Techmeme: Foxconn Said to Target Wearables With New Startup Fund (Tim Culpan/Bloomberg)

Open Links In New Tab

Mobile Archives Advertise Site News Contact Editors

December 11, 2013, 10:15 AM

Top News

Tom Warren / The Verge:

Nokia's “Normandy” phone uses a forked variant of Android, a la Kindle Fire — This is Nokia's Android phone — Codename Normandy is ‘full steam ahead’ — Nokia has been building its own Android phone according to multiple sources familiar with the company's plans.

Ina Fried / AllThingsD:

Why Nokia Is Building an Android Phone and Why Microsoft Might Not Kill It — So, is Nokia really working on an Android-based phone, and would Microsoft really go ahead with such a device? — The answer to the first one is definitely yes. And, surprisingly, the answer to the second question may be yes, as well.

More: T3 News

The Switch:

NSA uses Google cookies to pinpoint targets for hacking — The National Security Agency is secretly piggybacking on the tools that enable Internet advertisers to track consumers, using “cookies” and location data to pinpoint targets for government hacking and to bolster surveillance.

More: Techdirt, Freedom to Tinker, ZDNet, Gigaom, CNET, Washington Post, SocialTimes, emptywheel, Gizmodo, The Verge, Engadget, Yahoo! News, The Next Web and Boing Boing

Tweets: @latentexistence, @eff, @mstem, @juliaangwin, @thomas_drake1, @mattbuchanan, @r_macdonald, @jcstearns, @dhh, @emptywheel, @katecrawford and @csoghoian

See also Mediagazer

The Switch:

New documents show how the NSA infers relationships based on mobile location data

More: VentureBeat and The Verge. Tweets: @schock, @kataclyst, @mattblaze, @ashk4n, @fborgesius and @mattbuchanan

Marguerite Reardon / CNET:

AT&T chief: We can't keep doing big subsidies on phones — AT&T's top executive says the era of big subsidies for devices is coming to an end, as wireless operators can no longer afford to fund a constant smartphone upgrade cycle. — Speaking at an investor conference in New York City on Tuesday …

More: Gigaom, Forbes, DSLreports, AppleInsider, 9to5Mac, Gizmodo, App Advice, WebProNews, iPhone, Gotta Be Mobile, SlashGear, MacRumors, PhoneArena, Cult of Mac and Android Central. Tweets: @johnlegere

Mary Jo Foley / Fortune:

Steve Ballmer and Microsoft's top executives reflect on his legacy — For Steve Ballmer, a lasting touch on Microsoft — As the world prepares for Microsoft to announce a new chief executive, we ask the company's top executives—including the man himself—to take a look at the legacy Steve Ballmer leaves on the technology company.

More: ZDNet, ZDNet, The Verge, Business Insider and TechRepublic

Tweets: @fortunemagazine, @thurrott and @maryjofoley

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

Glassdoor: Twitter dethrones Facebook as the best tech company to work for, ending three-year streak — Career website Glassdoor today released its sixth annual Employees' Choice Awards, a list of the 50 best places to work for in the coming year. Twitter was elected the number one tech company …

More: Fortune, ReadWrite, 9to5Mac, GeekWire, SiliconANGLE, AppleInsider, PhoneArena, CNET, Gigaom, MacNN, SiliconBeat, Business Insider, VentureBeat and Marketing Land

Tweets: @tonyw and @ober

Jon Fingas / Engadget:

Dell unveils education-focused Chromebook 11, arriving in January for under $300 — As promised, Dell has taken the wraps off its first Chrome OS device, the Chromebook 11. The 11.6-inch, 2.9-pound laptop is built with the classroom in mind, and it should ship in tandem with a Wyse PocketCloud app …

More: Gigaom, The Next Web, The Verge, TechCrunch and PC World

Matthew Panzarino / TechCrunch:

Twitter Apps Updated With New Swipeable Design And Photo Support In Direct Messages — Today, Twitter has announced an update to its apps that bring a renewed focus on direct messaging. The app now features a direct link to DMs in the tab bar and allows you to send photos inside direct messages.

More: The Next Web, Newsy, Softpedia News, SlashGear, Electronista, AppleInsider, 9to5Google, iDownloadBlog.com, iMore, iClarified, TUAW and 9to5Mac

Tweets: @panzer, @mattbuchanan, @caseynewton, @mikeisaac and @andylevy

John Herrman / BuzzFeed:

Why Twitter Just Joined The Backchannel Wars

Michele Sinner / Reuters:

Cisco loses court challenge to Microsoft's takeover of Skype — (Reuters) - Microsoft fended off a challenge to its $8.5 billion takeover of messaging service Skype when Europe's second-highest court ruled against claims by rival Cisco that the 2011 deal would harm competition.

More: Gigaom, PC World, CNET, ZDNet, The Verge and Bloomberg

Joe Mullin / Ars Technica:

“Revenge porn” operator arrested, charged with ID theft — Websites that post nude pictures of adults without their permission, commonly known as “revenge porn” sites, have recently drawn public scorn and a few lawsuits. — Now, the owner of one revenge porn website is facing prison.

More: California Attorney …, BBC, Business Insider, The Switch, Forbes, CNET, TheHill, Digits, Boing Boing, Guardian, Mashable, Gigaom and Motherboard

Kim-Mai Cutler / TechCrunch:

Palantir's Latest Round Valuing It At $9B Swells To $107.8M In New Funding — Palantir, the big data company that started off with clients like the FBI and CIA before building up a large private-sector roster of customers, just added more funding to its coffers.

