AllThingsD » Joe Brown

New-Parent Perks at Yahoo Get a Baby Bump

Joe Brown — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 16:02:47 +0000

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has significantly increased the amount of paid leave new parents can receive — up to 16 weeks for mothers and eight for fathers, among other expanded benefits. Mayer’s recent move to ban telecommuting at the company drew widespread criticism; the new policy brings Yahoo more in line with family-leave perks offered by Google and Facebook.

Buy Signal: Facebook Widens Data Targeting

Evelyn M. Rusli — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 01:18:39 +0000

Gunning to win more advertising dollars, Facebook Inc. is using new ways to cull personal information from outside the social network and match it with data submitted by its billion-plus users.

The efforts are winning over advertisers such as General Motors Co. and Neiman Marcus Group Inc. but are further raising privacy concerns as Facebook harnesses a mosaic of information about its users.

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EU Probes iPhone Contracts

Vanessa Mock — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 14:05:29 +0000

BRUSSELS — The European Union acknowledged that it is looking into complaints from some telecoms operators that Apple Inc.’s terms for carrying the iPhone are anticompetitive, but said the matter isn’t formal and competition in the smartphone market is strong.

Several European operators have submitted concerns about their contracts with Apple to the EU antitrust watchdog over the past months, two people familiar with the matter said Friday. French carriers led the charge, but companies from other EU countries were also involved, the people said.

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Samwers Launch €150 Million Venture Fund

Ben Rooney — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 13:26:30 +0000

Three of Germany’s successful entrepreneurs have Monday launched a €150 million ($194 million) fund targeting global opportunities.

Mark and Oliver Samwer, the driving force behind the Berlin-based Rocket Internet, are joining Fabian Siegel, one of the people behind Berlin’s Delivery Hero.

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Leap Wireless to Spin Off Muve Music Unit

Thomas Gryta — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 16:23:33 +0000

Leap Wireless International Inc. plans to spin off its Muve Music service into a separate company, as the carrier attempts to turn around its struggling core business of providing pay-as-you-go wireless service.

Leap, which offers service under the Cricket brand, launched the on-demand music service in January 2011. By creating a new company, Leap hopes to license the service to other carriers and has an agreement in principle with an unnamed international wireless carrier, spokesman Greg Lund said.

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Clearwire to Tap Sprint Financing

Sharon Terlep and Joann S. Lublin — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 02:59:33 +0000

Clearwire Corp. plans to tap financing made available by Sprint Nextel Corp., people familiar with the situation said Tuesday, in a move that further complicates Dish Network Corp.’s effort to buy the wireless broadband operator.

Dish has proposed buying Clearwire for $3.30 a share amid opposition among Clearwire shareholders to a deal in which Sprint would acquire the roughly half of Clearwire it doesn’t own for $2.97 a share.

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BlackBerry to Launch in U.S. in Mid-March

Will Connors — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 16:01:34 +0000

Research In Motion Ltd. unveiled two new BlackBerry phones on Wednesday crucial to the company’s turnaround, but the first of the those devices won’t be available in the crucial U.S. market until mid-March.

In an interview ahead of a BlackBerry 10 launch event in New York, RIM Chief Executive Thorsten Heins said the first of two phones — a touch-screen-only device called the Z10 — will be available in the U.K. and Canada later this week.

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Nook Loses Ground in Tablet War

Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 17:12:47 +0000

Barnes & Noble Inc. said revenue at its consumer stores fell 10.9% during the nine-week holiday selling season ended Dec. 29, a sign that the retailer is falling behind in the crucial tablet battle with Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., and Google Inc.

While the revenue drop reflected in part a slight decline in the number of stores open, and lower online sales, it included an 8.2% drop in sales at stores open at least one year. Most of that was driven by lower sales of Nook digital devices, both the tablet and e-reader. Excluding Nook device sales, “core” same-store-sales fell 3.1%, because fewer consumers came to the stores.

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Intel's Push Into Web TV Hits Delays

Don Clark and Christopher S. Stewart — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 05:23:43 +0000

Intel Corp.’s effort to develop an Internet-based TV service and associated hardware is taking longer than expected, people familiar with the company’s plans say, in part due to delays in reaching content agreements with media companies.

The chip maker’s surprise interest in the crowded pay TV business was disclosed last March by The Wall Street Journal, which reported Intel had told media companies it hoped to launch a service by the end of 2012. The timing now seems uncertain.

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Tech Resolutions (Comic)

Nitrozac and Snaggy — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 23:00:09 +0000

Here is the latest comic from our Joy of Tech friends at Geek Culture, Nitrozac and Snaggy. Joy of Tech appears three times a week in the Voices section of this site.

Google Designing "X Phone" to Rival Apple, Samsung

Amir Efrati — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 20:25:30 +0000

Engineers at Motorola are hard at work on a sophisticated handset, to be released next year, that parent Google Inc. hopes will provide more potent competition for devices like Apple Inc.’s iPhone, said people familiar with the matter.

Seven months after being acquired by Google for $12.5 billion, Motorola is designing its marquee handset — known internally as the “X phone” — to stand apart from existing phones, though the company is running into some obstacles, these people said.

The previously undisclosed development effort is a key facet of Google’s strategy for bolstering the miniscule market position of the cellphone pioneer, based partly on bolstering quality while reducing the quantity of Motorola products.

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News Corp. Says Publishing Unit Lost Money

John Jannarone — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 16:19:55 +0000

News Corp said the publishing company it plans to spin off incurred losses last fiscal year and in the most recent quarter.

The media conglomerate, which plans to separate its entertainment businesses from its publishing businesses into two separate listed stocks next year, said the publishing company would have reported a net loss of $2.08 billion in the year through June 30 if it had been a stand-alone company.

The loss was mainly the result of $2.8 billion in impairment and restructuring charges, which News Corp. previously disclosed. But the financial statements for the publishing company, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission early Friday, showed that earnings contributions from the businesses also declined.

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Sprint in Deal to Buy Rest of Clearwire

Melodie Warner — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 16:26:44 +0000

Sprint Nextel Corp. raised its offer to acquire the roughly 50 percent stake in Clearwire Corp. it doesn’t already own, agreeing to pay $2.97 a share.

Sprint’s move to consolidate Clearwire is seen as key to a strategy meant to disrupt the U.S. wireless market, which is dominated by Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc.

The proposal will take about $2.2 billion in cash to complete, Sprint said in a statement Monday. The latest deal values Clearwire at $10 billion, including $5.5 billion of debt and spectrum lease obligations. The prior offer was worth $2.90 a share.

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iPhone 5 Gets China Network Access License

Paul Mozur — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 15:54:23 +0000

Looks like Apple Inc.’s iPhone 5 may be coming to China soon.

According to a regulatory website, an Apple device resembling the iPhone 5 has received approval for a “network access” license in China.

The phone is compatible with the network standard supported by China’s third-largest mobile carrier, China Telecom Corp. , the regulator said, an indication the service provider is one step closer to offering the phone in China.

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Eddy Cue: Apple's Rising Mr. Fix-It

Jessica E. Lessin — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 02:57:45 +0000

As Chief Executive Tim Cook shifts executive responsibilities around at Apple Inc., Eddy Cue is emerging as one of the biggest beneficiaries.

A member of Apple’s old guard, the 23-year company veteran rose through the ranks as co-founder Steve Jobs’s right-hand man for new areas like e-commerce and media. But at a company dominated by hardware and operating systems, Mr. Cue was on the periphery and known largely for cajoling media companies to sign on to Apple’s iTunes service.

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MyHeritage Raises $25 Million, Aquires Geni

Matthew Lynley — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 16:45:28 +0000

MyHeritage.com, the company behind an online application for researching and building family trees, has raised $25 million in its fifth round of funding.

MyHeritage is also announcing that it is acquiring Geni, a rival formerly run by PayPal alumnus David Sacks, who sold his enterprise social networking company Yammer to Microsoft for $1.2 billion. That acquisition adds seven million users to its network, along with a few extra tools to the service. Sacks joins MyHeritage’s board of directors.

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Zucker Is Lead Candidate to Head CNN

Keach Hagey and John Jannarone — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 02:30:00 +0000

Jeff Zucker, the former chief executive of NBCUniversal, is the lead candidate to become the next president of CNN Worldwide, say people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Zucker would succeed Jim Walton, who has run CNN for nearly a decade. Mr. Walton announced in July that he planned to leave at the end of the year. The management change follows years of ratings declines that often put CNN, a pioneer in cable news, in third place behind its more opinionated rivals, Fox News and MSNBC. Mr. Walton said when his departure was announced that “CNN needs new thinking.”

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Long Before HP Deal, Autonomy's Red Flags

Ben Worthen, Paul Sonne and Justin Scheck — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 07:03:02 +0000

CAMBRIDGE, England — When Autonomy Corp. was starting up in this historic university town, founder Mike Lynch stuck a sign on an office door that read “Authorized Personnel Only.” Behind the door, he told visitors, were 500 engineers working on “hush-hush” projects.

The door, in fact, led to a broom closet, Mr. Lynch recounted in a 2010 speech. By then, Autonomy had grown from its founding in 1996 to one of Europe’s largest and fastest-growing software companies. Hewlett-Packard Co. bought it in October 2011 for more than $11 billion.

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Early Sales Pay Off, for Now

Ann Zimmerman and Greg Bensinger — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 15:25:27 +0000

Retailers reported a big jump in consumer spending over the Thanksgiving weekend as shoppers flocked to stores, snapped up online discounts and, according to some merchants, paid repeat visits to the mall.

But the overall increase wasn’t as robust as last year’s. And some indicators showed a decline in spending at stores on Black Friday itself, leading to questions about whether retailers’ new tactics are simply shifting spending to different days and sales outlets.

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Leo Apotheker: Due Diligence of Autonomy Was Meticulous

Digits Blog — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 16:21:25 +0000

Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Leo Apotheker, who orchestrated the company’s acquisition of Autonomy last year, said he was “both stunned and disappointed” to learn of Autonomy’s alleged accounting improprieties.

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Former News Corp. Executives to be Charged in Bribery Probe

Jeanne Whalen and Paul Sonne — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 13:16:13 +0000

LONDON — British prosecutors said they will charge two former top executives of News Corp’s U.K. newspaper unit and others with crimes as part of a bribery probe, expanding their criminal prosecution to include journalists at the company’s tabloid The Sun.

Prosecutors said they will charge Rebekah Brooks, former editor of The Sun who later rose to lead the U.K. newspaper unit, with “conspiracy to commit misconduct in public office.” The charge relates to £100,000 ($159,000) in bribes allegedly paid by The Sun to a former Defense Ministry official for information which “formed the basis of a series of news stories” in The Sun, the Crown Prosecution Service said in a statement Tuesday. The defense ministry official, Bettina Jordan-Barber, and John Kay, who prosecutors described as the Chief Reporter at the Sun between 1990 and 2011, will also be charged with the same crime, prosecutors said.

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News Corp. Nears Deal For YES Stake

Matthew Futterman — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 04:34:54 +0000

News Corp. is closing in on a deal to buy a minority stake in New York regional sports network YES, according to three people with knowledge of the negotiations.

According to one of the people, a deal may be announced in the coming days that values the home network of the New York Yankees at roughly $3 billion. News Corp. is said have its sights on nearly 40% of the network, seeking to buy most, if not all, of the stakes owned by longtime investors Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Providence Equity Partners. Goldman helped launch YES in 2001. The Yankees and numerous investors in the team also own substantial stakes in the network.

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Sprint Buys Spectrum From U.S. Cellular

Melodie Warner — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 16:18:07 +0000

Sprint Nextel Corp. Wednesday said it agreed to acquire spectrum and business operations in parts of five states from U.S. Cellular Corp. for about $480 million, in a deal that will significantly increase the company’s network capacity.

Sprint Chief Executive Dan Hesse said the deal includes several important Midwest markets such as Chicago and St. Louis. The transaction involves 585,000 U.S. Cellular customers in Illinois, Indiana, Missouri and Ohio.

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AT&T Unveils $14B Infrastructure Plan; Raises Dividend

Ben Fox Rubin — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 16:11:45 +0000

AT&T Inc. said it plans to invest $14 billion over the next three years to significantly expand its wireless and wireline IP broadband networks, dubbed Project Velocity IP, in an effort to support increased customer demand for high-speed Internet.

Shares fell 3.1% to $33.72 in recent trading. The stock is up about 15% this year.

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News Corp. Unit Interested in Penguin Group

John Jannarone and Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 01:23:27 +0000

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. has expressed interest in buying book publisher Penguin Group, potentially undermining merger discussions between Penguin and Random House, people familiar with the situation said.

News Corp. is the parent of HarperCollins Publishers, a book publisher whose sales are a little smaller than Penguin’s. A combination of the two companies would create the world’s biggest consumer-book publisher, accounting for around 20% of English-language consumer-book sales, according to an industry executive.

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