Apple Acquires Local Data Outfit Locationary  —  Last September Grant Ritchie, CEO of crowdsourced location data company Locationary, penned an article for TechCrunch describing five challenges Apple faces as it builds out its new mapping service.  Ten months later he's become part of the effort to overcome them.

New Nexus 7 leak points to Android 4.3, dual cameras and wireless charging (update: on sale July 31st)  —  A few days back, a lovely tipster sent us in some shots that strongly suggest a shiny new Nexus 7 will be hitting shelves next week for $269.  Granted, that's for the 32GB model …

Google fired 5,383 Motorola employees in Q2  —  Google is an ad company, pure and simple.  In the company's Q2 2013 financial results, it said 93% of their revenues came from little blue links for little blue pills from Canada.  Nearly every other thing they do is either losing them money or doesn't generate any money at all.

Huawei spies for China, says ex-CIA head  —  The former head of the US Central ­Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency, Michael Hayden, believes Chinese telecommunications manufacturer Huawei Technologies is a significant security threat to Australia and the US …

Google's Chrome app launcher now available for all Windows users  —  Though there's no official word from Google yet, it looks like the Chrome launcher has come out of developer preview mode and into full release, at least for Windows.  On our own PCs, the installation placed the launcher app …

New Jersey Supreme Court Restricts Police Searches of Phone Data  —  Staking out new ground in the noisy debate about technology and privacy in law enforcement, the New Jersey Supreme Court on Thursday ordered that the police will now have to get a search warrant before obtaining tracking information from cellphone providers.

Bitcoin company acquisitions begin: Gambling site SatoshiDice sells for $11.5m (126,315 BTC)  —  Blockchain-based betting game SatoshiDice has been sold for 126,315 BTC, which at the time of writing was worth around $11.47 million.  —  SatoshiDice (S.DICE), which claims to be …

Would you pay again for iOS 7 versions of your favorite apps?  —  iOS 7 is coming, and with it an all-new design language.  Apps will have to update to reflect that change, or risk looking old and outdated, and lose their place to newer, hotter updates and upstarts.

Netflix presses ahead with HTML5, as free software activists call for boycott  —  Netflix is pushing ahead with efforts to get rid of Microsoft's Silverlight plugin and play video straight in the browser instead.  The company first introduced HTML5-based video streaming on Google's Chromebooks …

Evernote for iPhone and iPad Get Shortcuts, Related Notes and Skitch Support  —  For the latest Evernote for iPhone and iPad update (5.4), we're adding features that will help you rediscover your notes, jump to the content that's important to you, easily annotate just about anything in your account, and learn helpful tips.

U.S. Music Sales Down As Streaming Up 24% To 51B Tracks In 6 Months; Harlem Shake Bumps Its Way To The Top  —  As questions continue to swirl around just how well artists get paid through streaming music services like Spotify — and what they can do to improve that — Nielsen today released numbers …

To Give U.S. Manufacturing A Boost, Maker's Row Gets $1M From Index, Comcast, Alexis Ohanian & More  —  The emergence of vertically integrated e-commerce operations like Everlane and Flint and Tinder highlights how a new generation of startups is using entrepreneurial muscle for economic regeneration …

MIT Moves to Intervene in Release of Aaron Swartz's Secret Service File  —  Lawyers representing MIT are filing a motion to intervene in my FOIA lawsuit over thousands of pages of Secret Service documents about the late activist and coder Aaron Swartz.  —  Two weeks ago U.S. District Judge …