China’s hi-tech emperors; From a global online ‘anything store’ to high-end smartphones challenging Apple, a generation of billionaire entrepreneurs is rising in the East

China’s hi-tech emperors

From a global online ‘anything store’ to high-end smartphones challenging Apple, a generation of billionaire entrepreneurs is rising in the East

Global e-commerce is booming and Shanghai and other huge Chinese cities are alight with new ideas as the country shifts gear from assembly line to powerhouse of the technology industry. Photo: Alamy

By Christopher Williams

5:55PM GMT 04 Jan 2014

A new generation is taking power in China. Not the grey graduates of Communist Party committees. But aggressive, entrepreneurial and often colourful internet billionaires. As well as influencing domestic politics, several plan to break out on to the world stage in 2014. Read more of this post

Taiwan e-commerce firms seek Fujian fortunes

E-commerce firms seek Fujian fortunes
Sunday, January 5, 2014
CNA

TAIPEI–Taiwan’s e-commerce firms now enjoy greater business opportunities in mainland China after the two sides across the Taiwan Strait signed an agreement on trade in services in June 2013, which has prompted a business delegation to visit the mainland, a trade official said recently. Read more of this post

The long strife to reach Silicon Valley

January 3, 2014 6:10 pm

The long strife to reach Silicon Valley

Other tech hubs will struggle to copy California’s success

Silicon Valley is as much a state of mind as a place – a near-mythical economy that the rest of the world (and other cities in the US) would love to emulate. The strip of land from San Francisco to San Jose is a symbol for an alliance of risk-taking entrepreneurs and venture capitalists where inventions from the silicon chip to internet social media have been developed. Read more of this post

TabTale Cranks Up Its Game-Making Machine: The Israeli company isn’t worried about sophisticated games. It’s making games kids want to play and lots of them

JANUARY 4, 2014, 10:00 AM

TabTale Cranks Up Its Game-Making Machine

By VINDU GOEL

You’ve probably never heard of a company called TabTale. But if you’ve ever used an iPad or smartphone to entertain young children (as many parents do), you may very well have downloaded one of its hundreds of animated games or interactive books on topics like virtual cupcake baking and doctors who heal zombies. (I personally wasted an enjoyable hour this week playing Santa Rescue Challenge, one of the company’s recently released holiday titles.) Read more of this post

Smartphones set to become even smarter

January 3, 2014 4:25 pm

Smartphones set to become even smarter

By Daniel Thomas

The revolution in smartphones is over. This year’s focus will instead be on step changes in technology that will help the devices play an even greater role in people’s lives. Better processors and integrated applications will mean even smarter phones, not just in terms of sheer processing power but also in analysing and making use of the masses of data collected by the devices. Kicking off the fight for supremacy in the smartphone market this year will be the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next week, where the following technologies and trends in mobiles will be on display. Read more of this post

Secondary Stock Offerings Keep Questionable Techs Afloat; For some companies, finding money on Wall Street is easier than finding revenue for their businesses

SATURDAY, JANUARY 4, 2014

Secondary Stock Offerings Keep Questionable Techs Afloat

By TIERNAN RAY | MORE ARTICLES BY AUTHOR

For some companies, finding money on Wall Street is easier than finding revenue for their businesses.

Short-sellers had a rough 2013 in a surging market for stocks. Some of that is overall exuberance for the new, new thing in technology—think 3-D printing—that can sustain a stock’s momentum indefinitely. But there’s another factor that can also keep shares aloft: the willingness of capital markets to give these companies money again and again. I’ve been reviewing a decade’s worth of follow-on stock offerings by information technology companies based in the U.S.—793 deals, to be exact—which raised $77 billion for 470 companies. Read more of this post

Ride service Uber, brash darling of Silicon Valley, stalks new markets

Ride service Uber, brash darling of Silicon Valley, stalks new markets

Thu, Jan 2 2014

By Sarah McBride

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Uber Chief Executive Travis Kalanick knows the value of a good controversy. After his upstart company, which lets people summon rides at the touch of a smartphone button, provoked a flurry of social media outrage in December over pricing policies that can result in exorbitant fares, Kalanick addressed prospective New Year’s Eve customers. Read more of this post

Netflix’s dumbed-down algorithms

Netflix’s dumbed-down algorithms

By Felix Salmon

JANUARY 3, 2014

Alexis Madrigal has a rollicking investigation into Netflix’s movie genres — all 76,897 of them, from category #1 (African-American Crime Documentaries) to category #91,307 (Visually Striking Latin American Comedies). His story is titled “How Netflix Reverse Engineered Hollywood”, and as such, it’s the latest entrant to a well-stocked category of its own: Awestruck Narratives About Netflix’s Technology and the Systematization of the Ineffable. Read more of this post

Marc Andreessen Just Suggested That Snapchat Could Become A $100 Billion Company

Marc Andreessen Just Suggested That Snapchat Could Become A $100 Billion Company

JAY YAROW

When Snapchat reportedly turned down a $3 billion offer from Facebook, the knee jerk reaction from a lot of people was, “Are they crazy?!?” It’s a lot of money to pass on. But, according to venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, Snapchat has an opportunity to build something much bigger, much more valuable.  In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Andreessen was asked about Snapchat’s future as a business. Here’s his answer: Read more of this post

Listen to Pandora, and It Listens Back

January 4, 2014

Listen to Pandora, and It Listens Back

By NATASHA SINGER

Pandora, the Internet radio service, is plying a new tune.

After years of customizing playlists to individual listeners by analyzing components of the songs they like, then playing them tracks with similar traits, the company has started data-mining users’ musical tastes for clues about the kinds of ads most likely to engage them. Read more of this post

It’s true! The FT – and social media – really do move markets; Wikipedia visits and Google search linked to swings, research says

January 3, 2014 5:26 pm

It’s true! The FT – and social media – really do move markets

By John Authers

Wikipedia visits and Google search linked to swings, research says

Newspapers report the news. They should never aim to be part of the story themselves. But in the stock market, that division is hard to sustain. A rigorous statistical study by a group of academics at Warwick Businss School has now shown that we at the Financial Times regularly move the markets we write about. (A similar exercise for our best-known competitors would surely yield the same result; it happens that this study covered the FT.) Read more of this post

Even Google Employees Are Giving Up On Google Glass

Even Google Employees Are Giving Up On Google Glass

JAY YAROW

JAN. 3, 2014, 12:07 PM 261,004 45

Here’s a bad sign for Google’s still-nascent Glass project from Glass-evangelist Robert Scoble: I’m also worried at a new trend: I rarely see Google employees wearing theirs anymore. Most say “I just don’t like advertising that I work for Google.” I understand that. Quite a few people assume I work for Google when they see me with mine. I just hope it doesn’t mean that Google’s average employee won’t support it. That is really what killed the tablet PC efforts inside Microsoft until Apple forced them to react due to popularity of iPad. Read more of this post

Berlin’s ‘poor but sexy’ appeal turning city into European Silicon Valley

Berlin’s ‘poor but sexy’ appeal turning city into European Silicon Valley

Startups, venture capitalists and foreign workers descend on city with cheap rent and big investments from Google and Microsoft

Rupert Neate in Berlin

The Guardian, Friday 3 January 2014 18.40 GMT

A decade ago Berlin’s mayor Klaus Wowereit tried to attract creative types to the city by declaring “Berlin ist arm, aber sexy” (poor but sexy). It worked. The City’s astonishingly low rents compared with other European capitals – a one-bed flat a short walk from Alexanderplatz in the centre of town can still be picked up for as little as €450-a-month (£373) – have helped draw arty people from across the world and made Berlin a major centre for artists, writers, musicians and, increasingly, technology and web entrepreneurs. Read more of this post

Andreessen: Bubble Believers ‘Don’t Know What They’re Talking About’; Venture Capitalist Discusses the Current State of Tech Investing

Andreessen: Bubble Believers ‘Don’t Know What They’re Talking About’

Venture Capitalist Discusses the Current State of Tech Investing

DOUGLAS MACMILLAN

Updated Jan. 3, 2014 1:10 p.m. ET

In a 2011 essay in The Wall Street Journal, venture capitalist and Internet pioneer Marc Andreessen predicted that software companies are “eating the world” by replacing old industries with new services that are smarter, faster and cheaper. Read more of this post

An Ode to Joyful Music Streaming; With more Spotify-like services on the horizon, a bounty of unexplored music beckons. But will they do a better job of helping you figure out what to listen to next?

An Ode to Joyful Music Streaming

With more Spotify-like services on the horizon, a bounty of unexplored music beckons. But will they do a better job of helping you figure out what to listen to next?

JOHN JURGENSEN

Updated Jan. 3, 2014 10:50 p.m. ET

AS A WALL STREET Journal entertainment reporter, I have an enviable music supply. My desk is piled with promotional CDs; links to download unreleased albums flow into my inbox daily; and going to concerts is part of the job description. I’m steeped in new music—so why would I draw a blank when trying to figure out what to listen to on my evening train ride home? Confronted by the empty search bar on Spotify, I sometimes feel paralyzed. The unseen presence of the app’s 20 million songs weighs down on me with each flash of the cursor. Read more of this post