Techmeme: Uber launching an on-demand courier service in Manhattan on Tuesday (Harrison Weber/VentureBeat)

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April 7, 2014, 9:35 PM

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Harrison Weber / VentureBeat:

Uber launching an on-demand courier service in Manhattan on Tuesday — Uber is launching an on-demand courier service tomorrow (exclusive) — Tomorrow, Uber will launch an on-demand courier service in Manhattan, allowing users to request item pickup and delivery via a smartphone app.

More: Uber Blog, Businessweek, TechCrunch, PC World, Wall Street Journal, The Next Web, Vox, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, GeekWire, TechnoBuffalo, Business Insider, Engadget, bizjournals and Mashable

Tweets: @levie, @drew, @howells, @reckless and @ajs

Thanks:@cullenmacdonald

Michael Crider / Android Police:

#1 new paid app in Play Store “Virus Shield” has no functionality, later removed by Google — The #1 New Paid App In The Play Store Costs $4, Has Over 10,000 Downloads, A 4.7-Star Rating... And It's A Total Scam [Updated] — Computer security is important, even if the computer in question fits in your hand.

More: AppleInsider, BGR, TechSpot, Network World, We Live Security, The Hacker News, Redmond Pie, Business Insider, Gigaom Research, Tech2 and GSMArena Blog. Tweets: @edanuff

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:

Everything to know about iOS 8 and OS X 10.10 (Roundup + New Details) — While Apple only officially announced its 2014 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) last week, we have been reporting all of the known information about what Apple plans to unveil at the event over the course of the past few months.

More: Los Angeles Times, Redmond Pie, Pocket-lint, Business Insider, iPhone in Canada Blog, Gotta Be Mobile and iPhone Hacks

Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:

After Raising $250 Million, Lyft Cuts Prices By Up To 20% In All Markets — Last week, Lyft announced that it had raised a massive $250 million round of funding as part of its effort to compete against other on-demand ride services. Now the company is going on the offensive against its competitors …

More: GeekWire. Thanks:@mjburnsy

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols / ZDNet:

Heartbleed: Serious OpenSSL zero day vulnerability revealed — Summary: A new OpenSSL vulnerability has shown up and some companies are annoyed that the bug was revealed before patches could be delivered for it. — New security holes are always showing up.

More: Ars Technica, CloudFlare Blog, The Next Web, TechCrunch, iTnews.com.au, The Register, Threatpost and theWHIR.com

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:

Commenting Platform Disqus Introduces Sponsored Comments — Disqus, which says it powers the comment sections on almost 3 million websites, is announcing a new type of ad unit today — Sponsored Comments. — Since Disqus already runs ads through its Promoted Discovery program …

More: Disqus and The Next Web. Tweets: @dangillmor and @om. See also Mediagazer

Bloomberg:

Microsoft to launch Xbox original TV shows in June, has six series lined up, with more than a dozen projects in development — Microsoft Goes Hollywood in Amazon-Like Programming Push — Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) is going Hollywood with a cast including comedians Sarah Silverman and Seth Green …

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Twitter Acquires Android Lockscreen App Cover, Moves Deeper Into Mobile Services — A very interesting acquisition announcement from Twitter today: it's buying Cover, an Android lockscreen app that lets you customise what apps you see and when. For now, Cover will remain live in the Play store.

More: Cover, The Verge, Gigaom, VatorNews, PC Magazine, Engadget, Re/code, Wall Street Journal, Phandroid, Computerworld, The Next Web, VentureBeat, Marketing Pilgrim and silicontap.com

Tweets: @caseynewton and @rsarver

Max Chafkin / Fast Company:

The story of Better Place, Shai Agassi's failed electric car startup that raised nearly $1B — A Broken Place: The Spectacular Failure Of The Startup That Was Going To Change The World — “So this is the car.” I'm standing outside a shopping mall somewhere in Tel Aviv, Israel, as Guy Pross shows me his ride.

More: Gigaom

Chris Dixon / chris dixon's blog:

Mobile app dominance vs. web will hurt long-term innovation, likely make web a niche product — The decline of the mobile web — People are spending more time on mobile vs desktop: — And more of their mobile time using apps, not the web: — This is a worrisome trend for the web.

More: Business Insider. Tweets: @joshconstine and @johnolilly

Jon Russell / The Next Web:

Waze CEO confirms Google paid $1.15B for the company, hints that investors forced the deal — Google completed its acquisition of Waze last June, but only now has the price tag that it paid for the Israel-headquartered social mapping startup and a hint at why the company sold out been revealed.

