VentureBeat, Inquirer, Digits, Gizmodo, Electronista, Mashable!, Engadget, Engadget and PhoneArena

Michael McWhertor / Polygon:

Valve and Xi3's ‘Steam Box’ codenamed Piston, early specs detailed at CES — The “Steam Box” modular computer announced by hardware maker Xi3 and Valve at CES is codenamed “Piston” and is modeled after the PC maker's X7A line of pint-sized computers, Xi3 reps tell Polygon.

Matt Brian / The Next Web:

Apple CEO Tim Cook meets high-level officials, US ambassador on visit to China — While Google chairman Eric Schmidt is enjoying a much-criticised visit to North Korea, Apple is coordinating an Asia visit of its own, after its CEO Tim Cook met with China's Minister of Industry and Information Technology …

More: Bloomberg, GigaOM, CNET, Computerworld, AllThingsD, Macgasm, Engadget, MacRumors, China Real Time Report, AppleInsider, 9to5Mac, The Verge, iPhone Hacks, MacNN, iDownloadBlog.com, MacDailyNews, Tech in Asia, App Advice and iClarified. Tweets: @jimsciuttochina

David Zax / Fast Company:

This 15-Year-Old Built An App To Help His High School Debate Team. It Could Do Much More Than That — Tanay Tandon, high school sophomore, put out a Flipboard-like app last week called Clipped. What's it like to be a teen prodigy hacker juggling the demands of high school?

More: Business Insider and Betabeat

Kevin Fitchard / GigaOM:

FreedomPop, textPlus team up to offer freemium voice, SMS service — FreedomPop is delivering on its promise to become a voice as well as mobile data provider. At CES 2013, it revealed it's partnering with IP voice and messaging startup textPlus, bundling the latter's freemium text and calling app with its freemium broadband service.

More: Engadget and ReadWrite

John Shiffman / Reuters:

Chinese man pleads guilty in $100 million stolen software sting — (Reuters) - In a case U.S. officials say is the first of its kind, a Chinese businessman pleaded guilty Monday to selling stolen American software used in defense, space technology and engineering - programs prosecutors …

More: Gizmodo, Hillicon Valley, Bloomberg, The Register, The Verge and Inquirer

Chris Welch / The Verge:

Target will now price-match Amazon, other retailers year-round — Matching Amazon's pricing during the holidays is one thing, but Target today announced it plans to continue the practice on a year-round basis. The extended policy will apply to competitors other than the internet retailer …

More: Business Insider, Gizmodo, Reuters, WebProNews, bizjournals and bigstory.ap.org

Reuters:

Galaxy phones power Samsung to record $8.3 billion profit — (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics, the world leader in mobiles and memory chips, said it likely earned a quarterly profit of $8.3 billion, as it sold close to 500 handsets a minute and as demand picked up for the flat screens it makes …

More: Examiner, TechEye, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Bloomberg, DailyTech, Pocketnow, GeekWire, The Verge and Reuters

Michael Stroh / The Windows Blog:

Verizon, Sprint to offer new Windows Phone 8 models — There were two big Windows Phone-related announcements today at the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas. — First, Samsung said that the ATIV Odyssey will go on sale at Verizon Wireless in the “coming weeks.”

Michael Carney / PandoDaily:

Game discovery platform Chartboost is on fire, scores Sequoia in $19 million Series B — There are two principal challenges facing mobile game developers today. The first is app discovery. Amid an increasing sea of choices, it's never been more difficult to gain user mind share and crucial mobile device home screen real estate.

More: The Next Web, AllThingsD, TechCrunch, VentureBeat and Inside Mobile Apps

Ellis Hamburger / The Verge:

Consumers pay the hidden costs for the ‘free’ app ecosystem — Can mobile developers find a way to make paid apps work at scale? — Time is money, and apps don't last forever. You're never going to get back the hours you spent Oinking that hip record shop in Williamsburg or Stamping the bars with the best absinthe martinis.

Tweets: @viticci, @jerols, @darickdang, @benpopper and @davidcrow. Thanks:@max8378

B.L. Ochman / AdAge:

There Are 181,000 Social Media ‘Gurus,’ ‘Ninjas,’ ‘Masters,’ and ‘Mavens’ on Twitter — A Growth Industry: That's Up From Just 16,000 In 2009 — As a public service, I like to periodically check in on the number of self-proclaimed social media “gurus,” “ninjas,” “masters” and “mavens” on Twitter.

