Techmeme: Flickr Turns 10: The Rise, Fall and Revival of a Photo-Sharing Community (Harry McCracken/TIME)

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February 11, 2014, 4:50 AM

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Wall Street Journal:

Nokia Prepares to Release Android Phone Ahead of Sale to Microsoft — Finnish Smartphone Maker Readies Device for Barcelona Exhibit — Nokia Corp. plans to release this month a smartphone that runs a version of Google Inc. 's Android mobile software, according to people familiar with the matter …

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:

New Apple TV hardware references already appearing in iOS 7 builds — We reported last fall that a revamped Apple TV set-top-box is in the works, and then we learned earlier this year that the new box would likely be introduced in the first half of 2014. Sources said at the time that the new model …

More: AppleTell, NEWS.com.au, TechnoBuffalo, iPhone in Canada Blog, AppleInsider, MacRumors, Apple Bitch, iDownloadBlog.com, Touch Arcade, BGR, iMore, Business Insider, Electronista and iLounge

Reuters:

Chastened HTC turns to cheaper smartphones in search for profit — (Reuters) - Smarting from growing losses, Taiwanese phone maker HTC Corp says it will expand its range of cheaper products as it fixes off-target marketing for its premium smartphones. — The company that has long prided itself …

More: NYT Bits, BGR, Android Central, It's a Gadget, Ars Technica, TechCrunch, Softpedia News, I4U News, Droid Life, Pocketables, PC Magazine, iPhone, VentureBeat, MobileBurn.com, Guardian and Android and Me

Brian Fung / Washington Post:

This blogger paid Facebook to promote his page. He got 80,000 bogus Likes instead. — If you manage a Facebook page for a company, interest or organization, then you know there are two main reasons Facebook Likes are important. One is pretty obvious: The number of Likes you receive …

More: YouTube, The Next Web, Tubefilter, The Daily Caller, AGBeat, ITworld, BestTechie, Mashable, Union Square Ventures and memeburn

Tweets: @pug, @nytimesbits, @teresangonzalez, @calebgarling, @counternotions and @narendra

Rebecca Grant / VentureBeat:

And the winners are... Check out the victors from the Crunchies 2013! — It just wouldn't be an award show without drama. The Crunchies Awards attracted the attention of anti-tech protestors this year, who staged a demonstration outside Davies Symphony Hall as the movers-and-shakers …

More: TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, TechCrunch and TechCrunch. Tweets: @howardlindzon

Jonathan S. Geller / BGR:

BlackBerry BBM boss gone as company looks to strengthen enterprise business — BGR has learned from multiple sources that Executive Vice President Andrew Bocking is no longer with the company. What is unconfirmed, however, is whether Bocking was fired or decided to leave on his own accord.

More: TechCrunch, Bloomberg, CrackBerry.com, The Register, TechnoBuffalo, PhoneArena, Pocket-lint, Re/code, Gigaom Research and SlashGear

George Packer / New Yorker:

Is Amazon Bad for Books? — Amazon is good for customers. But is it good for books? Amazon is a global superstore, like Walmart. It's also a hardware manufacturer, like Apple, and a utility, like Con Edison, and a video distributor, like Netflix, and a book publisher, like Random House …

More: Salon, GeekWire, Re/code, Business Insider and Forbes

Tweets: @bradstone and @jbarro

See also Mediagazer

Jay Yarow / Business Insider:

Barnes & Noble Fired Its Nook Hardware Engineering Staff — Barnes & Noble laid off its Nook hardware engineers, according to a source that tipped Business Insider. — The engineers were let go last Thursday, according to our source. This follows Barnes & Noble dismissing the VP of Hardware, Bill Saperstein in January.

More: Softpedia News, Pocket-lint, DisplayBlog, eWeek, VatorNews, TechSpot, TechCrunch, New York Times, Ubergizmo, Ars Technica, Daring Fireball, GeekWire, SlashGear, The Verge and Deadline.com. See also Mediagazer

John Hsu / LiveSide.net:

Exclusive: OneDrive to offer bonus free storage for friends referral and camera roll backup — In case you missed it, yesterday we exclusively reported that OneDrive is getting a new “co-owned folders” feature. But the good news doesn't stop here, as we have received more exclusive information regarding what's to come with OneDrive.

More: My Nokia Blog, The Verge, Electronista, TechCrunch, Softpedia News, Network World, WinBeta and Gotta Be Mobile. Tweets: @edbott

Todd Bishop / GeekWire:

Activists block Microsoft shuttles in Seattle, in anti-gentrification protest — Photo by Sean Maguire, via Twitter. — Several Microsoft Connector shuttles were reportedly blocked for a total of 45 minutes in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood this morning by protesters handing out flyers …

More: CHS Capitol Hill Seattle, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, NYT Bits and CNET

Tweets: @pmarca and @jreichhold

Harry McCracken / TIME:

Flickr Turns 10: The Rise, Fall and Revival of a Photo-Sharing Community — If you happened to be at the O'Reilly Emerging Tech Conference in San Diego 10 years ago today, on February 10, 2004, you had the opportunity to witness a meaningful moment in the history of the web …

More: Flickr Blog, The Next Web, TechCrunch and PC Magazine

Tweets: @neb and @tomcoates

Thanks:@mariedomingo

Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:

Netflix performance on Verizon and Comcast has been dropping for months — Comcast streams Netflix at just the right speed for the Slowskys. — Netflix's speed rankings show that video streaming performance on Verizon and Comcast has been dropping for the past three to four months.

More: Netflix US & Canada Blog, The Verge and DSLreports

Kim Zetter / Wired:

Sophisticated Spy Tool ‘The Mask’ Rages Undetected for 7 Years — PUNTA CANA, Dominican Republic - Researchers have uncovered a sophisticated cyber spying operation that has been alive since at least 2007 and uses techniques and code that surpass any nation-state spyware previously spotted in the wild.

More: Securelist / Blog, SlashGear and SC Magazine

Robert McMillan / Wired:

Google Takes Over NASA's Hangar One, a Silicon Valley Icon — Google has taken over the lease at the airfield that houses Hangar One — the giant eight-acre aircraft hangar that was built in 1933 to house massive dirigibles and now is one of the most recognizable landmarks in Silicon Valley.

More: Mercury News, NASA, PR Newswire, Silicon Valley Business …, NASA Watch, Mercury News, TechCrunch, Computerworld, Inside Google and Re/code

Lan Anh Nguyen / Forbes:

Exclusive: Flappy Bird Creator Dong Nguyen Says App ‘Gone Forever’ Because It Was ‘An Addictive Product’ — The mysterious developer of the world's most popular free app, who drew global attention this past weekend with his sudden decision to remove it, tells Forbes that Flappy Bird is dead.

More: The Next Web, Tech in Asia, Kotaku, Softpedia News, Quartz and Slate

Nicholas Carlson / Business Insider:

Facebook Changed How The News Feed Works — And Huge Website Upworthy Suddenly Shrank In Half — In November, viral-content-for-a-cause site Upworthy posted insane traffic numbers, reaching almost 90 million people around the world, according to Quantcast. — Then, in December …

More: StartupBook. Tweets: @rafat, @jbrodkin, @ibogost, @dannysullivan, @cschweitz and @jayrosen_nyu. See also Mediagazer

Joe Palazzolo / Law Blog:

Apple Loses Bid to Shake Monitor But Doesn't Walk Away Empty-Handed — Apple Inc. will have to submit to a court-imposed monitor while the technology company challenges a ruling holding it liable for conspiring to raise the price of electronic books, a federal appeals court ruled on Monday.

More: Fortune, Re/code and iMore. See also Mediagazer

Brian Fagioli / BetaNews:

Microsoft soars through the sky — FAA authorizes Surface 2 for pilot use — Traveling on an airplane used to be quite the archaic experience. Sure, soaring above the clouds is great, but for many, using electronic devices for things like Flappy Bird is much more exciting.

More: Surface Blog, SlashGear and WinBeta. Thanks:@brianfagioli

Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:

Future Samsung phones could share what you type with other apps — ‘Context’ would reportedly share typing, sensor data, and app use — Samsung is said to be considering letting app developers know a whole lot more detail about what individual users do with their phones.

More: The Information and The Next Web

Derrick Harris / Gigaom:

Red Hat and Hortonworks fuse Hadoop and cloud in new partnership — Hortonworks' strategy of riding its channel partners to commercial success took a seemingly big step forward on Monday with the announcement of a new strategic partnership with Red Hat. Under the new alliance …

More: ZDNet, Re/code, bizjournals and MarketWatch

Harrison Weber / VentureBeat:

Thousands of tech companies, groups, sites join “The Day We Fight Back” anti-NSA protest on Tuesday — Reddit, Mozilla, Tumblr and more gear up for massive NSA protest tomorrow — Caption: SOPA protests in San Francisco. — Source: Wikipedia — Remember the Internet's reaction to SOPA and PIPA?

More: Electronic Frontier Foundation, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Global Voices Advocacy, NBC News, Guardian, P2P Foundation's blog, SocialTimes, The Verge, FierceCIO News and SiliconBeat. See also Mediagazer

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

Microsoft beats Google by adding Bitcoin currency conversion to Bing — Microsoft today added Bitcoin currency conversion to Bing, which supports over 50 currencies in its index. Conversion is as simple as typing in “x btc to currency” or “x currency to btc.” The data is provided by digital wallet company Coinbase:

More: Search Blog, The Coinbase Blog, Re/code, Softpedia News, WebProNews, Search Engine Land, GeekWire, LiveSino, PC World, WinBeta, CNET, Ubergizmo, The Verge, TheHill, CoinDesk and Engadget

SecureMac:

New Apple Mac Trojan Called OSX/CoinThief Discovered — SecureMac has discovered a new Trojan Horse called OSX/CoinThief.A, which targets Mac OS X and spies on web traffic to steal Bitcoins. This malware has been found in the wild, and there are multiple user reports of stolen Bitcoins.

More: Guardian, Breaking Apple News …, The Mac Observer, Cult of Mac, ReadWrite, Electronista, SecurityWeek, Digital Trends, iPhone in Canada Blog, Inquirer, MacMegasite and CoinDesk. Tweets: @__apf__

Ryan Knutson / Wall Street Journal:

Sprint Rethinks Acquiring T-Mobile After Public Antitrust Opposition — Justice Department, FCC Officials Expressed Strong Opposition to a Deal — Sprint Corp. officials are regrouping to decide whether trying to acquire smaller rival T-Mobile US Inc. makes sense after antitrust officials …

More: eWeek, BGR, The Verge, ZDNet, App Advice, GeekWire, Digital Trends, Tech Trader Daily, VentureBeat and CNET

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