Good Night Nerd on Sabbatical

Good Night Nerd's editor, Jon, will be on sabbatical for 3 weeks starting today. Enjoy your summer!

Dish Abandons Sprint in Favor of Clearwire

DISH has not submitted a new offer to buy Sprint Nextel, as per the deadline of tonight, so that means that SoftBank is the default suitor at this point.

DISH's decision has paved the road for SoftBank to take over the provider. Sprint shareholders will give final approval over the $21.6 billion offer next Tuesday.

DISH's full statement in regards to the withdrawal:

While DISH continues to see strategic value in a merger with Sprint, the decisions made by Sprint to prematurely terminate our due diligence process and accept extreme deal protections in its revised agreement with SoftBank, among other things, have made it impracticable for DISH to submit a revised offer by the June 18th deadline imposed by Sprint. We will consider our options with respect to Sprint, and focus our efforts and resources on completing the Clearwire tender offer."

 

App 'Rounds' Lets You Have Mobile Hangouts Jam-Packed with Features

Rounds, a new video chat hangout mobile app for iOS and Android, threatens to blow Google+ hangouts out of the water.

The app allows many new features that Google and other competitors dream about at night. The latest update includes a co-browsing feature, allowing chatting friends to share web pages. Other popular features include watching YouTube videos and using different camera effects. Rounds is compatible with iPhone, Android, Web, Facebook, Desktop, and Chrome.

Currently, the app is free with zero advertising.

RetailMeNot, a Popular Coupon Website, Files For an IPO

RetailMeNot, a popular coupon website, submitted its S-1 statement to go public today. Share numbers and IPO price has not gone public. The company will be listed on the NASDAQ with the ticker "SALE".

Auttomattic Accquires Poster, Popular WordPress iOS App

Automattic, the awesome people behind Wordpress, have purchased Poster, an amazing iOS Wordpress client. Tom Witkin, the man behind the app, will be joining the mobile team at Wordpress to try and merge Wordpress's existing mobile app and Poster.

For those who still have the app, Witkin will continue to provide support for you. Hopefully, with Witkin leading the way, Wordpress's mobile apps will be better.

To-Do: Reactivate Yahoo ID

On Wednesday, Yahoo announced it would free up Yahoo IDs that have been inactive for at least a year.

You will be seeing a reminder email telling you about the program. To meet Yahoo's "active" account standards, you will need to sign in at least one every year.

In mid-July, you will be able to reserve a username. In August, the usernames will be assigned. Good luck!

Click Here to view the Yahoo Tumblr post.

Apple Releases New Mac Pro

The 2013-era Mac Pro has been totally redesigned with a new, cylindrical chassis and vastly upgraded internals that have been designed to last for 10 years. The IO panel of the Pro is very busy. There are four USB 3.0 and six Thunderbolt 2.0 ports (can take up to six devices per port, so technically 36 maximum devices). Some other ports are HDMI-out, two gigabit Ethernet plugs, WiFi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4 and 3.5mm audio in and out ports.

The cylinder will be the first ever Mac to ship with dual AMD FirePro GPUs and support 4K displays. Also, the machine is 1/8th the volume of the current Mac Pro.

WWDC: Apple Retail Update

Updates on Apple Retail:

• One million daily visitors


• 407 stores in 14 countries

Apple WWDC Coverage

• What a day! Check out below for our full coverage of Apple's World Wide Developer Conference Keynote Address:
  
  
  
  • Apple Retail Update
  
  
  • Apple Releases New Line of Macs
  
  
  
  

Softbank Sees Acquiring T-Mobile as "Plan B"

Softbank is trying to trying to make an entrance into the US cellular market, but it isn't going as great as they thought as it would be. Softbank is trying to acquire Sprint. First, DISH tries to knock Softbank out of the ring to buy Sprint. In case they do get knocked out, DISH seems to be eyeing T-Mobile as a backup. According to Reuters, the Japanese are in talks with Deutsche Telekom to buy its shares of the carrier.

If Sprint shareholders reject the Softbank deal on June 12th, Big Magenta may be moving to Japan.

Google's Response to PRISM: What are you talking about?!

As you may have heard, the NSA and FBI have secretly been hoarding information about you. Google, one of those companies involved, is publicly denying this ever happened. Check out below for their post on the official company blog:

Taken from Google's Official Blog:

Dear Google users--

You may be aware of press reports alleging that Internet companies have joined a secret U.S. government program called PRISM to give the National Security Agency direct access to our servers. As Google's CEO and Chief Legal Officer, we wanted you to have the facts.

First, we have not joined any program that would give the U.S. government--or any other government--direct access to our servers. Indeed, the U.S. government does not have direct access or a "back door" to the information stored in our data centers. We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday.

Second, we provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law. Our legal team review each and every request, and frequently pushes back when requests are overly borad or don't follow the correct process. Press reports that suggest Google is providing open-ended access to our uses' data are false, period. Until this week's reports, we have never heard of the broad type of order that Verizon received--an order that appears to have required them to hand over millions of users' call records. We were very surprised to learn that such broad orders exist. Any suggestion that Google is disclosing information about out users' Internet activity on such a scale is completely false.

Finally, this episode confirms what we have long believed--there needs to be a more transparent approach. Google has worked hard, within the confines of the current laws, to be open about the data requests we receive. We post this information on our Transparency Report whenever possible. We were the first company to do this. And, of course, we understand that the U.S. and other governments need to take action to protect their citizens' safety--including sometimes by using surveillance. But the level of secrecy around the current legal procedures undermines the freedoms we all cherish.

Posted by Larry Page, CEO and David Drummond, Chief Legal Officer

Will Smidlein: Internet Famous in Under 2 Hours

Web developer Will Smidlein managed to bypass the six-second upload limit on Vine today, inserting the entirety of Rick Astley's immortal "Never Gonna Give You Up" into a post that was ultimately taken down by Twitter. Smidlein thought he had "broken Vine", as said in an earlier tweet. He had also tweeted that Twitter engineers had requested that he delete the post.

This long post happened on the same day that Vine became available to Android. Smidlein has been very tight-lipped about the situation, but has said that he will release the full story once the hole has been filled. It is estimated that Vine has 13 million users.

Smidlein has also been very mature about recovering from the situation. It appeared that his site had crashed for several minues, and had gained several hundred followers on Twitter. He also published a response to his Vine incursion on Throwww earlier this evening. The response to the event has been crazy on Twitter. He said in a tweet that he got so many "@ mentions", that his Google Glass just made one solid buzzing noise.

Overall, Will Smidlein has been the "Internet celebrity of the Evening", and has gotten attention from most of the major technology news organizations out there. Smidlein will be going for an internship at Pocket this summer in the Valley, and I'm curious if he'll get any job offers. Congrats again Will!

 

Below are some interesting tweets from Will:

Well, TechCrunch never asked me. I didn't use a jailbroken device at all. No idea where they got that.Shame they call themselves "news".

— Will Smidlein (@ws) June 3, 2013

 

Sorry, Twitter/Vine engineers. I tried to keep it quiet, but the internet never forgets. — Will Smidlein (@ws) June 3, 2013

 

So my Vine has gone semi-viral.The one that Twitter engineering asked me to take down.Fannntastic.

— Will Smidlein (@ws) June 3, 2013

BREAKING: Twitter is Having a Conniption

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Anonymous Lends Turkish Protesters A Hand, Crashes Government Websites

[liveblog]

BREAKING: GitHub is Down

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