Immigrants from the future: Robots offer a unique insight into what people want from technology. That makes their progress peculiarly fascinating

Immigrants from the future: Robots offer a unique insight into what people want from technology. That makes their progress peculiarly fascinating, says Oliver Morton

Mar 29th 2014 | From the print edition

SCHAFT, A BLUE-LIMBED robot, lifts its right foot to the seventh step of the ladder, its left foot to the eighth, and stops; it sways alarmingly in the strong Florida sea breeze. Of the 17 teams competing in the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC), a first-of-its-kind event held at a speedway track near Miami in December 2013, only two others got their robots this high up the ladder. One of those two then took a nasty tumble. Read more of this post

Journalism in America: Digital resurrection; Some moderately good news in the news industry

Journalism in America: Digital resurrection; Some moderately good news in the news industry

Mar 29th 2014 | From the print edition

IN FEBRUARY Vice, a media firm that caters to youngsters who like their news with a dollop of sass and hip-hop, toured the opulent residence of the ousted president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, and posted the video online. “It looks like a weird dictatorship theme park,” the sardonic reporter told the camera. A new report by the Pew Research Centre, a think-tank, finds that a third of Americans now watch news videos online, about as many as say they watch news on cable television. Among those aged 18-29, around half do. Read more of this post

Pricing the surge: The microeconomics of Uber’s attempt to revolutionise taxi markets

Pricing the surge: The microeconomics of Uber’s attempt to revolutionise taxi markets

Mar 29th 2014 | From the print edition

NEW competitors always ruffle a few feathers. The unique thing about Uber, a new taxi-market player, is that it seems to have annoyed some of its customers as much as the incumbent cabbies it threatens. The problem is its “surge pricing”, which can make the cost of Uber rides jump to many times the normal fare at weekends and on holidays. Gouging customers like this, critics reckon, will eventually make them flee, denting Uber’s business. Microeconomics suggests that although Uber’s model does have a flaw, its dynamic pricing should be welcomed. Read more of this post

How Klout, Once Ridiculed For Its Social Rankings, Sold For Hundreds Of Millions Of Dollars

How Klout, Once Ridiculed For Its Social Rankings, Sold For Hundreds Of Millions Of Dollars

ALYSON SHONTELL TECH  MAR. 28, 2014, 12:20 AM

Late at night on Sunday, Feb. 9, Joe Fernandez sat alone in Klout’s 67-person office on 77 Stillman Street in San Franciso. A pile of paperwork lay on his desk.

It was a term sheet from Lithium Technologies. If Fernandez signed it, his startup would be acquired for hundreds of millions of dollars. If he didn’t, Klout would continue to run independently. “The overwhelming pro of staying the course was you remain in control and you chart your own path. That for any entrepreneur means a lot,” he says. Read more of this post

Digital v human: the new debate; ‘The dirty secret of the digital economy is that humans do not know how to fight back’

March 28, 2014 11:37 am

Digital v human: the new debate

By Gillian Tett

‘The dirty secret of the digital economy is that humans do not know how to fight back’

Acouple of years ago Brian Arthur, an academic affiliated with the Palo Alto Research Center, made a startling prediction. In the next two to three decades, western digital networks would end up performing functions equal to the size of the “real” US economy. Or, to put it another way, if you looked at all the work being done by electronic supply chains, robots, communications systems – and the humble bar code – then the digital economy would “surpass the physical economy in size”, Arthur wrote, on the basis of productivity and output calculations. Read more of this post

Video app threatens to shake up greeting cards market

March 28, 2014 3:30 pm

Video app threatens to shake up greeting cards market

By Dalya Alberge

Next Mother’s day, a British-American technology company is hoping consumers will forgo sending traditional cards, and ping a personalised digital greeting to their mother’s smartphone instead. Read more of this post

Google, Facebook, Twitter: Not Enough Dollars to Go Around; Given the size of the ad market, it will be nearly impossible for dot-coms to all grow into their market values

SATURDAY, MARCH 29, 2014

Google, Facebook, Twitter: Not Enough Dollars to Go Around

By JACK HOUGH | MORE ARTICLES BY AUTHOR

Given the size of the ad market, it will be nearly impossible for dot-coms to all grow into their market values.

Google, Facebook, Twitter, and a slew of other high-flying dot-coms are headed for a pie problem. Viewed individually, each seems to have endless potential to turn popular, free services into more revenue by grabbing a larger slice of the online advertising pie. But as a whole, online ad spending is growing at a fairly predictable pace, and won’t be large enough anytime soon to justify all of the high-flying valuations on dot-com shares. Read more of this post

Media: Old players may continue to rule but content will be king

Media: Old players may continue to rule but content will be king

March 29, 2014

Madeleine Heffernan

With Australia’s media scene undergoing rapid change, here’s where it all might be headed.

Newspapers, radio and television will be there, but they’ll be different and the companies that have long delivered their content might be gone. The Australian media a couple of years from now will be even more focused on fulfilling people’s desires for content any time, anywhere. Read more of this post

How Yoox became the Amazon of the fashion world

How Yoox became the Amazon of the fashion world

Each year two million orders leave the hi-tech warehouses, destined for customers in more than 100 countries. Nick Compton visits the site’s Italian HQ

BY NICK COMPTON

MARCH 22, 2014 08:04

Federico Marchetti, the CEO of Yoox. His Proust Geometrica armchair by Cappellini is available from yoox.com

“I do think Yoox appeals to the fashion-savvy. They believe in their own personal style, they are connoisseurs” Read more of this post

Lemnos Labs have gone from being laughed out of the room, to establishing a $20 million hardware fund

Lemnos Labs have gone from being laughed out of the room, to establishing a $20 million hardware fund

BY JAMES ROBINSON 
ON MARCH 28, 2014

Jeremy Conrad wants Lemnos Labs, the hardware incubator he co-founded and which this week turned into its own VC fund, to eliminate a false choice he sees plaguing entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. “There’s a real tragedy for me in seeing great mechanical people feeling like they have to choose between that and becoming a software engineer,” he says. Read more of this post

BlackBerry Ltd’s ‘New Coke’ moment: John Chen hones in on company’s old, but beloved, tech recipe

BlackBerry Ltd’s ‘New Coke’ moment: John Chen hones in on company’s old, but beloved, tech recipe

Matt Hartley | March 28, 2014 7:10 PM ET

WATERLOO, ONT. • John Chen is navigating something of a “New Coke” moment.

When BlackBerry Ltd.’s previous management team unveiled the BlackBerry 10 operating system in January of last year alongside a pair of new, redesigned smartphones, it represented a monumental shift for the Waterloo, Ont.-based company. Read more of this post

Netflix Runs Into the IT Crowd

Netflix Runs Into the IT Crowd

MIRIAM GOTTFRIED

March 28, 2014 4:28 p.m. ET

Competitive clouds are forming in Netflix‘s NFLX -1.46% crystal ball. Read more of this post

Pets Vs. Cattle: The Rising Value of Cloud Computing Skills

Mar 28, 2014

Pets Vs. Cattle: The Rising Value of Cloud Computing Skills

SPENCER E. ANTE

A few months ago, James Weatherell updated his online resume on LinkedIn with his recent experience working with new cloud-computing software known as Open Stack.  Since then, the phone of the 27-year-old computer engineer who works at the Broad Institute of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been ringing off the hook. Read more of this post

Amazon.com says not planning free TV service

Amazon.com says not planning free TV service

2:02pm EDT

By Deepa Seetharaman

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc has no plan to offer a free streaming TV service, a spokeswoman said on Friday following a report that the online retailer might turn up the heat against Netflix and Hulu. Read more of this post

As traditional journalism models collapse, billionaires grab the medium and the message

As traditional journalism models collapse, billionaires grab the medium and the message

DAVID SIROTA 

Journalism, as you learn in your first J-school class, is all about the inverted pyramid. It is the shape that haunts you as a writer and guides you as an editor. And now, as evidenced by Pew’s new report on the state of the news, it is a shape that increasingly defines the media industry’s business model. It also explains why we’re suddenly seeing a raft of new Citizen Kanes’ investing in media and journalism. Read more of this post

A New Facebook Lab Is Intent on Delivering Internet Access by Drone

A New Facebook Lab Is Intent on Delivering Internet Access by Drone

By VINDU GOELMARCH 27, 2014

SAN FRANCISCO — Watch out, Google. Facebook is gunning for the title of World’s Coolest Place to Work. And its arsenal includes unmanned drones, lasers, satellites and virtual reality headsets. Read more of this post

Microsoft opens door to a world beyond Windows; Tech group is finally ready to move beyond PC

March 27, 2014 7:12 pm

Microsoft opens door to a world beyond Windows

By Richard Waters

Tech group is finally ready to move beyond PC

Satya Nadella is ready to scrap the Windows tax.

