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BlackBerry (BBRY), the Canadian smartphone maker, has started discounting its top end flagship phones, one week after it said that it would not get into price wars with its competitors. In my last article published a few days ago, I had asserted that BlackBerry would have to lower the prices of its premium Q10 and Z10 smartphones as they did not offer a good value proposition as compared to its competitors. BlackBerry refrains from discounting wars, but that strategy won't work BlackBerry has said that it will not get into a discounting war with its competitors. However, you can only go and implement this strategy if you have a unique value proposition. While the BB 10 OS is quite good and BBRY phones are solid products, they don't have a killer feature like older BBRY products (push email). Even the current king of smartphones, Apple (AAPL), is being forced

The tech industry has been buzzing about “big data” for years now. And according to venture capital firm Accel Partners, the excitement around the big data space is not set to die down any time soon — it’s just about to enter into a new phase. Accel is announcing tonight that it has closed on $100 million for a new investment fund called Big Data Fund 2. The fund is the same size as Accel’s first big data focused fund, which launched with $100 million back in November 2011. As part of the new fund, Accel is also adding QlikView CTO Anthony Deighton and Imperva CEO Shlomo Kramer to its Big Data Fund Advisory Council, which Accel has said is meant to serve as a “guiding light” to help think through investments and track entrepreneurs doing interesting things in the space. Despite the nearly identical name, Accel’s Big Data Fund 2 will mark a definite shift in focus from the firm’s first big data fund, partner Jake Flomenberg said in a phone call today. “Over the past few years, we’ve focused a tremendous amount of attention on what people like to call the ‘three Vs’ of big data: variety, volume and velocity,” he said. “We now believe there is a fourth V, which is end user value, and that hasn’t been addressed to the same extent,” and that is where Big Data Fund 2 will be focusing the bulk of its investment and attention. Specifically, Accel believes that “last mile” for big data will be served largely by startups focused on data-driven software, or “DDS.” These startups have largely been made possible through the hardware and infrastructure technology innovations that defined big data’s first wave, Flomenberg says. In a prepared statement from Accel, Facebook engineering VP Jay Parikh, who also serves on Accel’s Big Data Advisory Council, explained it like this: “The last mile of big data will be built by a new class of software applications that enable everyday users to get real value out of all the data being created. Today’s entrepreneurs are now able to innovate on top of a technology stack that has grown increasingly powerful in the last few years – enabling product and analytical experiences that are more personalized and more valuable than ever.” One example Flombenberg pointed to as an example of a “fourth V” DDS startup is RelateIQ, the “next generation relationship manager” software startup which launched out of stealth last week with some $29 million in funding from Accel and others. Accel’s existing portfolio of big data investments also includes Cloudera, Couchbase, Lookout, Nimble Storage, Opower, Prismatic, QlikView, Sumo Logic, and Trifacta.

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013 San Francisco, CA Early Bird Tickets on Sale Enterprise cloud backup provider Zetta.netv has raised $8 million in new funding to help it bolster its backup, disaster recovery, and archiving services, the company said today. Zetta.net competes with cloud backup providers such as Carbonite and Mozy, but it differentiates itself by claiming top-tier performance. As an example, it says that it helped its customer Group Photographers Association restore 2.7TB of data in less than 24 hours back in July 2012. “We want to carve out a segment of the market that previously didn’t use cloud services,” Chris Schin, VP of Product at Zetta.net, told VentureBeat. “The dirty little secret in the cloud market is that most [cloud recovery] services can’t backup multiple terabytes and restore it quickly. But we can.” The company has seen substantial customer growth in the past year. From Q1 2012 to Q1 2013, its customers have grown by 243 percent. The company now has 400 small-to-medium sized business customers. Big customers include Yammer, Mint.com, Marketo, and Mazda. Zetta.net promises 99.99% uptime and has 2 data centers — one on the East Coast and one on the West Coast. It says that it’s now backing up 4.3 billion files in the cloud each month. Pricing for Zetta.net’s new flagship DataProtect 4.0 product starts at $225 per month. This includes 500GB of storage, backup and recovery protection, monitoring, and more. The new round of funding was led by new investor Industry Ventures with participation by existing investors Foundation Capital and Sigma Partners. Including the new funding, Zetta.net has raised $39.5 million. The new funds will go toward hiring new sales, marketing, and engineering employees. Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Zetta.net was founded in 2008. The company’s focus is on the U.S. market, but it intends to look at international expansion in 2014. Clouds photo via Jeff Kramer/Flickr Filed under: Business, Cloud, Deals .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate { width:278px; margin:0px 0px 10px 20px; padding:10px; float:right; border:1px solid #e4e4e4; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; color:#000; } .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate .logo-date-wrap { width:100%; display:block; float:left; margin-bottom:8px; } .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate img { float:left; } .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate .date-location { float:right; font-size:12px; line-height:14px; text-align:center; padding-left:7px; padding-top:5px; padding-bottom:3px; border-left:1px solid #e6e6e6; } .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate .cta { display:block; clear:both; width:100%; border-radius:5px; border:1px solid #1864b1; color:#fff; text-shadow: 0px -1px 0px rgba(0,0,0,0.3); text-align:center; text-decoration:none; font-weight:600; font-size:18px; line-height:17px; padding:4px 0px 6px 0px; background: #1f80e4; background: -moz-linear-gradient(top,  #1f80e4 0%, #1862ae 100%); background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,#1f80e4), color-stop(100%,#1862ae)); background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top,  #1f80e4 0%,#1862ae 100%); background: -o-linear-gradient(top,  #1f80e4 0%,#1862ae 100%); background: -ms-linear-gradient(top,  #1f80e4 0%,#1862ae 100%); background: linear-gradient(to bottom,  #1f80e4 0%,#1862ae 100%); filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#1f80e4', endColorstr='#1862ae',GradientType=0 ); }

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama hinted in an interview aired on Monday that he may be looking for a new chief of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, saying current Chairman Ben Bernanke has stayed a lot longer than he had originally planned. Obama, speaking to Charlie Rose, host of a PBS interview program, compared Bernanke to longtime FBI Director Robert Mueller, who agreed to stay two years longer than he had planned and is to leave in the coming months. "Well, I think Ben Bernanke's done an outstanding job. Ben Bernanke's a little bit like Bob Mueller, the head of the FBI - where he's already stayed a lot longer than he wanted or he was supposed to," Obama said. Asked whether he would reappoint Bernanke if he wanted to keep the job, Obama did not answer directly. "He has been an outstanding partner, along with the White House, in helping us recover much stronger than, for example, our European partners, from what could have been an economic crisis of epic proportions," Obama said. Bernanke, who has tried to nurse along the ailing U.S. economy through the 2008 financial crisis, is widely expected to step down when his second term as chairman expires at the end of January. Obama is said to be considering a number of monetary experts for the job, including Fed Vice Chair Janet Yellen, former Obama and Clinton aide Lawrence Summers, and former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. An announcement could come as early as this fall, to give the Fed nominee time to get through Senate confirmation by the time Bernanke's term is up. (Additional reporting by Jeff Mason; Editing by Lisa Shumaker) Copyright (2013) Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions Join the conversation about this story »

Like many, I have long stayed away from LinkedIn (LNKD), believing that the fundamentals and the price were substantially misaligned. After all, the price trades at a whopping 517 times trailing earnings as of Monday's closing. But, since its IPO, the stock enjoyed a strong run higher - and one thing I learned as a young trader is that the market can be wrong longer than you can stay solvent.That is to say that, until now, shorting LinkedIn would have been a far too risky proposition. However, after taking a closer look, I believe it is finally time for LinkedIn's price to come back to reality. Year-to-Date Performance I admit it: I didn't like LNKD at the start of the year when it was at $115. I didn't like it at $130, $150 or $200. But, it hit all those marks and, besides the last, is still trading above

On last night's Lightning Round on Jim Cramer's Mad Money, Jim recommended three stocks, eBay (EBAY), ConAgra Foods (CAG), and CarMax (KMX). Jim is famous for his quick buy or sell recommendations during the lightning round, but rarely goes into details as to why he likes or dislikes a particular stock. Let's dive further into his three most recent buy recommendations.eBay (EBAY)eBay was Jim's first call of the lightning round, with the caller stating that he had recently bought eBay but is currently down on his position. Jim reassured him that his charitable trust owns eBay, and to hold onto the stock.The stock has fallen after its most recent earnings release, particularly due to a slower growth rate than expected with eBay's payment system, PayPal. In terms of valuation, eBay does trade at a fairly large multiple of around 25, but is trading to

It's anyone's guess what smartphone superpower Apple is introducing at its upcoming product launches -- which are expected later this year -- although we have some very good ideas. We recently saw some more detailed information emerge from a very credible source. According to reports, Apple's iPhone is in for a massive overhaul. In the video below, Fool contributor Andrew Tonner tells investors what's important about this major tech storyline. It's incredible to think just how much of our digital and technological lives are almost entirely shaped and molded by just a handful of companies. Find out "Who Will Win the War Between the 5 Biggest Tech Stocks?" in The Motley Fool's latest free report, which details the knock-down, drag-out battle being waged by the five kings of tech. Click here to keep reading.

