Techmeme: Researchers show why the NSA's phone metadata is far from anonymous (Adi Robertson/The Verge)

Open Links In New Tab

Mobile Archives Advertise Site News

December 26, 2013, 7:55 PM

Top News

Todd Bishop / GeekWire:

Christmas delayed: Amazon offers $20 gift cards, refunds shipping charges after UPS and FedEx problems — Didn't get what you expected under the tree? It's probably marooned in a package delivery center. — Following widespread complaints about absent packages, Amazon …

More: internetretailer.com, BGR, Gizmodo, Business Insider, VentureBeat, The Next Web, AllThingsD, VatorNews, The Verge, Gotta Be Mobile and IntoMobile

Shelly Banjo / Wall Street Journal:

Surge of online orders causes fulfillment, delivery delays, frustrates customers on Christmas

More: UPS, BetaNews, BestTechie, Corporate Intelligence, TechnoBuffalo, louisgray.com, InvestorPlace, SlashGear and Business Insider

Tweets: @levie and @eholmeswsj

Jay Yarow / Business Insider:

Christmas shoppers on iOS outspent Android users by more than 5 to 1, according to IBM — Apple's iOS Completely Blew Away Google's Android For Shopping On Christmas — Apple's mobile operating system, iOS, continues to blow away Google's Android in mobile commerce, according to IBM analytics.

More: IBM, MacRumors, AppleInsider and iMore. Tweets: @john_frankel

John Herrman / BuzzFeed:

Dogewallet announces Dogecoin theft, a dubious milestone for the new cryptocurrency that started as a joke — Millions Of Dogecoins Stolen In Apparent Heist — Much robbery, so anger, etc. Users of the functional joke currency are reporting emptied wallets.

More: doges.org, The Verge, SiliconANGLE, The Register, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Mashable, Mediaite, Tech in Asia, ReadWrite, Gizmodo, Forbes, Business Insider, The Next Web, Vacuum and Electronista

Tweets: @daweiner, @cshirky, @samir, @tmfbiggles, @fmanjoo, @dcbigjohn and @russellbrandom

Todd Bishop / GeekWire:

Amazon's “best ever” season saw 1M new Prime members in one week, 426 items sold per second — Amazon Prime tops 20 million members as company touts its best holiday season ever — Amazon is exiting the 2013 holiday season with “tens of millions” of Amazon Prime members …

More: Businessweek, NYT Bits, Digital Book World, The Verge, AllThingsD, Gigaom, Mashable, Quartz, CNET, Gigaom, Gotta Be Mobile, VatorNews, The Next Web and Businessweek

Tweets: @zseward and @zseward

Thanks:@belril. See also Mediagazer

Farhad Manjoo / Wall Street Journal:

Snapchat's popularity shows we all may want a more erasable Internet — The Internet doesn't necessarily have to keep our digital effluvia around forever. Do we want it to be erasable? — The Internet doesn't necessarily have to keep our digital effluvia around forever, and Snapchat has proved it.

More: BGR and MacDailyNews. Tweets: @fmanjoo, @stevesi and @hunterwalk

Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:

Plain Vanilla Games, Maker Of Ultra-Hot Trivia App QuizUp, Raises Another $22 Million From Sequoia — Plain Vanilla Games, the company behind ultra-hot trivia app QuizUp, has raised a $22 million Series B Round of financing. The financing was led by Sequoia Capital, with participation …

More: Betabeat, VentureBeat, The Next Web, VentureBeat, The Verge, StartupBook and AllThingsD

Tweets: @semil and @caseynewton

Thanks:@chrisvelazco

Adi Robertson / The Verge:

Researchers show why the NSA's phone metadata is far from anonymous — Since the first of many leaked documents showed that the NSA has been gathering phone records en masse as part of its anti-terrorism program, there's been an ongoing fight over just what these records reveal.

More: Gizmodo, The Raw Story, TechCrunch and The Atlantic Online. Tweets: @naveen_jain_ceo

Steve Dent / Engadget:

LG mum on smartwatch rumors, but confirms that a wearable device is coming — Amidst rumors of 2K displays and octa-core CPUs for the LG G3, the Korea Herald has just added another: The upcoming smartphone will come with a G-Arch smartwatch and G-Health fitness band.

More: The Korea Heald, TechnoBuffalo, TechnoBuffalo, Yahoo! News, VentureBeat, Droid Life, WebProNews and MobileSyrup.com. Tweets: @liliputingnews

Hannah Karp / Wall Street Journal:

Scores of Music Services Stream Into Crowded Field — Many of the New Models Will Focus on Genre — The number of music-streaming services is set to explode next year, as record labels have warmed up to the idea of renting consumers access to a vast collection of tunes, rather than selling them individual albums or songs.

Tweets: @zseward

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

Tech Stocks Hover Near 2013 Highs, Paving Way for 2014 IPOs Like Alibaba, Box and Dropbox — Today, the tech sector got a pretty nice post-Christmas present, as stocks of many companies in the sector continued to remain near their highs for the year. — And with 2013 seeing …

Sarah Frier / Bloomberg:

KakaoTalk is used by 93% of South Korean smartphone owners, expects $200M revenue in 2013 — With $200 Million in Revenue, South Korea's Top Messaging App Is All Smiley Faces — In South Korea, there's no escaping KakaoTalk. The country has a smartphone penetration rate of 73 percent …

Tweets: @papadimitriou. Thanks:@electricwaffles

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Google punishes Rap Genius in search ranking for SEO practices, founders seek resolution — Google Destroys Rap Genius' Search Rankings As Punishment For SEO Spam, But Resolution In Progress — Google hit back hard today after it learned lyrics site Rap Genius had been using dubious SEO tricks to attain top spots in search results.

Sponsor Posts

Google:

Try Gemini 3 Pro — Google's newest and most intelligent AI model that helps you bring any idea to life

Shopify:

Shopify's new AI commerce stack — Their VP of Product digs into just-launched products to help entrepreneurs and developers build with the latest AI and tech.

Zoho:

Enhancements to Zoho Writer's automation flow designer: New PDF operations, password protection, and more — Once we rolled out the automation flow designer in Zoho Writer's merge templates …

IDrive:

Protecting your Cloud Applications Data — Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Sponsor Techmeme

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:

2025 In Review, 2026 Predictions — With Reed Albergotti

The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.

Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.

Channels with Peter Kafka:

Podcast Pioneer PJ Vogt's Second Act: Less Budget, More Control

Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.

Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.

BG2 Pod:

AI Enterprise - Databricks & Glean

Open-source podcast on all things tech, markets, investing, and capitalism, hosted by Brad Gerstner.

Subscribe to BG2 Pod.

Great Chat:

The stories we told ourselves in 2025

A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.

Subscribe to Great Chat.

Grit:

How Brands Stay Visible When AI Decides | Profound CEO James Cadwallader

Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.

Subscribe to Grit.

Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:

Ted Sarandos: Netflix and how tech changed storytelling

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.

Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.

Add your podcast here

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 7:55 PM ET, December 26, 2013.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.