Techmeme: Samsung Gear 2 review: much improved, but that doesn't mean you should buy it (James Trew/Engadget)

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April 16, 2014, 2:55 PM

Top News

Reuters:

Samsung plans to launch Tizen smartphones in Q2 and an Android Wear smartwatch later this year — Samsung executive says Galaxy S5 to outsell S4, sees second quarter rollout for Tizen phone — (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co Ltd's new Galaxy S5 smartphone should outsell its predecessor …

Farhad Manjoo / New York Times:

Q&A with Zuckerberg about Facebook unbundling, anonymity, acquisitions, and innovation — Can Facebook Innovate? A Conversation With Mark Zuckerberg — For my column this week about Facebook's new approach to creating social apps, I spent some time talking to Mark E. Zuckerberg, the company's co-founder and chief executive.

More: Om Malik, Valleywag, Gigaom, The Verge, DailyTech, TechCrunch, Mashable and Dice News. Tweets: @mathewi

Farhad Manjoo / New York Times:

Facebook's future: more single-purpose apps that may not bear the Facebook brand — The Future of Facebook May Not Say ‘Facebook’ — In the two years since its rocky initial public offering, Facebook has become a strong business that regularly releases financial results that set investors' hearts aflutter.

More: SiliconBeat and Business Insider. Tweets: @martinsfp, @mikeisaac and @mikeisaac

iFixit:

Google Project Tango smartphone prototype teardown — Project Tango Teardown — It's 2014 and the future is now. Google's engineers have been hard at work bringing the virtual to reality with projects like Google Glass, and their newest 3D mapping tech, Project Tango.

More: BGR, Inquirer, Engadget, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, Gizmodo, 9to5Google, PhoneArena, SlashGear, Android Central and dailywireless.org. Tweets: @ifixit

Vlad Savov / The Verge:

LG G3 launching this summer with 2560 x 1440 screen resolution, golden hue — LG will launch golden G3 with crazy resolution this summer — 2560 x 1440 pixels in your front pocket — A third of the way into 2014, we already have new flagship phones from almost all the big Android handset makers …

More: Ubergizmo, SlashGear, Phandroid, 9to5Google, Digital Trends, Android Central and TechnoBuffalo

Wall Street Journal:

Inside Alibaba, China's e-commerce giant with double Amazon's revenues, and plans for a $15B IPO — Alibaba Flexes Muscles Before IPO — Chinese E-Commerce Giant Speeds Toward $15 Billion Deal — Jack Ma still has the spartan apartment in the Chinese city of Hangzhou where the former English teacher started Alibaba.com in 1999.

More: Tech in Asia, The Next Web, Business Insider and ZDNet

Tweets: @shiraovide and @whatthebit

Reuters:

China e-commerce giant Alibaba seen filing for US IPO next week: sources

More: TechNewsWorld

Kyle Orland / Ars Technica:

Study: 37% of the roughly 781M games owned on Steam have not been played once — Introducing Steam Gauge: Ars reveals Steam's most popular games — Right now, I can tell you that about 37 percent of the roughly 781 million games registered to various Steam accounts haven't even been loaded a single time.

More: GeekWire, PC World, Softpedia News, TechSpot, Ubergizmo, Pocket-lint, GamesIndustry International, Gamasutra, VG247, Kotaku and Blue's News. Tweets: @tanyaxshort

Jordan Kahn / 9to5Google:

Google's new Android Camera app arrives on Google Play Store — Following a report at the beginning of this month that Google was about to release a new, standalone Android camera app, today the app has officially made an appearance on the Google Play Store.

More: Google Research Blog, TechCrunch, The Verge, Engadget, Android Police, Android - Google+ and Droid Life

Jason Abbruzzese / Mashable:

The Rise and Fall of AIM, the Breakthrough AOL Never Wanted — When we think about the spectacular collapse of once untouchable Internet properties, companies like MySpace and Pets.com come to mind. The rise and fall of AOL Instant Messenger rivals them all.

