Techmeme: Mini tablet display comparison: 7" Kindle Fire HDX and Nexus 7 impress, iPad mini disappoints (Dr. Raymond M. Soneira/DisplayMate)

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November 19, 2013, 2:25 PM

Top News

Tom Warren / The Verge:

Nokia shareholders approve Microsoft deal — Nokia shareholders have approved a deal allowing Microsoft to purchase the Finnish smartphone maker's Devices and Services unit. 99.7 percent of shareholders who participated in the vote agreed with the Microsoft sale, representing around four-fifths …

Todd Bishop / GeekWire:

In final shareholder speech, Ballmer defends Bing and Xbox as key parts of Microsoft — Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer just finished speaking at the company's annual shareholder meeting — his final one as the company's leader — and while he didn't directly address calls for the company …

More: Search Engine Land, The Verge, BGR, The Next Web, GeekWire, Forbes and WinBeta. Thanks:@johnhcook

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

“Caretaker” Mulally as CEO Remains Inside Bet at Microsoft, but Will a Dark Horse Emerge?

More: Forbes and Business Insider

Arik Hesseldahl / AllThingsD:

Sony's PlayStation 4 Costs $381 to Build — Only $18 Under Retail Price — In Teardown — When PlayStation 3 was first released by electronics giant Sony in 2006, it was sold at a loss with the hope of making money back on individual games. — That's pretty close to what Sony is doing again with the PS4 …

More: Co.Design, Ars Technica, The Register, GamesIndustry International, CNET, Playstation 4, Geek.com, Gotta Be Mobile, VG247, Softpedia News and Gamasutra

Derek Khanna / Slate:

Obama's Secret Attempt to Ban Cellphone Unlocking, While Claiming to Support It — Last week, WikiLeaks made public a portion of a treaty that the White House has been secretly negotiating with other nations and 600 special interest lobbyists. The draft of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Treaty …

More: iClarified, Cult of Mac, I4U News, Gizmodo, DSLreports, VentureBeat, Ars Technica and Computerworld

Colleen Taylor / TechCrunch:

Hightail, The File-Sharing Service Formerly Called YouSendIt, Lands $34 Million In New Funding — Hightail, the file-sharing service formerly known as YouSendIt, is announcing today that it has raised $34 million in new funding. The round, which serves as Hightail's Series E, was led by hard drive maker Western Digital.

More: Fortune, AllThingsD, SiliconBeat, VentureBeat, VatorNews and socalTECH.com. Thanks:@sidharthdassani

Aaron Souppouris / The Verge:

Samsung ships 800,000 Galaxy Gear smartwatches to retailers in two months — Samsung defies critics, sells 800,000 Galaxy Gear smartwatches in two months — Despite very negative reviews from almost everyone that cared to touch one, Samsung has sold 800,000 Galaxy Gear smartwatches in two months.

Dr. Raymond M. Soneira / DisplayMate:

Mini tablet display comparison: 7" Kindle Fire HDX and Nexus 7 impress, iPad mini disappoints — Mini Tablet Display Technology Shoot-Out — Introduction A new generation of Mini 7 to 8 inch Tablets from three of the major manufacturers has just completed with the belated launch of the Apple iPad mini with Retina Display.

More: Computerworld, Gizmodo, MacRumors, TechnoBuffalo, CNET, ZDNet, Gotta Be Mobile, Forbes, 9to5Mac, iLounge, DisplayBlog, AllThingsD, DisplayBlog, iDownloadBlog.com and Electronista

Tweets: @displaymate and @nanosysinc

Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:

FiftyThree, Maker Of Creativity App Paper, Gets Into Hardware With Launch Of Its ‘Pencil’ Stylus — FiftyThree, the company behind the wildly popular iPad creativity app Paper, is making its first foray into hardware with the launch of a new stylus it's creatively named “Pencil.”

More: The Verge, MacRumors, PC Magazine, GeekWire, Digits, Guardian, Engadget, Business Insider, Gizmodo, Cult of Mac, FiftyThree, iClarified, 9to5Mac, MacStories, Laughing Squid and TUAW

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

Google Wallet Creators Raise $7M From Eric Schmidt, Khosla To Bring Personalization And Analytics To In-Store Commerce — While Amazon has been at the forefront of providing a personalized experience in online commerce, in-store retailers are still behind in using data in compelling ways …

More: AllThingsD and Digits

DoctorBeet / DoctorBeet's Blog:

LG Smart TVs logging USB filenames and viewing info to LG servers — Earlier this month I discovered that my new LG Smart TV was displaying ads on the Smart landing screen. — After some investigation, I found a rather creepy corporate video advertising their data collection practices to potential advertisers.

