The Dark Side of Online Discounts; Companies can profit handsomely from online daily discounts but intermediaries often have conflicting objectives that need to be managed

The Dark Side of Online Discounts

by Karan Girotra | Mar 14, 2014

Companies can profit handsomely from online daily discounts but intermediaries often have conflicting objectives that need to be managed

It’s an age-old problem for many retailers, from movie houses to circuses – how to make a profit in off-peak periods. A restaurant that turns away customers on Saturday night but loses money during lunch on Monday. The opera house hosting a big-name orchestra and superstar diva for a limited engagement, faced with a half-filled house on Tuesday night. The beachfront resort perennially hard up for bookings in early spring or late fall.  Read more of this post

Newhaven firm aims to become ‘iTunes of art’: East Sussex-based online store EasyArt is licensed to sell more than 60,000 images from 1,500 artists

EasyArt picture store sets forth from Newhaven to revolutionise access to art

Chairman of site with licence to sell more than 60,000 images from 1,500 artists says the goal is to become ‘the iTunes of art’

Sarah Butler

The Guardian, Monday 17 March 2014 19.58 GMT

Newhaven may not be seen as the centre of the art world, but the East Sussex town is home to a British business that is hoping to harness the cultural credentials of the Tate galleries to the pop sensibility of 1980s poster shop Athena, powered by technology developed for the Red Bull Formula 1 team. Read more of this post

Can Design Save Silicon Valley?

Can Design Save Silicon Valley?

by Jules Pieri  |   12:00 PM March 17, 2014

The tech titans of Silicon Valley are actively circling the strategic value of design. I didn’t take their interest seriously until I saw the news in December that John Maeda, the former President of the Rhode Island School of Design, joined venerable VC firm Kleiner Perkins. He’s the Valley’s first-ever Design Partner.  That’s a serious step into the mover-shaker circle for the design profession. Read more of this post

The U.S. is relinquishing control of domain names. Here’s why

The U.S. is relinquishing control of domain names. Here’s why.

March 17, 2014: 2:10 PM ET

The United States has long planned to give up its unique role as steward of the Internet’s domain name system, but it’s unclear what kind of entity will replace it.

By Sam Gustin

The U.S. plan to relinquish stewardship of key technical functions that ensure the Internet runs properly drew praise and criticism over the weekend. If the process goes smoothly, it shouldn’t affect the day-to-day Internet experience for users, but the shift, which was announced Friday by U.S. officials, represents an important development in the evolution of the Internet. Read more of this post

To Change Tunes, a Nod Will Be as Good as a Wink; Automakers, including Mercedes-Benz and Ford, are cautiously installing gesture sensing systems

To Change Tunes, a Nod Will Be as Good as a Wink

By JIM NASHMARCH 14, 2014

Drawings from a 2013 Microsoft patent application suggests gestures that would serve, from left, as commands to lower and raise the audio volume and a request for more information; A Google patent filing proposes this gesture as a command for the audio system to play.CreditUnited States Patent and Trademark Office Read more of this post

Searching for Profits in Mobile

MARCH 17, 2014, 9:00 AM  Comment

Searching for Profits in Mobile

By QUENTIN HARDY

Maybe the problem of making money in mobile is getting easier, using the same basic technique that was used for the web. Or for that matter, for junk mail. Read more of this post

In Masochistic Twist, the Faster You Die, the More Popular the Game; Failure, in Video Games, Has a Sweet, Addictive Allure

In Masochistic Twist, the Faster You Die, the More Popular the Game

Failure, in Video Games, Has a Sweet, Addictive Allure

MARCH 16, 2014

By STEPHEN TOTILO

The popularity of video games is proof that people enjoy having problems. Apparently life isn’t tough enough for those of us who seek amusement in failure’s premiere form of entertainment. Taxes, relationships and health troubles not stressful enough? Play an arduous video game that you’ll fail at in seconds. Millions of people do. They like a challenge. They like to walk into a bit of trouble. Read more of this post

Giant lasers to create fusion: With one tiny flash, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and elsewhere are inching closer to fusion’s promise of endless power

Machinery of an Energy Dream

The Challenge: How to Keep Fusion Going Long Enough

By KENNETH CHANGMARCH 17, 2014

The National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory where a team used giant lasers to create a fusion reaction last month. CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times Read more of this post

Time spent on digital media to overtake TV

March 17, 2014 7:00 pm

Time spent on digital media to overtake TV

By Robert Cookson, Digital Media Correspondent

The amount of time UK adults spend accessing digital media is forecast to surpass hours spent watching television for the first time this year – reflecting big changes in consumer habits. Read more of this post

YouTube taps fast-growing Saudi Arabia interest; Google-owned video network to develop more Arabic content

March 17, 2014 12:29 pm

YouTube taps fast-growing Saudi Arabia interest

By Simeon Kerr in Dubai

Google has launched a campaign to develop online videos in the fast-growing market of Saudi Arabia, where residents watch more hours of YouTube content per capita than anywhere else in the world. Read more of this post

Start-ups with an Apple flavour

March 17, 2014 4:23 pm

Start-ups with an Apple flavour

By Tim Bradshaw

Tim Bucher, who worked on Macintosh engineering at Apple, is about to start selling Lyve, his online storage system

Steve Jobs hurled many abusive names at Andy Grignon during his six years at Apple. Mr Grignon internalised the criticism to such an extent that he even had one particularly offensive name printed on his business card there. Read more of this post

Just Eat, the online takeaway food service, is expected to achieve a valuation in the range of £700m to £900m

Last updated: March 17, 2014 8:28 pm

Just Eat joins growing queue of London IPOs

By Andy Sharman and Sally Davies

Just Eat has confirmed its intention to join the swelling ranks of companies lining up to float in London.

The online takeaway food service, which is expected to achieve a valuation in the range of £700m to £900m, on Monday said it planned to raise £100m and list on either the main market or the London Stock Exchange’s High Growth Segment, designed to lure entrants from the capital’s flourishing start-up scene. Read more of this post

‘Big Data’ Doesn’t Yield Better Loans; Consumer Group Says Crunching Such Numbers Doesn’t Make a Big Difference; Lenders Disagree

‘Big Data’ Doesn’t Yield Better Loans

Consumer Group Says Crunching Such Numbers Doesn’t Make a Big Difference; Lenders Disagree

ELIZABETH DWOSKIN

Updated March 17, 2014 11:19 p.m. ET

Can “Big Data” really help write a better loan?

That is a timely question, as startups backed by big Silicon Valley names employ big-data techniques to offer short-term, small-dollar loans. The companies want to reach the 68 million Americans who the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. says struggle to get loans because they have either no credit history or a poor credit history. Read more of this post

As email threats multiply, funds pick up Proofpoint

As email threats multiply, funds pick up Proofpoint

2:46pm EDT

By David Randall

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The last time email could be called a sexy business, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was celebrating his tenth birthday. Yet Proofpoint Inc, a $1.6 billion market cap email security company, is catching the eye of fund managers by gaining share in a market that many investors have left for dead. Read more of this post

The app 28 million fitness freaks use; It’s connecting some of society’s most competitive people

The app 28 million fitness freaks use

March 18, 2014

Doug Hendrie

It’s connecting some of society’s most competitive people.

Jason Jacobs has always taken fitness seriously. But it wasn’t until he was training for his first marathon in 2007 that the Boston entrepreneur discovered something was missing: data. What was his rate of progress? Would he be fit enough in time for the whistle? That’s when he knew he’d found it: the important problem he wanted to solve. Read more of this post

Start-Ups Aim to Conquer Space Market; Planet Labs, a San Francisco aerospace start-up, is launching 100 of its small satellites into orbit this year where they will image the Earth every single day

Start-Ups Aim to Conquer Space Market

By QUENTIN HARDY and NICK BILTONMARCH 16, 2014

Planet Labs, a San Francisco aerospace start-up, is launching 100 of its small satellites into orbit this year where they will image the Earth every single day. Read more of this post

In A Changing Financial World, Thinknum Wants To Democratize Financial Analysis

In A Changing Financial World, Thinknum Wants To Democratize Financial Analysis

Posted 6 hours ago by Danny Crichton (@DannyCrichton)

One of the most important functions of any modern financial institution is conducting valuations. On Wall Street, this means developing financial models – projections of how a company will perform based on a set of assumptions. Get these models right, and suddenly you can make trades on public equities that bring in enormous profits. Blow it, and see billions of dollars evaporate. Read more of this post

Hi-tech is hot but take care not to get burnt; The landscape is littered with tech deals that fell short

March 14, 2014 7:48 pm

Hi-tech is hot but take care not to get burnt

By Brooke Masters

The landscape is littered with tech deals that fell short

News this week overflowed with evidence that the appetite for groovy sounding technology companies is rising to heights not seen since the dotcom bubble of the late 1990s. Read more of this post

Protect the open web and the promise of the digital age; Much will be lost if fences are put up around our digital open plans

Last updated: March 14, 2014 10:10 pm

Protect the open web and the promise of the digital age

By Richard Waters

Much will be lost if fences are put up around our digital open plans, says Richard Waters

For all the drawbacks, it is not hard to feel nostalgic about the early days of the web. Surfing between slow-loading, badly designed sites on a dial-up internet connection running at 56 kilobits per second could be frustrating. No wonder it was known as the “world wide wait”. But the “wow” factor was high. There was unparalleled access to free news and information, even if some of it was deeply untrustworthy. Then came that first, revelatory search on Google, which untangled the online jumble with almost miraculous speed. Read more of this post

US relinquishes control of internet’s addressing system

March 14, 2014 11:40 pm

US relinquishes control of internet’s addressing system

By Richard Waters in San Francisco

The Obama administration said on Friday that it would give up control of the internet’s addressing system, marking one of its most significant responses yet to the international outcry over revelations of widespread US internet surveillance. Read more of this post

Social media becomes product test ground; Companies trade focus groups for social media

March 14, 2014 12:35 pm

Companies trade focus groups for social media

By Hannah Kuchler in San Francisco and Neil Munshi in Chicago

Social media is replacing the clipboard, the focus group and the pencil-chewing designer, as companies listen in on consumers’ conversations in the hope of creating the products they really want. Read more of this post