Techmeme: Design Quality and Customer Delight as Sustainable Advantages (John Gruber/Daring Fireball)

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October 10, 2013, 12:00 PM

Top News

Bloomberg:

BlackBerry Is Said to Warm to Idea of a Breakup — BlackBerry (BBRY) Ltd. is more open to a breakup of the company amid concerns that Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. (FFH) may be unable to line up funding or partners for a $4.7 billion buyout, a person with knowledge of the matter said.

More: AllThingsD, VentureBeat, BGR, GigaOM, ZDNet, CNET, InfoWorld, Mashable, Electronista, CrackBerry.com, TechCrunch, VatorNews and I4U News

Tweets: @howardlindzon and @jcmccracken

Larry Dignan / ZDNet:

BlackBerry tries to hold enterprise software, services fort; Customers wary

More: Digits

Brad Stone / Businessweek:

The Secrets of Bezos: How Amazon Became the Everything Store — Amazon.com rivals Wal-Mart as a store, Apple as a device maker, and IBM as a data services provider. It will rake in about $75 billion this year. For his book, Bloomberg Businessweek's Brad Stone spoke to hundreds of current and former friends of founder Jeff Bezos.

More: GigaOM, GeekWire, Betabeat, Business Insider, Digits, PhoneArena, The Verge and bizjournals

Tweets: @tcarmody, @nickbilton, @bradstone, @valleyhack and @sfiegerman

Jason Del Rey / AllThingsD:

How Jeff Bezos Crushed Diapers.com So Amazon Could Buy Diapers.com — A day after the New York Times dropped an excerpt of a juicy upcoming book about Twitter, Bloomberg Businessweek has published an excerpt of journalist Brad Stone's book about Amazon and CEO Jeff Bezos, due out on Oct. 15.

More: GeekWire. Tweets: @delrey

Matthew Panzarino / TechCrunch:

Twitter Appears To Be Exploring Personalized Breaking News Notifications With @Eventparrot Experiment — Twitter appears to be exploring introducing breaking news notifications tuned for you to its apps, if a new experimental account is any indication. An account called @eventparrot …

More: The Next Web, AllThingsD, Digits, TechHive, The Switch, The Verge, Mashable, Fast Company, bizjournals, Engadget, memeburn and Softpedia News. See also Mediagazer

Dan Seifert / The Verge:

Fitbit Force brings smartwatch features to a fitness tracker — Fitbit is making its latest device to quantify your activity, the wrist-worn Force fitness tracker, official today. The Force is an evolution of the Flex, Fitbit's other wrist-worn tracker, and offers an OLED display and altimeter …

More: AllThingsD, 9to5Mac, MacRumors, CNET, The Next Web, ABC News, Gizmodo, GigaOM, Engadget, VentureBeat, Gotta Be Mobile, Gearburn, Electronista and Mashable

Jason Inofuentes / Ars Technica:

Acer's $249 C720 Chromebook launched: Thinner, longer lasting, and Haswell — The Chromebook C720. — Acer — Chrome OS aficionados have long pined for a Haswell processor to drive one of their Chromebooks, imbuing the line with the longevity they've been missing out on. That wait has come to an end.

More: Marketwired, The Next Web, BetaNews, The Next Web, Softpedia News, The Verge, GigaOM, CNET, Pocketables, PC World, Softpedia News, SlashGear, I4U News, Gearburn, TechCrunch, Engadget, AndroidOS.in and Electronista

Tim Peterson / AdAge:

Bye, Bye Cookie: Microsoft Plots Its Own Tracking Technology to Span Desktop, Mobile, Xbox — Redmond Joins Google, Apple, Amazon and Others In Plotting the Cookie's Demise — Microsoft is set to become the latest tech giant to develop its own tracking technology to replace the ubiquitous …

More: The Verge, Softpedia News, I4U News, AdExchanger and InvestorPlace

Tim Berners-Lee / W3C Blog:

On Encrypted Video and the Open Web — There has been a lot of response to the announcement that W3C considers content protection for video as in-scope for discussion in the HTML Working Group. In this post I can touch on some of the arguments. — We hear the outburst of criticism …

More: The Register and O'Reilly Programming. Tweets: @mike_digitize and @digiphile

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Amazon Makes A Play For Startups With Its AWS Activate Service Bundle And Support Network — Amazon's AWS cloud services division has become one of the go-to places for startups looking for hosting and other services for their apps and other business. Today, Amazon redoubled its efforts …

More: Amazon.com, ReadWrite, The Next Web and WebProNews. Tweets: @swardley

Nicole Lee / Engadget:

Dropcam Pro launched with better optics, dual-band WiFi and Bluetooth for $199 (hands-on) — Before 2012, Dropcam was a software outlet famous for integrating its camera tech into other people's hardware. However, it knew that in order to grow, the company needed to get into the hardware business as well.

