Techmeme: T-Mobile Raises iPhone Price by $50, Down Payment on iPhone 5 Starts at $150 (Jordan Golson/MacRumors)

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May 13, 2013, 4:40 PM

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Steven Levy / Wired:

New Android Boss Finally Reveals Plans for World's Most Popular Mobile OS — For the past few years, Sundar Pichai has been part of a tag-team routine staged at Google's annual I/O developer conference. Pichai, a Googler since 2004, would present on behalf of Google's Chrome division …

Aaron Souppouris / The Verge:

New Android chief downplays Chrome OS merger, hints at developer-focused I/O

More: CITEworld, ReadWrite, TechCrunch, AndroidHeadlines.com and SlashGear

CBS News:

Bill Gates on Steve Jobs: We grew up together — We've seen plenty of Bill Gates on television, but we'd never seen him get emotional before. It was a striking, yet subtle moment in Gates' 60 Minutes interview this week when Charlie Rose asked him about his longtime business rival, the late Steve Jobs.

Sean Buckley / Engadget:

Samsung ready for 5G rollout in 2020, has reportedly pulled down 1Gbps in tests — LTE might be all the rage right now, but next generation mobile technology is already in the works. According to Korea's Yonhap News Agency, Samsung has successfully tested its 5G platform, pulling down data at 1Gbps in recent tests.

More: SAMSUNG TOMORROW Global, AppleInsider, Examiner, Light Reading, Gizmodo, BetaNews, Forbes, iDownloadBlog.com, Cult of Mac, TUAW, AndroidHeadlines.com, Electronista, Macgasm and TechEye

Aaron Souppouris / The Verge:

Let the ‘5G’ confusion begin: Samsung demos ultra-fast wireless with bad branding

More: TechHive, CNET and GigaOM

Nate Hoffelder / The Digital Reader:

Confirmed: Amazon Bought Liquavista - Color Kindle to Follow? — For the past four months I have been saying that Amazon was in the market to buy Samsung's screen tech company Liquavista, and today I do believe the rumors have come true. — New filings from the Netherlands Chamber …

More: CNET, VentureBeat, ZDNet, Business Insider, GeekWire, GigaOM, AllThingsD and Electronista

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Amazon Now Offers Amazon Coins Virtual Currency On Kindle Fire, Gives $5 In Free Coins To All Users — E-commerce leviathan Amazon today is taking a step into social gaming: Amazon Coins, its new virtual currency, is now live in the U.S. To kick it off, Amazon announced that it would put $5 worth …

More: Business Wire, The Verge, CITEworld, Examiner, Gotta Be Mobile, Ars Technica, AllThingsD, GeekWire, The Next Web, GigaOM, Engadget, Softpedia News, TechSpot, Gizmodo, Business Insider, 9to5Google, PhoneArena, BetaNews and CoinDesk. Tweets: @dannysullivan

Drew Olanoff / TechCrunch:

Google Unifies Its Free And Paid Storage Options, Gives You 15GB To Share Between Drive, Gmail And Google+ Photos — Until now, you've had to track your free storage on Google products separately. It was just another thing that Google hadn't brought together to make it easier on users.

More: Google Drive Blog, Google Enterprise Blog, Google Operating System, Engadget, PC Magazine, iMore, The Verge, AllThingsD, 9to5Google, The Next Web, ZDNet, VentureBeat, Gizmodo, iDownloadBlog.com and WebProNews

Mike Isaac / AllThingsD:

Path Product Management Director Dylan Casey Departs for Yahoo — Dylan Casey, director of product management at Path, has left the company and will soon join Yahoo, according to sources familiar with the matter. — Update 9:29 am PT: And Casey has confirmed his new job via Twitter …

More: Search Engine Land, CNET and Business Insider

Tweets: @hunterwalk and @qthrul

David McLaughlin / Bloomberg:

Apple, Google Pressed by N.Y. Over Handheld Device Thefts — Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Google Inc. (GOOG) are among technology companies being asked by the New York attorney general to take steps to deter thefts of iPhones and other handheld devices and eliminate a black market for the products.

More: AppleInsider, ag.ny.gov, ZDNet, Cult of Mac, SlashGear, TUAW, PadGadget, Betabeat and iDownloadBlog.com

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

Google Launches Content Recommendation Engine For Mobile Sites, Powered By Google+ — Google continues to increase the reach of its Google+ platform, and today the company is launching a new mobile content recommendation service powered by Google+. These recommendations will appear …

More: Google+ Developers Blog, Marketing Land, The Verge, The Droid Guy, ReadWrite, Engadget, CNET, AllThingsD, VentureBeat, 9to5Google and Beyond Search

Casey Johnston / Ars Technica:

Facebook Home flagship phone, HTC First, may be discontinued — Facebook's HTC First, the smartphone herald of Facebook Home, will be discontinued by carrier partner AT&T, according a report from BGR Monday. The phones, released just over a month ago, will be returned as unsold inventory to HTC …

More: PandoDaily, GigaOM, SiliconBeat, The Register, AllFacebook and PC Magazine

Reuters:

France weighs ‘culture tax’ for Apple, Google products — (Reuters) - President Francois Hollande will decide by the end of July whether France should impose new taxes on technology giants like Apple and Google to finance cultural projects, a move that could feed into an anti-business image days after a spat with Yahoo!.

More: VentureBeat, AppleInsider, ParisLemon, The Huffington Post, TechSpot, TUAW and The Verge

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

Intelligent To Do List App Any.DO Raises $3.5 Million, Will Further Expand Into Personal Productivity Space — Q: Why does a to do list application need $3.5 million in funding? A: Because it's becoming more than a simple to do app. Today, Any.DO one of the more popular to do list applications …

More: GigaOM, AllThingsD, VentureBeat and The Next Web

Xperia Blog:

Xperia ZR announced: 4.6-inch 720p display, IP58 water resistant, 13MP camera with dedicated camera button — Sony has unveiled the Xperia ZR (C550X 'Dogo') and our previous report was right on the money with the specs. The Xperia ZR has a 4.55-inch OptiContrast display with 720 x 1280 pixel resolution and 319 PPI.

More: Sony, BetaNews, The Next Web, Engadget, GigaOM, PC Magazine, The Verge, The Tech Report, iClarified, Inquirer, newlaunches.com, The Droid Guy, TrustedReviews, Gearburn, IntoMobile, Unwired View, Gotta Be Mobile and Electronista

Horace Dediu / asymco:

iTunes users spending at the rate of $40/yr. — In the latest quarter the iTunes top line grew by 32%. Additional newly reported items: — Quarterly revenues topped $4 billion (a new high) and the company suggests that this rate is maintainable by stating it has a “$16 billion annual run rate”.

More: AllThingsD, GigaOM, AppleInsider, Cult of Mac and SlashGear

Jordan Golson / MacRumors:

T-Mobile Raises iPhone Price by $50, Down Payment on iPhone 5 Starts at $150 — When 4th-place U.S. cell carrier T-Mobile launched the iPhone last month, customers could purchase it for a $100 down payment with 24 monthly payments of $20 to cover the full cost of the phone.

More: TmoNews, Examiner, The Verge, 9to5Mac, Gotta Be Mobile, App Advice, Cult of Mac and Ubergizmo

Ellie Powers / Android Developers Blog:

All Google Play Developers Can Now Reply to User Reviews — There are a lot great things a developer can do to promote their app, but the best way for your app to take off is when a really happy user tells their friend about your app, who tells their friend, who tells someone else — you get the picture.

More: Engadget, The Next Web, Android News, Rumours …, AndroidHeadlines.com and PhoneArena. Tweets: @panzer

Nathan Ingraham / The Verge:

Aereo streamlines its plans, eliminates daily and annual subscription options — Aereo has just announced that it is cutting back on the number of plans it offers by eliminating its $1 per day plan it introduced last summer as well as the option to have a cheaper annual subscription.

More: DSLreports, Engadget, CNET, VentureBeat, Gizmodo and SlashGear. See also Mediagazer

Jon Fingas / Engadget:

Verizon bumps up Samsung Galaxy S 4 launch to May 23rd — Disappoined that Verizon wasn't going to offer its variant of the Galaxy S 4 until May 30th? You're in for an unexpected treat: Big Red has just moved up the launch by a full week, to May 23rd. The $200 contract price remains the same …

More: Verizon Wireless, The Verge, 9to5Google, IntoMobile, Ubergizmo and HotHardware.com News

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

Twitter Acquires Big Data Visualization Startup Lucky Sort, Service To Shutter In Months Ahead — Lucky Sort, a Portland, Oregon-based startup behind a visualization and navigation engine called TopicWatch that helped to discover patterns in live data streams, has been acquired by Twitter.

More: ZDNet and The Next Web

Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:

With Windows Blue, Microsoft may (finally) do the right thing — Summary: Call it capitulation. Call it listening to customers. But whatever you call it, making Windows 8 more usable with expected coming Blue tweaks is a positive, not a negative. — Mary Jo Foley

More: PC Magazine, Computerworld, Digital Trends, BGR and Telegraph

Phillip Archer / The Genesis Block:

Bitcoin Network Speed 8 Times Faster than Top 500 Supercomputers Combined — The bitcoin network hashrate estimate on bitcoinwatch.com passed 1 exaFLOPS (1,000 petaFLOPS) this week - over 8 times the combined speed of the top 500 supercomputers. Experts will be quick to point out that this estimate …

More: Quartz, Gizmodo, ExtremeTech and CoinDesk

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