Techmeme: Comcast testing full ad loads for on-demand shows (Ryan Nakashima/Associated Press)

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December 3, 2013, 4:45 AM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:

Apple acquires Topsy, a company specializing in Twitter search and analytics, for more than $200M — Apple Taps Into Twitter, Buying Social Analytics Firm Topsy — Apple Inc. has acquired social-media analytics firm Topsy Labs Inc. for more than $200 million, according to people familiar with the matter.

More: Cult of Mac, memeburn, AllThingsD, Reuters, Gigaom, Search Engine Land, Bloomberg, Mercury News, VentureBeat, MacRumors, MacDailyNews, SlashGear, Variety, Forbes, Mashable, Los Angeles Times, BGR, AppleInsider, The Next Web, Digits, iMore and TUAW

Tweets: @kenromano, @mattlynley, @panzer, @dannysullivan, @rossneumann, @digiphile, @mattlynley, @daiwaka, @caseynewton, @vijayshekhar, @darbison, @samhouston, @edmundlee, @mattlynley, @mikeisaac and @jwherrman

Matthew Panzarino / TechCrunch:

Apple Buys Topsy For Price Reportedly North Of $200M, Could Use Social Signals To Bolster Siri, App Store Relevance — Apple has purchased social analytics firm Topsy, which focuses on parsing data from Twitter, reports The Wall Street Journal. The deal was apparently worth ‘more than $200M’ according to the publication.

Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:

Microsoft codename ‘Threshold’: The next major Windows wave takes shape — Summary: Microsoft's wave of spring 2015 updates to its various Windows-based platforms has a codename: Threshold. — When I blogged recently about Microsoft's plans on the operating-systems front following Windows 8.1 …

Foreign Policy:

Accused of Cyberspying, Huawei Is ‘Exiting the U.S. Market’ — The CEO of the world's biggest telecommunications equipment maker, which for years has been labeled by U.S. officials as a proxy for Chinese military and intelligence agencies, says he's giving up on America.

More: ZDNet, Telecompaper, SlashGear, ecns and Gigaom

Tweets: @niubi and @csoghoian

TechCrunch:

Google's Compute Engine Hits General Availability, Drops Instance Prices 10%, Adds 16-Core Instances & Docker Support — Google today announced the general availability of the Google Compute Engine, the cloud computing platform it launched in the summer of 2012.

More: Google Developers Blog, Forbes, Gigaom, New York Times, The Next Web, Computerworld, The Register, Digits and Google Cloud Platform Blog

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Salesforce Says Hackathon Winner Didn't Cheat But Declares Tie, Gives Two Finalists $1M Each — Microsoft Rolls Out Student Advantage, Giving Students Free Access To Its Office Suite — Salesforce has responded to cries of foul play in its $1 million hackathon by announcing …

More: Developer Relations, PR Newswire, VentureBeat, CNET, The Next Web, Business Insider, Forbes, Gigaom, The Register, Valleywag, ZDNet and NYT Bits

Tweets: @om and @rjonesy

Thanks:@joshconstine

San Francisco Chronicle:

Hangar 3: Google building three floating retail stores for $35 million, to be docked in SF, LA and NY — Google plans ‘floating retail store,’ builder says — It turns out that the mysterious high-tech barge that Google is building at Treasure Island is just the first of three floating wonders …

More: SlashGear, Los Angeles Times, The Verge, BGR, AppleInsider, The Huffington Post and NBC Bay Area

Derrick Harris / Gigaom:

Netflix is balancing its streaming traffic across Amazon's cloud — Netflix is fighting back outages in the Amazon Web Services cloud computing platform with a new architecture that has its streaming-video service running live across multiple regions of the AWS cloud and balancing user traffic between them.

More: The Netflix Tech Blog and GeekWire

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:

Scientist-developed malware covertly jumps air gaps using inaudible sound — Topology of a covert mesh network that connects air-gapped computers to the Internet. — Hanspach and Goetz — Computer scientists have developed a malware prototype that uses inaudible audio signals to communicate …

More: Gizmodo and Graham Cluley. Tweets: @chrisnahr, @gammacounter, @suffert and @qthrul

Seth Rosenblatt / CNET:

Google Glass gets official Play Music app — Google continues to add apps to its MyGlass app page with an official Glass-ification of its Play Music app. Google released an official version of its Play Music app for Google Glass on Monday. The app, announced in a Google+ post …

More: Stephen Lau, Engadget, The Next Web, AndroidGuys, Glass Almanac, Android Central and Android Police

Danielle Kucera / Bloomberg:

Cyber Monday Sales Increase 19%, Aided by Mobile, IBM Says — Cyber Monday online sales increased 19 percent compared with last year, setting the foundation for what's projected to be the biggest online shopping day of 2013. — Retailers catering to smartphone and tablet users are especially benefiting …

More: internetretailer.com

Sean Buckley / Engadget:

Engadget's Cyber Monday 2013 roundup

More: Xbox Live's Major Nelson, Gigaom, AppleInsider, VentureBeat, 9to5Google, Amazon.com, SiliconANGLE, Softpedia News, IntoMobile, TechnoBuffalo, pocketnow.com, TechHive, Inquirer, The Verge, USA Today, Wired, ZDNet and The Verge

Guardian:

Edward Snowden revelations prompt UN investigation into surveillance — UN's senior counter-terrorism official says revelations ‘are at the very apex of public interest concerns’ — The UN's senior counter-terrorism official is to launch an investigation into the surveillance powers …

More: Gigaom. Tweets: @mariongroves. See also Mediagazer

Ryan Nakashima / Associated Press:

Comcast testing full ad loads for on-demand shows — LOS ANGELES (AP) — Pay TV customers who are used to watching fewer ads on on-demand shows may have to put up with longer commercial breaks. — Comcast Corp., the nation's largest cable TV provider, says it is testing out a system …

More: Digital Trends, Reuters, Variety, Fast Company, Benzinga, Consumerist, bizjournals, Broadcasting & Cable, FierceCable and Deadline.com. See also Mediagazer

Amy Gesenhues / Search Engine Land:

Yahoo's Year In Review Includes Top Searches For 2013 & First Ever Posting Of Top Tumblr Trends — Yahoo has assembled an impressive list of search trends for 2013, covering 38 different “Top Searched” lists on everything from top searches overall to top searched cookies (yes, the ones you eat).

More: The Next Web and Yahoo

Parmy Olson / Forbes:

Landmark Princeton Study Sends Bots Across The Web To Track Discrimination — Privacy advocates have long argued that the commercialization of our online data is a worrying trend, but it's been hard to argue why since the advertising and marketing firms who track much of what we do, operate in obscurity.

Thanks:@parmy

Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:

U.S. Department of Justice gives Microsoft-Nokia deal the OK — Summary: The U.S. DOJ has given its approval to Microsoft's planned $7.2 billion acquisition of Nokia's devices and services business. — The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has given its approval to Microsoft's pending acquisition …

More: The Verge, AllThingsD, TechSpot, VatorNews, PC Magazine, SlashGear, NYT Bits, Softpedia News, TechCrunch, The Register, ReadWrite, The Next Web, Gigaom, WMPoweruser, Engadget and WinBeta. Tweets: @fosspatents

Joe Mullin / Ars Technica:

Judge: MPAA can't call Hotfile founders “pirates” or “thieves” at trial — Action figures that absolutely can't be used in the upcoming MPAA v. Hotfile trial. — lamont_cranston / flickr — In years past, the Motion Picture Association of America has had success in shutting down peer …

More: TorrentFreak

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

Microsoft launches Student Advantage worldwide, lets teachers who bought Office 365 give it to students for free — Microsoft today announced the worldwide launch of a program called Student Advantage. In short, the move lets teachers offer Office 365 to their students for free.

More: The Microsoft Office Blog, TechCrunch, GeekWire, BetaNews, Ubergizmo, SlashGear, WebProNews, Engadget, Electronista, WinBeta and TechNet Blogs

Casey Newton / The Verge:

Dropping the needle: the life and death of Turntable.fm — Meet me in the club, it's going down — Tonight at 10PM EST, the virtual DJs at Turntable.fm will be escorted off the stage for the last time. Two and a half years after founders Billy Chasen and Seth Goldstein captivated music fans …

More: Mashable. Tweets: @calebgarling and @turntablelive. See also Mediagazer

Tiernan Ray / Tech Trader Daily:

OCZ Says Toshiba to Buy Assets for $35 Million — Defunct flash-storage vendor OCZ Technology Group (OCZ) this afternoon announced that Toshiba (6502JP) will buy the company's assets out of bankruptcy for $35 million, including both OCZ's consumer business and its enterprise solid-state drive business.

More: OCZ Technology Group … and The Register

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