Techmeme: Yahoo Expands Research Labs in Search of Personalized, Mobile Experiences (Tom Simonite/MIT Technology Review)

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February 11, 2014, 8:50 PM

Top News

Liz Gannes / Re/code:

Social customer service company Lithium Technologies to acquire Klout for at least $100M — Exclusive: Lithium Technologies to Acquire Klout — Klout, the online popularity contest startup, is poised to be sold to social customer service company Lithium Technologies.

Samantha Murphy Kelly / Mashable:

Twitter Testing Major Profile Redesign That Looks a Lot Like Facebook — Twitter is testing a major profile redesign that's very reminiscent of Facebook and Google+. Mashable assistant features editor Matt Petronzio spotted on Tuesday a huge update to his Twitter profile page …

More: VentureBeat, TechCrunch, PC Magazine, CNET, AllFacebook, Business Insider, Gizmodo, The Wire, TIME, Fast Company, iClarified, iDownloadBlog.com and All

Tweets: @dannysullivan and @caseynewton

Lorraine Luk / Digits:

Foxconn Is Quietly Working With Google on Robotics — But few people know the Taiwanese contract manufacturer, also known as Hon Hai Precision industry, has been quietly working with Google. — People familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal that Foxconn has been working …

Christina Warren / Mashable:

28 Days of Fame: The Strange, True Story of ‘Flappy Bird’ — In just a few weeks, the mobile app Flappy Bird became a global phenomenon. It was a simple game, but frustrating and endless. Sharing many similarities with the famous Helicopter Game — only with Super Nintendo-style graphics …

More: Naked Security, The Next Web, USA Today, Telegraph, Guardian, Business Insider, Forbes and DisplayBlog

Lan Anh Nguyen / Forbes:

Exclusive: Flappy Bird Creator Dong Nguyen Says App ‘Gone Forever’ Because It Was ‘An Addictive Product’ — The mysterious developer of the world's most popular free app, who drew global attention this past weekend with his sudden decision to remove it, tells Forbes that Flappy Bird is dead.

Emily Spaven / CoinDesk:

Bitcoin Exchanges Under ‘Massive and Concerted Attack’ — A “massive and concerted attack” has been launched by a bot system on numerous bitcoin exchanges, Andreas Antonopoulos has revealed. — This has lead to popular exchange Bitstamp putting a temporary halt on all bitcoin withdrawals …

More: Ars Technica, Digits, The Register, SiliconANGLE, ReadWrite, Gigaom, Cryptocurrency …, MoneyBeat and Business Insider

Tweets: @aantonop, @aantonop and @coindesk

Thanks:@jsundmanus

Peter Burrows / Bloomberg:

Apple Promotes Young Smith to Run Human Resources — Apple Inc. (AAPL) promoted Denise Young Smith to lead human resources, selecting an insider with experience in the retail-store division as the iPhone maker seeks to attract and retain top talent. — Smith is replacing Joel Podolny …

More: 9to5Mac, iDownloadBlog.com, iPhone Hacks, iPhone in Canada Blog, AppleInsider, Cult of Mac, The Mac Observer, MacRumors, SlashGear and MACé" blog. Tweets: @nytimesbits

Peter Kafka / Re/code:

Netflix Says Verizon Isn't Slowing Down Its Streams — A federal court may have given the pipe guys clearance to start slowing down Web services like Netflix. — But so far, that's not happening, Netflix says. — That update comes to us via a note from J.P. Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth …

More: DSLreports and PandoDaily. Tweets: @alex. See also Mediagazer

Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:

Netflix performance on Verizon and Comcast has been dropping for months

More: Techdirt, Examiner, ReelSEO Video Marketing and Gigaom Research

Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:

Microsoft staffs up its evolving Internet of Things team — Summary: Microsoft's Windows Embedded team seemingly has a new name, and may be expanding to have a broader charter. — Microsoft is staffing up its Internet of Things (IoT) team that is part of its unified Windows division and may be expanding its charter, as well.

More: VentureBeat, The VAR Guy and SlashGear

Alex Kantrowitz / AdAge:

Mozilla To Sell Ads In Firefox Web Browser — Mozilla Will Serve Ads Within Tiles Of Its New Tab Pages — Mozilla will soon sell ads within its Firefox browser, the company announced Tuesday. — Wait, what? Mozilla made itself the villian of the online ad business early last year …

More: Advancing Content, CNET, ZDNet, Consumerist, TechSpot, Mashable, gHacks Technology News and Marketing Pilgrim

Tweets: @soaj1664ashar and @tsimonite

Thanks:@aerocles. See also Mediagazer

Dominic Rushe / Guardian:

Bing censoring Chinese language search results for users in the US — English and Chinese language queries for terms like ‘Dalai Lama’ return radically different results on Microsoft search engine — Microsoft's search engine Bing appears to be censoring information for Chinese language users …

More: Business Insider, Salon, Mashable, SlashGear and Valleywag. See also Mediagazer

Tom Warren / The Verge:

New Windows Phone 8.1 features revealed in developer preview leaks — Microsoft has started sharing its Windows Phone 8.1 Software Development Kit (SDK) with developers, and the inevitable leaks have begun. Over on Reddit, one developer is documenting all of the updates discovered in the Windows Phone 8.1 SDK.

More: Windows Phone Central, GeekWire, Pocket-lint, Gotta Be Mobile, Electronista, MobileSyrup.com, WMPoweruser, My Nokia Blog, TechCrunch, ZDNet, ExtremeTech, The VAR Guy, Softpedia News, TechSpot, BGR and IntoMobile

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Stripe Goes Global, With Its API Now Accepting Payments In 130 Currencies — Stripe, the U.S.-based startup that lets developers integrate payments into their site or app with a few lines of code, is stepping up its game in the world of e-commerce. From today, users of its API will be able …

More: Stripe Blog, The Next Web, Gigaom, VentureBeat, NYT Bits, bizjournals and Re/code

Jordan Crook / TechCrunch:

Yahoo Acquires Social Diary Company Wander For A Price Over $10M — Yahoo has acquired New York-based startup Wander. — The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but based on rumors I heard last night at the Crunchies, it appears that the price was north of $10 million.

More: The Days Blog, VatorNews, VentureBeat, PC World and The Next Web. Tweets: @richminer

Matt McGee / Search Engine Land:

Google Showing Restaurant Menus In Card-Style Search Result — Google has started showing complete restaurant menus in its search results when a query specifically looks for menu information. — We think Allie Brown was the first to spot this when she shared the results of a search for “jones brunch menu” on Twitter.

More: 9to5Google and Aaron Bradley. Tweets: @alliebrown89

Roger Cheng / CNET:

Wireless charging takes big step forward as rival groups team up — The fragmented world of wireless charging is getting a little order, which means you will be able to place any phone down on a charging station and top off your battery — well, eventually.

More: PR Newswire, The Verge, Wireless Week, LAPTOP Magazine, ReadWrite, Digital Trends, TechSpot, Re/code, Engadget, Gigaom and TechHive

Anand Lal Shimpi / AnandTech:

ARM Cortex A17: An Evolved Cortex A12 for the Mainstream in 2015 — ARM has been doing a good job figuring out its PR strategy as of late. In the span of a couple of years we went from very little outward communication to semi-deep-dives on architecture and a regular cadence of IP disclosures.

More: ARM, Engadget, Ars Technica, ExtremeTech, MarketWatch, Pocketnow, PhoneNews.com, PC Magazine and MobileSyrup.com

Brad Molen / Engadget:

MediaTek's new octa-core processor to compete with Qualcomm over the premium LTE smartphone market

More: MediaTek, PhoneNews.com, Inquirer, eWeek, AndroidGuys and SlashGear

Tom Simonite / MIT Technology Review:

Yahoo Expands Research Labs in Search of Personalized, Mobile Experiences — The rejuvenated research labs at Yahoo are investigating ways to predict what users want and new forms of mobile hardware. — There are many conflicting opinions about what troubled Web giant Yahoo must do to turn itself around …

Tweets: @techreview. Thanks:@tsimonite

Daniel Cooper / Engadget:

Samsung Galaxy S5 teaser hints at new privacy and fitness features — We're not mathematicians, but we're fairly sure that you can't multiply Life to the power of five. That hasn't stopped Samsung, however, from claiming as much on its latest MWC invite. The company's “back-to-basics” …

More: Samsung Tomorrow, SonnyDickson, 9to5Google, Examiner, Gotta Be Mobile, The Verge, AndroidGuys, Ars Technica, BGR, Gigaom, LAPTOP Magazine, Redmond Pie, CNET and Android Police

Mathew J. Schwartz / InformationWeek:

DDoS Attack Hits 400 Gbit/s, Breaks Record — A distributed denial-of-service NTP reflection attack was reportedly 33% bigger than last year's attack against Spamhaus. — A record-breaking distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack Monday peaked at 400 Gbit/s, which is about 100 Gbit/s …

More: Gigaom, Computerworld, BBC, NBC News, Threatpost, Metro.co.uk, The Register, PC Magazine, RT, Ars Technica, CNBC, Inquirer, SC Magazine and TechEye

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

DigitalOcean Launches Its First Data Center In Asia, Prepares To Roll Out IPv6 Soon — DigitalOcean, the fast-growing SSD-based cloud hosting service, today announced the launch of its Singapore data center location. Hosted in Equinix's Singapore 2 data center, Digital Ocean's new location marks …

More: Data Center Knowledge, PandoDaily, Gigaom, Forbes and VentureBeat

Jason Del Rey / Re/code:

Square Lands Its Next Starbucks by Inking Deal With Whole Foods — Digital payments company Square has signed a deal to manage the payments process in portions of select Whole Foods Market stores in the U.S., the companies announced this morning. With the deal, Square has signed on its flashiest …

More: Square, TechCrunch, Motherboard, Mashable, The Verge and Gigaom

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