Techmeme
November 14, 2013, 11:20 AM

Top News

Jenna Wortham / New York Times:
Rejecting Billions, Snapchat Expects a Better Offer  —  What business makes no money, has yet to pass its third anniversary and just turned down an offer worth billions of dollars?  Snapchat, a social media service run by a pair of 20-somethings who until last month worked out of a beachfront bungalow in Venice, Calif.
Digits:
Snapchat Spurned $3 Billion Acquisition Offer from Facebook  —  Snapchat, a rapidly growing messaging service, recently spurned an all-cash acquisition offer from Facebook for $3 billion or more, according to people briefed on the matter.  —  The offer, and rebuff, came as Snapchat …
The Official Google Blog:
Government requests for user information double over three years  —  In a year in which government surveillance has dominated the headlines, today we're updating our Transparency Report for the eighth time.  Since we began sharing these figures with you in 2010, requests from governments …
Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica:
Google Search for Android now does Siri-style conversational voice commands  —  The Google Search app for Android was updated today.  While Google's official post about the new version mentioned some updated cards and traffic incidents, the real news is that voice search can now hold a conversation.
Seth Rosenblatt / CNET:
Mozilla: No Firefox phones in US  —  Mozilla's Mitchell Baker stresses Firefox OS's appeal to developing countries — and (pay attention, Apple and Google) the importance of price.  SAN FRANCISCO — If you're a Firefox OS fan and you live in the United States, you're going to have to wait a bit longer to get your Firefox phone.
Don Clark / Digits:
Under Armour to Buy MapMyFitness in Embrace of Sports Tech  —  Under Armour is buying the popular workout application company MapMyFitness for $150 million, putting the sports apparel maker in charge of one of the biggest social sports communities on mobile devices.
Jeff John Roberts / Gigaom:
Google wins book-scanning case: judge finds “fair use,” cites many benefits  —  Google has won a resounding victory in its eight-year copyright battle with the Authors Guild over the search giant's controversial decision to scan more than 20 million library and make the available on the internet.
More: Reuters and CNET.  Tweets: @ruskin147 and @cshirky.  Thanks:@mathewi.  See also Mediagazer
Roger Cheng / CNET:
Isis Mobile Wallet goes live nationwide, offers freebies  —  Wave phone, buy stuff: after a long period of trials, the joint venture teaming Verizon Wireless, AT&T, and T-Mobile is finally broadly available.—The wireless carriers' mobile payment initiative, Isis Mobile Wallet …
Ben Woods / The Next Web:
Roku and AOL ink deal to bring first news app to the streaming TV boxes  —  Roku, the company behind the little internet-connected streaming TV box, has signed a deal with AOL to bring the media organization's content to TVs.  —  Announced today, the deal will see business, entertainment …
Ian Crouch / Culture Desk:
The Story Behind the “What Would I Say?”  Facebook App  —  Am fond of Seinfeld, and I disparage the value of baseball arguments.—That was the first phrase generated just for me this afternoon by What Would I Say?, a new app that runs users' old Facebook status updates through a text-generating bot …
Chris Kanaracus / Computerworld:
IBM to offer Watson supercomputer as cloud development platform  —  IBM is preparing to give third parties access to its Watson supercomputer with the aim of spurring the growth of applications that take advantage of the system's artificial intelligence capabilities.
Electronic Frontier Foundation:
TPP Leak Confirms the Worst: US Negotiators Still Trying to Trade Away Internet Freedoms  —  After years of secret trade negotiations over the future of intellectual property rights (and limits on those rights), the public gets a chance to looks at the results.
David Kravets / Wired:
NSA Transparency Hurts Americans' Privacy, Feds Say With Straight Face  —  Adding limited public accountability to the NSA's vast electronic spying programs would actually harm the privacy of Americans, Obama administration officials told a Senate hearing today.
David Beren / 9to5Google:
Verizon drops Moto Maker customized Moto X to $49.99 until November 18th  —  Motorola's world may be concentrated on the release of the Moto G this week but Big Red is working to shift some attention back to the Moto X. The carrier is offering a $50 promotion on customized orders through Moto Maker until November 18th.

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Jeff Barr / Amazon Web Services Blog: