Techmeme: Hopper, the Startup That's Been in Stealth for Six Years Finally (Soft) Launched This Week (Joseph Czikk/BetaKit)

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January 17, 2014, 11:45 PM

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Douglas MacMillan / Wall Street Journal:

Dropbox Raises About $250 Million at $10 Billion Valuation — BlackRock Is Leading the Deal Alongside Previous Backers — Dropbox Inc. has closed on about $250 million in a funding round that values the online-storage provider at close to $10 billion, according to two people familiar with the deal.

More: TechCrunch, VentureBeat, ZDNet and Business Insider

Tweets: @bryce, @sacca, @gregbensinger, @joshconstine and @chris_ciaccia

Liz Gannes / Re/code:

Dropbox Fundraising Could Actually Be as Much as $400 Million — Dropbox's latest funding round values the company at $10 billion, with private equity giant BlackRock leading the deal with participation with existing investors. — But while the round is currently worth $250 million …

More: VentureBeat, Forbes, Los Angeles Times, CNET, Business Insider and Gigaom

Reuters:

Obama bans spying on leaders of U.S. allies, scales back NSA program — (Reuters) - President Barack Obama announced a ban on U.S. eavesdropping on the leaders of close friends and allies on Friday, and rein in the vast collection of Americans' phone data in a series of reforms triggered by Edward Snowden's revelations.

Electronic Frontier Foundation:

EFF's scorecard rates Obama's proposed NSA reforms at 3.5 out of 12

The Verge:

President Obama's NSA reforms show both promise and peril

More: Guardian, The Switch, Computerworld, CNET, Betabeat, Senator Wyden's Press Feed, TechFreedom, Access Blog, PC World, SiliconBeat, VentureBeat, Gotta Be Mobile, TechCrunch, eWeek, and Softpedia News. Tweets: @joshuatopolsky

Cecilia Kang / The Switch:

Tech firms say Obama's proposals fall short of expectations

More: Electronic Frontier Foundation, Wired, Mozilla Privacy Blog, Politico, CTIA-The Wireless …, VentureBeat and PC Magazine

Dan Primack / Fortune:

Andreessen Horowitz raising $1.5 billion for new fund — Andreessen Horowitz is raising its fourth fund in six years. — FORTUNE — Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz is in the process of raising $1.5 billion for its fourth fund, Fortune has learned.

More: Re/code, TechCrunch, Valleywag, Business Insider and PE Hub Blog

Greg Bensinger / Digits:

Amazon patents method for anticipating your purchases to move them to a shipping hub near you — Amazon Wants to Ship Your Package Before You Buy It — Amazon.com knows you so well it wants to ship your next package before you order it. — The Seattle retailer in December gained …

More: Engadget, ReadWrite, GeekWire, Gizmodo, BGR and Business Insider

Noel Randewich / Reuters:

Intel announces plans to cut 5% of its 107k workforce this year — Intel to reduce global workforce by five percent in 2014 — (Reuters) - Intel Corp plans to reduce its global workforce of 107,000 by about 5 percent this year as the chipmaker, struggling with falling personal-computer sales …

More: CNET, VentureBeat, eWeek, Tech Trader Daily, MacDailyNews, ZDNet, SiliconBeat, Business Insider, The Register, EE Times and Mashable

Spark Blog:

Building an open source Nest — Earlier this week, Google bought Nest, a connected devices company, for $3.2 billion. This might seem like an ungodly sum for a company that makes thermostats and smoke detectors, but it makes absolute sense. Nest's products are beautifully designed …

More: TechCrunch, Lifehacker, Geek.com, The Verge, SlashGear, Dice News, Engadget and Business Insider. Tweets: @dhof. Thanks:@binoyxj

Jim Finkle / Reuters:

Exclusive: Cybercrime firm uncovered six active attacks on U.S. merchants — The sign outside the Target store is seen in Arvada, Colorado January 10, 2014. — (Reuters) - The cyber security firm IntelCrawler said on Friday that it has uncovered six ongoing attacks at merchants across …

