Techmeme: AT&T considering acquisition of DirectTV, in deal likely worth at least $40B (Wall Street Journal)

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May 1, 2014, 11:20 AM

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The Verge:

Foursquare splitting into two apps: Foursquare for discovery and Swarm for checkins — Meet Swarm: Foursquare's ambitious plan to split its app in two — To take on Yelp, Foursquare is moving beyond the check-in — Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley has spent the last year trying to convince …

More: The Foursquare Blog, Business Insider, iMore, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, Gizmodo, The Next Web, Mashable, Android and Me, VentureBreak, Gary Bacon and SlashGear. Tweets: @noah_weiss

Wall Street Journal:

AT&T considering acquisition of DirectTV, in deal likely worth at least $40B — AT&T Has Approached DirecTV About Possible Acquisition — AT&T has approached DirecTV about a possible acquisition of the satellite TV firm, say people familiar with the situation, the latest sign of a possible shakeup in the television industry.

Alex Sherman / Bloomberg:

Sprint Said to Plan T-Mobile Bid After Pushing for Funding — Sprint Corp. (S) plans to push forward with a bid for T-Mobile US Inc. after meeting with banks this month to make debt arrangements for that offer, people with knowledge of the situation said. — Sprint Chief Financial Officer …

Todd Bishop / GeekWire:

T-Mobile adds another 2.4M customers in record quarter, within shouting distance of Sprint — T-Mobile added a net total of 2.4 million customers in the first quarter — the biggest growth in its history — including record expansion of 1.3 million customers in the coveted category of branded postpaid accounts.

More: T-Mobile, Gigaom, The Verge, CNET News, DSLreports, Re/code, iMore, BGR, Reuters, Engadget, AndroidGuys, Android Authority, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and TmoNews. Thanks:@johnhcook

Ellis Hamburger / The Verge:

Snapchat adds ephemeral text messaging and live video chats — Real talk: the new Snapchat brilliantly mixes video and texting — More than just photos, Snapchat's new text and video chat feels immediate and intimate — By any measure, Snapchat has had a busy year.

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:

OS X 10.10 emphasis planned for WWDC, iOS 8 features pushed to iOS 8.1, new Apple TV still in the works — Apple may be planning to give the next version of the Mac OS X operating system, 10.10, a larger presence than iOS 8 at this year's Worldwide Developers Conference, according to sources with knowledge of the plans.

More: Business Insider, MacRumors, BGR, Softpedia News, iPhone Hacks, iPhone in Canada Blog and iLounge. Tweets: @benjaminzamayo. Thanks:@srikardr

Zach Epstein / BGR:

Amazon Smartphone Photos: Exclusive first clear photo of Kindle Phone — Following a series of exclusive reports, BGR has now obtained the first unobscured image of Amazon's debut smartphone — Amazon is still more than a month away from unveiling its first own-brand smartphone, but there isn't much mystery that remains.

More: The Next Web, TechCrunch, Gizmodo, The Verge, SlashGear, AndroidGuys and Android Central. Tweets: @tomwarren

Alistair Barr / Wall Street Journal:

Preliminary analysis of Google Glass teardown estimates cost of components less than $80 — Google Glass Parts Estimated to Cost Less Than $80 — Google Glass currently carries a $1,500 price tag, but the components packed tightly inside the device may cost the Internet giant a lot less …

More: Teardown, Gigaom, CNET News, Ars Technica, 9to5Google, Digital Trends, Geek.com, WebProNews, The Droid Guy, WearablesArena, SlashGear, Android Authority, GSMArena Blog, TechnoBuffalo, Softpedia News, Ubergizmo, Marketing Land and Glass Almanac

Katherine Rosman / Wall Street Journal:

LeapFrog launches LeapBand, a $40 wearable activity tracker for kids — Kid Wearables? LeapFrog Debuts Fitness Tracker for Training Wheels Set — The inevitable is happening: Kids and wearable devices are now going hand-in-hand, er, wrist-in-wrist. But will parents jump at the opportunity …

More: Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Electronista, WearablesArena, Tom's Guide, SlashGear, Computerworld, ABC News, Engadget, Ubergizmo and PC Magazine

Mark Hachman / PC World:

Windows 8 gains natural-language Smart Search, with hints that Cortana could follow — Microsoft said Wednesday that it has added natural-language search to its internal Windows 8 Smart Search. Users can write out queries as sentences or thoughts, rather than try to puzzle out the correct search term.

