Skype turns 10 today. Here’s a look at the past decade of using the internet to make phone calls

Skype turns 10 today. Here’s a look at the past decade of using the internet to make phone calls

By Ritchie King @RitchieSKing August 29, 2013

Today is the 10-year anniversary of the launch of Skype, the voice and video calling service that is now owned by Microsoft and used for about a third of all international calls. For much of that decade, Skype has been synonymous with making calls over the internet: The verb “to skype” even has a spot in the Oxford Dictionaries Online. Internet telephony has changed a lot since the days of external microphones and webcams. Like everything else, it’s become increasingly mobile, and new players have emerged. Here’s a look back at the past decade. (Skype’s ownership could constitute a separate timeline. Purchased by Microsoft in 2011 for $8.5 billion, it began as an independent startup and was once owned by eBay.)

Post-Ballmer, Microsoft Must Focus on Products to Avoid Extinction

Post-Ballmer, Microsoft Must Focus on Products to Avoid Extinction

By Peter Burrows, Ashlee Vance, and Dina Bass August 29, 2013

Whip out the elegant, light, superthin Asus (2357:TT) Zenbook on an airplane, and you’re sure to attract stares. The PC stands out even more with Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows 8 software, its touchscreen full of colorful tiles promising a glimpse of the future. But that view starts to get foggy when Windows 8 tries to work with Microsoft Office 2013, lagging or freezing up as it attempts a task as ambitious as saving a document. This divide—between how good Microsoft’s products look and how badly they still behave—partly led to Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer’s Aug. 23 announcement that he’ll leave within a year. Read more of this post

Microsoft Is Said to Be in Talks to Invest in Foursquare

Microsoft Is Said to Be in Talks to Invest in Foursquare

Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) is in discussions with Foursquare Labs Inc. about a potential investment in the social-media company, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. The talks are at an advanced stage, said two of the people, who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public. Foursquare is also meeting with other companies about an investment, and the talks with Microsoft may not lead to a deal, said another person with knowledge of the matter. Read more of this post

Marketplaces – companies like auction service eBay, accommodation service Airbnb, and personal-loan service LendingClub – have the potential to create more billion-dollar businesses in the next five years than in the last 20

Greylock makes $100 million venture bet on marketplaces

1:02pm EDT

By Sarah McBride

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – In a big bet on marketplaces, venture capital firm Greylock Partners is promoting former eBay Motors founder Simon Rothman to partner, and dedicating $100 million to the sector. Marketplaces – companies like auction service eBay, accommodation service Airbnb, and personal-loan service LendingClub – have the potential to create more billion-dollar businesses in the next five years than in the last 20, Rothman said in an interview with Reuters. Read more of this post

Japan’s first new rocket in 12 years failed to lift off; U.S. companies had a monopoly on the commercial launch business 30 years ago, but its hold has steadily declined, with most of the business going to the France-based Arianespace

Japan’s newest rocket fails to lift off

Tue, Aug 27 2013

By Elaine Lies

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan’s first new rocket in 12 years failed to lift off on Tuesday, dealing a potential blow to hopes that Japan may be able to take a larger share of the growing, multi-billion dollar satellite launch industry. It was the second setback for the Epsilon rocket this month. An earlier launch was postponed because of a computer glitch. No word was immediately available on the cause of the problem on Tuesday or when the launch might be tried again. Read more of this post

How Mobile Native Ads Are Turning The Digital Ad Industry On Its Head

How Mobile Native Ads Are Turning The Digital Ad Industry On Its Head

BUSINESS INSIDER AUG. 29, 2013, 10:58 AM 1,151 1

The advertising industry can’t quite seem to figure out how to advertise effectively to audiences on smartphones and tablets. Many mobile ads are simply banner or search ads bought inadvertently as advertisers aim for broad digital audiences. Native ads are being touted as the new formats that will bring real depth and differentiation to the mobile ad market.  But what exactly is a native ad on mobile? Is it just an ad unit that was designed to show on a mobile device? In a new report from BI Intelligence on native ads and native ads on mobile, we interview a half-dozen industry experts, we explain away the confusion surrounding native mobile ads, we categorize the various types of native ads that have gained traction on mobile, and we examine the growing role played by publishers and agencies in nurturing the native-mobile ecosystem and upending the traditional banner ad and the ad networks that deal in them.

Read more of this post

Facebook considers adding profile photos to facial recognition

Facebook considers adding profile photos to facial recognition

12:17pm EDT

By Alexei Oreskovic

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Facebook Inc is considering incorporating most of its 1 billion-plus members’ profile photos into its growing facial recognition database, expanding the scope of the social network’s controversial technology. The possible move, which Facebook revealed in an update to its data use policy on Thursday, is intended to improve the performance of its “Tag Suggest” feature. The feature uses facial recognition technology to speed up the process of labeling or “tagging” friends and acquaintances who appear in photos posted on the network. Read more of this post

Even Cord Cutters Will Have to Pay the Cable Bill; Viable online TV products may thwart Internet service providers’ new push toward usage-based prici

Even Cord Cutters Will Have to Pay the Cable Bill

By Joshua Brustein August 22, 2013

Internet television finally seems nigh. ESPN (DIS) on Wednesday said it has held introductory discussions to offer its channels through Web-based TV services. That comes on the heels of news that Sony (SNE) had reached a preliminary Internet distribution deal with Viacom (VIAB) and that Google (GOOG) was talking to the NFL about buying the rights to its Sunday Ticket package. And, of course, the reports of Apple TV (AAPL) persist. Read more of this post

Israel’s hard news and soft power; After helping set up France 24, Frank Melloul has launched a news channel in Israel

August 29, 2013 7:34 pm

Israel’s hard news and soft power

By John Reed

©Quique Kierszenbaum

Communicator: Frank Melloul says i24’s structure helps strengthen its independence

At i24’s glassy new studios above Israel’s trendy Jaffa port waterfront complex, Frank Melloul’s staff, whom he describes as a “Tower of Babel”, are working in full swing. As midday approaches, editors are chattering in English, French and Hebrew as they draft scripts, edit programmes or prepare for studio interviews. A neatly coiffed female presenter is reading the news in French at a desk behind a glass wall. The 24-hour news channel, Israel’s first, began broadcasting on July 17 with a mission to present international news – which makes up about three-quarters of its output – from an Israeli perspective. Read more of this post

This chart shows the future of venture capital

This chart shows the future of venture capital

BY ERIN GRIFFITH 
ON AUGUST 28, 2013

The dramatic drop in the cost of creating a company over the last decade ($2 million in the late ’90s to maybe $5,000 today) has had an obvious effect on the venture capital world. Serious venture investment is not required in the earliest stages of a company’s life, so angel investors have been getting the best seed deals. That spawned “super angels” and their subsequent micro-VC funds, which in turn evolved into crowdfunding platforms like AngelList. Read more of this post

Sony’s Newest Hit? Find It in Apple and Samsung Phones; Sony’s latest star performer is a CMOS chip found in almost every high-end camera and smartphone

Sony’s Newest Hit? Find It in Apple and Samsung Phones

Sony Corp. (6758) has a hit product on its hands. Apple Inc. (AAPL), Samsung Electronics Co. (005930) and LG Electronics Inc. (066570) will be happy to sell it to you. Sony’s latest star performer isn’t a gadget like the Walkman or PlayStation. Instead, it’s a chip found in almost every high-end camera and smartphone. Apple’s iPhones 5 and 4S use it and so do Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S4 and LG’s G2, researchers say. The company that helped invent the compact disc has captured almost a third of the $7.6 billion market for low-power sensors that record crisp snapshots. Sony boosted its revenue from the chips by about 30 percent last year as Chief Executive Officer Kazuo Hirai tries to revive the electronics unit after its TV business posted nine straight annual losses. Read more of this post

