Online retail giant Amazon steps up Korean penetration

Online retail giant Amazon steps up Korean penetration

Tuesday, January 21, 2014 – 09:35

The Korea Herald/Asia News Network

SOUTH KOREA- With a new chief aboard, Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, is set out to enter the Korean market in full scale by the end of the year. The online retail giant’s arrival is expected to cause a stir as domestic marketers claim it would kill off Korean commerce companies already suffering from extreme competition. Read more of this post

Nintendo Mulls New Business Model After Forecasting Loss; Nintendo’s Woes Don’t Mean Game Over For Its Consoles

Nintendo Mulls New Business Model After Forecasting Loss

Nintendo Co. (7974) President Satoru Iwata said the maker of video-game machines is considering a new business model after forecasting a surprise 25 billion-yen ($240 million) annual loss because of tepid demand for the Wii U. Read more of this post

Tencent invests US$193M to acquire 9.9% stake in China South City

Tencent invests US$193M to acquire 9.9% stake in China South City

By Saloni

To strengthen foothold in Chinese e-commerce market, Tencent has bought stake in the logistics provider; will pay HK$2.20 each for 680.3M new shares

Screenshot of paipai.com, Tencent’s e-commerce platform. Tencent also owns Tenpay, an online payment application

With an aim to strengthen its foothold in the Chinese e-commerce space, Tencent Holdings has announced that it has made an investment of HK$1.5 billion (US$193.45 million) in Chinese logistics provider, China South City Holdings. Read more of this post

S. Korea companies flock to develop voice recognition technology

S. Korea companies flock to develop voice recognition technology

Hwang Ji-hye, Sohn Yu-ri

2014.01.17 17:13:29

A new way is emerging to facilitate natural communication between humans and machines. People use ‘words,’ rather than keyboard or mouse, to operate machines via a speech recognition technology.
South Korean companies are working on developing independent speech recognition technologies. LG Electronics is the only Korean smartphone producer that owns an independently developed speech recognition technology, and is applying it to a wider range of products covering smartphones, air conditioners, smart TVs, and robotic vacuum cleaners. The “Q Voice,” a default app installed in LG Electronics’ smartphones, uses Google’s voice recognition technology and LG’s own proprietary natural language engine “Wernicke” that analyzes input sentences. “Wernicke is far better at recognizing the Korean than Google or Apple’s technologies,” said an official at LG Electronics’ future IT fusion research institute, which develops and researches the Wernicke. Unlike Google’s voice search or Apple’s “Siri,” the Q Voice understands both simple questions like “confirm Seoul weather now” and conversation-like sentences like “tell me how to get from Yeouido to Gwanghwamun.”
A team at Samsung Electronics is reportedly independently developing a Korean recognition technology to be used for the company’s smartphones or smart TVs. Samsung Electronics’ voice recognition app “S Voice” adopted the US technology “Vlingo.”

Nintendo: Save Donkey Kong, Abandon the Console

Nintendo: Save Donkey Kong, Abandon the Console

One of us had just found the elusive pair of RCP-90s. There was a lot of shouting, including some untoward remarks about the person who had managed to be so much shorter than the rest of us, making him harder to hit. It was the late 1990s, and we were playing one of the greatest video games of all time: “GoldenEye 007,” available only on the Nintendo 64. Read more of this post

Nest and Google’s Customer Service Problem

Nest and Google’s Customer Service Problem

by Dan Pallotta  |   10:37 AM January 17, 2014

“…Google does not offer live customer support at this time…”

That’s the recording you’ll eventually receive (after you’ve gone through two decision trees) if you call the Google headquarters phone number, the only number listed on Google’s “Contact Us” page. Read more of this post

Why Silicon Valley Can’t Find Europe

Why Silicon Valley Can’t Find Europe

Posted 1 hour ago by Sten Tamkivi (@seikatsu)

Editor’s note: Sten Tamkivi has been a software entrepreneur for 16 years and spent the recent half of his career as an early executive at Skype in Tallinn, Estonia. Sten is now an Entrepreneur in Residence at Andreessen Horowitz. Follow him on his blog and on Twitter @seikatsu.

Go to Europe these days – to Berlin, London, Helsinki – drop in on any of the regional tech confabs and you will quickly see that the European startup scene is in the most bustling, vibrant shape it’s ever been. The potential is everywhere, and the energy is undeniable. Then you return Stateside, in my case to Palo Alto, and Europe isn’t just irrelevant among the tech industry power-set. It has virtually ceased to exist. Read more of this post

PSFK Future Of Wearable Tech – Summary Presentation

PSFK Future Of Wearable Tech – Summary Presentation

by PSFK on Jan 08, 2014

The Future of Wearable Tech report in collaboration with iQ by intel identifies 10 trends and three major themes that point to the evolving form and function of wearable devices and their influence on the way we live, work and socialize. In our Connected Intimacy theme, we explore how wearables are revolutionizing the way we communicate information about ourselves and maintain relationships over any distance. With the Tailored Ecosystem theme, we look at how these devices are personalizing the world around us and adapting to our ever-changing needs. While the Co-Evolved Possibilities theme considers the potential and promise of a closer union between humans and technology and its impacts on our natural abilities.
Within these themes, we take an in-depth look at each of the key trends, bringing them to life with one best-in-class example, and YouTube videos for further illustration sprinkled through out this Slideshare presentation, and connecting the dots with takeaways to help spark thinking and discussion. As you click through the following slides, we hope you find inspiration and innovation that you can leverage and share within your own organization.

Dropbox and Uber: Worth Billions, But Still Inches From Disaster; Investors Drop Big Money On Dropbox So It Can Beat Box; Dropbox is now worth two Ubers and a Snapchat

Dropbox and Uber: Worth Billions, But Still Inches From Disaster

BY MARCUS WOHLSEN

01.14.14

Dropbox went dark over the weekend.

According to the company, the widespread outage was the result of a bug it introduced while updating the hundreds of computer servers that drive its massively popular file-sharing service. But the problem was bigger than that. The San Francisco-based startup not only faced countless complaints from users across the net, it was forced to deflect rumors that the service was hacked, something that turned out to be a hoax. Read more of this post

Dr Dre’s Beats Music is copying Spotify but should be copying Pandora instead

Dr Dre’s Beats Music is copying Spotify but should be copying Pandora instead

By Roberto A. Ferdman @robferdman January 17, 2014

Dr Dre may know a lot about the music industry, but that doesn’t mean he understands the music streaming industry.

The rap legend’s headphones brand Beats, which he co-founded with Jimmy Iovine, is set to launch Beats Music in the US early next week, and it’s going to look and work a lot like Spotify. Like the popular music streaming service, Dr Dre’s new offering will feature a near-endless pool of licensed music—more than 20 million songs in all. Like Spotify, Beats Music will also rely on monthly membership fees. Unlike Spotify, Beats will offer no free version, only a free one-month trial. Beats also promises to offer an advanced music curation service that will help create music playlists and suggest songs and artists based on a user’s taste. Spotify does this too, but Beats claims it will do it better. Read more of this post

Brian Chesky: The ‘Sharing Economy’ and Its Enemies; The cofounder of Airbnb on how an idea to rent space on air mattresses turned into a Web business that has hotel chains fuming and politicians suspicious

Brian Chesky: The ‘Sharing Economy’ and Its Enemies

The cofounder of Airbnb on how an idea to rent space on air mattresses turned into a Web business that has hotel chains fuming and politicians suspicious.

ANDY KESSLER

Jan. 17, 2014 7:00 p.m. ET

San Francisco’s Radius Cafe is one of those places where “local” is the rule—all the food is sourced within a 100-mile radius of the restaurant. So it’s a touch ironic to meet there with Brian Chesky, the hoodie-wearing 32-year-old co-founder of Airbnb, whose game plan is global. Read more of this post

Audio candy: Meet the companies using music to spur sales

Audio candy: Meet the companies using music to spur sales

The right music can generate loyal fans for a brand. The wrong music can alienate or even offend. Rebecca Burn-Callander meets two companies creating aural sensations for global retailers.

Daniel Cross, founder of Record-Play. Photo: Josep Xorto

By Rebecca Burn-Callander, Enterprise Editor

8:00AM GMT 17 Jan 2014

Music has gone hand in hand with promotion since primitive man drummed makeshift instruments to celebrate a birth or attract a mate. The very act of listening to music changes us. We release dopamine, the feel-good chemical, when we hear music that we like, and oxytocin, the bonding hormone associated with trust. Read more of this post

As smart-home devices grow, so do questions of security, privacy

As smart-home devices grow, so do questions of security, privacy

Matthew Braga | January 18, 2014 7:30 AM ET
Remember when computers were beige boxes that sat chained to your desk, where ‘networking’ meant walking a five-inch floppy disk to the office next door?

Here’s what the Google-connected home of tomorrow looks like

Those were certainly the days. Because, now, our refrigerators are talking to our lightbulbs and sharing data with our smartphones, and everything is a damned mess. Read more of this post

A More Mobile Intel Still Must Fix Its Financial Reporting; Where to look for signs of success at Intel. “Other IA” just won’t cut it

SATURDAY, JANUARY 18, 2014

A More Mobile Intel Still Must Fix Its Financial Reporting

By TIERNAN RAY | MORE ARTICLES BY AUTHOR

Where to look for signs of success at Intel. “Other IA” just won’t cut it.

There is still a shoe that needs to drop at Intel . The world’s largest chip maker (ticker: INTC) on Thursday reported fourth-quarter revenue of $13.8 billion, slightly higher than its forecast for the quarter, and up 3% from the year-earlier period. Read more of this post

Acer Posts Record $685 Million Loss After Making Further Write Offs

Acer Posts Record Loss After Making Further Write Offs

(Corrects CFO’s name in fourth paragraph.)

Acer Inc. (2353) posted a record annual loss after falling sales and asset write-offs prompted the Taiwanese personal computer maker to change its leadership. The net loss was NT$20.6 billion ($685 million) in 2013, the Taipei-based company said in a statement today, wider than the NT$15.1 billion average of 25 analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Read more of this post

Chinese Use Mobile Apps to Move Savings Into Money-Market Funds

Chinese Use Mobile Apps to Move Savings Into Money-Market Funds

By Bloomberg News January 16, 2014

Rebecca Ning can improve the yield on her savings by tapping her phone. Using Alipay, an Internet payment system, she pokes a silver icon on her screen to transfer money from her bank account in Beijing to a money-market mutual fund via a service called Yu’E Bao. She earned 430 yuan ($71) in interest on 30,000 yuan in a little less than three months last year. Had she left the money in her checking account earning 0.35 percent, her take would have been 26 yuan. “I put any spare cash I have into Yu’E Bao,” says Ning, 24, a graduate student in finance at Hong Kong Baptist University. “I’m basically losing money if I leave it as a bank deposit, as it’s depreciating in value every day.” Read more of this post

Cryptography: Unsafe and sound; Ciphers can now be broken by listening to the computers that use them

Cryptography: Unsafe and sound; Ciphers can now be broken by listening to the computers that use them

Jan 18th 2014 | From the print edition

EAVESDROPPING, be it simply sticking an ear against a door or listening to and analysing the noises made by tapping different keys on a keyboard, is a stock-in-trade of spying. Listening to a computer itself, though, as it hums away doing its calculations, is a new idea. But it is one whose time has come, according to Adi Shamir, of the Weizmann Institute, in Israel, and his colleagues. And Dr Shamir should know. He donated the initial letter of his surname to the acronym “RSA”, one of the most commonly used forms of encryption. Acoustic cryptanalysis, as the new method is known, threatens RSA’s security. Read more of this post

WeChat to manage wealth

WeChat to manage wealth

BEIJING, Jan. 17 (Xinhuanet) — Tencent Holdings Ltd pushed into the nation’s booming online financial services sector on Thursday as it announced plans to launch a wealth management service on its dominant mobile messaging app WeChat. Read more of this post

Who Wants to Be Microsoft’s Next CEO?

Who Wants to Be Microsoft’s Next CEO?

Pity the people who have to find the next chief executive officer of Microsoft Corp. Few are qualified, and fewer seem to want the job. Even so, there are reasons to think that shareholders could do better than Hans Vestberg, the boss of Ericsson AB, who, according to Bloomberg News, is on the short list to succeed Steve Ballmer, the current CEO. Read more of this post

The new GE: Google, everywhere: With a string of deals the internet giant has positioned itself to become a big inventor, and reinventor, of hardware

The new GE: Google, everywhere: With a string of deals the internet giant has positioned itself to become a big inventor, and reinventor, of hardware

Jan 18th 2014 | SAN FRANCISCO | From the print edition

AT GOOGLE they call it the toothbrush test. Shortly after returning to being the firm’s chief executive in 2011, Larry Page said he wanted it to develop more services that everyone would use at least twice a day, like a toothbrush. Its search engine and its Android operating system for mobile devices pass that test. Now, with a string of recent acquisitions, Google seems to be planning to become as big in hardware as it is in software, developing “toothbrush” products in a variety of areas from robots to cars to domestic-heating controls. Read more of this post

Something to stand on: Proliferating digital platforms will be at the heart of tomorrow’s economy, and even government

Something to stand on: Proliferating digital platforms will be at the heart of tomorrow’s economy, and even government

Jan 18th 2014 | From the print edition

PROVIDING THE RIGHT platform is sometimes all it takes. Instead of planning new pedestrian plazas by the usual bureaucratic means, New York City’s department of transportation just marks an area on a street with temporary materials and then lets local organisations, architects and citizens decide what to do with it. The programme has so far produced 59 plazas, including the Pearl Street Triangle in Brooklyn, a small urban oasis with big potted plants and shaded seating. Read more of this post

Out of juice: Disposable batteries are a costly way to buy power. Their days are numbered

Out of juice: Disposable batteries are a costly way to buy power. Their days are numbered

Jan 18th 2014 | From the print edition

TIME was when a household torch used an incandescent bulb and gobbled disposable batteries. Now it is more likely to have a low-power LED (light-emitting diode) and a long-lasting rechargeable battery—or none at all: a flick of the wrist or a twist of a handle can provide enough juice for a bright steady light. Read more of this post

IBM has laid out plans for a rapid expansion of its data centres around the world as it races to make up for lost time and prevent internet companies such as Amazon from cornering the fast-growing cloud computing market

January 17, 2014 2:22 am

IBM plans rapid cloud expansion

By Richard Waters in San Francisco

IBM has laid out plans for a rapid expansion of its data centres around the world as it races to make up for lost time and prevent internet companies such as Amazon from cornering the fast-growing cloud computing market. Read more of this post

Google zooms in on smart contact lens designed to help diabetics track their blood sugar levels in the blink of an eye

January 17, 2014 1:16 am

Google zooms in on smart lenses

By Richard Waters in San Francisco

Google is aiming to take a lead in an area of “wearable” health devices where Microsoft once hoped to be a pioneer, as it tests a contact lens designed to help diabetics track their blood sugar levels in the blink of an eye. Read more of this post

Google and the internet of things: Feathering its Nest

Google and the internet of things: Feathering its Nest

Jan 14th 2014, 8:34 by M.G.| SAN FRANCISCO

“HOLY cripes, Google just broke into my home”, was a typical reaction on Twitter to news on January 13th that the internet giant had splashed out $3.2 billion of its cash pile on Nest, a startup that makes smart thermostats and smoke-alarm systems for houses and apartments. The deal is striking not just because it represents a massive pay day for a hardware company that is only a few years old. It is also a landmark deal that signals the coming of age of the internet of things, or “Thingternet”—a world in which everything from household gadgets to cars, clothes and pets are connected wirelessly to the web. Read more of this post

Coming to an office near you: The effect of today’s technology on tomorrow’s jobs will be immense—and no country is ready for it

Coming to an office near you: The effect of today’s technology on tomorrow’s jobs will be immense—and no country is ready for it

Jan 18th 2014 | From the print edition

INNOVATION, the elixir of progress, has always cost people their jobs. In the Industrial Revolution artisan weavers were swept aside by the mechanical loom. Over the past 30 years the digital revolution has displaced many of the mid-skill jobs that underpinned 20th-century middle-class life. Typists, ticket agents, bank tellers and many production-line jobs have been dispensed with, just as the weavers were.

Read more of this post

A penny stock called Nestor just surged 1,900% because people confused it with the company Google just bought; Insider Trading Law Cannot Handle Nest and Nestor

A penny stock called Nestor just surged 1,900% because people confused it with the company Google just bought

Steven Perlberg, Business Insider | January 15, 2014 | Last Updated: Jan 15 2:40 PM ET
Nestor Inc is a Providence, Rhode Island-based company that sells automated traffic enforcement systems to local governments. It has 89 employees and trades over-the-counter under the ticker “NEST.” Read more of this post