Techmeme: VAIO computers return after Sony sells the brand (Sam Byford/The Verge)

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July 2, 2014, 12:05 AM

Top News

Jordan Crook / TechCrunch:

Google acquires music streaming service Songza for undisclosed amount, will keep product intact for now — Google Buys Songza — Google has acquired music streaming service Songza after weeks of speculation around a potential buyout. — Songza uses information about the user and context …

Ben Sisario / New York Times:

Source: Google paid more than $39M for Songza

More: Hollywood Reporter, USA Today and Forbes. See also Mediagazer

Julian Hattem / The Hill:

Privacy board backs NSA's foreign spying — A federal privacy watchdog is largely putting its support behind a major pillar of the National Security Agency's foreign snooping. — A draft version of a new Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) report released late Tuesday …

More: Bloomberg, Associated Press and Forbes

Tweets: @granick and @the_intercept

Washington Post:

New Snowden documents show FISA court authorized NSA to spy on all but four foreign countries

More: Daily Dot, SiliconBeat and Businessweek

Tweets: @majid_agha and @jesselynradack

Mike Masnick / Techdirt:

FBI, CIA Use Backdoor Searches To Warrentlessly Spy On Americans' Communications

More: Computerworld, Vox, Softpedia News and The Hill. Tweets: @trevortimm

Amy Schatz / Re/code:

FTC says T-Mobile made hundreds of millions on crammed text message charges; T-Mobile says accusations are “unfounded and without merit” — FTC Alleges T-Mobile Made Millions From Allegedly Bogus Text Message Charges — T-Mobile made hundreds of millions of dollars …

Sam Byford / The Verge:

VAIO computers return after Sony sells the brand — The new VAIO Corporation is here — The iconic VAIO PC brand has been resurrected today, following Sony's sale of the struggling business to investment fund Japan Industrial Partners. At the time, Sony said it planned to concentrate …

More: CNET, Engadget, Electronista, Pocket-lint, Neowin, TechRadar.com, The Tech Report, PC World, Liliputing, Gizmodo, Softpedia News, Ubergizmo, Geek.com, Inquirer and WinBeta

Todd Bishop / GeekWire:

Amazon sues former employee for taking Google cloud job, in new test of non-compete deals — Amazon is suing a former Amazon Web Services strategic partnerships manager, Zoltan Szabadi, alleging that his new job at Google Cloud Platform violates the terms of a non-compete agreement that he signed when he originally joined Amazon.

More: CNET, Business Insider and 9to5Google. Tweets: @adamnash

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Dropbox Buys E-Commerce A/B Testing Service Predictive Edge, Shuts It Down — Dropbox has made another acquisition: Predictive Edge, a company that had built a way to personalise e-commerce offerings, along with dynamic pricing, for marketers to send out to users and run A/B tests around them.

More: bizjournals, VentureBeat and PE Hub Blog

Jordan Crook / TechCrunch:

Tinder CEO's Internal Memo Claims Harrassment Complaint Is Inaccurate — TechCrunch has obtained an internal memo sent from Tinder CEO Sean Rad to employees in the wake of a new lawsuit waged against the company. The lawsuit focuses on the relationship between Whitney Wolfe …

More: Valleywag, Slate, Washington Post, Guardian and The Verge

Matt Thomlinson / TechNet Blogs:

Microsoft strengthens encryption for Outlook.com and OneDrive, opens Redmond Transparency Center to let governments review source code — Advancing our encryption and transparency efforts — Vice President, Trustworthy Computing Security, Microsoft — In December, we announced …

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

Amazon Launches Its Most Affordable EC2 Instances Yet, But There's A Caveat — Amazon today launched its most affordable instances for its EC2 cloud computing service yet. Starting at just $0.013 per hour ($9.50 per month) for on-demand access (reserved instances are even cheaper) …

More: Amazon Web Services (AWS), The Register, Gigaom, Data Center Knowledge, eWeek, Computerworld and WebProNews

Kevin C. Tofel / Gigaom:

Lumia 635 with LTE comes to US through T-Mobile, Metro PCS for as little as $99 — Microsoft's newest Lumia smartphone with LTE arrives in the U.S. later this month. The Lumia 635 can be had from T-Mobile for zero down and $7 a month while MetroPCS customers get special promotional pricing of $99 for the Windows Phone 8.1 handset.

More: T-Mobile Newsroom, Re/code, Engadget, VentureBeat, Softpedia News, DailyTech, Ubergizmo, PhoneNews.com, Pocketnow, Neowin, CNET, PC World, Gotta Be Mobile, The Windows Blog, Windows Phone Central and TmoNews

Mike Kaplinskiy / Vine blog:

Vine introduces ‘loop count’ popularity indicator, updates home and activity feeds — Introducing Loop Counts — Starting today, you'll see loop counts on Vines in our iOS and Android mobile apps and on the web. Loop counts indicate how many times people have looped a video …

More: The Next Web, TechnoBuffalo, Wired, iDownloadBlog.com, Marketing Pilgrim, 9to5Google, PC Magazine, ABC News, Tubefilter, Ubergizmo, Phandroid, Marketing Land, Engadget, VentureBeat, TechHive, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, App Advice, Gigaom, WebProNews and Mashable. Tweets: @mikeisaac

Nellie Bowles / Re/code:

Hinge, a Transparent Dating App, Raises $4.5 Million — Hinge, a transparent, totally not anonymous dating app (you use your full name, and it pulls photos from Facebook), just received $4.5 million in venture funding from Founders Fund, Lowercase Capital and others.

More: TechCrunch and VentureBeat

Husain Sumra / MacRumors:

Apple Launches $49 Mac Pro Security Lock Adapter in Online Store [Mac Blog] — Apple today launched a new $49 Mac Pro Security Lock Adapter in its online store, offering users of the new Mac Pro a way to easily secure their machines using existing Kensington locks.

More: 9to5Mac

Stan Higgins / CoinDesk:

US Marshals: One Auction Bidder Claimed All 30,000 Silk Road Bitcoins — The US Marshals Service (USMS) has announced that a single, undisclosed bidder claimed all of the roughly 30,000 bitcoins seized from online black market Silk Road and sold in its recent auction.

More: New York Times, The Register, Bloomberg, Wired, Wall Street Journal and NEWSBTC. Tweets: @reggiemiddleton

Kara Swisher / Re/code:

Twitter names ex-Goldman banker Anthony Noto CFO, Mike Gupta now Head of Strategic Investments — Twitter CFO Steps Down and Is Replaced By Banker Who Took Company Public — Twitter said in a filing today that it's CFO Mike Gupta was shifting his job to become an SVP of strategic investments.

More: New York Times, Reuters, VatorNews, Wall Street Journal, Tech Trader Daily, StrictlyVC, Quartz, TechCrunch, Softpedia News, ABC News, VentureBeat, Fortune and Wall Street Journal

Tweets: @dickc, @mgupta, @carlquintanilla, @wsjd, @sacca, @mikeisaac and @howardlindzon

Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica:

Android Wear review: Fast notifications, accurate voice commands, but still feels like a beta — Android Wear software review: Smartwatch software that doesn't suck — Google wearables: take two. — Believe it or not, Google has been a leader in the wearables space for some time with Google Glass.

More: Ars Technica, Gizmodo, eWeek, 9to5Google, CNET and Wall Street Journal

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:

iPhone & iPad AppleCare+ purchase window extended to 60 days as standard plan discontinued — Apple today will be rolling out a couple of significant changes to its AppleCare support offerings. As we detailed in a report last month regarding Apple's future plans for AppleCare …

More: Gigaom, iPhone in Canada Blog, TUAW, MacRumors, GeekWire, Gotta Be Mobile, iMore, MacNN and App Advice. Thanks:@apollozac

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