Twitter reports Q2 2014 results: revenue $312M, up 124% year-over-year, net loss of $145M  —  Twitter Reports Second Quarter 2014 Results  —  SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. - July 29, 2014 - Twitter, Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) today announced financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2014.

Instagram launches Bolt, its one-touch photo and video messaging app, in Singapore, South Africa, and New Zealand  —  Instagram Launches One-Touch Photo And Video Messaging App Bolt Outside The US  —  Instagram is taking on Snapchat by turning your best friends' faces into the shutter button …

Microsoft is about to launch a selfie phone and a new ‘high-end’ Windows Phone  —  Microsoft is planning to launch two new Windows Phone 8.1 devices shortly.  Sources familiar with the company's plans tell The Verge that Microsoft devices chief Stephen Elop revealed both handsets during an internal company meeting this week.

Netflix Signs Peering Deal With AT&T to Reduce Buffering  —  This story has been updated to include a statement from AT&T confirming the peering deal.  —  Netflix has reached an agreement with AT&T to give its streaming service direct access to AT&T's network, with the goal of reducing buffering …

Ubiquitous competition in the app market is hurting the quality and sustainability of iOS apps  —  App Rot  —  Look around your iPad for a minute.  How are its third-party apps doing?  —  Are they all being actively updated?  Are they all built for iOS 7 yet?

Former Diapers.com CEO Marc Lore gets $55 million investment for e-commerce startup Jet  —  CEO Who Sold Diapers.com to Amazon Raises $55 Million to Challenge Amazon Again  —  If you can't beat 'em, try, try again.  —  That's the playbook being followed by Marc Lore …

Certificate verification flaw in Android since 2.1 granted malicious apps special access to resources, potentially exposing sensitive user data  —  Android crypto blunder exposes users to highly privileged malware  —  A slide from next week's Black Hat talk titled Android Fake ID vulnerability.

U.S. Senate bill proposes sweeping curbs on NSA surveillance  —  (Reuters) - Senator Patrick Leahy will introduce legislation on Tuesday to ban the U.S. government's bulk collection of Americans' telephone records and Internet data and narrow how much information it can seek in any particular search.

Open Whisper Systems releases Signal iOS app for free encrypted voice calls; encrypted texts coming soon  —  Free, Encrypted Calling Finally Comes To The iPhone  —  The encrypted calling app Signal.  The two seemingly random words beneath the contact's name are meant to be read …

Ford switching 3,300 workers from BlackBerry to iPhone this year  —  Ford Switching Employees to IPhones From BlackBerries  —  Ford Motor Co. (F) is deploying iPhones for corporate use to employees worldwide, scoring a win for Apple Inc. (AAPL) as it seeks to lure more corporate customers.

Facebook Is Shutting Down Gifts To Focus On Its Buy Button And Commerce Platform  —  Facebook wants to help other businesses sell things, so it's done selling its own.  Facebook Gifts will shut down on August 12th and stop selling gift cards for businesses like Starbucks and iTunes.

Amazon willing to retain its current 30% of digital revenue if Hachette lowers e-book prices to $9.99  —  Amazon Calls for Hachette to Cut E-Book Prices  —  Online Retailer Also Suggests Hachette Should Boost Proportion of Digital Book Sales It Pays to Its Authors

Apple Launches Retina MacBook Pros with Faster Haswell Processors, More RAM Standard  —  As indicated over the weekend and yesterday, Apple today launched refreshed 13-inch and 15-inch Retina MacBook Pros.The new notebooks feature faster versions of Intel's Haswell processors …

Nvidia quadruples display resolution by stacking two cheap LCD panels on top of each other  —  Nvidia researchers have used a fantastically straightforward approach to quadruple the effective resolution and double the refresh rate of cheap, off-the-shelf LCD panels: Stacking them on top of each other.

Apple TV updated with FOX NOW, CNBC channels  —  Apple has rolled out some new channel additions to the Apple TV set-top box this morning.  Both FOX NOW and CNBC have joined the Apple TV lineup.  Both channels appear to require a cable subscription to unlock the content within.

Flickr Rolls Out A New Commercial Licensing Program To Compete With 500px And Others  —  Yahoo-owned photo-sharing and storage site Flickr announced this morning the rollout of a new licensing program aimed at the service's members who are looking to have their work discovered …

US government increases funding for Tor, giving $1.8m in 2013  —  Despite attempts by the National Security Agency to crack the anonymous browser, the US increased state funding through third parties  —  Tor, the internet anonymiser, received more than $1.8m in funding from the US government in 2013 …

Apple's Smartphone Market Share Slips as Huawei, Lenovo Make Gains  —  Apple's growth in the overall worldwide smartphone market continues to slow as it loses ground to smaller Chinese vendors releasing more affordable devices, even as the smartphone market itself grows substantially.