Twitter hit with $124 million lawsuit over private stock sale

Twitter hit with $124 million lawsuit over private stock sale

2:15pm EDT

By Nate Raymond and Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Twitter Inc was sued for $124 million on Wednesday by two companies claiming the social media darling fraudulently had them organize a private sale of its shares to stoke investor interest for an initial public offering then canceled it. In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Precedo Capital Group Inc and Continental Advisors SA accused Twitter of using the aborted sale as a way to give the money-losing company a $10 billion market valuation and higher IPO price. Read more of this post

Psychic scammers find fertile haunting ground in Internet age

Psychic scammers find fertile haunting ground in Internet age

Tue, Oct 29 2013

By Jeffrey B. Roth

GETTYSBURG, Pennsylvania (Reuters) – As pre-Halloween witches and ghouls sprout up on U.S. lawns, experts are warning people to be wary of modern occult scammers who have moved online to hawk virtual voodoo dolls, revenge spells and otherwise “haunted” items. While the idea of spending money for a magic spell – to help with an endeavor or to inflict pain on an enemy – has been around for centuries, experts say the anonymity of online transactions can encourage people who would otherwise never think of visiting a storefront psychic to fall for a con. Read more of this post

Baidu’s Li Looks to Deals to Accelerate Push Into Mobile Search

Baidu’s Li Looks to Deals to Accelerate Push Into Mobile Search

Baidu Inc. (BIDU), owner of China’s most-popular Internet search engine, is buying companies to accelerate its transition to mobile devices, where traffic is at least doubling annually, Chief Executive Officer Robin Li said. Baidu bought Santa Clara, California-based TrustGo Mobile Inc. for its security and personal-privacy protection technology earlier this year, Li said in a televised interview with “Bloomberg West,” without disclosing details. Read more of this post

Intel looking to exit TV business: report

Intel looking to exit TV business: report

9:57am EDT

(Reuters) – Chipmaker Intel Corp is having second thoughts about its nascent television service and is in talks with Verizon Communications Inc to take over the business, according to a report on tech website All Things D, citing people familiar with the matter. While discussions were in the advanced stages, it was still unclear if Verizon plans to take full control of Intel’s media unit or Intel would maintain a stake in the unit, the report said. Representatives from Intel and Verizon did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Earlier this year, Intel decided it would launch an Internet TV service with live and on-demand content in a bid to find an alternative revenue stream as its core business of providing chips to computer makers erodes. It’s a crowded field as Apple Inc, Google Inc, Sony Corp and Microsoft Corp jockey for position to own the living room through TV, while Netflix Inc and Amazon.com Inc’s streaming video services have millions of subscribers. Intel has also struggled to reach content deals with media companies. Read more of this post

China Baidu’s financial foray shows online finance rush; Baidu triggers alarm bells with launch of Baifa mutual funds

China: Baidu’s financial foray shows online finance rush

Oct 29, 2013 11:28am by Lydia Guo

Baidu, China’s dominant search engine, started its online financial service on Monday in an attempt to compete with rivals such as Alibaba, who have already pushed aggressively into Chinese financial sector. It wasn’t exactly smooth running. Baidu’s financial services platform made its debut on October 28, introducing a financial product in conjunction with China Asset Management, which was offering an 8 per cent annual return in its original promotional material. However, the ad fell foul of the financial regulator, and the site was overwhelmed with traffic. The missteps show how much of a rush the big internet companies are to get into online finance. The China Securities Regulatory Commission said on its official Weibo account that it is against the rules to estimate or promise the return of a fund. CSRC said it would verify whether Baidu has followed compliance rules based on written documents submitted by the company. Baidu has already pulled the 8 per cent advertisement and said it would “offer [a] better online financial service experience under the guidance of relevant regulators”. But many of Baidu customers were frustrated on the service’s first day. People hungry for the attractive yields couldn’t log into the platform for much of the morning, and those who managed to log in complained the complexity of process. Baidu said that the platform problem was because of too many visitors – hardly a good excuse from China’s biggest internet company. The service was back to normal in the aftern on, and with more than 120,000 users the Rbm1bn product was oversubscribed. Read more of this post

Click and clink: Amazon selling wine in China

Click and clink: Amazon selling wine in China

Updated: 2013-10-30 07:21

By YU WEI in San Francisco (China Daily USA)

After launching its first shipment of directly imported US wines into China, Amazon China, Amazon.com’s branch there, said the wines have received a very good response in the country, especially in Shanghai. “The direct-sales model gives our wines quality assurance and more cost-effectiveness,” said Niu Yinghua, vice-president of Amazon China. “Consumers can easily have fine wines from thousands of miles away to by clicking Amazon.cn.” Read more of this post

Sony’s Hirai Mixes Camera With Phone Geeks to Catch Apple

Sony’s Hirai Mixes Camera With Phone Geeks to Catch Apple

For Kazuo Hirai, creating Sony Corp. (6758)’s flagship smartphone was too important to be left to the company’s mobile-phone experts. Taking aim at a $310 billion market dominated by Samsung Electronics Co.’s Galaxy and Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iPhone, Sony’s chief executive officer sent dozens of his company’s camera engineers to its phone division last year to give the Xperia Z handset advanced photography capabilities. It was a big change for a company whose units haven’t been used to collaborating on their thousands of consumer products. Read more of this post

Phantom Ships Expose Weakness in Vessel-Tracking System: Freight

Phantom Ships Expose Weakness in Vessel-Tracking System: Freight

Shippers, traders and researchers monitoring global vessel traffic in the past six months might have seen an imaginary U.S. ferry sail to North Korea, a tugboat go from the Mississippi River to a Dallas lake in two minutes and the path of a fake Italian yacht spelling out PWNED — hacker slang for “defeated.” These false signals, orchestrated by Trend Micro Inc., a Tokyo-based Internet security company, were designed to expose vulnerabilities in the mandatory system used to track merchant vessels worldwide. With the network that was built to improve safety at sea unprotected against hackers, phony tracks could lead to collisions and other accidents, according to the International Chamber of Shipping, a trade association representing more than 80 percent of the fleet. Read more of this post

Motorola aims for do-it-yourself smartphones

Motorola aims for do-it-yourself smartphones

3:56pm EDT

By Noel Randewich

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Motorola wants to let consumers design their own smarpthones. The Google-owned manufacturer has launched Project Ara to create a free, open and standardized platform to let people pick and choose the components they want in their phones, Motorola said in a blogpost this week. The goal is to create a standard endoskeleton, or frame, that can hold different modules, like extra-powerful processors, additional batteries or memory chips for storing more music, all based on the customer’s preferences. Read more of this post

Google+ rolls out movie-making features, claims 300 million users

Google+ rolls out movie-making features, claims 300 million users

3:04pm EDT

By Alexei Oreskovic

(Reuters) – Google Inc on Tuesday unveiled new technology that creates polished movies, complete with music soundtracks, from collections of home videos and photos that users post on its fledgling Google+ social network. The new features mark Google’s latest move to try and differentiate its 2-year-old social network from Facebook, the world’s No. 1 online social network with 1.15 billion users. Read more of this post

Google Nears Smartwatch Launch; Company In Talks With Asian Suppliers for Mass Production

Google Nears Smartwatch Launch

Company In Talks With Asian Suppliers for Mass Production

EVA DOU and LORRAINE LUK

Oct. 29, 2013 6:03 a.m. ET

Google’s smartwatch is in late-stage development and the device, which will run on Android, will be integrated with Google Now, the company’s digital assistant. The WSJ’s Yun-Hee Kim speaks with Eva Dou about what to expect from Google’s smartwatch. TAIPEI— Google Inc. GOOG +2.09% ‘s smartwatch is in late-stage development and the company is in talks with Asian suppliers to begin mass production of the device, people familiar with the matter said. Read more of this post

Apple Expands China Business, Moving Beyond Big Cities

Apple Expands China Business, Moving Beyond Big Cities

Apple Inc. (AAPL) Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook is working to broaden the company’s distribution in China as a way to reignite growth after the iPhone maker reported its first decline in annual profit in at least a decade. Cook said Apple is expanding how it sells the iPhone and iPad tablet in China, focusing on areas outside the country’s largest cities. The Cupertino, California-based company is adding more outlets besides Apple stores to sell its devices, and the iPhone is now available in 50 percent more stores in the country than last year, he said on a conference call this week. Read more of this post

Infosys’ Record Fine Targets Outsourcing Abuses

Infosys’ Record Fine Targets Outsourcing Abuses

A record fine against Infosys Ltd. (INFY) targets outsourcing companies and their alleged abuse of existing immigration laws to feed the insatiable desire for highly skilled engineers in the U.S. Infosys has been sending employees to the U.S. with B-1 visitor visas, letting it sidestep caps on H1-Bs — the permits designed for high-tech workers. To settle the case, the company agreed to $35 million penalty with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Texas that will be announced today, said two people familiar with the matter. The fine would be the largest ever for the outsourcing industry, which manages tasks for customers using a mix of on- and offshore labor. Read more of this post

Shanghai’s two leading press groups merged to create the country’s biggest newspaper company

Merger creates biggest media group

By Ding Yining and Ye Zhen | October 29, 2013, Tuesday |  PRINT EDITION

Shanghai’s two leading press groups merged yesterday, creating the country’s biggest newspaper company and the new parent company of Shanghai Daily, in a bid to press ahead with reforms and develop multimedia platforms to drive growth. The merger between the Jiefang Daily Group and Wenhui-Xinmin United Press Group will create a consolidated group with total assets of 20.87 billion yuan (US$3.42 billion) and net assets of 7.626 billion yuan. Read more of this post

Qihoo Launched A Kid Tracking Bracelet

Qihoo Launched A Kid Tracking Bracelet

By Tracey Xiang on October 29, 2013

Qihoo today released 360 Child Guard, a GPS tracking bracelet. Like most GPS trackers, 360 Child Guard locates where the one wearing it anytime and can display the course on the app in your phone for any given period of time. A special feature with it is you can call the gadget and listen to the sounds around it, telling whether your kid is in a safe environment. It also can record a 15-second clip after you send a command. 360 Child Guard claims it can, using machine learning, automatically tell whether a place is safe for your child and would alert you when he or she is near to an area the gadget judges as unsafe. It works with iOS or above, and Android 2.2 or above. The price isn’t disclosed yet. Qihoo has rolled out a pair of wireless routers. Some Chinese Internet companies don’t want to be left out by the appcessory trend. Baidu launched several pieces, too. Baidu also wants to sell its cloud platform to appcessory developers that recently set up a website featuring smart gadgets who are using it.

Merely 1% China Mobile Apps Reached Million Users in H1 2013: Report

Merely 1% China Mobile Apps Reached Million Users in H1 2013: Report

By Guest Editor on October 29, 2013 

According to iResearch, in the first half of 2013, China mobile app developers kept losing money and the percentage of net loss developers increased significantly. Besides, most app users’ number could not reach a million. The research showed that more than 60% mobile app developers suffered net loss in the first half of 2013. 35.6% developers even faced with severe net loss. In 2012, the percentage of severe loss was 9.1%. 16.8% developers had made profits, the percentage in 2012 was 22.3%. One reason for the decrease was that a lot of new developers entered the market in the beginning of 2013. The major business model of Chinese mobile app developers were paid download, free download with pre-installed ads, free download with value-added service. Most developers chose free download with pre-installed ads. In general, paid download and free download with pre-installed ads were not so optimistic, some paid app even offered free download such as Autonavi. In terms of the number of users, Chinese mobile app developers were facing severe challenges. 96% apps users were under 500,000, and about 0.6% apps had over 1 million users.

The Web Behind The Wall Explains China’s Complicated Startup Industry

The Web Behind The Wall Explains China’s Complicated Startup Industry

Posted 5 hours ago by Catherine Shu

“The Web Behind The Wall” is an e-book published by TechNode (our partner for next month’sTechCrunch Shanghai event) that wants to be “the #1 resource for foreign tech companies to understand China.” The book is a quick but highly informative read about China’s startup ecosystem, which has proven unpenetrable for tech giants like Google, Yahoo,Facebook and Amazon. Read more of this post

Is Thailand’s top e-bookstore Ookbee competing with its own partners?

Is Thailand’s top e-bookstore Ookbee competing with its own partners?

October 28, 2013

by Saiyai Sakawee

If you follow the Thai tech startup scene, there’s no way you’ve never heard of Ookbee, Thailand’s largest e-bookstore. It’s held up as one of the country’s pioneer startups. According to CEO Moo Natavudh, Ookbee’s market share in Thailand is over 90 percent now, and besides Thailand, the company also has presences in Vietnam and Malaysia. Founded in December 2010, Ookbee has long been a web-based online e-bookstore platform, up until recently. In fact, two weeks ago, Ookbee just launched its own iOS app, marking a big step for the startup. Previously it has worked with two major partners – B2S and AIS – to power their online bookstore apps in Thailand. In addition, later next month, Ookbee will be launching Ookbee Mee, which is an all-you-can-read online magazine subscription service. Think Netflix for magazines. It might extend to books later as well. Read more of this post

Why free operating systems will encourage you to actually spend more

Why free operating systems will encourage you to actually spend more

By Dominic Basulto, Updated: October 29 at 9:19 am

Lost in the hubbub of Apple’s unveiling of the new iPad Air last week was the company’s announcement that it would be giving away its new operating system, OS X Mavericks, for free. Apple thinks that by enabling you to upgrade your operating system for free, it will encourage you to upgrade to new laptops or desktops that take advantage of Mavericks’ latest functions. View it as a BOGO pricing strategy in reverse – you get one, you buy one. Read more of this post

Warily, Schools Watch Students on the Internet

October 28, 2013

Warily, Schools Watch Students on the Internet

By SOMINI SENGUPTA

SAN FRANCISCO — For years, a school principal’s job was to make sure students were not creating a ruckus in the hallways or smoking in the bathroom. Vigilance ended at the schoolhouse gates. Now, as students complain, taunt and sometimes cry out for help on social media, educators have more opportunities to monitor students around the clock. And some schools are turning to technology to help them. Several companies offer services to filter and glean what students do on school networks; a few now offer automated tools to comb through off-campus postings for signs of danger. For school officials, this raises new questions about whether they should — or legally can — discipline children for their online outbursts. Read more of this post

The Wide Open Era in 3-D Printing

OCTOBER 29, 2013, 8:31 AM

The Wide Open Era in 3-D Printing

By QUENTIN HARDY

SINGAPORE — For a 15-person start-up in 3-D printing — a nascent industry at best — Pirate3D has the hallmarks of a much bigger tech company. These include big funding, large expectations, unforeseen price increases, expanded distribution and serious trash talking. Pirate3D gained a lot of notice in June when it raised a lot of money on Kickstarter. The company is making an inexpensive 3-D printer for the consumer market; early models will probably ship in December, executives say. Read more of this post

The iPad is going to suffer the same fate the Mac suffered a generation ago?

The iPad is going to suffer the same fate the Mac suffered a generation ago

By Timothy B. Lee, Updated: October 29 at 9:27 am

Apple’s latest financial results came out on Monday, and as usual the Cupertino firm made an astonishing amount of money: $7.5 billion. Yet this quarter’s results contained at least one disappointing sign for Apple’s fans and shareholders. Apple sold 14.1 million iPads in its fiscal fourth quarter, which runs from July to September. It’s the first time Apple has ever had iPad sales fall for three quarters in a row. Even more ominous for Apple, this quarter’s sales are only slightly higher than the 14 million iPads Apple sold during the corresponding quarter last year. Read more of this post

SoundCloud Now Reaches 250 Million Visitors In Its Quest To Become The Audio Platform Of The Web

SoundCloud Now Reaches 250 Million Visitors In Its Quest To Become The Audio Platform Of The Web

Posted 6 hours ago by Romain Dillet

Today at Disrupt Europe,SoundCloud co-founder and CEO Alexander Ljung took the stage to share two new updates and share his thoughts on the music industry, music startups and more. Back in July, SoundCloud announced that it has reached 200 million active listeners (monthly active users). But since then, the startup has grown substantially as it now reports 250 million listeners. In addition to that, SoundCloud now integrates with Instagram to allow you to your photos as album art. More on that here. Read more of this post

Nielsen to Begin Counting Mobile Viewing Audiences in TV Ratings

Nielsen to Begin Counting Mobile Viewing Audiences in TV Ratings

By Andy Fixmer – Oct 28, 2013

Nielsen, the provider of television ratings used to calculate payments by advertisers, will begin counting some mobile viewing of shows as broadcast and cable networks make more programs available online. TV shows that are viewed through some digital formats and within certain time frames will be counted starting in the TV season that begins in September 2014, the company, part of Nielsen Holdings NV (NLSN), said today in a blog post. Read more of this post

Nextdoor, a social network for neighbors, raises $60 million

OCTOBER 29, 2013, 9:01 AM

Nextdoor, a Start-Up, Raises $60 Million

By DAVID GELLES 

Nextdoor, a social network for neighbors, is moving into elite territory. The San Francisco start-up announced a $60 million investment on Tuesday, led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Tiger Global Management, two prominent venture capital firms. Comcast Ventures, Benchmark, Greylock Partners and Shasta Ventures also participated in the fund-raising round. With the investment, Nextdoor has raised more than $100 million in the last 18 months, and that is bound to set off questions about whether venture capitalists are inflating another technology bubble by throwing money at unprofitable start-ups. Read more of this post

Making Robots More Like Us

October 28, 2013

Making Robots More Like Us

By JOHN MARKOFF

On a recent morning Natanel Dukan walked into the Paris offices of the French robot maker Aldebaran and noticed one of the company’s humanoid NAO robots sitting on a chair. Mr. Dukan, an electrical engineer, could not resist. Bending over, he kissed the robot on the cheek. In response the NAO tilted its head, touched his cheek and let out an audible smack. It is certainly a very French application for a robot, but the intimate gesture by the $16,000, two-foot robot, now being used in academic research labs and robotic soccer leagues, also reflects a significant shift. Read more of this post

Is the Russian-Vietnamese search engine CocCoc really beating Google in Vietnam?

Is the Russian-Vietnamese search engine CocCoc really beating Google in Vietnam?

October 28, 2013

by Anh-Minh Do

In a recent report from the Voice Of Russia, the Russian-backed Vietnamese search engine CocCoc is apparently getting more than one million searches per day. That’s a significant step over what Victor Lavrenko, CEO at CocCoc, told me in June at the Tech In Asia Meetup. At that time, CocCoc had just about 300,000 monthly users (meaning very few daily searches). Read more of this post