Techmeme
January 28, 2014, 5:55 PM

Top News

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:
Apple TV graduates from hobby/accessory to product line ahead of major changes  —  Apple appears to be putting its ducks in a row ahead of major Apple TV changes.  Alongside last night's changes to the Apple Online Store to promote Valentine's Day specials, Apple added an entire Apple TV section.
Re/code:
Medium, Evan Williams's Post-Twitter Media Startup, Raises $25 Million Round  —  Medium is about to become large.  —  The collaborative publishing startup has just closed a $25 million round of financing, the company confirmed, marking its first major funding raise since it launched a little more than a year ago.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Yahoo Q4 2013 Earnings Slide 6% To $1.27B On EPS Of $0.46, Display Ads Down 6%  —  Yahoo today reported its earnings for the fourth quarter of 2013, where it reported GAAP revenues of $1.27 billion and non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.46.  Excluding traffic acquisition costs, revenues were $1.2 billion.
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Framing Google Glass: the headset of the future now works with prescription lenses  —  Just shy of a year after the Google Glass Explorer edition started arriving on early adopters' doorsteps, Google is announcing a way for people who need prescription glasses to use it.
Brad Molen / Engadget:
Pebble Steel review: at last, a stylish smartwatch  —  Smartwatches are supposed to be pieces of jewelry that are just as personal as the smartphones they're attached to, yet rarely are they thought of as fashionable.  We've seen a handful (or is it wristful?) that are hip, ornate and sporty …
Douglas MacMillan / Digits:
Yahoo in Talks to Buy App Developer Tomfoolery for $16 Million  —  Yahoo is in talks to acquire business app developer Tomfoolery for about $16 million, according to two people familiar with the negotiations.  —  The discussions are at an advanced stage but the deal isn't yet final, the people said
Catherine Shu / TechCrunch:
Global Smartphone Shipments Top 1 Billion For The First Time Thanks To Cheap Android Devices, Says IDC  —  The global smartphone market shipped one billion units in a single year for the first time, with Samsung as the leading vendor, according to a new report by research firm IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker.
Wall Street Journal:
Netflix Gears Up to Expand in Europe  —  Rival Media Companies Race to Grab Subscribers, Program Rights … As streaming-video juggernaut Netflix Inc. plots an expansion in Europe, media companies across the continent are girding for battle.  —  The U.S.-based online video service …
More: The Verge and Gigaom
Arik Hesseldahl / Re/code:
IBM Exploring Sale of Software-Defined Networking Business  —  A week after selling its server business unit to Lenovo, IBM is now exploring the sale of some of its networking assets and may be seeking as much as a $1 billion, sources familiar with the matter tell Re/code.
More: Forbes and SiliconANGLE
Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:
Rovio Denies Providing Angry Birds User Data To The NSA, Points Finger At Third-Party Ad Networks  —  A new report originating from the ongoing Snowden document trove presents the terrifying possibility that our casual gaming habits offer government surveillance agencies a look at some key personal data …
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
ISPs No Longer Have to Block The Pirate Bay, Dutch Court Rules  —  The Pirate Bay is arguably the most-censored website on the Internet, but that's no longer the case in the Netherlands.  —  In 2010 Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN went to court to try and force Ziggo, the Netherlands' largest ISP, to block The Pirate Bay.
Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:
Akamai: Average Internet speed grew 29% year-over-year to 3.6 Mbps, mobile traffic jumped by 80%  —  Global average connection speeds have hit a new high, rising 29 percent year-over-year to 3.6 Mbps.  Meanwhile, the demands of the mobile world are growing very fast, with data traffic increasing by 80 percent in the last year.
Alice Truong / Fast Company:
Following Arrest, BitInstant CEO Charlie Shrem Resigns From Bitcoin Foundation  —  The day after BitInstant CEO Charlie Shrem was arrested on money-laundering charges, the 24-year-old has resigned from the Bitcoin Foundation, where he was a founding member and had served as vice chairman since 2012.
Christopher Mims / Quartz:
Intel's voice recognition will blow Siri out of the water—because it doesn't use the cloud  —  There's a problem with today's voice recognition systems: They're just too slow.  Anyone who has waited in frustration while Siri or Google's Voice Search “thinks” about even the simplest commands knows what I'm talking about.

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Earlier Picks

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:
Neil Hughes / AppleInsider:
Bill Laing / The Official Microsoft Blog: