Techmeme: Wearables: one-third of consumers abandoning devices (Charles Arthur/Guardian)

Open Links In New Tab

Mobile Archives Advertise Site News Contact Editors

April 2, 2014, 1:30 PM

Top News

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

Microsoft unveils Windows Phone 8.1 with personal assistant Cortana, Action Center, customizable lockscreens — At its Build 2014 conference today, Microsoft unveiled Windows Phone 8.1. Among the new features is a personal digital assistant named Cortana, a new Action Center …

More: Engadget, VentureBeat, ReadWrite, Ars Technica, BetaNews, BGR, Gizmodo, The Verge, LAPTOP Magazine, Engadget, TechCrunch, BGR, Softpedia News, Gotta Be Mobile, Electronista and Windows Phone Central

Tweets: @thurrott, @thurrott, @tim_stevens, @willsmith and @tim_stevens

The Verge:

Live from Microsoft's Build 2014 keynote — In San Francisco, at 8:30AM PT on Wednesday, April 2nd, Microsoft will kick off its Build developer conference for 2014. Microsoft's new CEO Satya Nadella is expected to take the stage and unveil Windows Phone 8.1, a big update to Microsoft's mobile OS.

More: TechCrunch, Marketing Land, BGR, The Verge, CNET, Re/code, Ars Technica, Gigaom, Windows Phone Central, WinBeta and Engadget

Tweets: @tomwarren and @microsoft

Dana Wollman / Engadget:

Windows 8.1 update aims to win over mouse-and-keyboard users, arrives April 8th as an automatic download — The whole point of Windows 8 was to make Microsoft's aging OS easier to use on touchscreen devices. Mission accomplished, we'd say (more or less). But now the folks in Redmond …

More: Gizmodo, BGR, The Next Web and TechCrunch

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

Microsoft announces universal Windows apps, which work across PCs, phones, tablets and Xbox One — At its Build 2014 conference today, Microsoft announced universal Windows apps, which work across PCs, phones, tablets and even the Xbox One. In other words, the Windows runtime in Windows 8.1 Update 1 …

More: Gizmodo, The Verge, BGR and SlashGear. Tweets: @maryjofoley

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

Microsoft Announces Its Cortana Personal Assistant For Windows Phone 8.1, Powered By Bing — At its Build developer event in San Francisco today, Microsoft announced the launch of its oft-rumored voice-driven Cortana personal assistant. Cortana, which seems to have some of Siri's humor, gets its knowledge from Microsoft's Bing.

More: Search Engine Land, The Next Web, ReadWrite, VentureBeat, Technology Personalized and Electronista

Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch:

Microsoft Demos Its Touch-Focused Office Suite For Windows — This morning at its Build developer conference in San Francisco, Microsoft showed off the coming touch-friendly build of its Office suite coming for the Windows platform. The software, Microsoft assured us, is not done.

More: The Verge and Engadget

Amazon.com:

Amazon Fire TV ships today with Netflix, Prime Instant Video, Hulu Plus, YouTube, WatchESPN, and more — Introducing Amazon Fire TV: The Easiest Way to Watch Netflix, Prime Instant Video, Hulu Plus, WatchESPN, and More on Your Big-Screen TV — Powerful performance with 3x the processing power …

Terrence O'Brien / Engadget:

Amazon launches Fire TV, an Android-powered streaming and gaming set-top box for $99 — We've been waiting for it for quite sometime, but now Amazon is finally ready to make its play for the living room. Fire TV is not a barebones device like the Chromecast, it's a powerful Android-driven platform …

More: AppleInsider, TechCrunch, The Switch, Inquirer, iMore, BetaNews, DSLreports, Techvibes Global News, Wall Street Journal, VentureBeat, TUAW, Dan Rayburn, IntoMobile, Gotta Be Mobile and internetretailer.com. See also Mediagazer

Adi Robertson / The Verge:

Amazon's Fire TV billed as low-cost game console for titles like Minecraft and Asphalt 8, separate controller available for $40 — Amazon's FireTV set top box is also a gaming console — Amazon's FireTV set-top box will also act as a home console. The FireTV is billed not as a competitor …

More: The Verge, Forbes, Engadget and Amazon.com

Tweets: @stephentotilo and @jasonschreier

Dieter Bohn / The Verge:

Amazon Fire TV hands-on: Prime comes to your living room — Amazon has just unveiled Fire TV, its first attempt at a set-top box for streaming movies, television shows, photos, games, and more straight to your TV. The Fire TV is all black and consists of a small, square box that connects …

More: Engadget, iPhone in Canada Blog and App Advice. Tweets: @reckless

Yuichiro Kanematsu / Nikkei:

Report: Apple in talks to buy 55% stake in Renesas SP display chip design unit for $479M — Apple looking to buy Japanese chipmaker — SILICON VALLEY — Apple is in talks with Japan's Renesas Electronics to take over a unit that designs chips for smartphone displays …

More: SiliconANGLE, Gigaom, Gotta Be Mobile, ZDNet, Geek.com, SlashGear, Inquirer, I4U News, Softpedia News, ITworld.com, Bloomberg, AppleInsider, Reuters, Reuters, Business Insider, Mashable, Wall Street Journal, TechnoBuffalo and PC Magazine

Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:

Lyft Raises $250 Million From Coatue, Alibaba, And Third Point To Expand Internationally — Lyft has officially closed a huge, $250 million round of funding that it will use to aggressively expand its on-demand ride-sharing service in the U.S. and internationally.

More: Wall Street Journal, The Verge, PandoDaily, VentureBeat, Los Angeles Times, Re/code, The Next Web, GeekWire, Bloomberg, Fortune, Forbes and silicontap.com

Charles Arthur / Guardian:

Wearables: one-third of consumers abandoning devices — Hundreds of Galaxy Gear smartwatches are listed on eBay barely six months after launch. Why isn't the wearable tech market taking off? — The advert was blunt: a second-hand Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch for sale, priced at “£100 ONO”.

More: Fox News, 9to5Mac, Venture Chronicles, Gigaom Research and BGR. Tweets: @kevinpauldowney

Terrence O'Brien / Engadget:

Spotify's new design is cleaner, darker and puts the focus on content — If you're using Spotify on the web, desktop or iOS you should notice a pretty massive change starting today. (The new look should be coming to Android “near future.") The company is launching its most dramatic overhaul since its launch in 2008.

More: The Next Web, BetaNews, TechCrunch, Guardian, Spotify Press, PC Magazine, The Verge, Softpedia News, Electronista, Geeky Gadgets, CNET, iDownloadBlog.com, MacRumors, Gizmodo, NEWS.com.au, Geek News Central, App Advice, iPhone, Inquirer and Pocketnow. Tweets: @zseward. See also Mediagazer

Kevin Poulsen / Wired:

Google Takes Wi-Fi Snooping Scandal to the Supreme Court — The biggest U.S. internet wiretapping program outside the NSA may be headed to the Supreme Court. — Google is asking the high court to rule on the legality of the company's past sniffing of unencrypted Wi-Fi traffic …

More: PC World, DSLreports, Fox News, Marketing Land, PandoDaily, SiliconBeat, The Switch, Ars Technica, bizjournals and TechEye

Harrison Weber / VentureBeat:

Ubuntu to shut down Dropbox competitor Ubuntu One as storage wars heat up — Canonical, owner of the popular Linux operating system Ubuntu, today announced that it is shutting down its file-storing service Ubuntu One. — Aside from being a distraction, Canonical says the service is being shut down because …

More: Canonical Blog, BetaNews, Gigaom, TechCrunch, Inquirer, The Next Web, Liliputing and Softpedia News. Thanks:@harrisonweber

Tom Hals / Reuters:

Judge orders Mt Gox CEO to U.S. for questions on failed bitcoin exchange — (Reuters) - The chief executive of Japan's Mt. Gox, once the world's leading bitcoin exchange, was ordered to the United States to answer questions related to its U.S. bankruptcy case, filed after the company lost $400 million of customers' digital currency.

More: The Technology Chronicles, CoinDesk, Softpedia News, CryptoCoinsNews, TechSpot, Bloomberg, The Register and InfoWorld

Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:

Box wants to let businesses control cloud encryption keys “this year” — Box CEO Aaron Levie told Ars last September that the cloud storage company is trying to build a service that would let customers store data in Box data centers but would keep encryption keys in-house.

