Techmeme: The Great App.net Mistake (Mat Honan/Wired)

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August 21, 2013, 4:25 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 …

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, Free Press Blog, Wired, The Verge, Pressthink, TechCrunch, Digital Trends, BuzzMachine and Business Insider

Tweets: @peston, @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: @mattmdiaz, @r343l, @techopirate, @petersuderman, @realchadtaylor and @jeffjarvis. See also Mediagazer

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 …

More: The Technology Chronicles, Mercury News, ReadWrite, NEWS.com.au, PC World, Digits, GigaOM, The Next Web, Bloomberg, Ubergizmo, Facebook and SlashGear

Tweets: @mm, @anoyes, @jguynn and @ericsson

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.

More: VentureBeat, Gizmodo, The Verge, AllThingsD, Engadget, Reuters and CNN

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

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Facebook And 6 Phone Companies Launch Internet.org To Bring Affordable Access To Everyone

More: Engadget. Tweets: @vindugoel and @shiraovide

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 …

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

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, Engadget, AppleInsider, Bloomberg, Electronista, App Advice, iClarified and Digits. Tweets: @ethanwsj

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, Uncrunched, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, The Next Web, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, AllThingsD, Mattermark, GigaOM, VentureBeat, Valleywag and SiliconBeat

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

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

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, TechHive, VentureBeat, BBC, Kotaku, PR Newswire, I4U News, The Register, Gotta Be Mobile, ABC News, Penny Arcade, Digits, WebProNews, Electronista, Giant Bomb, Polygon, The Next Web, The Verge, Gizmodo, AllThingsD, BGR, 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, Mashable and The Next Web

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.”

More: The Next Web, 9to5Google, The Verge, Ars Technica, Engadget, Android Police and ITworld.com

Chris Davies / SlashGear:

Nokia HERE 3D v2: We ride the 68MP rig putting Google Maps on notice — Nokia may have come late to the game with Streetview-style 3D photography in its HERE Maps service, but the company is aiming to overtake Google with its second generation of mapping cars.

Tweets: @slashgear and @heremaps. Thanks:@t_chrisburns

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.

More: TechnoBuffalo, MacNN, Patently Apple, MacRumors and TechCrunch

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.

More: The Verge, CNET, Gizmodo and Electronista

Andrew Cunningham / Ars Technica:

Get 4K video from your phone's USB port with the new MHL 3.0 spec — Simultaneous charging is one of MHL's advantages over Slimport and Miracast. — MHL Consortium — The Mobile High-Definition Link (MHL) standard already lets you connect certain phones, tablets, and other devices …

More: mhltech.org, TWICE, BetaNews, Electronista, Pocket-lint, Android Community and Engadget

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

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, ROUGH TYPE and Nextgov

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

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

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, The Wrap, USA Today, DSLreports, GigaOM and Associated Press. See also Mediagazer

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