More: Valleywag. Tweets: @gootecks, @chelseabot, @jasonrosenthal and @hunterwalk

Wall Street Journal:

Mt. Gox gives up plan to rebuild under bankruptcy protection, files for liquidation — Mt. Gox Files for Liquidation — Defunct Bitcoin Exchange Gives Up On Plan to Rebuild — Defunct bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox has given up its plan to rebuild under bankruptcy protection and has asked …

More: PandoDaily, Engadget, Gigaom, The Technology Chronicles, TechSpot, Tech in Asia, ZDNet, The Verge, CoinDesk, PC World, The Register, Neowin, Business Insider, Gizmodo, Softpedia News, Reuters, The Next Web, TechCrunch, PYMNTS.com and BBC. Tweets: @mochi_wsj

Liam Tung / ZDNet:

Google says ‘all Glass spots claimed’ after one day sale, as KitKat rolls out — Summary: Google reckons its Glass Explorer club has reached capacity after the company opened it up to the public for one day only, but it's staying mum on numbers. — Liam Tung

More: Google Glass, PandoDaily, GeekWire, The Register, Computerworld, CNN, ABC News, Computerworld, PC Magazine, Wired, CNET, SlashGear, Ubergizmo, Inquirer, Associated Press, Digital Trends, Mercury News and App Advice

Aaron Souppouris / The Verge:

Samsung launches website highlighting ‘meaningful’ design — In the midst of a major “copycat” lawsuit, Samsung has launched a site that highlights original design from the company. Emblazoned with the tagline “make it meaningful,” it's described as “a platform to present influential design stories …

More: 9to5Google, Samsung Tomorrow, I4U News, Engadget, Fortune, Android Beat, MobileSyrup.com, Wall Street Journal and Android Central

Romain Dillet / TechCrunch:

Photo-Sharing App Frontback Comes To Android — Frontback just released the Android version of its popular photo-sharing app. Previously, the app was only available on iOS. But even with just the iPhone app, the app was downloaded one million times over the past eight months.

More: PandoDaily, 9to5Google, The Next Web, The Verge and Android Central

Nermin Hajdarbegovic / CoinDesk:

Linguistic Researchers Name Nick Szabo as Author of Bitcoin Whitepaper — A group of forensic linguistics experts from Aston University believe the real creator of bitcoin is former law professor Nick Szabo. — This is not the first time Szabo has been outed as the ‘real’ Satoshi Nakamoto.

More: Betabeat, International Business Times, Slate, PFhub.com ™ and Wall Street Journal

Tweets: @adrianchen and @adrianchen

Cadie Thompson / CNBC:

Google expected to post big revenue, but watch out for margins — While Google is widely expected to post an impressive quarter when it reports earnings after the bell on Wednesday, investors will want to keep a close eye on the company's operating margins.

More: Washington Post, Re/code, Wall Street Journal, Forbes and TheStreet.com

Wade Roush / Xconomy:

Guy Kawasaki Aims to Democratize Design Through Aussie Startup Canva — Guy Kawasaki was once chief evangelist at Apple, the firm that redefined personal computing in the 1980s and 1990s and went on to become the world's most valuable company. More recently, he went to work for Google …

More: TechCrunch, Tech in Asia, CNET, ZDNet, tech.co, thedrum.com and The Next Web

Benjamin Mayo / 9to5Mac:

8 GB iPhone 5c now available in the Netherlands, Czech Republic, Sweden, Poland, Italy, Ireland and several others — After a brief period of downtime, the Apple Store website around the world has now gone back up. Aside from a bit of Mother's Day promotional advertising, there is no change to most regions.

More: MacRumors, Electronista, I4U News, iPhone in Canada Blog, Gigaom, CNET, SlashGear, MacDailyNews, Softpedia News, Phones Review, iDownloadBlog.com, App Advice and iMore. Thanks:@mikebeas

John Biggs / TechCrunch:

Weev Talks About Life In Prison And His Plans To Open A Hedge Fund, TRO LLC — Weev, aka Andrew Auernheimer, is free. The 29-year-old hacker, released from the Allenwood Federal Correctional Center in Pennsylvania last weekend, has spent the past few days celebrating a federal appeals court decision …

More: SiliconBeat. Tweets: @tsimonite, @essobi and @charnyr

James Trew / Engadget:

Samsung Gear 2 review: much improved, but that doesn't mean you should buy it — 2013 was the year of the smartwatch. In promise, anyway — maybe not delivery. Of the many, many different, colorful and unusual timepieces that would populate our blogroll, it was perhaps Samsung's Galaxy Gear that made the most headlines.

More: The Next Web and LAPTOP Magazine

Ina Fried / Re/code:

Apple, Google, Microsoft, Samsung and Carriers Back Anti-Theft Measures for Smartphones — With several states and municipalities considering various mandatory “kill-switch” laws for mobile devices, the wireless industry announced a voluntary commitment to include new anti-theft technology on phones starting next year.

Gregg Keizer / Computerworld:

Microsoft slashes Windows XP custom support prices just days before axing public patches — Reduces after-retirement support costs for large enterprises as much as 95% — Just days before Microsoft retired Windows XP from public support, the company drastically reduced the price …

More: ZDNet, WinBeta and Softpedia News

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