Google Inc is launching a service that lets consumers pay for live video chats with experts who can provide everything from step-by-step turkey cooking instructions to marriage counseling

Updated: Tuesday November 5, 2013 MYT 2:49:25 PM

Google offers live video chats on range of topics with new service

SAN FRANCISCO: Google Inc is launching a service that lets consumers pay for live video chats with experts who can provide everything from step-by-step turkey cooking instructions to marriage counseling. The Google Helpouts service, introduced on Monday, features roughly 1,000 partners in fashion, fitness, computers and other topics, available for live, one-on-one video consultations. The video sessions can be as short as a few minutes or can last several hours, depending on the topic, with pricing set by each individual provider. Read more of this post

SoftBank Deploys ‘Clash of Clans’ to Tap $3 Billion Game Market

SoftBank Deploys ‘Clash of Clans’ to Tap $3 Billion Game Market

Supercell Oy started the year trying to break into the Japanese smartphone game market. By October, it had struck a deal with the nation’s second-richest man that valued the maker of “Clash of Clans” at $3 billion. The Finnish game maker is seeking a bigger slice of Japan’s market for downloaded games, which is forecast to triple to $3 billion this year, amid a shift to smartphones, Supercell co-founder Ilkka Paananen said in an interview. Billionaire Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank Corp. (9984) led a $1.53 billion agreement for a 51 percent stake, a deal that was completed last week. Read more of this post

Legend Capital eyes wearable device market with tech investment

Legend Capital eyes wearable device market with tech investment

Staff Reporter

2013-11-05

An ad for the GolfSense sensor and app developed by Zepp Labs. (Internet Photo)

Many investors are now eyeing wearable devices as the next potential field in consumer electronics, with companies looking to invest in related start-up firms, reports the Chinese Entrepreneur magazine. The concept of wearable devices emerged last year, with the introduction of Google Glass — an eyeglass-shaped mobile computing device, the magazine said. Da Mi, vice president of Legend Capital, a subsidiary of Chinese investment holdings company Legend Holdings, said the most applicable hardware remains the smartphone at this time, but the future lays in sensor hardware. Earlier this year, Legend Capital decided to invest in Zepp Labs — which combines 3D motion technology and sports — and entered its board, after seeing the latter’s hot sales in North America. Read more of this post

Teachers are earning millions of dollars selling their lesson plans on the “iTunes of education”

Teachers are earning millions of dollars selling their lesson plans on the “iTunes of education”

BY ERIN GRIFFITH 
ON NOVEMBER 4, 2013

TeacherspayTeachers has never raised a cent of outside venture capital. That’s fine — the 28-person company, launched from a New York apartment in 2006, has been profitably helping teachers sell their lesson plans to each other for some time now. This week, the company crossed the threshold of $60 million in teacher-to-teacher sales. That’s up from just $5 million a year ago. It’s just another positive milestone on the company’s quest to become the iTunes for digitally delivered educational content, according to founder Paul Edelman. Read more of this post

The Airbnb Economy in New York: Lucrative but Often Illegal; A number of New Yorkers make a substantial portion of their income by renting out apartments on a short-term basis through the Airbnb website

November 4, 2013

The Airbnb Economy in New York: Lucrative but Often Illegal

By ELIZABETH A. HARRIS

Tama Robertson is an artist who sells paintings and makes jewelry, but this being New York City, she also works in real estate. She has worked as an associate broker and invested in some properties of her own, but in recent years, she has supplemented her income with something a bit more contentious: She rents out a room in her own apartment to travelers she finds on the website Airbnb. By sharing her kitchen and her keys with strangers, she estimates that she brings in up to $10,000 a year. Read more of this post

China Buys Its Way Into Silicon Valley; Tencent’s Push for Stake in Snapchat Is Latest Effort to Gain Foothold in U.S.

China Buys Its Way Into Silicon Valley

Tencent’s Push for Stake in Snapchat Is Latest Effort to Gain Foothold in U.S.

EVELYN M. RUSLI and PAUL MOZUR 

Updated Nov. 4, 2013 7:31 p.m. ET

China’s homegrown Internet giants are buying their way into Silicon Valley. The Chinese firms, which have little consumer business outside their home market, are unloading small fortunes on startups as they strive to understand and eventually gain a foothold in the elusive U.S. market. This week, Tencent Holdings Ltd.0700.HK -1.37% , a social networking and gaming company, is vying to lead a fundraising round of $200 million in buzzy American messaging app Snapchat Inc., according to people briefed on the matter. Tencent’s investment will likely value the two-year-old company, which has no revenue, at $4 billion. Read more of this post

Google Boosts Hong Kong Entrepreneurs

November 4, 2013, 7:06 PM

Google Boosts Hong Kong Entrepreneurs

Google Inc.GOOG -0.09% Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said Monday that the company plans to tap into Hong Kong’s “natively entrepreneurial” culture and help incubate startups in partnership with a local university. Hong Kong — which is home to a number of multi-billion dollar property-led conglomerates founded by bootstrapping immigrants from mainland China — has “excellent connectivity [and is] an excellent place to do business,” Mr. Schmidt said in a speech at the campus of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Though few details about the partnership are yet public, the company said it will work with the school to offer mentorship to young entrepreneurs and sponsor trips to Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. Read more of this post

The rise of the automotive tech wars

November 4, 2013 6:50 pm

The rise of the automotive tech wars

By Henry Foy

In 1911, Henry Ford won a patent battle that kick-started the US automotive industry, crushing a licensing cartel that had demanded royalties for every car he built. Just over a century later, as green engines,self-driving cars and interactive vehicles pitch the industry into a period of feverish innovation not seen since its birth, Big Auto is nervously eyeing another intellectual property battle that could shape the winners and losers for the century to come. Read more of this post

In patent showdown, IBM’s arsenal dwarfs Twitter’s

In patent showdown, IBM’s arsenal dwarfs Twitter’s

4:36pm EST

By Dan Levine

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – International Business Machines Corp’s patent demand against Twitter Inc as it approaches an initial public offering highlights how few patents the social media company possesses compared with the established tech players. IBM has accused Twitter of infringing three IBM patents, one of which relates to online advertising, according to a Twitter securities filing on Monday. Twitter said it has “meritorious defenses” to those claims, and IBM has not filed a lawsuit. Read more of this post

High-tech cars spark fears of auto patent wars

November 4, 2013 6:14 pm

High-tech cars spark fears of auto patent wars

By Henry Foy, Motor Industry Correspondent

An arms race between manufacturers to dominate the future market for green cars has sent patent activity to record highs and sparked worries of an intellectual property war similar to that which has engulfed the smartphone industry. Traditional automotive giants desperate to stay on top of the pile, technology-heavy upstarts and industry outsiders are battling for supremacy over future engines, fuels, safety systems and in-car entertainment in the most research-intensive period the car business has seen since the birth of the combustion engine. Read more of this post

Half of U.S. adult Twitter users consume news on the platform

Half of U.S. adult Twitter users consume news on the platform

2:11pm EST

By Jennifer Saba

(Reuters) – About half of all adult Twitter users in the United States said they get news through the social media platform, mainly on mobile devices, according to a new survey. The report by the Pew Research Center in collaboration with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation was released on Monday. The results are based on a the survey of more than 5,000 U.S. adults including Twitter and Facebook users. Read more of this post

Chen’s BlackBerry Revival Task Mirrors Sybase in 1990s

Chen’s BlackBerry Revival Task Mirrors Sybase in 1990s

Fifteen years after saving Sybase Inc. from its death spiral, John Chen is being called upon to revive a beaten-down BlackBerry (BB) Ltd. Chen, 58, was named interim chief executive officer of BlackBerry today after the collapse of a proposed $4.7 billion buyout. He takes over a company that’s lost 95 percent of its value since mid-2008, as the mobile world shifted to touch -screen smartphones and tablets and away from BlackBerry’s e-mail-centric devices. Read more of this post

Taiwan branding stymied by its success at making others’ gadgets

Taiwan branding stymied by its success at making others’ gadgets

4:09pm EST

By Michael Gold

TAIPEI (Reuters) – Taiwan’s success at designing and mass producing must-have gadgets for branded rivals such as Apple Inc makes it tougher for its companies trying to launch aspirational consumer brands of their own. Ben Ho, marketing chief at smartphone maker HTC Corp, says his firm’s shift from original design manufacturer (ODM) to branded company has been a challenge for marketing and messaging. Read more of this post

The little VC that could: How Crosscut Ventures turned a measly $5.1M into a killer early stage portfolio

The little VC that could: How Crosscut Ventures turned a measly $5.1M into a killer early stage portfolio

BY MICHAEL CARNEY 
ON NOVEMBER 1, 2013

Size matters. But to dispel a commonly repeated myth, bigger isn’t always better – in terms of VC fund size, that is. Many mega-firms have learned as much in recent years, pulling back from billion dollar fund sizes in search of more manageable multi-hundred million dollar sums that can be put to use more effectively. But at the very opposite end of the spectrum are micro-VCs, which, whether by choice or lack of access to additional capital, have to make due with far, far less. These sub-$50 million dollar funds often find it difficult to support multiple investment partners on the meager fees they generate, and can be handicapped in their ability to write larger checks or double down once they do make a winning early stage bet.  Read more of this post

Hailo boss on driving UK’s most ambitious app; It’s not only about calling cabs – Jay Bregman believes his smartphone technology could also change the way you buy everything, including cars

Hailo boss on driving UK’s most ambitious app

It’s not only about calling cabs – Jay Bregman believes his smartphone technology could also change the way you buy everything, including cars

Big yellow taxi app: Jay Bregman, co-founder of Hailo, the company that links cab drivers with customers, pictured outside Somerset House. Taxis, he says, are ‘a personal obsession’

By Louise Armitstead

8:00PM GMT 03 Nov 2013

The chief executive of Hailo is not just offering to call you a cab – Jay Bregman wants to make you give up your car. He then plans to alter radically your shopping and eating habits, and maybe your whole lifestyle, too. Buckle up: the “black cab app”, which is driving a revolution in the taxi market in 15 cities around the world, is being heralded as the next big thing in disruptive technology. Read more of this post

Google Employees Confess The Worst Things About Working At Google

Google Employees Confess The Worst Things About Working At Google

JIM EDWARDS NOV. 3, 2013, 12:06 PM 838,581 41

A job at Google. It’s career heaven, right? How could a gig at the biggest, most ambitious tech company on the planet possibly be bad? Well, take a look at this Quora thread, which is being used by current and former Google employees to dish the dirt on working for Big G. We’ve edited some of the standout comments into this excerpt. Read more of this post

Disney and Dish Wrangle Not Over Broadcast Fees, but the Future of TV

November 3, 2013

Disney and Dish Wrangle Not Over Broadcast Fees, but the Future of TV

By BRIAN STELTER

A sweeping distribution deal between television giants, the Walt Disney Company and Dish Network, expired more than a month ago, and there is still no new deal in sight. What is taking so long? Not any disagreement about the billions of dollars that Dish will pay Disney for its programming over the life of the next contract. The two sides agreed about the money a while ago. The squabbling is over something more abstract: digital rights — or to put it another way, control of the future. Read more of this post

Crowdsourcing: Fresh Thinking or Online Fad?

Crowdsourcing: Fresh Thinking or Online Fad?

by Barry Bayus | Oct 31, 2013

Results are encouraging, but long-term effectiveness remains uncertain. Companies that don’t know about crowdsourcing risk falling behind, especially if their success relies on new products or innovative ideas. The concept of getting non-experts to solve problems or do small tasks for free or for the chance to win a prize has been around since the 1700s, when the British government offered the Longitude Prize to whoever could come up with a reliable way for sailors to navigate when their ships got too far from land. Today the Internet makes crowdsourcing much cheaper and easier to implement and extends its reach to diverse populations. While computers can perform some tasks exponentially faster than cerebral synapses, businesses still rely on the human brain for nuanced thinking and creativity. Read more of this post

Ads Scant When Twitter Crosses Borders

November 3, 2013

Ads Scant When Twitter Crosses Borders

By MARK SCOTT

BERLIN — From Manila to Madrid, international consumers now represent more than three-quarters of the 232 million people who regularly use Twitter. The problem is, Twitter is still figuring out how to make money from those users abroad. The company received 26 percent of its total revenue from markets outside the United States in the third quarter, compared with around 17 percent at the end of last year, according to regulatory filings. Read more of this post

Twitter’s Gambit to Revolutionize Advertising

Twitter’s Gambit to Revolutionize Advertising

The social media giant, which will go public this week, could remake the way TV ads sell us products.

ANDY KESSLER

Nov. 3, 2013 6:41 p.m. ET

If all goes according to plan, Twitter is expected to price its initial public offering this week and could start trading Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange. NYX +1.00% Brace yourself for #yougottabekiddingme and #bubble hashtags. It’s been hard to escape the hype. From Ashton Kutcher’s 15 million followers, to the tweeted photos in 2009 of the miraculous landing of US Airways LCC +2.14% Flight 1549 in the Hudson River, Twitter’s 140-character messages are now entrenched in the culture. It’s a classic Silicon Valley story—trial and error and drama among the founders since its July 2006 launch—until the company took off in 2009 by taking advantage of billions of mobile devices. The company is now valued at somewhere around $13 billion. But is it a business? Read more of this post

IBM Ad Campaign Attacks Amazon

Nov 3, 2013

IBM Ad Campaign Attacks Amazon

SPENCER E. ANTE

The IBMIBM +0.01% logo is seen at their booth prior to the opening of the CeBIT IT fair on March 5, 2012 in Hanover, Germany. IBM is stepping up its fight againstAmazon.comAMZN -1.38% around cloud computing. In an unusual move, IBM is launching a marketing campaign Monday that names Amazon as a rival and implicitly claims that IBM is the leader in the estimated $40 billion-a-year cloud-computing market. IBM rarely mentions competitors in any of its advertisements. Read more of this post

Fear of ‘Showrooming’ Fades; Best Buy, Other Retailers Are Optimistic Price-Matching Can Stanch Trend; “A year ago, people said that showrooming would kill Best Buy. I think that Best Buy has killed showrooming.”

Fear of ‘Showrooming’ Fades

Best Buy, Other Retailers Are Optimistic Price-Matching Can Stanch Trend

DREW FITZGERALD

Updated Nov. 3, 2013 7:39 p.m. ET

Best Buy Co. BBY +0.30% is daring bargain hunters to use its stores as showrooms. With four weeks to go before Thanksgiving, the big-box retailer is running television ads that tout its stores as “the ultimate holiday showroom,” playing on the phenomenon in which shoppers visit traditional retailers to check out products and then leave to buy them online for less. That’s a big reversal from last year. Concerns that Best Buy was losing sales to online retailers at alarming rates sent its shares plunging toward single digits. Analysts warned that the company’s 1,400 stores were becoming little more than a testing ground forAmazon.com Inc. AMZN -1.38% ‘s customers. And Best Buy interim Chief Executive G. Mike Mikan made it his top priority to combat “showrooming” before handing the reins to current CEO Hubert Joly. Read more of this post

Chip designers see dollar signs in Bitcoin miners

Chip designers see dollar signs in Bitcoin miners

11:28am EST

By Noel Randewich

SUNNYVALE, California (Reuters) – Tucked away in an air conditioned data center in Silicon Valley is a hodgepodge of black boxes, circuit boards and cooling fans owned by 27-year-old Aaron Jackson-Wilde, a modern-day prospector looking for Bitcoins. Since discovering the digital currency a few months ago, Jackson-Wilde has paid about $2,000 for his “rigs,” which are powered by specialized computer chips. They are designed to help operate and maintain the Bitcoin network – and, in return, generate a small reward in a process known as “Bitcoin mining.” Read more of this post

Sony’s Credit Rating May Be Cut to Junk by Moody’s After Loss; Sony suffers TV relapse as Japan peers change channel

Sony’s Credit Rating May Be Cut to Junk by Moody’s After Loss

Sony Corp. (6758)’s credit rating may be downgraded to junk by Moody’s Investors Service Inc. after the Japanese electronics company posted a loss and cut its earnings forecast, signaling that its turnaround effort is faltering. Moody’s has placed Sony’s Baa3 long-term senior unsecured bond rating on review for a downgrade, the credit-rating company said today in a statement. Baa3 is Moody’s lowest investment-grade rating. Read more of this post

Indonesia’s major mobile operators bleed as sharp drop in rupiah hurts earnings

Telcoms bleed as sharp drop in rupiah hurts earnings 

Mariel Grazella, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Business | Mon, November 04 2013, 8:02 AM

Indonesia’s major mobile operators suffered sharp declines in their profits during the first nine months of this year partly due to lower growth in their revenues and large foreign-exchange losses. Bakrie Telecom (BTEL), one of whose commissioners is Anindya N. Bakrie, son of tycoon and presidential hopeful Aburizal Bakrie, booked a 10.2 percent decrease in its revenues in the first nine months of this year, but its profits plunged even lower due to high costs stemming from the sharp drop in the rupiah against the US dollar in the third quarter. Read more of this post

Hiring a property agent? Let them bid for the job online at hirepropertyagent.com

Hiring a property agent? Let them bid for the job online

Monday, Nov 04, 2013

Cheryl Ong

The Straits Times

SINGAPORE – The days of sifting through hundreds of advertisements to find a property agent could be gone if a new website has its way. The site – hirepropertyagent.com – allows agents to bid for the chance to represent a client. This upends the usual process, which involves a buyer or seller browsing through ads or asking for recommendations. They then have to negotiate over the commission payable to the agents for their services. But trying to find an agent out of a pool of thousands is often a tedious and lengthy process, which prompted website developer Ezekiel Chew to devise his site. Read more of this post