Techmeme: The 1999 tech bubble was about naive optimism, but now it's about gross entitlement (Om Malik/Gigaom)

Open Links In New Tab

Mobile Archives Advertise Site News Contact Editors

May 13, 2014, 12:45 PM

Top News

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:

Apple plans to match Microsoft Surface with split-screen iPad multitasking in iOS 8 — iOS 8 is likely to supercharge the functionality of Apple's iPad with a new split-screen multitasking feature, according to sources with knowledge of the enhancement in development.

More: GeekWire, The Verge, LAPTOP Magazine, Gizmodo, iMore, Business Insider, AppleInsider, BGR, TechCrunch, MacRumors, CNET News, TechSpot, PadGadget, Softpedia News, iPhone in Canada Blog, Phones Review, Gotta Be Mobile, Redmond Pie, App Advice, TechnoBuffalo, Neowin, iLounge and everythingiCafe

Tweets: @stevesi and @dannysullivan

Ben Gilbert / Engadget:

Microsoft lowers Xbox One price to $400 without Kinect — Is the $500 asking price of Xbox One too rich for your blood? Turns out you're not alone, and Microsoft's responding: the price of the Xbox One is dropping to $400, and the company's dropping Kinect from the box as well. Developing ......

More: BGR, The Verge, BetaNews, GeekWire, TechCrunch and VentureBeat. Tweets: @briantong. See also Mediagazer

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

Microsoft to drop Gold subscription requirement for entertainment apps on Xbox One and Xbox 360 in June — In addition to the Kinect-free Xbox One for $399, Microsoft today also announced it is dropping the Xbox Live Gold subscription requirement for entertainment apps on the Xbox One and Xbox 360.

More: Xbox Wire, Re/code, Gizmodo and Guardian

Foo Yun Chee / Reuters:

EU top court upholds “right to be forgotten”, says Google must edit sensitive search results — European court says Google must respect ‘right to be forgotten’ — (Reuters) - Internet companies can be made to remove irrelevant or excessive personal information from search engine results …

Om Malik / Gigaom:

The 1999 tech bubble was about naive optimism, but now it's about gross entitlement — Is it really a tech bubble, or is it something else? — Adam Lashinsky, in a piece for Fortune last week, wrote at length about the question that has crossed the minds of everyone north of San Jose: are we in a bubble?

More: ReadWrite and Valleywag. Tweets: @jasonh, @christianhern, @fdestin, @naveen, @qhardy and @arrington

The Cryptocurrency Times:

The popular online wallet Dogevault is offline, large amounts of Dogecoin appear to have been stolen — Dogevault is a popular online wallet, where people can store and send Dogecoin. It provides no advantage over a normal Dogecoin wallet however, and generally online wallets are regarded as risky …

More: PandoDaily, The Technology Chronicles, VentureBeat, Business Insider, The Register, CoinDesk, The Mac Observer, Softpedia News and CNET News

Vlad Savov / The Verge:

Motorola adds LTE to Moto G, launches $129 Moto E — Motorola adds LTE to Moto G, introduces an even cheaper Moto E — Shipping with Android 4.4 and a guaranteed upgrade to the next major version of Android — The Moto G is the best selling smartphone in Motorola history.

Adrianne Jeffries / The Verge:

Airbnb takes on hotels with last-minute booking — It's 8:00. Do you know where you'll sleep tonight? — Airbnb, the service that makes it easy for anyone to convert their extra space into an income-generating vacation rental, is experimenting with a new emphasis on short trips and last-minute bookings.

More: Engadget, The Airbnb Blog, New York Times, VentureBeat and TechCrunch

Pete Rizzo / CoinDesk:

BitPay Raises $30m in Record-Breaking Bitcoin Funding Round — Georgia, Atlanta-based bitcoin merchant processor BitPay has raised $30m in Series A funding in what is the largest-ever financing round to date for a bitcoin company. — The round was led by Index Ventures …

More: Business Insider, Mashable, CoinReport and Business news. Tweets: @kashhill

Benjamin Mako Hill / copyrighteous:

Even if you host your own email server, Google will end up capturing about half of your emails — Google Has Most of My Email Because It Has All of Yours — For almost 15 years, I have run my own email server which I use for all of my non-work correspondence.

More: Boing Boing and The Guardian. Tweets: @bcrypt and @dangillmor

Dana Wollman / Engadget:

Lenovo's ThinkPad 10 tablet brings a sharper screen, loads of accessories — Some companies throw gadget spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. Others... keep the same tablets around for nearly two years. We've seen Lenovo be both those companies, frankly, but when it comes to its business line …

More: BetaNews, Inquirer, HotHardware.com News, CRN, Tom's Hardware Guide, ZDNet, LAPTOP Magazine, SlashGear and The Verge

Dale Russakoff / New Yorker:

Zuckerberg's $100M pledge in 2010 to reform Newark schools has had little benefit to students — SCHOOLED - Cory Booker, Chris Christie, and Mark Zuckerberg had a plan to reform Newark's schools. They got an education. — Late one night in December, 2009, a black Chevy Tahoe in a caravan …

More: Salon, The Verge and Business Insider

Tweets: @underoak, @russellbrandom, @moneyries, @andrewverte, @tonyromm and @tonyromm

Michael Carney / PandoDaily:

With $50M in boottrapped revenue, Swagbucks raises $60M from TCV for its rewards and loyalty shopping platform — In an era where startup valuations and the piles of capital that accompany them seem powered more by pixie dust than they do business fundamentals, it's refreshing to encounter …

More: TechCrunch, Re/code, VentureBeat, PE Hub Blog and socalTECH.com

Deborah Gage / Wall Street Journal:

