THE BUSINESS OF TECHNOLOGY
Baidu, the Chinese web titan behind the country’s search engine that works similarly to Google, will enter the television with its own smart TV as the company forays into the expanding online video industry. Dubbed TV+, the company’s first smart TV will be produced by TCL Multimedia Technology Holdings Ltd, with a 48-inch screen costing 4,567 yuan … [Read more...]
To flesh out plans for their floating city, The Seasteading Institute takes fundraising to Indiegogo. With capital from the masses matched by the Thiel Foundation, twenty-first century pioneers may settle the oceanic frontier by 2020. “Our biggest challenge is getting over this first hurdle, where we get enough people together, enough money … [Read more...]
Gamer and developer Tasneem Salim wanted in on her country’s gamer conventions. The only problem? No girls allowed. So Salim and her two co-founders, Felwa Al Suwalim and Najla Al Arifi, created their own, girls-only version: GCON. The event, sponsored by tech titans Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft, brought 3 thousand women together in Riyadh, Saudi … [Read more...]
Baidu has just announced the biggest deal in its history. China’s premier search engine plans to pay $1.9 billion for 91 Wireless, a major developer of app stores in China that has downloaded more than 10 billion apps to date. It’s a sign of the search giant’s push towards mobility as it struggles to transcend the shift from desktops to mobile … [Read more...]
Come August, our planes, trains and automobiles may receive a public shaming. Tesla co-founder and CEO Elon Musk announced yesterday he’ll debut his plans for a “Hyperloop” transportation system August 12; and from his description, it’ll make most current transit tech look like the Flintstones. Though some imagine Musk’s proposal as a higher-speed … [Read more...]
With their new smart-enabled scooters and sleek vehicle designs, Japanese company Terra Motors delivers Jetson’s-level transit tech that’s as elegant as it is efficient. And as high fuel costs and environmental concerns plague Asia’s drivers, Terra’s making clean energy the smart choice––and the cool one. “We need...beautiful design to change … [Read more...]
Amid reports of 10 percent employee layoffs and financial losses, Australian online retailer THE ICONIC has received $26 million in funding. The fashion site, a venture by German-born incubator Rocket Internet, lined its pockets with capital from Verlinvest and previous-round investors Summit Partners and Kinnevik earlier this week. With $46 … [Read more...]
Coursera, the online education startup, has raised a $43 million round to further propel its burgeoning growth as it takes its platform international and multi-lingual. The Series B round was led by GSV Capital Corp. (GSVC), Learn Capital, Laureate Education Inc. and International Finance Corp., the investment arm of the World Bank, with … [Read more...]
Big data is the next revolution in business, and Scality strives to turn the industry on its head through a low pricing model that uses multiple distribution points for an easily scalable system that never needs to go offline to evolve. The company offers reliable and backed up storage for roughly 2 cents GB/per month, less than half the cost of … [Read more...]
Smartphone growth may have reached its saturation point in already developed markets, but mobile advertising revenue is just beginning to hit some impressive speeds. Global mobile advertising spend earned $8.9 billion in 2012, an 83 percent spike over the previous year’s $5.3 billion, according to a new study from the Interactive Advertising Bureau … [Read more...]