Techmeme
June 18, 2014, 10:45 PM

Top News

Amazon.com:
Introducing Fire, the First Smartphone Designed by Amazon  —  New breakthrough innovations—Dynamic Perspective, Firefly button, and more  —  Seamless integration with Amazon's vast ecosystem—over 33 million songs, apps, games, movies,  —  Only smartphone with Mayday, ASAP, X-Ray, and Second Screen
CNET:
Fire Phone exclusively available July 25 on AT&T: $199 for 32GB, $299 for 64GB, $649 and $749 off-contract  —  Amazon Fire Phone to arrive July 25 at $199 for 32GB, $299 for 64GB on AT&T  —  A listing on AT&T's website has Amazon's Fire Phone priced competitively with the Apple iPhone 5S …
Nick Summers / The Next Web:
Ina Fried / Re/code:
T-Mobile Offering Weeklong iPhone “Test Drive” To Lure Customers  —  Pulling a page from the car dealer's manual, T-Mobile is offering would-be customers a free seven-day trial of its network using an iPhone 5s.  —  “You (can) have a 7-night stand,” CEO John Legere said in an interview …
Chris Ziegler / The Verge:
T-Mobile's ‘Music Freedom’ is a great feature — and a huge problem  —  It sounds great, but it's really, really, really bad  —  Net neutrality has seen headier days, and to be honest, it never stood a chance in the wireless industry — but T-Mobile just drove the point home at its “Uncarrier 6.0” announcement in Seattle this evening.
Judd Legum / ThinkProgress:
People Invested $1 Million In An App That Just Says ‘Yo’  —  It only took 8 hours to build the app, and the only thing it does is allow you to send the word ‘Yo’ to your friends.  To many, it seems like a joke.  But its inventor, Or Arbel, is totally serious.
Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:
iPhone 6 likely to sport barometer & air pressure sensors to measure altitude, weather  —  Besides a larger display and redesigned metal body, details regarding which features the next-generation iPhone models will pack have been light.  However, it appears that the new models could include a new sensor: a barometer.
Stacey Higginbotham / Gigaom:
Facebook has built its own switch.  And it looks a lot like a server  —  Not content to remake the server, Facebook's engineers have taken on the humble switch, building their own version of the networking box and the software to go with it.  The resulting switch, dubbed Wedge …
Jeff Gray / Globe and Mail:
Canadian court orders Google to block a group of websites from its search engine worldwide  —  B.C. court ruling orders Google to block sites worldwide  —  In an unprecedented ruling, a B.C. court has ordered Google Inc. to block a group of websites from its worldwide search engine …
Twitter Support / @support:
Evelyn M. Rusli / Wall Street Journal:
Nest investor Shasta Ventures raises $300M for its fourth, and largest, fund  —  Shasta Ventures Sticks to Basics With New $300 Million Fund  —  Tod Francis, a managing director of Shasta Ventures, recalls a time when few in venture capital were interested in “consumer” start-ups.

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Benjamin Mayo / 9to5Mac: