Techmeme: Robin Williams, World Cup, Ebola, MH370, ALS, and Flappy Bird top Google's list of trending searches for 2014 (Amit Singhal/The Official Google Blog)

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December 16, 2014, 12:35 PM

Top News

Jason Del Rey / Re/code:

Samsung in talks with mobile payments startup LoopPay to launch Apple Pay rival in 2015 — Samsung in Talks to Launch Apple Pay Competitor — Samsung has discussed a deal with a payments startup that would help the smartphone maker unveil a wireless mobile payments system in 2015 to rival Apple, according to multiple sources.

More: 9to5Mac, Engadget, MacRumors, The Verge, Gizmodo, ZDNet, 9to5Google, AppleInsider, Business Insider, Ubergizmo, MacDailyNews, TechCrunch, iPhone Hacks, iPhone in Canada Blog, TechnoBuffalo, Patently Apple, SlashGear, Seeking Alpha, SamMobile and Android Central. Tweets: @delrey

Mike Isaac / New York Times:

Apple Pay now supports 90% of US credit cards in terms of purchase volume — Dozens More Companies Sign Up for Apple Pay — The list of companies working with Apple Pay continues to grow. — On Tuesday, Apple announced that in recent weeks the company had signed up dozens more banks …

More: MacRumors, CNET, Macworld, SlashGear, The Verge, ReadWrite, TechCrunch, iMore, Gigaom, Wired, ITProPortal, O'Grady's PowerPage, Cult of Mac, Gotta Be Mobile, MacNN, 9to5Mac, iLounge, MacDailyNews, AppleInsider, Patently Apple, Ubergizmo and iPhone. Tweets: @nytimesbusiness

Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:

Microsoft's ‘Arcadia’ team is building a streaming app and game service — Summary:Microsoft's Operating Systems Group is staffing up a new team that is building an app and game streaming service for the company's ‘core platforms.’ — As Microsoft officials themselves have said …

More: Gizmodo, The Verge, Business Insider, Ubergizmo, Eurogamer.net, Gotta Be Mobile and Windows Phone Central

Amit Singhal / The Official Google Blog:

Robin Williams, World Cup, Ebola, MH370, ALS, and Flappy Bird top Google's list of trending searches for 2014 — A Year in Search: the moments that defined 2014 — Every year, we reflect on the moments that made us laugh, smile from ear to ear, or stay gripped to our screens in our annual Year in Search.

Daniel Howley / Yahoo Tech:

Starting January 1st, T-Mobile Data Stash will let you roll over unused data for up to a year, starting with one-off 10GB allowance — T-Mobile ‘Data Stash’ Lets You Roll Over Your Unused Data — Yahoo Tech's David Pogue interviewed T-Mobile CEO John Legere on Tuesday as T-Mobile announced upgrades …

More: T-Mobile Newsroom, ZDNet, Engadget, GeekWire, Android Police, ABC News, iMore, VentureBeat, The Next Web, MacRumors, 9to5Google, TechCrunch, Gizmodo, The Verge, BGR, AnandTech and SlashGear

Peter Kafka / Re/code:

Comcast Will Finally Let Roku Owners Stream HBO, Showtime — Many people who own Roku Web video boxes can use the devices to watch shows from HBO and Showtime. But not Comcast subscribers: A dispute between Roku and America's biggest pay-TV provider has kept the networks' streaming services off of Roku gadgets.

More: CNET, DSLreports, ReadWrite, PC World, Ars Technica, corporate.comcast.com, BGR, Ubergizmo, Consumerist, Gizmodo, The Verge, Electronista, ZDNet, TechnoBuffalo and Engadget

Jordan Crook / TechCrunch:

Dots Spins Out Of Betaworks With $10M Series A From Tencent, GreyCroft — Dots, the mobile gaming studio responsible for two dead-simple but beautiful games, is today announcing the close of a $10 million round, as well as the official spinout of Dots as its own company, separate from betaworks.

Tweets: @mims

Claire Cain Miller / New York Times:

Automation is not only replacing manufacturing jobs, it is displacing knowledge and service workers too — As Robots Grow Smarter, American Workers Struggle to Keep Up — A machine that administers sedatives recently began treating patients at a Seattle hospital.

Tweets: @ict4djester and @mathewi

Alistair Barr / Wall Street Journal:

Google Ventures invested 36% in healthcare & life sciences startups this year, up from 9% last year; consumer internet down from 66% last year to 8% in 2014 — Google Ventures Shifts Focus to Healthcare — Google 's venture-capital arm is moving strongly into healthcare and life-sciences startups …

More: Business Insider, Wired.co.uk and VentureBeat

Erin Griffith / Fortune:

Evan Williams: Medium's key advertising sales metric is not page views, but time spent on page — Evan Williams: On billionaire-backed journalism, Shanley Kane, and the problem with vanity ad metrics — Many people use the newish blogging site Medium each day, but almost as many of them are confused …

Tweets: @ftrain, @jonathanglick, @pkafka, @megan, @joshelman and @digiphile

Los Angeles Times:

Sony hit with lawsuit by former employees over email leaks — The first legal salvo has been leveled against Sony Pictures Entertainment since the massive computer breach that exposed the personal information of thousands of current and former employees. — Lawyers representing …

Eugene Volokh / Washington Post:

Sony unlikely to prevail in court if it sues media organizations for publishing stolen data

More: New York Times, Re/code, The Verge and Krebs on Security. See also Mediagazer

Jonathan Vanian / Gigaom:

Microsoft to open source Project Orleans, the cloud framework behind Halo by early 2015 — Microsoft open sources cloud framework that powers Halo — Microsoft is continuing its open-source push, this time announcing that it will open source its Project Orleans cloud computing web framework.

More: GeekWire, The Verge, Inquirer, ZDNet, Computerworld, TechWeekEurope UK, cloudpro.co.uk and The Register

Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:

Microsoft removes waitlist for its Office presentation app Sway, adds slew of new features to the preview — Microsoft today expanded the preview for its content aggregation and presentation application Sway. The waitlist has been axed, meaning anyone with a Microsoft Account can sign up to start creating Sways.

More: Office Blogs, SiliconANGLE, PC World, BetaNews, Network World, The Register, Good E-Reader, Business Insider, TechCrunch, The Fire Hose, SuperSite for Windows and Patently Apple

Juli Clover / MacRumors:

‘Opera Coast’ Browser for iOS Gains Discover Feature, Turbo Data Compression [iOS Blog] — The Opera Coast webkit-based browser for iOS was today updated to version 4.0, adding Opera Software's Turbo data compression technology to make browsing websites on the iPhone and iPad much faster on congested networks.

More: Engadget, The Next Web, The Digital Reader, CNET, iMore and Gigaom

Tom Cheredar / VentureBeat:

Netflix updates its Android app with social sharing features, Android Wear integration — Streaming video service Netflix is showing some love for subscribers using the company's Android app with a new social-focused updated released today. — The Netflix Android app update adds a set …

More: Netflix US & Canada Blog, PC World, Tech Times, The Next Web, Ubergizmo, SocialTimes, Engadget, Pocketnow, TechCrunch, SlashGear, BetaNews, 9to5Google and WebProNews

Amazon:

HBO GO is now available on Amazon Fire TV, support for Fire TV Stick coming in spring — HBO GO Now Available on Amazon Fire TV — HBO GO joins a growing list of services that support Amazon Fire TV voice search — customers simply say the name of a movie or TV show to find it on Amazon …

More: IntoMobile, Tech Times, TechnoBuffalo and The Verge

Nathan Olivarez-Giles / Wall Street Journal:

HBO Go not available on Fire TV for Comcast and Charter customers

More: USA Today

Zoltan Istvan / Motherboard:

Flying smartphones, or personal drones with smartphone capabilities, to rise in popularity over the next ten years — The Dawn of the Flying Smartphone — Zoltan Istvan is a futurist, journalist, and author of the novel The Transhumanist Wager. He writes an occasional column for Motherboard …

Tweets: @motherboard

Ben Lovejoy / 9to5Mac:

Google Wallet iOS app now supports Touch ID and lets you split the bill between friends — Apple Pay may be leaving Google Wallet in the dust when it comes to adoption, but Google hasn't given up yet. It's just updated its iOS app to support Touch ID, add optimization for the iPhone 6/Plus …

More: The Verge, 9to5Google, Engadget, Ubergizmo, The Next Web, iMore and SlashGear

Jacob Fischler / BuzzFeed:

Uber responds to Sen. Al Franken, says it accessed reporters' account because she was late, scales back access to God View; senator still dissatisfied — Uber Said It Accessed BuzzFeed News Reporter's Information Because She Was “Late” — The company, responding to Sen. Al Franken …

More: Al Franken, PandoDaily, The Next Web, VentureBeat, Engadget, The Verge, Computerworld, Politico, Wall Street Journal, CNET, Gizmodo, New York Times and CNET. Tweets: @dnvolz. See also Mediagazer

NDTV Gadgets:

Xiaomi India import ban lifted until January 8th for smartphones with Qualcomm chipsets — Xiaomi Permitted to Import and Sell Qualcomm-Based Handsets in India — The Delhi High Court on Tuesday has permitted Xiaomi to sell and import Qualcomm chipset-based handsets until January 8 as a temporary measure.

More: Times of India, Bloomberg, Tech2, GSMArena.com, The Economic Times, Android Authority and Tech in Asia

Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:

Google and Verizon cross-license patents to ‘reduce the risk’ of future litigation — Google and Verizon today announced a long-term patent cross-license agreement. The duo said the deal covers “a broad range of products and technologies” but details were scarce beyond that.

More: Verizon Public Policy, Gigaom, Business Wire, PhoneDog.com and Android Central

Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:

Clever Gets $30 Million From Lightspeed To Become The Login Layer For Education Apps — It's not often you hear about companies actually disrupting the education market. Conventional wisdom seems to be that due to the bureaucratic nature of the industry, it's nearly impossible to get wide-scale adoption at the institutional level.

More: Wall Street Journal, VatorNews, PE Hub Blog, bizjournals and EdSurge

Kate Knibbs / Gizmodo:

Russian malware SoakSoak infects 100k+ self-hosted WordPress sites, uses known vulnerability in RevSlider plug-in — Report: Mysterious Russian Malware Is Infecting 100,000+ Wordpress Sites — A Russian malware called SoakSoak has infected over 100,000 Wordpress sites since this Sunday, turning blogs into attack platforms.

More: Sucuri Blog, Sucuri Blog, Guardian, Ars Technica, FierceCIO News, theWHIR.com, Neowin, Threatpost, Ubergizmo, SecurityWeek, TechSpot, Infosecurity Magazine, ZDNet and SC Magazine. Tweets: @hfuhs

Mark Suster / Both Sides of the Table:

LA's Upfront Ventures raises $280M for its fifth fund — Upfront Ventures Raised New $280 Million Fund — Whew! — We've been dying to tell you all for a while that we had raised a new venture capital fund and of course given SEC filing requirements the story was somewhat already scooped …

More: TechCrunch, Wall Street Journal, PandoDaily, Business Insider and Re/code. Thanks:@msuster

Joe Mullin / Ars Technica:

Jury begins deliberations in billion-dollar Apple iTunes trial — OAKLAND, Calif.—The long-running iTunes antitrust lawsuit against Apple has gone to a jury, which took the case after about three hours of closing arguments today. The jury will make an unusual split decision …

More: CNET, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, TUAW, Tech Times, App Advice, 9to5Mac and VentureBeat

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