Why Vietnam is proud of Flappy Bird

Why Vietnam is proud of Flappy Bird

February 7, 2014

by Anh-Minh Do

Flappy Bird, the hottest app coming out of Asia (and possibly the world) at the moment, is from Vietnam. Today, in Vietnam’s startup and tech scene, Flappy Bird marks a major achievement. It’s a moment of pride and triumph for the fledgling community. It’s common to hear someone say “When you ask people about Vietnam, the first thing they remember is the war. I want Vietnam to be known for innovation. I want my product to break that mold and redefine what Vietnam is.” And against the most bizarre and lucky odds, Flappy Bird has done it. Flappy Bird is the most famous piece of Vietnamese software in the world right now. Read more of this post

Nielsen has a near monopoly in measuring TV viewership — and a new growth plan; CEO Mitch Barns: “We have products that scale very well.”

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2014

Nielsen’s Measured Approach

By LESLIE P. NORTON | MORE ARTICLES BY AUTHOR

Nielsen has a near monopoly in measuring TV viewership — and a new growth plan. Shares could rise 40%.

“Words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises, but only performance is reality,” the celebrated businessman Harold Geneen once said. That accounts for the enduring popularity of the Nielsen TV ratings system, the flagship product of Nielsen Holdings . Nielsen’s ratings, prized by advertisers, are why the Super Bowl can charge $8 million for a minute of commercials. Nielsen’s enviable client list is topped by customers who’ve used its services for more than 30 years. Read more of this post

Entering the Era of Private and Semi-Anonymous Apps

FEBRUARY 7, 2014, 12:00 PM

Entering the Era of Private and Semi-Anonymous Apps

By NICK BILTON

Today’s Web-enabled gadgets should come with a digital Miranda warning. “Anything you say or do online, from a status update to a selfie, can and will be used as evidence against you on the Internet.” Read more of this post

AO.com founder John Roberts’ rise began with pub bet

February 7, 2014 11:27 pm

AO.com founder John Roberts’ rise began with pub bet

By Duncan Robinson

John Roberts founded AO.com, the online electricals retailer, after a bet in a pub.

Fed up with his job as head salesman at the now defunct Moben Kitchens, the then 26-year-old moaned to a friend about wanting to set up his own business. The friend bet him £1 he would not do it. Read more of this post

Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s engineer chief: The cerebral new chief is charged with reviving the faltering tech group

February 7, 2014 7:10 pm

Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s engineer chief

By Richard Waters

The cerebral new chief is charged with reviving the faltering tech group, writes Richard Waters

Talk to almost anyone who knows Satya Nadella

, the new boss of Microsoft, and sooner or later they will come up with the same observation: he is the anti-Steve Ballmer.

The man who has stepped aside after 14 years as head of the world’s biggest software company has always exuded an overabundance of energy, running the gamut from ebullience (jumping sweatily around a stage to inspire an audience) to temper tantrum (throwing a chair across the room when a lieutenant quits). Read more of this post

What Microsoft can learn from Sony

What Microsoft can learn from Sony

By Hayley Tsukayama, E-mail the writer

Sony chief executive Kazuo Hirai has made a painful decision, announcing Thursday that Sony is parting ways with its Vaio line of computers, one of the most iconic brands in the company’s modern portfolio. Read more of this post

Amazon tests Brazil’s retail jungle with its Kindle

Amazon tests Brazil’s retail jungle with its Kindle

8:36am EST

By Esteban Israel and Marcela Ayres

SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Amazon Inc. started selling its Kindle online in Brazil on Friday, expanding from ebooks into retail for the first time in Latin America’s biggest and most challenging ecommerce market. Read more of this post

Taiwan’s MediaTek sets up backyard brawl with Qualcomm

Taiwan’s MediaTek sets up backyard brawl with Qualcomm

3:08pm EST

By Noel Randewich

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Qualcomm Inc, the world leader in smartphone microchips, may want to shore up its defensive tactics.

Taiwan’s MediaTek Inc, the leading chip supplier for Chinese smartphones, is barreling into the U.S. market with a new major global branding campaign and setting up shop in San Diego, California, home to Qualcomm. Read more of this post

News you can lose: CNN’s transformation says a lot about what is working today in television

News you can lose: CNN’s transformation says a lot about what is working today in television

Feb 8th 2014 | NEW YORK | From the print edition

JEFF ZUCKER, boss of CNN Worldwide, a cable-news firm, likes to start his morning with a shot of numbers. Every weekday at 9am he confers with his teams in New York, Atlanta, Washington, DC, and other bureaus to discuss ratings and web traffic, and to decide what news to cover. On February 4th a story reconstructing the final day of Philip Seymour Hoffman, an actor who died of a heroin overdose (see obituary), boosted CNN’s website. Mr Zucker wanted to “push it” on TV too. As producers pitch the stories they plan to cover, Mr Zucker pitches them his own, including more on Hillary Clinton’s election prospects, how bad weather affects America’s economy and whether drinking two fizzy drinks a day will actually kill you. Read more of this post

Google starts selling corporate videoconferencing product

Google starts selling corporate videoconferencing product

Thu, Feb 6 2014

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Google Inc unveiled a videoconferencing system for businesses on Thursday, the Internet search company’s latest effort generate revenue from corporate customers. Read more of this post

ARM Designs One of the World’s Most-Used Products. So Where’s the Money?

ARM Designs One of the World’s Most-Used Products. So Where’s the Money?

By Ashlee Vance February 04, 2014

Most people have heard of Intel (INTC). The company, which makes the chips that power the world’s PCs and servers, pulled off one of the great marketing triumphs of the past 50 years with its “Intel Inside” campaign. About 400 million computers containing Intel chips are expected to be sold this year. Read more of this post

Bringing Order to Data Chaos; As cloud computing has taken off, companies have built ever-larger data centers that increasingly tax the ability of staffers to manage them

Bringing Order to Data Chaos

By Olga Kharif February 06, 2014

As cloud computing has taken off, companies have built ever-larger data centers that increasingly tax the ability of staffers to manage them. Two Pacific Northwest companies, Puppet Labs and Chef, are here to help. They’re taking on the likes of IBM(IBM), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), BMC Software, and CA Technologies (CA) in what market researcher IDC calls a roughly $2 billion business to help companies make all those servers work more efficiently together. On top of that, there’s a growing corporate demand for software that can better manage computer networks or fine-tune a server system that handles terabytes of data, everything from streaming songs to document-sharing apps. Read more of this post

New CEO Satya Nadella Needs to Make Microsoft More Like Google

New CEO Satya Nadella Needs to Make Microsoft More Like Google

By Ashlee Vance February 04, 2014

About two years ago, Microsoft’s (MSFT) research arm described something amazing in a blog post. It had developed a contact lens equipped with a tiny chip that could measure the blood sugar level of tears. Read more of this post

5 ways China’s WeChat is more innovative than you think

5 ways China’s WeChat is more innovative than you think

February 7, 2014

by Josh Horwitz

Tech in Asia has been covering WeChat, China’s most popular mobile message app, before it even had an English name. Meanwhile, international tech media outlets (including ourselves) have also been following the evolution of other messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Line, Facebook Messenger, and many, many others. Over the past year or so there’s been lots of talk about how these messengers are maturing into “platforms” – or, apps that users will use to buy things, and that business and organizations can use to reach an audience. Read more of this post

Vietnam’s biggest telco wants to acquire KakaoTalk for $5 billion

Vietnam’s biggest telco wants to acquire KakaoTalk for $5 billion

February 6, 2014

by Anh-Minh Do

According to an article in VNExpress today, the vice president of Viettel, Vietnam’s biggest telco, wants to acquire Korea-based messaging app KakaoTalk for $5 billion. Read more of this post

A different Bill Gates is returning to Microsoft

A different Bill Gates is returning to Microsoft

World | Nick Wingfield, The New York Times | Updated: February 06, 2014 20:14 IST

Seattle:  The last time Bill Gates played an active role at Microsoft, as chief software architect, he witnessed the company muffing its earliest efforts to become a major player in search, smartphones and tablet computers.  Read more of this post

Why South Korea Will Be The Next Global Hub For Tech Startups

 2/06/2014 @ 12:35PM 2,343 views

Why South Korea Will Be The Next Global Hub For Tech Startups

American business has long led the way in high tech density or the proportion of businesses that engage in activities such as Internet software and services, hardware and semiconductors. The US is fertile ground for tech start-ups with access to capital and a culture that celebrates risk taking. Other countries have made their mark on the world stage, competing to be prominent tech and innovation hubs. Israel has been lauded as a start-up nation with several hundred companies getting funded by venture capital each year. A number of these companies are now being acquired by the likes of Apple, Facebook and Google. Finland and Sweden have attracted notice by bringing us Angry Birds and Spotify among others. But a new start-up powerhouse is on the horizon – South Korea. Read more of this post

HP and Autonomy: a parable on due diligence

February 7, 2014 8:14 am

HP and Autonomy: a parable on due diligence

By Neil Collins

“Autonomy’s technology allows computers to harness the full richness of human information, forming a conceptual and contextual understanding of any piece ofelectronic data”. Thus read a footnote to one of the company’s constant light drizzle of petty announcements in 2011 when it was a listed company, this one for an order from an un-named US bank worth $50m “over the next few years.” Read more of this post

Google buys 6% stake in Chinese PC maker Lenovo

7 February 2014 Last updated at 07:06

Google buys 6% stake in Chinese PC maker Lenovo

Google bought a near 6% stake in Lenovo for $750m (£459m), just a day after selling handset-maker Motorola Mobility to the Chinese PC maker.

According to a stock exchange filing, Google acquired 618.3 million Lenovo shares at $1.21 each on 30 January.

Last month, Lenovo spent a combined $5bn on buying Motorola Mobility and IBM’s low-end server business – the two biggest deals in the company’s history. Read more of this post

IBM Looking to Sell Chip Manufacturing Operations

IBM Looking to Sell Chip Manufacturing Operations

DON CLARK And SPENCER E. ANTE

Feb. 6, 2014 10:13 p.m. ET

International Business Machines Corp. IBM +0.80% is exploring the sale of its semiconductor manufacturing operations, said a person familiar with the matter. Read more of this post

This is why your smartphone battery has the life span of a fruit fly

This is why your smartphone battery has the life span of a fruit fly

By Dominic Basulto, Updated: February 6 at 7:57 am

When news leaked out this week that Apple was experimenting with a new way of charging its anticipated iWatch – possibly using kinetic movement, magnetic induction or solar power — it should have been an “a-ha” moment for innovators everywhere. We’ve been so accustomed to thinking in terms of “battery life” and plugging cords into electrical wall sockets that we never ask the obvious question: Why isn’t there more innovation when it comes to powering our digital devices? Read more of this post

For Google, a leg up in the artificial intelligence arms race

For Google, a leg up in the artificial intelligence arms race

February 5, 2014: 6:41 AM ET

Its acquisition of DeepMind Technologies holds promise for its advertising, autonomous vehicle, and “smart home” businesses.

By Verne Kopytoff

FORTUNE — Google’s executives have long dreamed of solving one of the technology industry’s biggest riddles. How do you predict what people want — hockey scores or new Ugg boots, for example — before they even ask for it? Reading user’s minds, or at least seeming to, would make Google’s products that much faster and more convenient. It could also help the company fend off rivals. Read more of this post

Sapphire crystal is poised to see widespread adoption among higher-tiered consumer electronic manufacturers

Sapphire crystal to see widespread adoption

By Ted Chen ,The China Post
February 6, 2014, 12:04 am TWN

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Sapphire crystal is poised to see widespread adoption among higher-tiered consumer electronic manufacturers, with a Taiwanese company poised to capitalize on the emerging supply chain niche by establishing an early lead in patent holdings. Read more of this post

WeChat’s virtual red envelopes prove a viral hit

WeChat’s virtual red envelopes prove a viral hit

Staff Reporter 

2014-02-05

A WeChat user receives a virtual red envelope during Chinese New Year. (Photo/CNS)

Chinese tech giant Tencent’s idea to allow users of its WeChat messaging app to send out “virtual red envelopes” during Chinese New Year has proven a huge hit, reports the Shanghai-based Oriental Morning Post. Read more of this post

If robots divide us, they will conquer; The rise of intelligent technologies may cost us dear – unless we understand the dangers

February 4, 2014 6:57 pm

If robots divide us, they will conquer

By Martin Wolf

The rise of intelligent technologies may cost us dear – unless we understand the dangers

With one rub of his lamp, Aladdin could command an intelligent being able to fulfil all desires. His genie was a spirit. But the dream of powerful and intelligent artificial servants has also encompassed physical beings. Now, it is becoming a reality built of silicon, metal and plastic. But is it a dream or a nightmare? Will clever machines prove beneficial? Or will they be Frankenstein monsters? Read more of this post

Citizens seek cancer cure with ‘Genes in Space’ smartphone game

Citizens seek cancer cure with ‘Genes in Space’ smartphone game

Tue, Feb 4 2014

By Kate Kelland

LONDON (Reuters) – Gaming enthusiasts across the world can from Tuesday join the search for cancer cures with a citizen science project using a smartphone game to help researchers analyze vast volumes of genetic data from tumor samples. Read more of this post

Akamai: “The WD-40 of the Internet”

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2014

“The WD-40 of the Internet”

By ALEXANDER EULE | MORE ARTICLES BY AUTHOR

With strong profit margins and the safety of recurring revenue streams, Akamai’s stock could rise 25%.

Akamai Technologies‘ co-founder and CEO, Tom Leighton, probably wouldn’t take credit for creating today’s Internet. But unlike some folks, he has a pretty good claim. In the mid-1990s, Leighton, an MIT professor, and Danny Lewin, a graduate student, used applied mathematics and algorithms to solve a looming problem: traffic jams on the ‘Net. The plan involved a network of distributed computers—it was the massing of the Internet’s earliest cloud. Read more of this post

Netflix and the self-inflicted demise of major media

Netflix and the self-inflicted demise of major media

BY JAMES ROBINSON 
ON FEBRUARY 3, 2014

Ken Auletta’s profile of Netflix founder and CEO Reed Hastings in the latest edition of the New Yorker starts with a revealing tidbit.

Back in the heady days of 2000, Netflix had 300,000 subscribers. Hastings had a vision even then that films would one day be streamed cheaply over the Internet. But that future was not there yet. The company was losing money. Hastings flew to Dallas and met with Blockbuster, offering them 49 percent of the company. Netflix would become blockbuster.com and be Blockbuster’s online video division. Read more of this post

Building true social media engagement means creating a content strategy to hook the audience, not just being on social media

Content strategy is king
in social media

David Dubois, INSEAD | Business | Sat, February 01 2014, 11:48 AM

Building true social media engagement means creating a content strategy to hook the audience, not just being on social media.
Those who love to drink coffee often h Read more of this post

Apple Said To Be Exploring Inductive Charging And Solar Power In iWatch Testing; Battery life for wearables is a huge concern, and the reason why is continued adoption: No end user is eager for the chance to have to remember to charge

Apple Said To Be Exploring Inductive Charging And Solar Power In iWatch Testing

Posted 20 hours ago by Darrell Etherington (@drizzled)

Apple’s work on an upcoming smartwatch includes explorations of induction charging and solar-powered batteries, according to a new report from the New York Times. As part of a larger piece about battery tech in general, the NYT revealed that Apple has been working on tests involving wireless induction charging for the smartwatch, and methods for incorporating solar panels into the display to draw power from the sun, and potentially ambient light. Read more of this post