More: Mashable!, AllTwitter, Marketing Pilgrim and The Verge

Don Clark / Digits:

Microsoft's Ballmer Makes Cameo at Qualcomm Opening Keynote — A symbolic changing of the guard at the Consumer Electronics Show featured a surprise appearance by the old guard-Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, who helped Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs kick off his first-ever opening keynote at the show.

More: GeekWire, BetaNews, The Seattle Times, Mashable! and Tech Trader Daily

Tweets: @dsilverman, @donal888 and @robpegoraro

Matt Buchanan / BuzzFeed:

Why We're Not At The Biggest Tech Show In The World — Because it's not the most important event in technology anymore. The two trends that killed CES. For a long time, the Consumer Electronics Show, which began in 1967, was the Super Bowl of new technology.

More: The Verge, TechCrunch, AllThingsD, Guardian and NYT Bits

Mat Honan / Wired:

CES Is the World's Greatest Hardware Show Stuck in a Software Era

More: digitaltrends.com and Quartz

Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:

Cisco introduces ‘videoscape unity’ to manage the future of video everywhere — Cisco is the world's networking giant, and today it showed what it is doing to make sure that it can provide the plumbing for the explosion of video on live TV, paid services, and the wide-open Internet.

More: SiliconANGLE, NYT Bits, Inquirer, DailyTech, Reuters, Washington Post, memeburn and Light Reading

Robin Wauters / The Next Web:

Mo' money, fewer funds: 182 U.S. VC firms raised $20.6 billion in 2012, most since 2008 — According to a new report from Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), U.S. venture capital firms raised $20.6 billion from 182 funds during full year 2012.

More: PE Hub Blog, A VC and PE Hub Blog

Dan Rayburn / StreamingMediaBlog.com:

Netflix Announces Major ISPs Deploying Their CDN Caches; New 3D Streaming — Last June, Netflix announced plans to build out their own content delivery network by giving ISPs free caches to place inside their networks. Called Open Connect, Netflix's new platform allows network operators …

More: GigaOM, TechCrunch and Cable Television News. Thanks:@danrayburn

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

Firefox 18 gets up to 25% faster JavaScript with IonMonkey, built-in PDF viewer, and Retina support — Mozilla on Tuesday officially launched Firefox 18 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. The improvements include a new JavaScript compiler, a built-in PDF viewer, as well as Retina support (on Macs) and touch events (for mobile).

More: TechCrunch, The Mozilla Blog, The Next Web, Softpedia News, Techie Buzz, gHacks Technology News and BetaNews

Andrew Webster / The Verge:

Amazon Prime comes to Canada with free two-day shipping, but no Instant Video — Amazon Prime is finally available in Canada. For $79 a year, plus taxes, Canadians will receive free two-day shipping on eligible items destined for “most cities” in the country, with no minimum purchase.

More: Times Colonist, CNET, Amazon.com, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, The Next Web, Engadget, WebProNews and Mashable!

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

GM Announces New App Framework, SDK, And Store For In-Vehicle Apps — Ford today introduced its new AppLink API that allows mobile apps to talk to its cars. Not to be outdone, General Motors just introduced its own API and SDK for its new in-vehicle app platform. the big difference …

More: Telematics News, Engadget, Inquirer, media.ford.com and The Verge

Thomas Gryta / Digits:

Verizon Says Buying Out Wireless Venture ‘Feasible’ — Verizon Communications Inc. Chief Executive Lowell McAdam believes the company could pull off the acquisition of its wireless joint venture with Vodafone Group PLC. — In an interview Monday ahead of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas …

More: digitaltrends.com, StreetInsider.com, Bloomberg, Reuters, Guardian, Wall St. Cheat Sheet and FierceWireless

Alex Williams / TechCrunch:

GitHub Introduces Contributions, A New Way To Display On Profile Pages What Developers Are Doing — GitHub continues to build out its unique social network with Contributions, a new addition to profile pages that displays the projects developers created and what they are contributing to …

More: The GitHub Blog. Tweets: @cdixon

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