Autonomous cars have been arriving in bits and pieces for years. Bristling with sensors and microprocessors, cars have long been lightening the driver’s workload and improving safety

October 25, 2013

On the Road to Autonomous, a Pause at Extrasensory

By PAUL STENQUIST

The self-driving car, whenever it arrives, is sure to be hailed as a breakthrough. The truth is, autonomous cars have been arriving in bits and pieces for years. Bristling with sensors and microprocessors, cars — especially at the top end of the price spectrum — have long been lightening the driver’s workload and improving safety with features like parking assist, lane-departure warning, adaptive cruise control and various crash-avoidance technologies. Read more of this post

Tesco expands click-and-collect in Asia; The retailer is stepping up its efforts to be the world’s leading online grocery retailer with plans to open the click-and-collect at its hypermarket in Thailand

Tesco expands click-and-collect in Asia

The retailer is stepping up its efforts to be the world’s leading online grocery retailer with plans to open the click-and-collect at its hypermarket in Thailand.

Tesco is now selling groceries online in 50 cities around the world, including Shanghai.

By Graham Ruddick

9:30PM BST 26 Oct 2013

Tesco is stepping up its efforts to be the world’s leading online grocery retailer and fighting back from a decline in global sales by launching a click-and-collect service in Asia. The retailer is to open the service at its hypermarket at Ramindra in Bangkok, Thailand. It will be the first time that a retailer has launched a click-and-collect service in Asia which allows customers to collect their online food orders from supermarkets. Read more of this post

The smartphone companies that shook up India and China are ready to colonize the world?

The smartphone companies that shook up India and China are ready to colonize the world

By Leo Mirani @lmirani October 25, 2013

You’ve never heard of Micromax (slogan: “Nothing like anything“) but in just five years it’s gone from a standing start to commanding over a fifth of the Indian smartphone market, behind only Samsung. Its stated ambition to is to control a third of the market. Its swift rise mirrors that of China’s Xiaomi (slogan: “Just for fans“), which within three years overtook Apple for the number six spot in China’s much more competitive marketplace. (Even their orange logos spelling out “Mi” look similar.) Now both companies are looking beyond their national borders to take their explosive growth to the world. Read more of this post

Indonesian Capital Tweets to Beat Traffic Chaos

Indonesian Capital Tweets to Beat Traffic Chaos

By Olivia Rondonuwu on 11:05 am October 27, 2013.
Fed up with spending hours stuck in the gridlocked Indonesian capital Jakarta, hundreds of thousands of social media-savvy commuters are tweeting to beat the traffic. The threadbare public transport system in the capital of Southeast Asia’s biggest economy, combined with growing spending power, has spawned vast numbers of motorists who are increasingly turning to Twitter to conquer jams. Road users in Jakarta, the world’s most active city in terms of posted tweets, are using the microblogging service to warn fellow travelers of traffic-choked roads or arrange car pooling. Read more of this post

Microsoft Relying on Gaming, Cloud to Weather PC Storm

Microsoft Relying on Gaming, Cloud to Weather PC Storm

Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) is weathering slumping personal-computer sales by focusing on Xboxes, business software and cloud services, as departing Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer seeks to make the company less dependent on its Windows operating system. Microsoft reported fiscal first quarter sales and profit yesterday that topped analysts’ average estimates on demand for Office programs and database servers. The company’s revenue forecast for the current quarter was also ahead of projections. Read more of this post

Israel knows water technology, and it wants to cash in

Israel knows water technology, and it wants to cash in

By William Booth, Published: October 25

The Israeli water industry took over the convention center here this week to show the world its bacterial sewage scrubbers and computerized shower heads, its low-flow nipples to grow high-yield tomatoes, and its early-warning mathematical algorithms to detect dribbles, leaks and bursts. It might not have been the sexiest business conference in a country that refers to itself as “start-up nation,” but there’s a lot of money in water. Read more of this post

DirecTV, Time Warner Cable Said to Consider Aereo-Type Services

DirecTV, Time Warner Cable Said to Consider Aereo-Type Services

DirecTV (DTV), Time Warner Cable (TWC) Inc. and Charter Communications Inc. (CHTR), taking a page from Aereo Inc., are considering capturing free broadcast signals from TV networks to avoid paying billions of dollars in so-called retransmission fees, said people with knowledge of the deliberations. Aereo, which charges $8 a month for online access to broadcast TV, is locked in a court battle with CBS Corp. (CBS) and other media companies over the legality of its service. If Aereo prevails, cable companies could use the same approach to bypass the retransmission fees they currently pay for network signals, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are at an early stage. Time Warner Cable has even considered buying Aereo, said one of the people. Read more of this post

Tencent Has Invested $2 bn in Overseas Markets. Here’s the Full List

Tencent Has Invested $2 bn in Overseas Markets. Here’s the Full List.

