The good news – and the bad news – from the mobile internet
Speaking at the D: All Things Digital conference in California on Wednesday, former Morgan Stanley internet analyst Mary Meeker summed it up succinctly: it is hard to overstate the scale of the shift to mobile access, but ways of making money lag woefully behind.
Ms Meeker, now a partner at Kleiner Perkins, laid out her analysis in the annual slideshow in which she sums up the big forces at work in the internet industry. Slides after the jump.
Google’s all-new Chromebook: now with extra PC
Google’s first Chromebook sought to do a couple of things really well – and largely succeeded.
But because laptops need to do more than a couple of things, the Chromebook didn’t sell. Ultimately, it represented too much of a break with the PC. That makes the compromises built into the new Chromebook, which goes on sale in the US on Tuesday and the UK on Wednesday, an important step towards making it a more practical machine.
Dell launches 27in iMac rival
For those preferring Windows and a lower-priced all-in-one PC to Apple’s 27in iMac, Dell is offering its first 27in XPS all-in-one from today.
The XPS One 27 is priced from $1,400 – $300 cheaper than the comparable iMac – and I was impressed by the brightness and resolution of the screen in a demonstration – it offers the same 2560×1440 “Quad HD”, meaning four times the resolution of 720p HDTV.
Now we know what people mean when they say merger integration is torture. Former staff at Autonomy, the UK software company bought by Hewlett-Packard less than a year ago, say submitting to the US company’s “stifling” bureaucratic procedures felt “like being water-boarded”.
In turn, Meg Whitman, HP’s chief executive, has blamed “classic entrepreneurial company scaling challenges” for Autonomy’s “very disappointing” latest quarter. She has ditched Mike Lynch, the British group’s outspoken founder, often lauded in the UK as a hero of the homegrown technology sector.
Was Facebook’s IPO a flop? Following the social networking company’s rollercoaster week of trading, that was the question at the heart of much of the debate with tech commentators.
Health and sports performance monitoring are benefiting from new forms of connectivity, as apps and devices record our activities and vital signs, and link them to a variety of analytical services. This week a heart monitor, weighing scales and a bicycle camera are the focus of a fitness gadget workout.
When Ayush Agarwal decided to look for love, he thought carefully about his likes and dislikes. The 28-year-old product manager at Google, who lives in San Francisco, loves Apple products. So he signed up to Cupidtino, a dating website for Apple fanboys and fangirls.
“The idea of pivoting my dating life around Mac ladies was intriguing,” he says. “It’s definitely a solid conversation starter. Also, having a Mac girlfriend would mean that I wouldn’t end up becoming [her] tech support”.
Dealership software motors onto market
After the excitement of Facebook’s $104bn IPO and the subsequent fall in its shares, something more modest is coming onto London’s alternative investment market.
Incadea, an Austrian company that provides software for BMW and other car dealerships, will raise around £17m on Friday, in a stock market float expected to value the company at £47m.
It’s a lot smaller than Facebook, but it is a rare technology listing in London, where the tech IPO market has been considered closed for a long time.
©Pascal PerichWhen Josh Silverman received a call last year asking if he would like to work for American Express, he was surprised.
The 43-year-old technology entrepreneur’s life had always revolved around Silicon Valley start-ups. He had been chief executive of Skype and before that held a senior role at eBay. In the late 1990s he had cofounded Evite, the internet invitations company, and sold it in 2001. The thought of working for a 162-year-old blue-chip corporation was alien.
ooVoo launches new Facebook and iPad apps
Since its launch in 2007 ooVoo has helped refine the consumer video chat market with its free high definition app. In the process it has become a 
favourite with the teenagers and young adults under 25 who make up more than two thirds of its 46m users.
Now the New York-based company’s management team, led by executive chairman Robert Jackman, is trying to consolidate its grip on the youth market with a upgrade to its social video chat service designed to make it easier to use and available on more devices.
| About this blog | Blog guide |
Older entries
