Techmeme
November 19, 2013, 5:20 PM

Top News

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 …
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 …
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 …
Lance Whitney / CNET:
Snapchat says it's delivering over 400M snaps daily while Facebook sees 350M photo uploads daily  —  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 …
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.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Music Streaming Startup Rdio Lays Off Staff To 'Improve Cost Structure And Ensure A Scalable Business"  —  The music streaming business can be tough, with market leaders like Spotify growing like weeds but still loss-making.  Today, some bad news from competitor Rdio, the music streaming service startup …
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.
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.
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.”
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 …
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.
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.
Nathan Ingraham / The Verge:
Google releases ‘sneak peek’ of Glass app development kit  —  Back at SXSW, Google announced the Glass Mirror API — the first step in allowing developers to build apps, or “Glassware” for its wearable computing device.  Now, developers will have a whole new set of tools at their disposal: the long-awaited Glass Development Kit (GDK).
Dan Primack / Fortune:
Exclusive: Tim Draper leaving DFJ  —  Venture capitalist Tim Draper is moving on from the Silicon Valley firm he created 28 years ago.  —  FORTUNE — Tim Draper is leaving Draper Fisher Jurvetson, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm he founded in 1985.
Tweets: @megan
Russ Frushtick / Polygon:
One of the first official iOS controllers sets a low bar for the competition  —  iOS 7 brought with it official support for gamepads on Apple devices, but one of the first on the market doesn't set a high standard.  —  One of the more subtle features of iOS 7 was the addition of official Apple drivers …
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 …
Shara Tibken / CNET:
Apple makes last pitch for why it deserves $380M from Samsung  —  Outside U.S District Court in San Jose, Calif., the scene of the Apple v. Samsung retrial.  —  (Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET) SAN JOSE, Calif. — Apple on Tuesday made its last pitch to a jury before the eight men …
More: AllThingsD, Reuters, PC World and AllThingsDTweets: @hmintz

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:
Stop re-entering Shopify order details in Zoho CRM  —  This is a guest blog from Xapplets (Zeeyes AI Inc).Here's a scene that plays out in many growing Shopify stores every day: a customer places an order …
IDrive:
IDrive Autonomy: low-cost L2+ driver assistance with AI  —  L2+ driver assistance with a scalable AI stack built for automotive companies and laying the foundation for the autonomous future.

Featured Podcasts

Hard Fork:
The A.I. Mob That Attacked Hugging Face + METR's Ajeya Cotra
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.
Big Technology Podcast:
Cloudflare CEO: We're Ready To Block Millions of Websites From AI — With Matthew Prince
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:
Data Centers, Elon Musk, and the New Politics of Tech, with David Weigel
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:
Sam Altman on OpenAI's next model and the AI backlash
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.
Uncapped with Jack Altman:
Brian Singerman from GPx
Conversations with people I admire about things I'm genuinely interested in.
Subscribe to Uncapped with Jack Altman.
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 5:20 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.

More News

Earlier Picks