Techmeme: Roku raises $25 million amid growing competition from Amazon and Google (Tom Cheredar/VentureBeat)

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October 22, 2014, 6:05 PM

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Mat Honan / Wired:

Twitter's new SDK Fabric represents an audacious plan to live inside every app — Twitter's Audacious Plan to Infiltrate All Your Apps — Twitter is releasing a new software development kit today at its developer's conference. It's called Fabric. It does lots of very pretty things …

More: Marketing Land, Gigaom, ReadWrite, Gizmodo, Computerworld, Forbes, ZDNet, The Next Web and Mashable

Tweets: @stevesi, @digiphile, @carnage4life, @mattlynley, @mat and @mikeisaac

Thanks:@mat

Jeff Seibert / The Twitter Blog:

Twitter introduces Fabric, an SDK for mobile developers — Introducing Fabric — Today at Flight, we announced Fabric, a modular mobile platform that makes it easy for developers to build great apps. — The Fabric platform is made of three modular kits that address some of the most common …

More: VatorNews, CNET, VentureBeat, Re/code, Forbes, Mashable, MobileSyrup.com, WebProNews, ReadWrite and SlashGear

Tweets: @joshconstine, @fabric and @mikeisaac

Casey Newton / The Verge:

Twitter's Digits enables users of third-party apps to sign up using just their phone number — Inside Twitter's ambitious plan to kill the password — As he traveled the world last year as part of a user research project, Michael Ducker noticed a problem.

More: TechCrunch, Washington Post, VentureBeat, ReadWrite, Macworld, Marketing Land, Guardian, iMore, Business Insider, TechCrunch, Engadget and Phandroid

Dieter Bohn / The Verge:

Google aims to reinvent email with Inbox, a marriage of Gmail and Google Now, currently invite-only — Inbox is a total reinvention of email from Google — The new Gmail app from the Gmail team isn't technically just an email app, at least if you ask them.

Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:

Hands On With Google Inbox: Useful Email Triage Tools For A Mobile Workflow

More: The Verge, 9to5Mac, GeekWire and SlashGear

John Gruber / Daring Fireball:

iPad Air 2 is faster than 2011 MacBook Air, forges ahead of new iPhones on performance — The iPad Air 2 (And a Few Cursory Words Regarding the iPad Mini 3) — The relationship between the iPad and the iPhone, performance-wise, has been hard to predict.

More: Ars Technica, Tested, Business Insider, MacDailyNews and BGR

Tweets: @narenbalaji, @om and @asymco

Walt Mossberg / Re/code:

iPad Air 2: best iPad ever, but only a modest evolutionary improvement over the Air

More: iFixit, AppleInsider, MacRumors, 9to5Mac, App Advice, Engadget, Wall Street Journal, TechHive, iPhone in Canada Blog, iDownloadBlog.com, Asymco, The Loop, iPhone Hacks, Marketing Land, Fortune, USA Today, MacNN and Dwight Silverman's TechBlog. Tweets: @waltmossberg

Nilay Patel / The Verge:

iPad Air 2 review: great hardware, but lacks multiuser, multitasking support, tablet-specific features

More: Tech.pinions, TUAW, TIME, MacDailyNews and iMore

Mark Spoonauer / Laptop Mag:

iPad Air 2 benchmarks: excels in Geekbench compared to Samsung Galaxy Tab, Nvidia Shield, Sony Xperia Z2, strong on 3DMark but not best

More: Gotta Be Mobile, BGR, Inquirer and ITProPortal. Thanks:@mspoonauer

David Pogue / Yahoo Tech:

The iPad Air 2: Thin, Gorgeous, Powerful — and That's Enough

Marton Dunai / Reuters:

Hungary plans new tax on Internet traffic, public calls for rally — (Reuters) - Hungary plans to impose a new tax on Internet data transfers, a draft 2015 tax bill submitted to parliament late on Tuesday showed, in a move that could hit Internet and telecoms providers and their customers hard.

More: The Register, Wall Street Journal, Hungary Today, Geek.com, The Verge, Taxation, RT, Portfolio.hu Online …, Gigaom, Broadband TV News, Inquirer and DSLreports

Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:

New Microsoft Garage site invites public to test a wide range of app ideas — Microsoft today launched a new section on its website: The Microsoft Garage is designed to give the public early access to various projects the company is testing right now. The team is kicking off with a total …

More: The Fire Hose, The Verge, ReadWrite, The Next Web, CNET, Windows Phone Central, AndroidGuys, PC World, Gigaom, 9to5Google, GeekWire, Gotta Be Mobile and ZDNet. Thanks:@epro

Alex Kipman / The Official Microsoft Blog:

Microsoft allows Kinect Apps in Windows Store for the first time, launches Kinect SDK 2.0 — Microsoft releases Kinect SDK 2.0 and new adapter kit — Today, we have some exciting news to share about the next chapter for Kinect. Our Windows SDK 2.0 is now available for the Kinect v2 sensors …

More: GeekWire, PC Magazine, PC World, Ubergizmo, Eurogamer.net, VentureBeat, Windows Phone Central, The Verge, ZDNet, The Next Web, SuperSite for Windows and High-Def Digest

Tweets: @kinectwindows and @brekelj

Maeve Duggan / Pew Internet:

Pew survey: 40% of US internet users have experienced online harassment, 18% in severe form — Online Harassment — Summary of Findings — Harassment—from garden-variety name calling to more threatening behavior— is a common part of online life that colors the experiences of many web users.

More: New York Times, USA Today, CNET, Wall Street Journal, PC Magazine, Joystiq, CIO.com, Associated Press, Poynter, Washington Post, Tech Times and The Verge. Tweets: @pewinternet

Molly Wood / New York Times:

Apple Pay: Seamless in Stores, but Quirky Online — AFTER I used Apple Pay for a day of shopping in stores, a few things became clear: The new payment system is convenient, problem-free and even fun. — The same can't be said for using Apple Pay to shop via apps on my phone or tablet.

More: CNNMoney.com, Cult of Mac, 9to5Mac, Engadget, CNET, Gizmodo, iMore, Mashable, ReadWrite, Electronista, BGR and Gotta Be Mobile

Kelly Hodgkins / MacRumors:

Apple Pay Shown to Work Internationally Using U.S.-Based Credit Cards

More: Re/code, ABC News, PC World, AppleInsider, TechCrunch, 9to5Mac, iMore, Fox News, BGR, CNET, iPhone in Canada Blog and TechSpot

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Groupon takes on Yelp with Pages: business listings with offers, news, reviews and more — Groupon Goes After Yelp And Google With Millions Of Individual Business Pages — Groupon today took one more step ahead in its bid to be a simple daily deals site, and more of a general go-to place …

More: Re/code, Groupon, Inc., Wall Street Journal, The Next Web, Marketing Pilgrim, GeekWire, Chicago Tribune and WebProNews

Andrew Ross Sorkin / New York Times:

IBM's increasing EPS in recent years only due to buybacks, no real revenue growth since 2008 — The Truth Hidden by IBM's Buybacks — For many years, the International Business Machines Corporation's earnings glided smoothly upward. Every quarter, IBM would report higher earnings per share.

Tweets: @froomkin, @rogerlmartin, @infoarbitrage, @edwardnh, @andrewrsorkin and @nilofer

Tom Cheredar / VentureBeat:

Roku raises $25 million amid growing competition from Amazon and Google — Updated at 1:45 p.m. PST with a statement from Roku. — Set-top box company Roku has secured a fresh $25 million round of funding, according to a SEC form D filing released today.

More: Gigaom. Thanks:@tched

Josh Lowensohn / The Verge:

Homeboy is a $149 rechargeable low-power Wi-Fi security camera with a three month battery, on sale today — Homeboy is what happens when tiny security cameras hook up with magnets — The new $149 camera sticks to walls to watch your home — After having his home burglarized for a third time …

More: Gigaom, TechSpot and PC World. Thanks:@jordan_tara

Chris Kanaracus / PC World:

EMC buys controlling interest in VCE, its joint venture with Cisco — EMC has confirmed it will purchase the bulk of Cisco's stake in VCE, the companies' joint venture in converged infrastructure products. — News of the deal surfaced late Tuesday. The move means that VCE will become an EMC business …

More: VCE, eWeek, Network World, EnterpriseTech, Reuters and SiliconBeat

Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:

Microsoft and IBM commit to providing their enterprise software to Azure, IBM clouds — Summary: Microsoft and IBM have forged a new alliance bringing more of IBM's enterprise software and services to Azure, and Microsoft's enterprise software to IBM's cloud platforms.

More: News Center, PC World, InfoWorld, GeekWire, The New Stack, WinBeta, bizjournals, The Register, VentureBeat and WindowsITPro

Romain Dillet / TechCrunch:

MicroBlink's PhotoMath app solves math problems scanned in through your phone's camera — MicroBlink Launches PhotoMath To Solve Math Equations With A Phone — Imagine you are a 14-year-old kid again. You need to do this really difficult math exercise for tomorrow, but have no idea how to do it.

More: Engadget, SiliconANGLE, PC Magazine, GeekTime, Gizmodo, TIME, Technabob, Cult of Mac, Boing Boing, TechSpot, The Daily Dot, Phandroid and Lifehacker

Jonathan Vanian / Gigaom:

Google exec: Chromecast V2 is coming; users have cast 650 million times — Google's Mario Queiroz said that 650 million people have now hit the cast button. An API for developers will let them build custom apps for Backdrop. — Three months ago, Google claimed that Chromecast users …

More: BGR, The Daily Dot, TechnoBuffalo, Phandroid, 9to5Google, ITProPortal, Ubergizmo and WebProNews

Jon Russell / TechCrunch:

Xiaomi Is Moving International Users' Data Out Of China Ahead Of Further Global Expansions — The past year has been an eventful one for Chinese phone-maker Xiaomi. The company's devices are now sold in seven countries in Asia, that's a big step up from Xiaomi's inception …

More: Tech in Asia and Technology Personalized

Denni Hu / Bloomberg:

Yelp Q3 beats estimates with $102.5M revenue; shares down 16% on Q4 sales forecast — Yelp Falls as Fourth-Quarter Forecast Miss Estimates — Yelp Inc. (YELP) shares dropped as much as 16 percent in extended trading after the local-reviews company forecast fourth-quarter sales that fell short of analysts' estimates.

More: Associated Press, Reuters, Forbes, Tech Trader Daily, Business Insider, RTTNews and Yelp Investor Relations

Paul Sawers / The Next Web:

Barnes & Noble launches a 10.1-inch version of its Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 Nook tablet for $299.99 — Almost two months to the day since Barnes & Noble launched its Samsung-developed 7-inch Galaxy Tab 4 Nook tablet, a new larger-screen incarnation has now been unveiled.

More: Business Wire, VentureBeat, Android Police, Associated Press, IntoMobile, Electronista, Android Police, 9to5Google, SlashGear, TechnoBuffalo, Digital Trends, Laptop Mag, The Verge and CNET

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