Chinese Internet Traffic Redirected to Small Wyoming House
In one of the more bizarre twists in recent Internet memory, a large portion of Internet traffic in China was redirected to a small, 1,700-square-foot house in Cheyenne, Wyo. on Tuesday. — A large p...
Apple Promises to Fix iOS 7 ‘White Screen of Death’
Since Apple released iOS 7, its completely revamped operating system for the iPhone, reviews have been mixed but mostly positive. However, a glitch that has quietly plagued iPhone users — the “white/...
EBay dismisses Icahn proposal to spin off Paypal
(Reuters) - Carl Icahn has taken a stake in eBay Inc and is proposing a spin-off of the its fast-growing PayPal division, but the e-commerce giant rebuffed the overture, setting the stage for a potent...
Netflix's momentum continues with 2.33 million new US customers in Q4
Netflix revealed its fourth quarter earnings today, capping off a banner year that saw the streaming service surpass HBO in subscriber count and earn critical acclaim for its original programming.
U.S. court finds Samsung to infringe one Apple patent, declares one Samsung patent invalid
In a summary judgment order entered late on Tuesday (January 21, 2014), Judge Lucy Koh, the federal judge presiding over two Apple v. Samsung patent cases in the Northern District of California …
Netflix wants to introduce three pricing tiers for new members
Netflix is getting ready for a new pricing structure, according to the company's Q4 letter to shareholders (PDF) released Wednesday. In it, CEO Reed Hastings and CFO David Wells write:
Hitachi hard drives used by Backblaze have remarkably low failure rates versus Seagate, WD
What Hard Drive Should I Buy? — My last two blog posts were about expected drive lifetimes and drive reliability. These posts were an outgrowth of the careful work that we've done at Backblaze …
Facebook announces it's testing its own ad network for third-party mobile apps
Testing a new way for developers to monetize mobile apps — Monetization is a difficult problem for mobile app developers, particularly as people move toward downloading more free apps and advertisin...
Hacking Snapchat's people verification in less than 100 lines
I woke up this morning and saw this article detailing Snapchat's new people verification system. You may have seen it but if not I will summarize it for you. They basically have you choose each imag...
Protesters show up at the doorstep of Google self-driving car engineer
Protests against tech giants and their impact on the San Francisco Bay Area economy just got personal. — According to an anonymous submission on local news site Indybay, an unknown group of proteste...
Chrome Bugs Allow Sites to Listen to Your Private Conversations
By exploiting bugs in Google Chrome, malicious sites can activate your microphone, and listen in on anything said around your computer, even after you've left those sites. Even while not using your c...
eBay Inc reveals activist investor Carl Icahn submitted proposal to spinoff PayPal from company
eBay Inc. has released its earnings result for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2013. Among the most interesting news, activist investor Carl Icahn has submitted notice that he has nominated …
Tivo Lays Off Most of Its Design Team as It Transitions to the Cloud
Update: Tivo says it will continue to use third-party designers for hardware going forward. The article has been updated to reflect this fact. — Tivo has been bullish lately about releasing new sof...
Apparently It's OK For iOS Apps To Ask For Your Apple ID And Password
Apple's currently featuring the Sunrise app in the App Store. — Upon first launch, Sunrise invites you to create an account, then asks you to add a calendar. The first option, “iCloud Calendar” …
Icahn says Apple “doing great disservice to shareholders,” increases AAPL investment to $3B
Snapchat Makes You “Find The Ghosts” To Keep Hackers From Stealing Your Phone Number
Snapchat now verifies new users aren't robots by making them choose its ghost mascot within images. It's an attempt to keep out hackers who could steal phone numbers by exploiting a leaked database o...
Stripe raises $80 million from Khosla, Sequoia and Founders Fund, now valued at $1.75 billion
Payments Startup Stripe Joins the Billion Dollar Club — New $80 Million Funding Round Will Help Company Battle PayPal — In the crowded field of online payments, venture capitalists …
T-Mobile Will Now Give You A Free Checking Account, Complete With 42,000 No-Fee ATMs
T-Mobile isn't just content being your wireless carrier. It now wants to manage your checking account, too. — The company announced today Mobile Money, a free checking account service available to ...
Massive Internet mishap sparks Great Firewall scrutiny in China
(Reuters) - Human error likely caused a glitch in China's Great Firewall that saw millions of Internet users ironically rerouted to the homepage of a U.S.-based company which helps people evade Beijin...
Sheryl Sandberg Becomes One of Youngest U.S. Billionaires
Sheryl Sandberg's fortune surpassed $1 billion today after Facebook Inc. (FB) closed at a record high. — The chief operating officer of the world's most popular social-networking service owns about ...
Pinterest CEO Lays Out Growth Plan, Sees Revenue in 2014
For his next act …
Google launches new video quality report to evaluate ISP network performance
Google Inc. is launching a new service designed to evaluate the connection speeds of Internet providers, in the hopes of identifying which companies are delivering the best experience for consumers wh...
Windows 8.1 Update 1 Preview: Now with More Integration
More Windows 8.1 Update leaks help a clearer picture emerge — A newly leaked set of shots from a prerelease version of Windows 8.1 Update 1 suggests that Microsoft is going to further integrate the ...
Fast-growing database startup MemSQL raises $35M
MemSQL, the database startup founded by former Facebook employees Eric Frenkiel and Nikita Shamgunov, has raised a $35 million series B round of venture capital. Accel Ventures led the round — which ...
Guccifer, the hacker who leaked George W. Bush paintings, reportedly arrested in Romania
The infamous hacker Guccifer has reportedly been arrested in Romania, a bit of early-morning gossip that startled fans of George W. Bush's pet portraits and left everyone else wondering who, exactly, ...
Docker Raises $15M For Its Open-Source Platform That Helps Developers Build Apps In The Cloud
The shift to scale out architectures and an app-centric culture has turned out well for Docker and its lightweight open-source “container” technology designed for developers to quickly move code to th...
Beats Music responds to launch issues, says free trial length to be doubled
Since Beats launched its Beats Music streaming music service earlier this week, the launch has been plagued by reliability issues and new customers not being able to sign up. — Responding to these c...
VMware buys AirWatch for $1.54 billion, acquires mobility strategy
Summary: VMware's acquisition of AirWatch will give it a foothold in mobility as well as its end-user computing strategy. — VMware will acquire AirWatch, a mobile device management company, in a $1....
Russian Spy Nodes Caught Targeting Anonymous Facebook Users
Somewhere in Russia an eavesdropper is operating a network of wiretapped nodes at the edge of the Tor anonymity network. And he's particularly interested in what you're doing on Facebook. — That's ...
Verizon publishes first transparency report, reveals 320,000 total law enforcement requests
As promised, Verizon has released a tally of the requests it receives from law enforcement at all levels, counting a total of 321,545 requests for customer subscription information, phone numbers, or ...
Early stakeholders in Scout Analytics claim venture capitalists engaged
Not everyone is happy about today's $32 million acquisition of Scout Analytics by ServiceSource. A group of series A preferred stockholders filed suit …
FCC to Hold Major Auction of Wireless Airwaves
The Federal Communications Commission will hold its first major auction of wireless airwaves in six years on Wednesday, kicking off tens of billions of dollars of spending by big U.S. carriers. — Th...
SimpleAir seeks $125M from Google after jury finds Android notifications infringe patent
Google faces $125 million damages claim after losing Android patent lawsuit — SimpleAir is seeking $125M in damages from Google after a jury found that push notification services in Android infringe...
Judge: IP-Address Does Not Prove Copyright Infringement
Mass-BitTorrent lawsuits have been dragging on for years in the US, involving hundreds of thousands of alleged downloaders. — The copyright holders who start these cases generally provide nothing mo...
UK regulator approves ‘earth stations’ to bring faster Internet to planes, trains, ships and coaches
The UK telecoms watchdog Ofcom has today cleared plans for airlines and other transport operators to use satellite-based ‘earth stations’ to deliver broadband speeds up to 10 times faster …
With Trove, Ex-WaPo Labs Team Takes Another Try at Social Reading
How do you get your daily news? — It's a question that any 21st century news organization is asking itself — a question all too familiar for a guy like Vijay Ravindran. As the chief digital officer...
Yahoo Makes Secure Search The Default
Yahoo has now joined Google in making all searches people do automatically go through a secure server, to help prevent eavesdropping by outsiders. Unlike Google, however, Yahoo has failed to make an ...
Showtime, HBO, Starz blast NPD study that says they lost subscribers
Thanks to “Homeland” and other shows, Showtime has added 1 million subscribers a year in six of the last seven years, a spokesperson says. — Pay-TV channels HBO, Showtime and Starz are blasting a mu...
Opera: iPhone remains king of mobile ads, despite Android smartphones enjoying greater reach
Android's share of mobile Internet usage continues to grow, but Apple retains a strong lead as the most valuable mobile platform for advertisers, according to new figures from browser-maker Opera.
Intercom Raises Another $23M For Its New, More Social Approach To CRM
Intercom, a platform for companies to provide personalised customer responses online, is today announcing that it has raised another $23 million — funding that it will use to continue to develop its p...
HootSuite Buys uberVU To Add Analytics To Its Enterprise Social Media Management Platform
HootSuite — a platform for enterprises to manage their presence on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Instagram and many more — is ramping up its product offering with more big dat...
Gartner Says by 2017, Mobile Users Will Provide Personalized Data Streams to More Than 100 Apps and Services Every Day
Mobile Apps Will Be a Vehicle for Cognizant Computing — By 2017, mobile apps will be downloaded more than 268 billion times, generating revenue of more than $77 billion …
Here Are 24 Countries Where Windows Phone Outsells The iPhone (And Why It Does)
Statistics may say Windows 8 is a flop but, contrary to popular opinion, Windows Phone is far from down and out in the battle for our mobile affections. In fact in many parts of the world sales are r...
Cable industry sues Apple-backed patent troll over “illegal conspiracy”
The patent wars engulfing the tech industry have taken a new twist as five cable companies filed a lawsuit to stop Rockstar, a consortium owned by Google competitors that bought up 4,000 old patents i...
Microsoft offers overseas data storage in response to NSA concerns
Today, Microsoft announced an unpredecented response to concerns of NSA data access, offering customers in foreign countries the option of having their data stored outside US borders. According to a ...
Startup Behind Flipagram Seeks Investment at $300 Million Valuation
These days, you have to strike while the app is hot. — The startup behind Flipagram, a popular mobile app that creates short videos from photos, is seeking to raise an investment in the tens of mill...