Techmeme
January 4, 2014, 10:20 PM

Top News

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Apple Acquires Rapid-Fire Camera App Developer SnappyLabs  —  Apple has acquired the one-man photo technology startup SnappyLabs, maker of SnappyCam, sources tell me.  The startup was founded and run solely by John Papandriopoulos, an electrical engineering PhD from the University Of Melbourne …
Rap Genius:
Rap Genius begins to recover its Google search ranking, details SEO strategies, apologizes  —  Rap Genius is Back on Google  —  In this post we give more details about our misguided SEO strategies and how we got there.  We also explain our process and the tools we used to fix the problem and return to Google.
George Lewis / Galapagos Digital:
Jeff Bezos flown from cruise in Galapagos islands by Ecuadorian navy after kidney stone attack  —  Billionaire Bezos Flown out of Galápagos  —  Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of the popular Amazon.com shopping website and current owner of the Washington Post …
Michael Crider / Android Police:
Google Buys Timely Alarm Clock Developer Bitspin, Premium IAP Content Is Now Free  —  In an odd bit of M&A news, the developers at Bitspin announced that the small company will be joining forces with Google.  Whether Google has purchased the company outright or merely hired …
Ed Christman / Billboard:
As streaming grows, digital music sales decreased in 2013, the first time since iTunes launch  —  Digital Music Sales Decrease For First Time in 2013  —  For the first time since the iTunes store opened its doors, the U.S. music industry finished the year with a decrease in digital music sales.
Jason Kincaid:
Evernote wants to help you “Remember Everything”, but is a bug-ridden elephant  —  Evernote, the bug-ridden elephant  —  To say this post pains me would be an understatement.  More than any other technology, Evernote is part of me, having evolved from habit to instinct over several years and nearly seven thousand notes.
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Palm's abandoned webOS plans at HP included phones and tablets, major UI evolution  —  The lost secrets of webOS  —  LG is about to unveil the future of webOS — but there's a past we never saw  —  Next week, LG will unveil new televisions running webOS, the ill-fated operating system it acquired in last February.
Tweets: @panzer
Daniel Stuckey / Motherboard:
Barnaby Jack, Hacker of ATMs and Pacemakers, Died From an Overdose  —  The celebrated hacker Barnaby Jack, who spectacularly demonstrated his ability to cause ATMs to spit out cash and pacemakers to crash, died from a drug overdose, San Francisco police revealed, months after his death at his home at the age of 36.
Natasha Singer / New York Times:
Pandora begins targeting ads by musical taste  —  Listen to Pandora, and It Listens Back  —  Pandora, the Internet radio service, is playing a new tune.  —  After years of customizing playlists to individual listeners by analyzing components of the songs they like, then playing them tracks …

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
SubQ Snap 1.1: the first long-context decision model for real enterprise work  —  Tied for #1 on the AA Decision Index, Snap is a multimodal model with a 384k-token context window for fast reasoning and agentic decisions.
Zoho:
3 smarter updates for your staffing pipeline  —  Staffing recruiters manage multiple client requirements, large candidate databases, and tight submission deadlines.  Finding suitable candidates is only the first step.
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.
WebBrain:
WebBrain: an open-source AI agent for your browser  —  Read pages, fill forms and automate tasks in Chrome or Firefox.  Use local models or your preferred AI provider.  Get started free.

Featured Podcasts

Lenny's Podcast:
How a 19-year-old intern built the growth engine behind this $2B AI company | Hector Serrano
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Big Technology Podcast:
Big Tech's Ugly Week, Getting Rich At Anthropic, AI Costs Plunge
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.
Machine Gods:
OpenAI's Latest Discoveries Spark a Backlash + Help! My Kid Hates AI
The official podcast of the singularity, from Casey Newton and Kevin Roose. Twice-weekly news, analysis, and interviews with the people who are building the future.
Subscribe to Machine Gods.
The Upstarts Podcast:
The Accidental YC Founder Solving AI's GPU Crisis | SF Compute's Evan Conrad
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.
Cheeky Pint:
Why Sam Altman is against a single superintelligence
Stripe cofounder John Collison interviews founders, builders, and leaders over a pint.
Subscribe to Cheeky Pint.
Great Chat:
The case for AI optimism
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 10:20 PM ET, January 4, 2014.

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

Matthew Lynch / Capital New York:
Jon Fingas / Engadget:
Sam Biddle / Valleywag: