Techmeme: Kinect tech demo turns your entire living room into a video game (Michael McWhertor/Polygon)

January 9, 2013, 7:35 PM

Top News

Dieter Bohn / The Verge:

Pebble smartwatch finally shipping January 23rd, we talk to CEO about its future — From Kickstarter to the biggest tech show on earth, and soon on your wrist — The Pebble smartwatch is best-known for being a smash hit on Kickstarter. It broke records and leapt to a total of 85,000 orders by the time the campaign ended.

More: Engadget, Digital Media Wire, LAPTOP Magazine, PC World, ReadWrite, VentureBeat, The Next Web, TechCrunch, IntoMobile, Engadget, everythingiCafe, Business Insider, NYT Bits, Gotta Be Mobile, ABCNEWS, Digits, AllThingsD and Electronista. Tweets: @splatf

Dieter Bohn / The Verge:

The Pebble smartwatch keeps it simple (hands-on) — Light on features, but heavy on design — Now that Pebble has announced it's shipping to Kickstarter backers on January 23rd, the company is finally ready to show off the final hardware and software on its smartwatch.

More: Guardian, ZDNet, Forbes, Daring Fireball, iPhone in Canada Blog, iPhone Hacks, BostInno and iDownloadBlog.com

Phil Goldstein / FierceWireless:

RIM to hit multiple price points with range of BlackBerry 10 devices — LAS VEGAS—While all eyes are on the first two BlackBerry 10 devices Research In Motion (NASDAQ:RIMM) will introduce later this month, RIM plans to eventually hit a range of price points at the high …

More: SiliconBeat, Engadget, AllThingsD, VentureBeat, SlashGear, MobileSyrup.com, The Verge, Pocketables, Neowin, Gotta Be Mobile, Mobile Magazine, BerryReview, Pocketnow and IntoMobile

Sinead Carew / Reuters:

T-Mobile USA to soon sell iPhones, cut subsidies: CEO — (Reuters) - Deutsche Telekom AG (DTEGn.DE) unit T-Mobile USA will start selling the Apple Inc (AAPL.O) iPhone in about three to four months and will enforce its plan to get rid of cellphone subsidies in a similar timeframe, according to Chief Executive John Legere.

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Reddit Raising $1 Million At a $400 Million Valuation — If you have a year like the one Reddit had last year — the kind of year where the President of the United States stops to by to court your audience - it makes perfect sense to follow that up by raising money.

More: Betabeat, VentureBeat and Gawker

Tweets: @mathewi and @eldon

Sean Ludwig / VentureBeat:

Redbox Instant by Verizon launching out of beta in March — Streaming movie service Redbox Instant by Verizon will fully launch to the public before the end of the first quarter, the venture's CEO said today at a CES 2013 breakfast. — As we've mentioned before, Redbox Instant by Verizon …

More: BGR, Engadget, GeekWire, GigaOM, Android and Me, The Verge, PadGadget and WebProNews. See also Mediagazer

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:

Apple slashes price on Thunderbolt cable, releases additional shorter model — Apple has reduced the price of its 2.0 m Thunderbolt cable from $49 to $39. The Thunderbolt cable, which can be used for data transfers and for display attachment purposes, was originally released in mid-2011.

More: The Verge, MacRumors, TUAW, Macgasm and iDownloadBlog.com

Juli Clover / MacRumors:

Apple Now Locking Screenshots for Submitted Apps, Shutting Down Popular Scam Tactic — Apple today announced on its Developer Portal that screenshots added to app descriptions will be locked in place once an app has been approved. … This small but important update shuts down a widely used scam tactic …

More: ReadWrite, TUAW, Daring Fireball, PhoneArena, iDownloadBlog.com, Touch Arcade and iPhone Hacks

Jeff Blagdon / The Verge:

Samsung announces 8-core Exynos 5 Octa mobile processor — For 2013, Samsung is announcing a new 8-core processor that it says provides twice the 3D performance of any previous mobile processor, including the company's Exynos 4 Quad. It's called the Exynos 5 Octa, and it uses ARM's new Big Little processor technology.

More: Engadget, Ars Technica, Reuters, Bloomberg, ZDNet, AnandTech, Gizmodo, GigaOM, LAPTOP Magazine, 9to5Google, BGR India, ces.cnet.com, VentureBeat, Liliputing, BGR, iPhone Hacks, Techie Buzz, iDownloadBlog.com and Mashable!

Tom Warren / The Verge:

Surface Pro: an in-depth look at Microsoft's super tablet — Microsoft might not be at CES this year, but that hasn't stopped the company's CEO jumping on stage to pass the annual keynote responsibility over to Qualcomm. While its OEMs are out in force with crazy Windows 8 designs and unreleased hardware …

More: parislemon

Jeff Blagdon / The Verge:

Samsung flexible OLED phone prototype (hands-on) — Samsung gave us a brief glimpse during it keynote today of its first phone using a flexible display, and now we've just had the opportunity to handle the device for ourselves. The phone, which is a nameless prototype …

More: CNET, AppleInsider, Digits, Android and Me, The Verge, FierceWireless and BGR

Lucas Mearian / Computerworld:

Dropbox to be included on all Samsung flagship phones and camera — Users get 50GB of cloud capacity for two years for free — LAS VEGAS — Dropbox on Wednesday announced tighter integration of its cloud storage and file-sharing service with Samsung products, from smartphones to televisions.

More: Daring Fireball, 9to5Google, PetaPixel, Ubergizmo, TechRadar.com, The Droid Guy, InfoWorld and GeekSugar

New York Times:

Onlike Banking Attacks Were Work of Iran, U.S. Officials Say — SAN FRANCISCO — The attackers hit one American bank after the next. As in so many previous attacks, dozens of online banking sites slowed, hiccupped or ground to a halt before recovering several minutes later.

More: AllThingsD, Computerworld, The Register, SecurityWeek, Betabeat, VentureBeat, Internet Evolution, Mashable!, ZDNet, Errata Security, 24/7 Wall St., DailyTech, SiliconANGLE and Gizmodo

Poornima Gupta / Reuters:

Samsung's big push for 2013: content, corporates — (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics, the global leader in consumer smartphones, is planning two major thrusts in 2013: bulking up mobile content and moving faster into the corporate market dominated by Research in Motion.

Brooke Crothers / CNET:

Intel responds to cooked power efficiency claims — The company's claims about power efficiency for its new Ivy Bridge chips involved some fancy marketing footwork. — LAS VEGAS—Intel came clean today about the power efficiency for the new Ivy Bridge chips announced at CES on Monday.

More: dailywireless.org and Ars Technica

Michael McWhertor / Polygon:

Kinect tech demo turns your entire living room into a video game — Microsoft may not have an official presence at CES 2013, but the company just showed some new Kinect-powered technology that expands video game graphics beyond the boundaries of the television.

More: TechNet Blogs, The Next Web, Gizmodo, Engadget, BetaNews, Engadget, ComputerAndVideoGames.com, Pocket-lint, Kotaku, VG247 and Neowin

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

Mayer's 10X Challenge: Yahoo's Homepage, Mail and Search Traffic Show Significant Year-Over-Year Declines — This week in Las Vegas, the new management team running Yahoo — including CEO Marissa Mayer — are at International CES to schmooze with big advertisers and convince them that Yahoo …

Tom Warren / The Verge:

Google Maps web version returns for Windows Phone users — Google has re-enabled the web version of its popular Maps service for Windows Phone users. The move comes after Google put a redirect in place to push Windows Phone users over to its search engine instead of a web version of Google Maps recently.

More: Engadget, CNET, WinBeta, LiveSide.net, PhoneRPT.com, PhoneArena, Gizmodo and WMPoweruser

Brian Barrett / Gizmodo:

Bloomberg: That Cheaper iPhone Would Cost $100-$150 — Piling on the Wall Street Journal's cheap iPhone rumor resurrection, Bloomberg is reporting that the budget-friendly device Apple is working on will cost in the $100-$150 range. It would debut, at the very earliest, at the end of this year.

More: Examiner, BGR, Inside Mobile Apps, CNET, Washington Post, digitaltrends.com, Tech Trader Daily, iPhone in Canada Blog, iDownloadBlog.com, Business Insider, BGR and Macgasm

Sean Buckley / Engadget:

FCC working to expand WiFi spectrum, wants to avoid wireless ‘traffic jam’ — Ever suffer through the painfully slow bottleneck of public WiFi? Sure you have — Airports, coffee shops, even your neighbors unprotected home network are limited by the current WiFi spectrum.

More: TechCrunch, The Register, GigaOM, The Verge, Ars Technica and CNET

Associated Press:

Google's Eric Schmidt calls for open Internet in North Korea — A private delegation including Google's Eric Schmidt is urging North Korea to allow more open Internet access and cellphones to benefit its citizens, the mission's leader said Wednesday in the country with some of the world's tightest controls on information.

More: The Verge, Mashable! and Business Insider

Vlad Savov / The Verge:

It's official: 3D is dead — The tech industry's annual hot air balloon show is dead, and the world's better for it — There's something about 2013's Consumer Electronics Show that's different from every other iteration this decade. You might not realize it immediately …

More: PC World, Guardian and Mercury News

John Koetsier / VentureBeat:

Codecademy adds API training with YouTube, NPR, Bit.ly, and 6 other services to help new devs build actual products — In other words, it'll help them do more than play with programming. — Codecademy's partners, which include YouTube, NPR, Stripe, and Bit.ly, are launching what cofounder Zach Sims calls …

More: TechCrunch, The Next Web, The Verge and GigaOM

Amol Sharma / Wall Street Journal:

India: Tech Import Restrictions Are for Security — NEW DELHI—India's proposal to restrict imports of an array of high-tech products, a move that Western companies fear could significantly undermine their business plans in the country, is aimed at protecting the nation's security while encouraging …

Tweets: @karaswisher

Seth Fiegerman / Mashable!:

Facebook Stock Hits $30 For First Time Since July — Facebook may finally be over its 20-something phase. — The company's stock hit $30 a share on Wednesday for the first time since mid-July, after several consecutive days of hovering around the $29 mark.

More: Digits, Forbes, CNET, The Next Web, Business Insider and Fox Business

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

Microsoft confirms Messenger will be retired and users migrated to Skype on March 15 — Microsoft on Tuesday mass emailed its 100 million+ Messenger users to let them know that the service is officially being retired on March 15, 2013. On that date, all users will be migrated to Skype …

More: GeekWire, Engadget, Mashable!, ITworld.com, Geek.com, InfoWorld, PC Magazine, Macgasm, WebProNews, The Register, TechSpot, SlashGear, memeburn, BetaNews, BuzzFeed, Softpedia News, Pocket-lint, Electronista and ZDNet

Sponsor Posts

Channel 9:

Defrag Tools: WPT - Command Line — Andrew Richards, Chad Beeder, and Larry Larsen continue walking you through the Windows Performance Toolkit (WPT).

Cloud Foundry:

Static.com Adds Hadoop Support for Cloud Foundry — In this guest post, Jake Farrell, CTO for Static.com, explains how the major shift in the hosting industry towards platforms for high developer productivity …

Rackspace Blog:

An Army Is Forming To Battle Patent Trolls — For the past several months, we've exposed the flaws in the patent system and how they're being exploited by opportunistic patent trolls looking to extort a quick buck …

Hortonworks » Blog:

Hadoop, Hadoop, Hurrah! HDP for Windows is Now GA! — Today we are very excited to announce that Hortonworks Data Platform for Windows (HDP for Windows) is now generally available and ready to support the most demanding production workloads.

Unison's blog:

“Yammer sucks” — Not to be mean to Yammer, or anything — it's a very good tool for some use cases — but that's what a customer told me recently (and others feel the same way).

Sponsor Techmeme

Who's Hiring In Tech?

Google: Do cool things that matter.

Automattic: 17% down, 83% to go. WordPress.

CBSi: Have your people call our people.

@WalmartLabs: A thin line between work and play.

Disqus: Build something worth talking about.

FancyCorp: We are real fancy.

imo: Awesome People. Awesome Products.

Zoosk: Fall in love. With your job.

Facebook: Best place to build & make an impact.

Amazon: Work hard. Have fun. Make history.

Square: Come simplify the complex.

Twitter: Less characters; more fulfilling.

Add your company here

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 7:35 PM ET, January 9, 2013.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.