Daily Archives: September 8, 2011

Chris Nuttall Mightybell’s step-by-step social play

September 8, 2011 9:22 pm by Chris Nuttall

Mightybell is a new social-networking play from Ning co-founder Gina Bianchini that aims to increase engagement between users one step at a time. It encourages them to create stage-by-stage guides for activities such as planning an Alaskan adventure or packing your bike and allows followers to input their own suggestions. It’s an evolution of Ning and a mashup of existing concepts that probably has a lot of stages to go through itself to win a significant following. Read more

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Posted in Social |
From FT columnists September 7, 2011

The head of a leading sportswear company once told me a contractor had introduced pregnancy testing at its factories.

That sounded good, I said – manufacturers taking care of their female employees. He gave me a pitying look. The factory had introduced the tests so it could fire pregnant workers before they could claim maternity leave. He had asked them to stop.

 Read more

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Posted in Consumer Electronics |

HTC “conducted internal discussions” to acquire mobile os – chairwoman

September 8, 2011 2:46 pm by Robin Kwong

It is no secret that HTC is keen to move beyond hardware manufacturing to online services and content – it had earlier acquired or partnered with, variously, a games provider (OnLive), a mobile video specialist (Saffron Digital), an e-books company (Kobo), and a music streaming service (Taiwan’s KKBox).

But its ambitions may range further still. Cher Wang, HTC chairwoman, recently revealed for the first time that the Taiwanese smartphone maker had considered acquiring a mobile operating platform. Read more

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Posted in Asia, Mobile |

Tim Bradshaw Ozon positions for Russian e-commerce boom with $100m funding

September 8, 2011 12:02 pm by Tim Bradshaw

Russia’s booming internet market has received another huge injection of growth funding. Ozon.ru, the largest Russian online retailer, has raised $100m in new venture-capital funding.

The investment in the self-styled “Russian Amazon” is the largest in the country’s e-commerce market after KupiVIP, a private buying club with big ambitions, raised $55m in April. Ozon’s round follows the stock-market debuts of Mail.ru and Yandex at eye-popping valuations. Read more

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Posted in Commerce, Europe, Internet, Tech |

PC sales growth set to slow – Gartner

September 8, 2011 11:04 am by Phill Tutt

Tech news from around the web:

Technology industry analyst Gartner has slashed its sales growth projection for PCs for 2011 from 9.3% to 3.8%, PC Pro reports. Gartner attributes the slowdown to pressure from other gadgets such as smartphones and tablets and people holding on to their PCs for longer. Read more

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Posted in Computers, Digital media, Internet, Social, Software, Tech |