It is something of a cliché to refer to 1984, George Orwell’s dystopian vision of the future, as an indicator of the direction society is heading in the early 21st century. But when you hear respected voices such as Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at Internet security company F-Secure, talking about how the German government…
Q &A with Fartetch’s Jose Neves
Farfetch, a fast-growing global online marketplace for independent fashion boutiques which launched in 2008, racked up its first $1 million sales day in early November 2012. To date, the company, which splits its headquarters between Portugal and England, has raised a total of $24 million in funding from Advent Venture Partners, Index Ventures, and eVenture…
Television + The Internet = TV Set Free?
After a myriad of false dawns, the TV industry is finally in the grip of an Internet-inspired revolution that is reshaping everything from content creation and delivery to the way we watch — and interact with — the medium, a development that is expected to be a big topic at DLD 2013, a conference taking…
Square: From Dongle To Domination
In 2008, glass blower James McKelvey was unable to complete a $2,000 sale of his glassware because a customer could only pay by credit card. Frustrated, he discussed this with a friend, Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter. By the summer of 2009, Dorsey had prototyped a dongle and soon after, Square launched as a…
FABricating A Global Future
E-commerce 3.0 is about super-targeted personalized curation and social sharing. Fab, which pivoted from a social site for the gay community to a fast-growing flash sale site for design, selling everything from furniture to art and jewelry, is one of the most successful plays in the space to date. About 50% of customer acquisitions are…
21st Century Statecraft
Alec Ross, Senior Advisor for Innovation in the Office of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has spent the last four years putting tech tools into the hands of diplomats and dissidents. He previously worked on the Obama-Biden Presidential transition team and served on Obama for America's Tech, Media & Telecom Policy Committee. In the…
The Future of Shopping
When Irishman Paul Kenny launched Cobone, a Groupon clone, in the United Arab Emirates in 2010, he needed to make a few adjustments to the model: customers in the region aren’t used to paying online — and many don’t yet trust digital delivery — so although they sign up for daily deals via their computers…
Reinventing PayPal
Swedish shoppers who wanted to buy gifts for friends from retailer Alpingaraget at Christmas were offered an incentive to do so with their mobile phones: PayPal would kick in SEK 49 ($7.35) on top of every free gift card available on Wrapp when Swedish consumers used the mobile payments service instead of a credit card…