Techmeme: Microsoft's Windows Store Averaged 1.7M Daily Downloads In October, Up Nearly 40% From June (Alex Wilhelm/TechCrunch)

Open Links In New Tab

Mobile Archives Advertise Site News Contact Editors

November 12, 2013, 2:05 PM

Top News

Tom Warren / The Verge:

Microsoft axes its controversial employee-ranking system — Microsoft is killing off its controversial stack-ranking system today. While it could be viewed as an internal change that won't affect consumers directly, it will have a broad effect on current and future Microsoft employees that may just shape the future of the company.

More: ZDNet, Business Insider, TechCrunch, GeekWire, Digits, Gigaom, Businessweek, Dare Obasanjo and Valleywag

Ben Sisario / New York Times:

Google Glass Will Expand Its Features Into Music — To sell Glass, its augmented-reality form of eyewear, Google has already tried to make it a fashion accessory and a must-have video device for any parent or sky diver. Now it is also presenting this $1,500 piece of wearable technology as a way to interact with music.

Nick Summers / The Next Web:

Confirmed: Play Music and All Access coming to Google Glass in a few weeks, stereo earbuds to follow

More: SlashGear

Quentyn Kennemer / Phandroid:

Google Glass XE11 update supports Google Play Music if you sideload the APK

More: Inquirer, USA Today, Examiner, Android Beat, Gearburn, Droid Life, Android Central, Engadget, Android Community and 9to5Google

Sam Byford / The Verge:

iPad mini with Retina display on sale now starting at $399 — Three weeks after its announcement, the iPad mini with Retina display is now available for purchase in the online Apple Store. The release follows that of the larger iPad Air earlier in the month; both tablets feature …

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:

Initial Retina iPad mini Apple Store rollout to be exclusive to Personal Pickup, Apple issues press release — Due to “limited supply” and “high demand,” the new iPad mini with Retina display will be available at Apple Stores exclusively through the Personal Pickup service for the time-being.

More: AppleInsider, MacRumors, MacRumors, Washington Post, ZDNet, ABC News, iDownloadBlog.com, App Advice, Reuters, MacDailyNews, everythingiCafe, iDownloadBlog.com, Touch Arcade, Gotta Be Mobile, Cult of Mac and MacStories. Tweets: @marcoarment

Digits:

Motorola Plans Low-Cost Phone; Sales of Moto X Disappoint — Google's Motorola unit is set to introduce a relatively low-cost phone Wednesday, according to people familiar with the matter, amid weak sales and a price cut of its flagship high-end model. — Details of the new …

More: Chitika Insights, Wall Street Journal, Computerworld, PC World, Gigaom, TechnoBuffalo, WebProNews, Unwired View, Android Beat, GSM Insider, The Droid Guy, Ubergizmo, Gearburn, PhoneArena, Softpedia News and AndroidGuys

Edvard Pettersson / Bloomberg:

Apple Heads to Trial With Inventor Over Smartphone Patent — Apple Inc. (AAPL), the world's most valuable technology company, faces a trial over claims by a California inventor that a patent he holds covers key features of the iPhone. — Apple maintains the NetAirus Technologies LLC patent …

More: BBC, 9to5Mac, eWeek, Electronista and iPhone in Canada Blog. Tweets: @fedcourtjunkie

Arik Hesseldahl / AllThingsD:

Don't Get Too Excited About GlobalFoundries and Apple — At Least, Not Just Yet — Don't get too excited about an intriguing story from the Albany Times Union saying that chip-manufacturing company GlobalFoundries may soon start turning out chips for Apple's iPhones and iPads at a factory in upstate New York.

More: AppleInsider, iPhone Hacks, The Buzz, iDownloadBlog.com, 9to5Mac, App Advice and Electronista

Larry Rulison / Times Union:

GlobalFoundries to make Apple chips in New York fab

More: MacRumors, I4U News, The Tech Report, Cult of Mac, ZDNet, Softpedia News, The Mac Observer and Digits

Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:

With 120M Users, Google Drive Gets Tighter Integration With Gmail — Eighteen months after it first debuted, Google Drive has 120 million active users. Today, it is launching additional features that bring it closer to the heart of Gmail, Google's first and most-used productivity app.

More: The Official Google Blog, Google Operating System, CITEworld, Google Developers Blog, The Next Web, BetaNews, Google Operating System, The Verge, 9to5Google and Softpedia News

Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch:

Microsoft's Windows Store Averaged 1.7M Daily Downloads In October, Up Nearly 40% From June — According to information Microsoft provides to developers, the Windows Store marketplace for applications on Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 racked up roughly 1.7 million daily downloads, both free and paid …

More: Gigaom, Digits, Engadget, Inquirer, MacNN and Softpedia News

Kadhim Shubber / CoinDesk:

$4.1m goes missing as Chinese bitcoin trading platform GBL vanishes — Bitcoin is surging in China, but the explosion in digital currency trading has been accompanied by possible fraud and theft. — GBL, a Chinese bitcoin trading platform that claimed to be based in Hong Kong …

More: Help Net Security, Geek.com, The Tell, Business Insider, Softpedia News, The Register, SiliconANGLE, Tech in Asia and ZDNet. Tweets: @coindesk

Matthew Panzarino / TechCrunch:

Twitter Announces Custom Timelines For Hashtags Or Topics On Tweetdeck, Launching API Too — Twitter will let you create custom timelines based on topics, hashtags and more from Tweetdeck, it announced today. Twitter is also providing an API to allow developers to build this functionality into their products.

