Techmeme: Microsoft signs Android patent deal with Voxx Electronics (Mary Jo Foley/ZDNet)

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February 14, 2014, 12:40 AM

Top News

Alistair Barr / USA Today:

Google working on 10 gigabit Internet speeds — Project to develop ‘next generation’ of the Internet is part of Google's broader obsession with speed, CFO says — SAN FRANCISCO - Google is working on technology that will provide data transfer speeds over the Internet that are many times faster …

More: The Verge, BGR, CNET, SlashGear, DSLreports and Droid Life

Tweets: @davethefuturist, @georgebludger and @alistairmbarr

TechCrunch:

Facebook Opens Up LGBTQ-Friendly Gender Identity And Pronoun Options — Facebook has just updated to let users choose the gender pronoun they associate with. Aside from the usual “male” and “female” options, users can choose up to 10 different gender definitions to describe themselves …

More: Facebook Diversity, GLAAD, VentureBeat, CNN, Associated Press, CNET, Re/code, ZDNet, Business Insider, Inside Facebook, The Next Web, BBC, GeekWire, Slate, Salon, AllFacebook, Gigaom, VatorNews, Gizmodo, SlashGear and BetaNews. Tweets: @tomscott

Lisa Jennings / Nation's Restaurant News:

Taco Bell testing mobile ordering for in-store pickup, will roll out nationally this year — Taco Bell to offer mobile ordering nationwide — Taco Bell is preparing to roll out mobile ordering nationwide later this year, a move that will likely fuel a trend expected to shake up the quick-service world.

More: Los Angeles Times, The Verge, Phandroid, Electronista, The Switch, Ubergizmo, MacRumors, Droid Life, AndroidGuys, Digital Trends, Business Insider and Pulse 2.0

Andy Greenberg / Forbes:

Silk Road 2.0 ‘Hack’ Blamed On Bitcoin Bug, All Funds Stolen — The same bug that has plagued several of the biggest players in the Bitcoin economy may have just bitten the Silk Road. — On Thursday, one of the recently-reincarnated drug-selling black market site's administrators posted …

More: Deep Dot Web, The Verge, TechCrunch, SlashGear and MoneyBeat

Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica:

New Android OEM licensing terms leak; “Open” comes with a lot of restrictions — The least understood area of the Android ecosystem has always been the highly secretive Google Play Apps licensing process. While Android is open source, the Google applications, like the Play Store, Gmail …

More: BenEdelman.org, Digits, Wall Street Journal, Android Community, WindowsITPro, BGR, Pocketnow, The Register, FOSS Patents, Inquirer and ZDNet. Tweets: @glennf

Michael Isikoff / NBC News:

Exclusive: Snowden Swiped Password From NSA Coworker — A civilian NSA employee recently resigned after being stripped of his security clearance for allowing former agency contractor Edward Snowden to use his pers...

More: Ars Technica, New York Times, Mashable, TheBlot, Slate, Nextgov, Boing Boing, TheHill, The Switch and Softpedia News

Farhad Manjoo / New York Times:

To avoid obsolescence, buy Apple's hardware, use Google's services, and buy Amazon's media — How to Survive the Next Wave of Technology Extinction — Don't mock the beleaguered Nook owner. That could have been you. — Five years ago, when the nation's largest chain of bookstores released …

More: MacDailyNews. Tweets: @binarybits and @edbott

Jay Yarow / Business Insider:

Microsoft's Shaw to NYT's Manjoo “you are using a rear-view mirror, not a windshield, to look at the road ahead”

Tweets: @karaswisher, @willoremus, @fmanjoo, @drew, @mattyglesias, @thestalwart, @mikeisaac, @mhelft, @mims, @stldreiling, @fxshaw, @davegirouard and @ganeshtoday

Kim-Mai Cutler / TechCrunch:

Yahoo Acquires Technical Recruiting Startup Distill — Yahoo just acquired a San Francisco-based startup called Distill, which was working on a way to make technical recruiting easier by pairing video interviews and programming challenges. They had raised $1.3 million in funding …

More: CNET and Business Insider. Tweets: @joshconstine and @dsaezgil. Thanks:@anthonyha

Bloomberg:

Lenovo Projects End to Motorola Losses With China Phone — Lenovo Group Ltd. (992), which posted a 29 percent surge in profit today, expects to end losses at Motorola Mobility within quarters of completing a deal as it reintroduces the smartphone brand to China.

More: Digits, MobileSyrup.com, Phandroid, Droid Life, ExtremeTech, TechnoBuffalo, FierceWireless and The Verge

Tom Warren / The Verge:

Windows 8 passes 200 million license sales — Microsoft has been rather quiet about its risky Windows 8 bet. The company passed 100 million license sales of Windows 8 after around six months, but a year on the market came and went without any real update on its progress.

More: ZDNet, The Next Web, Computerworld, WinBeta, Reuters, Pocket-lint, TechCrunch, Pureinfotech Newsletter, The Register, WindowsITPro, BGR, Neowin, Engadget and Ars Technica

Elizabeth Dwoskin / Wall Street Journal:

Pandora to let advertisers target listeners based on its sense of their political leanings starting next week — Internet Radio Service Builds Profiles of Its Audience — Pandora Hopes to Build Ad Revenue by Pinpointing Likely Voting Preferences — Next time you listen to a Bob Marley channel …

Tweets: @peteskomoroch and @lizzadwoskin. See also Mediagazer

Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:

Microsoft signs Android patent deal with Voxx Electronics — Summary: Microsoft has added Voxx Electronics to its list of Android patent licensees. — Microsoft may be considering ways to entice Android developers and handset makers to join the Windows world, but that isn't stopping …

More: FOSS Patents, Seattle Times blogs and The Droid Guy

Amy Schatz / Re/code:

Peering could replace net neutrality as one of the key issues in Comcast-Time Warner review — Sleeper Issue Peers Around the Corner of Comcast-Time Warner Deal — Comcast executives scored big points three years ago with the Federal Communications Commission by volunteering to abide …

More: Comment, Wired, Quartz, The Technology Chronicles and Deadline.com. See also Mediagazer

Mikey Campbell / AppleInsider:

Apple wants to stop, track down spammers with automated disposable email addresses — The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Thursday published an Apple patent application describing a system that thwarts spam mail by automatically generating and handling “disposable” email addresses, all while being transparent to the end user.

More: BGR, MacRumors, VentureBeat, CNET and TechCrunch. Tweets: @counternotions

Ina Fried / Re/code:

Nathan Myhrvold's Intellectual Ventures Cutting Five Percent of Workforce — Intellectual Ventures, the invention house and patent consolidator run by former Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold, is cutting five percent of its workforce. — “We continue to refine our business and in doing …

More: GeekWire and SiliconBeat

Neil Hughes / AppleInsider:

Apple set to discontinue legacy, non-Retina iPad 2 — After nearly three years on the market, Apple's second-generation iPad, which sports an A5 processor and non-Retina display, is now on the chopping block, and is expected to be discontinued in the near future, AppleInsider has learned.

More: BGR, Geek.com, AppleTell, Apple Bitch, iPhone in Canada Blog, iPhone Hacks, SlashGear, Pocketnow, Gigaom, MacRumors, TechnoBuffalo, Los Angeles Times, 9to5Mac, iMore, iDownloadBlog.com, App Advice, InvestorPlace, Gotta Be Mobile and Softpedia News

Jason Clampet / Skift:

Study indicates 2/3 of Airbnb's 19.5K NYC listings have offsite owners, violating city law — Airbnb in NYC: The Real Numbers Behind the Sharing Story — The five biggest neighborhoods for Airbnb are in parts of Brooklyn and Manhattan with few hotels. Skift / Mapbox

More: Valleywag, The Verge, The Airbnb Public Policy Blog and CNET

Tweets: @curtwoodward, @rafat, @rafat, @rafat, @rafat and @antderosa

Josh Ong / The Next Web:

PlayStation 4 beat Xbox One for January console sales, but Xbox One sold more games — Sony and Microsoft are both trumpeting market share wins from NPD's January US gaming data. Sony declared its PlayStation 4 the top-selling console last month, while Microsoft took credit for selling the most games.

More: Xbox Wire, VentureBeat, VentureBeat, Engadget, NYT Bits, The Verge, WinBeta, SlashGear, GeekWire, Ubergizmo, Joystiq, VG247 and VG247

Martyn Williams / Computerworld:

Phil Schiller up again in next round of Apple-Samsung battle — The Apple executive is one of a handful of people Samsung said it will call to the court — Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller is among the witnesses that lawyers for Samsung plan to call when the two companies return to court in California in late March.

More: 9to5Mac, Network World, Computerworld, AppleInsider, MacRumors and iDownloadBlog.com

Alex Konrad / Forbes:

Wireless access point maker Aerohive Networks files for $75M IPO — Breaking: Wireless Company Aerohive Networks Publicly Files For IPO — Aerohive Networks is going public. — The wireless access point maker based in Sunnyvale, CA submitted a public S-1 form to the Securities and Exchange Commission Thursday.

More: Business Wire and TechCrunch

Mariella Moon / Engadget:

Open source OS Tizen gains 15 more allies; Sprint rejoins the list — In the world of mobile platforms, Tizen's but a new entry that's been through some tough times since its inception. The circle of 36 companies (aptly called the Tizen Association) backing up the open source OS is putting up a good fight …

More: Tizen Association, TechRadar.com, Mobile World Live, PhoneNews.com, Liliputing, HotHardware.com News and Ubergizmo

Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:

Asian gaming giant Nexon announces Owen Mahoney as successor to CEO — Don't look now, but a foreign guy will become the boss at one of Asia's biggest game companies. Free-to-play online gaming giant Nexon has announced Owen Mahoney's appointment as the successor for the top executive post at Nexon.

More: Digital Media Wire and Re/code

Sam Biddle / Valleywag:

Pando Spikes a Post Critical of a Company It Shares Investors With — The crookedest little bloghouse in Silicon Valley just hit a new low, it appears: A negative story about Birchbox, a beauty-product site with which Pando shares investors, was deleted shortly after being published.

More: The Future of Pando. Tweets: @samfbiddle, @abrams, @sarahcuda and @paulcarr

Digits:

DocuSign is raising $100M on a valuation as high as $1.5B — DocuSign Shoots for Valuation Above $1 Billion — DocuSign may soon be the latest entrant to the billion-dollar startup club. The electronic signature software company is in the process of raising about $100 million …

More: GeekWire

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