More: Search Blog, The Next Web, Electronista, Ubergizmo, Softpedia News, The Windows Blog, Beyond Search, Neowin, WinBeta and VentureBeat

Tom Warren / The Verge:

Microsoft brings Movie Moments and Reading List to Windows Phone 8.1

More: The Windows Blog, PC World, The Windows Blog, BetaNews, Softpedia News, Windows Phone Central, WinBeta, Neowin, Ubergizmo, Gigaom and Engadget

Andrew Grush / Android Authority:

Google Search 3.4 updated, Parking Location detects where you've parked your car — Google Search now knows where you parked, might sound cooler than it really is — Earlier today, Google kicked off Update Wednesday by bringing separate apps for Docs, Sheets and Slides to the Google Play store.

More: Android Police, Search Engine Land, The Verge, BGR, The Next Web, Lifehacker, Android and Me, Android Beat, Engadget, Android Community, AndroidHeadlines.com, The Droid Guy, Ubergizmo, 9to5Google, MobileSyrup.com and Pocketnow

Wall Street Journal:

Box Inc. delays IPO plans amid drop in cloud company stocks — Online-storage startup Box is delaying its plans for an initial public offering after a sudden weakening in demand for technology stocks.

More: Mashable, Quartz, Gigaom Research, Fortune, VatorNews, Inc.com, bizjournals, Gigaom, TechCrunch, Business Insider and VentureBeat

Tweets: @theromit, @bijans and @charlesfitz

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo: A ‘whisper mode’ would encourage friends to privately discuss public conversations — Twitter is looking to encourage more private discussions on its service. CEO Dick Costolo would like to have a “whisper mode” that allows users to take public conversations …

More: Bloomberg, Digital Trends, VentureBeat, Gigaom Research and Business Insider

Kashmir Hill / Forbes:

Anonymous Login isn't anonymous to Facebook, which can now reap more data for ad targeting — Why Facebook's New ‘Anonymous Login’ Matters — Facebook is moving one step closer to becoming your all-access pass to the Internet. CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced today that the company plans to offer “Anonymous Login.”

More: Business Insider, BuzzFeed, AllFacebook, Wired and Valleywag. See also Mediagazer

Steven Levy / Wired:

Mark Zuckerberg Explains Facebook's Future, From Virtual Reality to Anonymity

More: Valleywag, Polygon, Businessweek and Dustin Curtis. Tweets: @triketora

Facebook:

Facebook announces Anonymous Login for third-party apps, granular privacy controls for normal Login

More: New York Times, Facebook Developers, Inquirer, Brian Solis, TechCrunch, CNNMoney.com, SocialTimes, GSMArena Blog, USA Today, Quartz, CNET News, AllFacebook, I4U News, Gigaom, Forbes, TechHive, Robert Scoble, The Digital Letter, Business Insider and Tom's Guide

Tweets: @mikeisaac, @bryce, @tim and @mikeisaac

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

Facebook Launches AppLinks To Make Deep Linking Between Apps Easier

More: ReadWrite, Forbes, Facebook, Gigaom, Facebook Developers, Wired, The Register, The Next Web and Inside Facebook

Tweets: @villispeaks, @tim, @lazerow, @tim and @levie

Ryan Gallagher / First Look Media:

British Spy Chiefs Secretly Begged to Play in NSA's Data Pools — A secret memo suggests GCHQ's Sir Iain Lobban (pictured) wanted more access to the NSA's PRISM data. PA Wire/AP — Britain's electronic surveillance agency, Government Communications Headquarters, has long presented …

More: Softpedia News, emptywheel and Techdirt

Tweets: @gchqdirtytricks, @rj_gallagher and @yourrevocentral

Marguerite Reardon / CNET News:

Cox to join Gigabit broadband party — Cox Communications will join Google and AT&T in offering residential customers 1Gbps broadband by the end of the year, the cable operator's CEO told Bloomberg TV. — Utility cabinets house fiber-optic cable for delivering 1Gbps broadband service.

More: Bloomberg, Bloomberg, Ars Technica, Electronista, multichannel.com, FierceTelecom News, SlashGear and Engadget

Chris Davies / SlashGear:

Qualcomm spins off Gimbal Bluetooth beacon business — Qualcomm has spun off Gimbal, its location-based services system compatible with Apple's iBeacon, into a standalone company, offering retailers, entertainment venues, and businesses proximity-sensing and geofencing.

More: Reuters and Gigaom. Thanks:@c_davies

Kim Zetter / Wired:

Hackers Can Mess With Traffic Lights to Jam Roads and Reroute Cars — The hacker in the Italian Job did it spectacularly. So did the fire sale team in Live Free or Die Hard. But can hackers really hijack traffic lights to cause gridlock and redirect cars?

More: IOActive Labs Research, Gizmodo and Help Net Security

Tweets: @threatintel and @kimzetter

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