Edited by T. Trent Gegax & Woody Leonhard | August 21, 2013 06:00 PDT | 09:00 EDT | 13:00 UTC
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>> BLOCKBUSTER: Is Google ready to buy its way into TV with an NFL deal? By Peter Kafka: "Here's a fun combination to ponder: The world's most powerful media company and America's most popular sport.... That could happen if Google buys the rights to the NFL's Sunday Ticket package, the all-you-can-eat subscription-TV service currently owned by DirecTV.... As I've noted before, the DirecTV deal ends at the end of the 2014 NFL season, which would mean it would make sense for the league to start talking to potential bidders now." AllThingsD
>> MORNING BUZZ: Banks start courting Twitter to land rich IPO biz, by Mark Decambre and Garett Sloane: "The $10 billion social-messaging platform has held informal talks with Wall Street firms -- the first step toward an IPO that could come in the next several months, sources said.... Bankers have met with Twitter's management in recent weeks for preliminary talks ahead of a more formal selection process to pick underwriters to lead the IPO." NYPost
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>> LIBERTY & JUSTICE: Report: The NSA can access 75 percent of all U.S. Internet traffic, by Matthew Ingram: "According to a report in the Wall Street Journal -- based on what the paper says are interviews with current and former security officials -- the National Security Agency's surveillance program can access much more data than the agency has admitted publicly to date: as much as 75 percent of all U.S. internet traffic. The data comes from major internet nodes across the country, and most of the leading telecom companies help gather the information, the paper said late Tuesday." GigaOM
>> NEOMONEY: Bitcoin spawns China virtual IPOs as U.S. scrutiny grows, by Lulu Yilun Chen: "The Bitcoin craze is catching on in China.... Sun Minjie is a 28-year-old Internet worker who lives in Beijing. Eager to profit from growing demand for the digital currency, Sun has invested more than $3,000 in a company called 796 Xchange Ltd., an online exchange for trading stocks and other financial instruments related to Bitcoin, where initial public offerings are also being held.... He's part of a small but growing group of investors in China who have put the country into contention with the U.S. as the biggest downloader of the virtual money that's being used to buy a growing range of goods and services online. While intensified scrutiny by U.S. regulators casts doubt on the currency's future there, China's Bitcoin industry is expanding." Bloomberg
>> DENIAL OF ACCESS: Twitter says no accounts hit by hack claimed by 'Mauritania Attacker', by Charles Arthur: "Thousands of details leaked via third-party app but would not provide unauthorised access to Twitter's systems... 'Mauritania Attacker'... acquired some details for accounts via a third-party app which has since been blocked from accessing Twitter's systems." The Guardian
>> WASHINGTON WIRE: DHS cybersecurity appointment seen as government-industry bridge, by Antone Gonsalves: "Appointing McAfee's Phyllis Schneck welcomed given new tension between government, private sector following NSA revelations." CSO
>> COMING ATTRACTION: WSJ says Vevo TV deal signed for Samsung, Apple TV platform, by Richard Lawler: "Internet music video provider Vevo launched its linear channel on mobile devices, Xbox 360 and Roku back in March, and according to the Wall Street Journal, it may arrive on the PS3, Apple TV (directly, AirPlay support came last week) and Samsung's Smart TV soon." Engadget
>> GOOD PROBLEM: Google speeds up Chromecast shipments but inventory remains low, by Agam Shah: "Google said it will now ship units in up to two weeks for orders placed via its Play Store, but other retailers can't keep up with demand." Computerworld
>>>> Welcome to the post-nerd era, by Frank Catalano: "Don't try to be smarter than a smart device." GeekWire
>>>> Revamped YouTube apps rock playlists, by Zach Miners: "YouTube is adding some new video-playing functions to its mobile app on both iOS and Android devices... giving users more control over how they stream video to their television sets using Chromecast." TechHive
>> DERP: Tech in a 'surprising slump'? Hardly, by Alex Wilhelm: "One word that you don't usually see stapled to the technology industry is 'slump,' at least not lately. 2008 and the resulting financial ice-over are a half decade past, and the stock market is setting fresh records. Slump? Some think it, especially Chris O'Brien of the Los Angeles Times. His recent piece paints a bleak picture of the technology world, inferring that things are pretty rough at the moment.... A sampling, for tone: 'In a surprising turn, the tech industry is in a slump even as the U.S. economy picks up steam. [...] There even have been signs that tech's dysfunction was having a wider effect. [...] Being labeled a 'drag' is the ultimate insult for an industry that likes its growth fast and furious. But why has tech lost its mojo?'" TechCrunch
>> OLD DOG/NEW TRICKS: SAP takes the fight to Salesforce.com, Oracle with social intelligence app, by Chris Kanaracus: "Many companies have begun using specialized software to analyze what people are saying about their products and services on social media, and now SAP says it can help them match up individuals' social profiles with customer history data from CRM systems." InfoWorld
>> FORECASTING CLOUDS: Amazon still public cloud leader by a long shot, by Brandon Butler: "Amazon Web Services remains the top IaaS public cloud computing provider, offering the widest breath of services of any vendor in the market, Gartner concluded in its annual Magic Quadrant report… Its cloud operation is estimated by Gartner to be five times larger than a dozen of its top competitors in the market combined." Network World
>> COMING ATTRACTIONS: HP equips WorkSite with file-sharing service, by Joab Jackson: "The LinkSite service synchronizes files on an internal WorkSite deployment with an HP file storage repository accessible from the Internet, making internal files available from outside the corporate firewall. All files inherit their read and write permissions from their in-house counterparts." InfoWorld
>> THE GREAT RACE: IPad's China market share plunges as domestic tablet makers gain: "Apple's share of the Chinese tablet-computer market plunged in the second quarter as Samsung and dozens of local makers built on gains in smartphones to curb growth in iPad shipments.... Apple accounted for 28 percent of tablet shipments during the period, down from 49 percent a year earlier, Dickie Chang, a Hong Kong-based analyst with researcher IDC, said in an e-mail today. Samsung surged to second with 11 percent, while half of shipments were generated by producers with 1 percent or less each in market share, he said.... Consumers in China, Apple's largest market outside the U.S., are turning to cheaper tablets using Google Inc. (GOOG)'s Android operating system, following a trend in smartphones that saw the iPhone's market share almost halve." Bloomberg
>> BUBBLE WATCH: Goldman Sachs ponies up $40M to fund SugarCRM, by Barb Darrow: "New investment doubles funding for SugarCRM; Maybe someone should tell investors that open-source software is free.... Cupertino, Calif.-based SugarCRM offers a free open-source customer relationship management product as well as paid enterprise versions and support. It competes with CRM market leader Salesforce.com, Oracle and others in this market.... The new cash will be used to help the company boost its presence internationally. SugarCRM claims 15 consecutive quarters of growth, 6,500 business customers -- with 600 added in the second quarter alone. No word on actual revenue or profitability." GigaOm
>> GEEK SIREN: Google seeks experts for its soon-to-launch Helpouts video service, by Zach Miners: "Google... is looking for people who are experts on basically anything to lead some of the first sessions for its soon-to-launch Helpouts video calling program.. a face-to-face, live video calling service... designed to let professionals or experts in a particular area share their expertise or knowledge with others who want to learn from them, for a price." Computerworld
>> BIG PICTURE: Internet.org -- making Internet access available to the next 5 billion people: "There are huge barriers in developing countries to connecting and joining the knowledge economy. Internet.org brings together a global partnership that will work to overcome these challenges, including making internet access available to those who cannot currently afford it." Facebook, Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, Qualcomm and Samsung
>> DEMOTIVATIONAL POSTER: Microsoft dumps ad agency touting Windows 8, Surface, by Tim Greene: "As Windows 8 struggles to take off, Microsoft has decided to hire a new ad agency to handle the digital promotion of both the operating system and Microsoft Surface tablets. The company has awarded the contract to Razorfish ... [which] handles ads for Xbox and Bing, both of which seem to be doing better than Surface. The switch to Razorfish came because of a competitive conflict with the previous agency, R/GA, that recently won a contract with Samsung." Network World
>> NOT DEAD YET: Barnes & Noble backtracks, decides to keep designing Nook tablets after all, by Jared Newman: "Barnes & Noble is backtracking on an earlier decision to stop designing its own tablets, and says it will produce at least one new Nook device in time for the holiday shopping season... the company produced far more Nook tablets than it could sell." Still no word on Microsoft buying Nook Media digital assets. TechHive
>>>> Barnes & Noble totally reverses strategy in train wreck of an investor call GigaOm
>> SPEED PHREAK: Asus announces world's first Thunderbolt 2 motherboard, by Brad Chacos: "Thunderbolt 2 screams at a face-melting 20Gbps." PCWorld
>> DEADPOOL: Judge approves Kodak's plan to emerge from bankruptcy as a slimmed-down firm, by Cyrus Farivar: "[Kodak] to emerge from bankruptcy as a significantly smaller company focused on high-speed digital printing and other commercial products centered on consumers." Ars Technica
>> PRO TIP: How not to DDoS your former employer, by Brian Krebs: "If you're planning to launch a debilitating denial-of-service attack against your former employer, try not to 'like' the Facebook page of the DDoS-for-hire Web service that you intend to use in the assault." Krebs on Security
>> PRAISE: First 7 'Steve JobsSchools' open in Netherlands, tout education through iPad AppleInsider
>> BY THE NUMBERS: Average income per programming language Ben Podgursky
>> BIG PICTURE: 29% of the Bay Area's particulate air pollution comes from eastern Asia C&EN
>> TWEET O' THE DAY: "Kutcher is setting Wozniak straight about Jobs because, after all, he was there." @the_pc_doc
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