Techmeme: Amazon's Drone Fleet Delivers What Bezos Wants: An Image of Ingenuity (Brad Stone/Businessweek)

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December 2, 2013, 7:20 PM

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Wall Street Journal:

Apple acquires Topsy, a company specializing in Twitter search and analytics, for more than $200M — Apple Taps Into Twitter, Buying Social Analytics Firm Topsy — Apple Inc. has acquired social-media analytics firm Topsy Labs Inc. for more than $200 million, according to people familiar with the matter.

More: The Verge, Search Engine Land, Cult of Mac, Guardian, Los Angeles Times, AllThingsD, MacRumors, Gigaom, VentureBeat, CNET, iMore, BGR, AppleInsider, The Next Web, Reuters, MacDailyNews, SlashGear, Mashable, TUAW and Gizmodo

Tweets: @digiphile, @caseynewton, @darbison, @mikeisaac, @mattlynley, @kenromano, @panzer, @edmundlee, @mattlynley, @mattlynley, @samhouston, @dannysullivan, @rossneumann and @jwherrman

Matthew Panzarino / TechCrunch:

Apple Buys Topsy For Price Reportedly North Of $200M, Could Use Social Signals To Bolster Siri, App Store Relevance — Apple has purchased social analytics firm Topsy, which focuses on parsing data from Twitter, reports The Wall Street Journal. The deal was apparently worth ‘more than $200M’ according to the publication.

More: ABC News, The Next Web, ZDNet, Engadget, 9to5Mac, Daring Fireball, Digits, Business Insider, ITworld.com, Bloomberg, bizjournals, TheStreet.com, iPhone in Canada Blog, iPhone Hacks, PandoDaily, iDownloadBlog.com and Pocket-lint. Tweets: @marvelle

Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:

Microsoft codename ‘Threshold’: The next major Windows wave takes shape — Summary: Microsoft's wave of spring 2015 updates to its various Windows-based platforms has a codename: Threshold. — When I blogged recently about Microsoft's plans on the operating-systems front following Windows 8.1 …

Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch:

Windows 7 Handily Bests Windows 8 And 8.1′s Minute Market Share Gains In November

More: CNET, BGR, Los Angeles Times, InfoWorld, MacRumors, ZDNet, Softpedia News, Inquirer and BetaNews

Brad Stone / Businessweek:

Amazon's Drone Fleet Delivers What Bezos Wants: An Image of Ingenuity — In his 2010 internal “Amazon.Love” memo to senior executives, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos identified a serious problem that can plague big, successful companies: they tend to be feared and, in some quarters, hated.

More: Inbound Hub, Business Insider, BuzzFeed, Forbes and Boing Boing. Tweets: @gsterling

Charlie Rose / CBS News:

Amazon's Jeff Bezos looks to the future

More: Wired, The Switch, Tech Trader Daily, CNET, ZDNet, Tracy and Matt's Blog, EE Times, The Next Web, TechCrunch, Laughing Squid, GeekWire, MobileBurn.com, ReadWrite, Examiner, Gigaom Research, Guardian, 9to5Google and SiliconBeat

Tweets: @kraneland and @valleyhack

David Pierce / The Verge:

Delivery drones are coming: Jeff Bezos previews half-hour shipping from Amazon

More: Hitenism, BBC, CNET, Digits, Gigaom, WebProNews, TechCrunch, Forbes, TIME, Fortune, Yahoo! News, VatorNews, Marketing Land, internetretailer.com, Mail&Guardian, Gizmodo, deal architect, I4U News, Marketing Pilgrim, Om Malik and TheStreet.com

Tweets: @jenseniorny, @percival, @gassee, @astepanovich, @erickschonfeld, @hunterwalk, @levie, @rafe, @rcalo, @amazon, @mattrosoff and @brianstelter

Heather Timmons / Quartz:

Amazon drones won't replace the mailman or FedEx woman any time soon

More: TechCrunch, Business Insider, Salon, WebProNews and Nextgov. Tweets: @kentgoldman

Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:

U.S. Department of Justice gives Microsoft-Nokia deal the OK — Summary: The U.S. DOJ has given its approval to Microsoft's planned $7.2 billion acquisition of Nokia's devices and services business. — The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has given its approval to Microsoft's pending acquisition …

More: The Verge, VatorNews, AllThingsD, NYT Bits, PC Magazine, The Register, Softpedia News, Gigaom, WinBeta, SlashGear, WMPoweruser, ReadWrite, TechCrunch and The Next Web. Tweets: @fosspatents

San Francisco Chronicle:

Google plans ‘floating retail store,’ builder says — It turns out that the mysterious high-tech barge that Google is building at Treasure Island is just the first of three floating wonders the company plans to launch, at a total cost of $35 million. — In a confidential budget report we obtained …

More: BGR, Los Angeles Times, The Verge, AppleInsider and SlashGear

Foreign Policy:

Accused of Cyberspying, Huawei Is ‘Exiting the U.S. Market’ — The CEO of the world's biggest telecommunications equipment maker, which for years has been labeled by U.S. officials as a proxy for Chinese military and intelligence agencies, says he's giving up on America.

More: Gigaom, SlashGear, ecns and Telecompaper

Tweets: @niubi and @csoghoian

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Salesforce Says Hackathon Winner Didn't Cheat But Declares Tie, Gives Two Finalists $1M Each — Microsoft Rolls Out Student Advantage, Giving Students Free Access To Its Office Suite — Salesforce has responded to cries of foul play in its $1 million hackathon by announcing …

More: Developer Relations, PR Newswire, The Next Web, ReadWrite, Gigaom, ZDNet, NYT Bits, PC World, Business Insider and Valleywag

Tweets: @rjonesy and @om

Thanks:@joshconstine

Greg Stohr / Bloomberg:

Amazon Rejected by U.S. High Court on New York Sales Tax — The U.S. Supreme Court stayed out of the multibillion-dollar fight over Internet sales taxes, leaving intact a New York law that forces Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) to collect money from customers in that state.

More: Gigaom, NBC News Business, The Register, Reuters, CNET, TechCrunch, internetretailer.com, The Verge, The Next Web and AllThingsD. Tweets: @gsterling

Sean Buckley / Engadget:

Engadget's Cyber Monday 2013 roundup — As tempting as post-Thanksgiving savings are, some of us simply aren't brave enough to face the Black Friday hordes. That doesn't mean stay-at-home shoppers aren't still looking for a bargain: Cyber Monday is upon us, and there are deals aplenty.

More: Xbox Live's Major Nelson, BGR, Gigaom, VentureBeat, Amazon.com, AppleInsider, SiliconANGLE, 9to5Google, internetretailer.com, IntoMobile, TechHive, USA Today, The Verge, TechnoBuffalo, Inquirer, pocketnow.com, Wired, ZDNet and Gigaom

Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:

Yahoo Acquires Natural Language Processing Company SkyPhrase To Help Drive Intent Identification — Yahoo has acquired SkyPhrase, a startup that builds natural language processing technology, the company revealed today in a blog post. SkyPhrase will join Yahoo's New York office …

More: Yahoo Labs, Computerworld, PC Magazine, VentureBeat, The Verge, Gigaom, VatorNews and ZDNet

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Apple Gets “Significant Bounce” On 5c, 5s iPhones; Android Still Trumps With 71% Share Of All Sales — Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, the WPP market research division that provides a rolling check-in on how smartphones are selling in key markets, has put out its latest figures this morning covering the 12 weeks that ended October 31.

Rich Edmonds / Windows Phone Central:

Windows Phone hits 10% sales across Europe, but still struggles in China and the US

More: Guardian and PandoDaily

Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:

BlackBerry Sends Out Another 'We're Not Dead' Notice, This Time Homing In On Enterprise — BlackBerry got a lot of chaff from the press for issuing full-page print newspaper ads effectively reminding customers they're not dead, likely to counter rumors to the contrary in a lot of headlines and article feature art.

More: Inside BlackBerry …, BGR, VentureBeat, The Register, Pocketables, Ars Technica, Global Nerdy, The Verge and WebProNews

Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:

Lack of competition, not technological barriers, prevents ISPs from offering gigabit speeds — Why Comcast and other cable ISPs aren't selling you gigabit Internet — “Perhaps you should switch to another cable company... oh, that's right, we're the only one in town.” — Viacom

More: PC World and BGR

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

Facebook tweaks News Feed to surface more articles and fewer memes, resurface stories when friends comment — Facebook today announced tweaks to its News Feed algorithm that focus on articles. In particular, the company is looking to surface more articles that get clicks on mobile devices …

More: Facebook, Digiday, VentureBeat, ReadWrite, Business Insider, TechHive, Digits, TechCrunch, PC World, CNET, GeekWire, Engadget, Marketing Land, BuzzFeed, Ubergizmo and Digiday. See also Mediagazer

Richard Lai / Engadget:

BenQ rejoins the smartphone market with two tepid Android models — Contrary to what the execs told us back in September last year, BenQ has now decided that it should re-enter the smartphone business, and it's done so in Taiwan with two affordable quad-core models: the recently-launched …

More: The Droid Guy, Electronista, Ubergizmo and DigiTimes

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