Techmeme: Microsoft to rebrand ‘Windows Azure’ as ‘Microsoft Azure’ (Mary Jo Foley/ZDNet)

Open Links In New Tab

Mobile Archives Advertise Site News Contact Editors

March 24, 2014, 8:20 PM

Top News

Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch:

Box Files For $250M IPO On Full-Year Revenue Of $124M, Net Loss Of $168M — The Box S-1 is out at last. The cloud storage company is looking to raise up $250 million in the flotation. That sum is less than its competitor Dropbox recently raised from the private markets.

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Hotshot CEO Aaron Levie Will Only Own 4.1% Of Box When It IPOs, Investor DFJ Owns 25.5% — Box CEO Aaron Levie is credited with bringing sexy back to enterprise startups, but the big suprise in Box's S-1 IPO document filed today is that Levie only owns 4.1% of the company.

More: Both Sides of the Table and Wall Street Journal. Tweets: @sacca, @dgildeh and @joshconstine

Ronald Grover / Reuters:

Exclusive: Disney to buy YouTube network Maker Studios for $500 million — (Reuters) - The Walt Disney Co has agreed to buy Maker Studios for $500 million, becoming a major online video distributor through the purchase of one of YouTube's largest networks, according to a person familiar with the deal.

More: Re/code, TechCrunch, Variety, Bloomberg, Gigaom, 9to5Google and Tubefilter

Tweets: @steepdecline, @johnpaczkowski and @hunterwalk

See also Mediagazer

Peter Kafka / Re/code:

Apple's iTunes Radio Adds NPR News Channel — When iTunes Radio launched last fall, the service was designed for music fans (and music labels). Now it is branching out: National Public Radio is adding the first news channel to Apple's audio streaming service, with more on the way.

Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:

Microsoft to rebrand ‘Windows Azure’ as ‘Microsoft Azure’ — Summary: Microsoft will rebrand its cloud platform from ‘Windows Azure’ to ‘Microsoft Azure’ as part of the company's push to emphasize its cross-platform services prowess. — Microsoft will announce its rebranding of its …

More: Forbes, The Register, ReadWrite, eWeek, VentureBeat, Softpedia News, TechCrunch and WinBeta

Zac Hall / 9to5Mac:

Google's new Photowall app turns your Chromecast-connected TV into an interactive photo frame — Adding to the capabilities of the Chromecast HDMI streaming stick, Google is out with a new app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch users called Photowall that lets you turn your Chromecast-connected TV into a live, interactive photo frame.

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

Google Now arrives in Chrome for Windows and Mac — Google Now has finally arrived on the desktop. Google today announced Google Now is being pushed to the Chrome stable channel for Windows and Mac “starting today and rolling out over the next few weeks.”

More: Google Chrome, Google Chrome, TechCrunch, PC World, Digital Trends, Ars Technica, TechHive, PC Magazine, The Verge, Engadget, MacRumors, Lifehacker, Search Engine Land and Electronista

Liz Gannes / Re/code:

Coursera Brings In Longtime Yale President Rick Levin as CEO — Coursera, the massive-open-online-course provider with the most funding and the most students in the space, is shaking up its leadership. — The company has named Rick Levin, formerly president of Yale University for two decades, as CEO.

More: Wall Street Journal, bizjournals, Inc.com, Yale Alumni Magazine, New Haven Independent and EdSurge

Shira Ovide / Wall Street Journal:

Cisco to invest $1B in new “Cisco Cloud Services” effort aimed at large corporate customers — Cisco Joins Race to Offer Cloud Services — Firm to Spend $1 billion in Next Two Years to Enter Market — Cisco Systems Inc. plans to begin offering “cloud” …

More: Cisco, VentureBeat, InfoWorld, Data Center Knowledge, Reuters, TechSpot, InfoWorld, GeekWire, Re/code, StrictlyVC, Light Reading, Tech Trader Daily, TechEye, ZDNet and Network World

Larry Dignan / ZDNet:

Dell acquires StatSoft, adds analytics to software stack — Summary: StatSoft's flagship software is Statistica Enterprise, which filters and analyzes data from multiple repositories. — Dell on Monday said it acquired StatSoft, a company that specializes in analytics and data visualization software.

More: Direct2Dell, eWeek, SiliconANGLE, VentureBeat, ITworld.com, WebProNews, SlashGear and VentureBreak

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

Tumblr Gets More Secure With Addition Of Two-Factor Authentication — Tumblr today added a very important security feature to its service, with the addition of two-factor authentication - an option available within the blogging service's “Settings” section as of now.

More: Tumblr Staff, ZDNet, Business Insider, iMore, gHacks Technology News, Engadget, The Next Web and Pocket-lint. Thanks:@alex

Wall Street Journal:

Pinterest preparing for Q2 launch of paid promoted pins with select marketers — Pinterest makes play for advertising sales with artful ‘promoted pins’ — Digital scrapbooking site Pinterest is preparing to launch ad sales in the second quarter with a bold pitch.

