StreetEasy $50 Million Buyout by Zillow Shows NYC’s Addiction to Site

StreetEasy Buyout by Zillow Shows NYC’s Addiction to Site

Zillow Inc. (Z)’s purchase of StreetEasy for $50 million shows how dominant the listings website has become in the New York City real estate market seven years after it was founded.

StreetEasy allows users to view apartments for sale as well as all units that have sold in a given building, how long they were on the market, and what kind of discount their owners had to offer to strike a deal. If someone in your building had a federal tax lien filed against their apartment, you can find that on StreetEasy. Want to know when a unit is listed for sale at an exclusive Park Avenue co-op? That’s possible too. Read more of this post

Problem for Bezos: Mall Becoming Cheaper Than Amazon

August 19, 2013, 12:21 PM

Problem for Bezos: Mall Becoming Cheaper Than Amazon

By Tom Gara

You might think the biggest challenge for Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is figuring out how to make money running a print newspaper, but here is a risk hitting much closer to home: Brick-and-mortar retail stores are becoming cheaper than AmazonAMZN +1.10%. At least one store, that is. Prices at Bed Bath & BeyondBBBY +1.79% were on average 6.5% less than at Amazon for a basket of 30 items chosen by analysts atBB&TBBT +0.90% for one of their periodic pricing studies comparing the retailers. “We are becoming increasingly concerned Bed Bath & Beyond is sacrificing gross margin in order to drive top-line growth,” BB&T said — that is, increasingly concerned that Bed Bath & Beyond is starting to behave more like Amazon. Read more of this post

New York State Comptroller to Promote Investments in Silicon Alley

AUGUST 20, 2013, 10:17 AM

New York State Comptroller to Promote Investments in Silicon Alley

By MICHAEL J. DE LA MERCED

As New York City continues to promote the rise of Silicon Alley start-ups, the state comptroller’s office is doing its part for the cause. On Tuesday, the office of Thomas P. DiNapoli plans to promote its investments in two technology companies, RebelMouse and CoopKanics, as part of its initiative to invest in New York businesses. (The two transactions were previously disclosed by the companies themselves.) The investments were made as part of the comptroller’s In-State Private Equity Program, which meant to support native New York businesses while also generating hopefully solid returns. Last year, the comptroller’s office boasted that the program over all had yielded an internal rate of return exceeding 30 percent. Read more of this post

New Roamio: New Version of TiVo Lets Users Watch TV Content on Mobile Devices

August 20, 2013, 9:00 p.m. ET

New Roamio: TiVo on the Go

New Version of TiVo Lets Users Watch TV Content on Mobile Devices

WALTER S. MOSSBERG

It is popular to beam video from a mobile device to a TV, but how can you do the opposite? Walt Mossberg reviews the TiVo Roamio which allows you to stream TV and DVR to your iOS device and could be “the holy grail of set-top boxes.” (Photo: TiVo)

Last week, I wrote about the many ways to get Internet video on your TV. Several readers asked how to do the opposite—how to view standard cable TV content, in real time, on a smartphone and tablet. So this week, I’m reviewing a new version of a familiar product that does just that. Read more of this post

Advertisers Can’t Stop Thinking About The Google Glass ‘Pay Per Gaze’ Patent

Advertisers Can’t Stop Thinking About The Google Glass ‘Pay Per Gaze’ Patent

LAURA STAMPLER AUG. 19, 2013, 8:46 AM 2,671

Good morning, AdLand. Here’s what you need to know today: While Google said that it wouldn’t allow ads to be displayed on Google Glass, the tech giant put in a patent for “pay per gaze” technology for ads, which would track how many times a consumer looked at the branded content. And the ad industry can’t stop wondering what this means. Ad Age notes that this technology could be used to measure how people react to ads they view in their surroundings — tracking how dilated pupils get after seeing a particular billboard, for example. Radio ad growth might be stagnant, but digital radio ads grew 16% between Q2 2012 and Q2 2013. Digital marketing company Kenshoo Social released a report saying that users are engaging more frequently with Facebook ads. Apparently there is hope for the banner ad, says Digiday. Michael Kors made a Facebook app that allows users to choose their own adventure. Just as people were starting to quiet down about the Omnicom-Publicis merger, Atlanta-based ad agency Ames Scullin O’Haire made a video that parodies the event. Pizza Hut’s creative review rages on. Mullen, mcgarrybowen, Havas Worldwide, and current shop The Martin Agency are all in the running.  Ad Age identifies the women to watch in China.

AUGUST 20, 2013, 3:38 PM

How Pay-Per-Gaze Advertising Could Work With Google Glass

By NICK BILTON and CLAIRE CAIN MILLER

Google wants to see what you see. And then, of course, make money from those images. The company was recently awarded a patent that puts forth an idea for pay-per-gaze advertising — a way in which people interacting with ads in the real world could be analyzed in the digital world. Read more of this post

Facebook Leads an Effort to Lower Barriers to Internet Access

August 20, 2013

Facebook Leads an Effort to Lower Barriers to Internet Access

By VINDU GOEL

MENLO PARK, Calif. — About one of every seven people in the world uses Facebook. Now, Mark Zuckerberg, its co-founder and chief executive, wants to make a play for the rest — including the four billion or so who lack Internet access.

On Wednesday, Facebook plans to announce an effort aimed at drastically cutting the cost of delivering basic Internet services on mobile phones, particularly in developing countries, where Facebook and other tech companies need to find new users. Half a dozen of the world’s tech giants, including Samsung, Nokia, Qualcomm and Ericsson, have agreed to work with the company as partners on the initiative, which they call Internet.org. Read more of this post

Epic and Medium step together into longform experiment

Epic and Medium step together into longform experiment

BY HAMISH MCKENZIE 
ON AUGUST 20, 2013

On two occasions, Joshua Davis spent seven years working on a story that lived a brief, bright life in the pages of a glossy magazine, only to be ultimately confined to a dark corner of the Internet. A national magazine will go to great lengths to give a longform story first-class treatment. Designers and editors shine that thing up until it’s a glistening specimen of journalism. But the paper version of the product only get serious attention for the four weeks that the magazine sits on a newstand. Chances are high that the story will then go on to live a neglected digital life. Read more of this post

Birthday Greetings, Now Sent by Text and Twitter; Hallmark’s card sales dropped to 5 billion cards a year in 2012, down from 6 billion in 2011. American Greerings went private this year after rapid declines in sales

AUGUST 20, 2013, 9:00 AM

Birthday Greetings, Now Sent by Text and Twitter

By NICK BILTON

On my birthday, I received a slew of lovely birthday greetings.

By early morning I had stacked up 93 birthday wishes on Facebook — one even included a $5 Starbucks gift card! About 20 strangers digitally congratulated me on Google Plus. A dozen people chirped “happy birthday” to me on Twitter. Fifteen friends and family members sent me emoji-filled birthday wishes over text message. Eight over e-mail. Two voicemails. And one person yelled Happy Birthday on SnapChat. Read more of this post

Big Data poses questions for investors: How should investors in companies operating in a hyped-up technology field feel?

How should investors in companies operating in a hyped-up technology field feel?

20 August 13 10:15, Shmulik Shelach

Over-enthusiasm about a technology trend is part of the lifestyle of the enterprise computing world. The reason is clear: $2.2 trillion will be spent this year along the enterprise computing food chain, from PC components through hardware for infrastructures at server farms worldwide. This is big money, and any fluctuation in a technology trend can result in vendors of new solutions to painful problems of IT systems managers winning big budgets. Read more of this post

Big Box retail is watching you; New technology is allowing brick-and-mortar stores to invade their shoppers’ Levis for personal information like never before.

Big Box retail is watching you

August 20, 2013: 10:51 AM ET

New technology is allowing brick-and-mortar stores to invade their shoppers’ Levis for personal information like never before.

By Ethan Rouen

FORTUNE — Just about everyone knows that feeling of violation when a company digs deeper into your pocket than you want, but new technology is allowing brick-and-mortar stores to invade their shoppers’ Levis for personal information like never before. With the ability to track customer cell phones, retailers have unprecedented access to shoppers’ habits, from how frequently a customer visits a store to how long he stands at a window display before deciding whether or not to enter the shop. Read more of this post

Peter Chou – Is he HTC’s savior or obstacle to revival?

Peter Chou – Is he HTC’s savior or obstacle to revival?

5:09pm EDT

By Jeremy Wagstaff and Clare Jim

SINGAPORE/TAIPEI (Reuters) – Now in his tenth year as CEO of HTC Corp, Peter Chou is lauded as the architect of the Taiwanese firm’s award-winning smartphones. But as the company’s fortunes have dived, some insiders say he’s now an obstacle to any revival.

Rocked by internal feuding and executive exits, and positioned at the high-end of a smartphone market that is close to saturation, HTC has seen its market share slump to below 5 percent from around a quarter five years ago; its stock price is at 8-year lows, and it has warned it could make a first operating loss this quarter. Read more of this post

Malaysian price-comparison startup iMoney is taking over Asia one country at a time, and its next target is Thailand

iMoney is taking over Asia one country at a time, and its next target is Thailand

August 20, 2013

by Saiyai Sakawee

iMoney, a Malaysian startup, is a free online personal finance platform that helps users make comparisons between loans, credit cards, savings, and other banking services. It aims to make these complex products simpler and easier to choose between, and promises users a neutral, unbiased viewpoint from which to judge different banks’ services. In June, it raised funds from Asia Venture Group (AVG). Since then, it has expanded beyond Malaysia to five other countries; Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Hongkong, and Indonesia. According to Lee Ching Wei, iMoney’s co-founder and group CEO, these expansions all happened within a week. Thailand is the first iMoney office outside of Malaysia Read more of this post

Inside the collapse of ispONE: Near-death episodes and a broken partnership

Andrew Heathcote Rich Lists editor

Inside the collapse of ispONE: Near-death episodes and a broken partnership

Published 20 August 2013 11:41, Updated 20 August 2013 15:56

Zac Swindells (left) and Chris Mochings of ispONE. The two founders started their business in a bar, but Mochings left the business late last year. Photo: Arsineh Houspian

For a business that had its genesis in a barroom argument, it may not be surprising that ispONE’s remarkable run has come to an ugly end. The Melbourne-based business built a lucrative niche as a wholesaler of mobile and internet services. It was a remarkable success story and emblematic of the opportunities on offer in the fast-growing telco sector. ispONE was turning over as much as $55 million last year before trouble struck. The administration of the business will have serious ramifications for its owners, retailers like fellow BRW Young Rich list member Ruslan Kogan, and the 280,000 customers who rely on its services. Like many high achieving businesses, ispONE had an inauspicious start. It was founded in 2002 when Zac Swindells and Chris Monching met at a Melbourne bar. The story goes that a minor altercation followed after one was caught adding drinks to the other’s bar tab. Read more of this post

Traveling the lonely planet: the end of guide book publishing

Traveling the lonely planet: the end of guide book publishing

BY ADAM L. PENENBERG 
ON AUGUST 19, 2013

Most parents keep secrets from their young children. For some, it could be drugs, a period of alcohol-induced debauchery, the summer before college when Mom crammed all of her worldly possessions into a backpack and followed the Grateful Dead on tour. Or maybe Dad joined a cult or voted for Ross Perot. Twice.

Whatever it is, most parents live by the credo: Do what I say, not what I do (or have done). It’s not that we strive to be dishonest. We’re simply trying to protect our children from potential harm. Of course, how do you tell your kids not to do something you did yourself, and not be a complete hypocrite? It’s something my wife and I have discussed, and we agree that at some point I’m going to have to tell my two young daughters the truth. Read more of this post

Tesla Says Model S Electric Sedan Receives Top U.S. Crash Rating

Tesla Says Model S Electric Sedan Receives Top U.S. Crash Rating

Tesla Motors Inc. (TSLA), the electric-car maker led by billionaire Elon Musk, said its flagship Model S sedan received the highest crash test ratings of any car tested by U.S. regulators.

The battery-powered vehicle, with a base price of about $70,000, got five-star ratings in every safety and crash category set by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Palo Alto, California-based company said in a statement. The car has the “lowest likelihood of injury to occupants” and exceeds the performance of sport-utility vehicles and minivans, Tesla said late yesterday. Read more of this post

Same-Day Delivery? Not So Fast; How traditional retailers can leverage their bricks-and-mortar stores to outshine their online competitors

August 19, 2013

Same-Day Delivery? Not So Fast

How traditional retailers can leverage their bricks-and-mortar stores to outshine their online competitors.

by Curt Mueller, Andrew Schmahl, and Andrew Tipping

Offering customers free same-day delivery has long been an elusive goal for e-tailers. Their motivation is simple: If e-tailers can give customers the near-instant gratification of buying in a store, they can eliminate one of the most powerful advantages held by their bricks-and-mortar competitors. Alas, costs and complexity have largely kept same-day delivery (defined here as delivery between sunup and sundown on a weekday) out of reach and, at best, a niche offering. Read more of this post

Pocket Shop, a start-up website, has launched the ultimate in fast grocery deliveries – promising to have bread, eggs and milk in the hands of London customers less than an hour after they click ‘send’

August 18, 2013 1:52 pm

Pocket Shop launches speedy London delivery

By Jonathan Moules, Enterprise Correspondent

Pocket Shop, a start-up website, has launched the ultimate in fast grocery deliveries – promising to have bread, eggs and milk in the hands of London customers less than an hour after they click ‘send’. Its system works by allocating online orders to one of Pocket Shop’s team of 20 trained buyers around the capital, using a GPS-based algorithm similar to those employed by taxi-ordering smartphone apps. Read more of this post

Overstock Will Match Amazon Book Prices Permanently

Aug 19, 2013

Overstock Will Match Amazon Book Prices Permanently

By Greg Bensinger

Overstock.com said it will make permanent a strategy to keep its book prices on a par withAmazon.comAMZN +0.26%’s. The Salt Lake City-based company will match Amazon’s prices on all of its book inventory, said Chief Executive Patrick Byrne. Overstock hired a firm to trawl Amazon’s site once daily to ensure the prices match. “We think with the rise in sales volume, we can extract better pricing from publishers” at wholesale, said Byrne. “Publishers do want to see more competition for Amazon.” Overstock had offered to beat by 10% Amazon’s prices for a limited time in July. Byrne said that promotion cost it $11,000 daily in revenue from book sales. He estimated that the promotion would have cost Amazon between $500 million and $1 billion in lost revenue annually as it cut prices on its books to keep up. An Amazon spokeswoman didn’t respond to a request for comment. Byrne said that he believed Amazon’s software checks Overstock’s site about three times per day, so during a given day some book prices may be different. Sweetening the price matching deal, Overstock will give 15% rebates on book purchases to members of its $20-annual free-shipping loyalty club. The rebates are good for future Overstock purchases, Byrne said.

Interpublic Teams Up With TV Companies to Build Automated Ad-Buying System

Updated August 19, 2013, 7:34 p.m. ET

Interpublic Teams Up With TV Companies to Build Automated Ad-Buying System

SUZANNE VRANICA

When it comes to television ad sales, Madison Avenue has barely moved since the “Mad Men” days of the 1960s, with deals struck over the phone, via fax and, in a nod to modern day, email. But the industry appears to be moving slowly toward the digital age.

Ad giant Interpublic Group of Cos IPG -0.44% . is teaming up with TV and radio companies, including A&E Networks, Clear Channel, Tribune Co. TRBAA -0.96% andCablevision Systems Corp., CVC -3.36% to build and test an automated ad-buying system for television and radio ads, the companies say. Read more of this post

How Not to Stay on Top: In four short years, BlackBerry went from dominance to being an also-ran

August 19, 2013

How Not to Stay on Top

By JOE NOCERA

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the dominant computing device used in corporate America was a word processor made by Wang Laboratories. The company’s founder and chief executive was An Wang, a brilliant Chinese immigrant who was widely hailed as a visionary entrepreneur and philanthropist.

At Wang’s peak, some 80 percent of the top 2,000 corporations used the company’s word processors, according to Bloomberg Businessweek. The company’s rise was so heady that Wang used to keep a chart in his desk that showed when he expected to overtake the mighty I.B.M. — sometime in the mid-1990s. Read more of this post

E-Retailers Depend on the Kindness of Consumers; Online retailers can encourage word-of-mouth advertising by appealing to consumers’ benevolence.

Posted: August 15, 2013

Matt Palmquist

E-Retailers Depend on the Kindness of Consumers

Want to get online consumers to spread the word about your e-commerce site? Dial back on extrinsic rewards like mileage points or gift certificates, and start appealing to consumers’ desire to do good and help their fellow shoppers.

Those are the results of a new study that examined how companies can elicit electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) to build customer loyalty. Previous studies have largely focused on how reading the complaints or compliments of other customers can affect the attitudes of visitors to a site, but this paper looks at e-WOM from the perspective of the people making the comments. Read more of this post

Elephant in the Room to Weigh on Growth for Oracle, Teradata

August 18, 2013, 9:43 p.m. ET

Elephant in the Room to Weigh on Growth for Oracle, Teradata

ROLFE WINKLER

What do you get when you cross Google GOOG +1.02% with a toy elephant? A threat to sales growth for some big technology companies, and a new breed of promising IPO candidates.

In developing its powerful search engine, Google cracked one of the toughest “big data” nuts: figuring out how to make a copy of the Internet, digest what it means, and then use that information to answer a seemingly infinite number of user questions in nanoseconds. A decade later, Google’s innovations have spawned new open-source projects such as Hadoop—named after a toy elephant belonging to the son of one of its creators. Read more of this post

Will mobile kill the TV star? Mobile Video Consumption Is Increasing Dramatically In China

China App Index: Will mobile kill the TV star? [July 2013]

by WandouLabs on Aug 20, 2013

China is world’s largest smartphone market, by far. But it’s a black hole for app data.
Here at Wandoujia, China’s leading Android app store, we decided to change that.
The top trend for July 2013? Chinese are flocking to video apps. Find out what’s driving this trend and what will happen to China’s next gen TV stars.

Mobile Video Consumption Is Increasing Dramatically In China

CATHERINE SHU

posted yesterday

Android users in China are becoming increasingly avid consumers of mobile video, according to a new report fromWandoujia , one of China’s largest third-party Android app stores with over 200 million users. This underscores the importance of online video for Internet companies as consumers’ viewing habits shift to online content. In China, there have been several high profile mergers and acquisitions in the online video space within the last 18 months. In 2012, Youku-Tudou created what was then the country’s largest online video platform until Baidu took that title by merging its online video service, iQiyi, with PPS, which it purchased earlier this year for $370 million. In recent weeks, rumors have emerged that Alibaba is negotiating the purchase of PPTV, though the video sharing site has repeatedly denied the rumors. Read more of this post

Most Chinese 3D printing companies are struggling to survive

3D printing technology deemed unprofitable in China

Staff Reporter

2013-08-20

The hype surrounding 3D printing technology has created market uncertainty in China as unauthorized copies of Western printers have flooded the market. The industry’s progress is being hampered by is its unclear positioning and low product quality. As a result, the Shanghai-based National Business Daily found that most domestic 3D printing companies were struggling to survive. Read more of this post

Life after fame: Renren, once “China’s Facebook”, tries and tries again to remain relevant

Life after fame: Renren, once “China’s Facebook”, tries and tries again to remain relevant

August 19, 2013

by Ken Chester

Every so often I open up Gmail’s spam folder to see if anything important has been misdirected there. Typically, I find at least one notification email from Renren (NYSE:RENN), the faded-out ‘Facebook of China’, coming from another unknown URL among its apparent suite of domains. Last year, there were Renren notifications coming from xiaonei-inc.com (a defunct URL from its first name when it was a campus-oriented social network; but xiaonei.com still redirects to renren.com). Then, this April, I began receiving Renren notification emails from its Tongxueshuo domain, which hosts an under-publicized student-focused mobile messaging app. Read more of this post

Co-developed by State-owned China Film Group Corp and GDC, China Giant Screen hasbecome a major rival of IMAX in China and cost only about half as much as IMAX

IMAX sues former employee for passing secrets to rivals in China

Staff Reporter

2013-08-21

Montreal-based IMAX has filed a lawsuit against a former company employee for stealing trade secrets and handing them to Chinese film companies in direct competition with them in China. IMAX claimed in a high court in Los Angeles that Gary Tsui had stolen big-screen trade secrets and provided them to film companies in China, including a company called China Film Giant Screen (CFGS), where Tsui had previously worked as a chief engineer. CFGS runs big-screen businesses along with GDC Technology in China and the two together have been offering competitive pricing against IMAX, resulting in huge losses for the Canadian firm. IMAX has sued GDC Technology and Tsui for their illegal exploitation of its large-format digital theater projection system and film conversion technologies. Read more of this post

ZopNow Takes a Crack at Online Grocery in India

ZopNow Takes a Crack at Online Grocery

by Rohin Dharmakumar | Aug 20, 2013

Few companies have managed to crack the online grocery challenge—a hyperlocal business. Can Bangalore’s Zopnow break the jinx? “Don’t forget to get me a 2-kilo pack of Baba Ramdev’s detergent powder,” said the voice on the other end of the phone to Bal Krishn Birla. Birla, as he is known to most people in Bangalore’s closely-knit startup ecosystem, is a jovial 40-year-old who defies classification by virtue of being an IIT graduate, former CTO at online classifieds company Asklaila, one-time restaurant owner, brainchild behind a 20,000-member-strong global community of old Hindi music aficionados and the source of an unending supply of “PJs” of dubious antecedents. Read more of this post

Reinvent the Business Model, Not Journalism

Reinvent the Business Model, Not Journalism

By Anatole Kaletsky on 12:51 pm August 19, 2013.
It is now more than a week since Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, announced that he was buying the Washington Post, in what could be the most exciting case of convergence between the new media and the old since the merger of AOL with Time Warner.

But how might Bezos relaunch this flagship of US journalism? And what could his ownership of the Post mean for news businesses around the world? Read more of this post

Mobile-Payment Startups No Match for PayPal

Mobile-Payment Startups No Match for PayPal: Tech

The market for tools that help consumers buy goods using mobile phones is getting crowded, inundating small businesses, putting off venture capitalists and making it hard for many payment startups to make a buck.

Just ask Kristy Fassio, owner of a Fit4Mom exercise franchise near Seattle. She’s getting bombarded with pitches from mobile and web-payment companies pledging to provide low-cost, easy ways for her to accept payments for the mom-focused workout classes she teaches. Some don’t even charge fees. Read more of this post