Uber, LeCab And Others Now Have To Wait 15 Minutes Before Picking You Up In France

Uber, LeCab And Others Now Have To Wait 15 Minutes Before Picking You Up In France

Posted 5 hours ago by Romain Dillet (@romaindillet)

At first, it was just an idea, but this bill is now very real — urban transportation services like Uber and LeCab will now have to wait 15 minutes in France before letting a customer in the car. Back in October, the French government mentioned this piece of legislation as these new services would hurt traditional cab drivers. But nothing was set in stone until the AFPspotted the new bill today — and this news comes as a surprise. Read more of this post

Reddit Is Pouring Resources Into Its New Gift Exchange In An Attempt To Become Profitable

Reddit Is Pouring Resources Into Its New Gift Exchange In An Attempt To Become Profitable

GERRY SHIH, REUTERS
DEC. 28, 2013, 7:21 AM 1,777 1

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Social news hub Reddit snagged an interview with Barack Obama last year. The big get for 2013 was reaching 90 million unique visitors a month, according to the company, on par with the likes of eBay. This season, even Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates joined its Secret Santa gift exchange. Read more of this post

Reading Your Palm for Security’s Sake; The use of biometric scans for consumer identification is growing, but some experts are concerned about the data being hacked or misused

December 28, 2013

Reading Your Palm for Security’s Sake

By ANNE EISENBERG

The technology can be used at a public library for checking out a book without the need for a library card

They aren’t taking any chances at Barclays Bank in Britain. Stating an account number and other bona fides isn’t enough to get to your money at the bank’s wealth and investment management service. As an additional safeguard, a program analyzes customers’ voices when they call in, to make sure they match a voice print on file. Read more of this post

Moms Have Taken Over Facebook, And Teens Want Nothing To Do With It

Moms Have Taken Over Facebook, And Teens Want Nothing To Do With It

DANIEL MILLER, THE CONVERSATION UK
DEC. 28, 2013, 4:18 AM 7,453 12

What does 2014 hold for your online life? If you’re young, it probably won’t involve Facebook that much. This year marked the start of what looks likely to be a sustained decline of what had been the most pervasive of all social networking sites. Young people are turning away in their droves and adopting other social networks instead, while the worst people of all, their parents, continue to use the service. Read more of this post

Market Prophit Finds Predictability in Social Media; A new feature on Market Prophit’s site ranks bloggers who tweet on their ability to be correct

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2013

Market Prophit Finds Predictability in Social Media

By THERESA W. CAREY | MORE ARTICLES BY AUTHOR

A new feature on Market Prophit’s site ranks bloggers who tweet on their ability to be correct.

Is there predictability in the stock market in social media? Igor Gonta of Market Prophit believes so, and has introduced a new feature to his company’s website that helps you find financial bloggers who have crystal balls that are polished and ready to go. Read more of this post

Ex-Google Engineer Reveals How Google Maps Figures Out Destination Times

Ex-Google Engineer Reveals How Google Maps Figures Out Destination Times

PAUL SZOLDRA 

DEC. 28, 2013, 6:56 PM 4,458 

When you search for directions using Google Maps, there are a variety of factors at play in determining when you’ll actually arrive, according to a former Google engineer. In a post on Quora recently spotted by 9to5Mac, ex-Google engineer Richard Russell reveals more of what that is: Read more of this post

Brainlike Computers, Learning From Experience

December 28, 2013

Brainlike Computers, Learning From Experience

By JOHN MARKOFF

Kwabena Boahen holding a biologically inspired processor attached to a robotic arm in a laboratory at Stanford University.

PALO ALTO, Calif. — Computers have entered the age when they are able to learn from their own mistakes, a development that is about to turn the digital world on its head. Read more of this post

Why did Alibaba and Jingdong apply for mobile telecom licenses?

Why did Alibaba and Jingdong apply for mobile telecom licenses?

December 27, 2013

by Josh Horwitz

Yesterday news broke that China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), the regulator of the country’s three state-owned telcos, announced that 11 Chinese companies had received licenses allowing them to operate as “virtual telecom service providers.” This enables these private firms to lease services from China Telecom, China Mobile, or China Unicom and repackage them for consumers, much like how Sprint licenses airwaves to Virgin Mobile, or how Walmart offers service plans using T-Mobile’s network. Read more of this post

WeChat gets ready for primetime with upcoming release of WeChat TV

WeChat gets ready for primetime with upcoming release of WeChat TV

December 26, 2013

by Josh Horwitz

Tencent (HKG:0700), the company behind behemoth Chinese messaging app WeChat, has announced it will partner with television manufacturer Skyworth and content provider CNTV (the online branch of official state broadcaster CCTV) to launch “WeChat TV,” a standalone smart TV. Read more of this post

Camera360, One Of China’s Most Popular Photo Apps, Now Focusing On International Growth

Camera360, One Of China’s Most Popular Photo Apps, Now Focusing On International Growth

Posted Dec 23, 2013 by Catherine Shu (@catherineshu)

Build by Pingguo, a startup based in Chinese tech hub Chengdu, Camera360 is already one of the world’s most successful photo editing apps with over 180 million users in more than 200 countries who take about 80 million photos each day. But it has faces strong competition from other photo editing apps like Camera+ and Afterlight, all of which are aimed at users who want more advanced editing features than filters. Read more of this post

Uber Drivers to Get GM and Toyota Financing Deals

Uber Drivers to Get GM and Toyota Financing Deals

People who sign up as drivers for Uber Technology Inc.’s car-booking service will be able to get discounted financing or leasing for vehicles made by Toyota Motor Corp. (7203) and General Motors Co. (GM) Read more of this post

Twitter Posts Biggest-Ever Decline After Macquarie Downgrade

Twitter Posts Biggest-Ever Decline After Macquarie Downgrade

Twitter Inc. (TWTR) fell the most since it debuted on the New York Stock Exchange after Macquarie Capital downgraded the social-networking company, saying the stock has gone “too far, too fast.” The shares of the microblogging service fell 13 percent to $63.75 at the close in New York. The stock had almost tripled through yesterday since a Nov. 6 initial public offering. Read more of this post

MOOCs: Inflated Expectations, Early Disappointments

December 27, 2013, 12:09 PM ET

MOOCs: Inflated Expectations, Early Disappointments

By Irving Wladawsky-Berger

Guest Contributor

Massive open online courses–online platforms offering courses and educational materials to very large numbers of people–captured our imagination in the Fall of 2011 when, unexpectedly, a free online course in artificial intelligence given by two Stanford University professors attracted 160,000 students. The NY Times called 2012 The Year of the MOOC. Three major MOOC platforms were launched that year, the for-profit, VC-backed Udacity and Coursera, which were each started by Stanford faculty members; and the not-for-profit edX, a collaborative venture of MIT and Harvard University. They established partnerships with a number of universities which offer their own online courses on the platforms.  Other institutions around the world have also launched their own MOOCs. Read more of this post

Bob Peck’s Top 10 Disruptive Themes for 2014

Bob Peck’s Top 10 Disruptive Themes for 2014

Joshua M Brown

December 23rd, 2013

My fave internet analyst, Bob Peck of SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, is out with a note on the themes he thinks will be the biggest for web investors next year. Bob and his team at STRH have been spot-on about a lot of the big trends this year and he nailed Twitter’s eventual valuation way before the stock came public. In today’s note, Peck lists his Top 10 Disruptive Theme predictions for internet investors (all standard disclaimers apply)… Read more of this post

Asia’s richest man Li Ka-Shing just invested in a startup that’s like PayPal for Bitcoin

Asia’s richest man just invested in a startup that’s like PayPal for Bitcoin

December 27, 2013

by Steven Millward

Asia’s richest man, Li Ka-shing, is worth about $29 billion. Though he’s not investing in Bitcoin, the volatile virtual currency, he has decided to invest in BitPay, a US startup that’s a sort of PayPal for bitcoins. Read more of this post

Apple’s IOS Defeats Android in Battle of Christmas Day Shopping

Apple’s IOS Defeats Android in Battle of Christmas Day Shopping

Here’s one category where Android is still no match for Apple Inc. (AAPL): mobile shopping.

On Christmas day, Apple’s iOS devices were used to make 23 percent of all e-commerce orders, according to a report yesterday from International Business Machines Corp. Phones and tablets running Google Inc. (GOOG)’s Android, meanwhile, only accounted for 4.6 percent. IOS customers also spent $93.94 per order, almost twice the amount of the average Android shopper. Read more of this post

$7,500 A Month! Look At The Insane Salaries Interns Earn At Top Tech Companies

$7,500 A Month! Look At The Insane Salaries Interns Earn At Top Tech Companies

JULIE BORT

DEC. 27, 2013, 9:16 PM 34,045 1

It pays to study math, science and technology in college these … really pays. Competition for talented software programmers and computer hardware engineers is so intense, interns can expect land salaries of $4,000 to well over $6,000 a month at some top tech companies, according to InternMatch, a site that helps students find paid internships. One company even pays as much as $7,500 a month. Read more of this post

Taiwan’s e-commerce sector emerges

Taiwan’s e-commerce sector emerges

Saturday, December 28, 2013
By Kathryn Chiu ,The China Post

TAIPEI, Taiwan — As the development of third-party online payment matures, Taiwan’s e-commerce supply chain, including online shopping malls and cloud infrastructure buildings, will form an emerging sector in 3-5 years. Read more of this post

HTC executives indicted for leaking trade secrets

HTC executives indicted for leaking trade secrets
Saturday, December 28, 2013
The China Post news staff with CNA

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Six employees of leading Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC Corp., including its vice president of product design Thomas Chien (簡志霖), were indicted Friday on charges of leaking trade secrets and breach of trust. Read more of this post

King of PCs, Lenovo Sets Smartphone Ambitions

December 26, 2013

King of PCs, Lenovo Sets Smartphone Ambitions

By ERIC PFANNER

In the United States, Lenovo is still best known as the Chinese company that bought IBM’s PC business in 2005. In China, it is better known as the world’s new No. 1 PC maker, a force to be reckoned with in smartphones and a bellwether for the nation’s economic and technological might. Read more of this post

China approves pilot to open mobile telecoms market, boost competition

China approves pilot to open mobile telecoms market, boost competition

5:27am EST

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China has approved a pilot scheme allowing private companies to piggy back on the country’s three dominant telecommunications providers to offer own-brand mobile services, opening the world’s largest mobile phone market to increased competition. Read more of this post

Tech in China 2013: Chinese Internet Giants Shopping Crazily

Tech in China 2013: Chinese Internet Giants Shopping Crazily

By Tracey Xiang on December 26, 2013

The old story: Big Chinese Internet companies would, rather than buy or invest in startups, hire a bunch of engineers to build products on their own or do pixel-to-pixel knockoffs. Big names like Tencent are notorious for killing startups by doing so, with better products or the ability of converting existing users. Recognized reasons include 1) the costs of hiring several smart-enough Chinese engineers are much lower than buying a startup, and 2) intellectual property rights haven’t been well protected in China. Read more of this post

Will Facebook Stock Suffer The MySpace Syndrome?

Will Facebook Stock Suffer The MySpace Syndrome?