More: ZDNet

Ben Woods / The Next Web:

Nest's smart Thermostat is now available to buy in the UK, priced from £179 — Nest, the company looking to reinvent dull-but-worthy household items such as the smoke detector, has announced that its Nest Thermostat is now finally available to buy in the UK.

More: Nest, The Verge, BGR, iMore, New York Times, Geeky Gadgets, Inquirer, SlashGear, Engadget, Electronista, BBC, Cult of Mac, TechCrunch, Android Central, Telegraph, App Advice and TechWeekEurope UK

Greg Bensinger / Wall Street Journal:

Amazon Will Now Allow Returns Using Lockers — Amazon.com has quietly rolled out a new service to let customers return unwanted merchandise using large metal lockers it has installed for deliveries in garages, convenience and grocery stores in major metropolitan areas.

More: GeekWire, Geek.com, Gizmodo, Geeky Gadgets, SlashGear and Engadget

Will Connors / Wall Street Journal:

BlackBerry Ends Licensing Agreement With T-Mobile — Blackberry Says Strategies Are Not Complementary — TORONTO— BlackBerry Ltd. said late Tuesday that it is ending its licensing agreement with T-Mobile Inc. when it expires later this month, a surprise move that comes two months …

Kaylene Hong / The Next Web:

Samsung rolls out smart home service in Korea and US to let you control appliances with an app — Samsung took the wraps off its Smart Home service at CES in January this year, and today it is rolling out the service in Korea and the US. More countries will be added throughout the year.

More: Samsung Tomorrow, Ars Technica, Android Central, SlashGear, I4U News, Smartwatch Fans, Phandroid and SamMobile

Stacey Higginbotham / Gigaom:

Google launches Andromeda, a software defined network underlying its cloud — For everyone saying that software-defined networking is a pipe dream, Google is about to prove you wrong. The search engine giant and cloud provider said it has made its Andromeda software-defined network platform available …

More: Google Cloud Platform Blog

Vlad Savov / The Verge:

Reversible USB 3.1 Type-C connector shown in renderings, will be finalized in July — This is the reversible USB cable that will end your frustrations — The most abundant connector standard in technology, the Universal Serial Bus, is getting ready for its most revolutionary change yet …

More: Ars Technica, CNET, The Next Web, Computerworld, LAPTOP Magazine, Digital Trends, 9to5Mac, TechCrunch, iMore, Softpedia News, Gotta Be Mobile, iDownloadBlog.com, Electronista and The Tech Report. Thanks:@srikardr

Cotton Delo / AdAge:

Social-Marketing Startups Spredfast and Mass Relevance Merge — More Consolidation in Ecoystem of Companies Helping Marketers Use Facebook and Twitter — How Advertising Performs in a Social Media World — More consolidation is happening in the ecosystem of companies …

Tweets: @pkafka

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:

SubQ Snap 1.1: the first long-context decision model for real enterprise work — Tied for #1 on the AA Decision Index, Snap is a multimodal model with a 384k-token context window for fast reasoning and agentic decisions.

Command Line:

GitHub Universe 2026: Highlights from the developer's developer conference — Copilot Fusion was the belle of the ball, but the hero at the heart of the two-day event was the developer community.

Zoho:

Update on Node.js vulnerabilities CVE-2026-111497, CVE-2026-105482, CVE-2026-105483 and CVE-2026-106069 — Overview On October 21, 2026, Node.js announced security releases for the 26.x, 24.x and 22.x release lines to fix multiple vulnerabilities.

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:

Big Tech's Ugly Week, Getting Rich At Anthropic, AI Costs Plunge

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.

Machine Gods:

OpenAI's Latest Discoveries Spark a Backlash + Help! My Kid Hates AI

The official podcast of the singularity, from Casey Newton and Kevin Roose. Twice-weekly news, analysis, and interviews with the people who are building the future.

Subscribe to Machine Gods.

The Upstarts Podcast:

The Accidental YC Founder Solving AI's GPU Crisis | SF Compute's Evan Conrad

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.

Cheeky Pint:

Why Sam Altman is against a single superintelligence

Stripe cofounder John Collison interviews founders, builders, and leaders over a pint.

Subscribe to Cheeky Pint.

Great Chat:

The case for AI optimism

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.

Sources:

Tobi Lütke on the AI agent revolution and future of Shopify

Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.

Subscribe to Sources.

Add your podcast here

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 1:30 PM ET, April 2, 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.