Techmeme: Google Glass to become an independent division reporting to Tony Fadell; Glass Explorer Program shutting down; production of device in current form to end (BBC)

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January 15, 2015, 9:00 PM

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BBC:

Google Glass to become an independent division reporting to Tony Fadell; Glass Explorer Program shutting down; production of device in current form to end — Google calls end to Glass programme but says kit is not dead — Google is ending its experimental Google Glass programme, the BBC has learned.

Richard Lai / Engadget:

Xiaomi takes on iPhone 6 Plus with 5.7" 1080p Mi Note phablet launching January 27 for $370; $530 Mi Note Pro with 2560x1440 display coming in March — Xiaomi mocks Apple with its very own premium phablet — There's just no stopping for the world's most valuable startup.

Jared Newman / TechHive:

Xiaomi announces $30 Mi Box Mini, a media streamer the size of a phone charger, with pre-orders open in China on Jan. 20, shipping late Jan. — Xiaomi's Mi Box Mini is a media streamer the size of a phone charger — With the $30 Mi Box Mini, Xiaomi has managed to stuff …

More: Digital Trends, TechSpot, PhoneDog.com, Gizmodo, Android Authority, Business Insider, Liliputing, Ubergizmo, Engadget, SlashGear, bgr.in and AndroidHeadlines.com

Stephen O'Grady / tecosystems:

Apple's Swift rises from 58th in Q3 '14 to 22nd in Q1 '15 in Redmonk's language ranking list that uses Github and Stack Overflow data — The RedMonk Programming Language Rankings: January 2015 — With two quarters having passed since our last snapshot, it's time to update our programming language rankings.

More: Wired, AppleInsider, The Next Web, iMore, MacNN, ReadWrite, SlashGear, Cult of Mac, MacDailyNews, The Loop and Daring Fireball

Phil Goldstein / FierceWireless:

T-Mobile launches new ‘Simply Prepaid’ plans, starting at $40/month with 1 GB of LTE — T-Mobile US (NYSE:TMUS) launched new prepaid plans under its “Simply Prepaid” banner starting at $40 per month. The new plans come several months after T-Mobile launched the “Simply Prepaid” …

More: T-Mobile Newsroom, Wireless Week, Gigaom, 9to5Google, Lifehacker, Geeky Gadgets, AndroidHeadlines.com, PhoneDog.com, Consumerist, Ubergizmo, Droid Life, TmoNews, CNET, SlashGear, TechnoBuffalo and Finextra Research news. Tweets: @dannysullivan

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:

KeySweeper, a USB charger that sniffs, decrypts, logs, and transmits keystrokes of some Microsoft wireless keyboards can be built for $10 — Meet KeySweeper, the $10 USB charger that steals MS keyboard strokes — It sounds like the stuff of a James Bond flick or something described …

More: Samy Kamkar, VentureBeat, Threatpost, Security Affairs, Telegraph, Neowin, SlashGear, Business Insider, Network World, Schneier on Security, Hackaday and TechCrunch

David Meyer / GigaOm:

Be My Eyes app harnesses volunteers to help sight-impaired people — The Danish developer Robocat, which I've previously covered for its Thermodo thermometer dongle, has fully launched a new app that could be of great use to visually-impaired people. — Robocat built the open-source …

More: Quartz, cphpost.dk, Laughing Squid, iMore and TUAW

Mike Shields / Wall Street Journal:

MySpace says it reached 50.6M unique users in US in November, 575% over same month in 2013, and generated over 300M video views — MySpace Still Reaches 50 Million People Each Month — Did you know that 50 million people still visit MySpace each month? — Would you be surprised …

More: PC Magazine, Mashable, TIME, Gigaom, The Huffington Post, TechSpot, The Daily Dot, Business Insider and SiliconANGLE. See also Mediagazer

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:

Maker Studios Looks Beyond YouTube As It Announces Exclusive Content Deal With Vimeo — Vimeo and Maker Studios are announcing a partnership that will bring new videos from the Disney-acquired content network (that's Maker Studios) to the IAC-owned streaming video service (that's Vimeo) for an exclusive time window.

More: The Next Web, CNBC, TheStreet.com, International Business Times, Deadline, Union Gazette, Chinatopix, LaughingPlace.com, TIME and New Media Rockstars. See also Mediagazer

Carmel DeAmicis / Gigaom:

Instacart quietly changed its primary revenue model from delivery fees and product markups to grocer fees — On the way to $220M in funding, Instacart quietly changed its business model — Kaitlin Myers a shopper for Instacart studies her smart phone as she shops for a customer at Whole Foods in Denver on October 28, 2014.

