European retailers have gone back to bricks and mortar in the hope of turning their online food businesses profitable – racing to build pick-up points to capitalize on shoppers’ increasing demand for “click and collect” grocery options

Retailers look to click & collect online profits

9:56am EDT

By Emma Thomasson and Dominique Vidalon

BERLIN/PARIS (Reuters) – European retailers have gone back to bricks and mortar in the hope of turning their online food businesses profitable – racing to build pick-up points to capitalize on shoppers’ increasing demand for “click and collect” grocery options. E-commerce has revolutionized trade in books, music, clothes and electronics in the last decade, but food has proved a tough segment to crack. Grocery represents almost 40 percent of retail sales, but providing a profitable internet option for a high-volume, low-margin business with products that must be chilled is more complex and pricey than for non-perishables. Read more of this post

Amazon is considering selling its smart phone for $0, even without a wireless plan

Amazon is considering selling its smart phone for $0, even without a wireless plan

By Christopher Mims @mims 9 hours ago

Amazon isn’t just working on a phone, but the company is considering giving it away, anonymous sources have told ex-Wall Street Journal reporter Amir Efrati. The same sources say that Amazon’s plan to give away phones is unlikely, but the fact that Amazon is even thinking about such a plan is indicative of the company’s long-term strategy, which is to give away hardware while making money on content and advertising. Amazon has for some time been open about its strategy of making little or no money on hardware, and there has long been speculation that eventually the price of its Kindle e-reader will drop to 0, when the price of hardware declines to the point that Amazon calculates it can recoup the cost of devices from sales of ebooks. And unlike its competitors, as a whole Amazon is content with making little or no profit. As outrageous as a free smartphone might sound, it’s worth remembering that the price of low-end Android smartphones is already approaching $50. If Amazon thinks it can make more money selling content on a phone than on a tablet or e-reader, or perhaps by taking a cut of the costs for pre-paid wireless data plans, a complete subsidy of the lowest-end smartphones might make sense. Read more of this post

3D printing: From dental braces to astronauts’ seats; The signs are that 3D printing is transforming manufacturing, but not in the ways you might expect

3D printing: From dental braces to astronauts’ seats; The signs are that 3D printing is transforming manufacturing, but not in the ways you might expect

Sep 7th 2013 |From the print edition

EVER since 3D printing—the ability to construct solid objects by building them up, a layer at a time, in plastic or metal—hit public consciousness a couple of years ago, comment has veered towards two extremes. Fans, often in America, insist it will have a dramatic impact, undermining the economics of mass production and repatriating jobs to the West. According to the Harvard Business Review, “China will have to give up on being the mass-manufacturing powerhouse of the world.” Critics denounce it as overblown hype—“a gimmick” according to Terry Gou, the boss of Foxconn, a manufacturing giant in China: he says he will start spelling his name backwards if he is proved wrong. In fact 3D printing is evolving in a way that defies both these predictions (seeTechnology Quarterly). It is plainly a serious technology with a big economic impact. But it is not necessarily harming old-style factories or the Chinese. Read more of this post

Disney Armed With ESPN Cudgel in Next Pay-TV Fee Showdown

Disney Armed With ESPN Cudgel in Next Pay-TV Fee Showdown

Now that CBS Corp. has prevailed in its monthlong dispute with Time Warner Cable Inc., it’s Bob Iger’s turn to see how much his Walt Disney Co. can squeeze from a pay-TV carrier.

Disney, owner of the most-expensive pay-TV channel in ESPN, faces a Sept. 30 deadline to reach a new agreement with Dish Network Corp. (DISH), the second-largest U.S. satellite-TV provider. The negotiations cover how much Dish pays for content and whether it can put programs on mobile phones — the same sticking points that led to the one-month blackout of CBS on Time Warner Cable systems that was resolved this week. Read more of this post

Robotics: A new breed of robots is being designed to collaborate with humans, working alongside them to make them more productive

Robotics: A new breed of robots is being designed to collaborate with humans, working alongside them to make them more productive

Sep 7th 2013 |From the print edition

AS GIANT welding robots go about their business in a modern car factory, the scene looks like a cyberpunk vision of Dante’s “Inferno”. Amid showers of sparks, articulated mechanical arms nearly the size of telephone poles move sections of partially built vehicles so “scarily fast” that anyone who accidentally ends up in the wrong place is as good as dead, says Rodney Brooks, the boss of Rethink Robotics, a robot-maker based in Boston. For this reason, industrial robots operate in cages or behind security fences. But by segregating robots from humans, such safety measures greatly limit the tasks that robots can perform. In car factories, for example, most of the final assembly is done, expensively, by hand. Read more of this post

The sound of silence: Technology and society: Designers are paying more attention to devising products that make less noise, which can save energy and boost sales

The sound of silence: Technology and society: Designers are paying more attention to devising products that make less noise, which can save energy and boost sales

Sep 7th 2013 |From the print edition

EFFORTS to regulate the nuisance of distracting noise date back at least as far as the 6th century BC, when the Greek colony of Sybaris decreed that, along with roosters, tinsmiths and potters had to live outside the city because of the noise they made. Some 25 centuries later Charles Babbage, an English mathematician who is remembered as one of the forefathers of computing, waged a series of campaigns against organ grinders and other forms of street music. Both would surely approve of the way in which designers have lately started paying more attention to devising products that make less noise. Read more of this post

The rebirth of the diesel engine: Automotive technology: Electric and hybrid cars are being given a run for their money by an unlikely competitor: a range of advanced diesel engines that set new standards in performance and fuel economy

The rebirth of the diesel engine: Automotive technology: Electric and hybrid cars are being given a run for their money by an unlikely competitor: a range of advanced diesel engines that set new standards in performance and fuel economy

Sep 7th 2013 |From the print edition

TESLA MOTORS has had great success with its Model S luxury electric car, which has outsold its petrol-powered equivalents since being launched in America last year. Even so, the prospects for battery-powered vehicles generally may never shine quite as bright again. Having had their day in the sun, they may soon be eclipsed by, wait for it, the diesel engine. American readers will find this idea particularly hard to swallow. Surely not that dirty, noisy, smelly, lumbering lump of a motor that was hard to start in winter? Certainly not. A whole new generation of sprightly diesels—developed over the past few years—bear no resemblance to the clattering Oldsmobile 4.3-litre diesel of the late 1970s, which single-handedly destroyed diesel’s reputation in America for decades. Read more of this post

The big mobile-phone reset

The big mobile-phone reset

This week’s two telecoms deals will be followed by others, as the industry undergoes a big rationalisation

Sep 7th 2013 |From the print edition

ONE was a long-expected divorce, the other a much-predicted wedding. On September 2nd America’s Verizon Communications bought Britain’s Vodafone out of Verizon Wireless, the biggest mobile operator in the United States. It will pay a staggering $130 billion in cash, shares and bonds for Vodafone’s 45% stake. The next day Microsoft bought Nokia’s mobile-phone business for €3.8 billion ($5 billion). The American software company will also pay the Finnish firm €1.7 billion to license its patents, and lend it €1.5 billion. Read more of this post

High-tech fabrics: Advances in seemingly mundane textile technologies promise to make the world a safer place—using a variety of tricks

High-tech fabrics: Advances in seemingly mundane textile technologies promise to make the world a safer place—using a variety of tricks

Sep 7th 2013 |From the print edition

ON APRIL 29th a Boeing 747 cargo jet crashed just after take-off at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, killing all seven crew members. During the ascent, it seems, some heavy cargo broke free from its constraints and slid backwards, lifting the nose of the aircraft and making it stall. Such accidents have happened before. In 1997 a cargo plane leaving Miami crashed after pallets of denim shifted; all four of the crew and a motorist on the ground were killed. Accordingly, there is much interest in brawnier nets that can ensure air cargo stays put. Japan’s Nippon Cargo Airlines, TAP Portugal, and, as of this summer, Air France-KLM are using netting fabric that is much stronger than the polyester netting in wide use today. Read more of this post

Digital manufacturing: There is a lot of hype around 3D printing. But it is fast becoming integrated with mainstream manufacturing

3D printing scales up

Digital manufacturing: There is a lot of hype around 3D printing. But it is fast becoming integrated with mainstream manufacturing

Sep 7th 2013 |From the print edition

PEEK through the inspection windows of the nearly 100 three-dimensional (3D) printers quietly making things at RedEye, a company based in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, and you can catch a glimpse of how factories will work in the future. It is not simply that the machines, some as big as delivery vans, run day and night attended by just a handful of technicians. Instead it is what they are making that shows how this revolutionary production process is entering the manufacturing mainstream. Read more of this post

Alipay and UnionPay Battle over How Payments Are Processed; State-owned firm wants bankcard transactions routed through its system, a move experts say counters efforts to open market

09.06.2013 18:29

Alipay and UnionPay Battle over How Payments Are Processed

State-owned firm wants bankcard transactions routed through its system, a move experts say counters efforts to open market

By staff reporters Wen Xiu and Zhang Yuzhe

(Beijing) – A clash between two titans in the country’s payment industry has shed light on the worsening tension between challengers and a monopoly defending its privileges. The conflict surfaced when Alipay, the third-party payment arm of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, said on August 27 that it will stop its offline point-of-sales (POS) service for “obvious reasons.” Read more of this post

Here’s The Elon Musk Video Showing How You Can Design Rocket Parts By Making Hand Gestures

Here’s The Elon Musk Video Showing How You Can Design Rocket Parts By Making Hand Gestures

JOE WEISENTHAL SEP. 5, 2013, 5:55 PM 2,451 4

A couple of weeks ago, Elon Musk (who is the chief at both Tesla and the private rocket company SpaceX) said he was going to post a video showing how you could develop rockets just by waving his hands in the air. Well, the video is here. Signe Brewster at GigaOm has a concise explanation of how it works: SpaceX paired a Leap Motion gesture reader with its Siemens NX computer aided design software and added 3D glasses, allowing a designer to shape the part with their hands in a 3D environment. They can’t build a design from scratch, but they can take actions like modifying the shape of an object. Musk demonstrated in the video it is also a useful way to examine a design in three dimensions. There’s more on the process posted at the Leap Motion blog.

Prices for memory chips used in smartphones and personal computers surged 19% as SK Hynix Fire Sparks Supply-Crunch Woes

Chip Prices Surge as SK Hynix Fire Sparks Supply-Crunch Woes

Prices for memory chips used in smartphones and personal computers surged 19 percent, the most in three years, as SK Hynix Inc. (000660) suspended operations in China after a factory fire. Shares of the Apple Inc. (AAPL) supplier fell. The blaze occurred Sept. 4 during the installation of equipment at a factory in Wuxi, China, that makes dynamic random-access memory chips. The fire burned for about 90 minutes before being extinguished without causing major damage, the Icheon, South Korea-based chipmaker said. One person suffered minor injuries. Read more of this post

SmartBike and SmartLock: devices that answer Vietnam’s motorbike theft culture

SmartBike and SmartLock: devices that answer Vietnam’s motorbike theft culture

September 5, 2013

by Anh-Minh Do

Vietnam is a motorbike nation. Surrounding countries like Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia, with similar populations to Vietnam, have slowly made the transition into cars. They’re full of car traffic. But Vietnam’s traffic jams areunique. And that presents a huge market for motorbike products and services. Enter Digi-Gps: SmartLock and SmartBike. Two such solutions are the SmartBike and the SmartLock, made by a team of engineers out of a company called Digi-Gps. Now, let’s imagine you have a motorbike first. And just for the sake of storytelling, your motorbike is really nice, and lots of thieves want to steal it. That’s where the SmartLock and SmartBike come in. The SmartLock, which costs 500,000 VND ($25), is a bluetooth-enabled device that basically locks your motorbike if you walk more than 10 meters away from it. 10 meters, and it automatically shuts off and locks. Within 30 meters, it will send a text message to your phone if anyone touches or tries to steal your motorbike. Beyond 30 meters, and you won’t be able to get those text messages. But basically, no one will be able to turn on your motorbike without your bluetooth activated smartphone nearby. The SmartLock is tapped into your motorbikes electrical system. Read more of this post

U.S. broadcasters succeed in temporarily shutting down streaming TV service Aereo

U.S. broadcasters succeed in temporarily shutting down streaming TV service

8:42pm EDT

By Erin Geiger Smith

(Reuters) – U.S. television broadcasters won a significant court battle on Thursday when a federal judge shut down an online television service in most parts of the country until a lawsuit on the issue is resolved. FilmOn allows users to watch live television on their computers or mobile devices by streaming local news broadcasts and national television programs. Twenty-First Century Fox Inc, Walt Disney Co’s ABC and other networks sued FilmOn in May, claiming the service pays no licensing fees and is stealing their copyrighted content. Read more of this post

TV Makers Track What Viewers Watch Seeking Access to Ads

TV Makers Track What Viewers Watch Seeking Access to Ads

Televisions reaching consumers this year will be able to tell what audiences are watching and relay the information to marketers over the Web, opening the door to new ad revenue as well as privacy concerns. Coming Web-connected units from LG Electronics Inc. (066570) and other manufacturers contain digital sleuthing technology that tracks live and recorded programs as they’re shown on-screen. Sets being demonstrated by Seoul-based LG in Berlin this week at IFA, Europe’s largest consumer electronics show, will use software from San Francisco-based Cognitive Networks Inc. Read more of this post

Orlando tourism industry plugs into electric car experience

Orlando tourism industry plugs into electric car experience

7:48pm EDT

By Barbara Liston

ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) – Promoters of electric cars are hoping to entice a few of Orlando’s 56 million annual visitors to rent one at the airport and plug in at strategically placed charging stations at tourist hotels, theme parks and the convention center. The goal of Drive Electric Orlando, which officially kicked off on Thursday with 15 Nissan Leaf cars, is to encourage broader adoption of electric vehicles by providing visitors with what amounts to an extended test drive during their stay. Read more of this post

Living up to the hype surrounding three-dimensional printing may prove to be a tall order for 3D Systems

September 5, 2013, 4:30 p.m. ET

Reading the Fine Print on 3D Systems

Living Up to the Hype Surround Three-Dimensional Printing May Prove a Tall Order for the Company

ROLFE WINKLER

Three-dimensional printing could be as big as the steam engine, the computer or the Internet. So says Abraham Reichental, chief executive of three-dimensional printer maker 3D Systems DDD -0.37% . If that is so, it seems odd that he recently sold a fifth of his own shares in the company. 3D Systems’ stock remains near an all-time high a week after CitigroupC +0.52% issued a “buy” rating. The stock is up more than tenfold in the past three years and trades at more than 90 times expected 2013 earnings. The company says Mr. Reichental sold shares to diversify his holdings and to settle tax expenses. Read more of this post

Google is waging war on apps that attack, infiltrate and steal from your phone

Google is waging war on apps that attack, infiltrate and steal from your phone

By Leo Mirani @lmirani September 5, 2013

Android’s open platform means its must police its app store very carefully. (Note: Android data for March and April were unavailable.)

Late last month, Google made sweeping changes to its policies for developers on Play, the official store for apps that run on Android, Google’s smartphone operating system. The changes, which among other things affect how ads are displayed and permissions sought, are meant to make Android safer so users can download and use apps with confidence. Developers have until later this month to make the changes. Those that run afoul of the new rules after the deadline will find their apps deleted. Read more of this post

Asha to Ashes: Microsoft’s emerging market conundrum

Asha to Ashes: Microsoft’s emerging market conundrum

9:22pm EDT

By Jeremy Wagstaff and Devidutta Tripathy

SINGAPORE/NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Microsoft Corp’s acquisition of Nokia’s handset business gives the software behemoth control of its main Windows smartphone partner, but leaves a question mark over the bigger business it has bought: Nokia’s cheap and basic phones that still dominate emerging markets like India. Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer has said he sees such phones – of which Nokia shipped more than 50 million last quarter – as an entree to more expensive fare. Read more of this post

Univision’s English-Language News Network, Fusion, Targets Millennials; Since Univision first went on-air in 1962, many Hispanic viewers have treated it like a shadow government, to the point of calling up the station when their homes are on fire

Univision’s English-Language News Network, Fusion, Targets Millennials

By Graeme Wood September 05, 2013

Isaac Lee, the Colombia-born 42-year-old in charge of news at the Spanish-language network Univision, is a traitor: first to his native tongue, and second to his generation. As the architect of the forthcoming all-news channel Fusion, Lee is plotting the first English-language broadcast for a network whose main draw for the last half-century has been that it’s en Español. In that niche, which has long since grown into a mass market, Univision has dominated its rivals, styling itself, with just a hint of hubris, as “the Hispanic heartbeat of America.” When Fusion goes live on Oct. 28, Univision’s programming will suddenly be bilingual, with 24 hours of English to match its 24 hours of Spanish. Read more of this post

Xiaomi Beats Apple to Smart TV With $490 Set Coming Next Month

Xiaomi Beats Apple to Smart TV With $490 Set Coming Next Month

Xiaomi Corp., the smartphone maker that outsells Apple Inc. (AAPL) in China, has beat it on another front. The Chinese company will soon offer a TV that connects to the Web and runs on the Android operating system. The 47-inch (119-centimeter) TV costs 2,999 yuan ($490) and will be available next month, Lei Jun, founder and chief executive officer of the three-year-old company, said at a press conference in Beijing today. Lei also introduced a new handset he said would be the world’s fastest smartphone. Read more of this post

James Dyson says engineering can boom if government backs sector; Dyson said that 50% of his company’s £1.2bn sales in 2012 came from recently invented technologies

James Dyson says engineering can boom if government backs sector

Engineering industry creates far more jobs than ‘silicon’ sector, claims British entrepreneur as Dyson unveils 19% profit rise

Terry Macalister

The Guardian, Thursday 5 September 2013

Dyson says UK industry cannot get enough engineers, with 88% of postgrad students being from outside the EU and taking their skills abroad. Photograph: Dyson/Rex

The government should stop talking up the opportunities for the UK digital sector and the “silicon roundabout”, and concentrate more on the employment opportunities in engineering, according to the entrepreneur Sir James Dyson. The industrial designer made the comments as the company he founded under his own name announced a 19% increase in annual profits to £364m and announced plans to recruit 650 new engineers, 250 of whom would be found in Britain. Determined to push for even more innovation, Dyson said he was increasing the company’s spending on research and development (R&D) by 25% this year. The company already spends £1.5m a week. Read more of this post

Samsung Unveils Galaxy Gear Smartwatch; Electronics Giant Opens New Front in Tech Battle Over ‘Wearable’ Devices

Updated September 4, 2013, 7:18 p.m. ET

Samsung Unveils Galaxy Gear Smartwatch

Electronics Giant Opens New Front in Tech Battle Over ‘Wearable’ Devices

JONATHAN CHENG And MIN-JEONG LEE

Samsung have launched their much anticipated Galaxy Gear smartwatch. Ben Rooney assesses whether the device will simply become a fashion accessory or an essential piece of technology as ubiquitous as the smartphone. Samsung Electronics Co. 005930.SE +1.87% planted its flag in the battle over wearable devices Wednesday, unveiling a digital watch that can run apps and interact with its own family of smartphones. Samsung, which raced ahead of AppleInc. AAPL +2.07% last year to become the world’s biggest maker of smartphones, is attempting to shake off long-running criticism that it has been a follower rather than an innovator in the competitive market for high-end devices. Read more of this post

Twitter CEO accused of ‘playing God’ in stoush with Australian start-up ManageFlitter

Twitter CEO accused of ‘playing God’ in stoush with Australian start-up ManageFlitter

September 5, 2013 – 1:18PM

Ben Grubb

The chief executive of Twitter has been involved in an online stoush with an Australian start-up founder after disabling a feature the start-up relied upon in a product it markets mostly to big-name brands. ManageFlitter, founded by 39-year-old Sydney-based African entrepreneur Kevin Garber, allows Twitter users to manage whom they follow in a way that many have found much easier to use than Twitter. It has amassed nearly 2 million users who either access the website’s services for free, with limited functionality, or upgrade to the professional or business versions for a fee.

The ManageFlitter interface. Photo: ManageFlitter Read more of this post

Thorny Side Effects in Silicon Valley Tactic to Keep Control

SEPTEMBER 3, 2013, 5:16 PM

Thorny Side Effects in Silicon Valley Tactic to Keep Control

By STEVEN M. DAVIDOFF

The gods of Silicon Valley have repeatedly sought to take the companies they founded public while retaining control as if they were still private. Recent events at Google and other technology companies show that perhaps this control may be bad not only for the companies but also for the founders, who are increasingly living in a world bereft of checks and balances. Silicon Valley has for the most part held public shareholders in mixed regard. Preferring to keep them on the sidelines is not a new development. Read more of this post

Tesla has stolen a march on rival electric car makers but can it make the vehicle affordable?

September 4, 2013 6:31 pm

Automobiles: Electric shock

By Henry Foy and Richard Waters

Tesla has stolen a march on rival electric car makers but can it make the vehicle affordable? Move over Porsche, Audi and Jaguar. In the world’s most cutting-edge car market, Tesla Motors has the fastest-growing luxury sedan. And it has no exhaust pipe. Barely a year after its launch, the company’s electric Model S is California’s third most popular luxury car. It is a must-have for Hollywood superstars and technology titans, a serious challenger to established premium marques and an answer to the biggest question in the automotive industry: can green cars sell?

Read more of this post