Techmeme: Google Updates Play Services With Improved GPS, Google+ And Photo Sphere Integrations (Frederic Lardinois/TechCrunch)

Open Links In New Tab

Mobile Archives Advertise Site News Contact Editors

August 20, 2013, 11:30 PM

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 …

More: Techdirt, The Hill, The Verge, Engadget, TechCrunch and Wall Street Journal

Tweets: @bartongellman, @normative, @jasonleopold, @elliottjustin, @huffpostmedia, @emptywheel, @juliaangwin, @amir, @ericontrarian, @motherjones, @buzzfeedandrew and @mattblaze

See also Mediagazer

Julian Borger / Guardian:

NSA files: why the Guardian in London destroyed hard drives of leaked files — A threat of legal action by the government that could have stopped reporting on the files leaked by Edward Snowden led to a symbolic act at the Guardian's offices in London — Guardian editors on Tuesday revealed …

More: TechnoLlama, Pressthink, Digital Trends, TechCrunch, Wired and Business Insider

Tweets: @youranonnews and @markseibel

See also Mediagazer

NBCNews:

US doesn't know what Snowden took, sources say — HONG KONG - 2013: In this handout photo provided by The Guardian, Edward Snowden speaks during an interview in Hong Kong. Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA, revealed details of top-secret surveillance conducted …

More: Hillicon Valley. Tweets: @petersuderman, @realchadtaylor, @mattmdiaz, @techopirate and @jeffjarvis. See also Mediagazer

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 …

More: ParisLemon, The Register, Macworld, GigaOM, 9to5Mac, TechSpot, TUAW, MacRumors, The Next Web, iDownloadBlog.com, iPhone Hacks, Apple Bitch, Ubergizmo, TechnoBuffalo, VentureBeat, SlashGear, Cult of Mac, AppleInsider, The Mac Observer, App Advice, Engadget, iLounge and MacNN

Tweets: @pkafka, @jherskowitz and @learmonth

See also Mediagazer

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Facebook And 6 Phone Makers Launch Internet.org To Bring Affordable Access To Everyone — Facebook has just announced a partnership with Samsung, Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, and Qualcomm to launch Internet.org, a project aimed at bringing affordable Internet access to the five billion people without it.

Vindu Goel / New York Times:

Facebook Leads an Effort to Lower Barriers to Internet Access

More: The Verge, Engadget and CNN

Tweets: @facebook, @nateog, @jguynn, @brianstelter and @markgurman

newsroom.fb.com:

Technology Leaders Launch Partnership to Make Internet Access Available to All

More: The Next Web. Tweets: @jguynn

Pamela Jones / Groklaw:

Forced Exposure — The owner of Lavabit tells us that he's stopped using email and if we knew what he knew, we'd stop too. — There is no way to do Groklaw without email. Therein lies the conundrum. — What to do? — What to do? I've spent the last couple of weeks trying to figure it out.

More: GigaOM, werd.io, TechCrunch, PandoDaily, Inquirer, Ars Technica, ZDNet, The Verge, ITworld.com, Daily Dot, TechSpot, OStatic blogs, Popular Science, eWeek, BBC, Naked Security, SecurityWeek, Electronista, NPR, ReadWrite, VentureBeat, I4U News, PC Magazine, Slashdot, Memex 1.1, Help Net Security and WebProNews

Tweets: @privacyint, @puellavulnerata, @piecritic and @rsingel

See also Mediagazer

Mike Masnick / Techdirt:

More NSA Spying Fallout: Groklaw Shutting Down

More: TechCrunch. See also Mediagazer

Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:

Google and Waze Start Mixing Their Maps for the First Time — Google today is introducing the first integrations between its homegrown Google Maps for mobile and its newly owned Waze. — Google adds Waze — The traffic tab on Google Maps for iOS and Android will now include accidents …

Nick Summers / The Next Web:

Google Maps for iOS and Android now displays Waze alerts, while Street View lands in Waze Map Editor

More: Softpedia News, MacRumors, Softpedia News, SlashGear and Cult of Mac

Terrence O'Brien / Engadget:

PlayStation 4 hitting shelves on November 15th in the US for $399, November 29th in Europe and Latin America — There isn't much we don't know about the PlayStation 4 at this point. Sony has let the details slip out in drips and drabs, dragging out the mystery as long as possible.

More: PlayStation.Blog, The Register, VentureBeat, TechHive, Kotaku, The Next Web, AllThingsD, I4U News, BGR, ABC News, Penny Arcade, WebProNews, Giant Bomb, Gotta Be Mobile, Gizmodo, Digits, Electronista, Polygon, The Verge, GeekWire, Ars Technica and ReadWrite. Tweets: @tomwarren

Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch:

Twitch Integrates With PlayStation 4 For Streaming And Viewing Video Game Content

More: Engadget, The Official Twitch Blog, The Next Web and Mashable

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

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.

More: TechCrunch, TechCrunch, GigaOM, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, The Next Web, TechCrunch, Mattermark, VentureBeat, SiliconBeat and Valleywag

Tweets: @amir, @brianp, @arrington and @startupljackson

Laura Hazard Owen / GigaOM:

Barnes & Noble totally reverses strategy in train wreck of an investor call — Want to know what Barnes & Noble's plan is for the future? In that case, it would be wise to ignore pretty much everything the company has said it was going to do in recent months. — Getting out of the tablet business?

More: Android Community and SlashGear. Tweets: @pogue and @pkafka. See also Mediagazer

Laura Hazard Owen / GigaOM:

Bad earnings for Barnes & Noble: Nook revenues plunge 20%; Riggio won't take stores private

More: Barnes & Noble, Inc., AllThingsD, MarketWatch, DealBook, internetretailer.com, Associated Press, ZDNet, LAPTOP Magazine, Electronista, Engadget, TechCrunch and Reuters

Tweets: @sarahw and @peterlauria3

See also Mediagazer

Joan E. Solsman / CNET:

Netflix inks exclusive deal for first-run Weinstein films — The Internet's biggest on-demand video service will stream movies from the indie film studio before any other pay-TV providers starting in 2016, the same year it kicks off a similar Disney deal. — Follow @@joan_e

More: Tech Trader Daily, Engadget, DSLreports, USA Today, The Wrap, GigaOM and Associated Press. See also Mediagazer

Robinson Meyer / The Atlantic Online:

This Software Won't Let You Look Away — The creepiest educational technology yet — Updated, 3:45pm. — It's hard to imagine a creepier educational technology than “FocusAssist,” a new feature announced by online training company Mindflash last week.

More: CNET, Nextgov and ROUGH TYPE

Danielle Kucera / Bloomberg:

Amazon Ramps Up $13.9 Billion Warehouse Building Spree — Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) is stepping up a warehouse building spree, signaling the urgency of getting products to customers more quickly amid rising competition from EBay Inc. (EBAY) and Wal-Mart (WMT) Stores Inc.

Tweets: @jordanr1000

Lindsey Turrentine / CNET:

Welcome to CNET, Tim Stevens — Starting this September, one of tech's best-known comes to CNET. He'll bring his storytelling skills with him. — Tim Stevens — Two years ago, Tim Stevens and I met for a few minutes after work one day not long after he had taken the helm at Engadget.

More: Digital Displacement. Tweets: @lturrentine, @tim_stevens, @theromit, @darrenmurph and @tim_stevens

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.

More: MacRumors, AppleInsider and Digits. Tweets: @ethanwsj

Jay Greene / The Seattle Times:

Amazon blasts GAO and IBM over $600 million CIA contract — A redacted version of a lawsuit Amazon filed against the federal government became public today, offering a look at the company's effort to block rebidding of its lucrative CIA deal. — Amazon Web Services' battle with IBM …

More: GeekWire and The Register. Tweets: @iamjaygreene

Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:

Coursera Adds Kleiner Perkins Partner Lila Ibrahim as President — Lila Ibrahim, an operating partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, will become president at the online education startup Coursera. — That's a lot of leadership at the top of the growing startup, which was founded less than two years ago.

More: VentureBeat, Coursera Blog and bizjournals

Tweets: @kpcb and @rschon

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:

Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning — SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds. Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.

Cape:

Most carriers track everything. Cape doesn't. — Unlimited talk, text & data, 24-hr metadata deletion, network ID rotation, SIM-attack defense, and more. Switch today and get 29% off for life.

Zoho:

Pro tips: 5 ways to close WhatsApp leads in Zoho CRM — This is a guest post by Orkhan Jafarli, Growth PM at TimelinesAI.More buyers now reach out on WhatsApp before they ever fill out a form.

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.

Sponsor Techmeme

Featured Podcasts

Grit:

Ex-Twitter CEO on Why AI Needs a New Internet | Parag Agrawal

Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.

Subscribe to Grit.

Lenny's Podcast:

Anthropic's first technical PM on token maxing, the jagged edge, and living in the future | Dianne Penn

Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.

Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.

Big Technology Podcast:

What Happens If AI Fails?, Subprime Data Center Crisis, How Bad Can SpaceX Get?

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.

Hard Fork:

OpenAI Models Go Rogue + Kimi K3 Freakout + A.I. Superforecasting

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.

Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:

Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin

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.

Add your podcast here

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 11:30 PM ET, August 20, 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.