Loneliness of 72m BlackBerry owners; Loss of cool can be devastating for a brand

August 28, 2013 5:15 pm

Loneliness of 72m BlackBerry owners

By Matthew Garrahan

Loss of cool can be devastating for a brand, writes Matthew Garrahan

Imet a friend for a drink in Los Angeles recently and put my phone on the bar while I paid. The barman bent over to look at it, examining it curiously. “Huh,” he said after a while. “I didn’t know people still used those.” “What is it?” A young woman leaned over to see. “This guy still has a BlackBerry,” he said, holding it up. She looked at it too, and then burst out laughing. In the age of the touchscreen phone, BlackBerry owners, as I have discovered, face public opprobrium similar to the hardy souls who drove Skoda cars in the 1980s, or who kept faith with Betamax video recorders long after they were supplanted by the VHS format. Our phone has in a relatively short time become a laughing stock, a byword for naffness – a relic for losers in an age of apps, quick mobile internet access and touchscreen keypads. Read more of this post

Toddler-safe texting has arrived. LeapFrog’s Toddler-Safe Texting Aims to Fend Off Amazon

LeapFrog’s Toddler-Safe Texting Aims to Fend Off Amazon

Toddler-safe texting has arrived.

Spurred by burgeoning demand for kid-styled tablets, LeapFrog Enterprises Inc. (LF) and VTech Holdings Ltd. (303) revamped their tyke-targeted devices to add features that let three-year-olds send short messages to grandma and even watch online videos without stumbling across websites kids shouldn’t see. “Exposing our children to the Internet at an early age is incredibly valuable, but how do you do it safely?” John Barbour, chief executive officer of Emeryville, California-based LeapFrog, said in an interview. Read more of this post

Big Mother is watching you; Technology is letting parents keep a close eye on children

August 28, 2013 5:24 pm

Big Mother is watching you

By Henry Mance

I spy: technologists are helping parents keep track of their children with new devices, such as the Filip smartwatch

When Apple introduced the Find My iPhone app three years ago, its aim was to help people locate their lost smartphones. But EJ Hilbert, a 43-year-old former FBI officer, had a better idea – installing the app on his three children’s devices, so that he could track them wherever they went. “They have it on their phone and that’s the way it’s going to be,” says Mr Hilbert, whose day job is investigating cyber crime. By adapting the Find My iPhone app, Mr Hilbert is part of a wider trend. Until recently technology gave power to the children. Now it is starting to give something back to the parents. Read more of this post

Amazon’s Push to the Cloud Adds to Server-Market Woes

August 28, 2013, 6:42 p.m. ET

Amazon’s Push to the Cloud Adds to Server-Market Woes

GREG BENSINGER and DON CLARK

To understand the challenges facing makers of server systems, look to health-care staffing firm Schumacher Group. The Lafayette, La., company, has been shifting a growing proportion of its computing chores to computers operated by Amazon.com Inc. AMZN +0.23% In the past year, Schumacher purchased just one server from Hewlett-Packard Co., HPQ +2.82%says Douglas Menefee, Schumacher’s chief information officer.  Read more of this post

Autonavi reaches 137 million users of its mobile map app, but investors spooked by shrinking revenues; Operating income was “nil”

Autonavi reaches 137 million users of its mobile map app, but investors spooked by shrinking revenues

August 29, 2013

by Steven Millward

Autonavi (NASDAQ:AMAP), maker of China’s top mobile map app, has revealed its Q2 2013 financial report. The company – which is Apple’s partner in China, and is 28 percent owned by Alibaba – saw good growth in user numbers, but badly missed its guidance figures for revenue and earnings per share. Consequently, investors panicked during Wednesday trading, causing Autonavi shares to plunge 14.4 percent during the day, closing at $12.54 per share. In terms of user numbers, Autonavi grew to 137 million users of its free, market-leading mobile map app, of whom over 62 million are monthly active users. Those figures have doubled in the past year. Its premium mobile navigation app has been downloaded and pre-loaded on more than 70 million smartphones, but claims only three million monthly active users. Autonavi’s net revenues in the second quarter were $38.2 million, down slightly on the same period a year before. Operating income was “nil”. The numbers caused Autonavi to recant its previous guidance figures, leaving investors worried about the company’s long-term potential in the face of growing competition in the online maps sector, especially from search engine giant Baidu, whose Baidu Maps app is now a center-piece of its more aggressive mobile strategy.

Chinese shoppers set to become world leaders online; Total spending by Chinese consumers on online shopping reached $212.4 billion in 2012, compared to $228.7 billion in the U.S

Chinese shoppers set to become world leaders online

12:53pm EDT

By Paul Carsten

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China’s e-commerce market is expected to leapfrog that of the United States this year to become the world’s largest by total customer spending, management consultancy firm Bain & Company says. Online spending could account for half of all Chinese retail spending within a decade, according to Chinese e-commerce firm Alibaba Group. The change in shopping habits comes as almost half of the country’s 1.3 billion population now have direct access to the Internet, and of that number nearly 80 percent own smart phones or tablets. China’s e-commerce market has grown at an average rate of 71 percent from 2009 to 2012, versus 13 percent in America, and its total size is expected to reach 3.3 trillion yuan ($539.07 billion) by 2015, Bain & Company said in a report released on Wednesday. Total spending by Chinese consumers on online shopping reached $212.4 billion in 2012, compared to $228.7 billion in the U.S., the report said. Read more of this post

SK’s Cymera app has topped the 30 million mark in downloads; Cymera is a free application that helps anyone to take a photo like a professional photographer

2013-08-19 16:30

Cymera tops 30 mil. in downloads

By Kim Yoo-chul
Cymera, a free application offered by SK Communications, has topped the 30 million mark in downloads, the company said Monday.
The content affiliate of SK Group said that downloads have been rising fast on the back of growing popularity both in developing and advanced countries.
It took only 16 months to break the milestone. The app was launched in March 2012. It passed the 10 million mark in December and the 20 million mark in May. Read more of this post

Why Etsy’s brave new economy is crumbling

Why Etsy’s brave new economy is crumbling

By Kevin Morris on August 27, 2013Email

One of the biggest consumer markets in the world resides in a river valley about 200 miles southwest of Shanghai. You can find almost anything you want in Commodity City’s half-million stalls: baby bibs, knitting supplies, sundry types of underwear, T-shirts, glitzy jewelry. The market is the literal and figurative heart of Yiwu, a metropolis of 1.3 million people that bustles under the sticky, industrial haze of Zhejiang province. Journalist Tim Phillips has called Yiwu the “Wall Street” of China’s counterfeit goods industry—an accurate, if somewhat narrow, label. The city’s factories flood the shelves of Commodity City and the rest of the world with a lot more than just knock-off iPhones and pirated Hollywood DVDs. They relentlessly pump out the type of cheap consumer goods you’re used to seeing at shopping mall kiosks and street-side trinket stands. Read more of this post

Web Sales Remain Small for Many Retailers

August 27, 2013, 8:31 p.m. ET

Web Sales Remain Small for Many Retailers

SHELLY BANJO and PAUL ZIOBRO

Nearly two decades after the Web revolutionized shopping, many big retailers are still struggling to turn the Internet into a big part of their business. Their progress is on display in new correspondence between the Securities and Exchange Commission and a bevy of chains, including Target Corp., TGT -1.36%Wal-Mart Stores Inc., WMT -0.23% PetSmart Inc. PETM -0.48% and Fifth & PacificCos. FNP -2.57%. In the correspondence, the SEC asks the companies—which frequently tout their online prowess—to provide hard details about the amount of goods they sell online. Read more of this post

Baidu Said in Talks to Develop Smart Televisions

Baidu Said in Talks to Develop Smart Televisions

Baidu Inc. (BIDU), China’s largest search engine, is in talks with a Chinese manufacturer to help develop televisions connected to the Internet, according to two people familiar with the matter. The company is discussing working with Huan Technology Ltd. to develop a set-top box or a chip for use in smart TVs, the people said, asking to not be identified because the discussions are private. Huan Technology is a joint venture between Sichuan Changhong Electric Co. and TCL Multimedia Technology Holdings. (1070) TCL is the third-largest flat-panel TV maker in the world by revenue share, researcher DisplaySearch said in June. Read more of this post

Jenkins: Only Bill Gates Can Change Microsoft

August 27, 2013, 7:03 p.m. ET

Jenkins: Only Bill Gates Can Change Microsoft

The company needs to give up its Windows-era strategic obsessions.

HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR.

Retirement was not the fate many customers likely would have chosen for Microsoft‘sMSFT -2.61% Steve Ballmer. Something unpleasant involving wolverines would have been more like it—especially if you were among the countless corporate foot soldiers recently required to upgrade an underpowered company-issued laptop to Windows 7 because of Microsoft’s withdrawal of support for its long-lived XP. Read more of this post

Microsoft: 11 Fix-It Strategies; Business Leaders, Tech and Management Gurus Discuss a Post-Ballmer Company

August 27, 2013, 7:44 p.m. ET

Microsoft: 11 Fix-It Strategies

Business Leaders, Tech and Management Gurus Discuss a Post-Ballmer Company

In the nearly 14 years that Steve Ballmer has overseen Microsoft Corp.,MSFT -2.61% the company’s annual revenue has more than tripled to nearly $78 billion, and its profit ranks among the largest in any industry. And yet most technologists would agree that Microsoft is in dire need of rebooting. The company is characterized as a lumbering giant that under Mr. Ballmer didn’t introduce enough meaningful products to keep pace with the changing tide in technology. Microsoft has pointed to its successes under Mr. Ballmer in several new areas, including the Xbox videogame system and the company’s push into selling a collection of back-end technologies for corporations. In light of the news that Mr. Ballmer is retiring, The Wall Street Journal asked business leaders, technologists and management gurus what Microsoft needs to do to regain its luster as a technology innovator. Read more of this post

Steve Ballmer’s Biggest Mistakes As CEO Of Microsoft

Steve Ballmer’s Biggest Mistakes As CEO Of Microsoft

JAY YAROW AUG. 27, 2013, 9:07 PM 20,265 6

Steve Ballmer is out as CEO of Microsoft, ending one of the most polarizing runs in technology. While he did much right at Microsoft — tripling revenue and profits, building the Servers & Tools group — Ballmer will also be remembered for presiding over the company’s loss of dominance and for what he did wrong.  And he did make some mistakes over the last thirteen years. Read more of this post

The Microsoft CEO candidate no one is discussing: IBM’s former chief Sam Palmisano

The Microsoft CEO candidate no one is discussing: Sam Palmisano

By Adam Lashinsky, Sr. Editor at Large August 27, 2013: 10:13 AM ET

The former IBM chief has a stellar record. What better credentials could a new Microsoft CEO have than having humiliated and beaten his new charges? FORTUNE — When I reviewed Steve Ballmer’s umpteenth structural reorganization of Microsoft last month — was it only last month? — I noted that the key missing ingredient to making the construct work was leadership. A re-jiggered Apple without Steve Jobs doing the jiggering never would have been successful. It took the man who understood the culture of the organization, was willing to make the painful cuts as well as to promote what was working, and who commanded the respect of the employees, to succeed at Apple. Read more of this post

Twitter Hires Commerce Chief to Add Shopping Via Tweets

Twitter Hires Commerce Chief to Add Shopping Via Tweets

Twitter Inc. hired Nathan Hubbard, the former president of Ticketmaster, as its first head of commerce, part of a push to enable shopping via short postings on its social website. Hubbard, 38, started at San Francisco-based Twitter this week, said Jim Prosser, a spokesman for the online social service. As commerce chief, Hubbard will report to Adam Bain, Twitter’s head of global revenue. Hubbard left Live Nation Entertainment Inc. (LYV)’s Ticketmaster unit earlier this month amid an overhaul of its online services. Read more of this post