Techmeme
April 28, 2014, 6:00 PM

Top News

Chris Urmson / The Official Google Blog:
Google's self-driving cars get smarter at handling city driving conditions, log 700K miles  —  The latest chapter for the self-driving car: mastering city street driving  —  Jaywalking pedestrians.  Cars lurching out of hidden driveways.  Double-parked delivery trucks blocking your lane and your view.
Eric Jaffe / The Atlantic Cities:
The First Look at How Google's Self-Driving Car Handles City Streets  —  MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.—The first rule of riding in Google's self-driving car, says Dmitri Dolgov, is not to compliment Google's self-driving car.  We've been cruising the streets of Mountain View for about ten minutes.
More: Brad Ideas
Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:
Refreshed MacBook Airs with latest Haswell chips likely launching tomorrow  —  New MacBook Airs likely launching tomorrow  —  Update: Here are the specs...  Apple is preparing to launch a refreshed line of MacBook Air laptops as soon as tomorrow, according to multiple sources.
Xbox Wire:
Xbox Originals launching in June on Xbox 360, Xbox One, and other Microsoft devices  —  Xbox Originals: Coming Soon to a Screen Near You  —  Starting this June, you'll have more reasons to love your Xbox: Xbox Originals - premium dramas, comedies, documentaries, animation, unscripted shows, and live events.
Chris Wanstrath / GitHub:
GitHub CEO apologizes for lack of transparency, details findings of independent investigator  —  Follow up to the investigation results  —  Last Monday I published the least open and least transparent blog post GitHub has ever written.  —  We failed to admit and own up to our mistakes, and for that I'm sorry.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Nokia ‘Superman’ expected later this year is a 4.7" phone with a 5 megapixel front camera  —  Nokia ‘Superman’ will be the best Windows Phone for selfies  —  One of the first Windows Phone 8.1 devices due for release after Microsoft's acquisition of Nokia's phone business …
Richard Lai / Engadget:
Plastic HTC ‘M8 Ace’ aims at Galaxy S5 with same specs, lower price  —  HTC may have poked fun at its competitors' plastic flagship devices in the past, but it looks like the Taiwanese company will soon be offering one as well.  And no, we're not talking about the Butterfly line here.
Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:
Skype makes group video calling free on Windows, Mac, and Xbox One; coming to all platforms ‘in the future’  —  Skype today announced it is making group video calling (GVC) available free of charge on Windows desktop, OS X, and the Xbox One.  At the same time, the company is also promising …
Mark Scott / New York Times:
Annual Profit Falls 52 Percent for Angry Birds Maker Rovio  —  LONDON - All is not well in the land of Angry Birds.  —  On Monday, Rovio, the Finnish gaming company behind the once-popular franchise, announced a more than 50 percent drop in its 2013 net profit, to $37 million, compared with the previous year.
Ina Fried / Re/code:
AT&T to Take On Gogo With In-Flight LTE Service  —  AT&T on Monday said it plans to get into the in-flight Internet access business by building a new air-to-ground technology based on its LTE wireless service.  —  “Everyone wants access to high-speed, reliable mobile Internet wherever they are …
More: Gizmodo, BGR, ZDNet and AT&T
Jordan Novet / VentureBeat:
New Relic brings in $100M more ahead of IPO  —  Software analytics company New Relic has raised $100 million in new funding, the company said today.  That helps put off a debut on public markets.  —  The money will go toward more product enhancements and more expansion internationally, the company said.
Peter Kafka / Re/code:
NBCUniversal research chief Alan Wurtzell says Twitter chatter does not increase TV viewership  —  NBC Pokes a Hole in Twitter's TV Story  —  You know how Twitter is supposed to be TV's friend?  —  Things look a little less congenial today.  —  That's after a pointed article in the Financial Times …
Deborah Gage / Wall Street Journal:
InsideSales.com Raises $100M to Predict Sales; Valuation Close to $1 Billion  —  InsideSales.com Inc. has raised $100 million at a valuation of nearly $1 billion, Venture Capital Dispatch has learned, in what one investor called one of the most competitive deals he'd ever been involved in.
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Microsoft Won't Brand Its Own Phones ‘Microsoft Mobile’ — Nor Use Nokia's Name For Long  —  Now that Nokiasoft is (un)officially a thing, following the completion on Friday of Microsoft's multi-billion dollar purchase of Nokia's devices division, the question of which brand names Microsoft …
Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:
Microsoft Research Special Projects group tipped to take on Google X  —  Summary: Microsoft is building a Special Projects team expected to be headed by former DARPA innovation boss Norman Whitaker, which will focus on ‘disruptive next-generation technologies.’
Jonathan Kizer / 9to5Google:
Galaxy S5 “Prime” reportedly coming this June with quad-HD display as model number leaks  —  The Galaxy S5 may have just hit store shelves and the hands of users, but it seems as if Samsung is already planning an upgraded version of its flagship device.  According to a report from SamMobile …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Kantar: Windows Phone ‘Stutters’ Amid Android Price Competition, iPhone 5S Is Apple's Buffer  —  Last Friday, Microsoft finally took control as the new owner of Nokia's devices business, but it's coming into its new position as a mobile hardware maker with no less a challenge than Nokia has had for the last couple of years.

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Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica: