Techmeme
May 9, 2017, 3:50 PM

Top News

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Amazon unveils Echo Show, an Alexa-powered speaker with a 7" touchscreen and video calling for $229.99; preorders open now, ships June 28  —  Look out, world: Alexa is coming to a screen near you.  Today Amazon unveiled the Echo Show, a WiFi-enabled home device with a seven-inch screen …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Amazon will add voice calling and messaging on all Echo devices and the Alexa app; Amazon says the feature, called Alexa Calling, will go live later today  —  Amazon may have flopped with the Fire Phone, but don't count it out of the telephony game just yet.
Casey Newton / The Verge:
Snapchat adds snaps with unlimited viewing time and looping videos, which will both self-destruct on being closed, and new creative tools like a “magic eraser”  —  Infinite snaps, loops, and the magic eraser  —  Snapchat added a set of new creative tools to its arsenal today amid …
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Several studies show that existing Snapchat users are staying loyal to the social network, despite Instagram stunting its growth  —  U.S. millennials and Gen Zs aren't entirely replacing their Snapchat addiction with Instagram Stories, according to a dozen studies and surveys commissioned or collected by TechCrunch.
More: iMore, TechCrunch, and MashableTweets: @joshconstineThanks:@joshconstine
Dan Primack / Axios:
Sarah Tavel leaves Greylock Partners to become general partner at Benchmark Capital, the first woman in that role at the firm  —  Sarah Tavel has joined venture capital firm Benchmark Capital as its sixth general partner, after having been with rival Greylock since 2015.
Bloomberg:
China's Alipay announces deal with payment processor First Data Corp to let its users shop at 4M stores in US  —  Mobile payments wallet to be accepted at 4 million U.S. stores  —  Alipay says it's part of broader international expansion  —  China's mobile-payments king wants a piece of the world's biggest consumer market.
Matthew Lynley / TechCrunch:
Pinterest adds visual search guides to its Lens and promotes its head of discovery engineering Vanja Josifovski to CTO role  —  Pinterest today is adding a new feature to its Lens — its live camera search — that will help pick apart what's in the image and make it easier to search specific parts of that image.
Nick Statt / The Verge:
Samsung opens US preorders for unlocked Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus, starting at $724.99 for the 64GB unlocked S8 and $824.99 for the 64GB unlocked S8 Plus  —  Starting at Best Buy and Samsung.com  —  Samsung has opened preorders for the unlocked variety of its new Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus smartphones.
Cade Metz / Wired:
Uber hires University of Toronto AI expert Raquel Urtasun to oversee development of new AI research lab in Canada  —  Uber is hiring Raquel Urtasun, a prominent artificial intelligence researcher at the University of Toronto, as the ride-hailing company aims to build a lab for driverless car research …
Matt Humrick / AnandTech:
Qualcomm unveils 14nm Snapdragon 660 and 630 SoCs with faster charging, improved connectivity, and enhanced imaging, expected in devices later this year  —  Qualcomm is bringing some premium experiences to its mid-tier lineup with the addition of the Snapdragon 660 and Snapdragon 630 Mobile Platforms.

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Earlier Picks

Tomio Geron / Wall Street Journal:
Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg:
Sam Gustin / Motherboard: