Techmeme
February 3, 2014, 8:55 AM

Top News

New York Times:
As device makers strive to improve battery and charging tech, Apple tests inductive charging for its watch  —  Building a Better Battery  —  SAN FRANCISCO — The next breakthrough smartphone, or maybe the one after that, might not have a traditional battery as its sole source of power.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Developer Behind “Flappy Bird,” The Impossible Game Blowing Up The App Store, Says He Just Got Lucky  —  Flappy Bird, a game you can barely play for more than a few seconds without throwing your phone across the room in frustration, is dominating the App Store and Google Play.
Danny Sullivan / Marketing Land:
Hashtags in 57% of Super Bowl ads; Facebook led social networks with 5 mentions to Twitter's 4  —  New Record For 2014: Hashtags Mentioned In 58% Of Super Bowl Ads … Hashtags were in 58 percent of Super Bowl ads, up from 50% in 2013 and setting a new record.
Liam Tung / ZDNet:
Hackers access 800,000 Orange customers' data  —  Summary: Orange reveals an attack on its website exposed details for three percent of its French customer base.  —  Liam Tung  —  Orange customers in France could see a spike in phishing attempts after hackers nabbed hundreds of thousands …
Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:
Required Reading: The Economist's Special Report On Tech Startups  —  It's not every day we here at TechCrunch just point to someone else's work and say, “Here, you should go read this.”  But today's an exception, because The Economist has put together a 16-page Special Report on the rise of technology startups around the world.
More: Economist
Rebecca J. Rosen / The Atlantic Online:
Forgotify: The Tool for Discovering Spotify's 4 Million Unheard Tracks  —  The idea first came to Lane Jordan when he heard an odd little fact: Around 20 percent of tracks on Spotify—some four million songs—had been played exactly zero times.  —  Four million songs!  That got Jordan thinking.
Mike Isaac / Re/code:
New iPhone app “Secret” lets you share confessions anonymously with your network of friends  —  With New Anonymous Social App Secret, the Merit Is in the Message  —  What if you could share anything you wanted to, with little worry of repercussion?

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 8:55 AM ET, February 3, 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

Valentina Palladino / The Verge:
Brian X. Chen / NYT Bits: