Airbnb books place among young savvy travellers May 11, 2016 The tourism industry has been shaken up in dramatic fashion in the past couple of years by the pioneering startup company Airbnb. The company operates in 34,000 cities in 191 countries and has a value of around $25bn (£17.3bn). It allows ordinary homeowners to rent out rooms to holidaymakers, and is popular among those looking [...]
Star Wars game helps boost Electronic Arts’ sales and earnings May 11, 2016 Shares in video games maker Electronic Arts (EA) shot up by over seven per cent in after hours trading last night, after the US firm revealed quarterly revenue and profit had come in ahead of analysts' expectations. The company reported revenue of $924m (£640m) for the fourth quarter of its 2016 financial year, up from [...]
Visa Europe records three billion contactless payments over the last 12 months May 10, 2016 Card company Visa has recorded three billion contactless transactions in Europe over the past year. In April alone, European consumers used their cards 360m times, clocking in at almost 140 transactions per second. Contactless now accounts for one in every five Visa card payments in Europe, up from one in 60 in 2013. In the [...]
UK sleepwalks into cyber crisis May 10, 2016 British businesses are still not doing enough to protect themselves from costly cyber attacks, experts have warned ahead of a major conference on cyber security tomorrow. The Public Policy Exchange is hosting the high-level summit with the aim of ensuring the police, public and private sectors, industry and government might better work together to lower [...]
Safe texts: Durex is pushing for a condom emoji May 10, 2016 Condom manufacturer Durex has issued a request to the group responsible for the emoji approval process, the Unicode Consortium, arguing the case for a new condom emoji. Durex, owned by London-listed Reckitt Benckiser, first called for a new condom emoji to be approved ahead of World AIDS Day last November, on the basis that it could help promote safe sex. Now [...]
Amazon hits new high on this crazy big $1,000 price target from Wall Street May 10, 2016 Amazon shares have touched an all-time high after getting a serious upgrade from one Wall Street analyst. Bernstein has upped its price target for the stock to $1,000 (£694) from $770, sending stock up nearly three per cent to $699 per share. "[W]e are bullish in the short, medium, and long term and think we may see margins [...]
“We’d do it all again” say Boaty McBoatface competition creators May 10, 2016 The creators of the competition which ended up producing the name Boaty McBoatface for a billion pound science research ship have no regrets and said they would do it all over again, despite the whole thing descending into farce. Appearing in front of MPs on the science and technology committee today, the National Environmental Research Council (NERC) bosses [...]
Amazon just launched its own version of YouTube May 10, 2016 Amazon has upped the ante again when it comes to video with a new service which sounds a lot like YouTube. Users will be able to upload their own content through Amazon Video Direct (AVD) and it will be available to the millions of members of its Prime Video streaming service alongside movies and original TV shows, such [...]
Electric car owners can sell electricity back to the grid in Nissan trial May 10, 2016 Electric vehicle owners could soon make money from selling electricity back to the grid. Nissan, which builds some of its electric cars in its Sunderland factory, has launched a new trial in the UK which it claims could revolutionise energy supply. Owners of the Nissan Leaf will be able to charge their cars during low demand times and then [...]
UK security services fail in legal bid to get hacker Lauri Love to hand over passwords for encrypted device via “back door” May 10, 2016 The UK's security services have failed in their bid to force a hacker to hand over passwords which would give them access to encrypted information held on his computer, in what's been called a landmark case. A judge has ruled today against the National Crime Agency (NCA), which was seeking the passwords as part of a civil case brought by [...]