Techmeme: San Francisco Supervisor, Mayor Proposes Tighter Regulations On Short-Term Rentals, Airbnb (Kim-Mai Cutler/TechCrunch)

Open Links In New Tab

Mobile Archives Advertise Site News Contact Editors

April 15, 2015, 12:20 AM

Top News

Mark Bergen / Re/code:

Memo: Google responds to EU's imminent antitrust charges, says it expects EU to open investigation into Android on Wednesday — Here Is Google's Internal Response to the Imminent E.U. Charges (Memo) — On Wednesday, the European Union is expected to drop the hammer on Google …

Financial Times:

Sources: EU's competition commissioner to announce that formal charges will be filed against Google, alleging traffic was diverted from rivals — Europe to accuse Google of illegally abusing its dominance — Alex Barker and Christian Oliver in Brussels and Anne-Sylvaine Chassany in Paris

More: New York Times, eWeek, Reuters, Forbes, Bloomberg Business, Wall Street Journal and The Verge

Tweets: @johnbattelle, @zackwhittaker and @zackwhittaker

Wall Street Journal:

Apple buys Israeli camera technology company LinX for about $20M — Apple Buys Israeli Camera-Technology Company LinX — Companies had been discussing acquisition price of about $20 million — Apple Inc. has acquired Israeli camera-technology company LinX Computational Imaging Ltd.

More: MacRumors, 9to5Mac, AppleInsider, MacRumors, ZDNet, App Advice, TechCrunch, Business Insider, Refinery29, The Next Web and VentureBeat. Tweets: @tim

Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:

On-demand pot delivery service Eaze raises $10M Series A round led by DCM Ventures, with Snoop Dogg's venture fund as an investor — ‘Uber For Weed’ Startup Eaze Raises $10 Million In Funding Led By DCM Ventures — There's an Uber for everything nowadays, so why not an Uber for weed?

More: Quartz, Business Insider, Forbes, Digital Trends, PandoDaily, Smell the Truth, SiliconBeat, Reuters, PE Hub Blog and Business Wire

Carolyn Said / San Francisco Chronicle:

Over 20K now drive for Uber in the San Francisco Bay Area, more than double from a year ago, company says

More: Uber Blog

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

Google Play's New Program “Designed For Families” Will Highlight Pre-Approved, Kid-Safe Apps — Google today announced a new developer program called “Designed For Families” which will allow app publishers to opt into an additional review in order have their apps labeled as being “family-friendly.”

Arik Hesseldahl / Re/code:

IHS report: Verizon 64GB Galaxy S6 Edge costs about $290 to build, more than Apple's iPhones, and $34 more than Galaxy S5 — Samsung's Galaxy S6 Edge Is More Expensive to Build Than Apple's iPhones — Samsung's latest flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S6 Edge, is the most costly yet to build and assemble …

More: CNET, Engadget, TechnoBuffalo, SlashGear, Droid Life, eWeek, Pocketnow, BGR, MobileSyrup.com, iPhone in Canada Blog, iDownloadBlog.com, Phandroid, Load the Game, AndroidGuys and ZDNet

Apple:

Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference Kicks Off June 8 at San Francisco's Moscone West — Developers Can Apply for Tickets Now & Millions Worldwide Can Watch Sessions Streamed Live — Apple® today announced that it will hold its 26th annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) …

Roger Fingas / AppleInsider:

Apple bans selfie sticks, monopods from WWDC 2015

Bruce V. Bigelow / Xconomy:

VC Funding Slows as Big Funds Crowd into Late-Stage Venture Deals — Following a December surge, when U.S. venture firms invested $7.2 billion in 342 deals nationwide, VC activity reset at a lower pace during the first quarter of 2015, according to data being released today by CB Insights.

More: CB Insights, GeekWire, Yahoo! Finance, PandoDaily, Xconomy, Los Angeles Times, Business Insider and VatorNews

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

Skype For Business Begins Rolling Out Publicly Today — Microsoft's “Skype for Business,” which is designed to replace the company's older enterprise communication tool Lync, is rolling out publicly today as part of the Office 2013 April update, the company announced this morning.

More: Office Blogs, The Register, Tech Times, eWeek, ValueWalk, WindowsITPro, Thurrott.com, InformationWeek, No Jitter, theWHIR.com, WinBeta, BetaNews, The Next Web, Windows Central, InvestorPlace and VentureBeat

Maria Armental / Wall Street Journal:

Shopify files for US and Canadian IPOs, hopes to raise about $100M, valuing firm at more than $1B — Canadian Software Company Shopify Files for U.S.-Canada IPO — Ottawa company raised $100 million from private investors in Dec. 2013 — Canadian software company Shopify Inc. filed …

More: Shopify's Ecommerce Blog, ZDNet, VentureBeat, Bloomberg Business, MarketWatch, 24/7 Wall St., Financial Post, Forbes and Globe and Mail

Will Oremus / Slate:

A look at Twitter's homepage redesign, arriving in a few days, which caters to logged out visitors by organizing top tweets by category — Twitter for the Masses — For non-tweeters, the social network can feel clubby and confusing. Can its new home page change that? — Twitter.com is a barren wasteland.

More: SiliconANGLE. Tweets: @chrismessina and @howardlindzon

Casey Newton / The Verge:

Chinese streaming video service Letv announces its Le Superphone smartphone is headed for the US, in a profoundly unconvincing pitch — After comparing Apple to Hitler, Chinese company reveals Le Superphone — Two weeks ago, to build buzz for the Android smartphone it announced today, Chinese tech company Letv turned to Hitler.

More: Engadget, Forbes, Wired, Android Authority, SiliconBeat, TechNode, Los Angeles Times, PC Magazine, Ubergizmo, AndroidGuys, AndroidHeadlines.com, Gizmag Emerging …, MarketWatch, Digital Trends, South China Morning Post, CKGSB Knowledge and Hollywood Reporter

Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:

Microsoft's Delve, a Flipboard-like app for Office 365 business users, comes to iOS and Android — Microsoft delivers iOS, Android versions of Delve — Summary:Microsoft has rolled out native mobile app versions of Delve, its search and presentation technology, for iOS and Android …

More: Office Blogs, CIO.com, WinBeta, WindowsITPro, InformationWeek and Android Police

Kim-Mai Cutler / TechCrunch:

San Francisco Supervisor, Mayor Proposes Tighter Regulations On Short-Term Rentals, Airbnb — San Francisco Supervisor Mark Farrell and Mayor Ed Lee are backing a new set of tighter regulations on short-term rentals and their biggest hosting platforms like Airbnb.

More: Office of the Mayor, Engadget, San Francisco Chronicle and CBS San Francisco

Robin Sidel / Wall Street Journal:

American Express and Jawbone plan to let cardholders use future fitness bands for purchases at select merchants — AmEx, Jawbone Team Up to Allow Payments Via Fitness Bands — Partnership latest to add payment function to devices — Fitness enthusiasts may soon be able to shop while they work out.

More: iMore, Computerworld and SlashGear

Christopher Heine / Adweek:

Foursquare launches Pinpoint, an ad platform that uses Foursquare's location data for targeting across mobile devices and web — Foursquare Unleashes Location Data for Cross-Mobile Ad Targeting — Foursquare has taken its share of lumps from industry watchers in recent years about its slow user growth …

More: Pinpoint, AdExchanger, Wall Street Journal, VentureBeat, SocialTimes and The Next Web

Wall Street Journal:

Google wants advertisers to hand over customer info like email addresses to improve search ad targeting with service similar to Facebook's Custom Audiences — Google May Offer New Way to Target Ads — Google in Talks to Let Advertisers Reach Existing Customers

More: 9to5Google

Peter Bright / Ars Technica:

Surface 3 review: great build quality, good battery life, poor CPU and storage performance; useful accessories are paid extras — Surface 3 review: Smaller, slower, cheaper... better? — Switching to an x86 processor has made the Surface so much better. — To understand the Surface 3, you must first understand the Surface Pro 3.

More: The Verge, The Next Web and CNET

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

Microsoft buys mobile business intelligence service Datazen to improve its Power BI offerings — Microsoft Acquires Mobile Business Intelligence Service Datazen — Microsoft today announced that it has acquired Datazen, a mobile business intelligence and data visualization service.

More: The Official Microsoft Blog, Business Insider, eWeek and FierceMobileIT News

Nokia:

Nokia confirms it is in advanced discussions to acquire Alcatel-Lucent — Statement regarding Nokia/Alcatel-Lucent media speculation — In relation to recent media speculation Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent confirm that they are in advanced discussions with respect to a potential full combination …

More: Fortune, BetaNews, CNBC, Bloomberg Business, CIO.com, TechCrunch, Tech Trader Daily, TechnoBuffalo, BBC, Tech Trader Daily, PCWorld, Inquirer and Bloomberg View

Tweets: @jphelminen and @jphelminen

Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:

Path launches Kong, an app for creating and sharing animated selfies, on iOS and Android — Path's New App Kong Is A Selfie GIF Creation Machine — Most people know Dave Morin's Path for its eponymous social networking app, which sought to create a more intimate place for mobile users to share with their closest friends.

More: Path — Blog, Tech Times, Laughing Squid and The Next Web

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.

Equals:

Stop vibe coding analytics — Equals AI turns questions about your business into auditable spreadsheet models and dashboards. Build once, iterate for years.

Zoho:

Simplifying benefits management in Zoho People — Let's consider a new hire on their first day of orientation. They receive a brief introduction to the benefits plans, and almost immediately, questions start to surface …

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

Big Technology Podcast:

AI Pioneer Jürgen Schmidhuber: AI Already Feels Pain, Loves, and Is Self-Aware

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:

Inside Podcasting's Fight Over Netflix, YouTube, and Creator Control

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.

Uncapped with Jack Altman:

Sam Blond from Monaco

Conversations with people I admire about things I'm genuinely interested in.

Subscribe to Uncapped with Jack Altman.

Training Data:

Anthropic's Katelyn Lesse & Angela Jiang: Building an Ecosystem, not a Walled Garden

Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.

Subscribe to Training Data.

Invest Like the Best:

John Kim - How to Raise a Few Billion Dollars

The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.

Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.

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 12:20 AM ET, April 15, 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.