Big Data’s Little Brother

November 10, 2013

Big Data’s Little Brother

By QUENTIN HARDY

SAN FRANCISCO — David Soloff is recruiting an army of “hyperdata” collectors. The company he co-founded, Premise, created a smartphone application that is now used by 700 people in 25 developing countries. Using guidance from Mr. Soloff and his co-workers, these people, mostly college students and homemakers, photograph food and goods in public markets. By analyzing the photos of prices and the placement of everyday items like piles of tomatoes and bottles of shampoo and matching that to other data, Premise is building a real-time inflation index to sell to companies and Wall Street traders, who are hungry for insightful data. Read more of this post

Nokia’s Ollila had been surrounded by “sycophants who had no competence to address software challenges.”; Nokia’s fall should be a cautionary tale

Nokia’s fall should be a cautionary tale

Monday, November 11, 2013 – 09:04

AFP

HELSINKI – In just five years Nokia fell from dominating the mobile phone industry to abandoning the handset business, a swift fall from grace with lessons for market leaders. The story of Nokia, now at the toughest stage of the restructuring cycle, is a particularly salutary business case about the fast-moving, high-risk, high-reward, tech sector for hip consumer goods. Read more of this post

Twitter Puts Spotlight on How Firms Burnish Results

Twitter Puts Spotlight on How Firms Burnish Results

MICHAEL RAPOPORT

Nov. 9, 2013 7:06 p.m. ET

Twitter Inc. TWTR -7.24% lost money in the first nine months of the year. But when the company used a different set of measurements, it posted a profit. The strong interest in Twitter’s initial public offering brought back to the fore the accounting methods that companies can use to burnish otherwise lackluster results. Twitter has recorded a loss of more than $130 million this year using traditional accounting measures. But after stripping out several costs, Twitter posted a nine-month profit of almost $31 million. Read more of this post

Amazon and J&J Clash Over Third-Party Sales; J&J Complained Damaged or Expired Products Were Sold on Site

Amazon and J&J Clash Over Third-Party Sales

J&J Complained Damaged or Expired Products Were Sold on Site

SERENA NG and JONATHAN D. ROCKOFF

Updated Nov. 10, 2013 8:22 p.m. ET

Johnson & Johnson JNJ +1.47% and Amazon.com Inc. AMZN +1.96% are clashing over complaints that Amazon isn’t doing enough to prevent people from selling damaged or expired J&J products—Tylenol painkillers and Rogaine baldness treatments, among others—on its website. The behind-the-scenes dispute is a prime example of a widening fear among consumer-products companies: On the Internet, it is easier to lose control over a brand image. Read more of this post

Cameras Succumb to Smartphone Juggernaut

Cameras Succumb to Smartphone Juggernaut

FARHAD MANJOO

Nov. 10, 2013 7:16 p.m. ET

Smartphone cameras traditionally have been better in theory than reality. Start with the shutter lag: Nearly every phone camera I’ve ever used has had an annoying split-second delay between the time you hit the button to snap your shot and the time the shot gets snapped. The lag is just long enough for your kid’s adorable smile to turn into a nightmarish frown. Read more of this post

Social Media in China; Sina Weibo and Tencent’s WeChat dominate social media in China. But the landscape is shifting—and this week they will offer investors a glimpse of how well they are keeping their footing

Social Media in China: Sina, Tencent to Report Results

PAUL MOZUR

Nov. 10, 2013 12:58 p.m. ET

BEIJING—Two companies dominate social media in China. But the landscape is shifting—and this week they will offer investors a glimpse of how well they are keeping their footing. Beijing-based Sina Corp. SINA -2.64% runs the country’s most popular public microblogging service, the Twitter-like Sina Weibo, which for the past three years has served as the closest thing China has for a national forum. It is facing increasing pressure from Tencent Holdings Ltd. TCEHY +0.56% ‘s WeChat, a mobile app similar to WhatsApp and Line that allows users to post status updates, share photos and even strike up quick romantic encounters. Read more of this post

Is Silicon Valley Arrogant? Not by My Definition

Is Silicon Valley Arrogant? Not by My Definition

The tech world is all atwitter over accusations of arrogance. In an essay in the Wall Street Journal headlined “Silicon Valley Has an Arrogance Problem,” Farhad Manjoo decried the industry’s “superiority complex” and wrote: “For Silicon Valley’s own sake, the triumphalist tone needs to be kept in check.” He probably intended his piece as a friendly warning, but not everybody in the Valley took it that way. (Just peruse the comment threads.) What sparked Manjoo’s column was a speech last month by Stanford University lecturer Balaji Srinivasan titled “Silicon Valley’s Ultimate Exit.” Srinivasan proposed that techies should think about leaving the U.S., in part to escape from regulators who stifle progress but also because, even though the tech industry is the nation’s only reliable creator of wealth, Americans will eventually “try and blame the economy on Silicon Valley.” Read more of this post

Alibaba Builds a ‘Black Friday’ for China; It’s the Biggest Online Shopping Day in the World. And It’s in China, Not the U.S. Taobao and Tmall account for more than half of all parcel deliveries in China

Alibaba Builds a ‘Black Friday’ for China

It’s the Biggest Online Shopping Day in the World. And It’s in China, Not the U.S.

JURO OSAWA

Updated Nov. 8, 2013 7:13 p.m. ET

In the U.S., it takes Thanksgiving, plus the approach of the year-end holidays, to trigger the biggest shopping weekend of the year. In China, all it takes is a sale by Alibaba. Every Nov. 11, millions of Chinese shoppers flock to the e-commerce websites operated by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. They spend more on those sites during that one day of discounts than Americans do on all online retailers on Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined. Read more of this post

A Beer by the Sensor; An Indiana start-up showcased technology this week meant to help bars and restaurants — and maybe even patrons — keep track of the beer remaining in a keg

NOVEMBER 8, 2013, 2:38 PM

A Beer by the Sensor

By MICHAEL ROSTON

SteadyServ, an Indiana-based company, is a recent entrant in the technology industry’s desire to serve up what we want to drink whenever we want to drink it. The much-hyped Internet of Things may someday arrive as promised. While we wait, maybe we should grab a pint of good beer? That is where new technology from an Indiana start-up firm could come in handy. The company, SteadyServ Technologies, showcased technology this week to help bars and restaurants — and maybe even patrons — keep track of the beer remaining in a keg. Read more of this post

DuPont, the most valuable U.S. chemical company, is collaborating with Deere to sell software intended to boost crop yields, a move that may challenge Monsanto as it expands into the same area

DuPont Joins Deere on Software in Challenge to Monsanto

DuPont Co. (DD), the most valuable U.S. chemical company, is collaborating with Deere & Co. (DE) to sell software intended to boost crop yields, a move that may challenge Monsanto Co. (MON) as it expands into the same area. DuPont’s Pioneer seed unit will combine its Field360 software with Wireless Data Transfer technology from Deere, the world’s largest maker of agricultural equipment. Uploading data from the field as it’s collected can help growers make better decisions on seeds, fertilizer and other inputs, Wilmington, Delaware-based DuPont said today in a statement. Read more of this post

HTC can learn from Xiaomi’s success in mobile internet era

HTC can learn from Xiaomi’s success in mobile internet era

Su Yi-yi and Staff Reporter

2013-11-09

Chinese budget smartphone maker Xiaomi, which has been in business for just over three years, has outpaced Taiwan’s HTC to take the fifth spot in China’s smartphone market behind Samsung, Apple, Nokia and Huawei. HTC’s market value has declined by at least 80% since 2011 and the company must now assess how best to project its unique qualities amid global competition. HTC must also find ways to adapt to the current trends of the global mobile internet market and how it can interact with younger and trendier consumer groups. Read more of this post

Is the new mobile ecommerce experience all about avatars and auction rooms?

Is the new mobile ecommerce experience all about avatars and auction rooms?

BY CARMEL DEAMICIS 
ON NOVEMBER 8, 2013

When you enter Tophatter‘s site or mobile app, it looks like a scene from a 90s simulator game. A room of (mostly) female avatars face forward, their cartoon-y heads attentively watching an auction on stage. One avatar at the front hops up and down next to the robotic auctioneer, shouting descriptions about their item to the crowd until the highest bidder is chosen. Read more of this post

Microsoft Is Finally Taking Aim At The Cable Box

Microsoft Is Finally Taking Aim At The Cable Box

Posted 15 hours ago by John Biggs

Game consoles are in an enviable position: right under millions of televisions. The popular line is that the big three – Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony – are dinosaurs choking on the smoke of a red hot mobile gaming meteor. That’s not true. Nintendo has already sold 3.91 million units as of September 2013 and the Xbox 360 sold 79 million. That’s a lot of electronics under a lot of TVs. Read more of this post

Priceline CEO Seeks Growth After Boyd’s ‘Hundred Bagger’

Priceline CEO Seeks Growth After Boyd’s ‘Hundred Bagger’

Darren Huston has a tall task at Priceline.com Inc. (PCLN), succeeding the guy who generated a 100-fold stock surge over the past 11 years, racing the company past Expedia Inc. (EXPE) Huston, 47, was named chief executive officer yesterday of the Norwalk, Connecticut-based company, replacing Jeffery Boyd, who is staying on as chairman. Huston, a former Microsoft executive, joined Priceline in 2011 as head of Booking.com, the European unit that’s fueled the company’s expansion. Read more of this post

Ubiquitous Across Globe, Cellphones Have Become Tool for Doing Good

November 8, 2013

Ubiquitous Across Globe, Cellphones Have Become Tool for Doing Good

By ESHA CHHABRA

The cellphone has become more of a tool and less of a toy, especially among the poor, and those trying to help them, in emerging markets. It helps deliver, via text message, water, energy, financial services, health care and even education. The World Health Organization estimates that more than 700 million people do not have access to clean drinking water and over 2.5 billion have no access to toilets. Yet according to the International Telecommunications Union, 96 percent of the world is connected via cellphone — which is why it has become a means of doing good. Read more of this post

Meet Context, The New Photo Texting App All The Cool Kids Are Using

Meet Context, The New Photo Texting App All The Cool Kids Are Using

Posted yesterday by Ryan Lawler

There are a number of apps out there seeking to displace SMS as the primary mode of communications between mobile users — there’s MessageMe, Line, WeChat, WhatsApp and others. And, of course, there’s Snapchat, which has built a big, booming following around photo messaging. Well, there’s another new messaging app out there called Context, which seeks to streamline the way users communicate what’s going on around them through that it calls “Simple, Fun Photo Texting.” Read more of this post

Analyst Day good start for Samsung; It was only the second conference for analysts in Samsung’s history ㅡ the first one was held in 2005

2013-11-08 16:44

Analyst Day good start for Samsung

By Kim Yoo-chul
Samsung Electronics is changing. 
It is secretive, a complaint frequently made by financial and stock market analysts. Plus, the tech world is wondering whether it will continue its sustainable growth after the smartphone market reaches a saturation point.  Then, it opened up with Samsung Analyst Day this week. Samsung’s key executives held sessions to explain the firm’s growth strategies. It was only the second conference for analysts in Samsung’s history ㅡ the first one was held in 2005. Samsung thinks its way is the best way so its leaders had no reason to speak out. Read more of this post

Online video in China: The Chinese stream; China’s online-video market is the largest and most innovative in the world. It is also the most competitive

Online video in China: The Chinese stream; China’s online-video market is the largest and most innovative in the world. It is also the most competitive

Nov 9th 2013 | BEIJING |From the print edition

LATER this month PPTV, a Chinese online-video firm, will release a new reality show called “The Goddess Office” (pictured) about four young women living together in a house, trying to create their own e-commerce company. Viewers will be able to ask the stars questions and send them money and ideas for their start-up. The show will employ familiar television elements: the comedic rapport of the characters in “Friends” and the commercial ambitions of contestants in “The Apprentice”. But this “television” show will run exclusively online, rather than on a traditional TV network. Read more of this post

Internet security: Besieged; Stung by revelations of ubiquitous surveillance and compromised software, the internet’s engineers and programmers ponder how to fight back

Internet security: Besieged; Stung by revelations of ubiquitous surveillance and compromised software, the internet’s engineers and programmers ponder how to fight back

Nov 9th 2013 |From the print edition

SECURITY guards (at least the good ones) are paid to be paranoid. Computer-security researchers are the same. Many had long suspected that governments use the internet not only to keep tabs on particular targets, but also to snoop on entire populations. But suspicions are not facts. So when newspapers began publishing documents leaked by Edward Snowden, once employed as a contractor by America’s National Security Agency (NSA), the world’s most munificently funded electronic spy agency, those researchers sat up. Read more of this post

Brazil’s biggest software firm sees a sluggish economy as an opportunity

Brazil’s biggest software firm sees a sluggish economy as an opportunity

Nov 9th 2013 | SÃO PAULO |From the print edition

IN THE late 1970s Bill Gates predicted “a computer on every desk and in every home”. Laércio Cosentino, an engineer at SIGA, a Brazilian maker of software for mainframes, concluded that therefore every small firm in his country, even the ubiquitous street-corner padari a(bakery), would eventually have one too. In 1983 Mr Cosentino, then just 22, convinced his boss to set up a separate business to concentrate on serving small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Thirty years on, the company, nowadays called Totvs (pronounced “totus”), dominates Brazil’s $1.9-billion-a-year market for enterprise software. Investors have piled in. On October 22nd Totvs disclosed that the world’s biggest fund manager, BlackRock, had increased its stake to 5%. Read more of this post

BlackBerry: Only thorns; For a fallen star of the smartphone industry, things go from bad to worse

BlackBerry: Only thorns; For a fallen star of the smartphone industry, things go from bad to worse

Nov 9th 2013 | OTTAWA |From the print edition

THE signs do not look good. On November 4th, six weeks after BlackBerry said that its biggest shareholder, Fairfax Financial, wanted to take the ailing Canadian smartphone-maker private for $4.7 billion in cash, the sale was called off. BlackBerry instead declared that it would raise $1 billion in debt, convertible into 16% of its shares. Fairfax, a Toronto holding company that focuses on insurance but owns 10% of BlackBerry, is taking a quarter of the issue. Barbara Stymiest, who chairs BlackBerry’s board, called this “a significant vote of confidence in BlackBerry and its future”. The stockmarket called it a flop: the share price, already a fraction of what it once was (see chart), fell by 16%. Read more of this post

Is Xero the Hero for New Zealand Stocks? Technology Company has Nearly Doubled in Value in Last Two Weeks

Is Xero the Hero for New Zealand Stocks?

Technology Company has Nearly Doubled in Value in Last Two Weeks

LUCY CRAYMER

Nov. 7, 2013 10:53 p.m. ET

WELLINGTON, New Zealand—One of the Asian-Pacific region’s best-performing stock markets is being driven by an unlikely source: a technology company backed by PayPal founder Peter Thiel that has yet to make a cent in profit. A 21% increase in New Zealand’s NZX-50 so far this year reflects in large part rapid stock gains by Xero Ltd. XRO.NZ +3.56% , dubbed by broker Credit Suisse CSGN.VX -0.04% as the ” Apple Inc. AAPL -1.62% of accounting.” Read more of this post

The Hidden Technology That Makes Twitter Huge

The Hidden Technology That Makes Twitter Huge

By Paul Ford November 07, 2013

Consider the tweet. It’s short—140 characters and done—but hardly simple. If you open one up and look inside, you’ll see a remarkable clockwork, with 31 publicly documented data fields. Why do these tweets, typically born of a stray impulse, need to carry all this data with them? While a tweet thrives in its timeline, among the other tweets, it’s also designed to stand on its own, forever. Any tweet might show up embedded inside a million different websites. It may be called up and re-displayed years after posting. For all their supposed ephemerality, tweets have real staying power. Read more of this post

Small-Shop Hiring Fueled by 3-D Printers to IPhone Tools

Small-Shop Hiring Fueled by 3-D Printers to IPhone Tools

Matthew Doom texts a lot at work and is a whiz on the 3D printer. Unlike most tech workers, his office is a wooden workbench next to a milling machine where he cuts metal for medical devices and other parts. The 20-year-old is one of a dozen employees at Baklund R&D LLC in Hutchinson, Minnesota, using Internet connections with far-flung customers, smartphone chats and the latest in computer equipment to squeeze more business out of traditional tool and die equipment. Eight months ago Doom was milking cows at a nearby dairy farm. Read more of this post

Small Businesses Question Twitter’s Usefulness

Small Businesses Question Twitter’s Usefulness

Ad Targeting on the Messaging Service Receives Mixed Reviews

YOREE KOH and SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN

Nov. 6, 2013 5:50 p.m. ET

As it prepares to begin trading on Thursday, Twitter Inc. is hustling to attract, and retain, small businesses, a potentially lucrative source of advertising revenue. Justin Beegel, president of Infographic World Inc., spent $550 to advertise his 11-person New York data-visualization company on Twitter in September. But two weeks of “promoted tweets” offering a discount to targeted users generated only one response, from a user who didn’t become a customer. “I’m definitely done with the Twitter ads,” says Mr. Beegel. Read more of this post

Priceline replaced its longtime chief executive with the boss of its most profitable hotel-booking unit, ending an 11-year tenure that oversaw one of the most dramatic turnarounds of the past decade

Priceline’s Longtime CEO Hands Over Reins

DREW FITZGERALD

Updated Nov. 7, 2013 6:51 p.m. ET

Priceline.com Inc. PCLN -3.32% replaced its longtime chief executive with the boss of its most profitable hotel-booking unit, ending an 11-year tenure that oversaw one of the most dramatic turnarounds of the past decade. Chief Executive Jeffery Boyd, 56 years old, said he would hand the reins of the online travel company to Darren Huston, 47, a former Microsoft Corp. executive who has been running its Booking B.V. unit since 2011. Mr. Boyd will remain chairman of the company. Read more of this post

Online-Travel King Brad Gerstner Wants Venture Capital Empire

Online-Travel King Brad Gerstner Wants Venture Capital Empire

By Ari Levy November 07, 2013

Brad Gerstner is an amateur pilot who’s logged about 400 hours above New England. He’s also flown (as a passenger) to Morocco on MTV founder Bob Pittman’s private Falcon jet, and has gone heli-skiing with Expedia founder and Zillow (Z) co-founder Rich Barton. “He’s an explorer,” Barton says. This year, Barton, Pittman, and Gerstner met up for Burning Man, the famously libidinous temporary community assemblage in the Nevada desert, for a week of self-expression and survivalist living. Read more of this post

Marvel to Produce Several TV Series for Netflix

Nov 7, 2013

Marvel to Produce Several TV Series for Netflix

BEN FRITZ

In a huge commitment for both companies, NetflixInc. has agreed to order four 13 episode live-action superhero series and a miniseries from Walt Disney Co.’s Marvel Entertainment. The deal significantly expands Marvel’s television presence and gives Netflix one of its highest profile original series order since the company got into the business earlier this year. Read more of this post

High-End Cameras Fall Prey to Smartphones

High-End Cameras Fall Prey to Smartphones

Canon, Nikon Lower Full-Year Sale Forecasts for Interchangeable-Lens Cameras

JURO OSAWA

Updated Nov. 7, 2013 7:41 p.m. ET

Declining sales of high-end cameras and lenses are raising an alarming question for companies like Canon Inc. 7751.TO -0.65% and Nikon Corp. 7731.TO -5.42% : Could the proliferation of camera-enabled, app-heavy smartphones be crushing not only the simple point-and-shoot, but premium models as well? This year, shipments of what’s called “interchangeable-lens cameras”—high-end models that let users swap out different lenses—are diving suddenly after years of robust growth. Most of those are digital single-lens reflex, or DSLR, cameras—the bulky models used by professional photographers and enthusiasts. Read more of this post