Techmeme
August 21, 2013, 10:40 AM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
New Details Show Broader NSA Surveillance Reach  —  Programs Cover 75% of Nation's Traffic, Can Snare Emails WASHINGTON—The National Security Agency—which possesses only limited legal authority to spy on U.S. citizens—has built a surveillance network that covers more Americans' Internet communications …
Facebook Newsroom:
Technology Leaders Launch Partnership to Make Internet Access Available to All  —  Facebook, Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, Qualcomm, Samsung to be founding partners  —  MENLO PARK, CA, — Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, today announced the launch of internet.org …
Vindu Goel / New York Times:
Facebook Leads an Effort to Lower Barriers to Internet Access  —  MENLO PARK, Calif. — About one of every seven people in the world uses Facebook.  Now, Mark Zuckerberg, its co-founder and chief executive, wants to make a play for the rest — including the four billion or so who lack Internet access.
Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:
Is Google Ready to Buy Its Way Into TV With an NFL Deal?  —  Here's a fun combination to ponder: The world's most powerful media company and America's most popular sport.  —  That could happen if Google buys the rights to the NFL's Sunday Ticket package, the all-you-can-eat subscription-TV service currently owned by DirecTV.
Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:
Netflix Introduces ‘My List,’ A Personalized Instant Queue For Users All Over The World  —  Netflix is continually working to make its streaming video service more personalized, adding features that will make individual users keep coming back for more.  The company's latest effort in that direction …
Hannah Karp / Wall Street Journal:
Vevo in Deals With Apple, Samsung for TV Programming  —  Online Music-Video Company to Deliver On-Demand Programming Via Set-Top Boxes, Television Sets  —  Music-video company Vevo LLC is migrating from YouTube to the boob tube in a back-to-the-future attempt to recreate something akin to the original MTV.
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Google's Stealthy Helpouts Live Video Commerce Service Makes Its First Public Appearance, Landing Page Now Live  —  Last month, our own Rip Empson broke the news that Google was working on Helpouts, a Hangouts-based marketplace “ that enables individuals and small and large businesses to buy and sell services via live video.”
Alexis Santos / Engadget:
LG Display claims a world's first with 2,560 x 1,440 LCD for smartphones  —  Full HD displays?  Eat your heart out, handset manufacturers.  LG Display has just laid claim to the world's first Quad HD (2,560 x 1,440) smartphone display, which also boasts the highest pixel density of a mobile device, clocking in at 538ppi.
Mat Honan / Wired:
The Great App.net Mistake  —  Before the great gold rush of venture capital and public offerings, there was an idea that the Internet should not just change the world, but actively make it a better place.  Profit and empowerment, the voices said, should coexist.
Tweets: @tcarmody and @jonrussell
Jesse Hicks / The Verge:
Bradley Manning sentenced to 35 years for WikiLeaks disclosures  —  Bradley Manning's court-martial reached an end today, with Army Colonel Denise Lind sentencing him to 35 years in prison.  The WikiLeaks source, arrested in Iraq in 2010 for releasing nearly 700,000 government documents to WikiLeaks …
Mikey Campbell / AppleInsider:
Apple patents 3D gesture UI for iOS based on proximity sensor input  —  The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Tuesday published an Apple patent for a method of generating and manipulating a three-dimensional object on a computing device, with the process controlled by special gestures made above a touchscreen's surface.
Lulu Yilun Chen / Bloomberg:
Bitcoin Spawns China Virtual IPOs as U.S. Scrutiny Grows  —  The Bitcoin craze is catching on in China.  —  Sun Minjie is a 28-year-old Internet worker who lives in Beijing.  Eager to profit from growing demand for the digital currency, Sun has invested more than $3,000 in a company called 796 Xchange Ltd …
More: BTC Geek
Janko Roettgers / GigaOM:
Here's how Beats Music is curating its subscription service  —  Beats Music, the yet-to-be-launched digital subscription service spearheaded by Jimmy Iovine, wants to edge out competitors like Spotify and Rdio through human curation, but the company hasn't really explained how this will work.
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
TechCrunch's Picks: The Top 8 Startups From Y Combinator's Summer '13 Demo Day  —  Convenience tech, developer assistance, and services for senior citizens were the big trends amongst the 45 startups that pitched on the record today at Y Combinator's Summer 2013 Demo Day.
David Pogue / New York Times:
Siri vs. the Android: The Sequel  —  “Your review was the dumbest thing I've ever read.  It strains me to avoid profanity in describing how stupid you sound.”  —  That's the kind of e-mail that brightened my day after I reviewed Google's Moto X phone two weeks ago.
Tweets: @pogue and @nchan
Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch:
Tech In A “Surprising Slump”?  Hardly  —  What is the forecast for tech?  It depends on whom you ask.  For some, it's contraction.  For others, the money is flowing.  Cisco is in the tank and has layoffs planned, even as Microsoft mints new billion-dollar businesses.  Yahoo can't keep its hands off the kids.
John McDermott / AdAge:
iTunes Radio to Debut in September With McDonald's, Nissan, P&G, Pepsi  —  Launch Partners Sign 12-Month Deals Worth Tens of Millions of Dollars  —  iTunes Radio, Apple's answer to Pandora, is set to debut next month with a handful of high-profile brand partners including McDonald's, Nissan …

Sponsor Posts

Soxton:
Fast, affordable law for startups  —  Soxton automates startup legal so founders can move faster and sleep better.  We handle incorporation, advisor, employment and commercial contracts.  Join the waitlist for early access!
F5:
Accelerate AI Adoption at F5's AI Virtual Summit  —  Learn how to architect, secure, and scale AI for production with real-world insights from industry leaders on June 23.  Register now to save your spot.
Zoho:
Zoho RPA named a Leader in the 2026 RPA Technology Value Matrix by Nucleus Research  —  Zoho RPA has been named a Leader in the 2026 RPA Technology Value Matrix, published by Nucleus Research …
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:
SpaceX's IPO Triumph, Anthropic's Fable Fumble, OpenAI's Price War
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Access:
A top iPhone app developer reacts to Apple's new Siri
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
Hard Fork:
'Hard Fork' Live, Part 1: Satya Nadella and Cindy Cohn
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
The Upstarts Podcast:
TBC's Alex Ksendzovsky: The Neurosurgeon Using Brain Cells To Build Better AI
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
BG2 Pod:
The SpaceX IPO, Fable 5, AI Capex Update & Market Check w/ Gavin Baker, Andrew Fox & Clark Tang
Open-source podcast on all things tech, markets, investing, and capitalism, hosted by Brad Gerstner.
Subscribe to BG2 Pod.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
AI's Mythos Moment: Rishi Sunak on preparing governments for AI
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 10:40 AM ET, August 21, 2013.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Earlier Picks

Amy Gesenhues / Marketing Land:
Gregg Keizer / Computerworld: