Charles Arthur: He says that the growing number of accounts in app stores could also have a disruptive effect on other media types: “Whereas video, books and music are targeted to smaller user bases, apps are broadly consumed. Developers like Rovio or Supercell can offer their products to billions while TV producers can only hope [...]
Steve Wildstrom: Microsoft says it sold 100 million licenses for Windows 8 in the six months it was on sale. Not spectacular, but not bad either. But for Windows RT, Widows 8′s tablet-friendly little brother, things haven’t been so hot. Microsoft hasn’t given out numbers, but IDC estimates sales of Microsoft’s Surface RT at a [...]
Nikhil Behl: One of the many challenges a business must face is the decision to buy a pre-packaged solution or to build a customized version that meets the business’s exact specifications. The latter often requires extraordinary time, money, and human capital resources. In the entrepreneur-friendly environment of today, it can seem like the best option. [...]
Matthew Goldstein: Michael Marchillo, a plumber, has been trying and failing for months to buy a bigger home for his family here in Sin City. He was pre-qualified by a bank for a $130,000 mortgage, which a year ago would have landed a typical three-bedroom home in the area. No more. Now, the 36-year-old says, [...]
Tom Foremski: Google’s dirty little secret is that its commercial algorithm is broken and it can’t distinguish between quality content and spam. Which is why it is backing big brands in a big way because that’s the easiest way to sort things out. That’s too bad for small mom and pop businesses and the backbone [...]
Nicholas Retsinas @ HBR: The United States housing market is no longer the boat anchor dragging down economic growth. Data from the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices show that average home prices in an assortment of American cities have been on the upswing, increasing by almost 7 percent across the country in 2012. Recent reports that [...]
Jason Farago: here is nowhere left to live in New York. Trust me, I know. Fewer apartments are on the market today in the city than at any time since records began, and if you want one you’d better be able to put up the cash. Manhattan, converted these past 20 years into an antiseptic [...]
Jim Pickard: Socialism is a dirty word in many parts of the US. After all, America is a global symbol of free markets, muscular capitalism and the small state. Yet somehow the government has turned its mortgage market into a giant nationalised enterprise on a par with China’s Red Army or Britain’s National Health Service. [...]
Felix Salmon: None of these distinctions is hard and fast, of course, but at least it’s a start; basically, it all comes down to who writes the content in question. Was the material written by a professional journalist, writing a piece for an editorial outlet? In that case, any advertising message embedded within it falls [...]
Rolf Dobelli: In the past few decades, the fortunate among us have recognised the hazards of living with an overabundance of food (obesity, diabetes) and have started to change our diets. But most of us do not yet understand that news is to the mind what sugar is to the body. News is easy to [...]