Techmeme: Supply chained: Apple's sapphire production will be hard to copy (Vlad Savov/The Verge)

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May 7, 2014, 11:30 PM

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John Paczkowski / Re/code:

Apple's worldwide communications VP Katie Cotton retiring after nearly two decades at the company — Code/red: Apple PR Impresario Katie Cotton to Retire — Katie Cotton, Communications VP Who Helped Shape Apple's Story, Retiring — Big news out of Apple today.

Stacey Higginbotham / Gigaom:

Amazon, Netflix and tech giants defend net neutrality in letter to FCC — In a rare public stand for the internet retailer, Amazon has come out against the Federal Communications Commission's purported plan to bifurcate the internet into faster and slow lanes as part of its new network neutrality rules.

More: FCC.gov, The Verge, BetaNews, The Next Web, 9to5Mac, GeekWire, 9to5Google, Business Insider, Engadget, iMore, NationalJournal.com and New York Times. Tweets: @ronwyden. See also Mediagazer

Timothy Hay / Wall Street Journal:

Google Ventures Leads $130M Round For Big Data Medical Software Company Flatiron Health — Google Ventures has made its largest medical software investment yet, providing the bulk of a $130 million financing for Flatiron Health Inc., which aggregates cancer-patient data from a wide variety …

More: VentureBeat and TechCrunch. Thanks:@mkakav

Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch:

Marissa Mayer Explains Why Yahoo Is Undervalued — On stage today at TechCrunch Disrupt New York, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer pushed against the narrative that Yahoo is worth nothing. The company has a market capitalization in the tens of billions, but it's been pointed out that if you add …

More: VentureBeat, Associated Press, Business Insider, Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, Forbes, Re/code, Business Insider, Tech Trader Daily and CNET News

Tweets: @delrey and @dmac1

Clare O'Connor / Forbes:

Jeff Bezos quietly attacks the $7.2 trillion B2B wholesale market with AmazonSupply — Amazon's Wholesale Slaughter: Jeff Bezos' $8 Trillion B2B Bet — In recent months global Internet retail behemoth Amazon.com has green-lit six new original TV shows, announced an online streaming deal …

More: Business Insider

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

Layer Raises $14.5M From Homebrew, Jerry Yang To Be The Communications Platform For Mobile And Web Apps — Communications platform for mobile and web apps and Disrupt SF 2013 winner Layer has raised $14.5 million in Series A funding from Homebrew, AME Cloud Ventures (Jerry Yang's investment vehicle) …

Arik Hesseldahl / Re/code:

SAP Fires Cloud Chief Shawn Price and Realigns Company — SAP has fired the head of its cloud business unit Shawn Price, sources familiar with the move tell Re/code, in what appears to be a significant strategic realignment of the German business software giant.

More: Forbes and Business Insider

Neil MacFarquhar / New York Times:

Russia Quietly Tightens Reins on Web With ‘Bloggers Law’ — MOSCOW — Russia has taken another major step toward restricting its once freewheeling Internet, as President Vladimir V. Putin quietly signed a new law requiring popular online voices to register with the government, a measure that lawyers …

More: The Verge, Reporters Without Borders, TechPresident, theWHIR.com, VentureBeat, ANIMAL, Mashable, Bloggers Blog, Daily Dot and Gawker

Tweets: @grum and @seancostigan

See also Mediagazer

Vlad Savov / The Verge:

Supply chained: Apple's sapphire production will be hard to copy — Apple opened the door to machined-aluminum electronics, will it do the same for sapphire glass? — Though abundant in nature and everyday items like soda cans, aluminum didn't figure prominently in modern electronics until just a few years ago.

More: iPhone in Canada Blog, MacRumors and MacDailyNews. Thanks:@srikardr

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

To Battle Yelp, Google Buys Appetas, A Website Builder For Restaurants — Google today made one more acquisition that points to its interest in building up its relationship with local businesses, and particularly in the restaurant vertical to compete better against the likes of Yelp.

More: Appetas, Wall Street Journal, SlashGear, GeekWire, ZDNet, Engadget, 9to5Google, The Next Web and WebProNews

Nitasha Tiku / Valleywag:

Whisper CEO Crashes and Burns Over Questions About Gwyneth Paltrow — Michael Arrington is a man who would prefer to keep the things people whisper about him out of the public eye. So the blogging-capitalist, whose “conflicts of interests” run longer than his resume (literally) …

More: Medium, TechCrunch and Business Insider

Tweets: @michaelheywire, @arrington, @nitashatiku and @akovacs

Spencer Ackerman / Guardian:

USA Freedom Act unanimously clears House Judiciary Committee — Surveillance reform bill designed to prevent collection of US phone data in bulk and is first to proceed onto the House floor — Six months after it was written to restrain the National Security Agency's sweeping domestic surveillance …

Wilson Rothman / Wall Street Journal:

US Navy-Issue ‘NeRD’ E-Reader Has No Ports or Wi-Fi, But Is Full of Books … The latest twist on the e-reader is a device headed for sailors on U.S. Navy vessels. The Navy eReader Device, aka NeRD, will come pre-loaded with hundreds of books, and it had better, because it has no ports, no card readers and no Wi-Fi connectivity.

More: The Verge, Gizmodo, Geekosystem, Geek.com, NBC News, Fox News, Engadget and Findaway World. Tweets: @miniver

Jay Yarow / Business Insider:

Shares in mobile ad network Millennial Media drop over 40% in after-hours trading following worse than expected earnings — A Once-Hot Mobile Ad Network Is Crashing After Horrible Earnings — This is an eye-popper: Millennial Media is down 45% in after-hours trading following an earnings report that was worse than expected.

More: Tech Trader Daily and Millennial Media

Megan Geuss / Ars Technica:

On average, Americans get 189 cable TV channels and only watch 17 — In a blog post on Tuesday, Nielsen reported that on average, US homes receive 189.1 TV channels, but viewers only watch 17.5 of those channels. — The news will appear in Nielsen's forthcoming “Advertising & Audiences Report …

More: Nielsen, Digital Trends, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and DSLreports. Tweets: @qthrul

Matthew Lynley / BuzzFeed:

Pinterest designer Jason Wilson on how the company built Guided Search — How Pinterest Developed Its New Search Engine — Jason Wilson, Pinterest's lead designer, tells BuzzFeed in an interview how the social network's visual search engine was born. — SAN FRANCISCO — As a student …

Thanks:@mattlynley

Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch:

SEC Publishes Laundry List Of Bitcoin Risks, Cites Governmental Regulation As A Potential Headache — The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) doesn't appear to be bitcoin's biggest fan. Today, the government agency published a long list of potential risks that bitcoin presents, and it's quite the document.

More: Office of Investor Education …, The Register, The Hill, Businessweek, MarketWatch, CoinDesk, ABC News, Electronista, PandoDaily, The Verge and NDTV Profit

Molly Wood / New York Times:

Snapchat's recent update lets you save chats, which may not match some users' expectations — With Update, Snapchats Get a Little Less Private — Snapchat just released a major update that's been getting a lot of attention. But one less publicized aspect of this update is that Snapchat …

Tweets: @kristenvbrown, @pdxmobile, @mollywood and @kashhill

George Avalos / Mercury News:

LinkedIn eyes major expansion in Mountain View that could add 10,000 workers — MOUNTAIN VIEW — LinkedIn and a developer have submitted proposals to city officials for multiple office buildings in Mountain View where the technology giant could employ at least 10,000 new workers, according to proposals submitted to city officials.

More: Business Insider

Roberto Baldwin / The Next Web:

Andy Baio crowdfunds $30,000 in 90 minutes to relaunch community event site Upcoming — Serial co-founder Andy Baio re-introduced Upcoming, the collaborative events site. Purchased by Yahoo in 2005 and shutdown last year, Baio is relaunching the site via Kickstarter.

More: Cult of Mac, Turnstyle, Waxy.org, Daring Fireball and Crowdfund Insider

Tweets: @waxpancake, @waxpancake and @waxpancake

Barb Darrow / Gigaom:

Google snaps up Stackdriver and its cloud analysis expertise — Another small, smart Boston-area startup has been acquired by a Silicon Valley superpower. Google is buying Stackdriver, which specializes in monitoring and honing cloud workload performance.

More: Google Cloud Platform Blog, TechCrunch, Xconomy, VentureBeat, ZDNet, BetaBoston and Wall Street Journal

John Cook / GeekWire:

Zillow posts record Q1 revenue of $66.2M, but net loss grows as ad spending increases — Zillow continues to invest heavily in its brand — part of an attempt to become the dominant player in online real estate. But that investment is coming with a cost for the Seattle company.

More: TechCrunch, Zillow, Inc. and Tech Trader Daily

Robert J. Moore / Inside Ecommerce:

Pinterest: 92% of pins are by women, 84% of female users still active in their fourth year — Pinners be Pinnin': How to Justify Pinterest's $3.8B Valuation — Pinterest, founded in 2010, quickly became the visual social bookmarking service of the web. And, like the very best social platforms do, it invented a verb: pinning.

More: Forbes, Business Insider and VentureBeat

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

Twitter introduces language targeting for promoted tweets and accounts across 20 languages — Twitter today launched language targeting for promoted tweets and promoted accounts. As a result, advertisers can now target both in 20 different languages while users will be able to see “highly relevant ads” in their language.

More: The Twitter Blog, BBC and Marketing Land

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