Techmeme
December 30, 2014, 4:35 PM

Top News

Jarah Euston / Flurry Insights:
51% of new devices activated during Christmas week were Apple, 18% were Samsung, 6% Nokia  —  Apple and Apps Dominated Christmas 2014  —  Millions of people woke up and unwrapped a shiny new device under the Christmas tree.  As we have done in years past, Flurry examined these new device activations …
Jason Del Rey / Re/code:
Grocery delivery startup Instacart scores $220M investment at a valuation of around $2B  —  Grocery Delivery Startup Instacart Scores $220 Million Investment  —  Instacart, the grocery delivery startup, disclosed in a regulatory filing Tuesday that it had closed a monster $210 million investment …
Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:
Sources: Microsoft is building a new, lightweight browser codenamed Spartan for Windows 10  —  Microsoft is building a new browser as part of its Windows 10 push  —  Summary:Microsoft is planning to roll out a new browser when it debuts Windows 10, according to sources.  But IE isn't going completely away.
Roger Cheng / CNET:
Samsung launches Milk VR to deliver virtual reality videos to Gear VR  —  Milk VR will provide the videos for free as Samsung hopes to goose interest in virtual reality.  —  Samsung wants to jump-start the virtual-reality movement.  —  The Korean electronics conglomerate on Tuesday launched Milk VR …
Michal Lev-Ram / Fortune:
How Disney CEO Bob Iger uses technology to keep every division of his company relevant  —  Disney CEO Bob Iger's empire of tech  —  Even in a dress-down gray sweater, Bob Iger looks a bit mechanical.  His mouth is almost geometrically straight, his face constructed of some cool alloy.
Danny Sullivan / Marketing Land:
Promoted Twitter accounts appear in some users' Following lists, making it seem like the users actually follow those accounts  —  Twitter Ads Make It Seem Like People Follow Brands, Even If They Don't  —  Visa follows MasterCard?  So it seemed.  Twitter's expansion of ads into “Following” …
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
Chaos Computer Club claims it can reproduce fingerprints from people's public photos  —  Chaos Computer Club, Europe's largest association of hackers, claims it can reproduce your fingerprints from a couple of photos that show your fingers.  At the 31st annual Chaos Computer Club convention in Hamburg …
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
As Microsoft scales back original vision of the Xbox One as a general-purpose living room platform, key team members keep leaving the company  —  Almost every single Xbox executive we profiled in this video last year has left the company  —  Boyd Multerer — the genius Microsoft engineer …
Jason Del Rey / Re/code:
Used Car Site Beepi Lands $12 Million From Yuri Milner and AngelList's Largest Ever Investment  —  Online used car marketplace Beepi has landed a $12.7 million investment from two notable angel investors and more than 80 investors on the crowd-funding platform AngelList …
Eugene Kim / Business Insider:
Washington Post hopes to generate more revenue by licensing its content management system to other news organizations  —  Here's A New, Inventive Way Jeff Bezos Plans To Make Money From The Washington Post  —  When Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post for $250 million in 2013 …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Access To Gmail Partially Restored In China  —  Gmail access is partially restored in China, according to some reports as well as Google's own real-time traffic charts.  The bump in traffic follows a multi-day outage that began just after Christmas, which saw Gmail users blocked from using …

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Earlier Picks

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Christopher Williams / Telegraph:
Re/code: