Techmeme: Starbucks caught storing mobile passwords in clear text (Evan Schuman/Computerworld)

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January 16, 2014, 12:20 PM

Top News

Alex Chitu / Google Operating System:

Google Now integrated in Chrome Canary builds, with weather, scores, traffic, and reminder cards — Google Now in Chrome for Desktop — Google Now cards are available in the latest Chrome Canary build for Windows and Mac (34.0.1788). You only need to go to chrome://flags/#enable-google- now …

Kara Swisher / Re/code:

He Was Fired: Here's Marissa Mayer's De Castro Buh-Bye Memo to Yahoo Staff — Here it is, the internal memo to Yahoo staff about the sudden — though it was not sudden, by any means — leave-taking today of its COO, Henrique De Castro, courtesy of one of my 10,563 sources left at Yahoo!

More: Marketing Land, USA Today, Computerworld, New York Times, Business Insider, Softpedia News, The Register and VentureBeat. Tweets: @evelynrusli. See also Mediagazer

Kara Swisher / Re/code:

Yahoo COO Henrique De Castro, Mayer's No. 2, to depart after failing to move lagging ad business

More: Business Insider, Inquirer, SiliconANGLE, Wall Street Journal, CNET, memeburn, WebProNews, Forbes, The Register, TechnoBuffalo, Electronista and GeekWire

Tweets: @mikeisaac and @danprimack

See also Mediagazer

Bloomberg:

Microsoft CEO Candidate List Is Said to Include Ericsson's Vestberg — Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)'s board is considering Ericsson AB Chief Executive Officer Hans Vestberg as a potential successor to departing leader Steve Ballmer, according to people briefed on the search.

More: GeekWire, Inquirer, AppleInsider, Guardian, TheStreet.com, LiveSide.net, WinBeta, Gigaom and CNET

Tweets: @parislemon and @bloombergtech

Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:

OUYA Founding Team Member And VP Of Product Development Departs — One of OUYA's founding members, Muffi Ghadiali, has left the company, TechCrunch has learned. Ghadiali was instrumental in helping launch the OUYA on Kickstarter and to the consumer market, and has previous experience working for Lab126 …

More: SlashGear, Phandroid, The Escapist, Polygon, Joystiq, VG247, VentureBeat and GamesIndustry International. Thanks:@vmgarmstrong

David Meyer / Gigaom:

Privacy activists can sue Google in UK over Safari tracking, court decides — A group of privacy activists in England have won permission to sue Google in that country over its tricking of Apple's Safari browser into accepting its tracking cookies, even when the browser settings forbade this.

More: Marketing Land, MacRumors, The Register, Telegraph, Guardian, Inquirer, SlashGear, Softpedia News, Bloomberg and V3.co.uk

Ben Gilbert / Engadget:

Steam Controller drops touchscreen, adds physical buttons (update: new controller image) — It turns out that Valve's hardware beta was an actual beta: the Steam Controller is dropping its touchscreen and adding some physical buttons before going up for sale via Steam and at retail later this year.

More: Steam Database, Guardian, VentureBeat, PC World, Softpedia News, Geek.com, T3 News, GamesIndustry International, The Tech Report, Electronista, Kotaku, VG247, The Escapist, Polygon and PC Gamer

Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:

A First Look at the Target Intrusion, Malware — Last weekend, Target finally disclosed at least one cause of the massive data breach that exposed personal and financial information on more than 110 million customers: Malicious software that infected point-of-sale systems at Target checkout counters.

More: TechCrunch, Help Net Security, BGR, New York Times, ZDNet, Ars Technica, Poynter, Forbes, CNET and Reuters. Tweets: @privacychoice. See also Mediagazer

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Spotify Drops Free Web Listening Time Limit Everywhere - A Big Scalability Milestone — Spotify's advertising engine and paid customer conversion funnel are finally working well enough that today it eliminated all limits on free, ad-supported web listening in all countries.

More: Spotify Blog, TechHive, Inquirer, The Register, CNET, BGR, Business Insider, Overclockers Club, Electronista, Engadget, GSMArena Blog, Gizmodo, SlashGear, Pocket-lint, The Next Web, The Verge and Gizmodo UK. Tweets: @joshconstine. See also Mediagazer

Nick Summers / The Next Web:

Samsung announces the Galaxy Tab 3 Lite, a low-end 7-inch Android tablet — Samsung is throwing yet another Android tablet into the mix; a 7-inch slate called the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 Lite. — The WSVGA display sports a 1024×600 pixel resolution (170 ppi), which falls far below high-end devices …

Jason Del Rey / Re/code:

Amazon Warehouse Workers Vote Against Joining Union — In the first vote of its kind among workers employed by Amazon in the U.S., a group of up to 30 of the commerce giant's warehouse workers at a Delaware distribution center voted against unionization today.

More: Businessweek, Reuters, New York Times, GeekWire, CNNMoney.com and TIME. Thanks:@delrey

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

Report: eBay To Launch “The Plaza,” A New Brand-Focused Online Mall For Retail Goods — According to a new report from Macquarie Capital, marketplace giant eBay is set to launch a new vertical this spring called The Plaza on eBay that will focus on direct-to-consumer sales.

More: Business Insider, CNET, SlashGear and Softpedia News

Andy Greenberg / Forbes:

BitTorrent Creator's New Software DissidentX Hides Secrets In Plain Sight — Encryption tools help people keep secrets. Bram Cohen has a more subtle ambition: he wants to help people keep secret the act of keeping secrets. — For the last year Cohen, who created the breakthrough file …

More: SlashGear

Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch:

Citing The Re-Org, Xbox Exec Exits Microsoft After Nearly A Decade — In the wake of the recent Microsoft reorganization, a longtime Xbox-group executive is leaving Microsoft, according to the Los Angeles Times and confirmed by TechCrunch. Blair Westlake, a now former corporate vice president …

More: Variety, Engadget, GamesIndustry International, Los Angeles Times, The Verge, Joystiq, The Escapist, The Seattle Times, VG247, Polygon and GeekWire

JP Mangalindan / Fortune:

A third of SF cabbies switched from registered cabs to Uber, Lyft or Sidecar in the past year — San Francisco cab drivers are Uber's latest pickup — Uber, Lyft and other ride-sharing upstarts are transforming a slow-to-change industry from the outside in. — FORTUNE — Being a cab driver isn't what it used to be.

More: ParisLemon, Street Fight and SlashGear

Tweets: @filloux, @eladgil, @conorsen, @bgurley and @caseynewton

Thanks:@jpmanga

Mike Grishaver / Pandora Blog:

Discover More Music with Personalized Station Recommendations — Music discovery has always been at the heart of the Pandora experience and today we're thrilled to announce the launch of personalized station recommendations on both iOS and Android mobile devices.

More: The Next Web, Engadget, Mashable, MacNN, AndroidGuys, The Verge, iDownloadBlog.com, Android Beat and iPhone Hacks. Tweets: @dpaschel

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

Adobe Partners With MakerBot and Shapeways To Bring 3D Printing Support To Photoshop, Adds Perspective Warp Tool & Resets 30-Day Trials — Adobe today launched the latest update to its subscription-based Creative Cloud suite. While the company is updating a variety of its tools …

More: PHOTOSHOP.COM BLOG, Creative Layer, PHOTOSHOP.COM BLOG, Gigaom, ZDNet, iMore, Engadget, Techvibes Global News, BBC, Computerworld, 9to5Mac, MacNN, The Next Web, Rude Baguette, WebProNews, Softpedia News, Inquirer, Gearburn, bit-tech.net, MAKE, SlashGear, PetaPixel, Gizmodo, VentureBeat, Mashable and The Verge. Tweets: @egasser

Larry Seltzer / ZDNet:

Microsoft to extend Windows XP antimalware updates one year — Summary: Security updates for Windows XP will end this April, but updated antimalware signatures for the operating system will continue for another year. — Microsoft has announced that they will continue to supply antimalware signatures …

Evan Schuman / Computerworld:

Starbucks caught storing mobile passwords in clear text — In a case of convenience for users trumping security, Starbucks has been storing the passwords for its mobile-payment app, along with geolocation data, in clear text — The Starbucks mobile app, the most used mobile-payment app in the U.S. …

Sinead Carew / Reuters:

Price war in U.S. mobile market raises fear of profit hemorrhage — (Reuters) - New Year's rivalry among U.S. mobile operators has Wall Street worried that the industry's profits could seriously decline. — After months of aggressive moves by T-Mobile US to lure customers from other carriers …

Michael Davidson / Xconomy:

FullContact Buys Cobook, Adds Address-Book Apps and 1M Users — Denver-based startup FullContact announced today that it has acquired Cobook, a Latvia-based company that's created a popular contact management app for Apple users. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

More: FullContact, Cobook Blog, ArcticStartup, Feld Thoughts and App Advice

Bloomberg:

Obama Said to Keep NSA in Charge of Phone Records for Now — President Barack Obama's plan to keep phone data with the National Security Agency for now is a victory for telecommunications companies, which resisted the idea of holding the records themselves over concerns about lawsuits, lost business and unwanted responsibility.

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