US corporations have loaded up on a lot of debt since the financial crisis. In fact, America's corporations have doubled their total debt levels, according to a note Tuesday from analysts at Goldman Sachs.The debt has been raised by American firms to fund mergers and acquisitions and to buy back their own shares.And despite seven years of zero-interest rates and quantitative easing, interest pa...

Re-Time Pty Ltd was formed in 2010 to help people re-time their body clocks and improve sleep. Initially, the company set out to develop a solution to help thousands of people improve their sleep.Remember the Ted Talk by Arianna Huffington about how you need to sleep to be successful? Truth be told, there is no glamor in being sleep deprived or working like a zombie, just because you travel tim...

Get the stats on how much consumers rely on their friends and family for advice about their purchase decisions.Here are the highlights from Social Media Link's survey of its consumer influencer community. It captured data from more than 21,0000 respondents. "At least once a month, 83% of respondents hear about new products on social media before they hear from any other source," states Social M...

A NEW CONSUMER STUDY FINDS THAT MINORITIES ARE MORE INTERESTED IN VR, AND OCULUS IS NOT NO. 1.Minorities are more likely than whites to be passionate about virtual reality. And despite the attention paid to Facebook-owned Oculus in the media, Sony’s PlayStation VR is the most recognized brand.These are some of the conclusions from a wide-ranging survey of consumer expectations and preferences...

Researchers have created a collaborating swarm of drones that act as 3D pixels (voxels) and promises to create giant, flying interactive displays made up of many thousands of individual pixels. Researchers working at Queen’s University’s Human Media Lab in Ontario have created a collaborating swarm of drones that act as 3D pixels (voxels) to create giant, flying interactive displays. The rese...

TAG Heuer and Google revealed at an event in New York today (Nov. 9) the first high-end smartwatch—the TAG Heuer Connected.Unlike most smartwatches on the market, TAG’s watch looks pretty much like a regular watch, rather than a piece of technology that’s strapped to one’s wrist that happens to tell the time. There’s a choice of seven strap colors, and the Connected’s titanium dial looks...

Every customer who buys a Kirin beverage from their new Vendorphoto machines can also take a selfie and share it for free.Long before there were smartphones and selfies, the photobooth reigned supreme as the best device with which to take a photo of yourself and your friends pulling funny faces. Now, Japanese beer company Kirin is blurring the line between the two with its Vendorphoto, created...

WordPress, long known to be the No. 1 content management system (CMS) in use online, has reached a new milestone: It now powers 25 percent of all sites across the web. That’s according to the newest data from W3Techs, a company that tracks the usage of different web technologies. (W3Techs explains its methodology in the blog post I’m linking to above.)It’s far and away the most popular CMS,...

CB Insights, a nearly six-year-old, New York-based research outfit whose private company data and analysis has become oft-cited in media reports about the startup industry, has raised $10 million in Series A funding from the low-flying, bi-coastal growth stage investment firm RSTP.According to CEO and cofounder Anand Sanwal, the money represents CB Insights’s first equity round. The 61-person...