The maker of the popular Beats by Dr. Dre headphones is looking to buy out its Asian partner and bring in a new investor that can provide it with fresh funds for growth; HTC’s shares have lost nearly 90% of their value since April 2011, when HTC was second only to Apple in U.S. smartphone sales

Updated August 18, 2013, 6:50 p.m. ET

Beats By Dre Looks to Drop HTC

Headphones Maker Is in Talks With Investor for Debt Financing, Minority Stake

SERENA NG, EVA DOU and HANNAH KARP

Luke Wood, left, the president of Beats Electronics, with co-founders Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre in 2012.

The maker of the popular Beats by Dr. Dre headphones is looking to buy out its Asian partner and bring in a new investor that can provide it with fresh funds for growth, people familiar with the matter said. The moves come as the founders of Beats Electronics LLC—music mogul Jimmy Iovine and American hip-hop producer and artist Andre Young, better known as Dr. Dre—are broadening the company’s business from headphones to include speakers, audio systems in cars and consumer electronics and a soon-to-be-launched online streaming music service. It also comes only a couple of months after the company shelved a separate deal that would have raised hundreds of millions of dollars in cash for acquisitions and investments, as well as allowing the founders to be paid a dividend without giving up their controlling interest in Beats Electronics.

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Disruptions: Texting Your Feelings, Symbol by Symbol

AUGUST 18, 2013, 10:58 AM

Disruptions: Texting Your Feelings, Symbol by Symbol

By NICK BILTON

A colorful symbol alphabet that contains nearly a thousand images of cute animals, food items and expressive smiley faces can sometimes convey what words cannot.

I recently had to sit my friend down for a modern-day digital intervention. It wasn’t that he was using his phone at dinner, or that he was hitting “reply all” on e-mail threads, or leaving unnecessary voice mail messages. No, this was much worse. A few weeks ago my friend, Michael Galpert, who is 30-year-old and is founder of SuperCalendar, a personal assistant Web site, lives in New York City and was visiting the West Coast for work. I set him up on a date with a friend who lives in Los Angeles. The first date went well and the two decided to see each other again. Read more of this post

Inside the Phone-Plan Pricing Puzzle; complex plans make comparison shopping nearly impossible, a tool that discourages customers from jumping ship

July 31, 2013, 7:52 p.m. ET

Inside the Phone-Plan Pricing Puzzle

An Analysis of Some 700 Wireless Options Underscore the Complexity and Confusion in the Market

THOMAS GRYTA

To understand how confusing wireless plans have become, just walk into an AT&TInc. T -0.49% store. The second largest U.S. carrier offers far more plans than its rivals—nearly 30 combinations alone for individuals, and many of its packages contradict one another. For example, customers can sign up for 900 minutes of talk, unlimited texts and 300 megabytes of data for $100 a month. But a “mobile share” plan that is $30 cheaper offers unlimited talk and texts and the same amount of data. The muddled pricing isn’t unique to AT&T. The four major carriers offer a total of nearly 700 combinations of smartphone plans—a family of five alone would have more than 250 options to choose from, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of smartphone plans offered by the four biggest U.S. carriers. “It is always a cumbersome, somewhat root canalish experience,” said Erin Riordan, of Naperville, Ill., who has five children and manages an account with six lines from AT&T that produces a $495 monthly bill. She has considered switching carriers, but has been overwhelmed by the detailed service contracts, network coverage, the multiple plan options and whether moving will actually save her any money. “I consider myself to be pretty educated but it makes me want to stick a fork in my eye,” Mrs. Riordan said. Confusing plans are as old as the cellphones themselves, although there is some hope that the structures may simplify as competition in the industry heats up. Read more of this post

How LinkedIn Became A Wall Street Juggernaut

How LinkedIn Became A Wall Street Juggernaut

GLENN SOLOMON

Saturday, August 17th, 2013

Glenn Solomon is a Partner with GGV Capital. Some of his recent investments include Pandora, Successfactors, Isilon, Domo, Square, Zendesk, Quinstreet and Nimble Storage. His personal blog, focused on growth stage entrepreneurs who are thinking big; can be found at here. Follow him on Twitter@glennsolomon.

In 2010, had you suggested to the smartest Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors that LinkedIn would have a larger market value in 2013 than Groupon, Zynga or Twitter, you would have been laughed at. Had you hypothesized that LinkedIn would be worth more than Groupon, Zynga and Twitter combined and worth nearly one-third the value of Facebook, no one would have believed you.  LinkedIn just wasn’t as exciting as the internet darlings of the day, and, as a result, there were many LinkedIn doubters at that time, myself included. Read more of this post

Graphene: A new miracle in the material world; It is lighter than a feather, stronger than steel, yet incredibly flexible and more conductive than copper

Graphene: A new miracle in the material world

Britain is investing £60m in developing graphene. But are our businesses already falling behind in the race to exploit it, asks Rebecca Clancy.

Graphene is a planar sheet of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal pattern. Stacked graphene sheets form graphite, used in pencils.

By Rebecca Clancy

9:23PM BST 18 Aug 2013

It is lighter than a feather, stronger than steel, yet incredibly flexible and more conductive than copper. It has been hailed as “the miracle material”, its possible uses apparently almost endless. The material is graphene, a single layer of carbon atoms forming a regular hexagonal pattern, extracted from graphite, with astonishing properties and impressive potential. Unbreakable, foldable touch screens for mobile phones; a revolution in how drugs are administered; protective coating for everything from food packaging to wind turbines, faster computer chips and broadband; batteries of infinitely higher capacity than today’s – these are just a few of graphene’s possibilities. Read more of this post

Dash Is Turning Cars Into Futuristic, Data-Collecting Machines With An App And A Cheap Plastic Dongle

Dash Is Turning Cars Into Futuristic, Data-Collecting Machines With An App And A Cheap Plastic Dongle

ALYSON SHONTELL AUG. 17, 2013, 12:42 PM 3,728 7

Dash is made possible by this dongle which fits in a car’s OBD port. Dash can tell you why your check engine light is on and what needs to be replaced in your car.

Jamyn Edis is the CEO and co-founder of Dash, a platform that tracks 300 real-time data points in cars to make them smart vehicles.

A few months ago, just as the weather was starting to warm, a green Mini Cooper convertible rolled to a stop in front of Business Insider’s New York City headquarters. The door popped open and Jamyn Edis greeted me with a beaming smile and a pair of aviators. We were ready to take a Dash around Manhattan. Jamyn Edis and Brian Langel have been creating smart technology products for more than two decades combined. Last year, as HBO’s VP of Emerging Technology and Research Development, Edis entered the New York startup scene and advised founders going through a competitive accelerator program called TechStars. Now, the mentor has become the mentee. Edis and Langel recently founded a company called Dash, which was selected to be one of 11 startups in the 2013 TechStars New York class. Dash’s goal is to turn all vehicles into talking, data-collecting smart cars using nothing but a plastic dongle and a mobile app.  Read more of this post

“Sync is the new save”; Dropbox’s ambitious bid to “replace the hard drive” by making it easy for users to sign into Dropbox from many other apps

August 18, 2013 3:50 pm

Dropbox hopes to exploit tech rivalries

By Tim Bradshaw in San Francisco

“Sync is the new save,” declared Drew Houston, chief executive of Dropbox, at the cloud storage company’s first developer conference in San Francisco last month,writes Tim Bradshaw.

Mr Houston made an ambitious bid to “replace the hard drive” by making it easy for users to sign into Dropbox from many other apps. His hope is that this will make users more likely to pay for extra storage and, crucially, make them less prone to switch to Apple or Google’s rival products. Read more of this post

Beauty boxes by The Lilac Box sells like hot cakes in Malaysia

Beauty boxes by The Lilac Box sells like hot cakes in Malaysia

By Jacky Yap 19, Aug 2013

Malaysia-based The Lilac Box’s beauty boxes are a hit with consumers, selling out fast for each edition.

Earlier this year, there was a lot of hype around the beauty box subscription business. In January, we saw Australia-based bellabox closing an A$1.3 million (US$1.2 million) Series A round. Indonesia’s Lolabox was also launched by former Rocket Internet executives, with the backing of GRUPARA, one of Indonesia’s most active private equity fund.

Around the same time, Taiwan’s online beauty industry has also seen some activities. Japanese venture capital firm CyberAgent Ventures has put their skin in the game by investing in Taiwan based Fashionguide, a beauty and cosmetics social networking platform. Beauty sampling platform VanityTrove also commenced its consolidation in the Southeast Asia market with itsacquisition of Rocket Internet’s Glossybox in Taiwan. Read more of this post

Viacom to let Sony stream its programs, bypassing traditional pay TV providers

Viacom to let Sony stream its programs

BLOOMBERG

AUG 16, 2013

SAN FRANCISCO – Sony Corp. has reached a preliminary accord to stream cable television programming from Viacom Inc. over the Internet to TVs, game consoles and Blu-ray players, a source said.

Under the deal, Sony would use the Web to deliver shows such as “SpongeBob SquarePants” and “Teen Wolf” to homes with those products, bypassing traditional pay TV providers, said the source. The service also would sell Viacom shows and movies on demand. Read more of this post

Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age

Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age [Hardcover]

Susan P. Crawford J.D. (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 8, 2013

Ten years ago, the United States stood at the forefront of the Internet revolution. With some of the fastest speeds and lowest prices in the world for high-speed Internet access, the nation was poised to be the global leader in the new knowledge-based economy. Today that global competitive advantage has all but vanished because of a series of government decisions and resulting monopolies that have allowed dozens of countries, including Japan and South Korea, to pass us in both speed and price of broadband. This steady slide backward not only deprives consumers of vital services needed in a competitive employment and business market—it also threatens the economic future of the nation. This important book by leading telecommunications policy expert Susan Crawford explores why Americans are now paying much more but getting much less when it comes to high-speed Internet access. Using the 2011 merger between Comcast and NBC Universal as a lens, Crawford examines how we have created the biggest monopoly since the breakup of Standard Oil a century ago. In the clearest terms, this book explores how telecommunications monopolies have affected the daily lives of consumers and America’s global economic standing. Read more of this post

What Jiu Jitsu teaches us about media companies

What Jiu Jitsu teaches us about media companies

BY BRYAN GOLDBERG 
ON AUGUST 8, 2013

For a brief period of time, I studied Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. And I wasn’t very good at it.

Nevertheless, I put in a real effort and put up with the not-so-appealing aspects of it — having some dude squash my face into the ground, gasping for breathe while a normally-stoic Korean teenager choked me, etc.

At a time when martial arts, and the UFC in particular, has grown in popularity, the very act of fighting has changed, both in reality and in the popular consciousness.

Gone are the days when 80s action stars traded punches with German terrorists. Today, we understand that fighting usually takes place on the ground, with a lot more grappling than striking. You are just as likely to win a fight by choking your opponent with your legs (i.e. a triangle choke) as you are through a good old-fashion nose break. Read more of this post

Start the Presses! It’s How You Sell Newspapers; As iconoclastic as it may sound, it’s time to stop chasing the digital ghost.

August 18, 2013, 5:32 p.m. ET

Start the Presses! It’s How You Sell Newspapers

As iconoclastic as it may sound, it’s time to stop chasing the digital ghost.

ERIC SPITZ

This month has seen a couple of successful businessmen with no newspaper experience acquire two of America’s storied media institutions. Many people are wondering why.

I cannot answer for these new owners, but I may be able to shed some light. A year ago my business partner, Aaron Kushner, and I bought Freedom Communications, which includes the Orange County Register, the nation’s 14th-largest daily newspaper. Neither Aaron nor I came from the newspaper industry, but we are both entrepreneurs inclined to question the conventional wisdom. Read more of this post

TV’s Unnatural Monopolies; The rationale for government regulation is collapsing in the face of technological change

August 18, 2013, 5:25 p.m. ET

Crovitz: TV’s Unnatural Monopolies

The rationale for government regulation is collapsing in the face of technological change.

L. GORDON CROVITZ

The big loser in the battle between Time Warner Cable TWC -0.24% and CBSCBS -0.56% is not the cable company, the network or the viewers who lost access to their favorite shows. The big loser is Washington, whose efforts to regulate what used to be called television grow more futile with every new video technology.

Lawmakers and regulators still treat broadcasters and cable operators as “natural” monopolies. That gives them a rationale to layer on bureaucratic rules setting out how the industry should be run. Read more of this post

Book-publishing giant Penguin Random House is trying its hand at television, expanding a media diversification that began a few years ago when Bertelsmann’s Random House started a movie unit to spur sales of its titles

August 18, 2013, 7:51 p.m. ET

Publisher Makes TV Play

JEFFREY A. TRACHTENBERG

Book-publishing giant Penguin Random House is trying its hand at television, expanding a media diversification that began a few years ago when Random House started a movie unit to spur sales of its titles.

Penguin Random House’s first TV co-production, “Heartland Table,” will make its debut Sept. 14 on the Food Network, starring little-known chef Amy Thielen. Ten days later, Ms. Thielen’s first cookbook, “The New Midwestern Table,” will be published by Clarkson Potter, a Penguin Random House imprint. Read more of this post