Techmeme
August 28, 2013, 9:20 PM

Top News

AllThingsD:
Android's Hugo Barra Departs Google for China's Xiaomi  —  One of Google's top Android executives is leaving the company.  —  Hugo Barra, whose official title is vice president of product management for Android, has been one of the more public faces of the mobile operating system …
Mike Isaac / AllThingsD:
Twitter Acquires Social TV Tracker Trendrr  —  Twitter has acquired Trendrr, a social tracking TV service that until today competed with Twitter's own in-house analytics products.  —  After Wednesday's acquisition, the three dominant, stand-alone players in the social TV chatter space are gone.
Matthew Panzarino / TechCrunch:
Twitter Reverses The Flow Of Its Timeline In Effort To Humanize It For Newbies  —  Twitter just flipped the format of its timeline with a new conversation view.  The full timeline will still show in the traditional ‘newest stuff at the top’ view, but now there are linked conversations …
More: iMore
Josh Ong / The Next Web:
Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:
Debunk: September iPads, gold iPhone scratch tests, Apple products in Iran, more  —  This morning, news is circulating regarding claims of a September iPad launch, gold iPhone 5S scratch tests, Apple products being allowed to be imported into Iran, and Apple potentially disrupting the way that mobile carriers work.
Bloomberg:
David Beren / TmoNews:
T-Mobile Scheduling Employee Blackout Dates For September 20th-22nd?  —  I do love a good rumor and this one should make all you iPhone fans happy as I'm hearing whispers T-Mobile is planning blackout dates between September 20th and 22nd.  Like all good rumors, we should take this with the standard …
Janko Roettgers / GigaOM:
Exclusive: Google+ Hangouts goes HD as it switches from H.264 to VP8.  Next up, WebRTC.  —  Noticed any differences when using Google's Hangouts video chat lately?  If you did, then you may be one of the lucky users who has already received an upgrade to 720p HD video.
eMarketer:
Facebook Sees Big Gains in Global Mobile Ad Market Share  —  Google to take home half of $16.65 billion worldwide mobile ad market  —  Facebook's continued emphasis on mobile monetization, along with its users' ongoing shift toward mobile devices, is resulting in dramatic gains in mobile ad market share …
Greg Kumparak / TechCrunch:
Unity Game Engine To Get Official 2D Game Support And A Built-In Ad Solution  —  Unity, the increasingly popular “build once, run anywhere” 3D game engine, is going 2D.  —  At the company's UNITE conference in Vancouver this morning, CEO David Helgason announced three things …
More: 9to5Mac, AllThingsD, PC Magazine and Gamasutra.  Tweets: @eeen.  Thanks:@grg
Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:
Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin and 23andMe Co-Founder Anne Wojcicki Have Split  —  Brin and Wojcicki on Gavin Newsom's interview show in 2012.  —  Google co-founder Sergey Brin and 23andMe co-founder Anne Wojcicki, one of Silicon Valley's most high-profile couples, are living apart.
Michael McWhertor / Polygon:
Nintendo 2DS coming this Oct. for $129.99, plays 3DS games in 2D  —  Nintendo is releasing a new version of its Nintendo 3DS hardware that's playable only in 2D.  It's called the Nintendo 2DS and will be available in North America on Oct. 12 for $129.99.  —  Nintendo 2DS plays the entire library …
Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:
Joe Mullin / Ars Technica:
In historic vote, New Zealand bans software patents  —  A major new patent bill, passed in a 117-4 vote by New Zealand's Parliament after five years of debate, has banned software patents.  —  The relevant clause of the patent bill actually states that a computer program is “not an invention.”
Matthew Prince / CloudFlare Blog:
Eva Dou / Wall Street Journal:
HTC Develops China-Focused Mobile Operating System  —  Taiwanese Handset Maker Works With China in Bid to Revive Sales  —  TAIPEI—HTC Corp. is developing a mobile software system specifically for Chinese consumers, people familiar with the project say, as part of a big China bet …
Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:
Apple Acquires Swedish Firm AlgoTrim, A Company That Does Mobile Media And Data Compression  —  Apple has acquired AlgoTrim, a Swedish startup that builds codecs and designs solutions that maximize performance of data, mobile imaging, video and computer graphics while minimizing memory requirements …
Tom Simonite / MIT Technology Review:
Copy Protection for 3-D Printing Aims to Prevent a Piracy Plague  —  Streaming designs to 3-D printers like Netflix does movies could prevent unauthorized copying.  —  WHY IT MATTERS  —  The surge of companies springing up around 3-D printing could be slowed if digital designs are commonly copied without permission.
Greg Bensinger / Digits:
Amazon Asks Supreme Court to Decide Sales Tax Fight  —  Amazon.com is taking a fight over sales tax in the state of New York to the U.S. Supreme Court.  Exactly why is a little unclear.  —  The online retailer on Friday filed documents to appeal the issue to the nation's highest court …
Sam Sacks / RT:
Obama's NSA review board proving the cynics right  —  Sam Sacks is a political commentator and journalist, the last five years spent covering politics in Washington, DC.  —  When the US Congress wants to pretend to solve a problem, they create a “Gang of Six” or a “Gang of Eight.”
Andy / TorrentFreak:
Grooveshark Signs With Sony, Steps Over that Wavy ‘Piracy’ Line  —  What's the difference between YouTube and Grooveshark?  —  That's not the start of some terrible geek in-joke but a question that Grooveshark founder Sam Tarantino has always been happy to answer, and for good reason.
Wall Street Journal:
Verizon, Vodafone Rekindle Talks Over Verizon Wireless Stake  —  Verizon Communications Inc. and Vodafone Group PLC have rekindled talks over a buyout of the U.K. company's stake in their U.S. wireless joint venture, people familiar with the matter said, an acquisition that would likely cost Verizon well over $100 billion.
More: The Verge and Corporate Intelligence.  Tweets: @qz and @dkberman

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