Techmeme
January 6, 2015, 1:50 PM

Top News

Austin Carr / Fast Company:
As Fire Phone product manager, Jeff Bezos insisted Lab126 build a premium phone and include useless Dynamic Perspective feature in attempt to compete with Apple  —  The Real Story Behind Jeff Bezos's Fire Phone Debacle And What It Means For Amazon's Future  —  “What the hell happened?”
Benjamin Mayo / 9to5Mac:
Apple now selling SIM-free unlocked iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in the US, from $649  —  As we reported yesterday, Apple is now selling contract-free iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus in retail stores and online.  Following historic pattern, the 16 GB base model iPhone 6 costs $649 with higher tiers costing $100 extra.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Razer Unveils Its $100 Android-Powered Gaming Console, Razer Forge TV  —  Earlier this year, high-end gaming tech company Razer announced at Google I/O that it would be soon be making its first foray into Android-based gaming consoles.  Today at CES, that device made its public debut.
Ross Miller / The Verge:
Sony announces new high fidelity Walkman NW-ZX2 with 128GB onboard storage running Android 4.2, coming spring for $1.2K  —  This is the new Sony Walkman  —  All signs pointed to a new Sony Walkman (literally) at CES 2015, and the signs didn't lie.  The new Walkman ZX2 is real …
Alexandra Sifferlin / TIME:
Fitbit's $150 Charge HR and $250 Surge fitness trackers with heart rate tracking are now shipping  —  Fitbit Launches Two New Fitness Trackers  —  Fitbit officially launched the sale of two new fitness and activity trackers, Charge HR and Surge, on Tuesday.
Ev Williams / Medium:
Metrics based on a single number, like MAU, are a poor proxy for value for Internet companies  —  A mile wide, an inch deep  —  I was recently quoted as saying, “I don't give a s**t” if Instagram has more users than Twitter.  If you read the article you'll note there's a big “if” before my not giving of said s**t.
James Kendrick / ZDNet:
CES 2015: Lenovo unveils Yoga tablets, laptops, and new pen technology  —  Summary:Lenovo intends to continue riding its Yoga line of tablets and laptops, and launched a Yoga Tablet 2 with a strange feature, along with the Yoga 3 and ThinkPad Yoga laptops.  —  The Yoga line of tablets …
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Misfit Bolt, a $50 smart bulb with sleep tracker integration, now available for pre-order  —  Misfit introduces a smart bulb to go with its sleep tracker  —  There's no shortage of smart light bulbs on the market, but wearables company Misfit has decided that its influence shouldn't stop with collecting health data.
Mathew Ingram / Gigaom:
Radiohead's Thom Yorke, most legally-downloaded BitTorrent artist in 2014, may have made up to $20M with BitTorrent Bundles  —  Thom Yorke made as much as $20M from his BitTorrent experiment  —  Credit: Nikola Spasenoski / Shutterstock.com  —  Credit: Nikola Spasenoski / Shutterstock.com
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
HP delivers workstations on the go with thin-and-light Zbook laptops  —  What will be hot in consumer electronics and computing in 2015?  Read VB's full coverage of International CES 2015 to find out.  —  The 2015 International CES is all about consumers.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Kickstarter Drops Amazon Payments For Stripe  —  Crowdfunding platform Kickstarter announced today that it's partnering with payments service Stripe, which will now collect and process all payments for projects hosted on Kickstarter's site.  Since its founding, Kickstarter used Amazon Payments for this …
Valentina Palladino / Tom's Guide:
Razer announces Nabux X, a $49 fitness tracker without the OLED display of its $99 sibling  —  Razer Nabux X: Social Fitness Tracker Costs Just $49  —  LAS VEGAS - The $49 Nabu X is part fitness tracker, part smartwatch and part social connector, offering more features than other budget wearables …
Chris Ziegler / The Verge:
CarPlay and Android Auto will be in Volkswagen cars this year  —  At CES this week, Volkswagen finally announced its plans for Apple's CarPlay and Google's Android Auto: both will be available later this year.  The technologies will work on VW's MIB II dash electronics …

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
SubQ Snap 1.1: the first long-context decision model for real enterprise work  —  Tied for #1 on the AA Decision Index, Snap is a multimodal model with a 384k-token context window for fast reasoning and agentic decisions.
Zoho:
Introducing Zoho TouchPoint: Every handshake deserves a next step  —  Here's a scene you've probably experienced.  You spend a day at an event, talk to dozens of people, and come home with a stack of business cards.
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.
WebBrain:
WebBrain: an open-source AI agent for your browser  —  Read pages, fill forms and automate tasks in Chrome or Firefox.  Use local models or your preferred AI provider.  Get started free.

Featured Podcasts

Machine Gods:
The 10 Biggest Losers from Jensen Huang's Fall + The METR Report That Scared Us
The official podcast of the singularity, from Casey Newton and Kevin Roose. Twice-weekly news, analysis, and interviews with the people who are building the future.
Subscribe to Machine Gods.
The Upstarts Podcast:
The $1.4B Startup Deciding What You See When You Shop Online | Sequen's Zoë Weil
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.
Great Chat:
Too soon to call it a vibe shift?
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.
Big Technology Podcast:
Storm Clouds Ahead For Apple?, Debating Amazon's Bee Frontier, AI as UI
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Encore: Chuck Klosterman on Why Football Owns TV (and Why It Won't Forever)
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.
Invest Like the Best:
Zach Reitano - Building Ro and Why Healthcare Should Be 50% of GDP
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 1:50 PM ET, January 6, 2015.

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.

More News

Nick Summers / Engadget:
Jon Fingas / Engadget:

Earlier Picks

Caleb Pershan / SFist:
Josh Constine / TechCrunch: