Techmeme
January 22, 2015, 4:10 PM

Top News

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:
Apple targets Watch battery life of 2.5 hours heavy use and 3.5 hours standard use; pure standby battery life likely to be 2-3 days; CPU said to be A5-caliber  —  Apple targets for Apple Watch battery life revealed, A5-caliber CPU inside  —  Although Apple has said that the Apple Watch …
Jessi Hempel / Wired:
Inside Nadella's plan to reinvent Microsoft, starting with HoloLens, a flatter org chart, and a willingness to forge new partnerships  —  Satya Nadella's Got a Plan to Make You Care About Microsoft.  The First Step?  Holograms … REDMOND MISSED MOBILE  —  The old Microsoft never gained turf in smartphone operating systems.
Catherine Shu / TechCrunch:
BlackBerry CEO Wants Legislators To Make Developing BlackBerry Apps Mandatory  —  At this point, BlackBerry and Windows Phone fans are probably used to having a much smaller selection of apps than their counterparts on iOS and Android smartphones.  After all, diehard devotees of BlackBerry and Windows Phone …
Nick Bilton / New York Times:
In-flight Wi-Fi is getting slower, less reliable, and more expensive as demand increases  —  The Sorry State of In-Flight Wi-Fi  —  35,000 FEET, SOMEWHERE OVER THE MIDWEST — I've finally found something on commercial flights that's worse than airplane food: the Wi-Fi.
Catherine Shu / TechCrunch:
Kim Dotcom Launches Skype Competitor MegaChat  —  Kim Dotcom, the infamous entrepreneur behind Megaupload, has released his latest product.  Currently in beta, MegaChat is a browser-based encrypted video calling and file-sharing platform that is being positioned as a Skype competitor.
Jason Del Rey / Re/code:
Button Raises $12 Million to Make the App World as Interconnected as the Web  —  Could 2015 be the year of “deep linking?”  —  One startup trying to ride that wave is Button, a New York City-based company which is today announcing a $12 million Series A investment less than a year after its launch.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Gift Card Marketplaces Raise Grabs $56 Million From NEA And Others  —  A company offering a marketplace where consumers can buy and sell their unused gift cards, Raise.com, announced this morning it has taken in a sizable $56 million round of Series B funding, led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA).
Jack Clark / Bloomberg:
Amazon Agrees to Buy Israel's Annapurna Labs for AWS Cloud Unit  —  Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) agreed to acquire Israeli semiconductor company Annapurna Labs, seeking to improve performance within its Amazon Web Services cloud unit.  —  A deal has been reached but hasn't yet closed …
Michael Carney / PandoDaily:
Braintree opens private beta allowing US merchants to accept bitcoin via its v.zero SDK and Coinbase integration  —  Paying for Uber with Bitcoin?  Braintree opens up bitcoin payments to its thousands of merchants  —  Two of the biggest forces in modern payments collided today …
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
Google Suggesting Firefox Users Change Their Search Engine & Home Page  —  Now that Yahoo has gained search share from Google thanks to its Firefox deal, the search giant seems to be finally hitting back with moves to get users to switch to Google.  —  I've been checking each week since …
Shara Tibken / CNET:
Surface devices running Windows RT will not be updated with a full version of Windows 10  —  Microsoft's Windows RT isn't dead...yet  —  The software giant says it's working on an update for the versions of its Surface tablet that used an ARM-based chip.  But it will only have some of the functionality of Windows 10.
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
Microsoft announces Office 2016, coming in the second half of 2015  —  At its Windows 10 event yesterday, Microsoft unveiled the touch-optimized version of Office.  Today, the company offered more details about that version, and then snuck in another announcement: the next desktop version …
Sean O'Kane / The Verge:
Spotify updates iOS app with Touch Preview, a quick way to sample and discover music using gestures  —  Spotify unveils Touch Preview, a beautiful new music discovery tool  —  An audible solution for a visual problem  —  Last year was a busy one for Spotify.  It hit 10 million paid subscribers.

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Earlier Picks

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