Techmeme: BlackBerry Classic review: old-fashioned phone that won't please traditionalists or new users (Shane Dingman/Globe and Mail)

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December 17, 2014, 12:20 PM

Top News

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Leaked Sony emails show Snapchat acquired QR scanning company Scan for $50M and AddLive for $30M, negotiated with Vevo for music partnership — Snapchat Plans Music Feature, Acquired QR Scan.me For $50M And Vergence Eyeglass Cam For $15M, — Leaked emails from the Sony Pictures hack …

More: USA Today, Ubergizmo, Business Insider and The Tech Portal

Tweets: @joshconstine, @jonrussell and @mikeisaac

Business Insider:

Emails from Sony Hack show Snapchat quietly acquired Google-Glass like startup Vergence Labs for $15M in early 2014

More: Business Insider, Engadget, VentureBeat, The Verge, VatorNews and Gigaom

Tweets: @joshconstine, @ajs and @mikeisaac

Sam Biddle / Valleywag:

Sony hack confirms Snapchat turned down over $3B from Facebook last year, based on emails between Sony Ent. CEO Michael Lynton and Malcolm Gladwell

More: Guardian, Business Insider and SiliconANGLE

Tweets: @samfbiddle, @mikeisaac, @om and @ow

Shane Dingman / Globe and Mail:

BlackBerry Classic review: old-fashioned phone that won't please traditionalists or new users — Review: BlackBerry Classic is a trip back in time — The BlackBerry Classic is a curmudgeonly phone. — That's not entirely pejorative: a curmudgeon can be a beloved figure with a kind of …

More: CNET, Inside BlackBerry, Tech Trader Daily, BetaNews, Ars Technica, Inquirer, InfoWorld, Engadget, New York Times, CNET, The Next Web, Re/code, CNBC and MobileSyrup.com. Tweets: @jbrodkin

Dan Seifert / The Verge:

BlackBerry officially launches Classic, with full QWERTY keyboard and physical navigation keys — BlackBerry officially launches the Classic, a smartphone for yesterday — A full QWERTY keyboard and physical navigation keys round out the Classic's throwback design

More: Gizmodo, Guardian and BGR

Hugh Langley / TechRadar.com:

Netflix: offline viewing is ‘never going to happen’ — Well damn … For some time now, services like BBC iPlayer and 4oD have offered the ability to download shows for offline viewing, yet Netflix hasn't — And despite the pleas of the masses (or maybe it's just us) …

More: PC World, Engadget, TechCrunch, MacRumors, Ubergizmo and SlashGear. Tweets: @sievertmike

Ben Thompson / stratechery:

Wearables, Bitcoin, or messaging may underpin the next consumer computing epoch, after the PC, internet, and mobile — The State of Consumer Technology at the End of 2014 — While the modern computing era in many respects began with the IBM System/360 mainframe and further expanded with the minicomputer …

More: AVC. Tweets: @tuckershouse

David Meyer / Gigaom:

Sony's smart glass uses regular glasses, aims for sports and work — Sony Single-Lens Display Module — Sony Single-Lens Display Module — Sony has announced its own take on the smart glass concept. To be formally unveiled at CES next month, the Single-Lens Display Module can be attached …

More: Sony Global, Digital Trends, PC Magazine, BGR, The Verge, Electronista, CNET, Business Insider, TechCrunch, Beyond Search, Computerworld, SiliconANGLE, SlashGear, SlashGear, The Next Web, Ubergizmo, Engadget and Gizmodo

Catherine Shu / TechCrunch:

Chinese Search Engine Baidu Confirms Strategic Investment In Uber, May Add Ride Requests — It's official: Chinese Internet giant Baidu has confirmed that it is Uber's latest investor, as TechCrunch reported last week. — The companies did not disclose the amount of the investment.

More: Bloomberg, Uber Blog, Variety, The Tech Portal, Forbes, Tech in Asia, Business Insider, Fortune and Reuters

Reuters:

Uber faces tough rivals, regulatory glare in China

More: Wall Street Journal, VentureBeat and e27

Peter Kafka / Re/code:

Former Hulu CEO Jason Kilar opens Creator Preview for YouTube rival Vessel to lure stars; $2.99/month service includes ads, offers up to $50 CPM for creators — Former Hulu CEO Jason Kilar Pulls Back the Curtain on Vessel, His YouTube Rival — Six years ago Jason Kilar made a big splash in Web video when he launched Hulu.

More: Gizmodo, New York Times, The Next Web, TechCrunch, The Verge, Vessel Blog, Wall Street Journal and Tubefilter

Tweets: @rolfewinkler, @pkafka, @stevekovach and @pkafka

See also Mediagazer

Andrew Binstock / Dr. Dobb's:

Dr. Dobb's to stop producing content at year end due to decline in ad revenue despite 10M+ page views this year — Farewell, Dr. Dobb's — This year, our website will deliver almost 10.3 million page views, which is an unprecedented number for Dr. Dobb's. It's up from 9 million last year and 8 million three years ago.

More: The Register and bit-tech.net. Tweets: @mattrosoff, @klintron, @pkellner, @markrussinovich, @jsundmanus, @jhmcintyre, @bodil, @mattrosoff, @thurrott, @mathewi and @marypcbuk

Alyson Shontell / Business Insider:

Twitter And Foursquare Are Partnering To Improve Location In Tweets — Twitter wants to start surfacing information for users that's relevant and interesting, not just timely. And the company believes adding a location layer to its platform could be part of the solution.

More: Marketing Land, Gigaom, WebProNews, memeburn, Gizmodo, The Verge and Engadget. Tweets: @mathewi

Mike Shields / Wall Street Journal:

21st Century Fox to Acquire Ad Tech Firm TrueX for $200 Million — 21st Century Fox Inc. has agreed to acquire the online advertising technology company TrueX Media, people familiar with the matter said. — 21st Century Fox is paying a sum approaching $200 million for TrueX, said a person familiar with the deal.

More: Business Wire, TechCrunch, New York Times, Broadcasting & Cable, Variety and VideoInk. See also Mediagazer

Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land:

Google to close Freebase June 2015, will migrate data and APIs to Wikidata — Google To Close Freebase, Which Helped Feed Its Knowledge Graph — Google is shutting down Freebase, its open source repository of facts that, in part, helps power the Google Knowledge Graph.

More: Freebase - Google+, Gigaom, VentureBeat and Search Engine Roundtable

Tom Warren / The Verge:

Microsoft's Xim app now shares photos to Apple TV, Chomecast, and Xbox One — Microsoft's Xim photo sharing app debuted in October from the company's research labs, and today it's getting a big update. Available across Windows Phone, iOS, and Android, the latest version of Xim lets …

More: Gizmodo, 9to5Google and 9to5Mac

Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:

Brandwatch buys top-influencer analytics firm PeerIndex — Brandwatch, the maker of technology for acquiring social intelligence, has purchased PeerIndex, an analytics firm that finds and measures social influencers. — Above: Giles Palmer, CEO of Brandwatch.

More: TechCrunch, PE Hub Blog, The Next Web, Business Insider and Tech.eu

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Google Takes Play Music's Songza-Powered Playlists Abroad, First Stop UK — With catalogues of unlimited music on streaming services so extensive these days that we never quite know what to listen to first, playlists have become one of the key ways that music fans use services like Soundcloud.

More: Android Authority, Engadget, Android Central, 9to5Google and The Next Web

Zac Hall / 9to5Mac:

Launch Center Pro makers debut Group Text+ and Email+ for iOS — Contrast, the makers of the popular iOS automation app Launch Center Pro, released two new apps today that hope to “speed up tedious tasks on iOS.” Group Text+ and Email+ each include features that make texting (iMessage and SMS) …

More: Gotta Be Mobile, Lifehacker, iPhone Hacks, iPhone in Canada Blog, TUAW, O'Grady's PowerPage and iPhone Hacks

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Facebook Starts Auto-Enhancing Photos Because Algorithms Are Better At Filters Than You — We're not ace photographers, but we all take photos. Most could use a little help with light and shadow. So rather than making you manually filter them, Facebook tells me it will now auto-enhance …

More: TIME, SiliconANGLE, The Next Web, App Advice, TechSpot, DailyTech, Tech2, WebProNews, Ubergizmo, SlashGear, iDownloadBlog.com, AllFacebook, Engadget and Gizmodo

Tweets: @stevesi and @christauziet

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