It’s time once again for our weekly round-up of the tech news and discussion you’ll have missed if you weren’t paying attention over the weekend (hey, it was the weekend, we’ll let you off), including stories from The Next Web and beyond.
In the news
- Android apps found on Google Play download spyware to monitor your text messages, call logs, and location
- Tesla founder Elon Musk leaves Zuckerberg’s FWD.us advocacy group amid ‘green’ concerns
- 500 Startups launches a podcast series to highlight the stories of its portfolio’s founders
- Twitter valued at $9.8 billion by GSV Capital’s investment, and that’s actually down from last year
- Proposed law in North Carolina would block Tesla from selling cars in the state
- Meet ‘algoraves:’ Raves with music generated by artist-controlled algorithmic software
- Microsoft warns users of new malicious Chrome extension and Firefox add-on that hijack Facebook accounts
Good reads
- The rise of the App Director
- Microsoft’s Sean Nolan on electronic medical records, their storage, and the future of health tech
- How the Net Party aims to create a new UI for democracy in Argentina
- How VCs think: Is your startup a feature, a product or a business?
- How to pivot away $34m: Israel’s Xeround shuts it doors with a lesson
- Is Quasar Ventures the new Rocket Internet for Latin America?
- Freelancing after graduation? Here’s what to expect
- The future of wireless power: Tables that charge your phone and parking lots that juice your hybrid
TNW Conference 2013: videos
- American Apparel’s Ryan Holiday: Modern media is often wrong, vapid, and easy to manipulate
- A tour of some of Japan’s coolest tech innovations, by Dentsu’s Kei Shimada
- Witness the power of A/B testing, with Optimizely’s Dan Siroker [Video]
- Tim Ferriss shares how to master any skill by deconstructing it [Video]
For fun
- Meet GeoGuessr, the best little Web game about global geography you haven’t played yet
- This Tumblr says what everyone is thinking: I don’t want to download your app
Interesting stories from beyond The Next Web
- iTunes users spending at the rate of $40/yr. [Asymco]
- Facebook’s iPhone Culture Builds An Overzealous Home On Android [TechCrunch]
- Google shuts down SMS Search [Ghacks.net]
- DRM in HTML5 is a victory for the open Web, not a defeat [Ars Technica]
Image credit: Thinkstock
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