Techmeme: Kindle Paperwhite gets Goodreads integration and kid-friendly reading goals (Kevin C. Tofel/Gigaom)

Open Links In New Tab

Mobile Archives Advertise Site News Contact Editors

November 19, 2013, 2:45 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 Blog, Search Engine Land, The Verge, BGR, The Next Web, GeekWire and Forbes. Thanks:@johnhcook

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

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

More: Forbes, Business Insider and TechEye

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, Playstation 4, Geek.com, Gotta Be Mobile, CNET, VG247, Gamasutra and Softpedia News

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, VentureBeat, DSLreports, Ars Technica and Computerworld

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.

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

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, InvestorPlace and Digits

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, iLounge, DisplayBlog, AllThingsD, DisplayBlog and iDownloadBlog.com

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, iMore, PC Magazine, GeekWire, Digits, Guardian, Cult of Mac, Engadget, FiftyThree, Business Insider, iClarified, Gizmodo, MacStories, 9to5Mac, MacNN and TUAW

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: @evelynrusli and @fmanjoo

DoctorBeet:

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

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, CNET, TechHive, ReadWrite, Gigaom, Engadget, iDownloadBlog.com, Electronista, Mashable, Cult of Mac 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, TechHive, Gigaom, 9to5Google, iPhone, The Next Web and Electronista. Thanks:@jordankahn

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, Gigaom, The Register, TechCrunch, 9to5Google, Engadget, The Next Web, CNET, Android Police, Droid Life and Electronista

Tweets: @nerdtalker, @llsethj and @dcseifert

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 and TechCrunch. Tweets: @dmac1

Ashlee Vance / Businessweek:

Dropbox Seeks Another $250 million and $8 billion valuation

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

Tweets: @om and @alex

Thanks:@mattlynley

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, TechCrunch, Associated Press and Washington Post. Tweets: @jamesrbuk

IC ON THE RECORD:

DNI Clapper Declassifies Additional Intelligence Community …

More: Ars Technica, New York Times, Salon and The Next Web. Tweets: @charlie_savage

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, The Verge, ZDNet, The Next Web, Engadget, CITEworld, PC Magazine and TechCrunch

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: Digital Trends, Washington Post, Engadget, PC World, 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.

Tweets: @bijans and @lifescivc. Thanks:@eghosao

Brian X. Chen / NYT Bits:

Carriers Reject a ‘Kill Switch’ For Preventing Cellphone Theft — Lawmakers in San Francisco and New York are pushing cellphone makers to adopt a so-called kill switch that would allow users to deactivate their phone remotely, discouraging criminals from stealing phones. But the cellphone carriers are not on board.

More: Gizmodo, Engadget, TechHive and StrictlyVC

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.

Cape:

Most carriers track everything. Cape doesn't. — Unlimited talk, text & data, 24-hr metadata deletion, network ID rotation, SIM-attack defense, and more. Switch today and get 29% off for life.

Zoho:

Do you need a Zoho Partner? Here's why working with one can benefit you. — Zoho offers over 60 applications, each one built for a unique use case. From sales and marketing to finance, HR, and customer support …

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

The Talk Show With John Gruber:

'What's in Louie's Wallet', With Louie Mantia

The director's commentary track for Daring Fireball. Long digressions on Apple, technology, design, movies, and more.

Subscribe to The Talk Show With John Gruber.

Big Technology Podcast:

Leopold Blows Up, OpenAI Drastically Cuts Prices, Microsoft's Best Day

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.

Hard Fork:

Open Model Wars + Claire Stapleton's Dishy Google Memoir + Substack's Slop Fight

The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.

Subscribe to Hard Fork.

Great Chat:

Tech's short-term era

A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.

Subscribe to Great Chat.

Access:

Meet the most AI-pilled CEO on Earth

A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.

Subscribe to Access.

Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:

Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin

Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.

Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.

Add your podcast here

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 2:45 PM ET, November 19, 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.