Techmeme
November 21, 2013, 6:15 AM

Top News

Justin Edmund / Oh, How Pinteresting!:
Introducing Place Pins, for the explorer in all of us  —  About a year ago, we noticed Pinners creating more and more boards around the vacations they're planning, special places near where they live and sites they want to see someday.  In fact, every day people Pin about 1.5 million places …
Preston Gralla / Computerworld:
Dell Venue 8 Pro review: A Windows 8.1 tablet for the rest of us  —  Dell's new 8-in. tablet offers a fine display and good features at a price that most Windows users can afford.  —  With the new Dell Venue 8 Pro, we're finally seeing a full-blown Windows 8.1 tablet for the masses.
More: The Verge and ZDNet
Brad Molen / Engadget:
Ina Fried / AllThingsD:
Southwest to Be First With Gate-to-Gate Wi-Fi Service  —  Frequent fliers have been quick to note which airlines are allowing passengers to use their electronics during takeoff and landing, but Southwest Airlines is upping the ante.  —  In addition to already allowing use of the gadgets themselves …
Kellex / Droid Life:
Google Wallet Card is Official, Wallet Users Can Sign Up Now for Physical Cards  —  A few months back, rumors of a physical Google Wallet card surfaced, suggesting that Google would give you a credit/debit card that could access your Google Wallet balance and be used for purchasing goods.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Apple's iBeacon Comes To Retailers Via Shopkick's ShopBeacon  —  When Apple, with much fanfare, announced iOS 7 in June, it also quietly confirmed a new feature called iBeacons, which uses Bluetooth Low Energy signalling to enable micro-location services and to trigger actions within apps.
Casey Newton / The Verge:
Self-driving vehicles still a decade away, experts tell Congress  —  Truly autonomous vehicles won't arrive until at least 2020 and likely later, according to a panel of car company executives and researchers that spoke to Congress this week.  Mike Robinson, vice president of sustainability …
Vlad Savov / The Verge:
Acer founder steps in to save company as CEO and president resign  —  Acer's been on a quest to reinvent itself pretty much since the sunset of the netbook era — which both fuelled the Taiwanese company's rapid growth and left it floundering when consumers moved on to other devices.
More: EngadgetTweets: @tculpan, @tomwarren and @trixxy
Kirk Hamilton / Kotaku:
Xbox One almost reaches Microsoft's ambitious vision for a next-gen console  —  The Xbox One: The Kotaku Review  —  The Xbox One is a testament to Microsoft's towering ambition.  It represents their desire not only to occupy a place in your home entertainment center, but to lumber straight into the center of it.
Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch:
Microsoft Now Sells T-Shirts That Claim Google's Chrome Steals Your Data  —  Microsoft has started to sell t-shirts, hats, mugs, and sweatshirts that bear slogans from its Scroogled campaign that needles Google as bad on privacy.  I confirmed with the company that the clothing line was released today.
Rebecca Grant / VentureBeat:
Is the tide turning?  Women filled 60% of tech jobs created this year  —  Could America finally be making progress towards getting more women into the tech industry?  —  New data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics suggests we might be.  —  Of the 39,000 jobs created in tech this year, 60 percent of them were filled by women.
TechCrunch:
Dropbox-Rival Box Is Raising $100M In New Funding At A $2B Valuation  —  Enterprise cloud file storage firm Box is raising an additional $100 million in capital at a valuation of around $2 billion.  A filing with the State of Delaware was first noticed by VC Experts.
Nitasha Tiku / Valleywag:
Jay Z and Ashton Kutcher-Backed “Uber For Planes” Grinds to a Halt  —  Of all the “Uber for __” propositions, the splashiest by far was Blackjet, the app that purports to help wealthy users book seats on private jets (for a $2,500 annual membership fee).  When it launched last October …
Alexis Santos / Engadget:
Bitcasa's infinite cloud storage balloons to $999 a year  —  If you thought Bitcasa's infinite cloud storage was too sweet of a deal to exist on this mortal plane for $99 a year, that's because it was — or at least partly because the bulk of subscribers filled up far less of their digital lockers than expected.
Ken Yeung / The Next Web:
End of an era: Once-popular media player Winamp closing down on December 20  —  The end of an era is here.  AOL announced that the music service Winamp is shutting down on December 20, 2013.  This move affects its website, Winamp.com, associated Web services, and also its Winamp Media players.
James Ball / Guardian:
US and UK struck secret data pact  —  • 2007 deal allows NSA to store previously restricted material  —  • UK citizens not suspected of wrongdoing caught up in dragnet  —  • Separate draft memo proposes US spying on ‘Five-Eyes’ allies  —  The phone, internet and email records …
Florian Mueller / FOSS Patents:
While jury is deliberating, Samsung brings emergency motion to stay Apple's patent case  —  [Update] Shortly after the notice this blog post reported on initially, Samsung brought the actual motion, published toward the end of this post.  [/Update]  —  On the second day of jury deliberations …

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Earlier Picks

Terrence O'Brien / Engadget: