Techmeme: Pandora raises One price to $4.99 per month for new subscribers and scraps annual option, blames royalty rates (Emil Protalinski/The Next Web)

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March 19, 2014, 1:00 AM

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Sundar Pichai / The Official Google Blog:

Google extends Android to wearables with Android Wear project, launches developer preview — Sharing what's up our sleeve: Android coming to wearables — Most of us are rarely without our smartphones in hand. These powerful supercomputers keep us connected to the world and the people we love.

Lior Ron / The Official Motorola Blog:

Motorola teases Moto 360 wristwatch powered by Android Wear, launching this summer — Moto 360: It's Time. — It's time for a watch that looks and feels great and gives you the information you need, when you need it. — It's time for Moto 360, a truly modern timepiece, designed by Motorola, powered by Android Wear.

More: Engadget, Engadget, Ausdroid, TechCrunch, Greenbot, Pocket-lint, InfoWorld, ExtremeTech, Geek.com, ReadWrite, Phandroid, I4U News, SlashGear, Android Beat, Droid Life, PhoneArena, Los Angeles Times, Gizmodo, Pocketnow, Mashable, IntoMobile, Gigaom, POPSUGAR, Marketing Land and TechnoBuffalo

Tweets: @reckless and @benedictevans

Brad Molen / Engadget:

LG G Watch to launch next quarter with Android Wear — Over the last two years, LG has established a storied history of collaboration with Google. The two companies have worked together on three devices (two Nexus smartphones and a Google Play edition tablet) and today we're hearing about the fourth — a smartwatch.

More: Yahoo!, Droid Life, Re/code, Android Central, NEWS.com.au, AppleInsider, Android and Me, Ausdroid, TechCrunch, Android Community, Gizmodo UK, The Switch, SlashGear, CNET, Pocketnow, BGR, Android Beat and The Verge

CNBC:

Apple CEO Tim Cook: New book on company is ‘nonsense’ — Apple's course after Steve Jobs — Yukari Kane, author of “Haunted Empire: Apple After Steve Jobs,” discusses her book where she recounts the final years of Steve Jobs at Apple and focuses on the state of the company under its current CEO Tim Cook.

More: Re/code, Macworld, New York Times, The Register, TIME, BGR, TechCrunch, 9to5Mac, iDownloadBlog.com, CNET, AppleInsider, Forbes and The Verge

Tweets: @inafried and @jowens510

Sam Byford / The Verge:

Sony reveals Project Morpheus, its VR headset for PlayStation 4 — Sony has revealed that it is working on virtual reality technology for PS4. Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony Worldwide Studios, made the announcement at an ongoing Game Developers Conference 2014 event entitled Driving the Future of Innovation.

More: PlayStation.Blog, The Next Web, AppleInsider, PC Magazine, ReadWrite, Computerworld, BBC, Wall Street Journal, Gizmodo, VentureBeat, VentureBeat, Re/code, TechCrunch, Kotaku, Engadget, Ars Technica, Sony Computer Entertainment … and GameSpot

Philippa Warr / Wired.co.uk:

Microsoft ‘developing’ virtual reality hardware for Xbox

More: Wall Street Journal, GeekWire, destructoid, Joystiq and Ars Technica

Ben Gilbert / Engadget:

Oculus VR exits first virtual reality collective

More: The Register, The Technology Chronicles, BGR and Electronista

Washington Post:

NSA system can record 100% of a foreign country's calls, store every conversation for 30 days — NSA surveillance program reaches ‘into the past’ to retrieve, replay phone calls — The National Security Agency has built a surveillance system capable of recording “100 percent” …

More: ZDNet, Guardian, Techdirt, BGR, TechSpot, SecurityWeek, GamePolitics blogs, Gizmodo, PandoDaily, Gizmodo UK and DSLreports. See also Mediagazer

David Pakman / Re/code:

Dilemma for music streaming services: labels demand twice what listeners are willing to pay — The Price of Music — Will the recorded music industry ever grow again? Since 1999, the industry has been in rapid decline as CDs became unbundled into downloaded singles.

