Techmeme: Yahoo Acquires ‘Pandora For Places’ App Zofari (Ingrid Lunden/TechCrunch)

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August 12, 2014, 2:20 PM

Top News

Christina Farr / Reuters:

Apple in talks with Mount Sinai, the Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins, and Allscripts about its HealthKit service — Exclusive: Apple prepares Healthkit rollout amid tangled regulatory web — (Reuters) - Apple Inc has been discussing how its “HealthKit” service will work with health providers …

Bloomberg:

Apple suppliers begin production of new iPads, 9.7-inch to feature anti-reflective coating — Apple's Suppliers Said to Begin Production of New IPad Tablets — Apple Inc. (AAPL)'s suppliers have started manufacturing new iPads, according to people with knowledge of the matter …

Ina Fried / Re/code:

Apple's Diversity Report: 70 percent Male, 55 percent White in U.S. — Apple is the latest company to release a report on the diversity of its workforce, saying Tuesday that its numbers represent a work in progress to the diversity it hopes to achieve over time. — Currently 7 in 10 of its workers globally are male.

More: Apple, Wall Street Journal, The Verge, PC Magazine, CNET, SiliconBeat, Gigaom, Washington Post, TechCrunch, Business Insider, VentureBeat, The Next Web, USA Today, MacRumors, AppleInsider, Business Insider, 9to5Mac, ABC News and Bloomberg

Tweets: @carmeldea, @mattrosoff, @stevesi, @markgurman and @davewiner

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Yahoo Acquires ‘Pandora For Places’ App Zofari — Another acquisition for Yahoo, this one focused on improving the company's local search capabilities: it has bought Zofari, a local recommendation app that uses machine learning, natural language processing and third-party data from sources …

More: Zofari, CNET, VentureBeat and The Next Web

Tweets: @jyarow and @hunterwalk

Zachary M. Seward / Quartz:

Twitter admits that as many as 23 million of its active users are actually bots — Twitter raised eyebrows last month when it suggested that many of its active users aren't actually human. Now we know how many. — In a new filing, the company said that “up to approximately 8.5%” …

More: Gigaom, CNET, Yahoo Tech, International Business Times, Neowin, Marketing Land, WebProNews, Tech2, Engadget, Daily Mail and Re/code

Tweets: @peterwsinger and @amir

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

iOS drops to 67% enterprise share in Q2 2014, Android grows to 32%, and Windows Phone stays flat at 1% — Apple's iOS still rules the enterprise space, even after having fallen 5 percentage points to 67 percent of total device activations in Q2 2014. Android device activations increased …

More: Good Technology, GeekWire, Gigaom, 9to5Google, 9to5Mac and ZDNet

Erica Fink / CNNMoney.com:

Lyft says 177 Uber employees have ordered and cancelled 5,560 Lyft rides since last October — Uber's dirty tricks quantified: Rival counts 5,560 canceled rides — Uber is using a pattern of aggressive and questionable tactics in its effort to control the car-on-demand market, according to rivals.

More: Gigaom, BGR, VatorNews, Washington Post, SiliconBeat, Bloomberg, Ars Technica, The Verge, Consumerist, Fox News, SlashGear, Valleywag, Daily Dot, WebProNews, Business Insider, Wall Street Journal, CNET, ITworld.com, The Next Web, TIME and PandoDaily

Tweets: @dhh, @guan, @shayanjm, @jack_regan and @vplus

Steven Levy / Wired:

Ex-Siri engineers promise consumer-friendly digital assistant “Viv” that can teach itself — Forget Siri: This Radical New AI Teaches Itself and Reads Your Mind — Viv was named after the Latin root meaning live. Its San Jose, California, offices are decorated with tsotchkes bearing …

More: CITEworld, Engadget, BGR, iMore, The Verge, MacRumors, Gizmodo, The Next Web, iPhone in Canada Blog, 9to5Mac, iMagazin, Cult of Mac, SlashGear, Business Insider and MacDailyNews. Thanks:@johnrobertreed

Austin Carr / Fast Company:

Square killed prototype credit card due to legal hurdles and fear it would alienate partners — Why Jack Dorsey Killed The Square Credit Card — Square, the payments startup from Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey, has prototyped a Square credit card. The plastic card is all black …

More: Gigaom and The Verge. Thanks:@davidlidsky

Austin Carr / Fast Company:

Inside Square's long-term plan, its quest for non-payments revenue, and the Starbucks disaster

More: Wall Street Journal, Xconomy and Business Insider

Tweets: @incanus77 and @qthrul

Thanks:@_trendspotter. See also Mediagazer

Nick Summers / The Next Web:

Xbox One to offer TV streaming on SmartGlass, video playback via USB and DLNA network streaming — Just before its Gamescom presentation kicked off, Microsoft announced some hefty updates for its Xbox One video game console affecting some of the core apps, SmartGlass and live TV.

