Techmeme: Exclusive: Twitter-Mining News App SmartNews Raises $36 Million from Atomico and Gree (Eric Johnson/Re/code)

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August 8, 2014, 1:30 PM

Top News

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

Facebook unveils Autoscale, its load-balancing system that achieves an average power saving of 10-15% — Facebook today revealed details about Autoscale, a system for power-efficient load balancing that has been rolled out to production clusters in its data centers.

More: Facebook Code, ZDNet, Gigaom and Data Center Knowledge

Eric Johnson / Re/code:

Exclusive: Twitter-Mining News App SmartNews Raises $36 Million from Atomico and Gree — Japanese newsreading app SmartNews has raised $36 million in new funding, in a round led by growth-stage investment firm Atomico and mobile-social gaming company Gree. — The app is available on both iOS …

More: Gigaom, VentureBeat and Tech in Asia

Vanessa Mock / Wall Street Journal:

EU is asking companies to provide evidence by Sept. 12 that Google imposed app bundling, exclusivity requirements on Android device makers, carriers — Google's Tough European Summer: Android and Online Search Probes — Google Inc. isn't having a good summer.

More: Quartz, CNET and SiliconBeat

Reuters:

Exclusive: Tango secondary financing values company at around $1.5 billion — (Reuters) - Tango, the mobile messaging company, is arranging a financing transaction that would value its business at around $1.5 billion, roughly one-third more than the valuation it received just five months ago …

More: VatorNews. Tweets: @lexnfx

Reuters:

China refutes claim of government ban on Apple purchases — (Reuters) - Apple Inc (AAPL.O) products such as laptops and tablets are not banned from Chinese government procurement lists, according to the country's chief procurement center, refuting a report claiming Apple was blacklisted on national security concerns.

More: MacRumors, VentureBeat, iMore, 9to5Mac and Inquirer

Mat Honan / Wired:

Stewart Butterfield set out to build a game and failed; instead, he created Flickr and Slack — The Most Fascinating Profile You'll Ever Read About a Guy and His Boring Startup — Stewart is hungry. He's munching on potatoes smothered in chicken fat drippings, sitting by a long metal table …

More: StrictlyVC, Singularity Hub, kottke.org, Business Insider and Business Insider

Tweets: @accel, @stewart, @smc90, @kentgoldman, @fmanjoo, @joemfbrown, @pkedrosky, @waxpancake, @caseynewton, @stevekovach, @panzer, @mims, @pmarca, @anildash, @om, @mattrosoff and @kevinroose

Thanks:@nethistorypod

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

Facebook bans incentivizing users to Like Pages, gives developers until November 5 to update apps — In addition to releasing Graph API version 2.1 today, Facebook also announced two important changes to its Platform Policies under games and proper use. Developers have 90 days (until November 5, 2014) to comply with the new rules.

More: Inquirer, Softpedia News, Electronista, Ubergizmo, Gizmodo, Facebook Developers and WebProNews. Thanks:@epro

David Meyer / Gigaom:

Public Wi-Fi users in Russia will have to log on with ID, reports say — Russia's clampdown on internet freedom continues, this time with a measure designed to counter “those interested in destabilization.” However, there is some confusion over the details.

More: Global Voices, Radio Free Europe/Radio …, Wall Street Journal, ZDNet, Reuters, Bloomberg, ITAR-TASS, ITAR-TASS, kyivpost.com and India & World

David Pierce / The Verge:

The NFL Now app is a treasure trove of video for football fans — A few weeks before the 2014 season starts, the NFL has launched a new video network called NFL Now. First announced in January, it's made to bring the huge troves of football video into one place: highlights, interviews …

More: Engadget, 9to5Mac, CNET, Android Police, The Next Web, AppleInsider and Gizmodo. Thanks:@d_ghiglieri

Florian Mueller / FOSS Patents:

U.S. patent office rejects Apple's autocomplete patent claim Samsung was found to infringe — Apple has just given up its thermonuclear ambitions and practically agreed with Google's 2011 statement that “bad software patent litigation is a wasteful war that no one can win”, but even in the U.S. …

More: PC Magazine, 9to5Mac, CNET, iPhone in Canada Blog, Tech2, MacDailyNews, Fast Company, PhoneArena, AppleInsider, Android Authority, Electronista and Washington Post

Natalie Huet / Reuters:

Gemalto to buy U.S. data protection firm SafeNet for $890 mln — * Gemalto to buy SafeNet from PE firm Vector Capital — * Deal to be funded with cash and debt and close in Q4 — * Gemalto to beat 2017 op profit target by c. 10 pct — * Shares rise 3.9 percent (Adds share price reaction, analyst's comment, background)

More: New York Times, MarketWatch, Bloomberg, Wireless Week, The Register, RTTNews, Wall Street Journal and SecurityWeek

Kaylene Hong / The Next Web:

Twitter has quietly removed Bing translation from its mobile apps and web platform — A useful translation feature (albeit poorly executed at times) appears to have disappeared from Twitter's platform, less than two months after the company quietly rolled it out.

More: The Digital Reader, CNET, WebProNews, Softpedia News, Neowin and ReadWrite

Tim Peterson / AdAge:

Google Tests Way to Track Consumers From Mobile Browsers to the Apps They Use — For Advertisers, One Mobile User Has Previously Often Looked Like Two — Ebook — Advertising Age Essentials — Google has come up with a way to overcome the ad-targeting gap between mobile web visitors …

More: Wall Street Journal and Business Insider

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