CEO Tim Cook recently said the company is fixing its Maps app through software updates, but also vaguely mentioned a “huge plan to make it even better.” What is that plan? Maybe a smart acquisition of a small social navigation company. Read more »
As it had warned investors last week, Barnes & Noble announced disappointing holiday sales Thursday. Nook device sales, in-store sales and BN.com sales all fell, with a particularly large decline in Nook device sales. Read more at paidContent »
BuzzFeed announced Thursday morning that it raised $19.3 million in a fourth funding round. The round was led by VC firm NEA, with participation from Hearst, Lerer Ventures, RRE, SoftBank and Buddy Media cofounders Michael and Kass Lazerow. In total, BuzzFeed has raised around $46 million. Read more at paidContent »
Leap Motion, which invented a gesture-based user interface that tracks movement in a 3-D space, has raised $30 million in second round funding. The startup plans to use the money to scale its peripheral device, and has the chance thanks to a bundling deal with ASUS. Read more »
Ofcom wants to make it possible for consumers to pull out of their mobile contracts without paying a penalty, if the carrier raises the agreed contract price. But, as operators have warned, this may mean drastically reducing upfront hardware subsidies. Read more »
Data analytics took the energy sector by storm in 2012, and a bunch of companies launched, raised funding and grew their businesses last year. Here’s 13 energy data startups you should watch in 2013. Read more »
Our friends at GigaOM Research break down the big winners and losers in the cloud space and the trends you need to know about for the coming year: consumer-oriented cloud, big data and government adoption and more. With Adam Lesser, David Linthicum and Paul Miller. Read more »
If there is going to be one theme for 2013, then it is the inevitable march of technology (and the Internet) into everything we do and every aspect of our daily life. From car dashboards to rental cars – the fun is just getting started. Read more »
Big data technologies are like manufacturing robots: they let people do what they’re already trying to do, only faster than before and at a much greater scale. But as with any other product, that analyzed data is nothing without humans to do something with it. Read more »
IDC Energy Insights makes the following predictions related to the North American utility industry in 2013: Read more »
We’ve heard it before: So-and-so year will be the year of the mobile payments. A group of mobile industry experts, however, believes 2013 will be the real deal. Google and the carriers had their chance. Now it’s the banks’ turn. Read more »
The internet of things is set to be a hot topic this year at CES, but before going gaga over the latest connected device, there are some hard questions industry watchers should ask — or at least think about– when evaluating the latest announcements and gadgets. Read more »
The next big game console could be… a small game console. TV gaming specialist PlayJam wants to move into hardware by launching a portable indie box. But could GameStick be the next PlayJam? Read more at paidContent »
Blogging superstar Andrew Sullivan dropped a bombshell on Wednesday by saying he is leaving The Daily Beast and setting up his own subscription-based website. Can he become the first prominent success story in what some have called the move towards “post-industrial” journalism? Read more »
After users complained about bad online video experiences, France’s telecom regulator launched an investigation trying to figure out if a local ISP was blocking YouTube or if it was just underinvesting in its network. A decision is expected soon, and could have worldwide repercussions. Read more »
Inspired by Codecademy’s learn-to-code CodeYear initiative, New York-based Greatist this week launched HealthYear to help people take a more proactive approach to their health. Read more »
One of the most popular Linux distributions will arrive on smartphones this year: Canonical is bringing Ubuntu to the small screen. But this isn’t a special version of Ubuntu; it’s the actual desktop software platform with touch-friendly mobile interface that could be a disruptor. Read more »
BuzzFeed became a disruptive media force in 2012 by adding serious news to the silly and sleazy stuff it’s long produced. Here are some questions that will determine whether BuzzFeed can shape news in the long run. Read more at paidContent »
Don’t like the look and features of your Google TV’s home screen? Now you can change it with Open Launcher, the first dedicated launcher app for Google TV devices. The first release replaces Google TV’s app launch bar with a more customizable version. Read more »
Andrew Sullivan announced Wednesday that his immensely popular politics-and-other-stuff blog, The Dish, is striking out on its own and leaving the Daily Beast, which has owned it since 2011. The new site will charge $19.99 per year. Read more at paidContent »
With 9 billion people set to live on the planet by 2050, sharing — enabled by IT — will be one of the most important tools to emerge and companies that build brands now will be well positioned to capitalize on this future. Read more »
Google’s mapping and local search data is making its way into more connected car platforms. Automakers aren’t quite ready to let us download Google Maps directly into our dashboards, but they’re definitely leaning more heavily on the search giant to power their nav systems. Read more »
The claims of trademark infringement and unfair competition are still pending. But Amazon’s small win could prove to be very important as the company continues to turn its mobile content and hardware business into a more direct competitor of Apple’s. Read more »
There were fewer IPOs, mergers and acquisitions in 2012—but on average they were worth more, according to new research. Read more »
Mobile app downloads over the week from Christmas to New Year’s Eve increased to 1.76 billion, up from 1.2 billion a year ago. It’s also a significant spike over the 1.07 billion weekly average recorded earlier in December. Read more »
Oodle was one of the largest digital classified ad operators. Now it has fallen in to multiple hands after Adzuna snaps up UK assets of the firm recently sold to QVC. Read more at paidContent »
Mobile industry trade group CTIA hopes that replacing its two suffering conferences with a single fall event will halt its fall into trade show irrelevance. MWC and CES have been stealing CTIA’s thunder, but it might be too late to steal it back. Read more »
The Nearly New program offers barely-used smartphones at cut-rate prices. It’s available to contract users, but pre-pay customers are the main focus – post-Nexus 4, is this the new battleground? Read more »
Reports about Apple and TSMC striking a contract for mobile chip production have floated around since summer. In October, supply chain analysts in Asia said Apple was moving to TSMC. Now, reports peg the Taiwanese chipmaker with a first-quarter 2013 production trial for the A6X. Read more »
Hearst Magazines president David Carey says the company has nearly 800,000 monthly digital subscribers in the U.S. across platforms, and over 80 percent of the digital subscribers “are new to our files.” Read more at paidContent »
Apple will launch a fully fledged iBookstore in Japan this year. Kobo, Kindle and Google all launched Japanese ebookstores in 2012 — greasing the wheels for Apple’s launch in a country that has been slow to embrace ebooks. Read more at paidContent »
Avis Budget is buying Zipcar for $500 million in cash as it takes a big leap into the car-sharing market. Zipcar will get a big backer who can make it more efficient and help it grow. Read more »
The good news: digital formats now make up a quarter of UK entertainment sales thanks to 2012 growth. The bad: ongoing physical decline on the high-street means overall sales are shrinking. Read more at paidContent »
Despite a new agreement with Google, Belgian media will launch their own shared user management and payment system, reducing the amount of free content on their sites. Read more at paidContent »
If 2012 taught us anything, it was that today’s startups become slow moving giants at astonishing speed these days. I don’t expect 2013 to be any different. The pace of technological change with only increase in momentum. And that will be the story of 2013. Read more »
Congress approved a fiscal cliff deal on Tuesday and in it included an extension of the wind energy tax credits for wind projects built in 2013. The wind energy industry is breathing a sigh of relief and says 37,000 jobs will be saved. Read more »
No, Intel won’t be announcing its TV service at CES. But the company is definitely getting closer to revealing what it’s been working on, and a number of juicy new the details about the project, which has been developed stealthily, do sound intriguing Read more »
Both Amazon Web Services and Netflix — its most-prominent customer — have released details on AWS outage that took down Netflix’s streaming service on Christmas Eve. AWS attributes the issue primarily to human error. Netflix just wants to avoid this situation again, whatever the cause. Read more »
On the tail end of a very difficult year for electric car company Fisker, the company reveals that its insurance claim for 338 Karmas, worth $33 million, was denied by the insurance company, and Fisker is now suing XL Insurance America in court. Read more »
My pick for Android app of the year? AirDroid, which provides wireless management of your Android phone or tablet from any browser on the same Wi-Fi network. You can manage files, videos, music, ringtones and more on any computer, making for a great free companion application. Read more »
