Category: Newley’s Notes

Edition 100 — yes, 100! — of my email newsletter, Newley’s Notes, went out last week.

To subscribe, simply enter your email address at this link. It’s free, it’s fun, it’s brief, and few people unsubscribe.

Hi, friends. Welcome to the latest issue of Newley’s Notes, a newsletter in which I share my Wall Street Journal stories, other writings, and links about tech and life.

Amazingly, this is the 100th edition of Newley’s Notes. The first one went out on Feb 15, 2015. Time flies! Thanks, as ever, for reading.

Note: If you like NN, please forward this to a friend or click at the bottom to share on Twitter and Facebook. #SharingIsCaring

What I Wrote in The WSJ

— Uber Rival Grab in Talks for Up to $2 Billion from SoftBank, China’s Didi – a scoop with my colleagues Liza Lin and Julie Steinberg. Singapore-based Grab is set to get a new influx of cash, fueling its quest to win Southeast Asia. The story was followed by many outlets.

— China Bike-Sharing Titan Mobike Sets Sights on Washington, D.C. – another exclusive with my colleague Liza Lin.

What I Wrote at Newley.com

• New: Get iOS Alerts for My WSJ Stories – Want to get an iOS alert whenever my new stories go live? Of course you do. Click on the link to find out how. (TL;DR: select the plus sign next to my byline from within the new iOS app.)

5 Must-Reads in Tech

1. The untold story of Google’s academic influence. A piece by my colleagues Brody Mullins and Jack Nicas based on public records requests showing ways the search giant finances research papers to “defend against regulatory challenges of its market dominance.”

2. Will “beam me up” one day be possible? Scientists in China have for the first time teleported a photon particle from earth to a satellite.

3. U.S. folks: You stoked for the upcoming total solar eclipse? Here a handy map to find out where it’ll be most visible. It happens on Aug. 21.

4. Can Google, Facebook and Amazon be stopped? In a much-discussed WSJ essay, author Jonathan Taplin says powerful U.S. tech giants are remaking the economy and the nature of work, and are now poised to dominate artificial intelligence. Will the government or others do anything about their power?

5. J. M. Coetzee once wrote poems in computer code. The Nobel Prize winning South African novelist was a programmer in the 1960s, and a researcher at King’s College London made the discovery while examining his papers.

1 Fun Thing

1. A photographer took formal portraits of goats. And the pics are effing amazing. “They’re treated as if they were customers in a small-town photo studio,” said the Langley, Washington-based photographer. (Thanks, Anasuya!)

What’d I miss? Send me links, rants, raves, juicy news scoops and anything else. Thanks for reading, amigos.

Fist bump from New Delhi,
Newley

Edition 97 of my email newsletter, Newley’s Notes, went out on Friday.

To subscribe, simply enter your email address at this link. It’s free, it’s fun, it’s brief, and few people unsubscribe.

Hi, friends. Welcome to the latest issue of Newley’s Notes, a newsletter in which I share my Wall Street Journal stories and other writings, along with links about technology, business and life.

It’s been a busy week. But before we get going, a heads up that my colleague Eric Bellman and I will be doing a Facebook Live at 10:30 p.m. Eastern time Monday, which is 8 a.m. Tuesday India time. Join us! Details are here. We’ll be discussing…

What I Wrote in The WSJ

…This story: Apple Scraps Like an Underdog in Second Biggest Mobile Market. Here in India, where Apple has just a tiny market share, it’s trying to build brand awareness using some interesting tactics, my colleagues and I report. (Related Tweet I posted today: Photographic confirmation of our scoop last month that the first-ever assembled-in-India iPhones are a reality.)

– CEO’s Resignation Is the Least of Uber’s Problems in Asia. Following Travis Kalanick’s departure, my colleagues and I examined how the world’s most valuable startup is doing in Asia. The upshot: a potentially distracted Uber could lose ground to the likes of Ola in India and Grab and Go-Jek in Southeast Asia.

– India’s Hike Brings Mobile Payments to Its Messaging App. WhatsApp’s rival here is looking to tap into the fast growth of mobile wallet usage following last year’s cash crunch.

What I Wrote at Newley.com

– Weekend Sketching: Pen and Ink is Therapeutic. Just a few pics of some scribbling during my downtime.

5 Must-Reads in Tech

1. Why Uber’s Kalanick quit. My colleague Greg Bensinger has details on how and why it all went down. Meanwhile Axios’s Dan Primack reports that more than 1,000 Uber staff want him to return.

2. Samsung: doubling down on South Carolina? My colleague Tim Martin reports that the South Korean titan is in talks to plow $300 million into a factory in Newberry, S.C.

3. Facebook has a new mission, according to founder Mark Zuckerberg. It’s no longer to “connect the world.” Rather, he wants to give “people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.” That means more focus on Facebook groups.

4. Tesla: creating its own streaming music service? Would that even be a good idea? Recode has more.

5. Sweden has a museum of technological flops, celebrating everything from Crystal Pepsi to disposable DVDs. As Liz Lemon would say, I want to go to there.

1 Fun Thing

1. Beautiful, free, public domain ebooks. A new project called Standard Ebooks is a boon for digital book lovers.

What’d I miss? Just hit reply to send me links, rants, raves, juicy news scoops and anything else.

Thanks for reading.

,
Newley

Edition 96 of my email newsletter, Newley’s Notes, went out on Saturday.

To subscribe, simply enter your email address at this link. It’s free, it’s fun, it’s brief, and few people unsubscribe.

Hi, friends. Welcome to the latest issue of Newley’s Notes, a newsletter in which I share my Wall Street Journal stories and other writings, along with links about technology, business and life.

Apologies for not sending NN last week. I was in Hong Kong covering our WSJ D.Live Asia 2017 conference, a gathering of tech luminaries (and humble reporters) from across Asia. More on that below.

Meanwhile, the weather here in Delhi – normally sweltering this time of year – has taken an unexpectedly pleasant turn, with temps dropping and air pollution clearing up. Fingers crossed it lasts. It’s a nice break.

What I Wrote in The WSJ

– Use of H1B Visas Fell Before Donald Trump’s Critiques of Program – a story with my colleague Laura Meckler.

– Samsung Plans Fresh India Investment as It Looks to Upset Apple’s Cart – a story with my colleague Tim Martin on how the world’s biggest smartphone maker is shelling out $760 million to double its production capacity here, where it’s battling Apple.

– From D.Live Asia, I wrote about how Indonesian motorbike hailing startup Go-Jek claims it’s beating its rivals there, and how Singapore-based startup Grab is fighting for riders across Southeast Asia. Here are more of our stories from the conference.

5 Must-Reads in Tech

1. Amazon is buying Whole Foods for $13.7 billion. The blockbuster deal, as my WSJ colleagues wrote yesterday, transforms Amazon into “a major player in the bricks-and-mortar retail sector it has spent years upending.” They write (all emphasis mine):

The acquisition, Amazon’s largest by far, gives it a network of more than 460 stores that could serve as beachheads for in-store pickup and its distribution network. It would make Amazon an overnight heavyweight in the all-important grocery business, a major spending segment in which it has struggled to gain a foothold because consumers still largely prefer to shop for food in stores.

For more, here’s Brad Stone, author of the excellent book “The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon”:

In a sense, the surprising deal is preordained by his mission to construct the everything store: A company that delivers everything to everyone, at the best possible price and within the shortest amount of time.

And:

Grocery is an $800 billion market in the U.S., still largely untouched by the internet and resistant to change. Whole Foods itself has a well-established brand and high-income demographic that maps well to Amazon’s own customer base, and in particular its Amazon Prime subscription service, with an estimated 80 million members.

2. Walmart’s acquiring Bonobos for $310 million. The purchase of the menswear site shows how the retailer’s pushing into fashion.

3. A woman who was raped by an Uber driver here in India sued the company’s top execs in the U.S. She says they violated her privacy by disclosing her medical records, as a WSJ colleague reported. And if you missed it earlier: Founder Travis Kalanick is taking a leave of absence after a string of scandals.

4. The iPhone’s origin story. Ten years after the device was unveiled, Motherboard’s Brian Merchant has a new book out called “The One Device.” Here’s an excerpt.

5. Why cold-brew coffee is taking over the world. Okay, not exactly a high tech story, but one about tech(nique), coffee brewing, and business.

1 Fun Thing

1. TuneFind.com. Wondering what that cool song was on that TV show or movie you just saw? This site provides the answer.

What’d I miss? Just hit reply to send me links, rants, raves, juicy news scoops and anything else.
Thanks for reading.

,

Newley

Edition 94 of my email newsletter, Newley’s Notes, went out on Saturday.

To subscribe, simply enter your email address at this link. It’s free, it’s fun, it’s brief, and few people unsubscribe.

Hi, I’m Newley Purnell. Welcome to the latest issue of Newley’s Notes, where I share my Wall Street Journal stories, posts from by blog, and various links about technology, business and life.

What I Wrote at Newley.com

• Image of the Day: Map of China, Seen from the East. A geographic perspective I had never contemplated.

5 Must-Reads in Tech

1. On the internet (or lack thereof) in rural India. The New York Times’s Ellen Barry reports on how people in central India’s Madhya Pradesh state, like in many parts of India outside large cities, remain largely disconnected from the web.

2. Walt Mossberg’s final column. Mossberg, whose impending retirement I mentioned in NN88, looks to the future in his last dispatch at Recode and says we’re entering an era of ambient computing. Advances in fields like AI, VR/AR, robotics, drones and more mean tech will become ever more pervasive, rather than just sitting in front of us in the form of a PC or in our pockets, like smartphones:

I expect that one end result of all this work will be that the technology, the computer inside all these things, will fade into the background. In some cases, it may entirely disappear, waiting to be activated by a voice command, a person entering the room, a change in blood chemistry, a shift in temperature, a motion. Maybe even just a thought.
Your whole home, office and car will be packed with these waiting computers and sensors. But they won’t be in your way, or perhaps even distinguishable as tech devices.
This is ambient computing, the transformation of the environment all around us with intelligence and capabilities that don’t seem to be there at all.

3. DJI’s new drone for dummies. Speaking of drones, the Chinese powerhouse is launching a new $499 model, the Spark, that can be controlled with hand gestures. This could be a killer feature, since anyone who’s flown a traditional drone can tell you how hard they can be to keep aloft. (Yes, the new model can also snap selfies for you.)

4. Pics of Amazon’s new bookstore in NYC. Some have said the shop, in Manhattan’s Columbus Circle, looks like it was designed by people who hate books. What do you think? Say what you will about the toll the e-commerce titan has taken on book publishers and stores, but it’s interesting see their push into physical retail.

5. Why Google’s gobbling up your photos. In this piece at Medium, Victor Luckerson says the popular Google Photos product is all about gathering more and more of our data:

While we allow the company to passively track us through platforms like Chrome and Maps, Google Photos may be the first Google product that persuades people to actively share their personal information with the company en masse since Gmail.

1 Fun Thing

1. Video: Cody the Labrador stands in the pool. Not a new video, but new to me. Why dog paddle when you can just stand up?

What’d I miss? Just hit reply to send me links, rants, raves, juicy news scoops and anything else.

Thanks for reading.

Love,
Newley

Edition 93 of my email newsletter, Newley’s Notes, went out yesterday.

To subscribe, simply enter your email address at this link. It’s free, it’s fun, it’s brief, and few people unsubscribe.

Hi, I’m Newley Purnell – welcome to the latest issue of Newley’s Notes, where I share my Wall Street Journal stories, posts from by blog, and various links about technology, business and life.

What I Wrote in The WSJ

• Apple Assembles First iPhones in India – A scoop with my colleagues that was followed by many other news outlets. Taiwanese manufacturer Wistron has completed a trial run of the SE – Apple’s least expensive iPhone – at a plant in Bangalore. The first-ever “assembled in India” devices could hit stores soon.

• As Allegations Swirl Around SoftBank, It Calls Them ‘Sabotage’ – A story with colleagues that begins:

A contentious back-and-forth between SoftBank Group Corp. and attorneys who say they represent anonymous, disgruntled shareholders is riling the Japanese telecommunications titan.

The difficulties for SoftBank come as it is poised to begin investing $100 billion in technology startups around the world, and they have drawn concern from a Saudi Arabian investment vehicle that is set to commit $45 billion to the SoftBank technology fund.

The allegations from the attorneys have lingered over the past year about the conduct of top SoftBank executives, especially in India…

Click through to read the whole thing.

• India’s Paytm Secures $1.4 Billion Investment From SoftBank – The mobile payments firm is getting additional firepower to expand its services here.

What I Wrote at Newley.com

• Why I’m Excited about Manton Reece’s Microblogging Effort – TLDR: A new tool makes it easier to control content I create.

5 Must-Reads in Tech

1. A round-up of everything “WannaCry.” This comprehensive post from Troy Hunt explains what we know about the ransomware that hit computers around the world. There’s also a Wikipedia page about the attack.

2. The biggest news from Google’s annual developer conference, Google I/O, involved Google Lens (image recognition), a standalone virtual reality headset, new photo tools, and more. Here’s the BBC on the gathering’s 5 biggest announcements. And The Verge has a more comprehensive rundown.

3. The 20th anniversary of Amazon’s IPO. When the company when public in May 1997, it was worth $438 million. Now its worth almost $460 billion. Recode has some charts illustrating its rise. (Related: My notes from “The Everything Store,” Brad Stone’s excellent 2013 book on Jeff Bezos and the company he created.)

4. How tech titans rake it in. Speaking of charts, here’s a breakdown of how the likes of Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft make their money. (Don’t forget: Google and Facebook are enormously successful at attracting advertising bucks; they get comparatively little revenue from other sources.)

5. Bill Gates tweeted some advice for new college grads. While most were inspirational tips, he also mentioned one big regret: “When I left school, I knew little about the world’s worst inequities. Took me decades to learn.”

1 Fun Thing

1. The Bluths are coming back. The entire cast of hit TV show “Arrested Development” is returning to to Netflix for a fifth season next year.

As creator Mitchell Hurwitz said in a statement, “…we all felt that stories about a narcissistic, erratically behaving family in the building business — and their desperate abuses of power — are really underrepresented on TV these days.”

What’d I miss? Just hit reply to send me links, rants, raves, juicy news scoops and anything else.

Thanks for reading.

Love,
Newley

Edition 92 of my email newsletter, Newley’s Notes, went out yesterday.

To subscribe, simply enter your email address at this link. It’s free, it’s fun, it’s brief, and few people unsubscribe.

Hi, I’m Newley Purnell – welcome to the latest issue of Newley’s Notes, where I share my Wall Street Journal stories, posts from by blog, and various links about technology, business and life.

What I Wrote in The WSJ

• Indian Firms Face Shifting Landscape as Trump Cracks Down on Immigration – With Pres. Trump’s administration increasing the scrutiny on H-1Bs, companies are applying for fewer visas, bringing staff home and trying to accelerate the use of new technologies that require fewer workers.

5 Must-Reads in Tech

1. Is the “sharing economy” good for America? In a piece that was much-Tweeted this week, The New Yorker’s Nathan Heller examines services like Uber, TaskRabbit and Airbnb. The nut graf:

The American workplace is both a seat of national identity and a site of chronic upheaval and shame. The industry that drove America’s rise in the nineteenth century was often inhumane. The twentieth-century corrective—a corporate workplace of rules, hierarchies, collective bargaining, triplicate forms—brought its own unfairnesses. Gigging reflects the endlessly personalizable values of our own era, but its social effects, untried by time, remain uncertain.

2. Clayton Christensen, profiled. Also in The New Yorker, Larissa MacFarquhar looks at the effect that the man who coined the term “disruptive technologies” has had on American business. (My notes from his seminal book “The Innovator’s Dilemma” are here.)

3. There’s a new trailer for “Bladerunner 2049.” I am stoked. So stoked. You can watch it here. Vox has some analysis. And here’s a shot-by-shot comparison showing just how much the firm appears to respect the 1982 original.

4. On having Mark Zuckerberg over for dinner. Daniel Moore, of Newtown Falls, Ohio, had Zuck over for dinner when the Facebook founder was touring the state. He talks about the experience in this Business Insider story.

5. Frightening: Russian website aggregates web-linked security camera footage. CBC news found some even showing medical clinics and the interiors of homes.

1 Fun Thing

1. “history of the entire world, i guess.” That’s the title of this very amusing video that explains everything from the birth of this universe to artificial intelligence.

What’d I miss? Just hit reply to send me links, rants, raves, juicy news scoops and anything else.
Thanks for reading.

Love,
Newley

Edition 88 of my email newsletter, Newley’s Notes, went out to my 128 subscribers yesterday.

You can read it here.

To subscribe, simply enter your email address at this link. It’s free, it’s fun, it’s brief, and few people unsubscribe.

By the way, a programming note: I’m trying out a new-ish email newsletter platform called Revue. They offer some cool features, and make assembling the dispatches a bit easier than my old provider, TinyLetter. Stay tuned for more on that front.