More: Twitter Developers, Twitter, Marketing Land, The Next Web, The Verge and Gizmodo

Tweets: @cwarzel, @jwherrman, @carlfranzen, @mikeisaac and @rsarver

See also Mediagazer

Ken Yeung / The Next Web:

Now in 34k cities, Airbnb unveils redesigned iOS and Android apps that show how to be a better host — Airbnb today announced a series of new features for hosts in its iOS and Android mobile apps. As the company strives to become a better hospitality company, it is enabling hosts …

More: Digits, Gigaom, The Verge, AllThingsD, TechCrunch, TechCrunch and The Airbnb Blog. Tweets: @jguynn

Matt Brian / Engadget:

Sony now lets you buy digital PlayStation games from Amazon and other retailers — Sony has decided its PlayStation Network (PSN) Store isn't going to be the only place you can purchase digital PlayStation games. Utilizing a model similar to Valve's PC game marketplace Steam …

More: Kotaku, GeekWire, The Verge, Gotta Be Mobile, TechSpot, CNET, SlashGear, Inquirer, The Next Web, WebProNews and VG247

Derrick Harris / Gigaom:

Backblaze stores 75 petabytes on 25,000 drives, and most are still spinning — Cloud backup provider is fast becoming one of my favorite companies in IT, if only because it shares so much information about its operations. On Tuesday, the company — famous for its open source storage-pod designs …

More: Backblaze Blog, ExtremeTech, Computerworld, TUAW, The Tech Report, CNET, ZDNet and The Register

Tom Warren / The Verge:

Vine for Windows Phone arrives with Live Tile and camera integration — Twitter promised that it would launch an official Vine Windows Phone client, and after a brief demonstration at Nokia World it's finally arriving today. It looks largely the same as the existing iOS and Android versions …

More: Vine Blog, BetaNews, The Next Web, Gigaom, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, AllThingsD, Gotta Be Mobile, Softpedia News, Nokia Conversations, pocketnow.com and WMPoweruser

Paul Ziobro / Wall Street Journal:

Target emulates Amazon online, continues to struggle with e-commerce despite heavy investments — Target Fills Its Cart With Some of Amazon's Tricks — MINNEAPOLIS— Target Corp. has come up with an answer to Amazon.com Inc. Copy it. — The discount chain's latest online offerings …

Nick Summers / The Next Web:

Netflix is now available on TiVo set-top boxes for Virgin Media subscribers in the UK — Virgin Media subscribers in the UK can now access the on-demand movie and TV streaming service Netflix from their TiVo set-top box, following a successful trial that kicked off a few months ago.

More: Technabob, WebProNews, SlashGear, Engadget, Inquirer and Softpedia News

Ina Fried / AllThingsD:

Lytro Adds 3-D Viewing Capability to Its Living Images, Apple Online Store as Distributor — Lytro is unlocking another feature for images taken with its light-field cameras, enabling all photos ever taken with the devices to be displayed in 3-D. — Lytro

More: The Verge, CNET, Pocket-lint and Fast Company. Tweets: @lytro

Bloomberg:

Malone's Liberty Global Said in Talks to Buy Intel's TV Service — John Malone's Liberty Global (LBTYA) Plc, the European cable operator, is in talks to acquire Intel Corp. (INTC)'s online pay-TV service under development, said three people with knowledge of the situation.

More: The Register, DSLreports, CNET and Engadget. Tweets: @jessicalessin. See also Mediagazer

Zack Whittaker / CNET:

MakerBot wants to put a 3D printer in every US public school — (Credit: Zack Whittaker/CBS Interactive) — NEW YORK — MakerBot wants to put a 3D printer in every school in the United States, and it's drumming up support from the industry and general public to make it happen.

More: ReadWrite, Gigaom, PC Magazine, AllThingsD, VentureBeat, Engadget, TechCrunch and WebProNews

Joel Hruska / HotHardware.com News:

AMD Announces New Tools, Development Capabilities at APU13, Confirms Kaveri Has 512 GPU Cores and Can Run BF4 — At APU13 today, AMD announced a full suite of new products and development tools as part of its push to improve HSA development. One of the most significant announcements to come …

More: VentureBeat, PC World and SemiAccurate

Russ Pitts / Polygon:

The birth of Xbox Live … There was a dream that was a box. — Part sci-fi, part nostalgia, this box would unite people from around the world and provide a platform for entertainment that would drive the future. In young computer scientist J Allard's dream, this box would change the world.

Tweets: @robzacny, @tcarmody, @scottfeed and @kezamacdonald

Sinead Carew / Reuters:

T-Mobile US could raise almost $2 billion for spectrum purchases — (Reuters) - T-Mobile US Inc announced on Monday a stock offering that could bring it almost $2 billion for spectrum purchases. — T-Mobile, the No. 4 U.S. mobile service provider, said it would sell 66.15 million common shares …

More: VentureBeat, Bloomberg and Wall Street Journal

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.

Cloudflare:

Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference — Stop preparing for agents. Start running them. 100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.

Zoho:

Step into smarter meetings: Zoho Cliq Rooms is now available on Neat devices — The meeting landscape has completely transformed over the last few years, moving from conference rooms to people joining across locations and time zones.

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

Acquired:

The Home Depot

Learn the playbooks that built the world's greatest companies - and how you can apply them as a founder, operator, or investor.

Subscribe to Acquired.

Big Technology Podcast:

Special Report: Will AI Wipe Out Humanity? (And Who Profits)

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.

Channels with Peter Kafka:

The Atlantic's CEO on AI, Billionaire Owners, and Moonlighting as a Creator

Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.

Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.

Sources:

Mark Zuckerberg on Muse, Meta's biggest AI bet yet

Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.

Subscribe to Sources.

Lenny's Podcast:

How we built Grok Bot in a month | Roman Ugarte (SpaceXAI)

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.

Invest Like the Best:

Walter Russell Mead - How America Keeps Winning

The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.

Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.

Add your podcast here

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 2:05 PM ET, November 12, 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.