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The Journal's third annual ranking of the top 50 venture-capital-backed companies shows a crop of contenders that overall are focused less on online consumers than in years' past.

Apple has replaced Google’s maps with its own, built from scratch, but in the new app entire locations have been mislabeled or erased. We try to track down the problems.

EvePearl, owned by an Emmy-winning makeup artist, considers pitching its skin-care and makeup products on ShopNBC.

Several nations have adopted or proposed a range of limits on high-speed trading, saying they have learned from problems in United States markets.

The quirky melodies of Koji Kondo are alive and well in the hearts of Super Mario fans. That's why you'll be instantly transported to 1985 when you hit "play" on the video above.

Our pal Nick McKaig teamed up with French barbershop vocalist Julien Neel (a.k.a. Trudbol) on this brilliant vocal arrangement.

SEE ALSO: A ‘Game of Thrones’ Vocal Cover Worthy of the Iron Throne

The costumes and shtick certainly don't hurt the fun factor either. We have it on good authority that no Goombas were harmed in the making of this film.

More About: Gaming, Music, Nintendo, YouTube, super mario, video games

After decades of virtually ignoring the highest coffee-consumption market in the world, Starbucks's Europe chief is looking to give a swift and substantial jolt to the coffee giant's tiny presence in the pricey Nordic region.

China’s Communist Party appears so distracted by its leadership transition that it is not pursuing the bold agenda that may be necessary to prevent severe economic pain.

Guest post by Samuel Arbesman

Julian Assange claimed in a live video address broadcast during an event parallel to the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday that Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army soldier accused of providing classified intelligence to WikiLeaks, has been tortured while imprisoned.

"Bradley Manning, science fair all-star, soldier and patriot was degraded, abused and psychologically tortured by his own government," said Assange, broadcasting from the Ecuardoian Embassy in London where he's been living for months. "He was charged with a death penalty offence. These things happened to him, as the U.S. government tried to break him, to force him to testify against WikiLeaks and me."

Assange was…
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More About: US, World, bradley manning, julian assange, wikileaks

Free is great, but some things are worth paying for. Over the past few months, we've created The Hot List -- a collection of gadgets, products and services that are worth paying for. We broke down the Hot List into various sectors, from home to gadgets to entertainment. Check out highlights below and click through to the full article to see everything we think is worth paying for.

Home

From the Nest thermostat to the Roomba, we've rounded up a slew of gadgets that'll make your day more efficient and enjoyable, from your morning coffee to bedtime storytelling.

Apps

Want to do just about anything? There's an app for that. With more than 650,000 apps each in the…
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More About: Gadgets, Tech, The Hot List, features, mashable

Ms. Needleman comes from the Wall Street Journal, where she oversees WSJ. Magazine and the weekend lifestyle section, called Off Duty. She replaces Sally Singer, who departed last month.

Venture capitalists are still investing in flashy Internet start-ups, but the “Next Big Thing” is more likely to be a maker of humdrum Internet plumbing for businesses.

The Wall Street Journal’s third annual ranking of the top 50 venture-capital-backed companies shows a crop of contenders that overall are focused less on online consumers than in years past.

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Readers of “Street Sweeper” are familiar with our coverage of bid rigging of tax liens auctions.  On September 26, 2012, another defendant bit the federal criminal dust when Crusader Servicing Corp. Jenkintown, PA, pleaded guilty to participating in a conspiracy to rig bids for the sale of tax liens auctioned by municipalities throughout New Jersey.  Crusader faces a maximum penalty under the Sherman Act of a $100 million corporate criminal fine, which may be increased to twice the gain derived from the crime or twice the loss suffered by the victims if either alternative is greater than $100 million.

Apple's stock has given up all of its gains from after the iPhone 5 announcement two weeks ago.

The company's stock closed at $665.18 on Wednesday, a decline of more than 1% on the day and the third straight day the stock ended down, and opened even lower on Thursday at $664.29. By comparison, Apple's stock opened at $666.85 on Wednesday, Sept.12, the day the iPhone 5 was announced.

In the week after the iPhone announcement, Apple stock rocketed to new highs passing $700 a share for the first time in its history just five days later, thanks to Wall Street's optimism about consumer demand for the device and Apple's aggressive roll out schedule.

Apple stock remained above $700 a sha…
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More About: apple, iphone, stocks

Most smartphone users say they’re more likely to make a purchase at a mobile-friendly site, but that they’re quick to move to a competitor if they don’t like the site experience they encounter, finds Google in new research conducted by Sterling Research and SmithGeiger. Two-thirds of the smartphone internet users surveyed said they were more [...]

L’Huffington Post made its debut on Tuesday in Italy, becoming the fifth version of the Internet news outlet outside the United States.

With less than a week to go before Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman sits financial analysts down for an update on her efforts to turn the company around, another analyst has chimed in with a negative “sell” rating on HP shares.

HP shares are traded lower by more than 2 percent in pre-market action in partial reaction to the downgrade note by Peter Misek of Jeffries and Co. Misek lowered his target price for HP shares to $14 from $17 and maintained his already-low estimate on its per-share earnings for fiscal year 2013 of $3.58, which is far below the consensus estimate of $4.22.

He’s got lots of reasons: For one thing Misek is worried about HP’s intentions in the tablet and smart phone arena. After failing to capitalize on the acquisition of Palm and shutting down the WebOS hardware business after sales of the TouchPad tablet failed to gain traction and subsequent $3.3 billion write-off for goodwill and inventory, Whitman has promised to try again with another smart phone. Misek sees that “makes sense strategically,” but which also carries with it a lot of risk: “On top of adding costs and working capital burdens to an already stressed balance sheet, there could be additional write-offs.”

Meanwhile HP’s already got significant trouble with its bread-and-butter PC business. Overall demand in the PC market is slowing, while Microsoft’s Windows 8 doesn’t yet appear to be much of a catalyst, at least if you look at the slow demand for PC microprocessors from Intel.

On top of that the transition to a renewed emphasis on higher-value IT hardware and services is sputtering. Documents revealed in the lawsuit with Oracle over the Itanium chip — HP won the first round but Oracle has promised to appeal — laid bare the fact that HP has long been relying heavily on revenue derived service and support contracts with customers who buy Itanium-based servers. Referring to the Business Critical Server unit that sells the servers, Misek writes that his conversations with its customers don’t bode well for HP: “Our conversations with BCS customers indicate a lack of confidence in the longevity of the product platform. While migration off of BCS is not lightly undertaken, we expect continued weakness in BCS hardware and related Services revenues.”

Then there’s the printer business: Inventories of printer ink have built up because they’re selling more slowly than before. The correction, Misek argues, will take several quarters to resolve. He thinks tablets are cutting into demand for printed pages.

Finally there’s software: The one, still unfinished bit of messy business left over from the 11-month service of former CEO Léo Apotheker is the $11.7 billion acquisition of the British software firm Autonomy, announced 13 months ago. Misek says he expects HP to write off some of the value of Autonomy. This would follow the massive $8 billion write-off announced Aug. 22 related to the EDS acquisition from 2008. After that first big write-off, HP hinted strongly that more goodwill writeoff are in the offing, probably in Software, Misek says. “After Autonomy’s poor performance the last couple quarters, we think HP will write off half of the $6 billion goodwill from the Autonomy acquisition, which will put further pressure on its debt to equity ratio.”

Which brings us to HP’s debt situation. Misek notes that HP has $1 billion in debt payments due in the fourth quarter of this year and another $5.5 billion due in fiscal 2013. While not unusually high for HP historically, it doesn’t exactly help the already-strained balance sheet. Investors in debt markets have certainly noticed as credit default swaps on HP bonds experienced a textbook case of “blowing out” over the summer, though in fairness it wasn’t the only PC maker they worried about.

Misek isn’t the first to place a “sell” rating on HP shares. Chris Whitmore of Deutsche Bank Securities was notable for placing a sell on HP in August of 2011, and has remained bearish on the shares since then. The bearish case is strong indeed, and many investors are working it: Short interest in HP shares — an indication of sentiment that the share will fall further — has increased substantially in the last year.

As markets opened for trading in New York, HP shares fell by 15 cents or a little less than 1 percent to $16.96 on the New York Stock Exchange after closing yesterday at $17.11. If HP shares fall to the $14 price target that Misek has set, it would constitute their lowest price since April of 2003.

As the founder and CEO of a startup, VC's would always ask me, "What keeps you up at night?" It was a tedious question with only one honest answer: raising more money from you guys. Four years later, as chief product officer for a major news brand, I would answer the same question with a single word full of complexities for the future of journalism -- mobile. Finding more funding, though difficult, was a well-traveled path. Transitioning to a mobile universe is a new challenge, and one that gets more vexing by the day.

With Halloween around the corner, it’s just a matter of time before you start hearing Monster Mash and other ghoulish hits. But what you may not know is that the method you choose for listening to that – and all other radio programming – makes a monstrous difference in the royalties involved.

Bob Dylan hasn't been a huge fan of technology. In 2006, he complained to Rolling Stone that no one had made a record that sounded decent in the last 20 years because of modern recording techniques and that "CDs are small. There's no stature to it."

So it's something of a surprise that Dylan is using a geolocation iPhone app to promote his latest album, Tempest. The Sound Graffiti app, which can be accessed at listentobobdylan.com (but only via your iPhone -- you can't download it from a desktop computer), lets fans unlock free songs from the album when they visit various locations.

For instance, 3012 West Cary St. in Richmond, Va., is the home of Plan 9 Records and 2000 4th Ave.…
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More About: Bob Dylan, Marketing, apps