By Tracey Xiang on October 23, 2013

Tencent has invested $2 billion in overseas markets, a large part of which went to startups, disclosed Martin Lau, president of Tencent, at GMIC 2013 Sillicon Valley. Not only does Tencent inject money into those startups, the company would also pass on experience or help them enter China market, he said. Online gaming has been the major contributor to its total revenues and Tencent counts on mobile gaming in order to monetize the huge user base it has already had through WeChat, Mobile QQ and other mobile apps. So most of foreign businesses Tencent has stakes in are gaming-related. Below is a list of overseas investments we have heard about since the company started making investments in other companies, big or small — Years back Chinese Internet companies preferred to develop me-too products by themselves. Tencent was famous for that it could always kill the existing ones with better-than-copy versions. Read more of this post

Why Pinterest makes no money but is now worth $3.8 billion

Why Pinterest makes no money but is now worth $3.8 billion

BY CARMEL DEAMICIS 
ON OCTOBER 23, 2013

AllThingsD just broke the news that Pinterest has raised another huge round with an even fatter valuation, and it’s done it without any revenue to boot. Late-stage investor Fidelity Investments led the round, which topped out at $225 million with a $3.8 billion valuation for the online scrapbooking company. Whoa mama. That’s a lot of cash. And it comes on the heels of Pinterest’s recent February Series D, where it raised $200 million. Are your eyes swimming in dollar signs yet? I imagine Pinterest’s founders are. Read more of this post

Tesla’s Amazonian Attributes

Tesla’s Amazonian Attributes

LIAM DENNING

Oct. 24, 2013 11:06 a.m. ET

Tesla Motors TSLA +5.26% has a finger-lickin’ valuation.

That’s according to noted short seller Jim Chanos —and not in the tasty fried-chicken sense, either. At a recent Heard on the Street conference, the Kynikos Associates founder criticized an analyst’s hefty valuation of the electric-vehicle pioneer as resting mostly on far-off forecasts. He licked his finger and held it up as if testing the wind to demonstrate the uncertainty inherent in such long-range predictions. Read more of this post

One Last Look At The Giant Money Pit That Is Microsoft’s Online Operations

One Last Look At The Giant Money Pit That Is Microsoft’s Online Operations

JAY YAROW OCT. 24, 2013, 5:10 PM 2,525 7

Take a long look at this chart of Microsoft’s online losses, it’s the last time you’re going to see it. Microsoft is changing how it reports its earnings, killing the traditional reporting lines that revealed losses in the online division. In the future, online losses will be buried in “Commercial Other,” so we won’t see how much money Microsoft is losing on Bing, and MSN. Microsoft reported the Online losses one last time, as part of a transition to the new reporting system. For the record, since the March quarter of 2006, Microsoft has lost $12.36 billion trying to beat Google.

Masmoo3 Introduces Audiobooks to the Arab World

Masmoo3 Introduces Audiobooks to the Arab World

By Sarah A. Topol October 24, 2013

In a small recording studio in Amman, Jordan, a slight young woman sits in front of a computer, adjusting pitch and sound levels. “Excellent! Go,” she says, waving to the man standing on the other side of the soundproof glass. Seconds later, a rich baritone floods the control room. The words are centuries old, from a collection of classic Arabic poetry to be released as an audiobook later this year by a startup called Masmoo3. Its founders are brother and sister Ala and Alaa Suleiman. The idea came to them in 2008 when Ala, 35, a computer engineer and a devotee of English audiobooks, couldn’t find an Arabic-language version of Steve Chandler’s 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself. Read more of this post

Amazon has forked Android better than any other company

Mark Suster: Amazon has forked Android better than any other company

BY NATHANIEL MOTT 
ON OCTOBER 24, 2013

Any company can use Android in its products. Google has made the operating system freely available to any who wish to use it, which has certainly contributed to its position in the smartphone marketand the sheer number of devices that rely on Android to function. Lately the company has been trying to balance this commitment to a free and open Android with its desire to make sure its mobile efforts aren’t obviated by the same companies that have used the operating system to achieve dominance. Google is walking the line between “open” and “closed.” Read more of this post

Apps for brats: American parents snap up apps to make their children less horrible; Sales of educational software, digital content and related services in America are $7.8 billion a year

Apps for brats: American parents snap up apps to make their children less horrible

Oct 26th 2013 |From the print edition

CARROTS don’t work. Nor do sticks. Nor, even, do carrot sticks. How, American parents wonder, can they get their fussy children to eat healthy food? Since even little horrors who never listen to Mom and Dad usually pay attention to flashing screens, many parents hope that apps may succeed where they have failed. Things that are good for children—such as vegetables, maths, chores and looking both ways before crossing the road—are no fun. So any app-makers who can make them more enjoyable ought to turn a tidy profit. Tidier, at any rate, than a typical six-year-old’s bedroom. Read more of this post

Apple’s Location-Tracking iBeacon Is Poised for Use in Retail Sales

Apple’s Location-Tracking iBeacon Is Poised for Use in Retail Sales

By Sam Grobart October 24, 2013

Apple’s (AAPL) product event in San Francisco on Oct. 22 featured the expected upgrades to the iPad and MacBook lines, with better processors, sharper displays, and increased battery life. The bigger news was quietly rolled out a little more than a month ago, when Apple unleashed iOS 7 onto the world. Embedded in the mobile operating system’s flashier interface and multitasking features is a new technology called iBeacon that can pinpoint your location to within a few feet. Read more of this post

Apple: Why the iPad Is More Important Than the iPhone

Apple: Why the iPad Is More Important Than the iPhone

By Mark Glassman October 15, 2013

When Apple (AAPL) unveils its latest iPad and iPad mini later this month, the Internet will not explode, as it did when the company launched new iPhones last month. That’s fair enough. The iPhone is Apple’s benchmark product. It accounts for half the company’s revenue. It commands more news coverage than any other mobile device. It’s Hannah’s phone on Girls. Investors, however, should not ignore the iPad. The device is a critical piece of Apple’s business, and the company’s fortunes hinge largely on the success of the latest models. Read more of this post

Amazon hits 109,800 employees, passing Microsoft’s headcount for the first time

Amazon hits 109,800 employees, passing Microsoft’s headcount for the first time

By Emil Protalinski, 9 hours ago

Amazon today released its Q3 2013 earnings report. Among all the financial figures showing a second straight quarterly loss was a very big milestone: the Seattle-based company now employs 109,800 people around the world as of September 30, 2013. Why is this significant? Not only has it passed the six-figure mark, but it has done so at a blistering rate; Amazon’s employee growth is frankly staggering. Read more of this post

‘Big data’ lies behind victory of baseball games; It was big data that lied behind the success story of Samsung Lions which was the first to win three consecutive South Korea’s baseball pennants

‘Big data’ lies behind victory of baseball games

Hong Jang-won

2013.10.24 17:59:13

The 140-year history of Major League Baseball (MLB) demonstrates that ‘big data has been at the core of baseball.’ There is even a belief among baseball clubs that ‘no big data, no victory.’  This is supported by an example of Oakland Athletics which left a profound mark in the major league’s history in the early 2000s. Billy Beane, who became Oakland Athletics’ general manager in 1999 and deputy manager Peter Brand, defied conventions and watched a baseball game only from the perspective of big data. Their analysis based on big data found that the biggest determinant of the victory was on-base percentage. At low prices, the two scouted players whose value was unappreciated in the market, but boast higher on-base percentage, opening the new chapter of the major league. It was big data that lied behind the success story of Samsung Lions which was the first to win three consecutive South Korea’s baseball pennants. Former Samsung SDS president Kim In ordered employees to establish big data solution ‘STABIS’ right after serving as the president of Samsung Lions at the end of 2010. The solution gathers data on pitching quality, features of batter, weaknesses of opposition team to analyze the interrelation of the elements. This is why people say the Korean Series which opened Thursday is all about the battle over big data.

HTC shares surge on speculation of China Mobile’s acquisition plans

HTC shares surge on speculation of China Mobile’s acquisition plans

CNA
October 25, 2013, 12:27 am TWN

TAIPEI–Shares of Taiwan-based smartphone vendor HTC Corp. (宏達電) staged a strong rebound in heavy trading Thursday as bargain hunters rushed to buy into the stock, taking advantage of its relatively low valuation, dealers said. HTC shares rose 6.99% percent, nearly the maximum daily increase, to close at NT$145.50 (US$4.95) with 29.95 million shares changing hands, while the weighted index on the Taiwan Stock Exchange ended up 0.23 percent at 8,413.72 points. Read more of this post

Samsung Pursuing Glasses That Answer Calls in Google Challenge; “Samsung is willing to throw things at the wall just to see what sticks”

Samsung Pursuing Glasses That Answer Calls in Google Challenge

Samsung Electronics Co. (005930), Asia’s largest technology company, registered a design in South Korea for eyeglasses that can show information from a smartphone and enable users to take calls. The device will have transparent or translucent lenses, include earphones for listening to calls or music, and has been registered as “sports spectacles,” according to documents posted on the Korea Intellectual Property Rights Information Service website. Samsung applied for protection in March, and the patent was registered Oct. 2. Read more of this post

Laps to laptops: Formula One sells its big data know-how

Laps to laptops: Formula One sells its big data know-how

5:07pm EDT

By Jeremy Wagstaff

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Wander around the pits at a Formula One car race and you’re as likely to bump into a laptop-wielding scientist or engineer as a mechanic with a spanner. And the lessons they are drawing from sensors on F1 tracks, cars and drivers are finding their way into a surprising range of industries – from drilling oil wells to making toothpaste. “By chance or whatever we’ve ended up that F1 is a very strong metaphor for how the world is developing around a more industrialized Internet,” says Peter van Manen, managing director of McLaren Electronic Systems, part of a group which makes F1 cars. “You take information and you measure things, and from that you try to adapt how things behave and flow, so you can make performance better.” Read more of this post

South Korea’s Naver’s Line app to list on Tokyo exchange by next summer at $8-$10 billion market value

Line voice app developer plans to list on Tokyo exchange: Nikkei

4:03pm EDT

(Reuters) – The developer of the Line free voice calling and messaging app plans to list on the Tokyo Stock Exchange by next summer, the Nikkei said. Line Corp, owned by South Korea’s Naver Corp (035420.KS: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), will have a market capitalization of 800 billion yen to 1 trillion yen ($8-$10 billion) when it goes public, the Japanese business daily said. The Line app was developed by employees at Naver’s Japanese subsidiary who were forced to turn to the Internet to contact each other after the massive earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 that disrupted phone lines across the country. The Line app’s user base has grown to more than 270 million worldwide, the daily said. The company is expected use the proceeds on advertising and the development of new apps, the business daily said.

Patrick Grove plans to float $100 million e-commerce company iBuy

Nassim Khadem Reporter

Patrick Grove plans to float $100 million e-commerce company iBuy

Published 24 October 2013 11:44, Updated 24 October 2013 13:23

BRW Young Rich entrepreneur Patrick Grove is preparing to float his latest venture, e-commerce company iBuy, before the end of the year. Grove will list iBuy through broker Canaccord Genuity, a global investment bank focused on growth companies. The float of iBuy, a holding company of leading e-commerce sites selling branded consumer products at big discounts throughout south-east Asia, is expected to have a market capitalisation of $100 million. Read more of this post

Panasonic plans to dramatically cut back on chipmaking, slashing the business’s 14,000-strong workforce by half and possibly selling some plants

Updated: Thursday October 24, 2013 MYT 7:16:53 AM

Panasonic, which makes chips in M’sia, to slash production worldwide

TOKYO: Panasonic Corp  plans to dramatically cut back on chipmaking, slashing the business’s 14,000-strong workforce by half and possibly selling some plants, the Nikkei said Japanese companies are spinning off their chipmaking operations as profit margins shrink, mainly due to stiff competition from South Korea, the paper said. The move underlines Panasonic President Kazuhiro Tsuga’s determination to weed out weak operations as he focuses on higher-margin products to end years of losses at the consumer electronics conglomerate. Read more of this post

Samsung group’s unlisted Samsung Display unit could become the biggest shareholder of Corning, maker of scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass used in many mobile gadgets

With Corning deal, Samsung tightens grip on supply chain

Oct 24,2013

Samsung Electronics moved to strengthen its grip on vital electronics parts supplies as it looks to stay ahead of rival Apple Inc with new products in a fast-changing technology industry. The Korean group’s unlisted Samsung Display unit could become the biggest shareholder of Corning, maker of scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass used in many mobile gadgets, as part of a deal in which Corning buys Samsung Display out of a 1995 joint venture making glass for liquid crystal displays. Read more of this post

Value investors see tech stocks coming of age

October 23, 2013 9:02 am

Value investors see tech stocks coming of age

By John Authers

It is time to consign the dotcom bubble to the history books

In the long run, everything is a toaster. This is one of the more memorable lines delivered by Professor Bruce Greenwald, who teaches the class in Value Investing at Columbia Business School that was once taught by Benjamin Graham, and taken by Warren Buffett. The comment is a classic put-down by value investors against the overhyped hopes of rival “growth” investors. Great innovations may make money for a while, they say, but eventually they will be commodified and compete on price, like everyone else – much like a toaster. Read more of this post

Pinterest value leaps 52% to $3.8bn

October 23, 2013 11:44 pm

Pinterest value leaps 52% to $3.8bn

By Hannah Kuchler

Pinterest, the social network that styles itself as a scrapbook, has seen its valuation soar by more than 50 per cent in just eight months after its latest fundraising round valued the company at $3.8bn. The San Francisco-based company, which has yet to generate any revenue, raised $225m in a round led by Fidelity Investments with participation from existing investors. The social network had already raised $200m earlier this year at a valuation of $2.5bn. Read more of this post