Western Digital buys flash memory maker Virident for $685 million, focus now on Fusion-io

Western Digital buys flash memory maker Virident, focus now on Fusion-io

1:34pm EDT

By Neha Alawadhi

(Reuters) – Western Digital Corp said it would buy Virident Systems Inc for $685 million as the hard drive maker and Seagate Technology Plc battle for a piece of the fast-growing market for solid-state drives used in servers. Shares of Virident rival Fusion-io Inc were up 20 percent at midday, with analysts saying the storage drive maker was a likely acquisition target for Seagate, one of the backers of Virident. Read more of this post

Viki founder Razmig Hovaghimian’s winning bet

Viki founder Razmig Hovaghimian’s winning bet

September 9, 2013

by Terence Lee

Some time before Rakuten’s acquisition of Singapore startup Viki for a reported $200 million, founder Razmig Hovaghimian and SingTel Innov8 CEO Edgar Hardless had a friendly wager on how much the startup could be acquired for. The stakes? Dinner in any restaurant in Singapore. Razmig’s prediction was unbelievably rosy at the time, said Edgar at a panel discussion held at startup accelerator JFDI last week. Innov8, a $200 million venture capital firm, is an investor in Viki. It turned out that Razmig won. But the bet was trivial compared to the series of gambles Razmig and his co-founders had made as entrepreneurs. Read more of this post

PayPal Eliminates Need for Phone or Card in Retail Purchases

PayPal Eliminates Need for Phone or Card in Retail Purchases

EBay Inc. (EBAY)’s PayPal unit has a message for its 132 million users: put away your phones. The digital payments provider introduced technology today that lets consumers enter a store and pay without touching a credit card or smartphone. Retailers can plug a new device, called Beacon, into a power outlet and detect phones that have the PayPal application, sending a notification to the cashier. Read more of this post

Virgin Media U.K. Pay-TV Service Adds Netflix in First

Virgin Media U.K. Pay-TV Service Adds Netflix in First

Netflix Inc. (NFLX)’s subscription-video service will be offered on Virgin Media Inc. cable systems in the U.K., marking the first time the Web-delivered product is integrated by major pay-TV provider. Virgin Media, purchased this year by John Malone’s Liberty Global Plc (LBTYA), will begin testing Netflix with 40,000 customers who use TiVo set-top boxes, according to a statement today. The feature, which requires a Netflix subscription, will be available this year to all 1.7 million of its TiVo users. Read more of this post

IPad-Toting Doctors Fuel Publisher Profits as Paper Fades

IPad-Toting Doctors Fuel Publisher Profits as Paper Fades

Ohio doctor Mrunal Shah recently shipped four boxes of medical texts to developing countries because he can’t recall the last time he cracked a book rather than tapping for information on his iPad. “There is no paper chart in any of my hospitals, and it’s rare to see people even using paper and pen,” said Shah, 41. While that’s good news for Apple Inc., the shift has also been a boon for Wolters Kluwer NV (WKL) and Reed Elsevier Plc (REL), academic-journal publishers that trace their roots to the 19th century. Both now employ more technology staffers than editors as doctors trade in dusty volumes of “Gray’s Anatomy” for digital tools such as UpToDate, an online medical encyclopedia from Wolters Kluwer or a similar product from Reed Elsevier called ClinicalKey. Read more of this post

It’s all in the wrist – Who has vision to crack the ‘smartwatch’?

It’s all in the wrist – Who has vision to crack the ‘smartwatch’?

11:19pm EDT

By Jeremy Wagstaff

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – The smartwatch could be as revolutionary as the smartphone – an intelligent device on our wrist that connects our bodies to data and us to the world – but only a handful of companies have the heft and vision to be able to pull it off. It’s not through lack of trying. Watchmakers and others have been adding calculators, calendars and wireless data connections to wrist-straps for at least 30 years. Read more of this post

Israeli startup Outbrain, whose main product is a content recommendation service, expected to go public at $1 billion value

Israeli startup Outbrain expected to go public at $1 billion value

The firm, whose main product is a content recommendation service, is expected to try to raise some $200 million to $300 million.

By Orr Hirschauge | Sep. 9, 2013 | 11:36 AM

Israeli software company Outbrain is nearing an initial public offering. The firm, whose main product is a content recommendation service, has started preparing a prospectus for the IPO at a company value of about $1 billion, and is expected to try to raise some $200 million to $300 million. Outbrain’s technology is used by websites to recommend other content and links the reader might find interesting using. the idea is to keep readers on the site and increase traffic to sites – and in doing so increase revenues. Outbrain also allows advertisers to distribute marketing content alongside the recommendations. Read more of this post

Facebook Unveils Tools for Showing Posts About TV News

Facebook Unveils Tools for Showing Posts About TV News

Facebook Inc. (FB) is rolling out new tools that integrate posts from the world’s most popular social network with television broadcasts, stepping up competition with rival Web companies. News organizations such as CNN and NBC’s Today Show will be able to display real-time comments from Facebook users and companies that have designated their posts as public, the company said today. The features will also offer aggregated information on what’s generally being discussed on the social network based on gender, age and location. Read more of this post

Japanese Human-Resources Firm Recruit Looks to Buy Freelancer.com; Site Says It Has Generated $1.25 Billion of Work for Users Since 2009

September 10, 2013, 1:53 a.m. ET

Japanese Human-Resources Firm Recruit Looks to Buy Freelancer.com

Site Says It Has Generated $1.25 Billion of Work for Users Since 2009

DANA MATTIOLI And GILLIAN TAN

Recruit Co. Ltd, a Japanese human-resources firm and jobs-site operator, is in talks to acquire Australia’s Freelancer.com for US$400 million, people familiar with the matter said. Closely held Recruit is betting that more companies will outsource work to cut costs at a time of uncertain global economic recovery. The Japanese company has made acquisitions in India and the U.S. over the past year. Read more of this post

Alibaba Braces for Mobile Revolution

Alibaba Braces for Mobile Revolution

JURO OSAWA

As Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. gears up for one of the largest Internet IPOs, the Chinese e-commerce giant faces a major challenge: how to cash in on the mobile Internet. Alibaba’s two online marketplaces, Taobao and Tmall, together handle more total dollar transactions than any e-commerce platform includingAmazon.com Inc. AMZN +0.60% oreBay Inc. EBAY +1.69% But more than 90% of those transactions come from PCs. As Chinese consumers increasingly use mobile devices for all kinds of online activities, Alibaba is trying to figure out how to defend its No. 1 position in China’s rapidly growing e-commerce market. Read more of this post

China Telecom Takes the Offensive in Messaging App Wars

09.06.2013 18:14

China Telecom Takes the Offensive in Messaging App Wars

WeChat and Fetion are dominating the battlefield, but telecom giant and NetEase have partnered to develop an offering they hope gives them a fighting chance

By staff reporter Qin Min

(Beijing) – Within 24 hours of its launch, instant-messaging app Yixin had more than 1 million users, an employee of the company behind it, Zhejiang Yixin Technology Co. Ltd., bragged. Then things got even better. “We hit 5 million within three days, far exceeding our expectations,” the employee said. Yixin was developed by China Telecom and Internet company NetEase Inc. as a rival to Tencent Inc.’s hit messaging app WeChat. Read more of this post

YC alum Tutorspree shuts down; Once Tutorspree matches a tutor with its tutee, there is little to stop them from paying the tutor in-person and cutting Tutorspree (and its fees) out of the picture

YC alum Tutorspree shuts down

BY ERIN GRIFFITH 
ON SEPTEMBER 8, 2013

Most startups fail. Ninety percent or so. Often they fail before they even get off the ground, quietly slipping off the radar and into the deadpool. Whenever I encounter these situations, I try to find out and share what went wrong. It’s useful to do this because it offers lessons to other entrepreneurs, and because we try to paint a full picture of the startup world beyond flashy launches and frothy fundraises. Read more of this post

Worries That Microsoft Is Growing Too Tricky to Manage

September 8, 2013

Worries That Microsoft Is Growing Too Tricky to Manage

By NICK WINGFIELD

SEATTLE — At a time when many people in business believe the number of products at Microsoft should be getting smaller, it is about to become a lot bigger. Microsoft’s $7.2 billion acquisition of Nokia’s handset and services operations, when the deal closes early next year, will increase the company’s head count by 30 percent and add a big, new hardware unit to a dizzying variety of businesses — an unusual situation in an industry where focus is often prized more than breadth. Read more of this post

The Internet’s next victim: Advertising; What the story of AdBlock Plus tells us: The online economy is broken, and won’t be easy to fix

SEP 3, 2013 04:30 AM MPST

The Internet’s next victim: Advertising

What the story of AdBlock Plus tells us: The online economy is broken, and won’t be easy to fix

BY ANDREW LEONARD

“Everyone agrees that advertising on the Internet is broken,” says Till Faida, CEO of Adblock Plus, creator of by far the most popular ad-blocking software on the Web. The soft-spoken German, visiting the San Francisco Bay Area to network and drum up support for his company’s “Acceptable Ads” initiative, sketches out a distressing scenario: Ads aren’t generating enough revenue, so websites are forced to run ever more “aggressive” ads — a maddening deluge of pop-ups, blinking banners, and autoplaying video and audio commercials. But as ads steadily become even more annoying, users click even less, forcing revenues down even further. Read more of this post

Smartphones try fashion makeovers to stand out from pack

Smartphones try fashion makeovers to stand out from pack

Sun, Sep 8 2013

By Alexei Oreskovic and Poornima Gupta

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Bright colors, funky textures and personalization are coming to a smartphone near you as mobile phone makers turn to fashion to buoy sales in a crowded market. Apple Inc and Google Inc’s Motorola are among those trying to score style points as game-changing technological innovation becomes harder to achieve in the maturing business. Read more of this post

Fashion Industry Meets Big Data; High-Tech Forecasting Comes to a Business That Dreads Being Out of Style

September 8, 2013, 7:20 p.m. ET

Fashion Industry Meets Big Data

High-Tech Forecasting Comes to a Business That Dreads Being Out of Style

KATHY GORDON

In the fashion business, faux pas can be costly. In order to hem back the risk, some retailers are increasingly turning to trend forecasting.vFor an average annual fee of $7,000 to $15,000, customers get access to forward forecasts of fashion trends and data offering ideas for colors, fabrics and cuts, often broken into categories like ‘industrial’ and ‘aquatic.’ The forecasting companies offer analysis of fashion shows, data on the current market offerings and—for an added fee—bespoke research and consultancy services. The data are generated by teams of staff employed to trawl art exhibitions, events, restaurants and even scientific journals. Read more of this post

Cutting the middlemen from the delivery business: Two Australian start-ups have courier companies and supermarkets in their sights

Cutting the middlemen from the delivery business

September 9, 2013 – 11:34AM

Nate Cochrane

Two Australian start-ups have courier companies and supermarkets in their sights, writesNate Cochrane.

Next time your online purchase arrives at the door, pause to consider the shipping label. There’s a good chance it was facilitated by Temando, winner of this year’s IBM SmartCamp for Australian technology start-ups. By cutting out the middlemen of global logistics and transportation networks, the company – whose name translates to ”I send you” in Spanish – cuts the cost to ship a 500 gram parcel from the US to Australia from $40 to $7, according to co-founder and chief executive officer, Carl Hartmann.  Read more of this post

Apple’s Next Unveiling Could Make or Break a Business; The annual iPhone unveilings draw fans, entrepreneurs and technology executives who are praying that a new function does not make their company obsolete

SEPTEMBER 8, 2013, 11:49 AM

Disruptions: Apple’s Next Unveiling Could Make or Break a Business

By NICK BILTON

SAN FRANCISCO — On Tuesday morning, about 200 people — most of them from the news media — will gather in a Cupertino, Calif., auditorium to watch Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, unveil new iPhones. The people who make it their business to know these things say they expect Apple to reveal a long-awaited, less-expensive iPhone to woo buyers in emerging markets; a few brightly colored alternatives — yellow, blue and even pink — to entice teenagers; and a higher-end, gold-and-graphite model to draw those who enjoy spending lots of money. Read more of this post

A Flurry of Start-Ups Take On Data Storage; Look Out, EMC

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2013

A Flurry of Start-Ups Take On Data Storage; Look Out, EMC

By TIERNAN RAY | MORE ARTICLES BY AUTHOR

The data-storage giants could be vulnerable to new competitors using flash memory. Why Dell should be an acquirer.

Revolution is very much an overused term in Silicon Valley. But it may be apt to describe the flood of executives in recent years leaving the titans of data storage, EMC (ticker: EMC) and NetApp (NTAP), for start-ups, to push a dramatic overhaul of the industry they helped build. The money they have consumed along the way certainly feels like wartime spending. Consider the initial-public-offering filing last month by Violin Memory of Mountain View, Calif., which has taken aim at the traditional storage equipment, known as arrays, sold by EMC. Read more of this post

Latest Overhaul of the MGM Studio Appears to Be a Moneymaker; After emerging from bankruptcy and cutting costs, the venerable studio is generating cash and has a number of movies and TV shows in the works

September 8, 2013

Latest Overhaul of the MGM Studio Appears to Be a Moneymaker

By BROOKS BARNES

LOS ANGELES — For much of the last decade, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer has been troubled by financial turmoil and infuriating production stops and starts, including a debacle in which Tom Cruise helped run its United Artists label. Is it possible, just maybe, that the studio finally has its act together? It certainly appears that way, even as some questions remain. Shares of MGM Holdings’ thinly traded over-the-counter stock have risen 50 percent since April, to about $58.50. Revenue almost tripled in the last quarter, to $339 million, according to the company. Helped by repeated Standard & Poor’s upgrades over the last three years, MGM now has access to revolving lines of credit totaling $750 million. Read more of this post

New 3D camera technology could boost China’s anti-stealth capabilities

New 3D camera technology could boost China’s anti-stealth capabilities

Staff Reporter

2013-09-08

The stealth capabilities of the F-35 could become less effective with the development of the single pixel 3D imaging device created by China. (Internet photo)

China has developed the world’s first single-pixel three-dimensional imaging camera, reports Duowei News, an outlet run by overseas Chinese. The prototype of the single-pixel device, capable of recording 3D images, was built at the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics. Single-pixel cameras are already capable of generating 2D pictures through a lens-free process known as ghost imaging, but the team at the institute has added a timed laser pulse to allow the system to detect spatial arrangements and create a 3D layered series of 2D images. The new technology has the potential to help hospitals use ordinary X-rays to detect hard-to-spot soft tissue damage. In terms of military applications, the technology could allow radar surveillance to easily distinguish between birds and planes, making it difficult for stealth bombers to remain undetected. The breakthrough device could represent a huge step forward for China’s anti-stealth capabilities. The US military is regarded as the world leader in stealth technology with the development of the F-22, F-35 and B-2 stealth jets, while China is still some way from bringing its own J-20 and J-31 jets into service.

More Data Can Mean Less Guessing About the Economy

September 7, 2013

More Data Can Mean Less Guessing About the Economy

By STEVE LOHR

DAVID TABOR, 37 and a civil engineer, runs an eight-person home-inspection company in Hurricane, W.Va. Other than their owners, most small businesses have no employees. His is one of the 4.3 million that do have them, and that employ fewer than 20 people each. And while these companies collectively produce roughly 15 percent of the nation’s economic output, their activities aren’t captured by the official numbers in a timely or detailed way. Yet this measurement shortfall in the small-business sector, and a series of other information gaps in the economy, may be overcome by what experts say is an emerging data revolution — Big Data, in the current catchphrase. The ever-expanding universe of digital signals of behavior, from browsing and buying on the Web to cellphone location data, is grist for potential breakthroughs in economic measurement. It could produce more accurate forecasting and more informed policy-making — more science and less guesswork. Read more of this post

