Techmeme: Jawbone discounts its fitness trackers for corporate customers with UP for Groups (Joshua Brustein/Businessweek)

Open Links In New Tab

Mobile Archives Advertise Site News Contact Editors

December 11, 2014, 7:40 AM

Top News

Re/code:

Sources: Sony Pictures using AWS to execute denial-of-service attack on sites where its stolen data is available — Sony Pictures Tries to Disrupt Downloads of its Stolen Files — Sony Pictures Entertainment is fighting back. — The studio behind the “Spider-Man” franchise and …

More: Digital Trends, BGR, Gizmodo, Business Insider, The Verge, Ubergizmo, CNET, Geeky Gadgets, The Next Web, SiliconANGLE and Engadget

Tweets: @csoghoian, @dangillmor, @kevinmitnick, @csoghoian, @fmanjoo, @llsethj and @eastdakota

See also Mediagazer

Greg Sterling / Search Engine Land:

Google News to shut down in Spain Dec. 16 in response to recently passed Spanish copyright law — Strict New “Copyright Law” Forces End Of Google News In Spain — Google has decided to shut down Google News in Spain. This drastic step will occur next week (December 16) …

Neeraj Saxena / Times of India:

Xiaomi banned from selling, importing phones in India: Report — NEW DELHI: Delhi high court has put paid to Xiaomi's surging sales juggernaut in India. At least for now. Hearing a case filed by Ericsson India against Xiaomi, the court on Monday passed an ex parte order forbidding …

More: Spicy IP, ZDNet, The Economic Times, BetaNews, 9to5Google, TechCrunch, MediaNama, CNET, India Today, ABC News, PC Advisor, Bloomberg, SlashGear, The Next Web, The Register, Android Central, Reuters, Tech in Asia and Digital Trends

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Spotify Now Converts What Friends Listen To Into A “Top Tracks In Your Network” Playlist — Now you can listen to Spotify like you read the Facebook News Feed. Spotify's new “Top Tracks In Your Network” is a personalized, constantly updated playlist based on what the people you follow are listening to.

More: VentureBeat, The Next Web, The Verge, Engadget and Ubergizmo. Tweets: @joshconstine

William Petroski / Des Moines Register:

Iowa to allow drivers to use new mobile app as official driver's license in 2015 — Iowa to launch smartphone driver's license — Iowans will soon be able to use a mobile app on their smartphones as their official driver's license issued by the Iowa Department of Transportation.

More: SiliconANGLE, Mashable, Digital Trends, Tech Times, ExtremeTech, Network World and PCMag UK

Peter Bright / Ars Technica:

Xbox, Windows Store now accepting Bitcoin payments — You can now use Bitcoin to add funds to your Microsoft account. — Microsoft has added Bitcoin support to Microsoft accounts. Bitcoin funds can be added to accounts to enable digital purchases from the Windows, Windows Phone, Xbox Games, Xbox Music, and Xbox Video stores.

Farhad Manjoo / New York Times:

Q&A with Jack Dorsey on Square's past year and its future after the company hits record $100M in sales in a single day — Are All Payments Becoming Invisible? A Conversation With Square's Jack Dorsey — Square, the company famous for its tiny mobile credit-card reader …

More: VentureBeat, Wired, Quartz and Business Insider

Tweets: @jimprosser and @mikeisaac

Steve O'Hear / TechCrunch:

Wakie, the free ‘social alarm clock’ that replaces your alarm clock with a phone call from a stranger, is now available on iOS — Wakie, The Social Alarm Clock That Lets You Wake Up Strangers, Finally Arrives On iOS — “Hey there, I'm just calling to wake you up,” I said a little awkwardly.

More: Latin Post, MTV, iDigitalTimes.com, Pocket-lint and The Next Web

Mikey Campbell / AppleInsider:

Apple debuts cellular LTE-equipped iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3 in China — Apple on Wednesday announced cellular-capable iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3 models will be available in China later this week, offering support for region-specific wireless networks used by major telecoms like the world-leader China Mobile.

More: Apple, MacRumors, VentureBeat, Patently Apple, TechCrunch, Ubergizmo, iMore, 9to5Mac, SlashGear and App Advice. Tweets: @applespotlight. Thanks:@mikeycampbell81

Jason Del Rey / Re/code:

eBay CEO Likely to Leave Board and Join PayPal's When Companies Split — EBay CEO John Donahoe will likely depart eBay's board of directors when the company spins off payment subsidiary PayPal next year, according to two people who have discussed the topic with him.

More: ParisLemon

Jillian D'Onfro / Business Insider:

eBay considering plan to cut up to 3k employees, or 10% of its total workforce, in its core marketplace division early next year

More: Wall Street Journal, TheStreet.com, VentureBeat, CNET, The Register, GeekWire, TIME and Seeking Alpha. Tweets: @mikeisaac

Joshua Brustein / Businessweek:

Jawbone discounts its fitness trackers for corporate customers with UP for Groups — Your Boss Would Like You to Wear a Jawbone Fitness Tracker — Jawbone wants to become a part of the workday. The company's new service, UP for Groups, will sell discounted fitness trackers …

More: The Jawbone Blog, SlashGear, Connectedly and Engadget

Holly Ormseth / Facebook Media:

Facebook releases new tools for publishers to offer greater automation and better targeting, improves Insights, fixes referrer data bug for iOS — New Tools and Insights for Publishers — Over the past few months, we've listened to publishers around the world to better understand …

More: Re/code, Jon Loomer Digital, Marketing Land, AllFacebook, The Next Web, Mashable and Poynter

Tweets: @problogger and @kelseyproud

See also Mediagazer

Rachel King / ZDNet:

Box's S-1 update shows $57M revenue in Q3 2014, up from $33.6M Q3 2013; losses $45.4M, down from $51.4M same quarter last year — Box's S-1 update: Revenue climbed toward Q3 2014, losses less severe — Summary:Since the S-1 landed in early 2014, the enterprise cloud company has deflected analysis …

More: bizjournals, Re/code, VentureBeat, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, Gigaom and ZDNet

Kyle Alspach / BostInno:

Confirmed: Backupify Has Been Acquired by Datto in Cloud Backup Consolidation — New England may have a new tech heavyweight in-the-making with the acquisition of Cambridge's Backupify by Norwalk, Conn.-based Datto, which will form a company with more than 400 employees and revenue potentially nearing the nine-digits for this year.

More: Forbes, TechCrunch and Xconomy. Thanks:@kylealspach

Jere Suikkila / HERE Three Sixty:

Nokia's HERE maps app now available for free on Google Play; iOS version coming in early 2015 — HERE for Android now available for free on Google Play — More than a million of you have already taken HERE for Android beta for a spin, with the most active downloaders coming from Germany and the USA.

Mike Beasley / 9to5Google:

Google announces custom gender option for Google+ profile pages coming this week — Google has announced a new update to the profile editor on Google+ which introduces a new “custom” gender option. Rather than take the Facebook approach and present a long list of options, however …

More: Rachael Bennett, The Verge, Android Central, TechCrunch, The Register, TechTree.com, SlashGear, Gizmodo, Ubergizmo and Engadget

Zac Hall / 9to5Mac:

United Airlines to deploy 23,000 iPhone 6 Plus units to flight attendants for payments, manuals, and more — United Airlines buys iPhone 6 Plus for all its flight attendants to handle payments, manuals & more — United Airlines announced today that its more than 23,000 flight attendants …

More: AppleInsider, Business Insider, Engadget, newsroom.unitedconti …, SlashGear, TUAW and FOX2now.com. Tweets: @fmanjoo

Robert Hackett / Fortune:

Cybersecurity firm Area 1 Security, founded by ex-NSA employees, raises $8M Series A led by Kleiner Perkins — Can three ex-NSA snoops stop the worst hacks before they start? — An e-mail arrives in your inbox: relevant, knowingly addressed to you, hardly suspicious.

More: PE Hub Blog, eWeek and SecurityWeek

Catherine Shu / TechCrunch:

Korean E-commerce Leader Coupang Raises $300M Led By BlackRock — Seoul-based Coupang, an online retailer, announced today that it has raised an impressive $300 million in new funding led by BlackRock Private Equity Partners, with participation from Wellington Management Company, LLP …

More: Tech in Asia, PandoDaily and VentureBeat. Thanks:@catherineshu

Bertel King, Jr / Android Police:

Google publishes new “Live Channels for Android TV” app on Play Store, but it doesn't work yet — Google Publishes ‘Live Channels For Android TV’ App Into The Play Store, But So Far Not Much Is On — While it's possible to create a TV platform that doesn't deal with live channels …

More: The Next Web, Android Authority, The Verge, Gizmodo, 9to5Google, SlashGear and TechCrunch

Greg Kumparak / TechCrunch:

Google's YouTube App For Android Updated With Material Design, Adds Search Filters — Slowly but surely, Google is updating each of its own Android applications to fit in with Android's new “Material Design” motif. — The latest one to get the makeover treatment: YouTube.

More: Android Authority, VentureBeat, 9to5Google, YouTube - Google+ and The Next Web

Alex Wawro / Gamasutra:

Kabam shifts focus to mobile, sells off social games to RockYou — Free-to-play game company Kabam is abandoning social games in favor of the lucrative mobile market at the same time that RockYou is trying to buy up unwanted social games, so it's not so surprising that Kabam just sold …

More: corporate.kabam.com and Pocket Gamer.biz

Greg Kumparak / TechCrunch:

Sidecar Follows The Competition, Starts Charging A $1 “RideSafe” Fee — Last year, Uber introduced a “Safe Rides” fee that added a $1 charge to uberX fares. This fee, they said, was meant to help them cover the cost of background checks, vehicle screenings, and “the development of safety features.”

More: GeekWire

Janko Roettgers / Gigaom:

Netflix wants its app on cable providers' set-top boxes, may be nearing a deal with AT&T — Netflix wants to hook up with your cable company in 2015 — Netflix's new strategy to take on cable involves becoming best friends with cable: The video streaming service has been working hard …

More: DSLreports

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.

Zoho:

Do you need a Zoho Partner? Here's why working with one can benefit you. — Zoho offers over 60 applications, each one built for a unique use case. From sales and marketing to finance, HR, and customer support …

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

Hard Fork:

Open Model Wars + Claire Stapleton's Dishy Google Memoir + Substack's Slop Fight

The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.

Subscribe to Hard Fork.

Great Chat:

Tech's short-term era

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.

Access:

Meet the most AI-pilled CEO on Earth

A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.

Subscribe to Access.

The Upstarts Podcast:

Basis's Matt Harpe: Why AI Won't Replace Accountants — It'll Make Them Richer

Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.

Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.

Channels with Peter Kafka:

Lucas Shaw on Warner Bros' Limbo, Netflix's Anxiety, and Hollywood's Sort-of Comeback

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.

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 7:40 AM ET, December 11, 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.