Satya Nadella Reportedly Microsoft’s Next CEO

Microsoft may have found its next CEO. Bloomberg on Thursday reports the executive board at Microsoft Corp. is prepared to make Satya Nadella, the company’s enterprise and cloud chief, the successor to departing CEO Steve Ballmer.

The Bloomberg report also said Microsoft’s board is also considering replacing Bill Gates as chairman of Microsoft, according to “people briefed on the process.”

The people familiar with the plan, who asked not to be named as the private process is still ongoing, also added Nadella emerged as one of the stronger candidates to replace Ballmer a few weeks ago, and that the plans aren't officially finished.

The replacement for Gates as chairman of Microsoft, meanwhile, could be the company's lead independent director John Thompson, according to the alleged sources. Thompson is currently heading the search for Microsoft's CEO.

The search for a new CEO began on August 23, when Microsoft announced Steve Ballmer would retire within the next 12 months. A special commitee, created by Microsoft's Board of Directors, was designed to direct the succession process. Chaired by John Thompson, the board includes Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Audit Committee chairman Chuck Noski and compensation committee chairman Steve Luczo. The commitee worked with Chicago-based recruiting firm Heidrick & Struggles to help consider the best internal and external CEO candidates.

Ballmer, who became the second CEO of Microsoft after Gates relinquished the position he held since 1975, was the first business manager hired by Gates in 1980. After heading up several company divisions following Microsoft's incorporation in 1981, Ballmer became Microsoft's president from July 1998 to February 2001.

As CEO, Ballmer helped boost company revenue by expanding the existing Windows and Office franchises, introducing divisions for data centers, devices and entertainment—particularly the lucrative Xbox brand. But in recent years, critics both in and out of Microsoft named Ballmer as a big factor behind a number of recent failures, including the company's botched launch of Windows 8 and its inability to innovate faster than its rivals at Apple Inc., even though tablets were reportedly on Microsoft's agenda more than a decade ago.

Former Microsoft VPs also blamed Ballmer for a few notable departures within the company, including Kevin Johnson, who ran Microsoft's online division but went to manage Juniper Networks; Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, who's now back with his former company after Microsoft acquired Nokia last year; and Ray Ozzie, who, although Bill Gates had personally christened him as Microsoft's next "big-picture" guy, decided to leave to start his own project—a mobile communications startup called Talko.

Intex Aqua Curve with 5-Inch 'Curved Display' Launched At Rs. 12490

The Indian manufacturer Intex one has added another device in its Aqua range. This new smartphone has been dubbed Intex Aqua Curve and it comes with a black cobblestone back panel with Baby Skin painting in 3 vibrant colors - Red, blue and black.

Intex Aqua Curve is a dual-SIM smartphone that packs a 5-inch One Glass Solution based curved display featuring qHD (960 x 540 pixels). It is powered by a 1.3 GHz quad-core processor along with 1GB of RAM and 4GB ROM. Intex Aqua Curve can support microSD card of up to 32GB.

The smartphone runs on Android 4.2.2 (Jelly Bean). Connectivity options for Intex Aqua Curve include Wi-Fi, EDGE and 3G. For camera, it has a 2MP front-facing camera and an 8MP rear camera.
The Intex Aqua Curve comes with a 2000 mAh battery, which as per the company's claims will deliver talktime of 4.5 hours along with a standby time of 180 hours.

The best buy price of Intex Aqua Curve is Rs. 12,490.

This smartphone comes pre-loaded with "Shake Screenshot" app, which allows users to capture screenshots by just shaking the smartphone, and these can be directly shared with friends via social messaging platforms.

Google brings Chrome apps to Android and iOS, lets developers submit to Google Play and Apple’s App Store

Google today launched Chrome apps for Android and iOS. The company is offering an early developer preview of a toolchain based on Apache Cordova, an open-source mobile development framework for building native mobile apps using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Developers can use the tool to wrap their Chrome app with a native application shell that enables them to distribute it via Google Play and Apple’s App Store.

Today’s announcement builds on the company’s launch of Chrome apps in September that work offline by default and act like native applications on the host operating system. Those Chrome apps work on Windows, Mac, and Chrome OS, but now the company wants to bring them to the mobile world.