More: Network World, Geek.com, DSLreports, HotHardware.com News and Boing Boing. Tweets: @tomscott

Wall Street Journal:

Dropbox's revenue in 2012 was $116M and $46M in 2011 — Dropbox Seeks Funding Round at $8 Billion Valuation … Online-storage service Dropbox Inc. is raising a funding round that could value it at more than $8 billion, according to people familiar with the situation, though new figures reveal its revenue growth is decelerating.

More: Business Insider. Tweets: @dmac1

Ashlee Vance / Businessweek:

Dropbox Seeks Another $250 million and $8 billion valuation

More: CITEworld, Wired, ReadWrite, PandoDaily, Forbes, Network World, iPhone in Canada Blog, CNET, Reuters, TechCrunch, Business Cloud News, DealBook, HotHardware.com News, Gigaom Research, SocialTimes, ZDNet, The Register, Fortune, The Verge, Business Insider and bizjournals

Tweets: @om and @alex

Thanks:@mattlynley

Dan Seifert / The Verge:

Motorola releases Android 4.4 KitKat update for Verizon Moto X — Motorola announced today that the Android 4.4 KitKat update for the Verizon version of the Moto X would begin its rollout. This deploy comes a mere three weeks since KitKat was officially launched with the Nexus 5 …

More: The Official Motorola Blog, The Register, TechCrunch, 9to5Google, Engadget, The Next Web, CNET, Gigaom, Android Police, Droid Life and Electronista

Tweets: @nerdtalker, @llsethj and @dcseifert

Spencer Ackerman / Guardian:

Court order that allowed NSA surveillance is revealed for first time — Fisa court judge who authorised massive tapping of metadata was hesitant but felt she could not stand in the way — A secret court order that authorised a massive trawl by the National Security Agency of Americans' email …

More: SiliconBeat, The Verge, The Switch, Associated Press, Washington Post and dailywireless.org. Tweets: @jamesrbuk

IC ON THE RECORD:

DNI Clapper Declassifies Additional Intelligence Community …

More: Ars Technica, New York Times, Salon, The Next Web, CNET and Motherboard

Tweets: @charlie_savage and @dangillmor

Kaylene Hong / The Next Web:

Twitter backtracks and removes option to let users receive direct messages from any follower — Last month, Twitter quietly rolled out a new feature to give users the choice to receive private messages from any of their followers, but that option has now been removed.

More: The Verge, TechHive, ReadWrite, Gigaom, iDownloadBlog.com, Engadget, Mashable, Cult of Mac, Electronista and iPhone. Tweets: @mathewi. See also Mediagazer

Jordan Kahn / 9to5Mac:

FreedomPop expanding free wireless plan to all Sprint smartphones, iPhones included — FreedomPop, the wireless service provider offering free and cheap no-contract plans on Sprint's network, today announced it's now allowing customers to bring their old Sprint phones to activate on its $0/month wireless plans.

More: Engadget, Gigaom, 9to5Google, The Next Web, iPhone and Electronista. Thanks:@jordankahn

Kevin C. Tofel / Gigaom:

Kindle Paperwhite gets Goodreads integration and kid-friendly reading goals — Not to be outdone by yesterday's software update for the Kindle Fire tablets, Amazon on Tuesday announced an available upgrade for the Kindle Paperwhite on Tuesday. The free software enhancements include …

More: Amazon.com, ZDNet, The Next Web, Engadget, CITEworld, TechCrunch and PC Magazine

Kyle Orland / Ars Technica:

Live gameplay streaming on Xbox One delayed until 2014 — Just days ahead of the Xbox One's Friday North American launch, Microsoft has announced that the ability to stream live Xbox One gameplay through gaming-focused site Twitch.tv will not be available until early 2014.

More: Xbox Wire, Digital Trends, Washington Post, Engadget, The Official Twitch Blog, Ubergizmo, Gotta Be Mobile, WebProNews, Polygon and The Official Twitch Blog. Tweets: @patrickklepek

Bruce Booth / Forbes:

Correlation's Fresh Look At Venture Capital Returns — The broad underperformance of the venture capital asset class during the past decade is widely discussed; there's a frequently cited assertion that U.S. venture returns trailed the overall public equity stock market in the 2000s.

More: Venture Capital Dispatch. Tweets: @bijans and @lifescivc. Thanks:@eghosao

Lance Whitney / CNET:

Snapchat surpasses Facebook in photo uploads — Snapchat users are snapping past their Facebook counterparts when it comes to uploading photos. — A Snapchat represenative told CNET on Tuesday that the site now processes 400 million snaps per day. That jibes with information given earlier to Business Insider.

More: Business Insider, TechCrunch, TechSpot and Mashable. Tweets: @fmanjoo

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