Techmeme
March 20, 2014, 12:40 AM

Top News

Ryan Mac / Forbes:
Accel Partners Raises New Funds Totaling Over $1 Billion As Facebook Investor Jim Breyer Reduces Role  —  Accel Partners, a leading venture capital and growth equity firm, has raised two new funds totaling $1.475 billion as one of its most prominent figures looks to decrease his role.
Dan Primack / Fortune:
Exclusive: Jim Breyer reducing role at Accel Partners  —  Early Facebook investor Jim Breyer plans to spend more time investing personal capital, and less at the VC firm where he has spent the past 27 years.  —  FORTUNE — Jim Breyer of Accel Partners is one of the most successful venture capitalists …
More: TechCrunchTweets: @danprimack
Mike Isaac / Re/code:
As Messaging Wars Escalate, Social App Tango Raises $280 Million  —  Social startup Tango announced Thursday that it had raised a massive $280 million Series D round of venture funding, the latest significant move among a handful of high-profile apps all vying to own the mobile messaging space.
Parmy Olson / Forbes:
Exclusive: Alibaba Sinks $215 Million Into Messaging App Tango, Valuing It At More Than $1 Billion  —  China's Alibaba is the latest Internet giant to make a bet on the messaging space, and it's a big one.  The company is spending $250 million for a minority stake in the messaging and free-calling app Tango, the startup revealed today.
More: BloombergTweets: @parmy
Levi Pulkkinen / Seattle PI:
Ex-Microsoft employee charged with passing journalist trade secrets  —  Prosecutors: Angry worker sent blogger Windows 8 code, internal documents  —  Workers removing the products from the stage after the Microsoft Windows 8 and Surface event in New York, Oct. 25, 2012.
Chris Velazco / Engadget:
Quirky and GE cook up a smarter, prettier air conditioner  —  Quirky is more than just bendy power strips these days — recently, it's been pushing its vision of the connected home thanks to a multi-million dollar partnership with GE.  So far their deal has yielded stuff like intelligent egg trays …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Want More Privacy In Your App?  Wickr Resells Its Encryption, Self-Destructing Tech To Other Apps  —  Wickr, one of the wave of messaging apps built on the idea of private, encrypted and self-destructing data, has vowed never to make money off its users — with its app remaining free …
Phil Goldstein / FierceWireless:
Huawei backtracks, won't release a dual-OS Android, Windows Phone smartphone  —  Huawei said it has no plans to release a dual-OS smartphone running Microsoft's (NASDAQ:MSFT) Windows Phone and Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android, contradicting earlier statements from a Huawei executive.
Christian Nutt / Gamasutra:
Facebook sends 735 million referrals to games every day  —  Today at GDC, Facebook revealed new statistics around its user base that show that developers who create games for both mobile — using Facebook to drive community engagement — and also deploy them to their website see significant lift in engagement and revenue.
Nick Summers / The Next Web:
PlayStation 4 update to add rich video editor, 720p Twitch streaming, HDCP off option, and more  —  The Xbox One has already received a few firmware updates and it would seem the PlayStation 4 is about to follow suit.  —  Sony today detailed an upcoming patch for its new console …
Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:
Yahoo launches Games Network platform for developers, new Classic Games site for Android, iOS, and the Web  —  Yahoo today announced a renewed push into games with the launch of its Yahoo Games Network platform and its Yahoo Classic Games site.  The company says it already has more improvements …
Joseph Marks / Nextgov:
White House Releases Climate Data Set, Challenges Developers to Use It  —  The Obama administration opened up a trove of climate change data on Wednesday as part of its larger drive to open up government data.  —  The data housed at Data.gov/climate will be contributed by NASA …
Eriq Gardner / Hollywood Reporter:
MP3Tunes Founder Michael Robertson Found Liable for Copyright Infringement  —  A jury finds that the once-popular website willfully blinded itself to thousands of songs being stolen.  —  On Wednesday, a jury in a New York federal courtroom found MP3Tunes founder Michael Robertson liable …
More: Reuters and BloombergTweets: @ericgoldman
Jay Hathaway / Gawker:
Dong Nguyen says Flappy Bird will return to the App Store, but not soon  —  Enjoy Your Life While You Can, Because Flappy Bird is Coming Back  —  The most addictive, dangerous new drug of 2014 is about to come back on the market.  Game developer Dong Nguyen has announced that his hit game Flappy Bird …
Sean Hollister / The Verge:
The second Oculus Rift developer kit includes higher resolution panels, peripheral camera for position tracking, ships in July for $350  —  World-builders, rejoice: the final Oculus Rift VR dev kit is here  —  One year ago today, Oculus introduced the first version of its prototype virtual reality headset …
Arik Hesseldahl / Re/code:
Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior Joins Box's Board  —  Box, the enterprise-focused cloud storage and platform company, named Cisco Systems' CTO and chief strategy officer Padmasree Warrior to its board of directors, taking another step toward an IPO that's expected before the summer.
Martin Beck / Marketing Land:
Google Search Can Now Take Photos, Videos, On Your Android Phone  —  So you want to take a quick photo or video with your Android phone?  It just got a bit easier, at least for those who like to tell their phone what to do.  —  Google updated its Android Search app today …
Caitlin Dewey / Washington Post:
Meet Cloak, the ‘antisocial’ network that helps you avoid people  —  We have myriad tech-enabled ways to encounter friends (and strangers!) in real life.  We can check in on Foursquare.  Tag a location on Instagram.  Swipe on Tinder.  Tweet, from just about anywhere.

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