More: Guardian. Tweets: @aweissman, @jyarow and @pkafka

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

Pandora raises One price to $4.99 per month for new subscribers and scraps annual option, blames royalty rates

More: Pandora Blog, Engadget, TechCrunch, BetaNews, Reuters, NBC News, Bloomberg and SeekingAlpha.com. See also Mediagazer

Peter Kafka / Re/code:

Streaming Subscriptions Are Now a Billion-Dollar Business, but Music Sales Stall

More: Newsome.Org, Reuters, Billboard, Bloomberg, Guardian and Telegraph

Tweets: @nathanchubbard and @adamlipman1

Seth Weintraub / 9to5Google:

Google plans to kill Google Voice in coming months, integrate features into Hangouts — We've heard that Google Voice is getting dragged to the trash can and most of its functionality will be incorporated into G+ Hangouts apps on both Android and iOS. This has already happened to an extent …

More: TechnoBuffalo, Pocketnow, TechSpot, Droid Life, iDownloadBlog.com, Ubergizmo, Phandroid, Phones Review, MobileBurn.com, PC World, TechCrunch, Pocket-lint, TechCrunch, Android Police and DSLreports. Tweets: @dannysullivan

Tom Simonite / MIT Technology Review:

Facebook's AI research group reports major improvement in face recognition software DeepFace — Facebook Creates Software That Matches Faces Almost as Well as You Do — Facebook's new AI research group reports a major improvement in face-processing software.

More: Facebook, Daily Dot, TechCrunch, CNET, Business Insider, AllFacebook, Forbes, Slate, DailyTech and Graham Cluley. Thanks:@_trendspotter

Barb Darrow / Gigaom:

Nitrous.IO scores $6.65M to eliminate messy development set up — Nitrous.IO, the startup that aims to free developers from the gruntwork of configuring, patching and otherwise futzing with workstation-based development environments, now has $6.65 million in A Series funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners.

More: TechCrunch, The Next Web, PE Hub Blog, VentureBeat, Tech in Asia and tech.co

Liz Gannes / Re/code:

Sam Altman, Y Combinator's new president, profiled as always-on advisor and forceful dealmaker — Y Combinator's New Head Startup Whisperer Sam Altman Is Quite a Talker — It's not crazy for Sam Altman's phone bill to rack up 6,000 talking minutes in a month. He talks a lot, to a lot of people.

More: TechCrunch. Tweets: @drance

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:

10,000 Linux servers hit by malware serving tsunami of spam and exploits — Two-year-old Windigo may also have infected kernel.org Linux developers. — Researchers have documented an ongoing criminal operation infecting more than 10,000 Unix and Linux servers with malware that sends spam …

More: We Live Security, The Next Web, Techworld.com, V3.co.uk, Help Net Security and Softpedia News

James Temple / Re/code:

Microsoft researcher Leslie Lamport wins prestigious 2013 A.M. Turing Award — Microsoft Researcher Wins the “Nobel Prize” of Computer Science — The Association for Computing Machinery has named Microsoft Research's Leslie Lamport the recipient of the 2013 A.M. Turing Award, considered the highest honor in computer science.

More: acm.org, Microsoft Research, Network World and The Seattle Times. Tweets: @katecrawford

Casey Newton / The Verge:

Dropbox will let you switch between work and personal accounts next month — Dropbox will let you manage separate work and personal accounts on all of your devices next month, The Verge has learned. In advance of an April 9th press event, the company has notified users of its Dropbox …

More: ReadWrite and TechnoBuffalo

Larry Hryb / Xbox Live's Major Nelson:

Project Spark Goes to Open Beta on Xbox One — Our friends at Team Dakota have just announced that Project Spark is now in open beta on Xbox One. That means Xbox One owners can join the existing community of Project Spark players and creators without needing a beta code.

More: VG247, Blue's News and WebProNews

Jordan Novet / VentureBeat:

Cloudera snatches a massive $160M to lead the business of big data — Wowzers. Bloomberg's report about big data company Cloudera raising big money was no joke. — Today, Cloudera announced a heavy-duty $160 million round of funding. T. Rowe Price led the round, alongside money from …

More: Marketwired, SiliconANGLE, bizjournals, Gigaom and Wall Street Journal

Jared Newman / PC World:

GOG will bring classic PC games to Linux this fall — GOG.com, a site that specializes in selling classic PC games for modern computers, has decided to support Linux after all. — GOG says it has been working on Linux support for the last few months, and will add support for the Ubuntu …

More: GOG.com News, HotHardware.com News, PC Gamer, Geek.com, Softpedia News and VG247

Ina Fried / Re/code:

Apple Says Lower-Cost iPhone 5c Should Help It in Growing Mid-Tier Market — Apple said its move to add a lower-cost iPhone 5c in some countries is designed to help the company take advantage of a booming market for mid-range smartphones. — The company on Tuesday started selling …

More: AppleInsider, iPhone Hacks, iDownloadBlog.com, InvestorPlace, Cult of Mac and 9to5Mac

Rachel King / ZDNet:

Facebook's security chief talks encryption plan — Summary: For Facebook, ensuring the security of its users worldwide starts with improving the security culture and dialogue within the company itself. — Facebook has built its business upon the sharing of content between people worldwide …

More: TechCrunch

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