53330607
submission
cagraham writes:
In a pretty major executive shakeup, BlackBerry's Chief Financial Officer, Chief Marketing Officer, and Chief Operating Officer have all left the company. It's unclear whether the changes were brought about by new interim-CEO John Chen in order to facilitate company change, or represent an abandon-ship style exit after BlackBerry's failed bid to go private. The company announced that the CFO position would be filled by current SVP James Yersch, but gave no word on the other vacancies.
53175181
submission
cagraham writes:
Shake, a new mobile startup, just closed a $3M funding round, according to VentureBeat. The company's goal is to democratize legal documents, by letting users create and sign contracts entirely from their smartphones. The app is currently targeted at freelancers and small businesses, although their CEO says they have enterprise plans in the works. Whether or not they can easily expand into other states outside New York, and whether businesses trust their legal bonafides, will likely determine the company's success. Before founding Shakes, CEO Abe Gieger worked at venture capital firm Canaan Partners.
53140547
submission
cagraham writes:
Macy's is preparing to test a new in-store rewards program using Apple's iBeacon standard, reports the WSJ's Digits blog. The program, run through rewards company Shopkick, will detect nearby customers and send them targeted discount offers based on which department they're in. iBeacon currently works with Apple devices and Samsung's Android phones. If the initial tests in New York and San Francisco prove successful, the program will be rolled out nationwide.
52921133
submission
cagraham writes:
According to Yahoo's recent 10-Q regulatory filings with the SEC, the company lost both of their court appeals seeking to delay their transition to Bing-powered search technology. The dispute arose when Yahoo decided to slow their transition to Bing in the Hong Kong and Taiwan markets, saying they wanted to see who the next Microsoft CEO would be before continuing. This led to arbitration, followed by a Yahoo appeal to the District Court for the Southern District of New York, and finally an appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Yahoo says they are now "working with Microsoft" on a transition scale.
52856825
submission
cagraham writes:
Tech analyst Benedict Evans reports that Instagram users share approximately 45 million photos a day, compared to 450 million on Snapchat, and 400 million on Whatsapp. While Facebook was likely hoping to dominate mobile photo-sharing through its acquisition of Instagram, it seems that users increasingly correspond through multiple, similar apps depending on the context and group they're in. It's not uncommon for users to share photos via Snapchat, Instagram, and Whatsapp during the same day, for instance. This presents an odd dilemma for Facebook, which wants to serve as the single contact list for social apps, along with companies trying to advertise across these platforms.
52855811
submission
BigVig209 writes:
"Intel Has Acquired Kno, Will Push Further Into The Education Content Market With Interactive Textbooks"
TechCrunch is reporting that Intel has purchased e-textbook publisher Kno for an undisclosed sum. (http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/08/intel-has-acquired-kno-to-push-further-into-the-education-market/)
According to a blog post by John Galvin, GM of Intel Education, "The acquisition of Kno boosts Intel’s global digital content library to more than 225,000 higher education and K-12 titles through existing partnerships with 75 educational publishers. Even more, the Kno platform provides administrators and teachers with the tools they need to easily assign, manage and monitor their digital learning content and assessments.
We’re looking forward to combining our expertise with Kno’s rich content so that together, we can help teachers create classroom environments and personalized learning experiences that lead to student success. Check out the Intel Education newsroom for ongoing updates from Intel." (http://blogs.intel.com/csr/2013/11/intel-education-welcomes-kno-to-the-family/)
52854623
submission
SlongNY writes:
“Journalists using mobile phones to film athletes or spectators will be considered a serious violation and will result in cancellation of accreditation,” said Vasily Konov, head of the state-run R-Sport news agency, which controls accreditation at the games.
This should end well.
52768517
submission
cagraham writes:
International engineering and construction firm Balfour Beatty is considering using drones in order to construct walls and monitor work sites, among other things. Beatty CIO Danny Reeves, speaking at the Fujitsu Forum, said drones could improve efficiency and safety on sites. He also talked of implementing sensors that would monitor worker's stress levels and bodily functions, and notify management when they became less effective, or mistake-prone, on the job.
52668429
submission
cagraham writes:
Don't call it a comeback, but AOL beat analyst expectations for revenue today during its Q3 earnings report, and saw increased growth for search and video ad sales. The company seems to be finding a new role for itself as a brand company, as their content-portal days come to a close. While they still boast a quarter million paid subscribers, they're increasingly removing their main brand from the public eye, and positioning themselves as a distribution company rather than a web services company.
52546257
submission
cagraham writes:
The Wall Street Journal reported this morning that Amazon will begin charging customers in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin sales tax today, after fighting against it for years. Amazon now charges sales tax in 16 states, affecting roughly 163 million Americans. Yet despite Amazon's continued fight against sales tax on the state-level, they support a Senate bill that would allow all states to tax online retailers. It seems like a contradiction, but it's actually a calculated move to undercut rivals like eBay (who would have a far harder time dealing with sales tax laws), and even an unequal playing field (many states that tax Amazon don't tax other online retailers).
52488497
submission
cagraham writes:
Research firm Forrester released a new survey of executives and marketers at large firms, which ranked Facebook's business value lower than any other social media, or traditional marketing strategy (such as email marketing). The report concluded that Facebook needs to offer more options on their marketing platform, or risk companies pulling their spending. Yet Facebook (counting page likes, fans, etc.) is now the number one factor in determining Google search rankings, meaning that even if businesses aren't seeing any return on their investment business-wise, they're still stuck doing it to maintain their relevance in search results.
52483715
submission
cagraham writes:
Facebook is currently testing software that would track user's cursor movements, as well as monitor how often a user's newsfeed was visible on their mobile phone, according to the Wall Street Journal. The additional data from such tracking would potentially let Facebook raise their ad prices, as they could deliver even more information about user's on-site behavior to advertisers, such as how long users hovered over specific ads. In order to analyze the extra data, Facebook will utilize a custom version of Hadoop.
52287241
submission
cagraham writes:
Google promised in 2005 to never "ever" put banner ads on their search results, but that appears to be changing. The company confirmed to SearchEngineLand that it is running a "small experiment" involving large-scale banners on searches for Southwest Airlines, Virgin Atlantic, and Crate&Barrel, among others. The ads are being shown in less than 5% of searches, and only in the US, for now. Interestingly enough, the Google exec who wrote the no banner ads promise was Marissa Mayer, now CEO of Yahoo.
52286109
submission
sl4shd0rk writes:
In what could be an act of desparation of a company in it's death throes, Blackberry has submitted their BBM messaging application to Google Play for download. While this may seem like a logical path for a company on life-support, what wasn't expected is the sheer number of identical 5-star reviews the application has received since being posted. In what appears to be review "ballot stuffing", it poses the questions of just how Google is going to handle the subject of manufactured reviews as well as how many other entities have engaged in the same behavior. The same problems have plagued Amazon's review system as well bringing into question the validity of "crowd based review" and whether it's possible to legitimize this type of system.
52249237
submission
cagraham writes:
eBay has offered same-day delivery for a few years now, but only in select parts of New York and San Francisco. That appears to be about to change, however, with eBay's purchase of startup company Shutl. Shutl is a same-day ecommerce delivery service that has traditionally paired with local retailers. According to VentureBeat, the company makes most of its deliveries in less than an hour, and its record (posted on its website) is just under 14 minutes after order-placement. The move is a challenge to Amazon.com, which has its own sights set on same-day delivery.
