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Daily Archives: July 25, 2019

Barnes & Noble’s fate rests in the hands of a British indie bookstore owner

Quartz: “In 2018, it seemed like the days of the United States’ last major bookstore chain were numbered. A decade of falling sales, brutal layoffs, 150 store closures, six chief executives, and a $1 billion loss on its Nook e-reader had left Barnes & Noble in the throes of an identity crisis. So acute was its struggle that one New York Times critic imagined a sequel to the 1998 romantic comedy You’ve Got Mail in which Tom Hanks—the big-box bookstore owner who crushes Meg Ryan’s independent book shop—is now the David to Amazon’s Goliath. But here’s a better plot twist: What if Meg Ryan got tapped to save the big chain, and teach Hanks what people really want from their bookstore? That’s the mission that Elliot Advisors, the hedge fund that purchased B&N for $638 million in June, has handed to freshly appointed CEO James Daunt. A 55-year-old Englishman, Daunt has spent nearly three decades in the bookselling business. For most of that time, he was exclusively Team Indie, overseeing an idyllic, boutique book-buying experience as the founder of Daunt Books, which has six locations in well-heeled neighborhoods in London.

Despite his small-business bona fides, Daunt has in the past decade emerged as an unlikely savior for big-box bookstores, first overseeing the revival of Waterstones, a UK chain with close to 300 branches, and now at Barnes & Noble. His turnaround strategy is centered on a simple premise: In a world where Amazon offers unbeatable convenience and prices, big book chains will only survive if they act more like independents…”

Google Images now lets you swipe up to open a search result

Venture Beat: “The AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) project, which was first announced by Google in 2015, is an open source framework designed to speed up mobile webpages. The company asserts that it cuts load times to under a second by balancing clickthrough probability with device and network constraints, and it claims that AMP is actively used… Continue Reading

Equifax data breach settlement: How to file a claim for $125 or free credit reporting

USAToday: “If you were affected by the 2017 Equifax data breach, you can now file a claim for a piece of the settlement. The credit-reporting company has agreed to pay between $575 million and $700 million to settle state and federal investigations related to a massive security incident that exposed the personal information of more than 147 million… Continue Reading

Senate Intel Committee Unveils Election Security Report In Wake Of Mueller Hearings

NPR – “The Senate intelligence committee has released its report detailing Russia’s targeting of election systems in 2016 along with recommendations for protecting American elections from foreign interference. The committee’s final report on election security [redacted] appeared Thursday as the 2020 presidential race gets underway in what promises to be a bitter and divisive election… Continue Reading

The 101 people, ideas and things changing how we work today

BBC – The world of work is in transition. Are you ready? – “The world of work is being struck by waves of change. Some are vast and visible – leaps in machine learning and artificial intelligence or the rise of ‘do anything from anywhere’ technologies. Other ideas are just beginning to emerge – like monitoring… Continue Reading