Techmeme: For distribution, media companies turn to apps and services, whose ad-driven, mediated businesses mirror broadcast TV (John Herrman/The Awl)

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February 8, 2015, 6:15 PM

Top News

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Google Acquires Odysee, An App For Private Photo/Video Backup And Sharing, Team Joins Google+ — Google may be adding more offline and private sharing features to its Google+ Photos service soon. It has acquired Odysee, an iOS and Android app that let users automatically back up photos …

More: Odysee, VentureBeat, Engadget and ResearchBuzz. Tweets: @korzing

Christopher Solomon / Popular Mechanics:

Profile of Alex Holden, who tracked down the Russian hackers who stole over 1.2B credentials — Meet The Man Who Finds Your Stolen Passwords — Last summer a gang of Russian hackers was caught amassing the largest cache of stolen user names and passwords ever discovered—1.2 billion in all.

Tweets: @cwarzel

John Herrman / The Awl:

For distribution, media companies turn to apps and services, whose ad-driven, mediated businesses mirror broadcast TV — The Next Internet Is TV — I was talking to someone who works on one of those half-dozen or so apps that we tend to associate with teenagers: the ones that were built around …

More: Gigaom and everwas. Tweets: @dkthomp, @mattbuchanan, @mattyglesias, @grahamfarmelo, @frankpasquale, @mathewi, @tim, @digiphile, @stevebryant and @dangillmor

Daniela Velázquez / Fast Company:

In Kansas City, Google Fiber penetrates wealthier neighborhoods, but digital divide remains — Lessons From Google's First Rollout Of Google Fiber — Three summers ago, it was everywhere: An old-fashioned ice cream truck with peppy, electronic music blaring from its speakers.

Alyson Shontell / Business Insider:

How Fab went bust: e-commerce firm once worth $900M to sell for as little as $15M this month — THE TECH ‘TITANIC’: How red-hot startup Fab raised $330 million and then went bust — On Friday, Oct. 11, 2013, Fab CEO Jason Goldberg gathered a dozen executives in the eighth-floor conference room …

More: Re/code, Business Insider and Fast Company

Tweets: @counternotions, @carlazanoni, @ajs, @evelynrusli and @delrey

Steve LeVine / Quartz:

Profile of John B. Goodenough, who invented the lithium-ion battery and is now trying to build a powerful new super-battery — The man who brought us the lithium-ion battery at the age of 57 has an idea for a new one at 92 — AUSTIN, TEXAS—The chances are you have never heard of—nor …

More: Wired.co.uk. Tweets: @fmanjoo

Chris Gayomali / Fast Company:

Inside Zulily, the flash sale e-commerce company for young mothers that's about to hit $1B in annual revenue — The Billion-Dollar E-commerce Company You Know Nothing About — Zulily has defied the conventional wisdom—marketing to moms, sticking with flash sales, evading Amazon.

Tweets: @gsterling. Thanks:@chrisgayomali

Julie Bort / Business Insider:

Interview with Amit Singh about Google for Work's progress and plans for the future — We talked to the head of Google's next multibillion-dollar business. Here's what he told us — Five years ago next month, Google got serious about creating a new revenue stream for itself beyond search ads …

More: Business Insider. Tweets: @charlesarthur and @benedictevans

Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica:

The first Tizen smartphone isn't an “Android killer”—it's a bad Android clone — Review: Samsung's Android alternative arrives, but it's no match for the real thing. — This is the Samsung Z1—the world's first Tizen phone. After one of the bumpiest pre-launch situations in recent memory …

More: Daring Fireball, PhoneDog.com, Ars Technica, Fast Company, GSMArena.com, BGR, AndroidHeadlines.com, CNET, Android Authority, Wall Street Journal and SamMobile. Tweets: @lee_ars

Arielle Duhaime-Ross / The Verge:

MIT researchers study successful startups to map entrepreneurial quality in the Bay Area — An analysis of San Francisco's startups shows where the ‘real’ Silicon Valley is — Mapping entrepreneurial quality in California — There's a new map of entrepreneurial hotspots in California …

More: TechCrunch, Science and Dice News

Kevin Poulsen / Wired:

Drone maker DJI expands use of geofences as DHS warns that hobbyist drones can be used as weapons — Why the US Government Is Terrified of Hobbyist Drones — If you want to understand why the government freaked out when a $400 remote-controlled quadcopter landed on the White House grounds last week …

More: Electronic Frontier Foundation, The Verge, CoinTelegraph.Com News, Ink, Bits, & Pixels and Engadget

Tweets: @0xabad1dea, @drones and @csoghoian

Kevin Roose / Fusion:

How Waterloo recovered after BlackBerry's decline and avoided a talent exodus — The life, death, and rebirth of BlackBerry's hometown — It's a little after 5:30 p.m. on a Wednesday night, and I'm sitting in a freezing rental car outside the BlackBerry headquarters in Waterloo, Ontario, looking for signs of life.

Tweets: @kevinroose, @pmarca and @cdixon

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