Techmeme: Too many startups are now building poorly differentiated messaging apps (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)

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December 7, 2013, 8:20 PM

Top News

Daniel Cawrey / CoinDesk:

Baidu and China Telecom Stop Accepting Bitcoin, Price Slumps Again — The bitcoin price has continued to drop overnight on major bitcoin exchanges. The price on exchanges included in the Bitcoin Price Index all currently sit below $700, with the BPI overall having dropped almost 20% …

More: Business Insider, Los Angeles Times, The Huffington Post, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, Bitcoin Magazine, Forbes and MoneyBeat

Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:

Verizon Is Acquiring Content Delivery Network EdgeCast For More Than $350 Million — Verizon is looking to get deeper into the content delivery business with the acquisition of Los Angeles-based CDN provider EdgeCast Networks, TechCrunch has heard. Owning EdgeCast, and combining …

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

Too many startups are now building poorly differentiated messaging apps — Overrun With Messaging Apps — Because I'll install almost any app on my iPhone just to take a look, I've got a jam-packed folder called “messaging apps” that's now five pages deep.

More: CNET. Tweets: @stevesi and @caseynewton

Washington Post:

FBI's search for ‘Mo,’ suspect in bomb threats, highlights use of malware for surveillance — The man who called himself “Mo” had dark hair, a foreign accent and — if the pictures he e-mailed to federal investigators could be believed — an Iranian military uniform.

More: Gizmodo, Digital Trends, Mashable, SlashGear, Softpedia News and Ars Technica

Tweets: @csoghoian and @arawnsley

Matthew Panzarino / TechCrunch:

The Open Secret Of iBeacon: Apple Could Have 250M Potential Units In The Wild By 2014 — Yesterday, Apple began a small press push on its new iBeacon technology, pushed an Apple Store app update to support them and turned the feature on in 254 U.S.-based stores in an initial rollout.

More: Forbes, Business Insider, Yahoo! News, AppleTell, MacRumors, Macworld and Gigaom

Tom Warren / The Verge:

Why is Microsoft scared of Chromebooks? — Something has Redmond spooked — “It's pretty much a brick,” says Pawn Stars' Rick Harrison as he rejects a Samsung Chromebook brought in by an actor playing a customer. Microsoft really doesn't want you buying this thing. — But why?

More: Forbes, Electronista, Maximum PC, CNET, Inquirer, Digital Trends, Ubergizmo, GeekWire, BGR, TechCrunch and 9to5Google. Tweets: @hunterwalk

Rolfe Winkler / Wall Street Journal:

Teardown estimates Moto G components cost $123, leaving a profit margin of less than 5% — Google Squeezes Margins on Moto G Phone — A ‘Teardown’ of $199 Device Pegs Component Costs at $123 — Google Inc. 's Motorola unit is selling its new Moto G smartphone at starkly thinner profit margins …

More: Ars Technica, Android Beat, AndroidHeadlines.com, Phones Review, PhoneArena, SlashGear and pocketnow.com

Bloomberg:

Japan's SoftBank moves to undercut Square's lower payment processing fees for small retailers — Twitter's Dorsey Vies With SoftBank's Son for Japan Shops: Tech — Twitter Inc. co-founder Jack Dorsey sparked a price war over Japanese credit-card transactions with SoftBank Corp. (9984)'s Masayoshi Son.

More: bizjournals

Graham Cluley:

Check if you're the victim of a database breach with ‘Have I Been Pwned?’ — It seems to me that there is almost always a website making the news headlines, attempting to explain to innocent users that hackers breached its security, and stole the email addresses and passwords of innocent users.

More: PC World, Gizmodo, ZDNet, Troy Hunt's Blog, Digital Trends, Softpedia News and Geek.com

Chris Chavez / Phandroid:

Prescription Google Glass pictured in the wild gives us our best look at the eyewear yet — Up until now, we haven't gotten a real good look at Google's plans for prescription eyewearers looking to outfit themselves with Google Glass. Sure there was the scruffy looking fella from months ago …

More: Mashable, SlashGear, 9to5Google, Softpedia News, Yahoo! News and Droid Life

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

Google says 91.4% of non-spam emails sent to Gmail users are now authenticated using antiphishing standards — Google today declared that after almost a decade of fighting phishing emails, the Internet-wide efforts are finally paying off. The company revealed that 91.4 percent …

More: Google Online Security Blog, Softpedia News, CNET, Mashable and BetaNews

Ina Fried / AllThingsD:

T-Mobile Taps MetroPCS' Spectrum to Boost LTE Network Speeds — T-Mobile has started rolling out higher-speed LTE service by tapping the airwaves it acquired as part of its MetroPCS acquisition. — Just before Thanksgiving, T-Mobile quietly turned on the faster service in parts of North Dallas.

More: PC Magazine, PhoneNews.com, iDownloadBlog.com, PhoneArena, App Advice, Engadget, AndroidHeadlines.com and 9to5Mac

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