The music world may have found itself a new big villain: YouTube

The music world may have found itself a new big villain: YouTube

BY DAVID HOLMES 
ON MAY 23, 2014

Congratulations, Spotify and Pandora: You may no longer be musicians’ most hated tech companies.

Last Summer, the anti-Pandora rallying cry was at an all-time high. The Verge’s Greg Sandoval dubbed Pandora “music’s big villain.” Cracker’s David Lowery caused a major stir by penning the blog post, “My Song Got Played On Pandora 1 Million Times and All I Got Was $16.89.” And Pink Floyd wrote an editorial in USA Today accusing the streaming music service of “tricking artists” into signing a petition that would cut their already-miniscule royalty payments. Read more of this post

Twitter to take India election innovations global

Twitter to take India election innovations global

3:57am EDT

By Aditya Kalra

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – U.S. social networking company Twitter is planning to replicate parts of its India election strategy across countries that go to polls this year, after it emerged as a key tool for politicians and media companies during the world’s largest democratic exercise. Read more of this post

Amazon’s Tactics Confirm Its Critics’ Worst Suspicions; For years, authors and publishers have warned that Amazon,Jeff Bezos’ book-selling giant, would one day use its power for ill.

Amazon’s Tactics Confirm Its Critics’ Worst Suspicions

By FARHAD MANJOO

MAY 23, 2014 4:29 PM 25 Comments

Amazon is confirming its critics’ worst fears and it is an ugly spectacle to behold.

For years, authors and publishers have warned that Amazon,Jeff Bezos’ book-selling giant, would one day use its power for ill. Sure, so far, Amazon has marketed itself as a book buyer’s best friend. It sells books at terrifically low prices, it delivers them amazingly quickly, and it constantly invents new technologies to improve the way we read. Amazon has also invested heavily in publishing new authors and it has pushed exciting new formats made possible by electronic distribution. Read more of this post

Amazon escalates battle with publishers; Amazon is fuelling anguish about its growing dominance in the book industry by making it harder for customers to buy the books of a publisher it is battling with over pricing

Last updated: May 23, 2014 10:44 pm

Amazon escalates battle with publishers

By Barney Jopson in Washington and Emily Steel in New York

Amazon is fuelling anguish about its growing dominance in the book industry by making it harder for customers to buy the books of a publisher it is battling with over pricing. Read more of this post

Searching for the real identity of Google; It is the world’s top brand but it is hard to say exactly what it does, writes Izabella Kaminska

May 23, 2014 7:09 pm

Searching for the real identity of Google

By Izabella KaminskaAuthor alerts

It is the world’s top brand but it is hard to say exactly what it does, writes Izabella Kaminska Read more of this post

Grocery Deliveries in Sharing Economy; When you buy groceries from Instacart, the company summons a green-shirted “personal shopper” through its smartphone app to pick up your items from a grocery store and deliver them to you

Grocery Deliveries in Sharing Economy

MAY 21, 2014

When you buy groceries from Instacart, the company summons a green-shirted “personal shopper” through its smartphone app to pick up your items from a grocery store and deliver them to you. CreditPeter DaSilva for The New York Times

Farhad Manjoo

“I hope you realize that you are about to witness a remarkable display in ineptitude,” the technology investor Michael J. Moritz said as he entered a Whole Foods store in San Francisco one recent afternoon. Read more of this post

Home-Grown Software Gives Tesla, Facebook a Competitive Edge

May 23, 2014, 12:40 PM ET

Home-Grown Software Gives Tesla, Facebook a Competitive Edge

RACHAEL KING

Companies from Tesla Motors Inc.TSLA +1.18% to Facebook Inc.FB +1.37% are writing their own software for employees in key areas that give them competitive advantage. They’re foregoing – at least in part – commercially available software. Read more of this post

Computer security: Organisms stop infections spreading by being diverse. So can computer apps

Computer security: Organisms stop infections spreading by being diverse. So can computer apps

May 24th 2014 | From the print edition

ABOUT 1.3 billion people use one or other version of Microsoft’s Windows operating systems, and well over a billion have downloaded Mozilla’s Firefox web browser. Minor variations aside, every copy of these products—like all other mass-market software—has exactly the same bits in it. This makes such software a honeypot for hackers, who can write attack code that will cause precisely the same damage to, say, every copy of Windows 7 it infects. Worse, the bad guys can hone their attacks by practising on their own machines, confident that what they see will be what their victims get. Read more of this post

Virtual biology: Computer worms; A crowd-funded project aims to build the world’s first simulated organism

Virtual biology: Computer worms; A crowd-funded project aims to build the world’s first simulated organism

May 24th 2014 | From the print edition

ANY scientist will tell you that most of the work which gets done at the conferences they attend happens not in the lecture halls but around the coffee machines outside them (not to mention in the bars that delegates repair to after the lectures are finished). That is where ideas are swapped, phone numbers exchanged and collaborations begun. Read more of this post

The seven habits of highly effective digital enterprises

The seven habits of highly effective digital enterprises

To stay competitive, companies must stop experimenting with digital and commit to transforming themselves into full digital businesses. Here are seven habits that successful digital enterprises share.