More: VentureBeat, Marketing Land and SlashGear. Thanks:@malliegator

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

Mozilla Appoints JavaScript Creator Brendan Eich As Its New CEO — Last April, Mozilla announced that Gary Kovacs was stepping down as the organization's CEO and that it would start looking for a replacement. At the time, Jay Sullivan took over as acting CEO in the midst of a number of leadership changes at Mozilla.

More: The Mozilla Blog, Brendan Eich, CNET, Wall Street Journal, InfoWorld, ZDNet, Mitchell's Blog, PC Magazine, Engadget, The Register, eWeek, VentureBeat, Electronista, BrowserNative and SlashGear

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

Basecamp Becomes Latest Victim Of DDoS Attackers Attempting To Extort Money From Tech Companies — Basecamp, makers of the popular online project management software of the same name (which as of this February became the company's main focus) was hit with a distributed denial-of-service attack …

More: gist.github.com, Signal vs. Noise, Ars Technica, The Register, Computerworld, Help Net Security, Gizmodo and The Next Web

Rolfe Winkler / Wall Street Journal:

Google Deal With Luxottica Will Bring Glass to Ray-Ban, Oakley — Google Inc. has won a powerful ally in its fight to make Google Glass cool. — Italian eyewear maker Luxottica Group SpA, owner of the Ray-Ban and Oakley sunglass brands, said Monday it had agreed to design …

More: Google Glass, Engadget, #EXPLORE, TechCrunch, Business Insider, Bloomberg and Pocket-lint

Chris Welch / The Verge:

Justice Department lands first ever convictions against mobile app pirates — Two men accused of operating a popular Android piracy website have pleaded guilty to charges filed by the Department of Justice. It's the first time the US government has secured convictions for the distribution of counterfeit smartphone apps.

More: The United States Department …, Ars Technica, TheHill and Mashable

Matthew Panzarino / TechCrunch:

Popcorn Time is doing for distribution of pirated movies what the movie industry needs to do for itself — The Sweet Irony Of Popcorn Time — So the big fun story of last week was this streaming movie app called Popcorn Time. Essentially, it aggregated torrent links and packaged …

More: Forbes

Taylor Soper / GeekWire:

Seattle-area taxi association sues Uber for ‘unlawful and deceptive business practice’ — The Western Washington Taxi Cab Operators Association is suing Uber, the app-based transportation company, for operating illegally in Seattle and King County. The lawsuit, filed in King County Superior Court …

Thanks:@toddbishop

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:

Malicious apps can hose Android phones, erase data, researchers warn — Security researchers said they have uncovered bugs in Google's Android operating system that could allow malicious apps to send vulnerable devices into a spiral of endlessly looping crashes and possibly delete all data stored on them.

More: TrendLabs Security …, Computerworld and Inquirer

David Plunkert / Wall Street Journal:

A ‘Crisis’ in Online Ads: One-Third of Traffic Is Bogus — As Digital Advertising Climbs Toward $50 Billion This Year, Marketers Battle Fraudulent Visitors — Billions of dollars are flowing into online advertising. But marketers also are confronting an uncomfortable reality: rampant fraud.

More: Gigaom, Marketing Land, Business Insider and The Switch

Tweets: @wsj, @wsjd and @dannysullivan

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:

Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning — SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds. Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.

Cape:

Most carriers track everything. Cape doesn't. — Unlimited talk, text & data, 24-hr metadata deletion, network ID rotation, SIM-attack defense, and more. Switch today and get 29% off for life.

Equals:

Stop vibe coding analytics — Equals AI turns questions about your business into auditable spreadsheet models and dashboards. Build once, iterate for years.

Zoho:

Pro tips: 5 ways to close WhatsApp leads in Zoho CRM — This is a guest post by Orkhan Jafarli, Growth PM at TimelinesAI.More buyers now reach out on WhatsApp before they ever fill out a form.

IDrive:

Protecting your Cloud Applications Data — Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Sponsor Techmeme

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:

What Happens If AI Fails?, Subprime Data Center Crisis, How Bad Can SpaceX Get?

The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.

Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.

Hard Fork:

OpenAI Models Go Rogue + Kimi K3 Freakout + A.I. Superforecasting

The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.

Subscribe to Hard Fork.

The Talk Show With John Gruber:

'A Scam Held Together With Patriotism and Golden Paint', With Quinn Nelson

The director's commentary track for Daring Fireball. Long digressions on Apple, technology, design, movies, and more.

Subscribe to The Talk Show With John Gruber.

The Upstarts Podcast:

Abridge's Shiv Rao: The Doctor Founder Taking On Microsoft In Healthcare AI

Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.

Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.

Great Chat:

Too big to laugh: how tech lost its sense of humor

A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.

Subscribe to Great Chat.

Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:

Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin

Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.

Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.

Add your podcast here

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 8:20 PM ET, March 24, 2014.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.