Last month, we broke the news that the company was working on bringing Chrome packaged apps from the desktop to the mobile world. At the time, Google developer advocate Joe Marini said the beta toolkit for porting and building such apps would be ready in January. In the last week of the month, Google has delivered as promised.

Google offers two developer workflows for the aforementioned native app packaging process. You can run your Chrome app on a device or emulator using the command-line or an IDE, and you can also use the Chrome Apps Developer Tool to run your app on an Android device without the need to install the mobile platform’s SDK or an IDE.

This hacker turned his mouse into a webcam, and you can too

Did you know that your optical mouse contains a tiny, low-resolution camera? Web developer and gadget hacker Franci Kapel does, and he decided to rip apart his Logitech RX 250, take the ADNS-5020 optical sensor, and use the 15×15 pixel grayscale image as the source for a very rudimentary webcam.

This project requires some soldering, an Arduino and Ethernet shield, as well as some basic code. Kapel has done most of the work though, so you just have to follow his tutorial to go from mouse to a webpage with a live view of whatever is directly under it.

Airbnb: We bring the UK more than £500m in economic activity

Airbnb, the service that lets anyone rent out their home for short-term lets, brings the UK economy more than half a billion pounds each year and provides thousands of jobs, according to a study commissioned by the company.

While it’s normal for any company to want to shout about its progress around the world, it’s a particularly important point for Airbnb, which has seen resistance to its service operating in some cities and ultimately led us to ponder whether the clock is ticking for the wider sharing economy.

According to the study, which looked at Airbnb data between November 2012 and October 2013 and included an additional survey of 3,956 responses, the company generated £502 million of economic activity – £357 million of which was in London alone. Additionally, the company found that Airbnb visitors to the UK’s capital seemed to be bigger spenders, with £1,231 splashed out during the average stay, compared to £474 for “normal visitors”, the company said.

In total, the UK had 14,424 hosts, who earned an average of £2,822 from renting their properties out for around 33 nights per year.

Overall, there were 513,006 outbound guests, and 373,685 inbound guests during the period, and perhaps contrary to some people’s belief, 80 percent of UK Airbnb hosts are offering up their primary residence, while only 20 percent are using it as a way to temporarily fill a second home for some extra cash, according to the data. According to the surveyed hosts, some 44 percent said that money from Airbnb’s short-term rentals allowed them to stay in their homes in the long-term, while 63 percent said it allowed them to pay bills they would otherwise have not been able to pay.

It’s good to see Airbnb sharing detailed figures about its operations in specific countries and cities, but with a wildly varying regulatory landscape governing short-term lets around the world – and even between individual cities – the data can’t necessarily be taken as a sign of future performance or as replicable in other locations.

BBC Sport’s smartphone and tablet-friendly Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics portal is now live

BBC Sport’s website dedicated to the coverage of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia is now live ahead of the start of the event on February 7.

As revealed at the beginning of January, the BBC is going all out to provide multi-platform, multi-device support for users, and will offer up 650 hours of live HD coverage via its digital services. This is in addition to the 200 or so hours that will be broadcast on television.

The move to embrace mobile and responsive Web design reflects a general trend that the BBC (and beyond) is seeing with ever increasing numbers of visitors accessing its sites and services via smartphones and tablets, and BBC Sport is no exception. As such, the 2014 Sochi coverage will be made available via BBC Sport’s apps for iOS, Android and Kindle Fire devices, which will also include medal tables, schedules and event results, alongside live coverage.

The UK government moves to unblock websites inadvertently affected by ISP porn filters

The porn opt-in debate divided opinions and generally caused a stink when UK ISPs revealed plans to ‘protect’ children from adult content on the Web. And many of the initial concerns, vis-à-vis perfectly legitimate sites being inadvertently blocked by filters, have proven to be valid.

Yes, it seems a slew of sites run by charities, designed to educate children and others on the matter of sexual health, have been automatically blocked. And now, the UK government is producing a safe-list of such sites for ISPs to ‘unblock’.

As the BBC reports, moves are also being made to set up a standard system that lets any website that has been ‘wrongly’ blocked inform ISPs, so they can be added to an approved list.

ITV joins Sky for a new UK pay TV channel called ITV Encore, showcasing ‘great British drama’

UK commercial TV network ITV is entering the pay-to-view space, announcing a new channel in conjunction with satellite broadcaster BSkyB (Sky).

The four-year tie-up will see ITV Encore launch on Sky, representing ITV’s first new channel in eight years. ITV Encore will serve up “the very best of [ITV's] great British drama.” And from 2015, the channel will screen original commissions too.

The partnership will also see ITV content, including catch-up and archives, opened up to Sky’s connected platforms, including Sky+HD, Sky Go, NOW TV and Sky Store.

Tesco Mobile won’t charge its UK 4G customers any more than those on 3G

UK phone operator Tesco Mobile will not be charging its 4G customers any more than it charges customers on 3G contracts, it announced today.

While many of the larger operators – EE, Vodafone and O2 – all charge customers on a 4G tariff around £5 per month more than those on equivalent 3G tariffs, Tesco Mobile (an MVNO that is actually underpinned by O2′s network) has decided not to charge anything extra at all, making it one of only two in the country – the other being Three.

Available to customers on Pay Monthly and SIM-only tariffs, plans start from £7.50 on the latter and come with no ongoing commitment. At that level, you’ll get 250 minutes, 5000 texts and 500MB of data. Naturally, with 4G speeds at your disposal, you could well burn through that amount quite quickly – plans with higher data usage limits are also available. The operator said that “in the coming weeks” it will launch 4G data bundles for pay-as-you-go users.

Rocket Internet partners with operator MTN to invest $400m in startups in Middle East and Africa

Rocket Internet is increasing its focus on the Middle East after it announced plans to pump €300 million (around $410 million) in the region and Africa via two new projects with South Africa carrier MTN.

The companies are creating two joint ventures – Africa Internet Holding (AIH), announced this week, and Middle East Internet Holding (MEIH) – which will function like incubators to create new Internet businesses. Rocket Internet already has a presence in both regions — via lifestyle sales site Namshi, Uber-clone Easytaxi and others — and the new organization will “develop existing ventures… and launch new companies even faster and more successfully,” according to Rocket Internet co-founder Oliver Samwer.

AIH is expected to be up and running in the first quarter of 2014, with MEIH following in the second quarter. Rocket Internet tells us the investments are being made wholly by MTN.

Canada’s spy agency reportedly tracked travelers who used free airport WiFi service

A new NSA leak alleges that the US intelligence agency worked with its counterpart in Canada (CSEC) to test a system that tracked travelers who passed through one of Canada’s “major” airports, CBC News reports.

Information presented to the news agency shows that visitors who logged into the free WiFi service provided at an undisclosed Canadian airport could be tracked “for days” after they moved on. CBC News reports that the CSEC/NSA could pick up travelers when their devices were logged into other WiFi networks across Canada and at US airports.

The documents suggest that the system was trialed by the NSA and the CSEC with a view to scaling it into other countries — though there is no mention of data captured or tangible results. The head of the CSEC last year assured Canadians that it has never targeted its citizens via domestic or international spying programs.

The Guardian and Observer newspapers are now available as a Kindle Fire and Android tablet app

The Guardian and Observer newspapers are now available as a tablet-specific Android and Kindle Fire app, giving slate owners a new means of keeping up with the latest features, breaking stories and investigative reporting.

An iPad edition has been available since October 2011, so an expansion to larger-screen Android and Kindle devices is long overdue. Tablets, regardless of the OS, are well-suited to digital and web-only publications, and the new app for the Guardian and the Observer is no exception.

You’ll need to sign-up to one of the company’s subscription packages to access the app, currently priced at £11.99 per month for full access, £9.99 for six days per week (the Observer is excluded) and £6.99 per for just Sunday (the Observer only). A two-week free trial is also available for anyone that wants to see what’s on offer before parting with their hard-earned cash.

The new tablet apps offer all of the content from the print newspapers, as well as the supplements that come bundled with the weekend editions. Copies can also be downloaded for offline reading – useful for the morning commute – and stories are presented with a clean, professional layout not too dissimilar to the company’s iPad app.

Xbox teams up with ‘Man on Wire’ and ’30 Days’ producers for exclusive documentary series

Microsoft’s Xbox team has joined forces with Simon Chinn (Searching for Sugar Man and Man on Wire) and the award winning producer Jonathan Chinn (FX’s 30 Days and PBS’s American High) to create a series of documentaries that will debut exclusively on Xbox next year.

For the first in the series of documentaries, the newly formed combined company, Lightbox, will follow the story of what happened surrounding Atari Corporation’s burial of millions of unsold copies of ‘ET the Video Game’ in a small town in New Mexico in the middle of the night back in 1983.

Excavation of the site will begin in January, as will shooting of the first episode. The series is then set to air exclusvely on Xbox One and Xbox 360 in 2014 in all markets where Xbox Live is offered.

Lionsgate is making a TV show on the ‘Hatching Twitter’ book by New York Times writer Nick Bilton

Lionsgate Television is to produce a TV show based on the book ‘Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal‘ penned by The New York Times columnist Nick Bilton.

The studio has appointed Allison Shearmur, who worked on The Hunger Games, as the show’s executive producer. Bilton, meanwhile, will write the initial screenplay and serve as a producer for the project.

Hatching Twitter’ was released in November and debuted at number 14 in the New York Times best seller list, as well as number five in the Wall Street Journal’s hardcover business list. Lionsgate says the show will different to ‘The Social Network’, a movie examining the origins of Facebook, by offering a deeper look at the relationships and sacrifices faced by Twitter’s founders.

YouTube channel debuts on the Roku 3 in the US, Canada, UK and Republic of Ireland

Listen up, Roku owners. Google launched a YouTube app today for the Roku 3 set-top streaming player in the US, Canada, UK and Republic of Ireland, offering a straightforward means of watching the latest viral clips and catching up with your favorite channels on a large-screen TV.

The search giant announced the release over on the YouTube blog, but refrained from giving too many details about its design and features. We know it’ll support HD streaming in some capacity – hopefully up to 1080p resolution – and Send to TV, which lets you transform a smartphone or tablet into a remote.

It’s strange to think that YouTube wasn’t available on the Roku platform before, but at least the problem has now been remedied. The Roku 3 is the company’s flagship set-top box, but hopefully the new YouTube app will make its way onto lower-end Roku models too, such as the Roku 1, 2 and LT, in the near future.

Influential Bitcoin exchange BTC China begins accepting Renminbi deposits after 6-week block

BTC China, until recently the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange, has begun allowing users in China to make deposits in their local currency (Renminbi), ending a six-week block that affected domestic users and sent the price of the virtual currency tumbling.

The site stopped accepting deposits in Renminbi on December 18 following a memo issued by the Bank of China (BoC) that warned of the risks surrounding Bitcoin, although users could use US dollars and other international currencies. That action is thought to have been the spark that sent the valuation of Bitcoin crashing from $880 to $435 in under a day.

BTC China CEO Bobby Lee tells Coindesk that the company has reassessed the implications of that note, and decided that it wasn’t aimed at Bitcoin businesses. You’ll note this is Lee’s assumption, since it appears he hasn’t had direct contact with the government or BoC:

Previously, we judged doing this as not being viable, however, we have since changed our stance. We looked again at the guidance issued in December and we think it’s a reasonable for us to accept customer deposits via our corporate bank account.

The fact the PBOC said exchanges need to register with MIIT essentially means it recognises exchanges as a business category and BTC China as a legitimate business.

btcc 730x398 Influential Bitcoin exchange BTC China begins accepting Renminbi deposits after 6 week block

Lee’s rationale may be that his company overreacted to the BoC’s warning, but more cynical observers might put this down to the drop in business that BTC China has seen since implementing the restriction.

Business has been slower since the block, Lee says, and BTC China is no longer the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange:

Volumes in China have been down since December. A lot of the people we have spoken to have stopped trading, they’ve cashed out, so activity has calmed down a lot. Volume is certainly going to be low for the next few days because we’re going through a Chinese New year period.

Beyond simply allowing cash deposits again, BTC China has introduced its Maker-Taker program, which rewards those who increase liquidity (by offering multiple buying and selling offers) with 1,000 RMB ($165) when the total paid out to makers passes 100,000 RMB. Those that ‘take out’ pay a 0.3 percent fee on transactions.

Lee believes the program “brings more market depth and more liquidity to the site, plus it reduces volatility, which makes for a healthier for market for bitcoin in China.” He says BTC China has already paid out close to $500,000 in fees, though Pando Daily notes that there have been challenges — some trading bots appear to have been exploited over maker fees.

The company is yet to see a big spike in activity, nor has there been a surge in the valuation of Bitcoin in response to BTC China’s change, but once word gets out, that’s likely to change. Lee admits, however, that the potential for Chinese authorities to “change the rules” on Bitcoin could affect users’ confidence in putting money into the exchange

Bitcoin has seen a spike in activity in China during the Chinese New Year period. Hong Kong-based exchange ANXBTC gave away $65,000 in the virtual currency by feeding into the seasonal tradition of gifting money in red envelopes. New Year’s Day is today, so it remains to be seen if BTC China has reopened domestic currency deposits with enough time to take advantage.

Dutch court rules that IP blocks are ineffective against piracy, unblocks The Pirate Bay

The Court of Appeals in The Hague, Netherlands has today ruled that two ISPs operating in the country no longer have to block access to The Pirate Bay, as doing so was an ineffective measure against piracy.

The providers (XS4All and Ziggo) have been battling it out in the appeals court to overturn an earlier decision which led to the blocking of the services in the first place, brought about by a case initiated by the anti-piracy group BREIN. However, as the companies could demostrate that the blocks had been ineffective in achieving their goal of reducing piracy, the court ruled that they no longer had to be imposed.

“ In applying the case law from the European Court of Justice (ECJ), the Court of Appeal held that an access provider is not under an obligation to take measures that are disproportional and/or ineffective,” Bureau Brandeis, the legal firm that represented XS4All, said in a note on its website.


In the UK, ISPs have been forced to block not only The Pirate Bay, but also a plethora of other sites. It has also led to the blocking of completely legal and unrelated sites like The Promo Bay too.

In August last year, UK Parliament made an apparent about-turn on blocking under Digital Economy Act rules. However, rights holders in the UK have also used Section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (1988) to effectively achieve the same site blocks in the past.

Time will tell whether UK ISPs will continue to be forced to block access to certain websites, but with IP-based exclusion clearly proving ineffective, rights holders like the MPAA and BPI will have to find a different approach to curb the piracy that they say is costing them dearly.

At the time of writing, The Pirate Bay is still blocked by Ziggo, but we’d expect this to change in the near future following this decision.

LG’s curved G Flex smartphone is landing in Europe next month

LG will launch its curved G Flex Android smartphone in Europe next month, the Korean company announced today.

This means consumers in major European markets including the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Sweden and Austria, among others, will be able to get their hands on the smartphone, which comes with a vertical curve and a “self-healing” cover capable of covering over minor scratches, as well as a rear-mounted set of power and volume buttons.

It was already revealed in December that mobile operator EE will be carrying the G Flex in the UK next February, but we will have to wait and see on other carrier options, as well as the specifics of price and availability.

So far, LG has already released the G Flex in Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore – where it retails for S$1,088 ($870). It’ll be hitting India “soon” and will be launched in the US on Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile some time this quarter.

Argentina bans overseas online shopping sites from making home deliveries

Argentina has introduced new restrictions on online shopping in a bid to limit international spending and help stabilize its struggling domestic currency.

Deliveries from international shopping sites will no longer be sent to customers’ addresses, instead they must be collected from customs offices where a declaration of purchase must be presented. Citizens are permitted to buy $15 of goods from overseas tax-free, but anything beyond that will be subject to up to 50 percent tax.

The BBC reports that the government has introduced the measure to keep track of transactions using foreign currency, after hard currency reserves depleted by 30 percent over the past year. Economic issues were thought to be behind Google’s decision to stop taking local payments in Argentina, though it later backtracked and restored support to the Google Play store “for the time being”.

Spotify is now available in 20 new markets across Europe, South and Central America

Spotify is now available in 20 new countries across the globe covering Europe, South and Central America, matching many of those added by rival music streaming service Rdio earlier today.

The new markets are listed below, with a star next to them to denote that Rdio is expanding there too:

Bolivia (*), Bulgaria, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica (*), Cyprus, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic (*), Ecuador (*), El Salvador (*), Guatemala (*), Honduras (*), Hungary (*), Malta, Nicaragua (*), Panama, (*) Paraguay (*), Peru(*), Slovakia and Uruguay(*).

Spotify is now available in 55 markets worldwide, leapfrogging Rdio, which moved up to 51 a few hours ago. Both pale in comparison to Deezer, however, which is available in over 180 countries and heading to the United States sometime in 2014.

Spotify launched a free version of its music streaming service for iOS and Android devices today, as well as exclusive access to Led Zeppelin’s back catalog.

Sony denies it’s in talks to sell its overseas Vaio PC business to Lenovo

Lenovo’s spate of new business deals will not include a PC venture with Sony, that’s according to a statement from Sony in response to speculation.

Reuters was among the media to suggest that Lenovo — which recently announced deals to buy Motorola from Google and acquire IBM’s low-end server business — was in talks with Sony with a view to “taking over” the overseas branch of its Vaio PC business.

The statement from the Japanese company does, however, confirm that it is exploring a range of possibilities for its PC business in the future:

A press report on February 1, 2014 stated that Sony Corporation (“Sony”) is discussing with Lenovo Group (“Lenovo”) the possible establishment of a joint venture for the PC business. As Sony has announced previously, Sony continues to address various options for the PC business, but the press report on a possible PC business alliance between Sony and Lenovo is inaccurate.

Apple is reportedly going big on health and fitness with iWatch and iOS 8

Apple is reportedly looking to bring health and fitness tracking to iOS devices. 9to5Mac says that the company is working to bring these integrations into its newest operating system and enable users to monitor their activity through its own wearable device, the iWatch.

According to reports, in iOS 8, which is believed to be released this year, there will be a new application called “Healthbook”, which will track fitness statistics like steps taken, calories burned, and miles walked — similar to what is already available through the Nike+ Fuel band, Fitbit, and Jawbone UP! However, what makes Apple’s version more appealing is that Healthbook will also analyze a person’s vital signs such as blood pressure, hydration levels, heart rate, and more.

It’s known that Apple would be unveiling an iWatch for a while — it has filed paperwork for the trademark in several countries like Japan, Mexico, and Taiwan. The company also met recently with the US Food and Drug Administration to discuss mobile medical applications.

Lenovo To Buy Motorola Mobility From Google For $2.91 Billion

TechCrunch has confirmed reports that Lenovo is buying Motorola Mobility from Google. This is the division within Google that the company purchased in 2011 for $12.5 billion. Motorola Mobility will go to Lenovo for $2.91 billion.

Of that $2.91 billion, $1.41 billion will be paid at the close of the deal. $660 million will be comprised of US cash and $750 million in Lenovo ordinary shares. The remaining $1.5 billion will be paid in the form of a three-year promissory note.

Google will maintain ownership of the vast majority of the Motorola Mobility patent portfolio. Lenovo will still receive 2,000 patent assets and the Motorola Mobility brand and trademark.

According to a separate report published by Reuters, Lenovo is being advised by Credit Suisse Group while Lazard Ltd advised Google on the transaction.

“As part of Lenovo, Motorola Mobility will have a rapid path to achieving our goal of reaching the next 100 million people with the mobile Internet. With the recent launches of Moto X and Moto G, we have tremendous momentum right now and Lenovo’s hardware expertise and global reach will only help to accelerate this,” said Dennis Woodside, CEO, Motorola Mobility, in a released statement.

According to our source, Google wanted to dump the asset for some time. The company had to hold off selling the division for tax reasons.

Motorola Mobility’s performance has yet to live up to its purchase price. Since Motorola split and its consumer division went to Google, it has been a constant source of red ink. Motorola lost quite a lot of money: $248 million in the last quarter alone. Google sums this well, noting that the loss was “-21% of Motorola Mobile segment revenues.” Motorola lost $192 million in the year-ago quarter, so the trend here isn’t positive.

Google previously sold off the cable box division of Motorola Mobility for $2.4 billion.

This comes just weeks after Google purchased the hot hardware startup Nest. Since then, Nest’s role in the budding conglomerate that Google is turning into has been widely speculated about. With Motorola gone, Nest’s superstar team that includes many former Apple engineers seemingly has an empty playground.

It seems this complete’s Lenovo’s quest for an established cell phone business. It was rumored back in October that the company submitted a bid for BlackBerry. That deal clearly didn’t pan out.

Simply buying its way to the top worked for Lenovo in the past. In 2005 Lenovo purchased IBM’s personal computer division for $1.25 billion. That purchase alone caused Lenovo to be the world’s third-largest computer maker. But, using the established brand, Lenovo scaled the PC division to become the largest shipper of PCs in the world. In the last months of 2013 Lenovo overtook HP.

Just last week, Lenovo announced a plan to buy IBM’s x86 server business for $2.3 billion.

As the dust settles on this deal, it’s clear that Google took a large loss on its venture with Motorola Mobility. Google acquired an established brand with a vast portfolio of patents, a mature distribution system and a knowledgeable manufacturing arm. Even after pouring money and resources into the historic American brand, Google couldn’t make lemonade with Motorola. Maybe Lenovo, the now-leader in personal computers, will have better luck.

Coupons.com Files For $100M IPO On The NYSE, Trading As Coup

The march of the 2014 initial public offerings commences, with the latest one of the oldest brands on the internet. Coupons.com has just filed S-1 papers with the SEC for an IPO on the NYSE, trading under the name COUP, and raising $100 million.

Goldman, Sachs & Co., Allen & Company LLC, BofA Merrill Lynch and RBC Capital Markets are listed as the underwriters on the filing.

The news comes a day after Box reportedly filed a “secret” IPO. Coupons.com may elect to use a similar route to keep from disclosing certain aspects of its business, it notes. “We are an ‘emerging growth company’ as defined under the federal securities laws and, as such, may elect to comply with certain reduced public company reporting requirements for future filings,” it notes.

Coupons.com’s IPO filing was long anticipated, most recently with Paul Sloan jumping from his position as editor-in-chief at CNET to take up head of communications to lead the effort.

As one of the earlier movers in the online coupons space, Coupons.com is also one of the biggest. It notes in the IPO that in the first nine months of 2013, its sales were generated from some 940 million transactions on its site. Those included customers picking up digital coupons and also redeeming codes over its platform. That figure is up 49% over a year ago.

Coupons.com says that today its platform includes more than 700 consumer packaged goods companies, representing over 2,000 brands, and retailers covering some 58,000 physical stores in North America. It had 17 million monthly unique visitors on average across Coupons.com and affiliated sites over 2013 and visited the sites of its CPGs, retailers and publishers. Its mobile apps have been downloaded some 7 million times.

First established as a site for newspaper coupons, more recently the company has been trying to convert its brand recognition into a business fit for a more social and mobile age. In December Coupons.com acquired Yub for $30 million to add loyalty networks to its service and position itself as a better bridge between offline and online commerce. In March 2013, it acquired KitchMe, a Pinterest-like recipe service.

Founded in 1998, Coupons.com has raised some $277 million in venture funding but it is a loss-making business. During the nine months ended September 30, 2013, the company says, it generated revenues of $115.3 million, growing 51% compared to the same period in 2012 but at a net loss of $12.8 million. That net loss was a decrease of 75% over the same period in 2012, the company says.

The full-year figures for the year before show that Coupons.com is improving its structure. In 2012, sales were $112.1 million, 23% up versus 2011, but with a net loss of $59.2 million, up 158% (!) over 2011.

Sill, coupons are big business, potentially. Coupons.com says that in 2012, 305 billion total coupons were distributed, “representing an aggregate discount value of $467 billion, with 2.9 billion redeemed representing an aggregate discount value of $3.7 billion,” citing stats from NCH Marketing Services.

Facebook Announces Paper, A Curated Visual News Reader Launching Feb. 3 On iOS

You miss great content because you aren’t subscribed to the right sources. So Facebook wants to bring you content serendipity with Paper, a standalone iOS news reader app it revealed today that delivers human and algorithm-curated full-screen articles and photos in categories you select like Tech, LOL, and Pop Culture. Paper launches to everyone in the U.S. on February 3rd, the day before Facebook’s 10th birthday.

Paper is the first app out of Facebook Creative Labs, an initiative to let small teams within Facebook build standalone mobile experiences as if they were nimble startups. Facebook Creative Labs will carry out the strategy Mark Zuckerberg discussed on yesterday’s earnings call of conquering mobile with an array of single-purpose experiences rather than cramming more functionality into Facebook’s core app. [Check out our profile of Facebook's standalone app initiative: "Facebook’s New 'Creative Labs' Lets The 6,000-Employee Giant Move Fast Like A Startup"


I was the first to catch a glimpse of the radically visual News Feed redesign that would become Paper a year ago. TechCrunch writer Ingrid Lunden discovered more about on the project in June, and Re/code’s Mike Isaac revealed details on the news reader earlier this month. But now Facebook has officially outed Paper with a blog post, feature tour, and the vision video embedded below.

When you download Paper, you’re greeted with a reimagined interface for the News Feed. The top half of the screen shows big photos and videos, while the bottom half shows status updates and link stories. You can swipe from right to left to browse through the stories. If you tap one, it unfolds with a delightful animation to take up the full screen where videos auto-play. Pinch a story and it folds back up returning you to the Paper feed.

The content gets really interesting, though, when you start adding “sections” to your own Paper.

You can add sections including “Score” (sports), “Headlines” (world news), “Cute” (BuzzFeed-style adorable animals), “Planet” (sustainability and earth porn), “Enterprise” (business), “Exposure” (photography), “Flavor” (food), and “Ideas” (a different intellectual theme each day).

Each Section combines stories chosen by Facebook’s human editors and surfaced by the Paper algorithm that have been posted publicly to Facebook by a publication, blogger, public figure, or average Joe. The goal isn’t to just pump articles by The New York Times, but also posts by expert yet undiscovered bloggers, commentary by industry pundits, and opinions from laymen. For now, everyone who adds a Section to their Paper will see the same story in it, but Facebook says it’s considering personalizing the sections so you might see more about your favorite teams and sports in the Score Section over time.

Paper also lets you share your own stories. The visually-focused composer gives you an accurate preview of how your story will appear to other users, so there’s no wondering what photo will be featured or if an article’s blurb will be cut off like when you share using Facebook on the web or mobile.

For now there will be no ads in Paper, but Facebook tells me the team is considering how they could be naturally integrated.


Content Serendipity

Paper’s human plus machine curation creates what I call “content serendipity”. Normally on Facebook, you only see posts from friends and Pages you’ve subscribed to. But with a traditional newspaper, there are articles the editors think are great and you might enjoy, but that you wouldn’t have thought to seek out. You trust the editors’ taste, and give articles a chance even if they don’t strike you at first glance.

Paper creates this opportunity for Facebook to surprise like a newspaper, but on mobile. It can show content you might have missed by bubbling up public content with lots of Likes or that a Paper editor thinks is brilliant. Sure, friends act as curators of the web at large, but not everyone’s friends share content in the areas they’re interested. I might be the only one of my friends that digs business news or foodie stuff, and Paper could deliver it to me without me having to track down specific Pages to Like.

Zynga Buys NaturalMotion For $527M, Signaling A New Tack For The Gaming Giant

Zynga has long been famous (or infamous?) for its data-driven approach to game design. The company never focused on building strong character IP, or intellectual property, in favor of releasing games that had been thoroughly funnel-tested.

But now that founding CEO Mark Pincus has stepped aside and let Xbox executive Don Mattrick take the reins, perhaps the company is going in a totally new direction.

Mattrick is sending a big signal on that front today with a $527 million deal to acquire NaturalMotion, the Oxford, U.K.-based gaming company behind franchises like CSR Racing and Clumsy Ninja. The deal involves $391 million in cash and about 39.8 million shares of Zynga stock at yesterday’s price, leaving Zynga with about $1.2 billion in cash and marketable securities on hand. (There is also sad news today, with layoffs for 15 percent of the company’s workforce.)