Internet revolutionises vintage watch collectors’ world

March 26, 2014 9:05 pm

Internet revolutionises vintage watch collectors’ world

By Rachel Felder

Vintage watch collecting was once the preserve of well-informed enthusiasts. But that has all changed thanks to specialist websites and a handful of international dealers. Read more of this post

Why Alibaba Fears Tencent’s Online Incursions

03.25.2014 18:19

Why Alibaba Fears Tencent’s Online Incursions

Two kingpins of the Chinese e-commerce sector are increasingly at odds and adjusting strategies

By staff reporter Zhu Yishi

(Beijing) – Tencent Holdings is using its popular social networking app WeChat to push even deeper into the e-commerce territory dominated in China by Alibaba Group. Read more of this post

Will DirecTV and Dish Catch Cable’s Merger Fever?

Will DirecTV and Dish Catch Cable’s Merger Fever?

By Joshua Brustein March 27, 2014

The two largest satellite television companies in the country are talking about joining forces as a way to combat the pending merger of the country’s two biggest cable companies. Dish Network’s (DISH) chairman, Charlie Ergen, has reached out toDirecTV’s (DTV) chief executive, Mike White, and my colleagues at Bloomberg News report that White isn’t quite convinced about the idea. Read more of this post

Why Movie Streaming Sites So Fail to Satisfy

Why Movie Streaming Sites So Fail to Satisfy

MARCH 26, 2014

Farhad Manjoo

A team of web designers recently released an astonishingly innovative app for streaming movies online. The program, Popcorn Time, worked a bit like Netflix, except it had one unusual, killer feature. It was full of movies you’d want to watch. Read more of this post

How Oculus Goggles Became More Than a Virtual Reality; Facebook’s Big Acquisition Rose From a Hotel Demonstration Two Years Ago

How Oculus Goggles Became More Than a Virtual Reality

Facebook’s Big Acquisition Rose From a Hotel Demonstration Two Years Ago

IAN SHERR

March 26, 2014 9:29 p.m. ET

Brendan Iribe traces the surprising rise of Oculus VR Inc., Facebook Inc. FB -6.94% ‘s second-largest acquisition, to a demonstration in a hotel meeting room two years ago. Read more of this post

Microsoft Boss Relaxes Windows-First Policy; New Version of Office for iPad Ends Practice of Using Apps to Drive Operating Software Sales

Microsoft Boss Relaxes Windows-First Policy

New Version of Office for iPad Ends Practice of Using Apps to Drive Operating Software Sales

SHIRA OVIDE and STEVE ROSENBUSH

March 26, 2014 4:14 p.m. ET

Microsoft Corp.’s MSFT -1.36% new boss on Thursday will have his first shot at outlining a new, less Windows-dependent path for the company. But those who are the most likely customers for the shift won’t be easily won over. Read more of this post

How Box Inc. Is Battling the Web-Storage Giants; Firm Has to Show It Can Overcome Money-Losing Business Model

How Box Inc. Is Battling the Web-Storage Giants

Firm Has to Show It Can Overcome Money-Losing Business Model

DOUG MACMILLAN, SHIRA OVIDE and SPENCER E. ANTE

March 26, 2014 7:53 p.m. ET

Box Inc. operates in the red-hot market for online storage, but it will have to persuade investors in its coming IPO that it can eventually overcome an expensive, money-losing business model built around a commoditized product. Read more of this post

Cash, Paranoia Fuel Tech Giants’ Buying Binge

Cash, Paranoia Fuel Tech Giants’ Buying Binge

REED ALBERGOTTI and ROLFE WINKLER

March 26, 2014 8:15 p.m. ET

Facebook Inc. FB -6.94% is spending $2 billion to get into virtual reality. In the real world, the deal highlights a high-stakes race among the tech industry’s giants for continued dominance over a rapidly changing digital landscape. Read more of this post

Cree’s Stock Puts Its Bright Idea in the Shade

Cree’s Stock Puts Its Bright Idea in the Shade

DAN GALLAGHER

March 26, 2014 1:58 p.m. ET

If nothing else, Cree CREE -1.94% knows how to put all of its chips on the table.

Consider its move last year into selling LED light bulbs to consumers. For a semiconductor company accustomed to healthy margins, shifting to a segment selling mostly commodity products at thin margins seemed counterintuitive. The effect was predictable. Revenue in Cree’s lighting-product segment surged more than 40% year over year in the second fiscal quarter through December, while the gross margin for the segment slipped from 33.7% to 27.9%. Read more of this post

The brains behind Oculus, Facebook’s $2 billion baby

The brains behind Oculus, Facebook’s $2 billion baby

March 27, 2014 – 12:46PM

Nancy Blair

Full of strange ideas: 21-year-old Palmer Luckey with an early prototype of the Oculus Rift. Read more of this post

Man behind famous Windows XP wallpaper wishes he’d negotiated a better licensing deal; The man who took the most famous photo in the world: just 1 cent per copy would have made him $10 million

Man behind famous Windows XP wallpaper wishes he’d negotiated a better licensing deal

March 27, 2014 – 1:43AM

Ben Grubb

Deputy technology editor

Charles O’Rear reveals where ‘Bliss’ was taken and how Microsoft discovered his iconic photograph.

The default Windows XP wallpaper containing rolling green hills, blue sky and fluffy white clouds may be more recognisable than the Mona Lisa, but it earned its photographer a pittance. Read more of this post

Facebook’s moonshot is a wise move in a time of radical change; Facebook has taken the proper approach – acting as if it is doomed unless it reinvents itself

Facebook’s moonshot is a wise move in a time of radical change

BY VIVEK WADHWA

March 26 at 12:27 pm

Facebook has taken the proper approach — acting as if it is doomed unless it reinvents itself. (Jeff Chiu/AP)

A few months ago, I wrote that Facebook was doomed: that it could go the way of AOL and MySpace because it wasn’t keeping up with technology changes.  Social media is becoming less social as people start using their mobile devices more than their laptops, and as their address books once again become their friends list.  People are communicating more in small circles of close friends on messaging apps.  Facebook has been adding only small features and cluttering its pages with annoying ads.  Its biggest innovation has been in the way it markets user data and photos—and that hasn’t particularly endeared it to its users. Read more of this post

Strategic use of analytics can boost business; The key lies not in the quantity of data used but in using the right data and doing a trial run

Strategic use of analytics can boost business
26 Mar 2014
The key lies not in the quantity of data used but in using the right data and doing a trial run.
Within the telecommunications industry, the word “churn” is a dirty word. Churn happens when customers stop doing business with a telco (telecommunications company), often with the assumption that they have switched to a competitor. In an industry where customers have abandoned high-margin services such as voice calls and SMS texts for more cost-efficient ones such as data usage, every customer counts. Read more of this post

Facebook’s Alternate Financial Reality A $165 billion market value and dual-class share structure allow Mark Zuckerberg to spend the company’s stock on little more than a hunch

Facebook’s Alternate Financial Reality

By RICHARD BEALES

MARCH 26, 2014, 1:04 PM  1 Comments

Mark Zuckerberg is liking a lot of deals.

After spending $19 billion on WhatsApp, the Facebook founder isdoling out $2 billion – and possibly more – in cash and stock on a virtual reality newcomer, Oculus VR. It’s arguably a riskier bet than the messaging app. Both deals also suggest a buy, not build, approach. Read more of this post

Smartwatches? Not at this time, say wary Swiss

Smartwatches? Not at this time, say wary Swiss

3:09pm EDT

By Silke Koltrowitz

BASEL, Switzerland (Reuters) – With their hundreds of years of watchmaking experience, Swiss watchmakers can afford to take a long view of technological fads and fashions. So-called smartwatches, packing computing power into a wrist-sized gadget, aren’t in their plans for now. Read more of this post

Cloud-based payroll processor TriNet IPO valued at $1.09 billion; the company served more than 8,900 clients in 47 states

Cloud-based payroll processor TriNet IPO priced at $16 per share

8:04pm EDT

(Reuters) – Cloud-based payroll processor TriNet Group Inc (TNET.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) said it priced its initial public offering at $16 per share, valuing the company at about $1.09 billion. Read more of this post

Amazon’s core “strength” may actually be its biggest weakness

Amazon’s core “strength” may actually be its biggest weakness

BY KEVIN KELLEHER 
ON MARCH 25, 2014

A lot of things seem to be going Amazon’s way these days. It boasts the best-selling e-reader, two-thirds of the ebook market, a foothold in the tablet market, a growing library of video titles (including home-brewed programs), and, possibly in the future, a smartphone and a music-subscription service. Not to mention hundreds of thousands of Amazon Web Services customers. Read more of this post

With Oculus purchase, Facebook chokes VR innovation in the womb

With Oculus purchase, Facebook chokes VR innovation in the womb

BY JAMES ROBINSON 
ON MARCH 25, 2014

For most of us, there’s no good news in Facebook’s $2 billion purchase of Oculus. Mark Zuckerberg can crow all he wants about buying up tomorrow’s platforms, Oculus executives and investors can preen – entirely justifiably – over their glorious financial exit, but the rest of us are left watching the same horror show on repeat. Tech giants opening up their checkbook and buying the competition, willing to gut entire markets before they’ve even got started. Read more of this post

