Techmeme: T-Mobile and MetroPCS merger approved by the FCC (Bryan Bishop/The Verge)

March 12, 2013, 6:55 PM

Top News

Tom Warren / The Verge:

Nokia Lumia 928 to launch on Verizon in April with aluminum body and Xenon flash — Microsoft is gearing up to market Nokia's upcoming Verizon flagship heavily. Sources familiar with Nokia's plans have revealed to The Verge that the company plans to launch its Lumia 928 handset in April on Verizon.

More: LAPTOP Magazine, The Droid Guy, The Nokia Blog, Pocket-lint, Business Insider, IntoMobile, WP7forum.ru, Phones Review, Maati and MobileSyrup.com

Tom Warren / The Verge:

A look at Microsoft's top-secret Surface prototypes — From concept to reality: how Redmond's iPad competitor came to be — Microsoft made a bold bet to build its own hardware, competing directly with Apple's iPad, but it was never an easy task to create something new and unique.

More: Engadget, BetaNews, TechSpot, CNET, PhoneArena and Neowin

Tweets: @riptari and @maryjofoley

Tao Tao / Oh, How Pinteresting!:

Introducing Pinterest Web Analytics — Bloggers, businesses, and organizations often ask us, “what are people pinning from my websites?” These website owners help create the content on Pinterest and we wanted to help them understand which pieces of content people find most interesting.

More: LAPTOP Magazine, PC Magazine, Reuters, Wired, CNET, The Verge, Techie Buzz, TechCrunch, WebProNews and VentureBeat

Terrence O'Brien / Engadget:

Alleged Google Now for iOS video leaks on YouTube, is promptly pulled — iOS fans jealous of Jelly Bean's creepy Google Now might finally have something to get excited about. An October update to the Google Search app finally delivered an updated voice recognition experience to Apple's platform …

More: The Verge, TechCrunch, The Next Web, Business Insider, 9to5Mac, iDownloadBlog.com, IntoMobile, TodaysiPhone.com and Pocket-lint. Tweets: @markgurman

Paul Sloan / CNET:

Spotify: Growing like mad, yet so far to go — The digital music service has added another 1 million subscribers since December, bringing its global total of paying customers to 6 million. — AUSTIN, Texas — It's not a bluegrass jam on the legendary Austin City Limits stage …

More: paidContent, Pocket-lint, The Next Web, VentureBeat, The Verge, IntoMobile and AllThingsD. See also Mediagazer

Noel Randewich / Reuters:

Apple's iPads to fall behind Android tablets this year: IDC — (Reuters) - Shipments of Apple Inc's iPads will fall behind the growing variety of tablets running Google Inc's Android platform for the first time this year as smaller-sized devices catch on with more consumers, research firm International Data Corp (IDC) said on Tuesday.

More: IDC, eWeek, CNET, Reuters, Computerworld, MacRumors, Daring Fireball, AllThingsD, Investor's Business Daily, Macgasm, 9to5Mac, I4U News, SlashGear, App Advice, PadGadget, The Full Signal, GeekWire, GigaOM, BGR and Bloomberg

Russell Brandom / The Verge:

Automatic's iPhone app makes your dumb car feel a little smarter — Automatic handles everything from fuel efficiency to to crash response — Cars have been equipped with onboard computers for decades now, but as they get smarter, they remain stubbornly closed off.

More: LAPTOP Magazine, Engadget, MacStories, BetaKit, Wired, digitaltrends.com, 9to5Mac, iPhone Hacks, iDownloadBlog.com, Gotta Be Mobile, TodaysiPhone.com, Ubergizmo, GigaOM and MacRumors

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

Google confirms Project Glass will support prescriptions ‘later this year,’ but not in its Explorer Edition — A prescription version of Google Glass is coming in 2013. Google's project Glass is a pair of glasses at the end of the day, so it follows that you'll be able to order a pair personalized to your prescription preferences.

More: Google+, The Verge, PC Magazine, BGR, CNET, SlashGear, Ars Technica, TechSpot, Engadget and 9to5Google

Sean Hollister / The Verge:

Google reveals Glass apps: New York Times, Evernote, Gmail, and Path

More: LAPTOP Magazine, digitaltrends.com, Electronista and Gotta Be Mobile

Matt Brian / The Verge:

Google Now confirmed for Chrome OS and Windows, beta browser reveals — Google Now integration may soon become available in Google's Windows browser and Chrome OS platform in the near future, after engineers added a new reference to the feature in the latest Chromium release.

More: TechCrunch, Venture Chronicles, digitaltrends.com, BetaNews, CNET, Marketing Land, SlashGear, Macgasm, Softpedia News and The Tech Report

Kim Zetter / Wired:

Retailer Sues Visa Over $13 Million ‘Fine’ for Being Hacked — A sports apparel retailer is fighting back against the arbitrary multi-million-dollar penalties that credit card companies impose on banks and merchants for data breaches by filing a first-of-its-kind $13 million lawsuit against Visa.

More: The Register, Securosis Highlights and Softpedia News

Casey Newton / CNET:

Google reaches $7 million settlement with states over Street View case — The settlement with 37 states bans unauthorized data collection and requires Google to train employees on privacy issues. — The long-running Google Street View privacy case was settled today, as the company reached …

More: CT.gov Portal, New York Times, Hillicon Valley, AllThingsD, TechCrunch, Reuters, ZDNet, epic.org, Good Morning Silicon Valley, Search Engine Land, Inquirer, Engadget, WebProNews and The Verge. Tweets: @tomwarren

Gina Chon / Quartz:

Apple's plan for its cash: stock buyback or more dividends likely coming this spring — Apple is leaning toward additional dividends or a share buyback program as part of its effort to return more cash to investors, according to sources. The US tech company could announce the move this spring …

More: MacRumors, AppleInsider, Business Insider and Daring Fireball

Joseph Czikk / Techvibes:

Google Acquires University of Toronto Research Startup DNNresearch — The University of Toronto computer science department confirmed today that Google has acquired one of their startups lead by professor Geoffrey Hinton. DNNresearch Inc. was incorporated in 2012 and includes …

More: The Next Web, University of Toronto … and VentureBeat

Alex Wilhelm / The Next Web:

Dropbox refreshes its desktop client for improved file sharing, real-time notifications for incoming folders — Today Dropbox announced upgrades to its desktop client to allow for quick sharing of files with others, and improved updates that will help users keep up with the service.

More: The Dropbox Blog, Ars Technica, Macworld, CNET, The Verge, MacRumors, InfoWorld, ZDNet, TechCrunch, 9to5Mac and Gizmodo

Bryan Bishop / The Verge:

T-Mobile and MetroPCS merger approved by the FCC — We knew things were moving forward, and now the Federal Communications Commission has approved the merger between T-Mobile and MetroPCS. In a statement released today, FCC chairman Julius Genachowski says that the allowing the two companies …

David Jolly / New York Times:

Is Skype a Telephone Operator? France to Investigate — PARIS — French regulators said Tuesday that they had asked prosecutors to investigate Microsoft's Skype unit over its failure to register as a telecommunications operator in accordance with local law, raising the question of what constitutes …

More: arcep.fr, The Register, Ars Technica, SiliconANGLE, Rude Baguette, The Next Web, Dow Jones Newswires, CNET and Engadget

Alexei Oreskovic / Reuters:

Yahoo's Mayer gets internal flak for more rigorous hiring — (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc Chief Executive Marissa Mayer was asked at an all-staff meeting several weeks ago whether her rigorous hiring practices had caused the company to miss out on top engineering talent in Silicon Valley's hyper-competitive job market.

Christina Farr / VentureBeat:

Evolv pulls in $15M to prevent the ‘wrong person ending up in the wrong job’ — Imagine using data to pinpoint the most high-performing employees and keep them satisfied? — A startup called Evolv is building technology to make that possible, and it has raised $15 million in a fourth funding roundl led by Vantage Point Capital.

More: AllThingsD

Jon Fingas / Engadget:

Acer now selling C7 Chromebook with more battery life and memory for $280 — When we got our hands on Acer's initial C7 Chromebook, our chief gripe was its frankly disappointing 4-hour battery life. We now know that Acer had its ear to the ground after launch.

More: TechCrunch, AllThingsD, 9to5Google, GigaOM, Market Wire, Forbes, TG Daily and Geek.com

Rene Ritchie / iMore.com:

The “iPhone 5S” problem — Apple may or may not release a product called the “iPhone 5S” this year. The presumption, however, fueled by Apple having previously released the 2009 iPhone 3GS-as-in-speed, and the 2011 iPhone 4S-as-in-Siri, is that 2013 will see another S-style update.

More: CNET, Reuters, Phones Review, Mercury News, BGR, Tech Trader Daily, MacRumors and InvestorPlace

Eric Slivka / MacRumors:

A5 Chip in Tweaked Apple TV Still Manufactured by Samsung at 32nm — Earlier this week, we opened up the newly tweaked Apple TV to find a remarkably small A5 chip inside rather than an A5X as had been suspected from the device's software posted by Apple over a month ago.

More: chipworks.com, Ars Technica, iDownloadBlog.com, MacNN, iPhone Hacks and iClarified

Roger Cheng / CNET:

HTC One faces shipment delays, may hit stores in April — The company said it would start fulfilling pre-orders by the end of the month, with a rollout to more markets in April. — It looks like there's more bad news down the pike for HTC and its One flagship phone.

More: Clove Technology's Blog, Engadget, SlashGear, Business Insider, 9to5Google, Engadget, The Verge and Pocketnow

Timothy B. Lee / Ars Technica:

Major glitch in Bitcoin network sparks sell-off; price temporarily falls 23% — A technical glitch in the core Bitcoin software forced developers to call for a temporary halt to Bitcoin transactions, sparking a sharp sell-off. The currency's value briefly fell 23 percent to $37 before regaining much of its value later in the evening.

More: Quartz and Web Host Industry Review

Arik Hesseldahl / AllThingsD:

AMD Completes Sale, Leaseback of Texas Campus — Shares of the troubled chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices inched upward today on word that the company has executed a deal to sell its Austin, Texas, campus and lease it back from the new owner, in a deal expected to generate $164 million in cash.

More: Electronista and Reuters

Devindra Hardawar / VentureBeat:

Dragon Mobile Assistant for Android gets smarter: Now it can share your location and dial into scheduled calls — With Apple's Siri and Google Now leading the way, the race is on to create the perfect mobile virtual assistant. — Nuance, whose Dragon voice recognition technology powers Siri …

More: Engadget

Matthew Panzarino / The Next Web:

Security firm: iOS Provisioning Profiles could be vector for Apple's first big malware wave — Up to this point, iOS users have been relatively safe from malware on their devices. Apple SVP Phil Schiller recently felt good enough about it to tweet a link to a recent report that put most of the onus of mobile malware on Android.

More: Skycure Security, CITEworld, PadGadget, CNET and FierceMobileContent News. Thanks:@jonrussell

Liam Tung / ZDNet:

Samsung to issue Galaxy S3 lock screen bypass fix ‘shortly’ as Lookout releases fix — Summary: In the absence of a security fix for an easy Samsung Galaxy S3 lock screen bypass, security app Lookout has added a feature that prevents an attacker exploiting it. — Liam Tung

More: The Official Lookout Blog, CNET, Softpedia News, TechHive and Gotta Be Mobile

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

iPhone Video Usage Doubles Android, Says Ooyala — From the “Android is from Mars, Apple is from Venus” files, another reminder that the kind of phone you have influences what you do with that phone. — Or maybe it's a reminder that people buy different kinds of phones because they want to do different things with them.

More: Business Insider, Fortune, MacDailyNews, Ars Technica and MacRumors

Sean Ludwig / VentureBeat:

Now with over 20M users, presentation startup Prezi adds long-awaited audio features — Zooming presentation startup Prezi has just crossed the 20-million-registered user mark. To celebrate the new milestone, it has added audio capabilities to presentations.

More: The Next Web, TechCrunch and Business Insider

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:

Love, Magic, & APIs — I will confess, I am old enough to remember my GeoCities page. Don't hate. It was amazing, it was... this transformative moment in which I took real, actual information, and transformed it into something visible and memorable.

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 6:55 PM ET, March 12, 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.