Bamboo Innovator

Web Giants Threaten End to Cookie Tracking; Balance of Power in Ad Industry at Stake as Google, Microsoft Seek to Control Web Tracking

Web Giants Threaten End to Cookie Tracking

Balance of Power in Ad Industry at Stake as Google, Microsoft Seek to Control Web Tracking

ELIZABETH DWOSKIN

Updated Oct. 28, 2013 6:50 p.m. ET

The end could be near for cookies, the tiny pieces of code that marketers deploy on Web browsers to track people’s online movements, serve targeted advertising and amass valuable user profiles. In the past month, Microsoft Corp. MSFT -0.45% , Google Inc. GOOG -0.02% andFacebook Inc. FB -3.31% have said they are developing systems to plug into and control this river of data in ways that bypass the more than a thousand software companies that place cookies on websites. Read more of this post

SAP’s Plattner aims to remove the bugs from the human machine

Last updated: October 28, 2013 4:30 pm

SAP’s Plattner aims to remove the bugs from the human machine

By Chris Bryant in Potsdam

More than 40 years after he transformed the business software market by co-foundingSAP, Hasso Plattner has set his sights on an even more daunting challenge: prolonging human life. At an age when many of his peers are playing leisurely rounds of golf, SAP’s chairman, who turns 70 next year, is pressing the company to broaden its focus beyond helping businesses to run more efficiently, by helping human beings to run more efficiently as well. Read more of this post

Netflix Wants You To Be Able To Watch Movies At Home The Day They Hit Theaters

Netflix Wants You To Be Able To Watch Movies At Home The Day They Hit Theaters

ALYSON SHONTELL 16 MINUTES AGO 257 1

Netflix has found a lot of success creating its own TV shows like “Orange is the New Black.” It’d like to be able to disrupt blockbuster movies as well. But Netflix doesn’t want to just create movies. It wants to convenience people and help them watch hit films from anywhere, immediately. At least, that’s what its Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos communicated over the weekend. Read more of this post

Is Wikipedia getting worse? Behind the scenes of its many successes, Wikipedia has been roiled with controversy

Is Wikipedia getting worse?

October 28, 2013

Will Oremus

Wikipedia: Is paid editing making the site even less trustworthy?

Wikipedia is a glorious resource and one of the most dazzling accomplishments of the internet age. The online encyclopaedia, built and maintained primarily by volunteers, is the world’s largest repository of free information, and much of that information is quite good. A surprising 2005 Nature study found the quality of science articles on the site rivalled that of Encyclopaedia Britannica. The site today carries enough authority that Google uses it to directly answer search questions. Read more of this post

Fund Seeks Overlooked Tech Gems; Health-Care Tech Gives Manager Relief From High Internet Valuations

Fund Seeks Overlooked Tech Gems

Health-Care Tech Gives Manager Relief From High Internet Valuations

MATT JARZEMSKY

Oct. 28, 2013 6:48 p.m. ET

T. Rowe Price TROW +2.68% fund manager Henry Ellenbogen has made a career of discovering and investing in startup technology companies including Twitter Inc., and his $14.3 billion New Horizons fund has ridden Internet stocks to market-beating returns this year. But lately Mr. Ellenbogen is focusing on other areas—such as firms aiming to improve electronic records, care pricing and other aspects of the health-care industry, as well as innovators in financial payments—that he believes many market participants have overlooked. Read more of this post

Electricity Use Impedes Aereo’s March; Streaming-Video Service Has Other Challenges Besides Broadcasters’ Lawsuits

Electricity Use Impedes Aereo’s March

Streaming-Video Service Has Other Challenges Besides Broadcasters’ Lawsuits

SHALINI RAMACHANDRAN and AMOL SHARMA

Updated Oct. 28, 2013 7:50 p.m. ET

Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia holds one of his company’s miniature antennas as he stands next to a power-hungry server array of antennae. Associated Press

Aereo Inc.’s upstart TV streaming service has provoked a legal onslaught from broadcast networks. But even if it wins that fight, it still has to overcome more-pedestrian issues, like making sure it can pay for the electricity it needs. The service depends on tiny antennas assigned to each of its individual users, who rent them to stream broadcast TV channels over the Web. Each of those antennas, which Aereo warehouses in centralized facilities, uses five to six watts of power. On their own, that isn’t a whole lot—a typical set-top box rented by cable operators to customers can use four times as much, or more. But the power for a cable box is paid by consumers, whereas Aereo is footing the bill for every subscriber.

Read more of this post

Are gun sales on Instagram booming?

Are gun sales on Instagram booming?

October 28, 2013

Will Oremus

People are using Instagram to advertise guns for sale. Photo: Screenshot from Instagram

The Daily Beast’s Brian Ries this week wrote an interesting piece about gun sales on Instagram. By searching for various gun-related hashtags, he found examples ranging from an antique Colt to a “custom MK12-inspired AR-15”. It turns out that advertising guns for sale on the photo-sharing site is mostly legal (in the US at least), and Instagram has no special policy against it. Read more of this post

Apple looks to put down roots for the next decade

October 29, 2013 8:39 am

Apple looks to put down roots for the next decade

By Tim Bradshaw in San Francisco

Exactly a year ago Tim Cook stamped his mark on the company he inherited from Steve Jobs – after less than 18 months as its full-time chief executive, he instituted thebiggest reorganisation to Apple’s executive ranks in years. Out went Scott Forstall, a loyal Jobs ally who had headed iOS, and John Browett, retail chief. Up stepped Sir Jonathan Ive to oversee design in both software and hardware; Craig Federighi to become head of iPhone, iPad and Mac software; and Eddy Cue, who added the troubled Maps and Siri voice assistant to his responsibilities as services chief. Read more of this post

All companies are technology companies now; Technology is revolutionising the way even the smallest and most traditional businesses manage their operations

All companies are technology companies now

October 29, 2013 – 10:18AM

Sylvia Pennington

Michelle Jones from Blerick Tree Farm visiting her crop in China.

From humble home services to rural concerns, digital technology is revolutionising the way even the smallest and most traditional businesses manage their operations. Although only a fraction of companies around the world would consider themselves to be in the technology business, increasingly the great majority of them rely on technology to stay in business.  But John Roberts, Gartner vice-president and chairman of this year’s Gartner Symposium, held on the Gold Coast this week, says businesses are still working out how to extract maximum value from technologies, including social media, mobile communications, big data and cloud. Read more of this post

China’s Suning, Hony Capital to invest $420 mln in PPTV

China’s Suning, Hony Capital to invest $420 mln in PPTV

5:59am EDT

* Suning stake will be 44 percent of PPTV

* Deal values PPTV at $568 million

* Suning calls deal “strategic investment”

* Suning shares up 58 pct year-to-date

By Paul Carsten and Donny Kwok

BEIJING/HONG KONG, Oct 28 (Reuters) – China’s Suning Commerce Group and Hony Capital, an affiliate of Lenovo Group, will invest $420 million in PPTV, a Chinese online TV services provider, Suning said in a statement on Monday. Suning will invest $250 million to buy a 44 percent stake in PPTV and become its largest shareholder. It is believed Hony Capital will make up the remaining $170 million although the statement did not specify that. The deal values PPTV at $568 million. Read more of this post

Girls, Girls, Girls: Alibaba’s Play for Mobile ‘Losers’

October 25, 2013, 8:14 PM

Girls, Girls, Girls: Alibaba’s Play for Mobile ‘Losers’

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and Alibaba is calling on desperate men to build a user base for its fledgling messaging application, Laiwang. In a new promotional campaign that began yesterday, Laiwang is sharing with users the profiles of more than 30,000 models with users on its messaging platform. The women are a part of Alibaba’s Tao Girl platform, which was created in 2007 as a resource for merchants who want to use professional models to show off their products on Alibaba’s massive e-commerce site. Read more of this post