Google Introduces New Desktop Apps

SEPTEMBER 6, 2013, 10:59 AM

Google Introduces New Desktop Apps

By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER

Even if Google is ready to live entirely online, everyone else might not be. To celebrate the Google Chrome browser’s fifth birthday on Thursday, the company expanded its ambitions in computing by introducing a new kind of Chrome app that runs offline and on other operating systems besides Google’s. If trying to figure out what that means makes your head spin, you’re not alone. Until now, Google’s Chrome Web apps worked only online. The new apps combine the best of online and offline apps, the company says, similar to the apps on a smartphone. For instance, they allow people to work without an Internet connection and plug in hardware like digital cameras. But since they are written in Web programming languages, they can sync across devices, back up to the cloud and receive automatic security updates. Read more of this post

From Myspace’s Ashes, Silicon Start-Ups Rise; Many founders and former executives of Myspace have found new entrepreneurial life in the blossoming tech industry of Los Angeles

September 7, 2013

From Myspace’s Ashes, Silicon Start-Ups Rise

By EILENE ZIMMERMAN

IT is hardly uncommon for founders and employees of successful companies to cash in their chips and go on to start other successful companies. Perhaps the best-known example is PayPal, the Web payment service whose leaders went on to found and invest in a bunch of other companies — YouTube, LinkedIn, Yelp, Tesla — and to earn the nickname the PayPal mafia. More recently, the alumni of another Internet company — a social network based in California — have generated an impressive number of spinoffs. But what is notable about these spinoffs is that they have been generated not by a spectacular success, like PayPal or Facebook, but by a distant also-ran: Myspace. Read more of this post

“How can they be so good?”: The strange story of Skype. As Skype turns ten, a look back at how six Europeans changed the world

“How can they be so good?”: The strange story of Skype

As Skype turns ten, a look back at how six Europeans changed the world.

by Toivo Tänavsuu Sept 3 2013, 4:00am MPST

“I don’t care about Skype!” millionaire Jaan Tallinn tells me, taking off his blue sunglasses and finding a seat at a cozy open-air restaurant in the old town of Tallinn, Estonia. “The technology is 10 years old—that’s an eternity when it comes to the Internet Age. Besides, I have more important things going on now.”

Tallinn has five children, and he calls Skype his sixth. So why does he no longer care about his creation?

On August 29, 2003, Skype went live for the first time. By 2012, according to Telegeography, Skype accounted for a whopping 167 billion minutes of cross-border voice and video calling in a year—which itself was a stunning 44 percent growth over 2011. That increase in minutes was “more than twice that achieved by all international carriers in the world, combined.” That is to say, Skype today poses a serious threat to the largest telcos on the planet. It also made Jaan Tallinn and other early Skypers rich. Read more of this post

Lenovo came out of nowhere to become the global leader in PCs. Now it’s got its sights set on Samsung and Apple in smartphones and tablets

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2013

Lenovo Attacks

By LESLIE P. NORTON | MORE ARTICLES BY AUTHOR

Lenovo came out of nowhere to become the global leader in PCs. Now it’s got its sights set on Samsung and Apple in smartphones and tablets.

Yang Yuanqing has succeeded where many others have tried and failed. In just eight years, the chairman and CEO of Beijing-based Lenovo Group has transformed the company from a little-known maker of personal computers into the No. 1 global PC brand, displacing a half-dozen would-be challengers along the way, including Acer,Asustek, Toshiba, and Sony . And even in a now-fading $200 billion PC industry, Lenovo (ticker: LNVGY) continues to gain market share at the expense of former leadersHewlett-Packard (HPQ) and Dell (DELL). Read more of this post

Clever cities: The multiplexed metropolis; Enthusiasts think that data services can change cities in this century as much as electricity did in the last one. They are a long way from proving their case

Clever cities: The multiplexed metropolis; Enthusiasts think that data services can change cities in this century as much as electricity did in the last one. They are a long way from proving their case

Sep 7th 2013 | AMSTERDAM AND BARCELONA |From the print edition

EVEN thieves, it seems, now have a smartphone app. Makkie Klauwe (it means something like “easy pickings” in Amsterdam slang) reveals the city’s best places for pilfering—for instance Reestraat and Tuinstraat, where bicycles appear to be a good target. The app depends for its dark arts on pulling together publicly available data on disposable income, crime levels and other problems reported in a district. A good place to steal might, for instance, have high income, low reported crime and broken streetlights. Read more of this post