Techmeme
December 17, 2013, 6:00 PM

Top News

Guardian:
Tech firms push back against White House efforts to divert NSA meeting  —  Dominic Rushe in New York and Paul Lewis in Washington  —  The top leaders from the world's biggest technology companies pressed their case for reform of the National Security Agency's controversial surveillance operations …
Facebook:
Testing a New Way to Watch Promoted Videos in News Feed  —  Since September, we've been testing a way to make videos more engaging on Facebook, and as a result we've seen views, likes, shares and comments increase more than 10 percent.  —  We're beginning to test a similar video viewing format for advertisers.
Amit Singhal / The Official Google Blog:
2013 in Search: Heroes, tragedies and the Harlem Shake  —  Every day, around the world, we search.  We want to find out more about our heroes, explore far-away destinations, or settle a dinner table dispute between friends.  And sometimes we just search to find out how many calories are in an avocado.
Seung Min Kim / Politico:
White House chooses former Microsoft Office VP Kurt DelBene to lead HealthCare.gov overhaul  —  White House to tap Microsoft exec to fix Obamacare site  —  The White House is tapping the private sector for its next point man to fix the troubled Obamacare website.
Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:
Yahoo Acquires PeerCDN As It Builds Out Its Content Strategy  —  Content delivery network provider PeerCDN has been acquired by Yahoo, the company has informed TechCrunch, in a deal the terms of which were not disclosed.  The startup revealed its project earlier this year …
More: AllThingsD, VentureBeat, CNET, ZDNet and silicontap.com.  Tweets: @peercdn.  Thanks:@mjburnsy
Derrick Harris / Gigaom:
Amazon's streaming data service, Kinesis, is now available  —  Kinesis, the streaming data service that Amazon Web Services announced in November, is now publicly available.  The service is comparable in theory to popular open source technologies such as Apache Storm, only Kinesis brings …
Michael Hiltzik / Los Angeles Times:
Uber upholds capitalism, (possibly) learns downside of price gouging  —  Travis Kalanick, chief executive of Uber Technologies: Let the people walk!  (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg / December 16, 2013)  —  The ride-sharing firm Uber takes great pride in hewing rigorously to libertarian, let-the-market-decide business principles.
Richard Lawler / Engadget:
Roku 3 finally snags an official YouTube app, support for additional models is on the way  —  The lack of a YouTube app has been a massive hole in the content lineup of Roku's otherwise well-rounded media streamers, but no more.  YouTube just announced that Roku 3 players in the US, Canada …
Jon Russell / The Next Web:
Samsung launches a gamepad for Android that's optimized for its Galaxy phones  —  Apple began allowing third-party gamepads on the iPhone with iOS 7, and Samsung is also upping its presence in the space after announcing its own gamepad (the not-so-creatively named 'Smartphone GamePad') for Android 4.1 phones.
Ken Yeung / The Next Web:
PayPal acquires mobile platform provider StackMob so developers can build more payment-friendly apps  —  PayPal is showing that it's serious about supporting developers.  Today, the company announced that it has acquired mobile platform StackMob in a move that will bolster its efforts …
Michael Steeber / 9to5Mac:
Apple airs touching holiday commercial featuring the iPhone 5s and AirPlay  —  As is tradition, Apple is airing a new holiday commercial this evening, this time highlighting the iPhone 5s, its movie making capabilities, and AirPlay with the Apple TV.  The ad is set to the tune of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas”.
Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:
Chromebook 11 charger recalled after nine overheat and melt  —  Google and HP are recalling power chargers for the Chromebook 11 after receiving nine reports of them overheating and melting.  One minor burn and one minor incident of property damage resulted from the heating issues …
Larry Dignan / ZDNet:
Cisco acquires Collaborate.com, eyes mobile  —  Summary: The networking giant said the acquisition will help it better navigate mobile collaboration and cloud computing.  —  Cisco on Tuesday said it has acquired Collaborate.com, a company that develops mobile tools for document sharing, task management and team communication.

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