Techmeme
March 19, 2015, 12:50 PM

Top News

Bloomberg Business:
Google, Intel and TAG Heuer Partner on Luxury Smartwatch  —  Watch industry, consider yourself warned  —  Swiss watchmaker TAG Heuer is creating a smartwatch in partnership with American technology firm Google.  The watch is an attempt to compete with devices by consumer-electronics makers, particularly the much-hyped watch by Apple.
Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:
Apple Store retail plan for Watch: 15-minute appointments, at least 10 try-on stations, some employees dedicated to assisting Edition buyers  —  Apple Store retail plan for Watch: 15 min. appointments, 10+ try-on stations, Experts for Edition  —  Apple will introduce several major initiatives …
Matt Peckham / TIME:
Nintendo CEO talks about plans for smartphone games, says most will be developed in-house  —  Exclusive: Nintendo CEO Reveals Plans for Smartphones  —  It's official: Mario, Donkey Kong and Zelda will appear on smartphones and tablets at last—and that's just the start.
CBS News:
Target agrees to $10M settlement in class-action suit for 2013 data breach, up to $10K/person  —  Target agrees to pay $10 million to data breach victims  —  MINNEAPOLIS — Target has agreed to pay $10 million under a proposed settlement in a class-action lawsuit stemming from a massive 2013 data breach …
Geoffrey Smith / Fortune:
Alibaba's Jack Ma demos Smile to Pay app that validates mobile payments using facial recognition  —  Alibaba's Jack Ma shows off new ‘pay with a selfie’ technology  —  New facial recognition software is intended to buttress the fast-growing mobile-payments business.
Mike Masnick / Techdirt:
French Government Starts Blocking Websites With Views The Gov't Doesn't Like  —  We had been noting, in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in France, how the country that then held a giant “free speech” rally appeared to be, instead, focusing on cracking down on free speech at every opportunity.
Rich Lander / MSDN Blogs:
MSBuild Engine is now Open Source on GitHub  —  Today we are pleased to announce that MSBuild is now available on GitHub and we are contributing it to the .NET Foundation!  The Microsoft Build Engine (MSBuild) is a platform for building applications.  By invoking msbuild.exe on your project …
Several People Are Typing:
Slack launches app for Windows 7 and above  —  Press the Start Button: Slack for Windows Has Arrived  —  Every week, hundreds of thousands of people all around the world sign into Slack from a web browser on Windows.  Each of them is (we imagine) yearning for something more.
Jon Russell / TechCrunch:
Rakuten Buys Ebook And Audiobook Platform OverDrive For $410M  —  Rakuten is beefing up its digital content chops after it announced the acquisition of ebook and audiobook marketplace OverDrive for $410 million.  —  The Japanese e-commerce giant got into the e-reader game when it picked up hardware maker Kobo for $315 million in 2011.

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More News

Mark Sweney / Guardian:

Earlier Picks

Federico Viticci / MacStories:
Kurt Wagner / Re/code: