Color, Value, and Evolution of Logos

Facebook Acquires A Fitness-Tracking App.

Facebook Inc. has acquired mobile-fitness application Moves, as the social network jumps into the increasingly popular fitness-tracking market. Moves, which is operated by Finnish company ProtoGeo Oy, makes an app that works on Apple Inc. iOS devices and those that run on Google Inc.’s Android mobile operating system. The app lets people gather data from a smartphone’s accelerometer to determine whether a user is walking, running or doing other physical activities.
With the Moves app, Facebook can enter the market without developing its own wearable computing hardware. The app uses a smartphone's built-in sensors to track a person's physical activity, recognizing movements such as walking, cycling and running.

Corporate Acquisitions of Startups: Why Do They Fail?

by steveblank

The Innovation PortfolioMost large companies manage three types of innovation: process innovation (making existing products incrementally better), continuous innovation (building on the strength of the company’s current business model but creating new elements) anddisruptive innovation (creating products or services that did not exist before.)

Companies manage these three types of innovation with an innovation portfolio – theybuild innovation internally, they buy it or they partner with resources outside their company.

Five Types of Innovation to Buy
If they decide to buy, large companies can:

1. license/acquire intellectual property
2. acquire startups for their teams (and discard the product)
3. buy out another company’s product line for the product
4. acquire a company for the product and its installed base of users
5. buy out an entire company for its revenue and profits.

Silicon Valley – a Corporate Innovation Candy StoreCorporate business development and strategic partner executives are flocking to Silicon Valley to find these five types of innovation. In response, venture capital firms like Sequoia and Andreessen/Horowitz are hiring new partners just to work with their portfolio companies and match them to corporations. They are actively organizing annual and quarterly activities to bring the portfolio and Fortune 500 decision makers together–  in both large events and one-on-one visits. The goal is to get a corporate investment or an outright acquisition of the startup.

Read more at: http://steveblank.com/2014/04/23/corporate-acquisitions-of-startups-why-do-they-fail/?utm_source=Foundora&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Issue-308

Google introduces 'time machine' feature in Street View

Google has turned its Google Maps Street View into a time machine to let users travel back in time and see how places have changed.

The new feature will let users track changes in landscape, buildings, roads and entire neighbourhoods from around the world since the Street View mapping program began in 2007.

Users can now click on a new clock icon that will appear in the corner of the screen when using Street View on Google Maps on a desktop or laptop computer, firing up scrollbar-controlled time machine, changing the year and even season of the area or building they are currently looking at to see how it has changed over time. 

Indian Railways is committed to Microsoft

Since 2013, Microsoft India is having an exclusive realionship with IRCTC, by which IRCTC app is only available for Windows Phone and Windows devices. Now, Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) launched the official National Train Enquiry System for Windows 8 devices. The app has now made it to the Windows Phone Store as well.

It’s quite an impressive app – both in function and form. It has a very neat and beautiful user interface, and the user experience is seamless and intuitive.