More: AllThingsD, CNET, AppleInsider, GigaOM, PandoDaily, VentureBeat, Gizmodo, TechHive, 9to5Google, iPhone, Electronista, App Advice and TUAW

Sam Byford / The Verge:

Sony shrinks flagship Z1 smartphone to a more manageable size — NTT Docomo has announced the Xperia Z1F, a new Sony smartphone based on this year's Xperia Z1. The Z1's standout feature was its 20-megapixel camera with a point-and-shoot-sized sensor, but where that model featured a 5-inch 1080p display …

More: Gizmodo, GigaOM, Pocket-lint, Android Beat, Engadget and AndroidOS.in

Adam Pasick / qz.com:

Your Playstation 4 may be built by Chinese students in the worst internship ever — Updated with comment and detail from Foxconn. — Foxconn believes that students are the future, at least judging by its deal with China's Xi'an Institute of Technology to expose more than 1,000 …

More: Ars Technica, GigaOM, MCV: Home Stream, Engadget, Tech in Asia, Polygon, The Next Web, Tech in Asia, Gamasutra, Geek.com, The Escapist, Kotaku and VG247

Daniel P. Howley / LAPTOP Magazine:

T-Mobile International Data vs. the Competition: Rates Compared — Data Cost — Voice Calling Cost — AT&T — $30 per 120MB / $120 per 800MB (Global Add-on Package) — $30 / month for $2.00 per minute (Rest of World Plan) — Sprint — $40 per 40MB / $80 per 85MB (Multi-country Data Roaming)

More: BGR, ABC News, BetaNews, eWeek and Gotta Be Mobile

Brian X. Chen / New York Times:

T-Mobile to Make It Cheaper to Make Calls While Abroad

More: Engadget, AllThingsD, LAPTOP Magazine, TechCrunch, Electronista and MacRumors

John Cook / GeekWire:

VC deal activity hits highest mark since dot-com boom — It may feel a little frothy out there in startup land. And a new report out from CB Insights shows just what's going on. — Venture capital deal activity continued to climb in the third quarter as a total of 857 companies raised money during …

More: CB Insights and Xconomy

Paul Sawers / The Next Web:

Level: A real-time money meter app that wants to be your Fitbit for personal spending — There's no shortage of personal finance-management apps out there, with the likes of Simple serving up real-time data about all your incomings and outgoings, linked directly to your bank accounts.

More: AllThingsD, VentureBeat, GigaOM, TechCrunch, Pulse 2.0 and Co.Design

John Gruber / Daring Fireball:

Design Quality and Customer Delight as Sustainable Advantages — I've been thinking about this piece by Ben Thompson, “What Clayton Christensen Got Wrong in His Theory of Low-End Disruption”, since he published it two weeks ago. … In a sense, there are two rational Apple bear arguments.

More: Fortune, iMore and Tech.pinions. Tweets: @panzer

Ted Johnson / Variety:

Broadcasters Will Petition Supreme Court to Review Aereo Case (Exclusive) — Justices will have to choose between taking case or letting legal proceedings play out further — Broadcasters plan to petition the U.S. Supreme Court to review lower court rulings that have allowed Aereo …

More: GigaOM, CNET, Engadget, DSLreports, The Verge, blog.chron.com and GigaOM. See also Mediagazer

Bloomberg:

Microsoft Board Said to Work on Hiring New CEO This Year — Microsoft Corp.'s board is working toward having the successor to Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer in place by the end of this year and is winnowing a list of candidates, said people with knowledge of the discussions.

More: The Verge, Softpedia News, WebProNews, ZDNet, Hillicon Valley, VG247, Wired.co.uk, I4U News, WinBeta and Polygon

Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:

Aereo is releasing an Android app on October 22nd — Aereo is coming to Android. The streaming broadcast TV service will debut its first app ever just under two weeks from now, on October 22nd, inside of the Google Play store. The service is traditionally viewed through a web browser …

More: Marketwired, The Next Web, TechCrunch, TechHive, VentureBeat, GigaOM, MobileBurn.com, Android Community and Softpedia News. See also Mediagazer

Kevin Bostic / AppleInsider:

Best Buy trade-in offer to take any working smartphone for at least $100 toward iPhone 5s, 5c — Electronics retailer Best Buy appears on the verge of kicking off another trade-in program aimed at getting iPhone 5s and 5c customers through its doors, this time offering a minimum of $100 toward …

More: TechnoBuffalo, MacRumors, everythingiCafe, Mashable, 9to5Mac, App Advice, SlashGear, iDownloadBlog.com and Electronista

John Paczkowski / AllThingsD:

Rogers Agrees to Carry BlackBerry's Newest Flagship Phone — Looks like Rogers Communications will sell the BlackBerry Z30 after all. — A week after announcing its decision to forgo BlackBerry's latest flagship phone, the Canadian wireless carrier has reversed course following outcry from its customers.

More: Electronista, Phones Review, Softpedia News, The Verge and MobileSyrup.com

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