Alibaba To Invest $1.25B In Restaurant Delivery Service Ele.me, Says Report

Alibaba will reportedly invest $1.25 billion in Ele.me, a food delivery service based in Shanghai, says financial news site Caixin (link via Google Translate). The deal would Alibaba the startup’s biggest shareholder, with a 27.7 percent stake.

According to Crunchbase, Ele.me has raised about $1.09 billion dollars. Its list of investors is noteworthy because it includes Alibaba rivals Tencent and JD.com. Ele.me’s largest round, a $630 million Series F, was announced in August.

If the deal goes through, it strengthens Alibaba’s O2O strategy. O2O, which can stand for online-to-offline or offline-to-online, is shorthand for the business of convincing e-commerce customers to spend money at offline businesses or, on the other hand, getting customers who usually shop in brick-and-mortar stores to make online purchases.

Alibaba’s other O2O investments include its affiliate Alipay, China’s largest mobile payments platform, electronics retail chain Suning, and taxi app Didi Kuaidi.

China Is Making Domain Name History

Short domains have always been valuable, but if you’re a company today and want to own a short domain name, your price just became a lot higher. And I mean a lot.

There is a market unfolding that very few know about, and tens of millions of dollars are trading hands monthly. Over the last two years, China has become the largest buyer of domain names, resulting in what is likely the biggest story in domain-name investing since the Internet began.

Chinese investors (and other domain prospectors) have been buying up numeric and short-character dot coms faster than Adele can say “Hello.”

George Kirikos, a well-known follower of ICANN policy, tweeted on November 14th: “136 of the 676 2-letter .com domain names are now owned by Chinese registrants, breaking the 20% barrier (20.1% to be exact).”

The same week, TheDomains.com published an article noting Verisign just reported that 3.2 million new dot-com domains were registered in the previous three weeks — more than the entire second quarter.

What was once a market where domain name owners would hold and wait for a company to approach them is now quickly becoming a market with mass liquidity — the missing piece of the puzzle for the last decade.

Three-letter dot coms consisting of traditionally lower-quality letters often sold in the $10,000 to $15,000 range. Now they are catching upwards of $50,000, and more.

Western investors are still trying to catch up and understand the Chinese market. Letters of lower use in English — q, z and j for example — are considered premium in China. Vowels, on the other hand, are not premium. Any domain name with a vowel or a v is considered less valuable.

Ron Jackson, the publisher behind DNJournal, regularly reports sales like Give.com, Amber.com and Classic.com. However, the sales reports today are now almost nothing but short domains. In fact, 9 of the Top 10 year-to-date sales (all over $500,000) are less than three characters.

Even the preferred way to communicate with buyers has changed. Most transactions are agreed upon in China through QQ — the largest instant messaging system in China, but rarely known in North America. Tracy Fogarty of eNaming explains; “Most offers are sent through QQ. Maybe 1 in 10 people use email, even fewer use the phone.”

This explosion has made a lot of people extremely wealthy, but it’s not who you may think. Many industry veterans missed the boat — trying to understand how to analyze what’s attractive to Chinese buyers; others doubt the long-term value of this market, and many are doubling down for what they see ahead. All of the elements for a Hollywood story are happening right now.

One great site that tracks market activity is Chaomi.cc, showing sales history in charts (much like forex, gold or other commodities). As Hong Kong domain-name investor Franky Tong explained, “chao mi“ literally means fried rice, but also means domain speculation. This shows how Western investors may have their hands full analyzing data.

Over the last year, some incredible new milestones in domain-name registrations have been achieved.

• All five-number dot coms are now registered.
• All five-number dot nets are now registered.
• All six-number dot coms are now registered.
• All seven-number dot coms beginning with three eights, ending with three eights or having almost any repeatable pattern are now registered.
• All four-letter .orgs with premium Chinese letters are now registered.

Even with eight-number dot-com domains, of which there are one hundred million, it’s getting hard to find any of the popular patterns that don’t include a zero or four.

Is This A Fad Or History In The Making?

China is a vastly different culture than America, especially when it comes to wealth. Chinese citizens are raised learning strictly about the importance of savings and building wealth versus our consumer-based society.

Wealthy people love to invest and Chinese investors are hungry for portable wealth. The rise of Bitcoin was something quickly linked to China markets, but it couldn’t hold once Chinese regulators put a stop to the acceptance of deposits in Chinese Yuan. Bitcoin also has (and still has) liquidity issues for many owners outside of North America.

Domain names are different. First, the rarity of domain names is perfect and measurable since there are only so many two-letter dot coms, only so many three-letter dot coms, so many four-numbers with an 8, etc.

In fact, what seems like millions of domain names can easily be broken down into premium domain names that have a far lower supply than Bitcoin ever did.

This new demand for domain names is not an easy thing to understand, but some of those who do have acquired almost generational wealth over the past year. Others have made hundreds of thousands.

Short domain names are commodities now. Fads come and go, and this certainly does not seem like a fad in my opinion. Will there be ups and downs? Sure. But we are likely witnessing history in the making — a new history for an established marketplace that never saw this coming.

Maybe you should have ponied up and paid for that domain name after all.

Google Self-Driving Car’s Chris Urmson On California DMV: “Same Old Status Quo”

Yesterday, the California DMV posted a draft of proposed regulations for self-driving vehicles. Obviously, Google was waiting to see what came down and now that they’ve had some time to look through it all, their head of the Self-Driving unit, Chris Urmson, has responded with a Medium post.

Since these regulations are in draft form, the long back and forth between companies and the DMV begins now. However, many were not impressed with what has been initially proposed. The key takeaway from these is that California would like a licensed driver behind the “wheel” at all times. Well, fully autonomous cars might not have wheels. Because people don’t want to drive.

California’s Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom said in a statement:

These latest draft regulations may prove too onerous, create road blocks to innovation, and may ultimately drive the development of this promising industry to other states.

Urmson’s tone similarly cuts to the chase:

In a perplexing move this week, however, California seemed to shrink back from its leadership: the CA DMV proposed a draft rule that would require a self-driving car to have a licensed driver at all times. This maintains the same old status quo and falls short on allowing this technology to reach its full potential, while excluding those who need to get around but cannot drive. While we’re disappointed by this, we will continue to work with the DMV as they seek feedback in the coming months, in the hope that we can recapture the original spirit of the bill.

Google has been pretty damn transparent when it comes to their self-driving project, even publishing monthly reports that talk about accidents that took place and learnings from the team.

Urmson’s closing is equally as strong, challenging California to be a leader in the US in this type of innovation.

California is a state with both world-class car culture and world-class innovation, and we can do better. Instead of putting a ceiling on the potential of self-driving cars, let’s have the courage to imagine what California would be like if we could live without the shackles of stressful commutes, wasted hours, and restricted mobility for those who want the independence that the automobile has always represented.

There’s no “winners” or “losers” here yet, but the conversation about self-driving cars isn’t starting off the way that Google and other companies have hoped. Consumers simply don’t know enough about the technology to weigh in yet, which is why Google is trying to, and overdoing it sometimes, explain the ins and outs the best they can. Its program in Austin is a shining example of that. They’re not simply testing the roads there, they’re testing the community. Talking to them about what they think.

If the people don’t want to drive their cars, then states are going to have to put in more work to understand why and how.

Google’s November Self-Driving Car Report Details Learnings, A Pull-Over, And A Rear-End Collision

Google’s monthly self-driving car reports are fun to read through, and gives transparent accounts of what the team is up to, how the cars are performing, and any lessons learned along the way. Last month focused on pedestrians with Halloween being a helper.

This month? The company says its currently averaging 10,000-15,000 autonomous miles per week on public streets with 23 Lexus RX450h SUVs and 30 prototypes on the road. We also learned more about that car that was going too slow and got pulled over, as well as one of the cars being rear-ended at a red light.

On the former, Google explains why their cars were going so damn slow:

From the very beginning we designed our prototypes for learning; we wanted to see what it would really take to design, build, and operate a fully self-driving vehicle — something that had never existed in the world before. This informed our early thinking in a couple of ways. First, slower speeds were easier for our development process. A simpler vehicle enabled us to focus on the things we really wanted to study, like the placement of our sensors and the performance of our self-driving software. Secondly, we cared a lot about the approachability of the vehicle; slow speeds are generally safer (the kinetic energy of a vehicle moving at 35mph is twice that of one moving at 25mph) and help the vehicles feel at home on neighborhood streets.

The Mountain View police now knows why Google’s cars are driving around at that speed…and so do we.

On the rear-end accident, ​one of Google’s Lexus model autonomous vehicles or “Google AV” was hit from behind by a car going 4 MPH while the Google AV waited to take a right at a red light. The car that hit it rolled after its stop, thus hitting the car. Nobody was hurt. The team went on to explain how it trains its software to handle situations such as knowing when it’s OK to turn right on red:

Our vehicles can identify situations where making a right turn on red is permissible and the position of our sensors gives us good visibility of left-hand traffic. After coming to a complete stop, we nudge forward if we need to get a better view (for example, if there’s a truck or bus blocking our line of sight). Our software and sensors are good at tracking multiple objects and calculating the speed of oncoming vehicles, enabling us to judge when there’s a big enough gap to safely make the turn. And because our sensors are designed to see 360 degrees around the car, we’re on the lookout for pedestrians stepping off curbs or cyclists approaching from behind.

It’s all fascinating stuff. It’s like teaching a kid how to drive for the first time, except this kid is a big damn car driving itself around. Google feeds its software with all types of data, collecting more and more information as the cars drive the streets.

How to Transfer Contacts from iPhone to Android and Vice versa

For many of us, the biggest headache after buying a new phone has to be the transfer of private data like Contacts, Mail, Messages etc. Today, we are trying to address the contacts part, specially for those who are switching from Android to iPhone or other way around.

Transfer Contacts From iPhone to Android

Ready to make a switch from iPhone to Android? Good for you, but how do you import all your contacts from the iPhone to the Android? Since the iPhone doesn’t have the native option to copy your contacts to the SIM card, only by installing apps such of SIManager, we found a few alternatives to make the migration easier with no loss of data. To transfer your contacts from the iPhone, you have 3 options: sync your device with Google Contacts, Sync with Windows and Google or use the Sinkontact app.

1. Sync with Google Contacts

In order to sync with Google Contacts, you have to follow these easy steps:

• connect your iPhone or any other iDevice via USB to your PC
• open iTunes, select your phone and click the info tab
• check the Sync Contacts with option and select Google Contacts from the drop-down menu

• click on Configure and enter your Google username and password, provided that you have one already

After doing this, your contacts are safely stored inside your Google Account, ready to be downloaded to your new Android phone, with only a few steps to be followed:

• go to Menu -> Settings -> Accounts & Sync
• tap the Add Account option, select Google Account and fill in your username and password

• taping on the Google account will open sync options, where you have the possibility to sync Contacts, Gmail, Google Reader, Picasa and Google Calendar.

Now, just back and enjoy your new Android smartphone with all your contacts from the iPhone. Some will say that switching sides with the Android army was a good thing to do while others will call you a traitor. Good thing you get to keep your contacts safe and sound in this “cruel” smartphone battle.

2. Create a CSV File

If you want to sync your contacts first with Windows then with Google Contacts, the process is a little complicated, you will have to create a CSV file, so bare with me please. This is how you do it:

• follow the first 3 steps of the Google Contacts from above, except, instead of Google Contacts, select Windows Address Book
• open Windows Address Book (you should see here all your contacts, if not, try restarting the app and/or Windows)
• click File -> Export -> Other Address Book -> select text file

• select a name for the CSV file and scroll down to Mobile Phone and select it, also you have to do is select the information you want to export of the contacts and browse the location of the CSV file

• access your Google Account, and go to Import, browse your computer and provide the CSV file you created
• after importing your contacts to Google, just sync them with your Android device like before

While this method is not the simplest of them, it is the safest way to do it.

3. Use Synkontact

The last method of transferring your contacts from the iPhone to the Android is a cool little app called Synkontact. The process of transferring the data is easy and it takes just a few minutes:

• download and install Synkontact on your phone
• open the application and select upload
• type a name and tap ok

• the contacts are uploaded and a password is provided, save the password
• enter from your Android device (you have to install Synkontact of the Android phone),select download and enter the name and password

• select merge into local, tap OK and you are done

This process only takes a few minutes, but on the other hand, I don’t like the idea of uploading my contacts to a unknown server, it just depends on everyone’s needs. These methods were all tested and all of them work fine. So, if you are thinking of going Android and you didn’t know how to get your contacts from one iPhone over to the Android side, now you know!

II. Switch Contacts From Android to iPhone

If you have an Android phone and you choose to get a iPhone, you can transfer your contacts to your new phone by doing the reverse of the iPhone to Android methods. It would be non-sense to list them once more. There are also methods that work only one way.

1. Copy your Android Contacts to a microSD Card

• open Contacts on your device
• go to menu and tap Import/Export
• the phone saves your contacts with the default name 00001.vcf and it stores it in the root folder of the microSD card
• connect your Android device to your PC and selectMass Storage
• copy the 00001.vcf on to your PC and you are ready to Import it to Google Contacts or MS Outlook
• from here, you can import the contacts to your iPhone via iTunes

2. Upload to Outlook or Google

Importing the contacts is very easy on the iPhone, after you have uploaded them to Outlook or Google. Again, don’t think of all those Android lovers that might “hate” you for your move. Who knows, maybe you love diversity and you have both an iPhone and an Android smartphone, right?

• open Settings on your iPhone
• go to Mail, Contacts, Calendars
• tap Add Account and select Google or Outlook


• fill in the Email Address, Domain, username and password -> tap Next -> enter server name (m.google.com for Gmail Account) -> tap Next
• tap to ensure that Contacts is set to On

And you are done! The contacts are now on your iPhone. Also, remember, there shouldn’t be any hard feelings when switching sides. It’s better to experiment how Android or the iPhone feels and performs than to say you don’t like it because you are to afraid to try it.

How to Make Sure Important Emails Don’t End up in Spam

n the past few years, the Internet has developed in a rapid pace and almost half of the population of the Earth has an email account. The email is one of the cheapest and quickest ways in which you are able to send and receive messages, regardless of the place you are in. This service enables you to talk to your friends, family or colleagues at a lower price that you had to pay if you were using the cellphone. The only thing that you need in order to be able to use the email is an Internet connection.

A very annoying glitch of the system is represented by the apparition of spam, which are unwanted emails from advertisers that are sent indiscriminately. Nowadays, it got to the point where your spam filter slips some spam emails into your inbox because it is not clever enough. Furthermore, another problem may appear: what happens when the spam filter does the mistake of trashing messages from your acquaintances and sends them right in the spam bin? Well, lots of ignored contacts and an almost filled inbox, we might say.

In the first case, you can simply delete the spam message from the inbox or create a filter for that domain that sent it, but in the other case? It is not so easy to check dozens of spam emails that are received every day.

Protect Important Emails and keep them out of Spam

Today, you will learn how to tweak the settings of any email address and even use a couple of applications that manage email accounts so that you will not lose any important notification to the spam folder. This is a small step by step tutorial for the most well-known emailing services, Google and Yahoo, and can be applied to most intelligent browsers out there.

Yahoo

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A small trick which every Yahoo! Mail user can enjoy is to create a simple filtering rule. With this rule, people have the possibility of marking certain messages as important or send them directly to SPAM.

1. Log into your account and click on the “Settings” button and then on “Mail Options”.
2. Go to the “Filters” category that is placed on the left side of the page and press the “Create or edit filters” link.
3. Choose a name for the filter and then the criteria desired. You can choose to filter messages by “Sender”, “Recipient”, “Subject” and “Body”. When you finish you will have to save it.
4. After selecting on which bases an email should be filtered, choose what happens when a message is detected by the filter. You have the option of automatically moving that messages inside the Inbox, Spam, Trash or a new folder at all.

Gmail

The same tactic may also be applied on Google Mail, where we are going to create a filter for multiple purposes. This is just to make sure we do receive email from a specific contact, because Gmail already comes with an almost bullet-proof system of categorizing messages. This system learns what kind of emails are important for the user and which one should be ignored. Well, if you’re having troubles with that, here’s what you can do:

1. Navigate to Google Mail and click on the “Gear Icon” button. The button is placed on the top-right side of the page.
2. Further select “Settings” from the drop down menu.
3. Choose “Filters” and then “Create a new filter”. This is the most important step you will have to make. In the field “From” you have to put the friend’s email address. If you do not know it, it is not a problem, because Gmail has thought at this too. You can put his name or even his nickname. You can also enter multiple addresses, but only if they are separated by the word “OR” or by the sign “|”.
4. After you managed to add all you addresses you will press on the “Create filter with this Search” button. After that pop-up menu will appear, where you can choose a lot of options like: “Mark as read”, “Star it”, “Forward it” and lastly, the one that interests us: “Never send it to Spam”. After that press “Create filter” and that is it. You can be sure from now that the emails are not sent to the spam folder.

For those that are using special applications for checking and sending emails, like Microsoft Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird, these are some things you need to know.

Microsoft Outlook

Developed by Microsoft, Outlook can be used online or locally, through the Microsoft Office suite. This application is very handy because it is realized like a Microsoft Word document, so it is very easy to use it. Even filtering.

You will only have to right-click on the email in question and select the “Junk” option. A menu will pop up and you will have to choose “Never Block Sender” or “Never Block Sender’s Domain”. After following these quick actions, Outlook will treat the sender or the domain kingly, by making sure it will never end up in Spam without user approval.

Of course the system isn’t flawless, but you are able to create your own filters to improve general experience. To do this, simply browse to “Rules and Alerts” from the “Tools” menu and define the rule by selecting specific addresses, domains and so on. Outlook also gives users a couple of interesting options, like selecting when to check messages with pre-defined filters (at departure or when the arrive) and, in which folders should detected messages be sent.

Mozilla Thunderbird

Free to use, the main advantage of Mozilla Thunderbird, an email client in essence, is that you can manage multiple emails and news feed accounts on the same interface. This is very useful and you can also add a lot of plugins to a program that can actually be used even as a browser. But, let’s return to our problem.

The filtering problem exists here, too. To create a filter in Thunderbird, you need to open a message and click on the sender’s name or email address. After that choose from the newly appeared menu “Create filter from” and select your desired rule, action. You can redirect the message to your favorite folder and choose as a filter even the date of the emails.

In my opinion, Mozilla Thunderbird is the best option you have. I use it and it is very fast. The big advantage is that I can manage my email accounts, the one from Yahoo and the one from Gmail, at the same time, and from the same interface.