Techmeme: Twitter now shows emoji characters on the web (Jon Fingas/Engadget)

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April 4, 2014, 1:45 AM

Top News

Kara Swisher / Re/code:

Mozilla Co-Founder Brendan Eich Resigns as CEO, Leaves Foundation Board — Brendan Eich, the well-known techie who has gotten swept up in a controversy about his support of California's anti-gay marriage law Proposition 8, is resigning as CEO of for-profit Mozilla Corporation and also from the board …

More: The Dish, CNNMoney.com, TechCrunch, Incisive.nu, Fox News, VentureBeat, The Verge, New York Times, The Switch, Gawker, The Raw Story, Ars Technica, San Francisco Chronicle, PC Magazine, DailyTech, Computerworld, The Daily Caller, publicNotepad, TechPresident, KQED News Fix, BuzzFeed, The Heritage Foundation, The Verge, CNET, The Mac Observer, LGBTQ Nation, Mediaite, Business Insider, PC Magazine, Engadget, ReadWrite, eWeek, VatorNews, SlashGear, bizjournals, The Technology Chronicles, Boing Boing, Wall Street Journal, TheHill, WebProNews, PandoDaily, ZDNet, The Register, The Daily Caller, HotHardware.com News, NBC Bay Area, Electronista, Guardian, USA Today, Silicon Florist, Mashable, Los Angeles Times, The Next Web, InfoWorld and Gizmodo

Brendan Eich:

Brendan Eich on leaving Mozilla, taking a break and what's next — The Next Mission — Slides for the brief talk that I gave at a Harvard seminar on privacy and user data organized by John Taysom last week. — My talk was really more about the “network problem” than the “protocol problem”.

More: Scripting News. Tweets: @jeremiahg, @caseynewton, @ljharb, @nikmd23, @davewiner, @tekriot, @frankjonen, @tomcoates, @dianargergel, @joshuahoover, @rachaelbl and @trevinwax

Jim Edwards / Business Insider:

Not Everyone Is Happy That Mozilla's CEO Was Forced Out For His Anti-Gay Views — The resignation of Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich, 1998 founder of the company that makes the Firefox Web browser, because he has anti-gay-marriage views is not sitting well with everybody.

More: VentureBeat and Slate

Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:

Microsoft open sourcing more developer tech: .NET Compiler Platform, C#, Visual Basic, more — Microsoft open sources more of its .Net technologies — Summary: From the truth-is- stranger-than-fiction files, Microsoft — along with its mobile-dev tool partner Xamarin …

More: The Next Web, The Register, The Official Microsoft Blog, MSDN Blogs, ReadWrite, Ars Technica, Tech2, Computerworld, InfoWorld, WinBeta, TechCrunch, WinBeta, GeekWire and eWeek. Tweets: @developerzone

Amir Efrati / The Information:

Google mulls offering wireless voice and data services in Fiber markets, talked with Sprint, Verizon about buying, reselling network access — Google Weighs a Plunge into Mobile Phone Services — After thrusting itself into competition with U.S. cable operators, Google is inching closer to competing with wireless carriers, too.

More: The Register, The Verge, Android Central, Engadget, BGR, Gigaom, TechSpot, Gigaom Research, Gotta Be Mobile, Phandroid, bizjournals, TechnoBuffalo, 9to5Google, Pocketnow, Droid Life, LAPTOP Magazine, The Droid Guy, SlashGear, Android Community, AndroidGuys and Mashable. Tweets: @amir

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

Speech Recognition Pioneer Novauris Bought By Apple, Team Now Works On Siri — Apple quietly acquired an automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology company called Novauris Technologies, which grew out of Dragon Systems R&D U.K. Ltd., the British research subsidiary of Dragon Systems, a well-known voice dictation pioneer.

More: AppleInsider, BGR, MacRumors, Bloomberg, Pocketnow, VentureBeat, Gotta Be Mobile, LAPTOP Magazine, iDownloadBlog.com, iPhone Hacks, App Advice, iMore and iPhone in Canada Blog

Carol E. Lee / Wall Street Journal:

White House calls Samsung out on Ortiz's Selfie With Obama — Samsung Called Out on Ortiz's Selfie With Obama — The White House is pushing back against Samsung Electronics Co. for its promotion of a selfie that Red Sox slugger David Ortiz took with President Barack Obama earlier this week.

More: CBS Boston, SoyaCincau, The Boston Globe, GlobalPost, The Hill, EURweb, The Droid Guy, Washington Examiner, Washington Times, iPhone Hacks, Marketing Land, The Inquisitr News, 1250 AM WTMA, Ubergizmo, AppleInsider and Ars Technica

Tweets: @anildash and @jchengwsj

Jordan Kahn / 9to5Mac:

Microsoft says Office iPad apps hit 12 million downloads a week after release — After announcing the release of the Office for iPad apps late last month, Microsoft announced today that the separate Word, Excel and PowerPoint apps for iPad have collectively reached 12 million downloads a week after release.

More: AppleInsider, Cult of Mac, The Next Web, iPhone in Canada Blog, Tech2, Seattle Times blogs, BGR, Gotta Be Mobile, Ubergizmo, Pocketnow, TechnoBuffalo, iDownloadBlog.com and Engadget. Tweets: @office

Angus Loten / Wall Street Journal:

Yelp Reviews Brew a Fight Over Free Speech vs. Fairness — Many Businesses Say Anonymity of Comments Is Unfair, Sue to Unmask Users — A closely watched Internet free-speech case is headed to the Virginia Supreme Court this month, with many businesses that live and die by online reviews rooting …

More: StreetInsider.com, bizjournals, Seeking Alpha, Marketplace.org, Search Engine Journal, Benzinga and New Orleans Times-Picayune

Seth Weintraub / 9to5Google:

Google plans significant overhaul of many of its native and web apps in 'Google 2.0′/wearable push — Yesterday we got a look at a beta version of the upcoming Gmail app for Android which includes new Travel, Purchases, and Finance categories in addition to the Social, Promotions …

More: PC World. Thanks:@justinkahnmusic

Russell Holly / Geek.com:

Google is testing new inbox tabs, snooze and pinning features for messages in Gmail for Android

More: TechCrunch, The Verge and Marketing Land

Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:

Gina Bianchini's MightyBell, a social network for small groups, opens to the public — MightyBell Now Tolls For All — The group software space is getting hot. Between Google Groups, Facebook Groups, Yammer, Convo, Asana, newcomer Slack and more, a loose or tight-knit organization …

More: Re/code, Gigaom Research, Fortune and The Next Web. Tweets: @jen_mcfadden

Douglas MacMillan / Wall Street Journal:

Dropbox Promotes Sujay Jaswa to Financial Chief Ahead of IPO — Online-storage startup Dropbox Inc. has finally named a chief financial officer, a pivotal step towards planning its initial public offering. — The company has promoted Sujay Jaswa, a vice president who already ran …

Tweets: @scottmaustin

Mikael Ricknäs / PC World:

Public Wi-Fi speeds to get a boost from Qualcomm's new antenna technology — Qualcomm has chipsets on the way that use new antenna technology to boost Wi-Fi download speeds in crowded spaces where lots of people are competing for bandwidth. — The growing popularity of Wi-Fi has hurt performance …

More: New York Times, The Register, AnandTech, Light Reading, HotHardware.com News and FierceWireless

Matthew Panzarino / TechCrunch:

Nest Halts Sales Of Protect Smoke Alarm Over Safety Concerns About ‘Wave To Dismiss’ Feature — Nest CEO Tony Fadell has just issued a notice recommending users disable the Protect smoke alarm's ‘wave to dismiss’ feature. In testing, it was discovered that people could accidentally trigger the dismiss feature, delaying a smoke alarm.

More: Nest Labs, Support, New York Times, VentureBeat, Mashable, Bloomberg, Android Central, Gigaom, GeekWire, iMore, Gizmodo, BetaNews, Phandroid, The Verge, Business Insider, The Next Web, MacRumors, Engadget, 9to5Google, SlashGear and Wall Street Journal. Tweets: @olivercameron

Matthew Panzarino / TechCrunch:

Twitter's Vine Introduces Direct Video Messaging — Twitter's Vine has introduced a feature that allows you to message other users directly via video. This adds both a direct messaging channel and video clips to its messages, a big addition to Twitter's video app.

More: Vine, Re/code, The Next Web, Gizmodo, Marketing Land, WebProNews, The Verge, TechnoBuffalo, Wired, MobileSyrup.com, VentureBeat and Mashable

Tweets: @bartekd and @joshconstine

Jon Fingas / Engadget:

Twitter now shows emoji characters on the web — There's a good chance that some of your smartphone-toting friends use emoji to express themselves on Twitter — wouldn't it be nice to see those icons while you're surfing the web? As of today, you can. Twitter has updated its web client …

More: The Verge, The Next Web, Ubergizmo, Tech2, NDTV Gadgets, Digit - Tech News, Los Angeles Times, ValueWalk, Gizbot.com, Paste, RAPPLER, Morning News USA and PC Magazine. Tweets: @support

Associated Press:

US govt secretly created “Cuban Twitter” to stir unrest, sought funding from Jack Dorsey — US secretly created “Cuban Twitter” to stir unrest — WASHINGTON (AP) — In July 2010, Joe McSpedon, a U.S. government official, flew to Barcelona to put the final touches on a secret plan …

More: Telegraph, Forbes, Computerworld, PandoDaily and Guardian. Tweets: @katrinanation. See also Mediagazer

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

Facebook paid 330 security researchers $1.5M in 2013; adds Instagram, Parse, Atlas, Onavo to Bug Bounty program — Facebook today announced it paid out $1.5 million to 330 security researchers around the world in 2013 as part of its bug bounty program, which launched back in August 2011.

More: Facebook, Inside Facebook, Bloomberg, ZDNet, The Register and Re/code

Mike Isaac / Re/code:

Facebook Explores Anonymity Features — Facebook spent years defining what it means to have an online identity. Now with the surge in popularity of anonymous social apps, Facebook may be spending next few figuring out how to deal with the complete opposite case.

More: Business Insider

AppleInsider:

Apple settles patent infringement suit with Sony, Philips-backed Intertrust Technologies — Apple has reached an out-of-court settlement with Intertrust Technologies, a holding company owned jointly by consumer electronics giants Sony and Philips, putting an end to a patent infringement lawsuit filed …

More: Electronista

David Ruddock / Android Police:

[Rumor] “Android Silver” May Be Google's Attempt To Finally Provide A Premium Android Sale And Support Experience — If there's one thing we hear time and again about Android, it's the F word: fragmentation. While it's largely just an annoying word used to get under the skin of Android fans …

More: TechnoBuffalo, Gizchina.com and BGR

Kim-Mai Cutler / TechCrunch:

Khosla VC Rabois Looks To Make Homes Easy To Sell In A Few Clicks — Keith Rabois, the former Square and PayPal executive who is now handling much of Khosla Ventures' consumer investments, has a new side gig. — He's co-founding a company under the codename Homerun that will make it easy to sell entire homes in a few clicks.

Tweets: @mdudas, @hunterwalk and @panzer

Kim Zetter / Wired:

Barrett Brown Signs Plea Deal in Case Involving Stratfor Hack — Barrett Brown, whose case became a cause célèbre after he was charged with crimes related to the Stratfor hack, has agreed to a plea deal with prosecutors, according to court filings.

More: Gawker, The Verge and Guardian

Tweets: @onekade and @nathantempey

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