Techmeme: Another mobile carrier bites the dust: Cincinnati Bell sells its spectrum to Verizon (Kevin Fitchard/Gigaom)

Open Links In New Tab

Mobile Archives Advertise Site News Contact Editors

April 7, 2014, 11:05 PM

Top News

Harrison Weber / VentureBeat:

Uber launching an on-demand courier service in Manhattan on Tuesday — Uber is launching an on-demand courier service tomorrow (exclusive) — Tomorrow, Uber will launch an on-demand courier service in Manhattan, allowing users to request item pickup and delivery via a smartphone app.

More: Uber Blog, Businessweek, TechCrunch, PC World, Vox, TechCrunch, Wall Street Journal, The Next Web, TechnoBuffalo, GeekWire, Gizmodo, Business Insider, Engadget, Mashable and bizjournals

Tweets: @levie, @drew, @howells, @reckless and @ajs

Thanks:@cullenmacdonald

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:

Everything to know about iOS 8 and OS X 10.10 (Roundup + New Details) — While Apple only officially announced its 2014 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) last week, we have been reporting all of the known information about what Apple plans to unveil at the event over the course of the past few months.

More: Los Angeles Times, TechnoBuffalo, iPhone in Canada Blog, Pocket-lint, Redmond Pie, Gotta Be Mobile, Business Insider and iPhone Hacks

Michael Crider / Android Police:

#1 new paid app in Play Store “Virus Shield” has no functionality, later removed by Google — The #1 New Paid App In The Play Store Costs $4, Has Over 10,000 Downloads, A 4.7-Star Rating... And It's A Total Scam [Updated] — Computer security is important, even if the computer in question fits in your hand.

More: The Register, AppleInsider, BGR, Network World, We Live Security, The Hacker News, TechSpot, Redmond Pie, Business Insider, Gigaom Research, Tech2 and GSMArena Blog. Tweets: @edanuff

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:

Commenting Platform Disqus Introduces Sponsored Comments — Disqus, which says it powers the comment sections on almost 3 million websites, is announcing a new type of ad unit today — Sponsored Comments. — Since Disqus already runs ads through its Promoted Discovery program …

More: Disqus and The Next Web. Tweets: @qthrul, @dangillmor and @om. See also Mediagazer

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols / ZDNet:

Heartbleed: Serious OpenSSL zero day vulnerability revealed — Summary: A new OpenSSL vulnerability has shown up and some companies are annoyed that the bug was revealed before patches could be delivered for it. — New security holes are always showing up.

More: TechCrunch, CloudFlare Blog, Ars Technica, Computerworld, The Next Web, The Register, iTnews.com.au, Threatpost, Gotta Be Mobile and theWHIR.com

Max Chafkin / Fast Company:

The story of Better Place, Shai Agassi's failed electric car startup that raised nearly $1B — A Broken Place: The Spectacular Failure Of The Startup That Was Going To Change The World — “So this is the car.” I'm standing outside a shopping mall somewhere in Tel Aviv, Israel, as Guy Pross shows me his ride.

More: The Verge and Gigaom

Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:

After Raising $250 Million, Lyft Cuts Prices By Up To 20% In All Markets — Last week, Lyft announced that it had raised a massive $250 million round of funding as part of its effort to compete against other on-demand ride services. Now the company is going on the offensive against its competitors …

More: GeekWire. Thanks:@mjburnsy

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Twitter Acquires Android Lockscreen App Cover, Moves Deeper Into Mobile Services — A very interesting acquisition announcement from Twitter today: it's buying Cover, an Android lockscreen app that lets you customise what apps you see and when. For now, Cover will remain live in the Play store.

More: Cover, The Verge, Gigaom, The Next Web, Engadget, VatorNews, Re/code, Wall Street Journal, PC Magazine, Phandroid, Computerworld, VentureBeat, Marketing Pilgrim and silicontap.com

Tweets: @caseynewton and @rsarver

Chris Dixon / chris dixon's blog:

Mobile app dominance vs. web will hurt long-term innovation, likely make web a niche product — The decline of the mobile web — People are spending more time on mobile vs desktop: — And more of their mobile time using apps, not the web: — This is a worrisome trend for the web.

More: Business Insider. Tweets: @joshconstine and @johnolilly

Jon Russell / The Next Web:

Waze CEO confirms Google paid $1.15B for the company, hints that investors forced the deal — Google completed its acquisition of Waze last June, but only now has the price tag that it paid for the Israel-headquartered social mapping startup and a hint at why the company sold out been revealed.

More: LinkedIn Pulse, 9to5Google, bizjournals, Android Community, Softpedia News and silicontap.com

Casey Johnston / Ars Technica:

Jerk.com scammed money to remove Facebook-scraped profiles, says FTC — A typical Jerk.com profile, where visitors can vote on whether a particular person is or is not a jerk as well as fill in supplementary, personally identifying information. — As of Monday, the FTC has charged …

More: Federal Trade Commission, Federal Trade Commission, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, Adweek, The Switch, Protecting Your Pocket, CBS News, Oregonian, MarketWatch, TheHill, MediaPost, NationalJournal.com and Consumerist

Bloomberg:

Microsoft to launch Xbox original TV shows in June, has six series lined up, with more than a dozen projects in development — Microsoft Goes Hollywood in Amazon-Like Programming Push — Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) is going Hollywood with a cast including comedians Sarah Silverman and Seth Green …

Sarah Silbert / Engadget:

Thunderbolt 2 Networking enables 10 Gbps Ethernet connection, supports Macs and PCs — Intel's Thunderbolt 2 connectivity standard is getting an update here at NAB 2014 with the addition of Thunderbolt Networking. Put simply, this new feature will let you pair computers with a Thunderbolt cable …

More: Technology@Intel, AppleInsider, MacRumors, SlashGear and Electronista

Janko Roettgers / Gigaom:

The technology behind Android TV: how Google wants to reinvent apps for the living room — Google is working on yet another platform for the living room, and it doesn't just want to compete on looks alone: The company has come up with a novel way to develop TV apps and make use of their data.

More: The Verge, Pocketnow, eWeek, Gigaom Research and Light Reading

Jon Fingas / Engadget:

Google takes legal action against Turkey's YouTube ban — Remember how a Turkish court ordered an end to the country's YouTube ban? Well, that decision has already been reversed — and Google has launched an all-out legal assault in response. The search firm has filed a complaint …

More: VentureBeat, ITworld.com, 9to5Google and Mashable

Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:

The Micro, A Compact, Consumer-Friendly 3D Printer, Launches On Kickstarter For $199+ — High end 3D printers out in the wild already can print some pretty incredible things but at a high cost and commensurate level of complexity. As with any nascent industry, the market's initial focus …

More: Kickstarter, Engadget, Ubergizmo, TechCrunch, Business Insider, SlashGear and The Verge

Sean Gallagher / Ars Technica:

Raspberry Pi gets more Arduino-y with new open source modular hardware — The Raspberry Pi Compute Module, ready for your custom hardware soon. — Raspberry Pi Foundation — Soon, there could be Pi in just about any device that needs embedded computing power.

More: Raspberry Pi, VentureBeat, The Register, Electronista, TechCrunch and Inquirer

Paul Sawers / The Next Web:

Microsoft targets broadcasters with the new studio-grade Skype TX — Microsoft is extending its reach into the broadcasting realm with a new product called Skype TX, which it calls “studio grade software that delivers high quality audio and video output to seamlessly connect broadcast …

More: Skype, TechCrunch, The Verge, TechSpot, GeekWire, eWeek, VentureBeat and The Official Microsoft Blog

David Kravets / Ars Technica:

Supreme Court passes on NSA bulk phone surveillance case — Case will head to appeals court first, but will likely end up with the Supremes. — The Supreme Court declined Monday to resolve the constitutionality of the National Security Agency's bulk telephone metadata surveillance program …

More: The Register, SiliconBeat, ZDNet, Daily Dot, Computerworld and ACLU. Tweets: @qthrul

Steven Musil / CNET:

Samsung expects Q1 operating profit of $8B, down 4.3 percent — South Korean electronics giant's guidance is largely in line with analyst predictions. — Samsung said Monday it expects to post a decline in first-quarter profit, on slackening demand for its high-end smartphones.

More: Bloomberg, Reuters, BGR, Wall Street Journal and ZDNet

Kevin Fitchard / Gigaom:

Another mobile carrier bites the dust: Cincinnati Bell sells its spectrum to Verizon — As I've written before, in a U.S. mobile industry dominated by mega-carriers, it's becoming harder and harder for smaller regional carriers to survive. Cincinnati Bell became the latest case in point on Monday …

More: Cincinnati Bell, Ubergizmo, PhoneNews.com, Re/code, CrackBerry.com and DSLreports

Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:

StoreDot's Bio-Organic Battery Tech Can Charge From Flat To Full In 30 Seconds — Want to charge your phone from flat to full in 30 seconds? Who doesn't. But don't get too excited yet — Israeli startup StoreDot's bio-organic fast-charging battery tech, which utilizes quantum dot technology, is only a prototype right now.

More: Wall Street Journal, The Next Web, 9to5Mac, Android Central, PC Magazine, Daily Dot, textually.org, Business Insider, Softpedia News, Cult of Mac and Entrepreneur

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.

Cloudflare:

Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference — Stop preparing for agents. Start running them. 100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.

Zoho:

The 90-day recognition cliff: Why praise programs fade, and what keeps them alive — Recognition programs often start with enthusiasm. Employees participate, managers share shoutouts, and teams have a new way to celebrate achievements.

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:

SAP CEO: AI Won't Kill Software, But It Will Change Your Job — With Christian Klein

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.

Channels with Peter Kafka:

David Ellison's Paramount-Warner Empire & The Fight That Comes Next

Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.

Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.

Sources:

Factory CEO on why AGI is already here

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.

Invest Like the Best:

Noah Shinn - Building Instinct: The Personal Agent

The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.

Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.

Lenny's Podcast:

The grief, loneliness, and burnout sweeping through the tech industry right now | Molly Graham

Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.

Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.

Great Chat:

Doomers at Dreamforce

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.

Add your podcast here

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 11:05 PM ET, April 7, 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.