Techmeme: Virgin Mobile intros a blank-slate smartphone plan you can customize any way you like (Kevin Fitchard/Gigaom)

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July 30, 2014, 1:50 PM

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Bloomberg:

Snapchat Said in Funding Talks With Alibaba at $10 Billion — Snapchat Inc., the company that makes a mobile application for disappearing photo messages, is in talks with investors including Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (BABA) for a round of financing that may value the company at $10 billion, people with knowledge of the situation said.

More: Gigaom, Re/code, New York Times, USA Today, VentureBeat, Guardian, Engadget, TechCrunch, Business Insider, Valleywag, Mashable and WebProNews

Tweets: @bloombergtv, @monkbent and @nichcarlson

Derrick Harris / Gigaom:

Twitter acquires deep learning startup Madbits — Twitter has acquired Madbits, a deep-learning-based computer vision startup founded by proteges of Facebook AI director Yann LeCun. It's the latest in a spate of deep learning and computer vision acquisitions that also includes Google, Yahoo, Dropbox and Pinterest.

More: Madbits, Wall Street Journal, VentureBeat, Marketing Land, Re/code, Guardian, CNET, CIO.com, Beyond Search, memeburn, WebProNews, TechCrunch, The Next Web and ZDNet. See also Mediagazer

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

Hangouts Now Works Without Google+ Account, Becomes Part Of Google Apps For Business And Gets SLA — Say what you want about Google+, but it incubated two great products at Google: Hangouts for video meetings and Google+ Photos. While Photos is still deeply integrated with the social network …

More: Google Enterprise Blog, Gigaom, CITEworld, VentureBeat, The Next Web, ZDNet, 9to5Google, Re/code, PC World, Gizmodo and Mashable

Kevin Fitchard / Gigaom:

Virgin Mobile intros a blank-slate smartphone plan you can customize any way you like — Virgin Mobile's new prepaid plan can be anything you want it to be from a bare-bones emergency calling service to a custom unlimited Facebook plan. — Next month, Virgin Mobile USA will offer a new …

More: Wall Street Journal, Virgin Mobile, Gizmodo, Engadget, eWeek, BGR, The Verge, TIME, iMore, TechSpot, CNET, Droid Life, USA Today, LAPTOP Magazine and Re/code

Joe Belfiore / Windows Phone Blog:

Windows Phone 8.1 Update expands Cortana to new countries, adds “Live” folders on start screen, and more — Windows Phone 8.1 Update brings Cortana to new markets + new features — Back in April, you heard me talk about how we believe Windows Phone 8.1 is the world's …

Jay Yarow / Business Insider:

Q&A WITH TWITTER CEO DICK COSTOLO: Why Twitter Was Able To Blow Away Expectations This Quarter — Twitter delivered its first boffo earnings report as a public company for the second quarter. — It crushed expectations on revenue, EPS, and most importantly, monthly active users.

More: SiliconBeat. Tweets: @bijan and @andybeal

Garett Sloane / Adweek:

Twitter Is Considering Any Change that Will Convert Visitors to Logged-In Users Even filtering tweets

Tweets: @mathewi

Maria Kiselyova / Reuters:

Russia wants access to Apple and SAP source code to see if their products are used for spying — Russia wants Apple, SAP to cooperate against foreign spying — * Apple, SAP guard their source code closely — * Russian, Western relations strained over Ukraine

More: AppleInsider, 9to5Mac, iMore, Cult of Mac, Electronista, Patently Apple, iLounge, ITAR-TASS, The Moscow Times and App Advice

Eric Jackson / Forbes:

After several costly errors by CEO Marissa Mayer, Yahoo could use another activist investor — How Do You Solve A Problem Like Marissa? — [Disclosure: Author was long YHOO at time of writing.] — There's been a sharp response to the post I wrote last Wednesday in Forbes outlining …

More: Business Insider. Tweets: @mdudas and @forbes. Thanks:@techtipster1

Michael Carney / PandoDaily:

EXCLUSIVE: Payments giant First Data acquires Gyft in an effort to bring digital gift cards to the masses — Gyft, a Redwood City-based virtual gift card provider has been acquired by payment giant First Data, Pando has learned. The terms of the transaction were undisclosed …

More: Gyft, TechCrunch, LOCAL ONLINER and Gigaom

Jon Fingas / Engadget:

FreedomPop's free data and voice are now available on tablets — Many people can't really justify buying a cellular-equipped tablet — why pay for more data when your phone probably does the trick? FreedomPop is undoubtedly aware of that thriftiness, as it just started offering its namesake free service on tablets.

More: 9to5Mac, Gigaom, Gizmodo, CNET, TechHive, 9to5Google, The Next Web, Android Police, Re/code, iDownloadBlog.com, Gotta Be Mobile, TWICE, App Advice and Cult of Mac

Marcus Wohlsen / Wired:

Square prepares new reader with support for forthcoming cards with embedded computer chips — Square Bets Big on Next-Gen Credit Card Tech — Square first came to fame with a credit card reader you could plug into your iPhone jack. But next year, the company's signature device …

More: Square, The Verge, iMore, New York Times, TechCrunch, 9to5Mac, The Next Web and Gizmodo. Thanks:@emilydreyfuss

Catherine Shu / TechCrunch:

Amazon To Invest $2B In Its India Marketplace As Competition With Flipkart Intensifies — Just one day after Flipkart disclosed that it had raised as massive $1 billion round, Amazon has upped the ante by announcing that it will invest $2 billion in its Indian marketplace, which it launched about a year ago.

More: The Next Web, New York Times, GeekWire, Wall Street Journal, MediaNama, Computerworld, Gigaom, NextBigWhat, OStatic blogs, Associated Press and internetretailer.com

Brad Smith / Wall Street Journal:

Microsoft's general counsel on how the government wants the right to access emails stored abroad — We're Fighting the Feds Over Your Email — Governments want the right to see email stored anywhere in the world. Microsoft says not so fast. — On Thursday Microsoft will oppose …

More: WinBeta, Business Insider and emptywheel. Thanks:@techtipster1

Sam Byford / The Verge:

‘Mario Kart 8’ fails to stem growing Nintendo losses — 2.82 million copies sold, but most to existing Wii U owners — Nintendo made an operating loss of ¥9.47 billion ($92.7 million) in its first quarter of 2014, with the launch of Mario Kart 8 sparking a bump in Wii U hardware sales …

More: CNET, BGR, Engadget, Ars Technica, Fortune, Bloomberg, BBC, Metro.co.uk, IGN, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Softpedia News, TechCrunch, Polygon and Geek.com

Andy Fixmer / Mashable:

Netflix Signs Peering Deal With AT&T to Reduce Buffering — This story has been updated to include a statement from AT&T confirming the peering deal. — Netflix has reached an agreement with AT&T to give its streaming service direct access to AT&T's network, with the goal of reducing buffering …

More: TechHive, Softpedia News, TechSpot, Digital Trends, Washington Post, TechCrunch, The Register, Electronista, Ars Technica, SlashGear, CNET, Reuters, Gizmodo, DSLreports, The Verge, Gigaom and Engadget. Thanks:@toddwasserman. See also Mediagazer

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

Pinterest Acquires Icebergs, The “Pinterest For Creatives” — Pinterest has acquired Icebergs, a “Pinterest for creative types,” which offered an online collaboration service that allowed users to organize their projects, including not only images, but also articles, files, videos, and other content, and share that content with others.

More: Icebergs, The Next Web and WebProNews

Shane Harris / Foreign Policy:

Ex-NSA head Keith Alexander says his new company IronNet Cybersecurity invented unique technology to detect hackers, will file at least nine patents — The NSA's Cyber-King Goes Corporate — Here's why Keith Alexander thinks he's worth a million dollars a month. — GOOGLE +

More: Techdirt, TechPresident, Washington Post, Ars Technica, emptywheel, The Verge and VICE

Tweets: @dangillmor, @csoghoian, @dbgrady and @ashk4n

Jonathan Vanian / Gigaom:

AT&T, IBM Research and ACS create faster way to distribute bandwidth in the cloud — The new SDN prototype, developed as part of the U.S. Government's DARPA CORONET program, is basically a powerful resource management system that can coordinate data flow and hand out more bandwidth when needed.

More: SiliconANGLE, rdmag.com, Bloomberg, Light Reading, FedScoop, ZDNet, eWeek and The Register

Eduard Kovacs / SecurityWeek:

Tor Warns of Attack Attempting to Deanonymize Users — The Tor Project has disclosed details of an attack which appeared to be an attempt to deanonymize users of the popular anonymity network. — According to Tor Project Leader Roger Dingledine, the attack was detected on July 4 …

More: The Tor Blog blogs, Gizmodo, Telegraph, The Register, The Verge, Softpedia News, Deep Dot Web and Gigaom. Tweets: @csoghoian. Thanks:@wiredmike

Noah Rayman / TIME:

You Can Now Donate to Wikipedia in Bitcoin — The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit responsible for Wikipedia, said Wednesday that it will accept donations of the digital currency Bitcoin. — “It has always been important to the Foundation to make sure donating is as simple and inclusive as possible …

More: Wikimedia blog, The Coinbase Blog and CoinDesk

Tweets: @brian_armstrong and @coinbase

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