Amazon.com Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos stopped by the 37signals office yesterday and offered some wise thoughts about strategy. His views are especially refreshing in a time when people who change their views often get portrayed as weak and lacking confidence.
37signals Founder Jason Fried shared what Bezos said in a blog post he published this morning. After talking for 90-minutes about product strategy, Bezos impressed Fried with his observations about people who are "right a lot."
If you stop by Starbucks regularly for a caffeinated fix, you're about to have a good excuse to try Pay with Square, Square's mobile-payment app for iPhone and Android. The coffee chain has struck a deal which will result in 7,000 Starbucks-owned U.S. locations accepting Pay with Square, starting this fall.
The agreement has multiple other facets: Square will handle Starbucks' credit card processing and Starbucks will promote local businesses that accept Pay with Square.
FORTUNE -- One question keeps arising in the saga of Knight Capital and its $440 million software glitch: why did Knight, one of the premier U.S. market makers that handles more than 10% of total stock trading, introduce glitchy software into the market?
CEO Thomas Joyce explained in a television interview that the company’s new software program sent thousands of erroneous trades into the market because of “a large bug.” This was software Knight introduced Wednesday in conjunction with the New York Stock Exchange’s new platform that allows market makers like Knight (
UPDATED. A lot of people like to complain about their experiences on major web platforms such as Facebook, but most of them stick around as users, feeling that the pros outweigh the cons. But Limited Run, a startup that makes a software platform for musicians and labels to sell physical products like vinyl records, says it has reached the final straw with its experience as a small business advertising on Facebook -- and as a result is completely withdrawing its presence on the social networking platform.
A milestone reached as the world of old media continues its push in a digital direction: the storied, pink-sheeted daily newspaper the Financial Times, read by 2.1 million readers daily, today said digital subscribers now outnumber those in print, and that digital revenues now account for half of all sales in the FT Group. And what's more, sales actually grew rather than declined.
Siluria Technologies, the San Francisco-based cleantech company that is developing a technology to turn natural gas into transportation fuels and industrial chemicals, announced it has raised $30 million in investment for its third founding round.
With over $63 million in funding poured into Siluria to date, the company is under pressure to bring its product to market. Siluria said in a statement that it will use the funds for two pilot-scale reactors and a commercial plant, in an effort to scale the technology.
Younger users are just as engaged as everyone else, Facebook is selling $1 million in Sponsored Stories ads a day, and building a phone "wouldn't really make much sense" are a few of the juicy news nuggets dished on on Facebook's first earnings call today, led by CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Still, Facebook noted it was disappointed in how its stock has traded.
Social game-maker Zynga's shares lost about 35 percent of their value in after-hours trading today, a response to the company's disastrous earnings report.
Zynga reported revenue of $332 million and a net loss of $22.8 million, or 3 cents a share. That's far below the estimated $0.06 per share many analysts predicted. Comparably, the company had revenue of $279 million and net income of $1.4 million a year ago in the same quarter.
Analysts have been sharply divided in providing estimates for Apple's third quarter earnings report. And it would appear that this time, predictions of a mild third quarter were correct. Apple saw a bit of a plateau in Mac sales, with 4 million Macs, 26 million iPhones, and 17 million iPads sold in Q3 2012. That's compared to last quarter's sales…
When I learned this morning, via Twitter, that the small company behind Mac/iOS e-mail app Sparrow was being bought by Google, I almost didn't need to read the startup's announcement to know the upshot.
Google and Facebook buy itty-bitty web companies all the time. And the acquired businesses typically convey what's happening in an eerily consistent five-step ritual:
Budget cuts and bureaucracy have kept engineering equipment from our nation's schools, so a scrappy Stanford team is taking a truck chock-full of fun tools to the students themselves. SparkTruck literally parks a engineering bench outside of schools, let's students play with the latest in maker technology, and has managed to have a measurable impact on students' path towards a career in science.
Nobody likes to admit it, but if you're a working professional, there's a good chance you're familiar with sweat stains. The commute to work, the stress of meeting a deadline, the faulty air conditioning in the boardroom, cotton weaves -- all of these things and many more have been known to conspire against you, the working professional. Luckily, Ministry of Supply…
Are you an expert Facebook marketer? If so, that could be bad news, because when it comes to Twitter, everything you know is wrong. Well, many things.
Buddy Media, the social media engagement company, recently completed a study of 320 top brands on Twitter -- Fortune 1000 companies like Coke, American Eagle, Microsoft, and Nike -- looking at what works and what doesn’t to get maximum engagement, and the greatest degree of virality.
Google has a lot to prove with the Nexus 7: Does it finally understand tablets, after so much bumbling over the last few years? Can it take back tablet market share from Amazon, which has managed to create the only successful Android tablet with the Kindle Fire? And how can a cheap device take on the high-end iPad?
All of those thoughts were rushing through my head as I tore open my Nexus 7 review unit this morning (Google wasted no time shipping units out after…
Although gigantic ships are relatively efficient -- compared to, say, transporting massive amounts of stuff by airplane -- they do use an astounding amount of fuel. The shipping industry is working on this problem. In particular, a Norwegian shipping company and a marine energy company are partnering to work on a hybrid ship, the Viking Lady.
The Viking Lady…
Reblogged from Fortune Tech: Technology blogs, news and analysis from Fortune Magazine:
FORTUNE -- On Tuesday, a U.S. district court in San Jose, Calif., granted Apple's (AAPL) request for a preliminary injunction against Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 -- the tablet computer that most closely resembles Apple's iPad.
"Although Samsung has a right to compete, it does not have a right to compete unfairly, by flooding the market with infringing products," Judge Lucy Koh wrote.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gz5OoTFxD8
In this taste of TEDGlobal, Massimo Banzi, the inventor of Arduino, offers an inspiring word on open-source creativity: "You don't need anyone's permission to create something great."
Watch Massimo's TEDTalk >>
If you're among the throng of citizens outraged by questionable legislation such as SOPA, PIPA, CISPA and ACTA, the White House has a deal for you. On Monday, U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel called on all interested parties to submit their comments and suggestions for how the United States should go about combating IP piracy. That's right: clearly having learned a lesson from the backlash its peers in Congress endured recently, the executive branch is trying to open up the process and, presumably, develop an anti-piracy strategy that's actually sane.
London and Paris have had a competitive relationship for a little while now. So perhaps it shouldn't be a surprise that just a few weeks after London announced the rollout of free wireless access on the Tube, the French have made a similar move.
News coming from Paris tells of a fresh initiative to bring free wireless access to public transport, bringing the city's offering more in line with its cross-channel rival.
As the largest banks in the United States prepare “living wills” for the government in the event that any of them should become financially nonviable, Americans continue to lose their trust in banks. According to a new poll by Gallup:
These bleak perceptions of the nation’s banks are consistent with ongoing banking issues worldwide, including the continuing crisis in Europe, particularly regarding European banks.
Yesterday, Artnet closed its online magazine, which was almost certainly the first and longest-running art publication on the Internet. Walter Robinson had run the periodical for its entire existence, after leaving Art in America, where he served as a writer and editor for years. Below, a few of the responses that have come in from various members of the art world.
Need to share your location for a limited amount of time and just with a single person? I don't think I've seen an easier method than Mapfia, a new mobile app for iOS (s aapl) and Android (s goog). Springwise highlighted the software on Tuesday and I took a closer look. All you have to do is call someone and Mapfia shares the location of both people in the phone conversation for the length of the call.
When a grocery store in Süderlügum, Germany offered $276 in free groceries to anyone willing to shop naked, they expected maybe 10 brave souls. They got more like 250, including folks from nearby Denmark who cross the border to shop for cheaper alcohol. This video is, I hardly need to tell you, not really safe for work -- although there's nothing all that titillating about it.
The Samsung Galaxy S III is the phone you've been waiting for (per our review), and you may be waiting a bit longer due to some slight shortages on GSIII supply, but luckily this extended version of the ad can coddle us through this very difficult period.
This is the most emotional portrayal of gadgetry I've ever seen out of Samsung.
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