More: Xbox Wire, Xbox Live's Major Nelson, The Verge, Gizmodo, Inquirer, TechSpot, Consumerist, Gigaom, TechCrunch, WinBeta, Softpedia News and Windows Phone Central

Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:

OnePlus asks women to participate in degrading contest to get a smartphone — The startup OnePlus recently launched its first smartphone, the One, and to deal with production issues it's been letting people buy them by invitation-only, slowly offering them to more people as more are produced.

More: OnePlus, TechCrunch, BGR, Gizmodo, Business Insider, SlashGear, Phandroid, Android Central, Droid Life and Android Authority

Tweets: @cyanogeninc, @mkbhd, @dcseifert, @roflkops, @epro and @reybango

Ian Sherr / CNET:

Activision to break with past, release Skylanders for consoles, tablets — For the first time, the game giant will launch a top-tier console title on a tablet at the same time it's coming out for the PlayStation, Xbox, and Wii. Skylanders toys will, of course, join the fray.

More: Guardian, Engadget, iMore, TechHive and The Verge

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

Twitter launches Promoted Video ads in beta, only charging advertisers when a user hits play — Twitter today introduced Promoted Video ads in beta. The company is offering advertisers a new Cost Per View (CPV) ad buying model which means they only get charged when a user starts playing the video in question.

More: The Twitter Blog, TechCrunch and Mashable

Dave Smith / Business Insider:

Meet Marques Brownlee, the 20-year-old tech reviewer with over 1.5M subscribers on YouTube — Meet ‘The Best Technology Reviewer On The Planet,’ Who Is Only 20 Years Old — Marques Brownlee is just 20 years old, but there's arguably no one better on the internet when it comes to explaining new technologies to the average consumer.

Ben Casselman / FiveThirtyEight:

Corporate America hasn't been disrupted: startup rate continues decline as failure rate grows — Corporate America Hasn't Been Disrupted — Talk to anyone in Silicon Valley these days, and it's hard to go more than two minutes without hearing about “disruption.” Uber is disrupting the taxi business.

More: Beyond Search. Tweets: @natesilver538 and @codinghorror

Nick Summers / The Next Web:

Yo now lets you send links, “Yo” hashtags and set up IFTTT-style alerts with other services — Yo, a simple messaging app that sends nothing but the word “Yo,” just got a little more complicated. — In its first major update, the iOS app now gives you the option to show a photo and your full name.

More: Medium, VentureBeat, ReadWrite, Daily Mail, TechHive and TechCrunch

GSMArena.com:

Exclusive: 5-inch Moto G2 to ship on Sept 10 for €250 — The successor of Motorola Moto G, rumored as Moto G2 and Moto G+1, should be available for purchase on September 10. The information comes from a retailer, which got the info straight from a Motorola rep.

More: Android Community, AndroidGuys, GadgeTell, Greenbot, EyeOnMobility, BGR, SlashGear, Gotta Be Mobile, Pocketnow, Neowin, Digital Trends, Phandroid and Ubergizmo

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

Gartner: Chromebook sales will grow 79% to 5.2 million units in 2014, but ‘will remain a niche market’ — Chromebooks are expected to reach 5.2 million units in 2014, a 79 percent increase from 2013, according to Gartner. While the growth is certainly notable, the overall figures aren't impressive just yet.

More: eWeek, The Tech Report, Softpedia News, TechnoBuffalo, EyeOnMobility, Guardian, 9to5Google, AndroidHeadlines.com, Business Insider, The Register, V3.co.uk and InformationWeek. Tweets: @ampressman

Kaylene Hong / The Next Web:

The war Uber faces: how it's battling GrabTaxi and Easy Taxi in Southeast Asia — Whoever could have predicted that private car-for-hire and taxi-booking apps would one day be one of the hottest things in the tech scene? In Southeast Asia, a fierce battle is unfolding between three players …

Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch:

Bitcoin Slips As US Consumer Finance Agency Warns Of Cryptocurrency Risks — Remember bitcoin? Today the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued a lengthy set of risks that the cryptocurrency poses to early adopters. The list is somewhat decent in its content …

More: Consumer Financial …, Electronista, TheDomains.com, Washington Post, Ars Technica, Washington Post, Entrepreneur and PC World

Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:

RelayRides Adds $10 Million From Trinity And Looks To Expand Peer-To-Peer Airport Rentals — When we last checked in with peer-to-peer car rental startup RelayRides about six weeks ago, it had raised $25 million in Series B funding led by Canaan Partners. Well, it wasn't quite finished raising money …

More: Skift and PE Hub Blog. Thanks:@stevendwebb

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