More: IntelCrawler, BGR, TechnoBuffalo, ZDNet, Boing Boing, Gotta Be Mobile, VatorNews and Business Insider

Computerworld:

Target credit card data was sent to server in Russia

More: iSIGHT Partners, Threatpost, ZDNet, Help Net Security, Seculert Blog …, Forbes, Softpedia News and Krebs on Security

Bloomberg:

HTC Said to Plan New One Phone With Larger Screen, Better Camera — HTC Corp. (2498) plans a March release for the latest version of its HTC One smartphone featuring a larger screen and twin-sensor rear camera, according to a person with direct knowledge of the plans.

Andrew Webster / The Verge:

Nintendo ‘studying’ mobile devices in wake of bleak hardware sales forecast — “It's not as simple as enabling Mario to move on a smartphone.” — Earlier today Nintendo slashed its sales forecast for the Wii U by nearly 70 percent, which in turn led the company to predict an operating loss of around $336 million.

More: Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, Re/code, Daring Fireball and Wired

Sam Byford / The Verge:

Nintendo warns of loss after slashing Wii U sales forecast by 69 percent

More: TechCrunch, Reuters, Engadget, GeekWire, Softpedia News, ParisLemon, BGR, Home Media Magazine, Ars Technica, The Next Web, Engadget, The Register, Quartz, Electronista, Guardian and Inquirer

Andrew Martonik / Android Central:

Sprint Wifi Calling poised to debut on two Samsung phones — Calling requires software update but no monthly fee; only supported in the U.S. — T-Mobile may soon no longer be the only major carrier offering first-party Wifi calling, as Sprint apparently is preparing to launch a system of its own.

More: BGR, The Verge, TechnoBuffalo, FierceWireless, DSLreports, TheStreet.com, Gotta Be Mobile, Gigaom, AndroidGuys, AndroidHeadlines.com and The Droid Guy. Tweets: @andrewmbenton

Mike Beasley / 9to5Mac:

Google developing “Chromoting” remote desktop management app for iOS — Google has been working on a remote desktop management app for Android devices called “Chromoting” since last year, but today an entry in the Chromium issue tracker has revealed that an iOS version is also under developement.

More: Engadget, TechCrunch, BGR, Gigaom, Gotta Be Mobile, PadGadget, iDownloadBlog.com and Pureinfotech Newsletter

Google Research Blog:

Google visualizes data from Google Play Music to show changes in music genres over the decades — Explore the history of Pop — and Punk, Jazz, and Folk — with the Music Timeline — With newspapers, blogs, and websites wrapping up their Top Ten album lists for 2013 …

More: The Next Web, The Atlantic Online, Gizmodo, Gigaom, Laughing Squid, PSFK, The Verge, FlowingData, Google Operating System and 9to5Google

Joseph Czikk / BetaKit:

Hopper, the Startup That's Been in Stealth for Six Years Finally (Soft) Launched This Week — It's been six years since a bunch of ex-Expedia and TripAdvisor engineers started working on Hopper, a Montreal and Boston-based startup that has raised $22 million in funding.

More: Tnooz. Thanks:@inkblotca

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

Google introduces surveys to discover why you're muting its ads — Google today announced it is introducing, over the next few weeks, a series of short surveys in English-speaking countries which will appear after a user mutes an ad. The company says its goals are to learn why users mute ads …

More: Inside AdWords, TechCrunch, Marketing Land and VentureBeat

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

Path launches for Windows Phone as a public beta — Path today quietly launched an app for Windows Phone, but there's a small catch: it's a public beta. Nevertheless, the social network has arrived on Microsoft's mobile platform and you can grab the app now directly from the Windows Phone Store.

More: Path, TechCrunch, Engadget, CNET, Softpedia News, My Nokia Blog and Gotta Be Mobile

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