Techmeme: Blockchain Android app updated with new features simplying transactions, map view of merchants (Romain Dillet/TechCrunch)

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July 21, 2014, 12:55 PM

Top News

Jeyup S. Kwaak / Wall Street Journal:

Seoul Moves to Ban Uber, Plans Own App — UPDATE: Uber Monday evening called Seoul city government's earlier statement a sign that it lags behind in adopting what it called an innovation in transportation. “Comments like these show Seoul is in danger of remaining trapped in the past …

More: Engadget, The Verge, The Next Web, Business Insider, Forbes, BusinessTech, The Korea Times, Financial Times and SocialTimes. Tweets: @jchengwsj

Jason D. O'Grady / ZDNet:

Forensic scientist identifies suspicious ‘back doors’ running on every iOS device — Summary: During his talk at HOPE/X Jonathan Zdziarski details several undocumented services (with names like “lockdownd,” “pcapd,” “mobile.file_relay,” and “house_arrest") that run in the background on over 600 million iOS devices.

More: Jonathan Zdziarski's Domain, MacRumors, ScienceDirect, iLounge, Electronista, App Advice, Cult of Mac, Jonathan Zdziarski's Domain, iPhone in Canada Blog and BetaNews. Tweets: @csoghoian

Sarah Frier / Bloomberg:

Urban Compass raises $40M at $360M valuation after increasing revenues 10x over past year — Urban Compass Raises Money at $360 Million Valuation — Urban Compass Inc., the New York marketplace for renting and buying apartments, will expand to more U.S. cities after raising $40 million from investors.

More: VentureBeat, Business Insider and PE Hub Blog. Tweets: @urbancompass. Thanks:@mattlynley

Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:

Microsoft consolidates its IT pro tradeshows into one — Summary: Microsoft is consolidating a number of its standalone IT pro-focused tradeshows into a single unified event, slated to kick off in May 2015 in Chicago. — Microsoft is consolidating its TechEd, Microsoft Management Summit …

More: Office Blogs, TechCrunch, Windows Phone Central and Channel 9

Jonathan Shieber / TechCrunch:

NBA star Carmelo Anthony launches venture capital firm called M7 Tech Partners — Knicks Star Carmelo Anthony Launches Venture Firm — After scoring a new contract worth over $122 million with the N.Y. Knicks, NBA star Carmelo Anthony is looking to take a different kind of shot — starting a venture capital firm.

More: Wall Street Journal and Entrepreneur. Tweets: @hunterwalk

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

BlackBerry Names New COO, Marty Beard, ex-CEO Of Enterprise Cloud Startup LiveOps — On the heels of news that Apple would be significantly ramping up its mobile enterprise push in a partnership with IBM, BlackBerry is also looking to step up its game. Today, the company announced that it is appointing a new COO, Marty Beard.

More: Marketwired, CNET, ZDNet, Re/code, Wall Street Journal, Globe and Mail, SyrupCast, RTTNews and NASDAQ.com

Janko Roettgers / Gigaom:

The story of WebP: How Google wants to speed up the web, one image at a time — Tired of slow web pages? So is Google, and the company thinks it has the key to speed up the web: smaller image files. Google's WebP image format aims to replace existing image file formats like JPEG with a smaller file size …

Author Earnings:

Study: 31% of ebooks sold on Amazon are self-published; DRM harms sales at all price levels — July 2014 Author Earnings Report — It has been nearly half a year since we first pulled data for nearly every ranked ebook on Amazon.com's thousands of category bestseller lists.

More: Telegraph, TechHive, Forbes, Good E-Reader and Boing Boing. See also Mediagazer

Romain Dillet / TechCrunch:

Blockchain Android app updated with new features simplying transactions, map view of merchants — Blockchain Releases New Android Wallet App To Put Bitcoin Into Everyone's Hands — Popular bitcoin wallet provider Blockchain.info is releasing a major new version of its Android app …

More: 9to5Google

Steven Scheer / Reuters:

Mobileye, Israeli maker of driving assist systems, starts road show for $500M NYSE IPO — Israel's Mobileye starts road show for $500 million NYSE IPO — (Reuters) - Mobileye N.V., which makes software and cameras that help cars avoid accidents, said on Monday it has launched a road show …

More: Globes Online, NoCamels News Flash, RTTNews, ifrasia.com and NASDAQ.com

Shalini Ramachandran / Wall Street Journal:

Verizon FiOS, facing slowing growth, plans symmetrical upload speeds at no additional charge — Verizon FiOS Enhances Bandwidth for Uploads — Company Is Seeking to Race Ahead of Cable Industry in Its Internet Speeds — Verizon Communications Inc. 's FiOS TV and broadband service …

More: Verizon, Gigaom, Verizon, Ars Technica, Engadget, VentureBeat, PC World, PandoDaily, USA Today and Electronista

Jonathan Shieber / TechCrunch:

NEA Backs BetterDoctor's Quest To Develop Tools To Find A Better Doctor — For Ari Tulla, the chief executive officer in NEA's newest portfolio company, BetterDoctor, the decision to launch a company was a matter of more than just money. — Almost ten years ago, Tulla's wife began treatment for a serious illness.

More: VentureBeat, BetterDoctor Health, silicontap.com, StrictlyVC, ArcticStartup and Xconomy

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