Techmeme: Rhapsody revives CEO position after four-year absence, appoints mobile vet David Hose as interim chief (Joan E. Solsman/CNET)

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October 22, 2014, 7:30 PM

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Mat Honan / Wired:

Twitter's new SDK Fabric represents an audacious plan to live inside every app — Twitter's Audacious Plan to Infiltrate All Your Apps — Twitter is releasing a new software development kit today at its developer's conference. It's called Fabric. It does lots of very pretty things …

More: Marketing Land, Gigaom, USA Today, Tech Times, Gizmodo, ReadWrite, Computerworld, Forbes, Mashable, ZDNet and The Next Web

Tweets: @christianhern, @stevesi, @digiphile, @carnage4life, @mattlynley, @mat and @mikeisaac

Thanks:@mat

Jeff Seibert / The Twitter Blog:

Twitter introduces Fabric, an SDK for mobile developers — Introducing Fabric — Today at Flight, we announced Fabric, a modular mobile platform that makes it easy for developers to build great apps. — The Fabric platform is made of three modular kits that address some of the most common …

More: New York Times, VatorNews, CNET, VentureBeat, Forbes, Re/code, MobileSyrup.com, ReadWrite, Mashable, TechCrunch, SlashGear and WebProNews

Tweets: @joshconstine, @fabric and @mikeisaac

Casey Newton / The Verge:

Twitter's Digits enables users of third-party apps to sign up using just their phone number — Inside Twitter's ambitious plan to kill the password — As he traveled the world last year as part of a user research project, Michael Ducker noticed a problem.

More: TechCrunch, Washington Post, VentureBeat, ReadWrite, Macworld, Marketing Land, Guardian, TechSpot, iMore, Business Insider, Phandroid and Engadget

Dieter Bohn / The Verge:

Google aims to reinvent email with Inbox, a marriage of Gmail and Google Now, currently invite-only — Inbox is a total reinvention of email from Google — The new Gmail app from the Gmail team isn't technically just an email app, at least if you ask them.

Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:

Hands On With Google Inbox: Useful Email Triage Tools For A Mobile Workflow — Google's Inbox email app is now available, and we have access to the limited release, which is being distributed via Google's tried-and-true invite system. While many will have to wait to check it out for themselves …

More: ReadWrite, NEWS.com.au, Computerworld, 9to5Mac, TechHive, internetretailer.com, Marketing Pilgrim, Search Engine Land, SlashGear, AndroidGuys and GeekWire

iFixit:

iPad Air 2 Teardown — Step 1 — iPad Air 2 Teardown Just add air? That would be too easy. Apple has packaged all kinds of revised hardware into its thinnest tablet yet: Fully laminated, 9.7" IPS Multi-Touch LCD with a 2,048 x 1,536 resolution at 264 ppi and antireflective coating A8X 64-bit CPU …

More: Gizmodo, iMore, MacRumors, 9to5Mac, SlashGear and iPhone in Canada Blog

John Gruber / Daring Fireball:

iPad Air 2 is faster than 2011 MacBook Air, forges ahead of new iPhones on performance — The iPad Air 2 (And a Few Cursory Words Regarding the iPad Mini 3) — The relationship between the iPad and the iPhone, performance-wise, has been hard to predict.

More: Ars Technica, Tested, Business Insider, MacDailyNews and BGR

Tweets: @asymco, @narenbalaji and @om

Walt Mossberg / Re/code:

iPad Air 2: best iPad ever, but only a modest evolutionary improvement over the Air

More: MacRumors, AppleInsider, Engadget, App Advice, Wall Street Journal, iPhone Hacks, Macworld, Asymco, TechHive, iDownloadBlog.com, Marketing Land, The Loop, MacNN and USA Today

Nilay Patel / The Verge:

iPad Air 2 review: great hardware, but lacks multiuser, multitasking support, tablet-specific features

More: MacRumors, Tech.pinions, TIME, iPhone Hacks, MacDailyNews, iMore and TUAW

Mark Spoonauer / Laptop Mag:

iPad Air 2 benchmarks: excels in Geekbench compared to Samsung Galaxy Tab, Nvidia Shield, Sony Xperia Z2, strong on 3DMark but not best

More: Gotta Be Mobile and BGR. Thanks:@mspoonauer

Maeve Duggan / Pew Internet:

Pew survey: 40% of US internet users have experienced online harassment, 18% in severe form — Online Harassment — Summary of Findings — Harassment—from garden-variety name calling to more threatening behavior— is a common part of online life that colors the experiences of many web users.

More: New York Times, USA Today, CNET, Polygon, Wall Street Journal, CIO.com, Associated Press, Poynter, Washington Post, PC Magazine, Joystiq, Tech Times and The Verge. Tweets: @pewinternet

Alex Kipman / The Official Microsoft Blog:

Microsoft allows Kinect Apps in Windows Store for the first time, launches Kinect SDK 2.0 — Microsoft releases Kinect SDK 2.0 and new adapter kit — Today, we have some exciting news to share about the next chapter for Kinect. Our Windows SDK 2.0 is now available for the Kinect v2 sensors …

More: GeekWire, Engadget, BetaNews, PC Magazine, PC World, Eurogamer.net, VentureBeat, Ubergizmo, Windows Phone Central, The Verge, ZDNet, The Next Web, SuperSite for Windows and High-Def Digest

Tweets: @kinectwindows and @brekelj

Marton Dunai / Reuters:

Hungary plans new tax on Internet traffic, public calls for rally — (Reuters) - Hungary plans to impose a new tax on Internet data transfers, a draft 2015 tax bill submitted to parliament late on Tuesday showed, in a move that could hit Internet and telecoms providers and their customers hard.

More: The Register, Wall Street Journal, Geek.com, The Verge, Hungary Today, Taxation, RT, Inquirer, Portfolio.hu Online …, Broadband TV News and Gigaom

Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:

New Microsoft Garage site invites public to test a wide range of app ideas — Microsoft today launched a new section on its website: The Microsoft Garage is designed to give the public early access to various projects the company is testing right now. The team is kicking off with a total …

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Groupon takes on Yelp with Pages: business listings with offers, news, reviews and more — Groupon Goes After Yelp And Google With Millions Of Individual Business Pages — Groupon today took one more step ahead in its bid to be a simple daily deals site, and more of a general go-to place …

More: Groupon, Inc., Re/code, The Next Web, Wall Street Journal, Marketing Pilgrim, GeekWire, WebProNews and Chicago Tribune

Denni Hu / Bloomberg:

Yelp Q3 beats estimates with $102.5M revenue; shares down 16% on Q4 sales forecast — Yelp Falls as Fourth-Quarter Forecast Miss Estimates — Yelp Inc. (YELP) shares dropped as much as 16 percent in extended trading after the local-reviews company forecast fourth-quarter sales that fell short of analysts' estimates.

More: Yelp Investor Relations, Associated Press, Reuters, Forbes, Tech Trader Daily, Business Insider and RTTNews

Joan E. Solsman / CNET:

Rhapsody revives CEO position after four-year absence, appoints mobile vet David Hose as interim chief — Rhapsody revives CEO position, hires mobile vet as interim chief — The streaming-music forefather, often overshadowed by flashier rivals like Spotify or Apple's Beats Music …

Thanks:@benfoxrubin

Roger Cheng / CNET:

AT&T Q3 profit falls short even as it adds 2M wireless customers — The company's growth was driven largely by connected devices like the connected car, but also a healthy mix of smartphone and tablet growth. — AT&T reported strong customer growth even as its earnings came in just below expectations.

More: AT&T, ZDNet, Tech Trader Daily, Gigaom, Engadget, iMore, Re/code and Business Insider

Andrew Ross Sorkin / New York Times:

IBM's increasing EPS in recent years only due to buybacks, no real revenue growth since 2008 — The Truth Hidden by IBM's Buybacks — For many years, the International Business Machines Corporation's earnings glided smoothly upward. Every quarter, IBM would report higher earnings per share.

Tweets: @froomkin, @rogerlmartin, @infoarbitrage, @edwardnh, @andrewrsorkin and @nilofer

Chris Kanaracus / PC World:

EMC buys controlling interest in VCE, its joint venture with Cisco — EMC has confirmed it will purchase the bulk of Cisco's stake in VCE, the companies' joint venture in converged infrastructure products. — News of the deal surfaced late Tuesday. The move means that VCE will become an EMC business …

More: VCE, eWeek, Network World, ZDNet and Reuters

Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:

Microsoft and IBM commit to providing their enterprise software to Azure, IBM clouds — Summary: Microsoft and IBM have forged a new alliance bringing more of IBM's enterprise software and services to Azure, and Microsoft's enterprise software to IBM's cloud platforms.

More: News Center, PC World, InfoWorld, The New Stack, GeekWire, WinBeta, bizjournals, The Register, VentureBeat and WindowsITPro

Josh Lowensohn / The Verge:

Homeboy is a $149 rechargeable low-power Wi-Fi security camera with a three month battery, on sale today — Homeboy is what happens when tiny security cameras hook up with magnets — The new $149 camera sticks to walls to watch your home — After having his home burglarized for a third time …

More: PC World and TechSpot. Thanks:@jordan_tara

Tom Cheredar / VentureBeat:

Roku raises $25 million amid growing competition from Amazon and Google — Updated at 1:45 p.m. PST with a statement from Roku. — Set-top box company Roku has secured a fresh $25 million round of funding, according to a SEC form D filing released today.

More: Gigaom. Thanks:@tched

Jon Russell / TechCrunch:

Xiaomi Is Moving International Users' Data Out Of China Ahead Of Further Global Expansions — The past year has been an eventful one for Chinese phone-maker Xiaomi. The company's devices are now sold in seven countries in Asia, that's a big step up from Xiaomi's inception …

More: Tech in Asia and Technology Personalized

John Cook / GeekWire:

Redfin buys walkability rating site Walk Score, its first aquisition, to give users more neighborhood information — Redfin buys Walk Score, marking first acquisition in company history — Seattle-based Redfin just stumbled on a deal in its backyard that was simply too good to pass up.

More: Walk Score Blog, Redfin Real Estate Blog, Seattle Bubble, themiddlemarket.com and Inman News. Thanks:@taylor_soper

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