In 2004, Sun Microsystems revealed a radical plan to shake up the computing industry. It would build a series of large data centers and sell access to the computers inside them for $1 per hour.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, which regulates 10,000 products ranging from apparel to household appliances, inspects less than 1 percent of imports under its jurisdiction. With the odds stacked against being detected, cost-cutting foreign manufacturers continue to supply dangerous goods to U.S. retailers.
"It's dying," says an electronics-store retailer, shaking his head as he looks out at abandoned stores and torn promotional posters in what was once the busiest market in the Zhongguancun district, known as China's silicon valley. "There are more sales staff than customers around here. Everyone buys online now."
Instacart, the fast-growing online grocery delivery start-up that can get groceries to your doorstep within an hour, is growing some more. The three-year-old company just announced it has raised $220m in a funding round led by the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
You think you've had bad customer service buying products online - how about the guy in India who ordered his wife a Samsung smartphone, and the package arrived with only a brick and a bar of soap in it!
China's air and water pollution is more visible than its soil pollution and more often makes headlines. But recent government studies underscore the worrying extent of heavy-metal pollution tainting China's agricultural lands - and its food supply.
The Army and Air Force Exchange Service - widely known as the PX or the Exchange - is designed to provide everything a soldier might need or want, tax-free and often at a deep discount: uniforms, tactical gear, recreational sports equipment, vitamin supplements, electronics, furniture, booze, lawn ornaments. It serves 12.8 million customers in 50 states and more than 30 countries. In fiscal 2013 the PX had revenue of $8.3bn and a profit of $332m. About a third of that was reinvested in operations, and the rest - $208m - was plowed into the Pentagon's morale, welfare and recreation programs to provide services like playing fields and on-base Boy Scout troops.
Returned merchandise, which retailers have to discount or even dump, end up costing U.S. merchants as much as $20bn a year, and are a "ticking time bomb" that threatens retailers' profitability. To avoid that blowup, merchants are turning to new technologies.
Four years ago, when its little card reader attachments for phones and tablets began to show up in cabs and at farmers' markets, Square was one of the coolest, most innovative companies in Silicon Valley. That's over.
The recent introduction of Apple Pay was widely described as the dawn of a new era for smartphone payments. But within a week, two major pharmacy chains, Rite Aid and CVS, rejected Apple’s version of the future: Both disabled Apple Pay (as well as other tap-to-pay mobile payments systems Google Wallet and Softcard).