More: Slate. Thanks:@bizcarson

Adi Robertson / The Verge:

Twitch launches free music library for video game streamers — Game streaming platform Twitch is trying to solve a problem that has plagued it for months: how can you enforce copyright laws without limiting what players can do on the service? Today, the Amazon-owned company is launching …

More: The Official Twitch Blog, Engadget, Ars Technica, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, PC Gamer, PC World, Geeky Gadgets, GeekWire, Mashable, Shacknews, The Next Web, Wall Street Journal, destructoid, Joystiq and Polygon. See also Mediagazer

Andy Greenberg / Wired:

DHS suspected Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles may have been Silk Road's mastermind, Dread Pirate Roberts — DHS Believed Mt. Gox CEO Might Have Been Silk Road's Secret Mastermind — Long before the Department of Homeland Security set its sights on a 29-year-old named Ross Ulbricht …

More: Ars Technica, CoinDesk, Bloomberg, The Verge, Inside Bitcoins and Business Insider

Steven Johns / Neowin:

Moving the Steam folder on Linux is causing users' entire file systems to be deleted — Users of Steam on GNU/Linux are reporting that attempting to move the Steam folder - something that the GNU/Linux Steam installer doesn't allow you to set at the time of installation - is leading to everything being deleted recursively from root.

More: GitHub

Dan Levine / Reuters:

Apple, Google settle U.S. poaching lawsuit for $415 million — SAN FRANCISCO - Four Silicon Valley companies including Apple Inc and Google Inc agreed to pay $415 million to resolve an antitrust class action lawsuit by tech workers who accused the firms of conspiring to avoid poaching each other's employees …

More: VentureBeat, CNET, The Verge and USA Today

Ron Miller / TechCrunch:

Neo Technology, a graph database company, raises $20M Series C led by Creandum — Neo Technology Bags $20M As Graph Databases Get Hot — Neo Technology, developers of the neo4j graph database have been growing steadily, and investors have noticed, rewarding them with a $20M Series C pay day.

More: VatorNews, VentureBeat, Forbes, bizjournals, PE Hub Blog, Yahoo! Finance, PandoDaily, Gigaom, SiliconANGLE, Neo4j Graph Database and silicontap.com

Stephen Lawson / PC World:

Open Interconnect Consortium releases preview of IoTivity, an open-source framework for its Internet of Things standard — Intel-backed OIC advances in fast-moving IoT standards race — Internet of Things industry groups are in high gear, driving toward standards they hope will define …

More: SiliconANGLE, Yahoo! Finance, Wall Street Journal, SD Times, Rethink Wireless and EnterpriseTech

Ian King / Bloomberg:

Intel reports net income of $3.7B, record revenues of $14.7B, EPS of $0.74 for Q4; Q1 sales estimated to be a modest $13.7B — Intel Sales Forecast Misses Estimates, Signaling Deeper PC Slump — Intel Corp. (INTC), the largest maker of chips that run personal computers …

More: Intel, Re/code, VentureBeat and New York Times

Tweets: @corytv, @corytv and @chris_ciaccia

Brian Fung / Washington Post:

Source: FCC to vote February 26 on petitions from two cities asking to preempt state laws that limit municipal Internet service — The FCC will vote next month on whether to help cities build their own Internet — US President Barack Obama speaks about increasing access to high speed …

More: The Verge, The Dish and tech.slashdot.org. See also Mediagazer

Paul Sawers / VentureBeat:

Google and Lending Club to launch pilot program offering low-interest business loans to eligible Google partners — Google and Lending Club launch low-interest loans for Google partners — Peer-to-peer lending service Lending Club has announced a new tie-up with Google to facilitate funding for “eligible Google partners.”

More: PR Newswire, Seeking Alpha, Re/code and StreetInsider.com

Ben Popper / The Verge:

Skydio raises $3M from Andreessen Horowitz and Accel Partners to create self-navigating drones — A tiny startup has made big strides in creating self-navigating drones — Veterans of Google X and MIT have created some remarkable computer vision systems

More: Wired, cdixon blog, TechCrunch, skyd.io, Wall Street Journal, Gigaom, Gizmodo, VentureBeat and bizjournals. Tweets: @cdixon

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