E-commerce edge helps British retailers expand abroad

E-commerce edge helps British retailers expand abroad

4:41am EDT

By Emma Thomasson and James Davey

BERLIN/PARIS (Reuters) – Marks & Spencer Plc is making a new push to expand abroad, hoping e-commerce will give Britain’s biggest clothing retailer a better chance to succeed than earlier attempts to enter new markets. Read more of this post

BlackBerry aims to reverse emerging market slump with budget handset

BlackBerry aims to reverse emerging market slump with budget handset

5:41am EDT

By Randy Fabi and Euan Rocha

JAKARTA/TORONTO (Reuters) – BlackBerry Ltd launched a low-cost touchscreen device in Jakarta, the Z3, as the embattled smartphone maker looks to revive sales in emerging markets like Indonesia where its once-fervent following has shriveled. Read more of this post

Epic Fails of the Startup World: “The fact that most new businesses fail is hardly a secret. So why are so many people gambling on ventures that are likely to end badly?”

EPIC FAILS OF THE STARTUP WORLD

by James SurowieckiMAY 19, 2014

We live in the age of the startup. It’s never been easier to build a product and start a company. And, thanks to the boom in angel investing and crowdfunding, it’s never been easier for startups to raise money. The analytics firm CB Insights logged more than seventeen hundred seed-investment deals in the U.S. tech industry in 2012, more than three times the number from three years earlier. But there’s a catch: starting a company may be easier, but making it a success isn’t. Competition is fierce, profits are scarce, and venture capitalists aren’t generous when it comes to later stages of funding. As Gideon Lewis-Kraus shows in “No Exit,” a new Kindle Single about startup culture, the life of a new company is often brutish and short. Though we may be seeing a “Cambrian explosion” of new companies, as The Economist recently put it, there’s a mass extinction going on, too. Read more of this post

AT&T could become a television giant, too, with a $50 billion DirecTV merger

AT&T could become a television giant, too, with a $50 billion DirecTV merger

By Brian Fung Updated: May 12 at 6:22 pm

The rumors keep escalating. AT&T might be willing to pay $100 a share to acquire DirecTV, one of the nation’s few satellite TV operators, according to Bloomberg. The deal would amount to about $50 billion. Read more of this post

IBM facing ‘rocky time’, but poised for change, CEO says: NYT

IBM facing ‘rocky time’, but poised for change, CEO says: NYT

Sun, May 11 2014

(Reuters) – IBM Corp is facing a “rocky time,” Chief Executive Virginia Rometty told the New York Times, but said she and the company now have a clear vision on how to pursue another generation of growth. Read more of this post

Tech Stocks Are Still ‘Too Silly’ for Some; Valuations of Young Tech Companies Remain Sky-High

Tech Stocks Are Still ‘Too Silly’ for Some

Valuations of Young Tech Companies Remain Sky-High

STEVEN RUSSOLILLO and MATT JARZEMSKY

May 11, 2014 4:23 p.m. ET

Young technology-company stocks fell out of favor in the blink of an eye. But their valuations remain sky-high and many investors say they have a lot more room to decline before bouncing back. Steven Russolillo joins MoneyBeat. Photo: AP. Read more of this post

Do You Know What’s Going in Your Amazon Shopping Cart? For Faster Shipping, Items Are Commingled at Warehouses, Opening the Door to Knockoffs

Do You Know What’s Going in Your Amazon Shopping Cart?

For Faster Shipping, Items Are Commingled at Warehouses, Opening the Door to Knockoffs

SERENA NG and GREG BENSINGER

Updated May 11, 2014 8:31 p.m. ET

Every now and then Matthew Frank, whose company makes Tovolo-brand ice-cube molds and trays, will slow down shipments of his kitchenware to Amazon.comInc. AMZN +2.66% and then conduct test buys as the Internet retailer’s stock runs low. Read more of this post

Old and Fired at IBM: Tech Trendsetter Changes the Game, Guards Age Data

Old and Fired at IBM: Tech Trendsetter Changes the Game, Guards Age Data

By Alex Barinka – May 12, 2014

For at least a decade, International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) gave fired employees information detailing a severance package that asked them to waive age-discrimination claims and also included a page listing the job titles and ages of workers being let go. Read more of this post

Digital Music Service to Pose New Challenge to Subscription Model

Digital Music Service to Pose New Challenge to Subscription Model

By BEN SISARIOMAY 11, 2014

Adam Kidron, left, chief executive of Yonder, a music downloading service that will begin operating Monday, and Jim Heindlmeyer, chief operating officer, at their Manhattan offices. Read more of this post

How Birchbox Used A Threat To Their Business As Motivation; After Birchbox launched its successful subscription sample service, a wave of copycats hit the scene. But that just made them better

HOW BIRCHBOX USED A THREAT TO THEIR BUSINESS AS MOTIVATION

AFTER BIRCHBOX LAUNCHED ITS SUCCESSFUL SUBSCRIPTION SAMPLE SERVICE, A WAVE OF COPYCATS HIT THE SCENE. BUT THAT JUST MADE THEM BETTER.

BY GWEN MORAN

Birchbox, the wildly successful beauty subscription service,didn’t start in a dorm room, but it wasn’t far off. Read more of this post

Australian businesses failing to explore bigger data; Big data used to be purely about volume, but it is now more around the complexity of the data, which brings in notions of variety, speed and accuracy

Australian businesses failing to explore bigger data

May 12, 2014 – 10:58AM

Cynthia Karena

Externally sourced data, such as traffic flow, should be used to help businesses, Dr Hodgkinson said. Photo: Joe Armao

Despite some big data vendors claiming Australia is leading the big data analytics trend, businesses here are well behind their US counterparts. Read more of this post

Tech giants pour resources into artificial intelligence

Tech giants pour resources into artificial intelligence

May 10, 2014

Brandon Bailey

The latest Silicon Valley arms race is a contest to build the best artificial brains. Facebook, Google and other leading tech companies are jockeying to hire top scientists in the field of artificial intelligence, while spending heavily on a quest to make computers think more like people. Read more of this post

Tax evasion: The data revolution; It will soon be a lot harder to hide money overseas

Tax evasion: The data revolution; It will soon be a lot harder to hide money overseas

May 10th 2014 | NEW YORK | From the print edition

THE war on those stashing undisclosed money offshore intensified this week when 47 countries, including the Group of 20 and some prominent tax havens, sealed a pact that will shake up the sharing of tax information. Under the present system, countries have to file requests with each other for data on suspected cheats. Even reasonable enquiries are often rejected as “fishing expeditions”. In future the signatories—and dozens of others that will be pressed into joining later—will automatically exchange information once a year. This will include bank balances, interest income, dividends and the proceeds of sales, which can be used to assess capital-gains tax. Read more of this post

Apple’s Midlife Crisis

Apple’s Midlife Crisis

By PETER THAL LARSEN

MAY 9, 2014, 1:34 PM 5 Comments

Apple is showing another symptom of a midlife crisis.

It hasn’t got a tattoo or hooked up with a Pilates instructor. But Apple’s interest in headphone maker Beats Electronics suggests that it feels the need to open its wallet in order to keep up with the cool kids. Read more of this post

Tech Stocks Crumble As The Market Demands What They Can’t Deliver

Tech Stocks Crumble As The Market Demands What They Can’t Deliver

Posted May 7, 2014 by Alex Wilhelm (@alex)

It’s a nasty day for technology companies in the public markets, as aging giants like AOL are falling right alongside upstarts with larger market caps like Twitter and Groupon that are popping negative. Read more of this post

Alleged insider trading case cracked through LinkedIn

Alleged insider trading case cracked through LinkedIn

May 12, 2014

Foreign exchange broker Owen Kerr turned to social media website LinkedIn to make the vital connection between the two men accused of one of the country’s biggest insider trading cases. Read more of this post

Mike Maples: There will be no next Silicon Valley; Mike Maples on his fellow VCs: “Most just suck at it”

Mike Maples: There will be no next Silicon Valley

BY CARMEL DEAMICIS 
ON MAY 8, 2014

In 1994 when Mike Maples graduated Harvard Business School, he didn’t head straight to Silicon Valley. He thought that at that point the Valley had been developed so extensively he couldn’t make a big impact. He feared he’d be traversing the same well-worn path without forging new ground. Read more of this post