Sticking With Wells Fargo as Sole LP, Norwest Raises $1.2 Billion Fund — Norwest Venture Partners has closed its 12th fund, Norwest Venture Partners XII LP, at $1.2 billion-the same size as its last fund, which the firm raised in late 2009. — Norwest is one of a handful of venture capital firms …

More: TechCrunch, GeekTime, VentureBeat, Bloomberg, New York Times and PE Hub Blog

Ryan Smith / AnandTech:

VESA Adds Adaptive-Sync to DisplayPort 1.2a Standard; Variable Refresh Monitors Move Forward — The last half-year or so has seen the concept of variable refresh desktop monitors advance rather quickly. After sitting on the technology backburner for a number of years …

More: VESA, Computerworld, The Tech Report, Softpedia News and HotHardware.com News

Kevin Fitchard / Gigaom:

AT&T customers can connect their GM 4G cars to shared data plans for $10 a month — If you were thinking about buying one of General Motors' new-fangled 4G cars this summer but were wondering how much that LTE connectivity would cost you, then GM and AT&T today provided an answer.

More: GM Media News, The Verge, Android Authority, Wall Street Journal, CNET News, Detroit Free Press, detroitnews.com, Wall Street Journal, Ubergizmo, Forbes, PC Magazine, Re/code, FierceWireless, Android Police, ZDNet, SlashGear and Engadget

Suzanne Vranica / Wall Street Journal:

TV Ad Dollars Slowly Shifting to Web Video — Increasing Portion of Broadcast and Cable Budgets Follow Younger Audience Online — Online video outlets are finally starting to chip away at television's hold on advertisers. — Several major advertisers, including MasterCard …

Tweets: @jonsteinberg. See also Mediagazer

Ben Woods / The Next Web:

Square launches Feedback, a digital receipt that lets buyers and sellers talk to one another — Mobile payments company Square wants to turn the humble digital receipt into a fully-fledged customer communication channel with the launch of Square Feedback today.

More: The Verge, TechCrunch, ZDNet, Re/code, CNET, Business Insider, WebProNews and Mashable

Dylan Tweney / VentureBeat:

Uber brings a cheaper SUV service, UberXL, to San Francisco — Above: An Uber SUV. Not to be confused with the much cheaper UberXL SUV. — For those times when the party is not just breaking up, but moving to a whole new location, the typical Uber car might feel a little cramped.

More: Uber Blog, Engadget, VBProfiles, Gizmodo, bizjournals, SlashGear and Tech Chronicles

Alex Konrad / Forbes:

Despite Tech Stock Turbulence, Anaplan Raises $100 Million For Planning Software — Veteran software executive Frederic Laluyaux knows that his company, Anaplan, just looked to raise a lot of cash in a market that's taken big chunks out of the valuations leading public tech companies and forced others to slow down their IPOs.

More: TechCrunch, Wall Street Journal, Re/code, Reuters, PE Hub Blog, bizjournals and Bloomberg

Steve Dent / Engadget:

LG's Lifeband Touch and Heart Rate earphones coming May 18th (update: US pricing) — Though the internet was trolled recently with Apple's “biometric” earpods, LG's fitness-oriented Heart Rate earphones and Lifeband Touch are no joke. In fact, they're finally set to arrive next week …

More: AppleInsider, TechCrunch, 9to5Google, VentureBeat, TechHive, Gigaom, iMore and Electronista

Arik Hesseldahl / Re/code:

Iranian Hackers Targeted Defense Workers and Political Dissidents — There's a new politically motivated hacker gang to keep track of, one that started out defacing websites but which has progressed more recently into conducting full-blown campaigns of cyber espionage abroad and political oppression at home.

More: The Verge, blog.trendmicro.com, Reuters, Wall Street Journal, Reuters and SC Magazine UK

Chris Davies / SlashGear:

Sonos app hits big 5.0: Universal search, smarter playlists, more — Sonos has pushed out its new Sons app for iOS and Android, graduating the software from beta, and bringing universal search, musical alarms, and smoother multi-room support to all users. The new Sonos Software v5. updates …

Glenn Greenwald / Guardian:

NSA routinely receives or intercepts US-made routers and servers to implant backdoors before international shipping — how the NSA tampers with US-made internet routers — The NSA has been covertly implanting interception tools in US servers heading overseas - even though the US government …

More: VatorNews, Help Net Security, TechCrunch, CNET News, PC World, The Hacker News, New York Times, Washington Post, Neowin, Inquirer, The Tech Report, The Register, Softpedia News, Daily Dot, Gigaom, Wall Street Journal and SlashGear. Tweets: @headhntr

Jon Fingas / Engadget:

Sony reportedly puts its OLED TV efforts on hold — There were hints that Sony's OLED TV plans were in trouble when the company's collaboration with Panasonic went south last year, and it now looks like those efforts have stalled out completely. Nikkei reports that Sony has put development of OLED sets …

More: Nikkei Asian Review, Ars Technica, TechSpot, Softpedia News, The Verge, CNET News, Pocket-lint and Ubergizmo

Matt McGee / Marketing Land:

Twitter's New Mute Feature Means Brand Visibility Is No Sure Thing — Brand visibility on Twitter became a bit murky today. — Twitter announced the rollout of a new “mute” feature. It lets Twitter users continue to follow other accounts, but without actually seeing any of the other account's activity.

More: Re/code, ReadWrite, Guardian, Inquirer and WebProNews

Steven Melendez / Motherboard:

How Non-Profits Are Cashing In on the Cryptocurrency Boom — Bitcoin is often discussed as the backbone of the online drug trade, an interesting speculative investment, or simply a futuristic way to order pizza. But proponents say the cryptocurrency also has great potential for the nonprofit world.

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 12:45 PM ET, May 13, 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.