Techmeme: The Judges Approving the NSA's Surveillance Requests Keep Buying Verizon Stock (Lee Fang/VICE)

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July 28, 2014, 3:15 PM

Top News

Liz Gannes / Re/code:

Apple to Buy Radio App Swell for $30 Million — Apple is close to buying the Pandora-for-talk-radio app Swell, according to multiple sources. — The deal is worth about $30 million, these sources say. — Swell had raised $7.2 million from investors including DFJ, Google Ventures and InterWest Partners.

Michael J. de la Merced / New York Times:

Zillow to Acquire Trulia for $3.5 Billion — For much of the last nine years, Zillow and Trulia have competed in the online real estate listings market they helped create. — But after a speedy six-week courtship, the two are set to combine forces. — Zillow agreed on Monday to buy Trulia …

More: Zillow MediaRoom, Associated Press, Bloomberg, ReadWrite, GeekWire, VentureBeat, Businessweek, TheStreet.com, TechCrunch, The Verge, Washington Post, Gigaom, CNET, Marketing Land, ScreenwerkScreenwerk, WebProNews, Fortune, Mashable and Xconomy. Tweets: @nytimesbusiness

South China Morning Post:

Microsoft China placed under official investigation as offices in four cities raided — Government investigators have been sent to the company's offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chengdu — The mainland's business authorities are investigating the offices of Microsoft Corp, the US technology giant has confirmed.

More: ZDNet, PC Advisor, Reuters, GeekWire, Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, CNET, Gigaom, Neowin, New York Times, Windows Phone Central, theWHIR.com and The Next Web

Mitchell Baker / The Mozilla Blog:

Interim Mozilla CEO Chris Beard appointed as permanent CEO — Chris Beard Named CEO of Mozilla — I am pleased to announce that Chris Beard has been appointed CEO of Mozilla Corp. The Mozilla board has reviewed many internal and external candidates - and no one we met was a better fit.

More: ZDNet, CNET, The Register and Ars Technica

Tweets: @lsblakk, @mozilla and @cbeard

Lee Fang / VICE:

The Judges Approving the NSA's Surveillance Requests Keep Buying Verizon Stock — Drawing of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court at an Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) event in Germany last year. Photo via Flickr user mlcastle, original drawing by Lindsay Young

More: Ars Technica, Re/code, The Verge, Engadget, Electronista and Softpedia News

Craig Karmin / Wall Street Journal:

Most Hilton locations worldwide will let customers unlock rooms with their smartphones by 2017 — Hilton Books Upgraded Technology — Hotel Guests Will Be Able to Use Smartphones as Keys or to Choose Rooms at Properties World-Wide — Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. is placing …

More: Hilton, AppleInsider, Gizmodo, The Verge, iPhone in Canada Blog, iMore, Gizmodo UK, 9to5Mac, 9to5Google, Android Central and App Advice

Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:

OkCupid admits that it experiments on users, just like Facebook — Defending Facebook's experiments, OkCupid admits to some of its own — Facebook received a lot of backlash when news came out that it had manipulated users' news feeds in order to experiment on them, and today OkCupid …

More: OkTrends, Washington Post, The Hill, Gizmodo, Salon and kottke.org

Tweets: @tomkrazit, @sarahfrier, @xor, @ashk4n, @kashhill, @zeynep and @dangillmor

Builtvisible:

A history of the undersea cables that carry much of the world's international internet traffic — Messages in the Deep - The Remarkable Story of the Underwater Internet — In October of 1971, in the midst of the Cold War, the nuclear-powered submarine USS Halibut entered heavily guarded Russian waters in the Sea of Okhotsk.

Farhad Manjoo / New York Times:

Ultrapak external battery packs can grab a full charge for a standard smartphone in 15 minutes — How to Charge Your Phone in 15 Minutes — Say you've got 15 minutes in an airport between flights and your phone is nearly dead. What do you do? — In the past, you had two choices.

More: Global Nerdy and AndroidHeadlines.com. Tweets: @qthrul and @msquinn

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

Instagram's Forthcoming Photo Messaging App Bolt Could Face Legal Trouble — The developer behind the mobile voice app Bolt is none too pleased with Instagram's decision to launch what appears to be a new mobile messaging app by the same name. Bolt, a new app from Instagram, is expected out this week, we're hearing.

More: Bolt, VentureBeat, Tech Trader Daily and Business Insider. Tweets: @joshconstine

Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:

It's Business Time: Airbnb Targets Work Travelers With Concur Partnership — Global hospitality startup Airbnb has spent the last six years trying to get consumers comfortable with the idea of staying in someone else's home when traveling. Now the company is trying to make headway in the enterprise …

More: Wall Street Journal, VentureBeat, ZDNet, The Next Web, Fortune, CNET and Tnooz. Tweets: @marcmccabe

Steve Dent / Engadget:

Europe approves Apple's $3 billion takeover of Beats — Apple is official a step closer to owning Beats, as the $3 billion merger has just been cleared by European regulators. The EU commission ruled that the merger “did not raise concerns because the combined (headphone) market share of Apple and Beats Electronics is low.”

Arik Hesseldahl / Re/code:

Amazon Fire Phone Costs $205 To Build, Teardown Shows — The components used to assemble the Amazon Fire phone cost a combined $205, a teardown analysis by the research firm IHS shows. — In a report due to be released Tuesday and seen by Re/code, the research firm details the phone's internal components and their cost.

More: 9to5Google, ZDNet, Gizmodo and TechCrunch

Mike Isaac / New York Times:

Reddit, still unprofitable, looks to grow ad revenues without alienating users — Can Reddit Grow Up? — Since its founding nine years ago, Reddit has stuck to its own weird guns. — The site, where users find, share and talk about web links and photos, has been faithful to an antiquated design …

More: Guardian, Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, ITProPortal and Boing Boing

Tweets: @johnlegere, @mims, @alexjamesfitz and @pinboard

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