No winners in Europe’s fragmenting telecoms market; The vision of a single telecoms market is far from reality

March 25, 2014 6:36 pm

No winners in Europe’s fragmenting telecoms market

By Sarah Gordon, Europe business editor

The vision of a single telecoms market is far from reality

The battle of the French billionaires is hotting up. Martin Bouygues, head of the number three mobile operator in France, has mounted a €15.5bn bid for number two SFR, owned by Vivendi, in which Vincent Bolloré is the largest shareholder. Another billionaire, Patrick Drahi, is determined to win SFR for his Numericable cable group, and has put forward a €14.5bn offer of his own. Xavier Niel, France’s sixth-richest individual, owns the fourth biggest mobile operator, Free, whose entry into the market in 2012 ushered in one of Europe’s most brutal price wars. Read more of this post

U.S. journalism benefiting from ‘game-changing’ investments: study

U.S. journalism benefiting from ‘game-changing’ investments: study

12:13am EDT

By Jennifer Saba

(Reuters) – A new wave of funding by technology-savvy investors into U.S. media companies is driving momentum in journalism, even as news organizations continue to face challenges, according to a report issued on Wednesday. Read more of this post

Honesty may be the best policy, but it is taking a toll on sales for the nation’s largest ticket reseller, StubHub. Attempt at Price Transparency Backfires, Hurting Sales

StubHub Sings the Blues After Shifting Fees

Attempt at Price Transparency Backfires, Hurting Sales

HANNAH KARP

March 25, 2014 5:42 p.m. ET

Honesty may be the best policy, but it is taking a toll on sales for the nation’s largest ticket reseller, StubHub.

Three months after StubHub, a division of eBay Inc., EBAY -0.37% eliminated what it said had been the single biggest annoyance to most of its customers—hidden fees—its sales have taken a hit. Read more of this post

Apple Engineer Recalls the iPhone’s Birth; Jobs’s Ultimatum: Lay Out a Vision Fast or Lose the Project

Apple Engineer Recalls the iPhone’s Birth

Jobs’s Ultimatum: Lay Out a Vision Fast or Lose the Project

DAISUKE WAKABAYASHI

March 25, 2014 7:53 p.m. ET

In February 2005, Apple Inc. AAPL +1.08% ‘s then chief executive, Steve Jobs, gave senior software engineer Greg Christie an ultimatum. Read more of this post

Luxottica: A Google Glass Half-Full

Luxottica: A Google Glass Half-Full

Could Be a Smart Deal for Both Parties

RENEE SCHULTES

March 25, 2014 12:30 p.m. ET

Luxottica LUX.MI +3.95% is daring to see things differently. The Italian eyewear-maker is partnering with Google GOOG +0.07% to design, develop and distribute new versions of the U.S. technology giant’s internet-connected glasses. That’s a bold call: Luxottica’s luxury goods peers have more typically shunned technology groups’ advances. Read more of this post

Google’s working on high-fashion Glass. Where are the fancy smartwatches?

Google’s working on high-fashion Glass. Where are the fancy smartwatches?

BY HAYLEY TSUKAYAMA

March 25 at 12:29 pm

Google Glass keeps getting more and more stylish. Google and Luxottica — which makes Oakleys and Ray-Bans —  announced Monday that they are working together on new designs for the smart glasses ahead of Glass’s expected but as-yet-undetermined consumer launch. Read more of this post

ComScore: The Art and Science of Big Data, From the Inside

ComScore: The Art and Science of Big Data, From the Inside

Big Idea: Data & AnalyticsBlog March 24, 2014  Reading Time: 4 min

Renee Boucher Ferguson

A recent CISR report details how the market researcher creates internal value from big data.

While comScore, Inc. can rightly take its place among the world’s biggest data purveyors — the digital measurement and analytics company has collected about 14 petabytes of online data from around the globe, at a rate of about 20 terabytes a day — it still has to execute on all that data internally to create valuable insights its customers can actually use. Read more of this post

Google slashes cloud computing prices in rivalry with Amazon

Google slashes cloud computing prices in rivalry with Amazon

3:49pm EDT

By Alexei Oreskovic

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Google Inc slashed its cloud computing service prices on Tuesday, seeking to wrest customers from Amazon.com Inc and Microsoft Corp in the fast-growing market of renting computers and data storage to companies. Read more of this post

Facebook will buy virtual reality company Oculus VR for about $2.2 billion, in its first push into the hardware-technology industry

Facebook to buy virtual reality company Oculus for $2 billion

March 26, 2014 – 11:33AM

Sarah Frier

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Cisco Bets a Billion on the Cloud

MARCH 24, 2014, 3:59 PM  Comment

Cisco Bets a Billion on the Cloud

By QUENTIN HARDY

Even for the world of globe-spanning computer systems, Cisco is going big.

On Monday Cisco Systems announced it would spend $1 billion on creation of an “Intercloud,” which promises to bridge multiple cloud-computing systems open to the public — like those offered by Amazon Web Services and Google Compute Engine — the private clouds of big companies and specialty cloud services for business. Read more of this post

Big Data versus the SAT

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Big Data versus the SAT

In a recent Time Magazine article, the president of Bard College, Leon Botstein, joined a chorus of criticism of the SAT, going so far as to call it “part hoax and part fraud.”  Criticism is coming fast and furious because the SAT has just unveiled a new, improved product to try to fend off a trend among competitive colleges to downplay the role of the SAT, and even to eliminate its use entirely.  (The not-for-profit status of the College Board, which produces the SAT, does not put the company beyond reacting to a profit motive; not-for-profit does not exactly mean you don’t get benefits from pulling in more revenue). Read more of this post

S.Korea beats Japan to become world No.2 in chip industry

S.Korea beats Japan to become world No.2 in chip industry

SEOUL, March 24 (Xinhua) — South Korea beat Japan to become the world’s second largest manufacturer in the global semiconductor industry, the trade ministry said Monday. Read more of this post

Box reveals losses as it seeks $250m in IPO; The fact that Box is going public while saying it does not expect to be profitable “for the foreseeable future” will test investors’ willingness to gamble on the next generation of tech co

March 24, 2014 10:34 pm

Box reveals losses as it seeks $250m in IPO

By Tim Bradshaw and Hannah Kuchler in San Francisco and Arash Massoudi in New York

Box, the enterprise cloud storage company, said it hopes to raise $250m in an initial public offering as it revealed revenues that doubled last year but were outpaced by its losses. Read more of this post

o You Want to Compete Against Amazon?

October 25, 2013

So You Want to Compete Against Amazon?

Jeff Jordan

I’ve had Amazon on my mind lately, part of which is due to my reading Brad Stone’s very interesting book, The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon.

I’ve described in earlier blog posts how Amazon is a brutal competitor for brick and mortar merchants due to their large and growing cost advantages and a maniacal commitment (at least most of the time) to having the lowest prices anywhere.  (You can read more about it here.)  These same drivers also make Amazon a heavyweight competitor for e-commerce companies as well. Read more of this post

Lions Gate scores third teen franchise hit with ‘Divergent’, a film about a dystopian future where people are divided into factions based on human virtues Erudite, Dauntless, Amity, Abnegation, Candor

Lions Gate scores third teen franchise hit with ‘Divergent’

Peter Koven | March 23, 2014 | Last Updated: Mar 23 5:31 PM ET
Teen movie franchises are proving to be a very lucrative investment for Lions Gate Entertainment Corp., which appears to have yet another multi-part epic hit on its hands. Read more of this post

Driverless Cars Are Data Guzzlers The Self-Driving Car of the Future Will Consume an Enormous Amount of Information

Driverless Cars Are Data Guzzlers

The Self-Driving Car of the Future Will Consume an Enormous Amount of Information

UCILIA WANG

Updated March 23, 2014 4:36 p.m. ET

Read more of this post

Big Data Sparks Corporate Turf Fights; Companies Debate Which Department Should Oversee This Vital Asset

Big Data Sparks Corporate Turf Fights

Companies Debate Which Department Should Oversee This Vital Asset

BEN DIPIETRO

CONNECT

March 24,2014

Big data comes with a big internal turf question: Who gets to decide how it’s collected, used, stored and protected? Read more of this post

Apple is in talks with Comcast about a streaming-TV service that would use an Apple set-top box and try to bypass congestion on the Web

Apple in Talks With Comcast About Streaming-TV Service

Companies Discuss Service That Would Try to Bypass Web Congestion

SHALINI RAMACHANDRAN, DAISUKE WAKABAYASHI and AMOL SHARMA

March 23, 2014 8:36 p.m. ET

Apple Inc. AAPL +0.79% is in talks with Comcast Corp. CMCSA -1.20% about teaming up for a streaming-television service that would use an Apple set-top box and get special treatment on Comcast’s cables to ensure it bypasses congestion on the Web, people familiar with the matter say. Read more of this post

Web Fiction, Serialized and Social; With Wattpad, a storytelling app, the once-solitary writing process has become informal, intimate and highly interactive

Web Fiction, Serialized and Social

By DAVID STREITFELDMARCH 23, 2014

TORONTO — Not since the heyday of Dickens, Dumas and Henry James has serialized fiction been this big.

Read more of this post

As more stores go from exclusively online to brick-and-mortar, the online beauty subscription company Birchbox is aiming at a full-blown shopping and lifestyle “experience.”

Birchbox, Seller of Beauty Products, Steps Out From Web With a Store

By HILARY STOUTMARCH 23, 2014

A banner for the hair salon that once occupied these quarters still hangs outside an abandoned West Broadway storefront in the heart of SoHo’s main shopping area in Manhattan. Inside, the 4,500-square-foot duplex space is utterly empty, with no hint of what — if anything — will fill it next. Read more of this post