Donald Trump’s travel ban provokes top tech bosses from Apple, Google, Uber, Twitter, Facebook and more to speak out on immigration January 29, 2017 The high profile bosses of several of the United States' biggest technology companies have spoken out after Donald Trump issued an executive order banning people from seven majority Muslim countries entering the US. Google founder Sergey Brin, himself a migrant from the former Soviet Union, attended a protest at San Francisco airport in a personal capacity, he told reporters. [...]
Och, aye: Emoji English, Scottish and Welsh flags could be released in the next six months January 27, 2017 Smartphone fans in three UK countries are about to get more specific about their patriotism, after the body which decides on emojis declared it will add the English, Scottish and Welsh flags to its ranks. At a meeting of the Unicode Technical Committee, members – including representatives from Google and Apple -voted to add England, Scotland and [...]
Mark Carney’s fintech critique should be a wake-up call for a sector used to plaudits January 27, 2017 The fintech sector is so used to being publicly lauded that this week’s comments by the governor of the Bank of England will have come as a shock. Despite claiming London as the fintech centre of Europe and exulting its potential, Mark Carney made clear fintech’s rise could disrupt the established financial sector – raising [...]
Back to life, back to virtual reality: Xiaomi’s international boss Hugo Barra joins Facebook’s VR unit Oculus January 26, 2017 Hugo Barra announced he was leaving Xiaomi to make a Silicon Valley return a few days ago and now we know where he was headed: Facebook. The ex-Google executive who led international expansion at Chinese smartphone giant Xiaomi has left the company to take up a role as vice president of virtual reality at Facebook's VR [...]
Venture capitalists must embrace crowdfunding: It’s where the future lies January 26, 2017 Maybe you’re just not ready for venture capital”, said William H Draper to a potential partner. It was 1959, and the now-legendary VC was trying to persuade a firm to invest in his new fund. Set up as a limited partnership, it was different to any other investment opportunity then on the market. General William [...]
The Dow Jones Industrial Average breaks 20,000 for the first time as the Trump trade continues January 25, 2017 The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) has broken through the 20,000-point mark for the first time ever, crossing a symbolic line only a year after falling below 16,000. The index has surged over 2016, with the election of Donald Trump prompting a massive increase in US share prices in the last two months of 2017. [...]
Saudi Aramco eyes bankers for what could be the world’s biggest float January 24, 2017 Global banking giants are set to compete for an advisory role on oil goliath Saudi Aramco’s multi-billion-dollar float, which is expected to be the world’s biggest initial public offering. The Saudi state-owned firm, thought to be the world’s largest oil producer, has requested proposals from banks including Morgan Stanley and HSBC, sources told Reuters late last night. [...]
Jet2 launches New York trips from Birmingham and Belfast among its winter schedule January 24, 2017 Jet2 is taking another bite of the Big Apple, after it announced plans to launch New York flights from Birmingham and Belfast International. The low-cost airline will now offer 30 direct trips to New York, up from 24, from seven airports. It is lining the trips up to coincide with Black Friday, the sales bonanza day, as [...]
Softbank-owned Sprint is buying a stake in Jay Z’s Tidal January 23, 2017 Jay Z's music streaming service Tidal, a smaller rival to Spotify and Apple Music, has a new investor. Softbank-owned US telecoms firm Sprint has snapped up a 33 per cent stake in the company which the rapper acquired two years ago. That means 45m Sprint customers will now have "unlimited access" to the platform's exclusive music. Read more: The [...]
Blame it on the batteries: Samsung says battery faults caused Galaxy Note 7 fires January 23, 2017 After some intense investigation, Samsung has announced the reason behind its exploding Galaxy Note 7 phones. It was lithium-ion batteries that caused the problems, causing the mobiles to overheat and catch fire – leading to the global recall of millions of devices and scrapping production of the model altogether. The incident was a costly one, [...]