This is the figurative ‘levy’ that other Microsoft businesses have had to suffer as the price of keeping Windows at the centre of the personal computing world. No new product or business idea saw the light of day unless it supported the greater good of Windows. Read more of this post

Swiss watchmakers say they have no time for tech groups’ advances

March 28, 2014 1:26 pm

Swiss watchmakers say they have no time for tech groups’ advances

By Elizabeth Paton in New York and Tim Bradshaw in San Francisco

Apple is trying to lure top Swiss watchmakers away from luxury brands owned by LVMH in the race to bring mobile computing to the wrist. Read more of this post

Facebook Creates Team to ‘Beam’ Internet Everywhere on Earth

Mar 27, 2014

Facebook Creates Team to ‘Beam’ Internet Everywhere on Earth

REED ALBERGOTTI

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company is launching a Connectivity Lab, a team of scientists tasked with bringing the Internet to remote places on the planet using new techniques, including beaming it down from the sky. Read more of this post

Amazon aims for TV business with free video streaming: WSJ

Amazon aims for TV business with free video streaming: WSJ

5:26pm EDT

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Online retailer Amazon.com Inc plans to enter the battle for living-room viewership in the coming months, launching a free, ad-supported streaming TV service, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing anonymous sources. Read more of this post

Swedish eye tracking technology firm Tobii plans IPO: report

Swedish eye tracking technology firm Tobii plans IPO: report

5:50pm EDT

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Swedish eye tracking technology firm Tobii, co-owned by chipmaker Intel, is planning a stock market listing which could value the firm at around 2 billion crowns ($309 million), business daily Dagens Industri reported. Read more of this post

Intel takes ‘significant’ stake in Big Data startup Cloudera

Intel takes ‘significant’ stake in Big Data startup Cloudera

2:10pm EDT

By Noel Randewich

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Intel Corp said on Thursday it made a significant investment in Cloudera and will make the fast-growing startup its preferred distributor of software for crunching Big Data. Read more of this post

How a rental service could help digital textbooks thrive on college campuses

How a rental service could help digital textbooks thrive on college campuses

By Matt McFarland, Updated: March 27 at 8:31 am

Only 3 percent of college students use a digital textbook as their primary course material, according to one survey. Even as Amazon sells more digital books than print books, college students haven’t embraced digital textbooks. It’s surprising, given younger generations’ embrace of everything else digital, whether it be smarthphones or social media. Read more of this post

Consortium Wants Standards for ‘Internet of Things’

Consortium Wants Standards for ‘Internet of Things’

By QUENTIN HARDY

MARCH 27, 2014, 9:00 AM  1 Comments

Attention: Internet of Things. For better or worse, big boys are in the room.

A consortium of industrial giants, including AT&T, Cisco, General Electric, IBM and Intel said on Thursday that they would cooperate to create engineering standards to connect objects, sensors and large computing systems in some of the world’s largest industrial assets, like oil refineries, factories or harbors. The White House and other United States governmental entities were also involved in the creation of the group, which is expected to enroll other large American and foreign businesses. Read more of this post

Creator of a Virtual Reality Sensation

Creator of a Virtual Reality Sensation

By JENNA WORTHAM

MARCH 26, 2014

Palmer Luckey, a baby-faced 21-year-old college dropout, figured out how to build a virtual reality headset so exciting that it became a sensation on Kickstarter, the crowdfunding site, raising a staggering $2.4 million in 30 days. Read more of this post

Trying to assess Oculus Rift as Facebook’s future ad platform is meaningless

Trying to assess Oculus Rift as Facebook’s future ad platform is meaningless

BY JAMES ROBINSON 
ON MARCH 26, 2014

As we all wake up with the lingering realization that yes, yesterday Facebook actually did buy Oculus Rift for $2bn, and it wasn’t all some weird fever-dream, the attention as it always does has turned to why. Read more of this post

A Brief History Of Oculus; Less than two years ago, Oculus raised 2.5 million dollars on Kickstarter. Yesterday, they were acquired by Facebook for $2 billion

A Brief History Of Oculus

Posted 19 hours ago by Greg Kumparak (@grg)

Less than two years ago, Oculus raised 2.5 million dollars on Kickstarter.

Yesterday, they were acquired by Facebook for $2 billion.

Read more of this post