Techmeme
February 27, 2014, 12:30 PM

Top News

Guardian:
GCHQ, aided by NSA, intercepted and stored webcam images of millions of global Yahoo users  —  UK spy agency intercepted webcam images of millions of Yahoo users  —  • Optic Nerve program collected Yahoo webcam images in bulk  —  • 1.8m users targeted by GCHQ in six-month period alone
Steven Perlberg / Business Insider:
Carl Icahn Goes After The eBay Board In A New Open Letter With 6 Facts  —  Carl Icahn is out with a new open letter to the shareholders of eBay.  —  There has been quite a back and forth between the activist investor and eBay's board, and the scrap continues today with Icahn laying out six “facts.”
Harry McCracken / TIME:
Project Ara: Inside Google's Bold Gambit to Make Smartphones Modular  —  The two-year quest to create the ultimate customizable phone, inside and out.  —  On January 29, Google announced that it had agreed to sell Motorola, its phone-manufacturing business, to Chinese electronics giant Lenovo.
Andy Greenberg / Forbes:
Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:
Facebook Messenger for Windows will shut down on March 3  —  Facebook today began prompting Facebook Messenger for Windows users with a message saying the app is shutting down next week.  Without much of an explanation, the company plans to kill off Windows support for Facebook Messenger on March 3.
Matthew Panzarino / TechCrunch:
Apple Launches Big Improvements For iOS Management Tools For Enterprise And Education  —  Apple has been busy in the IT department.  Today, it released a slew of improvements and alterations to its large-scale deployment tools for education and enterprise customers.
Eric Johnson / Re/code:
A Long Tail of Whales: Half of Mobile Games Money Comes From 0.15 Percent of Players  —  Oh, you've spent a couple dollars on Candy Crush?  How cute.  —  In a mobile monetization report released today, app testing firm Swrve found that in January, half of free-to-play games' in-app purchases came from 0.15 percent of players.
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Google Launches Maps Gallery To Make Public Data Maps More Discoverable  —  Google today launched the Google Maps Gallery, an extension of the Google Maps Public Data Program it announced last October.  The new gallery is meant to showcase maps from the organizations Google is working with …
Farhad Manjoo / New York Times:
T-Mobile has turned every accepted practice in the mobile phone business on its head  —  T-Mobile Turns an Industry on Its Ear  —  A rash of consumer-friendliness has broken out across the mobile data industry.  Over the last year, the four major carriers — AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile …
More: Quartz.  Tweets: @alexisohanian and @johnlegere
Douglas MacMillan / Wall Street Journal:
Marketing Chief Kathy Savitt's Star Rises at Yahoo  —  A management shake-up at Yahoo Inc. has conferred more power on Kathy Savitt, a marketing executive who has quickly risen to become one of Chief Executive Marissa Mayer's most prominent and trusted lieutenants.
More: bizjournals and GeekWire.  Tweets: @wsjd.  See also Mediagazer
Stuart Dredge / Guardian:
Spotify and Ministry of Sound settle music playlists copyright lawsuit  —  Playlists based on dance brand's compilations will be removed from streaming service's search engine  —  Dance brand Ministry of Sound and streaming service Spotify have reached an “amicable” out-of-court settlement in their legal battle over music playlists.
Dhanya Skariachan / Reuters:
Best Buy profit beats, set to cut costs more; shares jump  —  (Reuters) - U.S. retailer Best Buy Co Inc (BBY.N) reported a better-than-expected quarterly profit on Thursday and announced more aggressive cost cuts this year, sending its shares up nearly 6 percent in morning trading.
Nancy Gohring / CITEworld:
With $50 million, ClearSlide will beef up analytics for salespeople  —  ClearSlide [1], the provider of services designed to help sales people better communicate with customers, just raised a whopping $50 million.  It plans to use the funding to scale up and continue developing more analytics capabilities.
Derrick Harris / Gigaom:
IBM is challenging developers to insert Watson into mobile apps  —  At the Mobile World Congress event today, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty laid down the gauntlet for mobile developers.  Over the next three months, IBM will host its Watson Mobile Developer Challenge to find the best ideas for mobile apps …
Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:
The Fingerprint Scanner On The Samsung Galaxy S5 Will Be Accessible By Developers  —  Samsung's Galaxy S5 includes a fingerprint scanner embedded in the home button, and that hardware will be made available to third-party devs, the company announced today at a developer-focused event during MWC this year.
Sam Byford / The Verge:
Nintendo ending DS and Wii online multiplayer in May  —  Nintendo has announced that it will end support for its online multiplayer service on the DS and Wii.  Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection will shut down on May 20th, meaning that games will no longer work online; offline features, however, will continue to work.

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Earlier Picks

Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica:
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: