Twitter turned down $500m offer from Facebook June 23, 2014 One of Twitter’s founders has revealed how the fledgling company turned down an offer from Facebook to buy the company for $500m. Speaking to Sky News, Biz Stone said that a meeting between himself, co-founder Ev Williams, and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, resulted in an offer being made for the then startup. Stone said the [...]
5 retailers who’ve suffered warehouse woes June 23, 2014 Retailers have had their fair share of misadventures with their warehouses in recent years. The fire at Asos’ distribution centre in Yorkshire is the second time the retailer has suffered damage to one of its warehouses. An explosion at the Buncefield oil depot near to its former site in Hemel Hempstead in 2005 [...]
Darkcoin fails to rise after latest hardfork failure June 23, 2014 Times have been tough for the privacy centred cryptocurrency Darkcoin. The digital currency's last attempt to implement its masternode system ended in failure after the blockchain split into several forks. Cryptocurrencies can only have a single path stemming from the original block. However, one-block forks can be created when two blocks come into being only [...]
Shire share price climbs higher on pledge to double sales by 2020 June 23, 2014 After knocking back offers from US-based pharma giant AbbVie, Shire's management has put forward the case for it to stay independent. In a statement, Shire says that it now "expects to deliver double-digit compound annual product sales growth from its current portfolio". It also forecasts that it will "more than double its 2013 annual product [...]
Consumers set to use tablets for 72pc of online purchases by 2018 June 23, 2014 Tablets are set to dominate UK mobile online shopping this year as order volumes on the larger screened devices soar to double that of smartphones. Smartphones will account for just £4.65bn of online retail sales in 2014, year-on-year growth of 43.2 per cent. Tablet online retail sales will soar 79.3 per cent to £9.28bn, according [...]
How Spotify data could shake up the Official Singles Chart June 23, 2014 Music streamed through online services such as Spotify will contribute to the UK’s music charts for the first time, better reflecting people’s listening habits. Streaming data from Spotify, Deezer, Napster, O2 Tracks, Xbox Music, Sony’s Music Unlimited and Omnifone owned Rara will now form part of the Official Singles Chart announced on Sunday evenings. The [...]
Titan’s magic island is not an island. So what is it? June 23, 2014 While flying by Titan, Saturn's largest moon, Nasa's Cassani spacecraft spotted a strange dark splodge on its surface, which has since been described as its “mystery island”. But that was last July, and three fly-bys since then have failed to spot this island again, leaving scientists baffled as to what the strange sighting could have [...]
FireChat: What is it and how does it work? June 23, 2014 FireChat, a messaging app designed to work without internet or cellular connections, is becoming increasingly popular in Iraq as the government continues to restrict internet usage. According to the Financial Times, there were 40,000 downloads of the app in Iraq last week, despite the fact the country has no iTunes store. User numbers in Iran [...]
Felix Dennis dies at 67 June 23, 2014 Felix Dennis, founder of the publishing company behind The Week and Viz, has passed away at the age of 67 following a long battle with cancer. Dennis died peacefully on Sunday at his home according to an announcement published by The Week and shared on Twitter. Dennis was renowned as a maverick and entrepreneur in the [...]
Eurozone growth stutters as French output threatened by oil price risks June 23, 2014 Preliminary survey data shows that the Eurozone's (still) fledgling recovery has stuttered in June. Purchasing managers' index (PMI) data released by Markit shows that the pace of expansion across the private sector has slowed a little, with a headline PMI of 52.8 in the euro area. Any number above 50 implies that order books are [...]