GenMark Diagnostics, Inc. (GNMK) June 17, 2013 4:45 pm ET Executives Nancy Torok Hany Massarany - Chief Executive Officer, President and Director Analysts William R. Quirk - Piper Jaffray Companies, Research Division Matthew O'Brien - William Blair & Company L.L.C., Research Division Shaun Rodriguez - Cowen and Company, LLC, Research Division Mark Massaro - Canaccord Genuity, Research Division Nicholas Jansen - Raymond James & Associates, Inc., Research Division Presentation Operator Good day, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to today's conference call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded today, Monday, June 17, 2013. I'd now like to turn the conference over to Ms. Nancy Torok of GenMark. Please begin. Nancy Torok Thanks, Tyrone, and thank you all very much for joining us this afternoon. Before we begin, I would like to inform you that certain statements made by GenMark during the course of

Once US dollar suppression lessens, substantial DXY rally will ensue. GBPUSD & EURUSD daily chart bearish warning strengthens.DXY daily chart gives bullish warning. SPX daily/weekly/monthly charts will continue to roll over asimpending Wile E Coyote collapse awaits. http://trader618.com/2013/06/01/sat-1-junehttp://trader618.com/2013/05/31/contrarian-indicators-signaling-a-market-tophttp://trader618.com/2013/05/29/the-wile-e-coyote-drophttp://trader618.com/2013/05/28/rallies-caused-by-squeezed-bears-nasty-wile-e-coyote-crash-2http://trader618.com/2013/05/22/how-to-guarantee-a-crashhttp://trader618.com/2013/05/21/rallies-caused-by-squeezed-bears-nasty-wile-e-coyote-crashhttp://trader618.com/2013/05/15/the-mega-wile-e-coyote-crash

Yahoo! is offering to purchase social email startup Xobni for $30 million to $40 million, according to AllThingsD’s sources. If the deal goes through, Xobni would be the latest acquisition by Yahoo! as CEO Marissa Meyer seeks to boost the company’s talent roster and product offerings. Xobni’s social email plugin automatically creates a profile for each contact with correspondence history and data pulled from social networks including LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Skype and Hoovers. The San Francisco-based startup began with a Microsoft Outlook plugin and now supports Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and Apple’s iCloud, in addition to its Smartr Contacts apps for Android and iOS. The deal makes sense for Yahoo! because it would enable the Internet giant to add a competitive edge to its email products. Furthermore, the startup already has strong ties with Yahoo!: Yahoo! co-founder David Filo previously worked with Xobni CEO Jeff Bonforte, who in turn was once vice president of social search and real-time communications at Yahoo!. In addition to the whopping $1.1 billion Yahoo! paid to acquire Tumblr, the company has also made a series of mobile acquisitions. These include the news gathering and delivery startup Summly, which it purchased for close to $30 million. The Summly deal followed Yahoo!’s acquisition of social recommendation company Jybe, which was staffed by former Yahoo! employees. As Drew Olanoff noted at the time of Jybe’s acquisition, the deal proves that Yahoo! is focused on “acquiring teams that do heavy research in machine and natural learning, which goes to show you that Mayer is giving the company an intelligence facelift of sorts.” (Speaking of additions to the Yahoo! team, Drew himself recently left TechCrunch to go purple). The acquisition’s closure, however, is still uncertain. Longtime Xobni followers might remember that in 2008 the startup turned down an acquisition offer from Microsoft in the $20 million range. While the $30 million to $40 million offered from Yahoo! represents an increase from Microsoft’s offer, it is important to note that it is still less than the $40 million that the startup has raised from investors including First Round Capital, Khosla Ventures and Y Combinator. AllThingsD reports that some Xobni common shareholders might not get any of their investment back over preferred shareholders, which might prevent the deal from going through, especially since Yahoo! seems unlikely to offer more money.