More: LinkedIn Pulse, 9to5Google, bizjournals, Android Community, Softpedia News and silicontap.com

David Kravets / Ars Technica:

Supreme Court passes on NSA bulk phone surveillance case — Case will head to appeals court first, but will likely end up with the Supremes. — The Supreme Court declined Monday to resolve the constitutionality of the National Security Agency's bulk telephone metadata surveillance program …

More: The Register, ZDNet, SiliconBeat, Daily Dot, Computerworld and ACLU

Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:

The Micro, A Compact, Consumer-Friendly 3D Printer, Launches On Kickstarter For $199+ — High end 3D printers out in the wild already can print some pretty incredible things but at a high cost and commensurate level of complexity. As with any nascent industry, the market's initial focus …

More: Kickstarter, Engadget, TechCrunch, Business Insider, PC Magazine, SlashGear and The Verge

Casey Johnston / Ars Technica:

Jerk.com scammed money to remove Facebook-scraped profiles, says FTC — A typical Jerk.com profile, where visitors can vote on whether a particular person is or is not a jerk as well as fill in supplementary, personally identifying information. — As of Monday, the FTC has charged …

More: Federal Trade Commission, Federal Trade Commission, The Switch, Adweek, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Oregonian, CBS News, Protecting Your Pocket, MarketWatch, TheHill, MediaPost, NationalJournal.com and Consumerist

Paul Sawers / The Next Web:

Microsoft targets broadcasters with the new studio-grade Skype TX — Microsoft is extending its reach into the broadcasting realm with a new product called Skype TX, which it calls “studio grade software that delivers high quality audio and video output to seamlessly connect broadcast …

More: Skype, TechCrunch, eWeek, The Verge, TechSpot, GeekWire and The Official Microsoft Blog

Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:

StoreDot's Bio-Organic Battery Tech Can Charge From Flat To Full In 30 Seconds — Want to charge your phone from flat to full in 30 seconds? Who doesn't. But don't get too excited yet — Israeli startup StoreDot's bio-organic fast-charging battery tech, which utilizes quantum dot technology, is only a prototype right now.

More: Wall Street Journal, The Next Web, 9to5Mac, Android Central, textually.org, Daily Dot, Business Insider, PC Magazine, Softpedia News, Cult of Mac and Entrepreneur

Lucas Mearian / Computerworld:

Seagate releases 6TB hard drive, its fastest yet — Seagate has released its first 6TB hard drive, saying that it was able to reach that capacity without using helium like rival Western Digital. — Seagate has released its first 6TB, enterprise-class hard disk drive …

More: The Register, The Register, Softpedia News, TechCrunch, ZDNet, Inquirer, Geek.com, Electronista, Electronista, eWeek, IntoMobile, PC Magazine, BGR, BetaNews, TechSpot, Computerworld, Softpedia News and HotHardware.com News. Tweets: @qthrul

Steven Musil / CNET:

Samsung expects Q1 operating profit of $8B, down 4.3 percent — South Korean electronics giant's guidance is largely in line with analyst predictions. — Samsung said Monday it expects to post a decline in first-quarter profit, on slackening demand for its high-end smartphones.

More: Bloomberg, Reuters, BGR, Wall Street Journal and ZDNet

Sean Gallagher / Ars Technica:

Raspberry Pi gets more Arduino-y with new open source modular hardware — The Raspberry Pi Compute Module, ready for your custom hardware soon. — Raspberry Pi Foundation — Soon, there could be Pi in just about any device that needs embedded computing power.

More: Raspberry Pi, VentureBeat, Engadget, SlashGear, Inquirer and TechCrunch

David Sirota / PandoDaily:

Documents show Gogo boasted of helping law enforcement agencies spy on in-flight wifi — We already know that there's almost nowhere on earth you can go to escape the warrantless snooping and panoptic surveillance of the US government. Now it turns out you're not even safe 30,000 feet up in the sky.

Tweets: @csoghoian

Jon Fingas / Engadget:

Google takes legal action against Turkey's YouTube ban — Remember how a Turkish court ordered an end to the country's YouTube ban? Well, that decision has already been reversed — and Google has launched an all-out legal assault in response. The search firm has filed a complaint …

More: VentureBeat, ITworld.com, 9to5Google and Mashable

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