Techmeme
February 27, 2014, 7:50 AM

Top News

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.
Fred Wilson / AVC:
A Letter To Senator Manchin  —  Senator Joe Manchin wrote a public letter to financial regulators asking them to “take appropriate action to limit the abilities of this highly unstable currency.”  The letter in its entirety is here.  —  What follows is a letter from me to the Senator.
Andy Greenberg / Forbes:
Senator Calls For Bitcoin Ban In Letter To Financial Regulators  —  Since Senator Charles Schumer first called on law enforcement nearly three years ago to shut down the Silk Road and cited the black market's use of Bitcoin for anonymous transactions, the cryptocurrency community has been waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Gregg Keizer / Computerworld:
Apple retires Snow Leopard from support, leaves 1 in 5 Macs vulnerable to attacks  —  Twice now that Apple's bypassed Snow Leopard when it patched newer editions  —  Apple on Tuesday made it clear that it will no longer patch OS X 10.6, aka Snow Leopard, when it again declined to offer …
Tweets: @r0h1n
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 GeekWireTweets: @wsjd
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.
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Boeing's secret ‘Black’ spy phone will detect tampering, self-destruct if cracked open  —  Nearly two years after word leaked about Boeing's plans to build a secure Android phone, the aerospace giant and defense contractor has quietly filed documents with the FCC for what it's calling the “Black” phone.
Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica:
Hands-on with Samsung's Tizen OS: An impressively capable Android clone  —  BARCELONA, SPAIN—Samsung has such a large presence at Mobile World Congress that it doesn't just have one giant booth; there are also several smaller ones scattered around the show halls.
Tweets: @danieleran
Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:
Integration complete: New Skype users can now sign up with a Microsoft account  —  In addition to including Microsoft account support in its Windows Phone app, Skype today also started letting new users signing up on Skype.com to register with a Microsoft account (in addition to a Facebook account).
Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:
Following developer requests, Google delays blocking extensions not in the Chrome Web Store until May 1  —  Google today announced it won't be blocking local Chrome for Windows extensions until May 1.  The timing change is being made after some developers requested more time to get their extensions in the Chrome Web Store.
Matt Warman / Telegraph:
Google never offered to acquire WhatsApp, says SVP Sundar Pichai  —  Google did not bid for WhatsApp  —  Claims that Facebook outbid Google in its $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp are untrue, a top executive has said.  —  Google did not bid for WhatsApp, the company revealed yesterday.
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 …
CoinDesk:
Exclusive: State of Bitcoin 2014 Report Analyses Emerging Trends  —  Today CoinDesk is pleased to release its first ever ‘State of Bitcoin’ report.  —  This report is not intended to be another guide to answer the question ‘what is bitcoin?’, which we cover in detail elsewhere on our site.
Tweets: @laurenlyster and @coindesk
Sharif Sakr / Engadget:
Wacom lets people share handwritten notes across devices and platforms  —  Wacom has been pushing into the world of mobile for a while, and its efforts have just culminated in a pretty bold move: A single, cross-platform standard for sharing handwritten notes and sketches between users …
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
A Closer Look At Blackphone, The Android Smartphone That Simplifies Privacy  —  One of the more interesting devices here at Mobile World Congress is Blackphone: a pro-privacy handset being developed by Spanish startup Geeksphone, in partnership with U.S. security company Silent Circle using a …
Thanks:@riptari
Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica:
“Google Now Launcher” hits Play Store, brings Google homescreen to GPE & Nexus devices  —  When KitKat launched, Google made the odd decision to make one of the headline features, a brand-new launcher, exclusive to the Nexus 5.  The new launcher was actually a merging of the standard home screen with the Google Search app.

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