Stephen Schenck / Pocketnow:

Android Action Bar overflow changes could mark beginning of the end for hardware menu button — When Android started making the move away from hardware buttons, and giving manufacturers the option to present users with fully on-screen virtual buttons, it sounded like we were moving towards …

More: Android Police and Android Beat

Leslie Horn / Gizmodo:

Harlem Is Getting the Biggest Free Public Wi-Fi Network In the U.S. — Here's some good news. Harlem is about to get the biggest free public Wi-Fi network in the entire country, spanning a whopping 95 blocks. Soon there won't be anywhere in the city where you can't get online.

More: NYC.gov, The Verge, InfoWorld, Engadget, MacNN, PandoDaily, Betabeat, TechPresident and Government Technology News

Jared Newman / PC World:

Battle of the Windows RT displays: Lumia 2520 shines but the Surface 2 stutters — Microsoft's Surface 2 and Nokia's Lumia 2520 (pictured at top) may have similar displays on paper, but a test of both tablets found Nokia to be the clear winner on screen quality.

More: DisplayMate, ZDNet, CNET, BetaNews, BGR, The Next Web and Gizmodo. Thanks:@bradchacos

Tim Culpan / Bloomberg:

Foxconn Said to Target Wearables With New Startup Fund — Foxconn Technology Group, maker of Apple Inc. iPhones and iPads, is launching an investment fund to finance startups developing new kinds of wearable computers, according to two people familiar with the project.

More: Digital Trends, Tech in Asia, The Next Web, SlashGear and bit-tech.net. Tweets: @tculpan

Jon Russell / The Next Web:

Google's first data centers in Asia go online to help serve the growing Internet population — Google has announced that its two new data centers in Asia — based in Taiwan and Singapore — are now online. — Following yesterday's news that the company has scrapped plans for a third data center …

More: The Verge, Google Asia Pacific Blog, Reuters, focustaiwan.tw, BBC and VCPOST

Yun-Hee Kim / China Real Time Report:

Google Scraps Plan to Build Hong Kong Data Center

More: The Next Web, VentureBeat and The Register

Variety:

Epic Fail: The Rise and Fall of Demand Media — The future of the so-called “content farm” looks bleak as its search-centric biz crumbles — Take note, Twitter: Not every tech company has a happy ending after a ballyhooed IPO. — Just look at Demand Media, the Santa Monica …

More: Forbes and ECPM BLOG. Tweets: @lyndoman and @carnage4life

Glyn Moody / Techdirt:

Norway To Digitize All Norwegian Books, Allowing Domestic IP Addresses To Read All Of Them, Irrespective Of Copyright Status — Here's a pretty amazing story from Norway: … Now, in any normal country — where “normal” means one in which copyright has reached the heights of monopolistic insanity …

More: The Verge, The Atlantic Online and SlashGear

Tweets: @mathewi and @glynmoody

Artem Russakovskii / Android Police:

Google Play Books now allows ebook uploads from any Android device — Google Play Books Update 3.1.17 Finally Lets You Upload Books Directly From Devices, Open Books Faster And Smoother, And More [APK Download] — Google Play Books update 3.1.17 is slowly rolling out …

More: Engadget and The Next Web

John Biggs / TechCrunch:

Wireless beacon startup Estimote raises $3.1M, hires Steve Cheney as SVP, Business Operations — iBeacon Pioneers Estimote Raise $3.1M Seed Round — Jakub Krzych, founder of Estimote, has announced a $3.1 million seed round raise from Innovation Endeavors, Betaworks, Bessemer Venture Partners …

More: AllThingsD, Y Combinator Posthaven, steve cheney, MobilePaymentsToday.com News, PandoDaily and Stowe Boyd

Tweets: @radekg and @hunterwalk

Brian X. Chen / New York Times:

New York Asks Cellphone Carriers to Explain Why They Rejected Antitheft Switch — SAN FRANCISCO — New York State's top prosecutor is investigating why American cellphone carriers have yet to embrace antitheft software on Samsung smartphones, raising questions about possible coordination among the biggest carriers.

Stephen Totilo / Kotaku:

YouTube Channels Crippled By Copyright Claims — Numerous video game-related YouTube personalities have spent the last day digging through piles of copyright claims suddenly filling their inboxes, claims that they say are messing with their ability to produce and profit from videos they post online.

More: Tubefilter, Polygon, VentureBeat, Plagiarism Today and Marketing Pilgrim

Karl Bode / DSLreports:

Sprint's ‘Spark’ LTE Upgrades Go Live in Chicago — Sprint today announced that the company's faster “Spark” LTE upgrades have gone live in Chicago. Last month Sprint announced they'd be combining the company's 800 MHz, 1.9 GHz and 2.5 GHz LTE spectrum to provide what Sprint promises …

More: CNET, Sprint Newsroom, BGR, Featured News, PhoneArena, FierceWireless, Phones Review, Engadget, Gigaom, Electronista, TelecompetitorTelecompetitor and TechnoBuffalo

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

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.

The Upstarts Podcast:

Basis's Matt Harpe: Why AI Won't Replace Accountants — It'll Make Them Richer

Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.

Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.

Channels with Peter Kafka:

Lucas Shaw on Warner Bros' Limbo, Netflix's Anxiety, and Hollywood's Sort-of Comeback

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.

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 10:15 AM ET, December 11, 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.