Facebook Inc’s purchase of Oculus raises questions

Facebook Inc’s purchase of Oculus raises questions

Jonathan Ratner | March 26, 2014 5:34 AM ET
Facebook Inc.’s US$2-billion acquisition of Oculus VR may look modest when compared to its recent US$19-billion purchase of WhatsApp, but there appears to be a clearer path for monetizing this new asset through game-related software and hardware. Read more of this post

Google Flu Trends’ Failure Shows Good Data > Big Data

Google Flu Trends’ Failure Shows Good Data > Big Data

by Kaiser Fung  |   8:00 AM March 25, 2014

In their best-selling 2013 book Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work and Think, authors Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Kenneth Cukier selected Google Flu Trends (GFT) as the lede of chapter one. They explained how Google’s algorithm mined five years of web logs, containing hundreds of billions of searches, and created a predictive model utilizing 45 search terms that “proved to be a more useful and timely indicator [of flu] than government statistics with their natural reporting lags.” Read more of this post

Mobile commerce is the name of the game for DMI, the quiet giant that is carefully building an enterprise mobility empire

DMI acquires KnowledgePath for $22 million

By Andrew Nusca March 25, 2014: 1:22 PM ET

Exclusive: Mobile commerce is the name of the game for DMI, the quiet giant that is carefully building an enterprise mobility empire.

DMI’s chief executive, Jay Sunny Bajaj, wants his company to be “the world’s largest pure-play integrated mobile enterprise solutions company.” Read more of this post

Best Bets Among Apple Suppliers; IPhone demand is improving but not all parts makers are created equal

MONDAY, MARCH 24, 2014

Best Bets Among Apple Suppliers

IPhone demand is improving but not all parts makers are created equal.

Pacific Crest Securities

Supply-chain conversations indicate improving demand trends for the iPhone, which is positive for Apple component suppliers. Read more of this post

MARK CUBAN: If I Was Responsible For Box’s Bad Numbers ‘I Would Combust’

MARK CUBAN: If I Was Responsible For Box’s Bad Numbers ‘I Would Combust’

JAY YAROW TECH  MAR. 25, 2014, 9:25 PM

Enterprise-focused online storage company Box filed for an IPO last night.

Box might exist if not for Mark Cuban,according to Box CEO Aaron Levie.

When he was still a student at USC in 2005, Levie emailed Cuban to tell him about his company. Cuban liked the idea and offered to make a $350,000 seed investment. Levie took the money. Read more of this post

Vice Media Is Considering An IPO And Thinks It’s Worth $28.9 Billion Equaling Twitter

Vice Says It’s Weighing IPO Prospects, Considering Buying a TV Network

Never Short of Optimism Anyway, Vice Sees Money ‘Sloshing Around in the System’

Published on March 24, 2014. 0

Vice Media, the company that combines punk culture with online journalism, is poised to double revenue to $1 billion by 2016 and may pursue an initial public offering, co-founder Shane Smith said. Read more of this post

Box’s Two 20-Something Co-Founders Don’t Own Much Of Their Company Anymore After Cashing Out Earlier to VCs

Box’s Two 20-Something Co-Founders Don’t Own Much Of Their Company Anymore

JULIE BORT ENTERPRISE  MAR. 26, 2014, 12:26 AM

Box co-founders Dylan Smith (left) Aaron Levie

Enterprise cloud storage company Box has filed the paperwork for its long-expected IPO, and the big surprise is how much of the company the co-founders have already sold off. Read more of this post

Microsoft Word Is Under A Hack Attack: Do Not Open Documents Named ‘.RTF’

Microsoft Word Is Under A Hack Attack: Do Not Open Documents Named ‘.RTF’

JULIE BORT ENTERPRISE  MAR. 26, 2014, 2:41 AM

Microsoft on Monday issued an emergency security warning saying that hackers have found a way to booby-trap certain common Word file with the extension”.rtf”. Read more of this post

Intel buys into Basis wearable technology

March 25, 2014 10:46 pm

Intel buys into Basis wearable technology

By Tim Bradshaw in San Francisco

Intel is stepping up its pace of progress in the wearable technology market with the acquisition of Basis Science, maker of a health-tracking watch. Read more of this post

London’s tech start-up competition flops

Last updated: March 25, 2014 5:37 pm

London’s tech start-up competition flops

By Robert Cookson

A competition to attract tech start-ups to London has been quietly shut down after the organisers failed to find any suitable candidates among the thousand that applied. Read more of this post