TOM TAULLI, INVESTORPLACE.COM DEC. 26, 2013, 8:34 PM 704 2

Facebook (FB) has become a company with a market cap of $142 billion in just a decade or so, under the guidance of Mark Zuckerberg. That’s not bad for someone who is now only 29. But has Wall Street has gotten to enthused about FB stock. Read more of this post

Twitter’s Ballooning Market Cap; Twitter: The Christmas Cult Stock

Dec 26, 2013

Twitter’s Ballooning Market Cap

STEVEN RUSSOLILLO

Twitter Inc.TWTR +4.79%shares are flying again Thursday morning, as bullish momentum keeps building behind the microblogging site. The stock has surged 75% this month and is up 180% since the company priced its $26 initial public offering in November. Twitter sports a $38.1 billion market capitalization as of Tuesday’s close, according to FactSet. If Twitter were in the S&P 500, it would be among the top 20% of biggest companies based on market value. Read more of this post

Twitter Now Has A Larger Market Capitalization Than 80% Of All S&P 500 Companies

Twitter Now Has A Larger Market Capitalization Than 80% Of All S&P 500 Companies

Tyler Durden on 12/26/2013 18:58 -0500

As everyone is well aware by now, Twitter investors and speculators have been on a sharp, sudden and very relentless buying spree, sending the company nearly 50% higher since the first week of December, and nearly doubling it since late November. Why the stock has exploded the way it has, nobody knows, and frankly nobody cares: it has entered that mythical zone of raging momentum where things work, until they don’t for whatever reason. But in order to present readers with a sense of where TWTR’s $40 billion market cap,which is greater than 403, or 80%, of all S&P 500 companies, puts in in the context of several companies all of which have a market cap that is lower than Twitter’s, we have shown on the chart below Twitter’s 2014 projected Revenue compared to this same universe of immediately smaller S&P500 companies. Again, just for the sake of perspective. Certainly, we have no doubt that Twitter’s growth curve, based on the realistic assumption of infinite and growing advertising budgets, will promptly eclipse not only the revenues but certainly the earnings and cash flows of all the below-listed companies, and why not all other companies, both in the US and the world, too. Surely, more idiotic things have happened under Bernanke’s centrally planned regime.

The Baidu IME Japanese-language input program for Windows computers poses security risk as it sends every character typed to the software provider’s server without the user’s consent

Free Chinese-made software poses security risk

BY ATSUSHI KODERA

STAFF WRITER

DEC 26, 2013

A Japanese-language input program — potentially installed on millions of computers, including those used at government agencies — sends every character typed to the software provider’s server without the user’s consent. Read more of this post

Samsung to offer Smart TVs controlled by finger gestures

Samsung to offer Smart TVs controlled by finger gestures

LONDON — Samsung has announced that it will showcase its new smart televisions, featuring voice- and motion-control, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next month.

6 HOURS 25 MIN AGO

LONDON — Samsung has announced that it will showcase its new smart televisions, featuring voice- and motion-control, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next month. Read more of this post

Rolls-Royce looks to plot a course to the future with drone ships

December 26, 2013 3:42 pm

Rolls-Royce looks to plot a course to the future with drone ships

By Mark Odell

Amazon may have embraced the robotics revolution with the promise of drones making deliveries to your door, but Rolls-Royce has taken it one step further and is predicting the first drone cargo ship will enter service in the next decade. Read more of this post

Robo-Gloves, Meat Hooks Help Ease Human-Machine Teamwork; “If the robot would bump into you, it would actually say ‘Hey excuse me”. It’s almost like another person working next to you.”

GM Robo-Glove to Meat Hook Smooth Human-Machine Teamwork

Robots and humans, for decades kept separate from each other on factory floors, are inching toward integration. After years of walling off robots to ensure safety, some companies are finding ways to put them alongside people, with lightweight materials and new sensors enabling engineers to build machines that can be employees’ partners or even worn on the job. Read more of this post

Overstock to Embrace Bitcoin, Giving the Currency a Lift

DECEMBER 26, 2013, 7:58 PM

Overstock to Embrace Bitcoin, Giving the Currency a Lift

By NICK WINGFIELD

Patrick Byrne, the chief executive of Overstock, finds the limitations of creating Bitcoins appealing. One of the biggest questions looming over Bitcoin, the digital currency generating attention in the tech business, is when big mainstream merchants will begin accepting it. Read more of this post