10 Tech Things You Need To Know This Morning
Jan 17, 2014, 17:40 IST
Happy Friday! Here's what's going on in tech:
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- Google is testing smart contact lenses to help people with diabetes. They'll measure glucose levels in tears with a tiny wireless chip the size of glitter and an antenna that's thinner than a strand of hair.
- For the first time, hackers used a refrigerator to attack businesses. This is being hailed as the first home appliance "botnet" and the first cyberattack from the Internet of Things.
- Marissa Mayer made her first major mistake at Yahoo, and it cost her $109 million. Mayer hired Enrique De Castro as Yahoo's well-compensated COO when she first joined the company; 15 months later she was forced to fire him. Yahoo's Editor-in-Chief Jai Singh quit the day after De Castro was fired.
- Ever notice how audio files don't go viral? "Out of the 100 most-shared news articles on Facebook, three were from NPR, but none included audio," writes Digg's Stan Alcorn. Here's his explanation as to why that is.
- After just a few months at The Wall Street Journal, Farhad Manjoo is heading to The New York Times. He will run its "State of the Art" technology column from San Francisco.
- The NSA collects almost 200 million text messages every day.
- Facebook is planning to release a suite of standalone mobile apps in 2014.
- Twitter is nearing a deal with payments startup App to let you purchase products via tweets.
- WeHeartIt, a startup that's a lot like Pinterest, has 25 million monthly active users and it serves 50 billion images per month. It's done all of that with just $8 million in funding compared to Pinterest's $338 million.
- Here are some things founders fear but are too afraid to say out loud.