Some call it the most famous pizza purchase in history: In May 2010, a programmer called Laszlo asked an online forum if anyone would buy him a couple of pies in exchange for 10,000 Bitcoins, an experimental online currency launched in 2009.
"No weird fish topping or anything like that," he wrote.
With each Bitcoin fetching less than a cent at the time, the order was worth about $41. Today, it would be valued at about $1.4 million (1.08 million euros).
While Apple’s stock declines, Google’s stock keeps zooming the other way.
If you go back six months, changes in the two companies’ share prices seem to be almost in lockstep, but heading in opposite directions. Overall, Google is up 20.6 percent, while Apple is down 37.8 percent.
As of today, at a market cap of $400 billion, Apple is no longer the most valuable company in the world. Google, meanwhile, hit an all-time high of $822.84, closing the day at $821.50 for a gain of 1.9 percent.
AdAge is reporting than in an effort to lure more content producers (along with the subsequent viewers and advertisers that follow) away from traditional television, YouTube is supposedly getting ready to launch paid subscription on specific channels.
The subscriptions won't be too pricey—at least for right now. Based on applications YouTube has reportedly asked a small group of unnamed channels to submit, the first group of paid channels will probably somewhere between $1 and $5 a month.
BGR has a huge feature on BlackBerry 10 with a 100-screenshot tour of RIM's next operating system.
BGR says this version of BlackBerry 10 is the "Gold Master," or the final version that will appear on new BlackBerry phones when they launch in a few weeks.
The source who provided the images also told BGR the new phone, called the BlackBerry Z10, will cost less than $199 on contract.
That leaves a lot of wiggle room, but it sounds like RIM is willing to sell its new phone on the cheaper side in the hope that people will choose it over other top-tier phones that cost $199 and up.
’m sure you know the marketing gimmick by now: the reason most retail stores price items at $99.99 instead of $100 is that it tricks the average consumer’s mind into believing an item is cheaper than it is.
But does this pricing method work for freelancing as well?
Does charging $249 – or $249.99 – instead of $250 bring in more clients?
I contacted three highly-respected, veteran designers to get their input.
For any freelancer, how much to charge clients is one of the hardest things to get right. If you set the price for your services too low, you could be leaving a lot of money on the table and get stuck working with clients that don’t see the true value of your work.
When it comes to pricing, most of us are either guessing or copying what others are doing.
Luckily, we can rely on some research studies to help us price our services better by applying the psychological principles derived from the studies that we’ll discuss below.
Here are seven pricing tips based on research studies.
3D printing seems to be everywhere these days, used to create everything from handguns to headphones. But what does it really take to get started: How much does it cost, how difficult is it to use, and how do you actually get your hands on a 3D printer?
Nintendo will finally make its Wii U available to customers this November, after having previewed the next-gen console for over a year now, the company announced at a press event today. The Wii U will come in a $299.99 Basic version in white with 8GB of onboard storage, and a 32GB Deluxe model in black for $349.99. It’ll hit the U.S. on November 18 and Europe on November 30.
Apple’s website now shows the unlocked pricing for the iPhone 5 in the U.S. Using the site’s compare tool, you can see that the 16GB model starts at $649, with the 32GB version costing $749, and the 64GB top-tier configuration running $849.
That’s the same that the iPhone 4S used to cost unlocked, and it’s a considerable additional expense above and beyond the on-contract price, but you get a couple of advantages.
Part guesswork, part experience, part number crunching – how ever you look at it, determining your price is a difficult task. Here are nine factors to take into consideration when pricing your services...
As we wrote about in the original post below, Facebook plunged below the IPO price in the early going, and the route continues now that the official start of trading has begun.
It's now off over eight percent to around $35/share, well below the $38/share IPO price.
Amazon is offering refurbished Kindle Fires for $140 today.
Gizmodo discovered the deal.
The Kindle Fire is one of the leading Android tablets currently available, and after knocking $30 off its regular retail price, Amazon has made it one of the best you can get for the money.
If you have any interest in the Kindle Fire, this is the most affordable way to pick one up.
As large companies increasingly look to protect their revenue streams through IP risk mitigation, startups with strong patent holdings will become increasingly valuable because they provide an opportunity to remove dual potential threats to the potential acquirer’s revenue stream — as a competitor and as a patent threat. Startups that are able to position themselves as part of an acquirer’s IP risk mitigation strategy make themselves more attractive targets for acquisition.
For example, Twitter acquired Tweetie days after Tweetie filed for a patent application on the pull down to refresh feature and Google recently acquired Apture and Katango, two small startups with multiple pending patent applications relevant to Google’s businesses. Although some have described these deals as talent acquisitions, the value presented by the associated IP to the acquirer should not be ignored.
Google's first tablet was supposed to be ready to go in May, but the company is pushing back the release to July at the earliest, according to a report at The Verge.
Google is working with Asian manufacturer Asustek to build a 7-inch tablet running Android 4.0.
As currently built, the tablet would sell for $250, says The Verge. That's $50 about Amazon's Kindle Fire. Google wants the price to be lower to compete with Amazon.
The hope for Google, according to the report, is to breathe some life into Android on tablets. Thus far, Google has been a total flop in the tablet market. It hopes that co-branding a tablet like it once co-branded a Nexus phone will help fix that.
Google's first tablet was supposed to be ready to go in May, but the company is pushing back the release to July at the earliest, according to a report at The Verge.
Google is working with Asian manufacturer Asustek to build a 7-inch tablet running Android 4.0.
As currently built, the tablet would sell for $250, says The Verge. That's $50 about Amazon's Kindle Fire. Google wants the price to be lower to compete with Amazon.
The hope for Google, according to the report, is to breathe some life into Android on tablets. Thus far, Google has been a total flop in the tablet market. It hopes that co-branding a tablet like it once co-branded a Nexus phone will help fix that.
It's only a symbolic victory, but Apple's stock closed higher than Google's for the first time ever.
Apple closed the day at $633.38. Google closed at $632.32
Per-share prices don't really mean anything, but it's an interesting note given the increasing competition between the companies.
Real estate prices have fallen from their peak, but there are ways to save even more when making the big purchase.
How you price your services makes a big difference in how your business is viewed by prospective clients. For freelancers, especially those just starting out, the tendency is to price work on the low end to generate client leads and interest. But what freelancers end up doing is attracting the cutthroat bargain hunters— not a sustainable client base to have in the long run.
On Monday Apple stock hit an all-time high of $503.83 in early trading, surpassing the magic (and arbitrary) $500 mark. It has since gone back down a bit, but all morning the stock dipped above and below $500. At the time of publishing this post, AAPL was at $499.22.
