Evernote’s Biggest Rival in China – Netease’s Youdao YunBiJi – is Way Ahead With 15 Million Users

Evernote’s Biggest Rival in China is Way Ahead With 15 Million Users

July 1, 2013

by Steven Millward

We know that Evernote has four million users in China right now, but the nation is also home to a few note sync clones that have had more time to gain traction before Evernote properly launched in China in May 2012. Evernote’s biggest rival in China is Netease’s (NASDAQ:NTES) Youdao YunBiJi which, in new figures revealed last week, has risen to 15 million users. Read more of this post

DuckDuckGo, a search engine that eschews tracking, sees traffic soar

DuckDuckGo sees user base jump, fueled by tracking concerns

By Hayley Tsukayama, Published: July 1

Privacy worries about tracking across the Web have fueled a tremendous jump in the number of users at DuckDuckGo, a smaller search engine that promises never to track its users. The flood started almost the moment stories broke detailing the U.S. National Security Agency’s PRISM surveillance program, said Gabriel Weinberg, the creator and chief executive of the search engine.

“We’re up about 90 percent from a few weeks ago,” Weinberg said in an interview with The Washington Post. The site is now regularly logging at least 3 million searches a day, according to its traffic page. While that doesn’t come remotely close to challenging Google, Weinberg said that he thinks DuckDuckGo’s growth in recent weeks shows that there is a population of Internet users looking for alternatives to safeguard their privacy. Read more of this post

TSMC Shakes Up Apple-Samsung Partnership

July 1, 2013, 3:49 AM

TSMC Shakes Up Apple-Samsung Partnership

By Lorraine Luk and Min-Jeong Lee

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. 2330.TW -2.70% has pulled off its biggest coup yet: winning over Apple AAPL +0.69% Inc. as a chip client and, in the process, giving heavyweight rival Samsung Electronics Co. 005930.SE -1.19% a poke in the eye.

It’s no surprise that Apple would seek to move away from Samsung as their competition in the smartphone market becomes more heated.  But TSMC may have to wait a while to feel the full benefit of Apple’s switch, analysts say. For the next year, at least, Samsung will still be supplying chips to Apple. Read more of this post

Meet Sleepbot, the fast-growing sleep tracking app with a over a million users; it’s turned Jane Zhu’s side project into a full-time job

Meet Sleepbot, the fast-growing sleep tracking app with a over a million users

BY ERIN GRIFFITH 
ON JUNE 28, 2013

Sleepbot started out as a joke. Jane Zhu and her friends built an Android app in college as a way to share how little they’d slept during exam week with each other. It was just a side project that they didn’t expect to go anywhere.

That is, until the app got hundreds of downloads. And then the emails came rolling in — people wrote to say it had changed their lives. “I was like, ‘How could a sleep log change your life?’” Zhu jokes. “We didn’t see that there was a market for tracking your sleep.” Read more of this post

Delivery Hero currently generates more than $400 million in annual turnover, partnering with local restaurants to deliver millions of monthly orders across the 14 international markets where it operates

Delivery Hero Tops Up Series D With $30M As Its Global Take-Out Service Heads For Profit

NATASHA LOMAS

posted 51 mins ago

Relies on rapid growth through acquisitions: Fabian Siegel, co-head of the Berlin delivery service broker Lieferheld

While others in the online food delivery space stumble, Delivery Hero is helping itself to some fresh Series D funding today: the online take-out ordering service has announced $30 million in additional Series D funding, led  by Phenomen Ventures with support from existing investors. The follow-on funding comes almost a year after it closed a $50 million Series D led by Kite Ventures.

Delivery Hero, which is headquartered in Berlin and was founded in October 2010 by startup factory Team Europe, said it is bringing more international investors on board after confirming it will reach profitability this year. Read more of this post

Over 40 years, John C. Malone has made his name through countless displays of shrewd deal-making that transformed the telecommunications industry

JUNE 30, 2013, 8:54 PM

Talk of Mergers Stirs the Big Players in Cable TV

By MICHAEL J. DE LA MERCED and BRIAN STELTER

Over 40 years, John C. Malone has made his name through countless displays of shrewd deal-making that transformed the telecommunications industry. Now Mr. Malone, the chairman of Liberty Media, appears to be trying to drum up a new round of consolidation in the sector where he first made his fortune.

This time, he is weighing a deal for Time Warner Cable, according to people briefed on the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly. In this deal, Charter Communications, a cable operator in which Liberty owns a 27 percent stake, would buy Time Warner Cable. Should he reach a deal, he will most likely use the combined company to roll up other cable operators, upending a status quo dominated by giants like Comcast. Read more of this post

Detroit, Embracing New Auto Technologies, Seeks App Builders

June 30, 2013

Detroit, Embracing New Auto Technologies, Seeks App Builders

By JACLYN TROP

DETROIT — After graduating from the University of Michigan in 1998, Brian Mulloy followed the path of many of his classmates, fleeing his home state for a job in a bustling city. But after 10 years of working in technology start-ups in San Francisco, he has returned as founder of a company in Detroit’s budding technology sector.

Mr. Mulloy is part of a group of workers that Detroit is suddenly hungry for — software developers and information technology specialists who can create applications for the next generation of connected vehicles. Read more of this post

What kind of problem does Oracle have exactly? The secular shift to cloud computing may mark a permanent move away from the high-margin business model that Oracle built its fortunes on (installing and maintaining suites of software) to the more utility-like, pay-as-you-go service model of most cloud-software sellers.

What kind of problem does Oracle have exactly?

June 28, 2013: 10:52 AM ET

Concern that the headwinds hitting Oracle are not cyclical but secular are growing.

By Kevin Kelleher, contributor

FORTUNE — What do you do when you are the best company in your industry, but your industry is mired in a slump of mediocre performance? That’s the dilemma faced by Oracle (ORCL), the enterprise software giant that has long been the most feared player in the competitive market for business software. Last week, Oracle reported that revenue grew to $37.2 billion in its fiscal year ended May 31, 2013. That was up from $37.1 billion in the previous fiscal year. Oracle is still growing, but just barely.

Read more of this post

Samsung’s $25 Billion Slide In Market Cap Equivalent of Sony as S4 Sales Disappoint

Samsung Slides Equivalent of Sony as S4 Sales Disappoint

Samsung Electronics Co. (005930) lost $25.3 billion in market capitalization last month, more than the value of competitor Sony Corp., as sales of its flagship Galaxy S4 smartphone fell short of investor expectations.

Since the handset was released April 26, the company that sells nearly one of every three mobile phones has plunged 9.7 percent as JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley lowered sales forecasts and cut profit estimates. Fifteen analysts cut second-quarter net income estimates for Samsung in June, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The company declined to comment on its share price and S4 sales. Read more of this post

Out of the 1.2 million taxi drivers in China, there are about 67,000 taxi drivers using taxi-finder app Didi Dache

I Lost My Virginity to a Didi Dache Taxi Driver That Cold, Rainy Night

June 28, 2013

by Vanessa Tan

The weather in Beijing has been gloomy of late, and just when I was queuing up to buy some cheap egg tarts along Houhai for friends visiting Beijing, it started pouring with rain and we had to head home. Because of the rain, it was a battle to find a spare taxi along that busy street. In a bid to show off that I’m a tech-savvy chick, I whipped out my phone and fired up an app I could use: Didi Dache (嘀嘀打车).

Read more of this post

India’s NewsHunt App Nearly Outflips Flipboard, Hits 10 Billion Page-Views

India’s NewsHunt App Nearly Outflips Flipboard, Hits 10 Billion Page-Views

June 28, 2013

by Steven Millward0

India’s top homegrown news reader app has hit 10 billion page-views, the startup revealed today.NewsHunt was launched in June 2009 and hit the five billion milestone last October. Available on iOS, Android, Nokia, legacy BlackBerry, and generic JAVA phones, NewsHunt is also very inclusive in terms of languages and content, supporting 99 newspapers in 11 languages. All of that means NewsHunt has nearly outflipped Flipboard in terms of the number of stories read within the app. Well, Flipboard is currently seeing three billion new flips per month, which is a massive number the Indian startup app cannot yet surpass. But it’s admirably close, adding just under one billion each month. NewsHunt, explains the NextBigWhat blog today, supports the country’s top papers, such as The Hinduand India Express, and that has helped to attract about 6.5 million monthly active users. It also supports a lot of regional newspapers in their respective languages, and that’s proving a particularly big draw for users around the country. The Indian startup explains that each user spends about 121 minutes per month on NewsHunt, and claims that’s greater than the monthly average time spent inside Flipboard (86 minutes).

Why Oracle And Salesforce, Once Bitter Rivals, Are Now On Cloud Nine

Why Oracle And Salesforce, Once Bitter Rivals, Are Now On Cloud Nine

RIP EMPSON, INGRID LUNDEN

posted 11 hours ago

Marc Benioff and Larry Ellison, the CEOs of two of the more powerful enterprise companies in the world — Salesforce.com and Oracle — are not known to be the chummiest of pals. Before this week’s sudden peaceful truce, which will see the two companies integrate their cloud services, the only clouds that connected the two were dark and frowny ones. For years, the two have pitted themselves and their companies against each other in brinkmanship-style competition, while chasing similar acquisitions and similar strategies just to stay within sight of each other.
Read more of this post

Why does everyone except Google want to build a reader? In the old days, you could just go to the New York Times and get all your news. The news is all distributed now, to a thousand different places

Why does everyone except Google want to build a reader?

by Om Malik

JUN. 24, 2013 – 12:09 PM PDT

SUMMARY:

With Google Reader about to be killed, — why is everyone getting on the “news reader bandwagon? What do Feedly, Digg, AOL, Facebook and LinkedIn know that Google doesn’t? I have been baffled by Google’s decision in March to euthanize the Google Reader instead of trying to reinvent it for the mobile/tablet age and use its strong (if small) community of users to build a new news reading experience. It is ironic because everyone seems to be getting into the reader business. Digg. Feedly. AOL. Even Facebook thinks it can be a player in the news reader game. The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that this rumored reader is: Read more of this post

As audiobooks flourish, thanks in part to digital technologies, the industry has given many aspiring actors a steady paycheck. “A fan once said to me that my narration was like ‘a modern version of sitting around a campfire listening to tribal elders’ ”

June 29, 2013

Actors Today Don’t Just Read for the Part. Reading IS the Part.

By LESLIE KAUFMAN

Gabra Zackman is a new kind of acting star: she is heard, but unheard-of.

Ms. Zackman had classical training through the Shakespeare Theater of Washington, has worked in regional theaters for the last two decades and has had a sprinkling of appearances on television shows like “Law and Order.” Those performances, however, have brought neither fame nor fortune.

Instead, like a growing number of actors, she has found steady employment as a reader in the booming world of audiobooks. Read more of this post

It Took BlackBerry Two Years To Admit Its PlayBook Tablet Is A Total Dud

It Took BlackBerry Two Years To Admit Its PlayBook Tablet Is A Total Dud

STEVE KOVACH JUN. 28, 2013, 8:47 AM 2,478 7

BlackBerry’s tablet, the PlayBook, will not receive an upgrade to the company’s new mobile operating system BlackBerry 10, CEO Thorsten Heins said this morning during a call with analysts and investors. The news is an admission that the PlayBook is a dud. BlackBerry only shipped “approximately” 100,000 PlayBook tablets last quarter, the company said in its earnings report this morning. It did not say how many of those tablets were actually sold. When BlackBerry introduced BlackBerry 10 to the world earlier this year, it said an update for the PlayBook was on the way. But it’s hit several delays, and Heins said today he wasn’t happy with how the OS was working in the tablet form factor. So he killed it. The PlayBook launched more than two years ago to terrible reviews. BlackBerry attempted to address concerns with software updates, but the tablet still hasn’t sold very well. The fact that BlackBerry didn’t introduce new tablet hardware in that timeframe also demonstrated there wasn’t much demand for PlayBook tablets. The news is also shows Heins’ feelings about the tablet form factor. In a recent interview, Heins said he doesn’t believe tablets will be around in five years. Instead, he thinks people will use a smartphone for everything. BlackBerry reported devastating earnings today. It lost $85 million last quarter and its stock is tanking.

Stealth Wear Aims to Make a Tech Statement; athletic wear that can monitor a player’s vital signs and protect the privacy of its owner from Google Glass

June 29, 2013

Stealth Wear Aims to Make a Tech Statement

By JENNA WORTHAM

THE term “stealth wear” sounded cool, if a bit extreme, when I first heard it early this year. It’s a catchy description for clothing and accessories designed to protect the wearer from detection and surveillance. I was amused. It seemed like an updated version of a tinfoil hat, albeit a stylish one.

Fast-forward a few months. Flying surveillance cameras, also known as drones, are increasingly in the news. So are advances in facial-recognition technology. And wearable devices like Google Glass — which can be used to take photographs and videos and upload them to the Internet within seconds — are adding to the fervor. Then there are the disclosures of Edward Snowden, the fugitive former government contractor, about clandestine government surveillance. Read more of this post

After Fighting Mobile Trend, Intel Now Embraces It

JUNE 29, 2013, 11:48 AM

After Fighting Mobile Trend, Intel Now Embraces It

By VINDU GOEL

Intel, which became a global behemoth by making the chips that drive most of the world’s desktop computers and laptops, missed the mobile revolution. In tablets and smartphones, the company is a bit player.

That’s hardly news to anyone who follows technology. But it was still a bit of shock to hear the company’s new chief executive, Brian Krzanich, acknowledge that the company actively fought what everyone else could see was an inevitable shift toward smaller, more portable computing devices. Read more of this post

Murdoch splits empire into two firms

Published: Saturday June 29, 2013 MYT 9:18:00 PM

Murdoch splits empire into two firms

NEW YORK: Rupert Murdoch split his corporate empire into two parts under a long-promised plan to “unlock value” by separating high-flying entertainment operations from struggling publishing activities.

The split became effective at the close of trade in New York Friday, creating a new group called 21st Century Fox while retaining the nameNews Corp for the publishing group. Murdoch remains in charge of both. Read more of this post

Ascending to the cloud: The rise of cloud computing is forcing old adversaries Oracle and Salesforce to work together

Ascending to the cloud: The rise of cloud computing is forcing old adversaries to work together

Jun 29th 2013 | SAN FRANCISCO |From the print edition

FOR years they loathed one another, rarely missing an opportunity to pick a fight. Their rows, full of sarcasm and sniping, occasionally hit the headlines. Then they started meeting discreetly every now and again—and ultimately realised just how badly they needed each other. Now, to the surprise of many, they have told the world about how they were really made to be together after all.

This is the backdrop to events that have caused a stir this week in the world of corporate computing. On June 24th Oracle and Microsoft announced plans to work closely together in the “cloud”—the business of delivering software and services over the internet. The following day Oracle unveiled another partnership, this time with Salesforce.com, a pioneer of cloud-based services such as hosting businesses’ marketing and customer-relations systems. The day after that, Oracle announced yet another alliance, with NetSuite, another provider of cloud-based business software. Oracle also unveiled a new, cloud-compatible version of its database software. Read more of this post

Intel’s new CEO focused on mobile chips, cautious on TV

Intel’s new CEO focused on mobile chips, cautious on TV

4:23pm EDT

By Noel Randewich

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Intel Corp’s new CEO said on Friday he would speed up the rollout of chips for smartphones, tablets and wearable devices as consumers move away from personal computers. Brian Krzanich, an Intel manufacturing guru who took over as chief executive officer in May, also took a cautious tone about the top chipmaker’s planned foray into television and said Intel continues to look at the business model.

Read more of this post

Apple Finds It Difficult to Divorce Samsung

June 28, 2013, 7:31 p.m. ET

Apple Finds It Difficult to Divorce Samsung

JESSICA E. LESSIN, LORRAINE LUK and JURO OSAWA

Apple AAPL +0.70% is finding that breaking up with Samsung 005930.SE +0.22% is hard to do.

For evidence, look no further than Apple Inc.’s effort to find a company other than ferocious rival Samsung Electronics Co. to make the sophisticated chip brains used in Apple’s iPads and iPhones. This month, after years of technical delays, Apple finally signed a deal with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. 2330.TW +6.22% to make some of the chips starting in 2014, according to a TSMC executive. The process had been beset by glitches preventing the chips from meeting Apple’s speed and power standards, TSMC officials said. Read more of this post

Why Is Apple Still Wrangling Over E-Books?

Updated June 28, 2013, 6:37 p.m. ET

Why Is Apple Still Wrangling Over E-Books?

JESSICA E. LESSIN

A question hangs over Apple Inc.’s AAPL +0.70% e-books trial: Why is Apple fighting the U.S. Department of Justice when the book publishers the agency also sued chose to settle? The answer lies in part in what’s at stake. Apple says it is fighting the high-profile case, now in the hands of a federal judge, on the principle it did nothing wrong. But the company is defending a lot more than its tiny digital-books business. A win would help Apple maintain negotiating clout with media companies, which are searching for new ways to make money in markets shifting online. A loss could hamper its ability to compete with rivals like Amazon.com Inc. AMZN +0.05% to land increasingly important media deals on favorable terms.

Read more of this post

Amazon’s Next Move: Fine Art

June 28, 2013, 2:28 p.m. ET

Amazon’s Next Move: Fine Art

GREG BENSINGER

Moving into more upscale markets, Amazon.com Inc. AMZN +0.05% is quietly laying plans to sell high-end art. The online retail giant is planning to open a new section on its site as soon as July where it will offer one-of-a-kind paintings, prints and other fine art, according to interviews with a dozen gallery owners. Amazon is set to debut the site with works from roughly 100 small galleries across the U.S., say gallery owners briefed on Amazon’s plans. In recent weeks, the Seattle company has held cocktail receptions in its hometown, San Francisco, New York and other cities to invite galleries to take part in the new program. Read more of this post

Chinese mobile phone company Xiaomi has a bigger valuation than BlackBerry at $9 billion

Chinese mobile phone company Xiaomi has a bigger valuation than BlackBerry

By Gina Chon and Lily Kuo 4 hours ago

Chinese mobile phone company Xiaomi Corp is getting a valuation of at least $9 billion in the private market, Quartz has learned from investors and potential investors who have assessed the company. That figure—more than double the $4 billion valuation it had a year ago in a fundraising round—makes Xiaomi one of the fastest growing Chinese startups and puts it on track to becoming one of the largest Chinese technology companies. Read more of this post

Cracks begin to emerge in Iconic model, the Australian online retailer model by the German Samwer brothers

Cracks begin to emerge in Iconic model

June 28, 2013 – 3:59PM

Elizabeth Knight

Mention the name The Iconic to Myer boss Bernie Brookes or David Jones chief Paul Zahra, or Gerry Harvey, and you won’t elicit a pleasant response. The online retailer that competes on service and delivery rather than price has become the scourge of both the bricks and mortar retailers and even its online-only competitors. In true entrepreneurial style this business exploded into the Australian market in late 2011, heralding a new level of aggression in retail strategy. It’s a fast and furious business, that takes no prisoners and litters the industry with casualties.

Read more of this post

Textbook publisher Cengage, formerly Thomson Learning, may file for bankruptcy protection soon; Cengage has struggled in recent times as customers shift more to Internet study materials on smartphones and tablets and state and local govt

Cengage Learning may file for bankruptcy protection soon: WSJ

Thu, Jun 27 2013

(Reuters) – Textbook publisher Cengage Learning Acquisitions Inc may file for bankruptcy protection in the coming days, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter. The publisher, which is owned by British investment firm Apax Partners, is currently negotiating a prearranged bankruptcy restructuring with senior creditors and plans to seek Chapter 11 court protection as early as July 5, the Journal said. Cengage has struggled in recent times as customers shift more to Internet study materials on smartphones and tablets and state and local governments reduce spending on school books. (r.reuters.com/sud39t) Read more of this post