Announcing Microsoft Ventures for startups to build, innovate and grow  —  The following is a post from Rahul Sood, general manager of Microsoft Startups.  —  Entrepreneurship is an increasingly global phenomenon.  We know that the barriers to turn an idea into a business have never been lower.

Jimmy Wales breaks Wikipedia rules in hunt for Snowden  —  Wikipedia's notorious co-founder, Jimmy Wales, has launched an investigation to determine if any of the pseudonyms who edit the world's biggest encyclopedia are in fact (or suspected to be) classified security info leaker, Edward Snowden.

Source: Snapchat Cofounders Unloaded Personal Stock for $20 M.  —  A source familiar with Snapchat's recent round of funding said that the teen sensation's two twenty-something cofounders, Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy, each received $10 million in secondary funding as individual shareholders.

Big Apple, Bigger Google  —  Google has passed Apple as the most valuable technology company in the world—on one measure.  —  The search giant eclipsed the iPhone maker last week, actually.  Few would have noticed because the metric by which Google jumped ahead isn't the widely-watched one of market capitalization.

Inside YouTube's Master Plan to Kill Lag Dead  —  There is a moment between when you click on a video and when it starts playing.  That moment is the worst part of your day.  The agony of waiting!  The torture of anticipation!  YouTube understands that, and on a visit to YouTube HQ in San Bruno …

Digg Reader Is A Promising, But Still Incomplete, Google Reader Alternative (Hands On)  —  For a subset of the Internet's population, Google's March announcement of its intention to shutter its dated, rusting RSS feed-reading service Google Reader was met with a large outcry.

FTC Updates Search Engine Ad Disclosure Guildelines After “Decline In Compliance”  —  In 2002, the US Federal Trade Commission issued landmark guidelines to search engines, to ensure they were make a clear distinction between their paid and unpaid listings.  Now, the FTC has updated those guidelines …

In Search of Tech Cred, eBay Builds a New Engine for a New Identity  —  SAN JOSE, Calif. — It was 2008, and eBay had a problem.  Mark Carges had just arrived to lead the tech side of what the company would come to call the “turnaround” of its core marketplace business.  The brand was stale.

Square branches out into e-commerce with new Square Market virtual stores for US businesses  —  Mobile and digital payment platform Square has moved into a new market today.  It's a bit different than what most people might think — it's an e-commerce play called Square Market …

First Look: OS X Mavericks  —  After Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference ended, Apple supplied me with a 13-inch MacBook Pro and a copy of OS X Mavericks to evaluate and post my thoughts on The Loop.  The version of Mavericks I tested was newer than the one released at WWDC, but not as new as the one released on Monday.

Microsoft to launch web-based version of Xbox Music next week  —  When we first heard Microsoft's plans for Xbox Music, there was a mention of web, iOS, and Android versions.  Next week the software maker will launch a web version of Xbox Music so that subscribers can access the service across various platforms from a browser.

iOS 7 to let developers detect blinking and smiling in photos, could foreshadow future iPhone features  —  iOS 7 adds several new camera-orientated features for developers, which may hint at future consumer-facing features.  In iOS 7 beta 2, Apple has added new image detectors that find certain face expressions in photos.

How A Great Google Workplace Turned Into A ‘Nightmare’  —  One December day last year, an email went out to a group of Google employees and contractors.  —  The email explained how, just more than a year after Google acquired guidebook company Zagat, the division was going to be re-organized.

From The Team Behind Branch, Potluck Is A New Link-Sharing Service For The Internet's “Lurkers” Who Don't Tweet Or Blog  —  The team behind the social conversation platform Branch is today launching a new venture with Potluck, a service which seems almost the complete inverse …

New Google report shows malware by country: highest rates in India, Central Europe  —  Google's Transparency Report is a document that shines light on threats to the internet, including copyright takedowns and government surveillance requests.  On Tuesday, the search giant announced a new section …

What It's Really Like To Work @Fab  —  Readers of this blog know that we pride ourselves on our transparency here at Fab.  —  To that end, I wanted to take a moment to clear up some misconceptions about how we work at Fab.  —  A Bloomberg article yesterday put forth some blatant misrepresentations about Fab.

LA sides with taxi companies, sends cease-and-desist letters to 3 ride-sharing startups (poll)  —  Disruption may be the name of the game for tech startups, but it also guarantees there will be pushback from the disrupted.  Three companies that aim to change the way we think about taxis …

Mozilla launches Firefox 22 with 3D gaming, video calls and file sharing to court developers  —  Mozilla has released a new version of its Firefox Web browser today that offers support for 3D gaming, video calls, and file sharing.  With these integrations, developers will be better able …

Hadoop Big Data Ecosystem Gets Big Boost As Hortonworks Nabs $50 Million In Fresh Financing  —  As big data is burning up the mainstream enterprise market, many are questioning the stability of the open source community.  Wikibon analyst Dave Vellante (@dvellante) predicts that the Hadoop ecosystem …

In-Flight Wi-Fi Still Costly, but More Available  —  AFTER many years of halting starts and hundreds of millions of dollars in investment, in-flight Wi-Fi is finally coming into its own, with 8,700 domestic flights, 38 percent of the total, now offering Internet connectivity …

Silicon Valley's Martha Stewart, Brit Morin, Raises $6.3 Million From Marissa Mayer And A Lead HuffPo Investor  —  Brit Morin, a former Googler who is reinventing herself as the Martha Stewart of tech, has raised a $6.3 million Series A round of financing from Index Ventures, Lerer Ventures …