Techmeme: PayPal launches a digital gift store, featuring Apple as its sole launch partner (Jon Russell/The Next Web)

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December 3, 2013, 11:20 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.

Matthew Panzarino / TechCrunch:

Apple Buys Topsy For Price Reportedly North Of $200M, Could Use Social Signals To Bolster Siri, App Store Relevance

Stuart Dredge / Guardian:

Spotify opens up analytics in effort to prove its worth to doubting musicians — Streaming music firm opens Spotify Artists website and claims when it reaches 40m subscribers, even ‘niche indie albums’ will earn $17k a month — Streaming music service Spotify is hoping to win …

More: Spotify for Artists, CNET, SiliconBeat, The Verge, Telegraph, Evolver.fm, hypebot, Music Week, I4U News, Digital Music News, Engadget, The Next Web, TechCrunch, SlashGear, Music Ally and Socialnomics

Tweets: @bwerde and @tobias_nielsen

Thanks:@stuartdredge. See also Mediagazer

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: VentureBeat, eWeek, DSLreports, TechSpot, TheHill, Softpedia News, Ubergizmo, Android Community, ZDNet, TechCrunch, Electronista, Lastest ITProPortal news, SlashGear, ecns, Telecompaper and Gigaom

Tweets: @niubi and @csoghoian

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: PC World, VentureBeat, Engadget, ExtremeTech, Softpedia News, Gizmodo, Mashable and Graham Cluley

Tweets: @chrisnahr, @qthrul, @gammacounter and @suffert

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

E La Carte Scores Deal With Applebee's, Bringing 100,000 Tableside Tablets To All U.S. Locations By Year-End 2014 — Applebee's, the largest casual dining chain in the U.S., has signed a deal with restaurant tablet hardware and software provider E la Carte, which will see it introducing 100 …

More: USA Today, Engadget, TIME, Y Combinator Posthaven and Business Insider. Tweets: @scottkirsner

Jon Russell / The Next Web:

PayPal launches a digital gift store, featuring Apple as its sole launch partner — A week after adding support for prepaid gift cards, payments giant PayPal has launched its own digital gift store to allow US -based customers to buy gift cards for friends and family using its service.

More: The Official PayPal, iMore, Engadget, App Advice, Inquirer, 9to5Mac, Gotta Be Mobile, PandoDaily, iPhone, MacStories, TUAW and Electronista

Kit Chellel / Bloomberg:

Nokia Gets Ruling Blocking Sales of HTC's One Mini Phone in U.K. — A London judge said HTC Corp. (2498) couldn't sell its One Mini phone in the U.K. from Dec. 6 after it was found to have infringed patents owned by Nokia Oyj. (NOK1V) — While Judge Richard Arnold also ruled that HTC's …

More: Engadget, FOSS Patents, CNET, BGR, The Next Web, Inquirer, Gigaom, Android Beat, PhoneArena, Softpedia News, Phones Review, pocketnow.com, Android Central and WMPoweruser

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, New York Times, BetaNews, SiliconANGLE, Network World, bizjournals, Softpedia News, CNET, ZDNet, Digits, InfoWorld, Electronista, Google Cloud Platform Blog, PalmAddict, The Next Web, Forbes, Gigaom and The Register

Tweets: @robynbergeron and @bdelacretaz

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, SlashGear and GeekWire

Nicole Lee / Engadget:

E Ink's new Fina display technology promises lighter, thinner e-readers — That Kindle Paperwhite is pretty thin and light already, but future e-readers could be even skinnier thanks to a new screen technology from E Ink known as Fina. The tech uses a super thin glass substrate that'll supposedly result …

More: E Ink, Softpedia News, Electronista, Liliputing, Ubergizmo, Gigaom, Softpedia News, SlashGear and Good E-Reader

Rob Wile / Business Insider:

Stockholm-based KnCMiner sells $8 million worth of bitcoin mining hardware in 24 hours — Bitcoin Developer Sells $8 Million Worth Of Hardware In 24 Hours, As Mining Technology Arms Race Goes Insane — Stockholm-based KnCMiner sold $8 million worth of their new $10,000-a-pop bitcoin miners …

More: ReadWrite

Agam Shah / PC World:

HP Slate tablets running Android Jellybean hit the market — Hewlett-Packard's latest Android tablets with multiple screen sizes are available through the company's website. — HP Slate 7 Extreme — The tablets run Android 4.2, code-named Jellybean, and are listed at the company's tablet page.

More: Gotta Be Mobile, Android Police, Digital Trends, Android Authority, Engadget, Android Community, Phandroid, Unwired View and Android and Me

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

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, Gigaom, 9to5Google, Android Police, WebProNews, Engadget, The Next Web, AndroidGuys, SlashGear, Gizmodo, Android Beat, Glass Almanac and Android Central

Gautham Nagesh / Wall Street Journal:

The Agency Running HealthCare.gov Mostly Kept to Itself as Warning Signs Grew About the Website — When warning signs emerged earlier this year, the agency running the HealthCare.gov website mostly kept the problems to itself—a decision that now looms large in explaining how the project went so badly astray.

Tweets: @stefaniei

Aman Sharma / The Econonomic Times:

India seeks US help to intercept chats from online platforms — NEW DELHI: India will ask the US to share its technology on how to decrypt conversations over various services like Viber, Whatsapp, Skype, Wechat and Blackberry messenger while complaining about service providers in US …

More: MediaNama and ZDNet. Tweets: @economictimes

Jon Christian / Wired:

From ‘Preggers’ to ‘Pizzle’: Android's Bizarre List of Banned Words — There's no “sex” at the Googleplex. — Type or swipe the word on the latest version of Android's Google Keyboard — or for that matter “intercourse,” “coitus,” “screwing” or even “lovemaking” — and the web giant's predictive algorithm will offer no help.

More: Inquirer. Tweets: @cheshirekate111

Wall Street Journal:

FCC Chair Hints at Spectrum-Allocation Idea — Regulator Indicates He Favors Making Sure Smaller Wireless Carriers Get Airwaves — The nation's top telecommunications regulator on Monday gave his strongest indication to date that he might support limiting big carriers like AT&T Inc …

More: The Switch, Variety and Union Square Ventures. 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: Reuters, Variety, Digital Trends, bizjournals, Benzinga, Consumerist, Fast Company and Broadcasting & Cable. See also Mediagazer

Dina Bass / Bloomberg:

Worldwide PC Market to Post Steeper 2013 Drop of 10.1%, IDC Says — Worldwide personal-computer shipments are projected to fall 10.1 percent this year, by far the biggest annual decline on record, as consumers continue to shun the devices, market researcher IDC said.

More: IDC, TechCrunch, InfoWorld, ZDNet, Digital Trends, CITEworld, eWeek, BBC, Softpedia News, WebProNews, CNET, Business Insider and Financial Times

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

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, GamePolitics blogs and Softpedia News

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