Techmeme: NPR One Delivers A Curated Public Radio Stream For The Smartphone Era (Darrell Etherington/TechCrunch)

Open Links In New Tab

Mobile Archives Advertise Site News Contact Editors

July 28, 2014, 9:30 PM

Top News

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Facebook Forces Users Worldwide To Download Messenger For Mobile Chat — Over the next few days, Facebook will stop allowing messaging in its main iPhone and Android apps, and force all their users around the world to download its standalone Messenger app. Facebook first started forcing users …

More: PC World, Inside Facebook, The Verge, The Next Web, 9to5Google, iMore, AppleInsider, MacRumors, Phandroid, Business Insider and iPhone in Canada Blog

Tweets: @harrymccracken and @joshconstine

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.

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, Digital Trends, CNET, The Hill, Computerworld, Re/code, PC Magazine, Liliputing, TechSpot, The Register, Ars Technica, WebProNews, Engadget and Web Browser

Tweets: @lsblakk, @mozilla and @cbeard

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, Bloomberg, VatorNews, Associated Press, VentureBeat, Slate, Gigaom, GeekWire, Washington Post, LOCAL ONLINER, ReadWrite, TheStreet.com, TechSpot, Businessweek, The Verge, Xconomy, TechCrunch, Mashable, Marketing Land, CNET, WebProNews, Fortune, and ScreenwerkScreenwerk

Tweets: @owenthomas and @nytimesbusiness

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, BGR, The Verge, Android Authority, Gizmodo, 9to5Mac, 9to5Google, TUAW, MacDailyNews, TechSpot, Android Central, iPhone in Canada Blog, iMore, Forrester Blogs and App Advice

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, Wall Street Journal, Computerworld, New York Times, DailyTech, Reuters, Gigaom, TIME, Neowin, CNET, TechnoBuffalo, PC Magazine, theWHIR.com, GeekWire, Business Insider, Windows Phone Central, The Next Web and GamePolitics blogs

Tom Warren / The Verge:

Microsoft pits Siri against Cortana in new Windows Phone 8.1 ad — Microsoft is focusing on Apple's Siri digital assistant in one of the first Windows Phone 8.1 commercials. It's another return to the Mac vs. PC war, as Microsoft choses to mock Siri in an effort to showcase Cortana for the first time.

More: AppleInsider, Gigaom, Business Insider, BetaNews, MacRumors, BGR, SuperSite for Windows, CNET, Gotta Be Mobile, Tech Times, Softpedia News, Pocketnow, TechCrunch, 9to5Mac, App Advice, Inquirer, PhoneArena, The Next Web and GeekWire. Tweets: @dannysullivan

Paul Sawers / The Next Web:

Yelp for iPhone now lets you add 12-second videos to your reviews, Android to follow soon — While the move isn't exactly surprising, Yelp has announced that it is now opening its mobile apps to user-generated videos to help create more engaging, visual reviews.

More: Yelp Official Blog, 9to5Google, 9to5Mac, MacRumors, WebProNews, SmallBusiness.com and App Advice

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

Bolt, Instagram's photo-messaging app expected to launch this week, may face legal challenge over name — 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 …

More: Bolt, Mashable, The Technology Chronicles, Inside Facebook, VentureBeat, Pocketnow, Business Insider and Tech Trader Daily

Tweets: @techcrunch and @joshconstine

Peter Kafka / Re/code:

AT&T, Verizon offer HBO with basic cable and internet for $40-50; still no cable-free option — Why HBO and Pay TV Still Aren't Getting Divorced — Reminder: You still can't get HBO without paying for other TV channels, too. — But you can still get a cheapish package that includes HBO …

More: Bloomberg, Deadline.com and VentureBeat

See also Mediagazer

Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica:

Multiple reports say Google and Motorola are planning a Nexus phablet — The Nexus line is definitely not dead. Over the weekend, a report from Android Police claimed Google and the soon-to-be Lenovo-owned Motorola are working together on a 5.9-inch Nexus phone.

More: Android Police and Droid Life

Tom Warren / The Verge:

Fitbit is the first fitness band to support Windows Phone — At the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year it was clear Microsoft had a problem: exciting new hardware like Pebble, Nest, and various fitness bands were not fully supported on Windows. Companies appeared …

More: Windows Phone, PC World, The Windows Blog, SuperSite for Windows, The Next Web, SlashGear, Pocketnow and Engadget. Tweets: @incanus77

Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:

Windows comes to Raspberry Pi-style board in Microsoft/Intel project — Sharks Cove. — Microsoft — Even Microsoft wants a piece of the development board market made famous by Arduino and Raspberry Pi. — Microsoft has teamed up with Intel and hardware maker CircuitCo to design the $300 …

More: MSDN Blogs and Microsoft News

Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:

NPR One Delivers A Curated Public Radio Stream For The Smartphone Era — Radio is an increasingly perplexing mode of content delivery as we gain access to more and better streaming services with on-demand programming. But the serendipity of radio is still appealing, the ability to turn …

More: Gizmodo, NPR, 9to5Mac, Mashable, Softpedia News, Gadget Review, Laughing Squid, AllAccess.com, 9to5Google, App Advice, Nieman Journalism Lab, VentureBeat, Engadget and iMore. Tweets: @theromit

Dan Palmer / CoinDesk:

Blockchain Returns to Apple iOS with New Bitcoin Wallet — Following Apple's controversial removal of iOS bitcoin apps in January, the first of the big-name wallets relaunches on the App Store today. — Blockchain, which already provides hugely popular wallets for both desktop computers …

More: Wired, Gigaom, MacRumors, Bloomberg, CNNMoney.com, TechCrunch, NEWSBTC, BuzzFeed, cryptocrimson.com, The Next Web, MacNN, Business Insider, NEWSBTC and TUAW

Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:

Hackers Plundered Israeli Defense Firms that Built ‘Iron Dome’ Missile Defense System — Three Israeli defense contractors responsible for building the “Iron Dome” missile shield currently protecting Israel from a barrage of rocket attacks were compromised by hackers and robbed of huge quantities …

More: Nextgov and Business Insider. Tweets: @joshconstine

Quentyn Kennemer / Phandroid:

LG launches new Android tablet/netbook hybrid with 4GB of RAM, 128GB SSD and an Intel Core i5 — Add one more to the list of ridiculous Android tablets. LG has revealed a variant of their Tab Book, a netbook/tablet hybrid that folds down into a tablet while you're on the go and slides …

More: 9to5Google, Digital Trends, NDTV Gadgets, TechRadar.com, Android Community, MobileBurn.com, Phones Review, Android Police, Ubergizmo, AndroidHeadlines.com, Android Authority and Liliputing

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, Engadget, Electronista, Re/code, The Verge and Softpedia News

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: CNET, ZDNet, 9to5Google, Gizmodo, TechnoBuffalo and TechCrunch

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.

Cape:

Most carriers track everything. Cape doesn't. — Unlimited talk, text & data, 24-hr metadata deletion, network ID rotation, SIM-attack defense, and more. Switch today and get 29% off for life.

Equals:

Stop vibe coding analytics — Equals AI turns questions about your business into auditable spreadsheet models and dashboards. Build once, iterate for years.

Zoho:

Zoho WorkDrive named a Leader in the Nucleus Research CSC Technology Value Matrix 2026 — Enterprise content management is evolving rapidly with about 80% of the data unstructured. The growing challenge is not about storing information anymore.

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

Great Chat:

Too big to laugh: how tech lost its sense of humor

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.

Channels with Peter Kafka:

Substack Wants To Become A Social Network; BeeHiiv Wants To Stay Invisible

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.

Training Data:

Factory's Matan Grinberg: The Coming 'Dark Factory' Where Software Builds Itself

Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.

Subscribe to Training Data.

Invest Like the Best:

Matthew Smith — Natural Gas: The Next Bottleneck

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:

Why Netflix is betting on systems thinkers—not specialists—in the AI era | Elizabeth Stone (CPTO)

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.

Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:

Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin

Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.

Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.

Add your podcast here

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 9:30 PM ET, July 28, 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.