Techmeme
June 18, 2013, 12:15 PM

Top News

BuzzFeed:
President Obama Defends NSA Spying  —  It's “transparent,” the president tells Charlie Rose in an interview.  Here's a portion of that transcript, from PBS.  —  Image by Matt Dunham / AP  —  Barack Obama: Well, in the end, and what I've said, and I continue to believe …
Vindu Goel / NYT Bits:
Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:
FiftyThree, Maker Of Drawing App Paper, Raises $15 Million From Andreessen Horowitz And Others  —  FiftyThree, the startup behind the wildly popular drawing app Paper, has closed a Series A round of financing led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Highline Ventures, Thrive Capital, SV Angels, and Jack Dorsey.
Wall Street Journal:
Maker of ‘Candy Crush Saga’ Plans IPO  —  Candy Crush Saga is lining up something besides jelly beans: bankers.  —  Midasplayer International Holding Co., the publisher of online and mobile games including the popular Candy Crush Saga, has hired banks to pursue a U.S. initial public offering …
More: Valleywag
Daniel Cooper / Engadget:
Huawei Ascend P6 announced: 6.18mm thickness, 4.7-inch 720p display  —  We knew it was in the works given the sheer quantity of leaks but, with a small sigh of relief, Huawei's Ascend P6 is now official.  At the company's London launch, the handset has been revealed with a 6.18mm-thick body …
Priceonomics:
Airbnb vs Hotels: A Price Comparison  —  Price of Airbnb vs Hotel by US City  —  Mouseover to get price comparison detail  —  Size of bubble corresponds to number of Airbnb listings (logarithmic scale)  —  At Priceonomics, we like to get more for our money.
Bloomberg:
Facebook's Zuckerberg Meets Samsung Executives Amid Mobile Push  —  Facebook Inc. (FB) Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, seeking to boost advertising sales from mobile devices, is meeting with Samsung Electronics Co. executives today in Seoul.  —  Zuckerberg was seen entering Samsung offices …
Tom Simonite / MIT Technology Review:
A Popular Ad Blocker Also Helps the Ad Industry  —  Millions of people use the tool Ghostery to block online tracking technology—few realize that it feeds data to the ad industry.  —  WHY IT MATTERS  —  There are few options for those wishing to avoid being followed around on the Web.
GigaOM:
Having problems with your Netflix?  You can blame Verizon  —  If you are trying to get Netflix and use Verizon's broadband, then there is a good chance that your video performance is less than optimal.  Some Verizon customers might even go as far as calling it a crappy Netflix experience.
Roger Cheng / CNET:
Ex-HTC execs can't quit phone game, create startup Kazam  —  Kazam is a smartphone manufacturer focused on design, customer service, and the European market.  But the company faces an extreme uphill climb.  —  Two former HTC executives are hoping for a fresh start with their own company.
Sam Biddle / Valleywag:
Top Wall Street Journal Reporter Jessica Lessin Going Solo  —  Jessica Lessin, a San Francisco-based senior technology reporter at the Wall Street Journal of several years, is quitting (somewhat abruptly) to launch her own tech website.  It will sting a bit.
Priya Kumar / Internet Monitor:
Twitter's Geography: Visualized and Explained  —  Twitter's CEO Dick Costolo has called the popular microblogging service “the pulse of the planet.”  With a little less than eight percent of the world's population on Twitter, that pulse has room to grow.  Nevertheless, recent big data research …
Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:
Yahoo Offer to Buy Contact Startup Xobni Is at a Price of $30M to $40M  —  According to numerous sources close to the company, Yahoo is offering to pay $30 million to $40 million for the maker of address book apps and plugins.  —  That's below the more than $40 million raised …
Don Clark / Digits:
AMD Prepares Move to ‘Seattle,’ Its First ARM Chip  —  Advanced Micro Devices has been using the same technology foundation as Intel since the 1980s.  Now the underdog chip supplier is fleshing out plans to diverge.  —  The company on Tuesday is announcing “Seattle,” the code name …
Jackie Dove / Macworld:
Adobe releases Creative Cloud into the wild  —  Adobe has released its long-awaited and highly controversial Creative Cloud suite of applications for both longtime professional devotees and the newcomers it hopes to attract.  Having historically operated on an upgrade schedule of every 12 to 16 months …
Anton Troianovski / Wall Street Journal:
How Clearwire Became the Darling of Telecom  —  Clearwire Corp. has long been the U.S. wireless industry's most embattled carrier.  In recent months, the money-losing company has also emerged as its crown jewel.  —  The company, which covers less than half the U.S. population …
Reuters:
Tim Peterson / AdAge:
Microsoft Builds Its Own iAd for Windows 8 Apps  —  New Technology Means a Banner Can Watch You  —  Microsoft is creating its own new native ad formats for Windows 8, not unlike Apple's iAd, which is designed to increase ad revenue in the iOS ecosystem.  —  The new ads — which will be …

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Featured Podcasts

Lenny's Podcast:
Father of the iPod and iPhone on building taste, judgment, and creativity in the AI era | Tony Fadell
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
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Hard Fork:
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The Upstarts Podcast:
Vanta's Christina Cacioppo: The Underdog Turning 'Nonsense' Compliance Into A $4.2B Security Standout
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
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Who are the billboards for?
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
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AI's Mythos Moment: Rishi Sunak on preparing governments for AI
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
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