May 2014 | by’Tunde Olanrewaju, Kate Smaje, and Paul Willmott

The age of experimentation with digital is over. In an often bleak landscape of slow economic recovery, digital continues to show healthy growth. E-commerce is growing at double-digit rates in the United States and most European countries, and it is booming across Asia. To take advantage of this momentum, companies need to move beyond experiments with digital and transform themselves into digital businesses. Yet many companies are stumbling as they try to turn their digital agendas into new business and operating models. The reason, we believe, is that digital transformation is uniquely challenging, touching every function and business unit while also demanding the rapid development of new skills and investments that are very different from business as usual. To succeed, management teams need to move beyond vague statements of intent and focus on “hard wiring” digital into their organization’s structures, processes, systems, and incentives. Read more of this post

How CIOs can lead their company’s information business

How CIOs can lead their company’s information business

In data-driven companies, CIOs—and new chief data officers—should think big and help accelerate bold changes throughout the enterprise.

May 2014 | byJanaki Akella, Sam Marwaha, and Johnson Sikes Read more of this post

Vancouver, the New Tech Hub

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-05-22/vancouver-welcomes-tech-companies-hampered-by-u-dot-s-dot-work-visa-caps

Vancouver, the New Tech Hub

By Karen Weise May 22, 2014

In the heart of downtown Vancouver, construction workers are installing glass facades on two office towers. One will be an engineering hub for Microsoft (MSFT), the other for Amazon.com (AMZN). Facebook (FB), Salesforce.com (CRM), and a bunch of startups with less familiar names have also been setting up shop in the city. In addition to great views in a convenient time zone, Vancouver offers U.S. tech companies world-class talent, lower salaries, and few immigration headaches. Read more of this post

Companies and the Clouds They Keep; While Salesforce has a head start in the race to build a cloud platform, Amazon could emerge as the winner

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-05-22/cloud-platform-race-salesforce-leads-amazon-microsoft-google

Companies and the Clouds They Keep

By Peter Burrows May 22, 2014

After co-founding Salesforce.com (CRM) in 1999, Marc Benioff spent years preaching the gospel of its radical new business model, cloud computing. The days of the hard sell are long gone, Benioff says. Just this month, the Salesforce chief executive officer played host to News Corp. (NWSA) Chairman Rupert Murdoch and Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) CEO Doug McMillon, who’d traveled to Silicon Valley to hear how Salesforce could help them cut costs and increase sales. Read more of this post

Learning from New York City’s open-data effort: Finding the technology needed to make data truly open is easy. Breaking down barriers to change and helping users understand the information takes work

Learning from New York City’s open-data effort

Finding the technology needed to make data truly open is easy. Breaking down barriers to change and helping users understand the information takes work. Read more of this post

VCs eye big cloud software returns despite dwindling valuations

VCs eye big cloud software returns despite dwindling valuations

6:41pm EDT

By Sarah McBride

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – A cloud software boom has nudged startups into unlikely realms such as dairy farms, yoga studios and back-of-the-building loading docks, leading venture capitalists to hope for stratospheric returns. Read more of this post

Online cycling retailer Wiggle in float rumours, valuing the company at around £440m; The company made pre-tax profits of £12.3m on revenues of £140.7m

Online cycling retailer Wiggle in float rumours

May 12, 2014

Wiggle was sold to private equity group Bridgepoint in 2011 for £180m ($192.4 million). Photo: John Veage

Wiggle, the privately owned online cycling retailer, is working with advisers at boutique investment bank Rothschild on a potential flotation. Read more of this post

A Closer Look Inside IBM’s Cloud Challenge: IBM is finally moving with real urgency in the cloud computing market. But can IBM win over enough of its mainstream corporate customers?

A Closer Look Inside IBM’s Cloud Challenge

By STEVE LOHR

MAY 12, 2014, 9:00 AM 5 Comments

IBM, after a sluggish start, is moving with real urgency in building up its cloud business, as I noted in a recent article.

“IBM has made big moves and done some really good things,” said Daryl Plummer, an analyst at Gartner. “But the question now is, can it win business and make money in the cloud business?” Read more of this post