Turmoil in global financial markets and economies is never good for Silicon Valley despite the fact that the regional economy has its own boom and bust cycles that operate on a different timetable.Currently, Silicon Valley has been booming, recapturing the trend that was in place in the second half of 2008, before the financial meltdown, of growing VC investments and jobs. It has to be asked though, whether like that recovery in 2008 which ran smack into an economic crisis, ...

Online streaming giant Hulu is set to make its first move outside the US as it plans to offer film and TV streaming services in Japan. Hulu has always aimed to expand globally, as stated in its official blog."We recognize that entertainment fans beyond the US have the same desires as those on our home shores: find and watch the world's premium content when, how, and where they want," says the blog.Hulu's Japanese streaming services, much like its ...

Based on the value of its global stock, Apple is now the most successful company on the planet. The stock exchange may currently be painting a grim picture for many businesses, but Apple continues to thrive with a total market capital of US$337-billion and a share value of US$363.The multinational company beat off companies like oil giant ExxonMobil in terms of overall corporate value. ExxonMobil's stock fell to US$68 per share; this lowers their total valuation to US$330.8-billion.While ...

Social networks such as Twitter and Facebook have been blamed for augmenting the recent violent riots in London and other English metropoles. Speaking to British newspaper The Guardian, Steve Kavanagh, the deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan police, said that "inflammatory" and "inaccurate" messages on Twitter helped fuel the riots."Social media and other methods have been used to organize these levels of greed and criminality," Kavanagh said.Social media has also been used to help those who have been affected ...

Activity streams, wireless power, internet TV, NFC payments and private cloud computing are some of the technologies that are being hyped at the moment, says IT research company Gartner.But some of the new technologies at the start of the hype curve include trends like social analytics, gamification, big data, social TV, natural language question answering and the "Internet of Things".Gartner's now-famous 2011 Hype Cycle Special Report provides an assessment of the maturity, business benefit and future direction of more than ...

In recent days, the streets of London have descended into bedlam as riots and looting spread, sparked by a protest organised around the shooting of an alleged gang member.Scotland Yard reported that a total of 44 officers have been injured during running battles with angry youths and, as has become tradition, social networks such as Twitter have come under fire for enabling the orchestrations of public violence. This time, however, there has been much finger pointing at BlackBerry Messenger, the ...

Almost better than any film adaption of a comic book, is the anticipation built up from the viral campaigns which leak out from the silver tap of Hollywood.The internet has become a bridge which connects the public to their childhood memories and marketing agencies are quick to pounce on our nostalgia in the form of videos, online games and interactive websites which slowly reveal the next major blockbuster. In the past decade, the internet has assisted in marketing the ...

There's an old adage that goes, "you need to break a few eggs to make a cake". This doesn't mean, however, that you have to break every egg you have in order to get the cake just right. There is a bit of an advantage to being in an emerging economy. The fact that first world markets have gone through the pain of developing and learning online marketing techniques first means there is a wealth of knowledge which emerging economies ...

"Hacktivist" group Anonymous has issued yet another threat of a cyber attack, this time against Facebook, reports tech blog Mashable.The loosely organised group of hackers has declared, in a statement aimed at the global body of Facebook users, that "your medium of communication you all so dearly adore will be destroyed".The statement goes on to explain the reasoning for what has been dubbed, "OpFacebook":Facebook has been selling information to government agencies and giving clandestine access to information security firms so ...

Back-to-back Review: The Samsung NX11 and Canon SX30 bridge cameras are aimed at the same photographer, but take different approaches. Both very light and very compact, ideal for doing the tourist or family holiday thing. One goes with an interchangeable lens system, one with a beast of a lens that does everything. Ish. Cameras in the bridge camera segment have, for a long time, been squeezed between their little brothers, the steadily more powerful and capable point-and-shoots, and big brother ...