News
In February 2017, Airbnb acquired peer-to-peer payments startup Tilt, which was like an early precursor to Venmo or Square Cash. A few months later, Airbnb started quietly testing how it could use Tilt's technology to help people traveling as a group. The early results were promising and more than 80,000 groups used it to make it easier to pay.
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Just Eat, a company that specializes in the ordering and delivering of mass-market takeaway food, is set to join the FTSE 100, the UK’s benchmark stock index, just three and a half years after going public.
The company’s stock has surged 40% this year, giving it a market value of £5.6 billion ($7.5 billion). The increase has made it bigger than two of the UK’s largest listed supermarket groups, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons, which are valued at £5 billion and £5.1 billion, respectively.
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But some recent surveys show that young people actually prefer an in-store shopping experience. In the 2017 Future of Retail report, communications company WalkerSands found that younger people actually prefer to shop in-store, seeking out discounts, personalised service, product demonstrations, and food and drink. By contrast, less than half (46%) of 26-to-45-year-olds want to shop in stores.
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Ocado Technology has developed a robot that can recognise and sort over 50,000 unique items from its storage crates.
The robot pick station consists of a suction cup on the end of an articulated arm. The arm is equipped with a pipe running to an air compressor, which is capable of lifting items regardless of their shape, as long as they are within the weight restriction.
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Harrods, London’s famous luxury department store, is planning the biggest revamp in its 180-year history as part of a £200 million investment which is aimed partly at attracting more Hong Kong and Chinese customers, managing director Michael Ward told the South China Morning Post on Thursday.
The three-year capital plan includes ploughing more money into its e-commerce offering to ensure the store remains popular for customers from around the world, especially from affluent Asian destinations, led by Hong Kong and China, said Ward.
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The projects are being backed as part of the NHS Innovation Accelerator (NIA) programme which is designed to encourage innovative technologies in the NHS.
One of them is RespiraSense, a wireless device which measures breathing and abdomen movements to help detect early signs of sepsis, pneumonia and cardiac arrest.
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Almost every sixth car sold in the world will be electric by 2025, according to a UBS global autos survey released Tuesday. And if things go the way they have in 2017, those cars are more likely to be emblazoned with a Tesla Inc. logo than BMW AG’s.
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StrideUp, a U.K. startup founded last year by Sakeeb Zaman and Rohan Trivedi, both formerly of Deutsche Bank, wants to make shared home ownership more readily available within the private housing sector.
The company, which launched in the summer, lets you buy a portion of your home while you continue to rent the remainder. The idea, Trivedi tells me, is to provide an alternative to a mortgage, a form of financing that is increasingly out of reach for many.
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If you thought the shops were looking quiet last Friday then you were right.
A whopping £1.4bn was spent on online sales in the UK on Black Friday - up some 11.7% on last year, according to online retailers trade body IMRG. But on High Streets, shopping centres and retail parks it was a different story with footfall figures down 3.6%, analysis firm Springboard said.
Online's shopping growth is already an established trend, but IMRG says it works particularly well for sales. To read more on this, click here.
Following a successful trial, TfL has announced that 4G will be coming to the London Underground with the rollout starting in 2019. Currently Wi-Fi is available at every station, but this change will mean you don’t have to wait for stops to send email.
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