Techmeme
January 28, 2014, 1:30 PM

Top News

Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Framing Google Glass: the headset of the future now works with prescription lenses  —  Just shy of a year after the Google Glass Explorer edition started arriving on early adopters' doorsteps, Google is announcing a way for people who need prescription glasses to use it.
Claire Cain Miller / New York Times:
Google Glass to Be Covered by Vision Care Insurer VSP  —  SAN FRANCISCO — Google and VSP, the nation's biggest optical health insurance provider, have struck a deal to offer subsidized frames and prescription lenses for Google Glass, the Internet-connected eyewear.
Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
NFL to block mobile streaming video in Super Bowl stadium  —  Smartphone usage has skyrocketed at sporting events, as anyone who's attended a recent game can tell you.  Look around the stands and you'll see fans checking stats, sharing pictures on social media, or just killing time between plays.
Neil Hughes / AppleInsider:
Tim Cook admits iPhone 5c share lower than expected, says demand was ‘different than we thought’  —  Though Apple doesn't break down sales of individual iPhone models, Chief Executive Tim Cook admitted on Monday that sales of the iPhone 5c represented a smaller mix of total handset sales than his company anticipated.
Apple:
Catherine Shu / TechCrunch:
Global Smartphone Shipments Top 1 Billion For The First Time Thanks To Cheap Android Devices, Says IDC  —  The global smartphone market shipped one billion units in a single year for the first time, with Samsung as the leading vendor, according to a new report by research firm IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker.
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
ISPs No Longer Have to Block The Pirate Bay, Dutch Court Rules  —  The Pirate Bay is arguably the most-censored website on the Internet, but that's no longer the case in the Netherlands.  —  In 2010 Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN went to court to try and force Ziggo, the Netherlands' largest ISP, to block The Pirate Bay.
Brad Molen / Engadget:
Pebble Steel review: at last, a stylish smartwatch  —  Smartwatches are supposed to be pieces of jewelry that are just as personal as the smartphones they're attached to, yet rarely are they thought of as fashionable.  We've seen a handful (or is it wristful?) that are hip, ornate and sporty …
Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:
Rovio Denies Providing Angry Birds User Data To The NSA, Points Finger At Third-Party Ad Networks  —  A new report originating from the ongoing Snowden document trove presents the terrifying possibility that our casual gaming habits offer government surveillance agencies a look at some key personal data …
Devlin Barrett / Wall Street Journal:
Christopher Mims / Quartz:
Intel's voice recognition will blow Siri out of the water—because it doesn't use the cloud  —  There's a problem with today's voice recognition systems: They're just too slow.  Anyone who has waited in frustration while Siri or Google's Voice Search “thinks” about even the simplest commands knows what I'm talking about.
More: Gearburn and The VergeTweets: @qzThanks:@hermanywong
Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:
Akamai: Average Internet speed grew 29% year-over-year to 3.6 Mbps, mobile traffic jumped by 80%  —  Global average connection speeds have hit a new high, rising 29 percent year-over-year to 3.6 Mbps.  Meanwhile, the demands of the mobile world are growing very fast, with data traffic increasing by 80 percent in the last year.
Alice Truong / Fast Company:
Following Arrest, BitInstant CEO Charlie Shrem Resigns From Bitcoin Foundation  —  The day after BitInstant CEO Charlie Shrem was arrested on money-laundering charges, the 24-year-old has resigned from the Bitcoin Foundation, where he was a founding member and had served as vice chairman since 2012.
More: The Verge and CoinDeskThanks:@alicetruong
Bill Laing / The Official Microsoft Blog:
Microsoft contributes cloud server designs to the Open Compute Project  —  On Tuesday, I will deliver a keynote address to 3,000 attendees at the Open Compute Project (OCP) Summit in San Jose, Calif. where I will announce that Microsoft is joining the OCP, a community focused on engineering …
Bloomberg:
Perkins: I Regret Using the Word Kristallnacht  —  In an exclusive interview, Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers Co-Founder Tom Perkins discusses his comments comparing the treatment of wealthy Americans to the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany.  He speaks exclusively with Emily Chang on Bloomberg Television's “Bloomberg West.”

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