Journal

To reverse engineer the secret sauce driving QVC’s $8.8 billion business, I went to the network’s school, then sold a product on air.

It’s five minutes to air, and I’m practicing my “card tricks”—what I’ve come to see as my greatest nemesis. I have to open a wallet, reveal a mirrored metal battery without reflecting the studio lights, yank out a stubborn plug, and slide it into my iPhone, all while aiming this electronic jumble at the camera and pretending the whole charade is effortless—in front of the late night viewers of QVC, the No. 1 home shopping network in the U.S., U.K., and Germany.

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A new feature in iOS 9.3 could help millions of people get more sleep.

Reading on a screen at night is probably killing your sleep: Research shows that using a tablet, smartphone, or laptop for a couple of hours before bed can cause you to lose as much as an hour’s worth of sleep per night. With its next major software update to iOS 9 Apple is looking to solve the problem, automatically adjusting the color of the light coming from your iPhone or iPad’s screen when it’s dark out so you fall asleep more easily.

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Consuming live streams right inside Twitter could make Periscope a whole lot more viral.

Early last year, Twitter bought live video-streaming app Periscope, before it had even been announced. Then it pretty much let it do its thing—including launching last March—without taking any aggressive steps to meld the newcomer with Twitter itself.

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$93 million investment values gay dating app at $155 million.

Grindr, the popular dating app for gay men, has sold a 60% stake to Chinese gaming company Beijing Kunlun Tech for $93 million, according to the New York Times. The $93 million investment now values the six-year-old dating app at $155 million. The remainder of the company’s shares continue to be owned by its employees and Grindr founder and CEO Joel Simkhai.

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The release comes hot on the heels of competing VR goggle maker, Oculus Rift.

2016 is starting off to be a banging year for those who can’t wait to embrace the next big technology: virtual reality. No fewer than three major VR headsets are due out this year: the Oculus Rift, Sony’s PlayStation VR, and the HTC Vive—the last of which has now announced its official pre-order date: February 29th.

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The price for creativity and innovation: 1 in 10 funded projects never deliver to backers.

It started like a typical Kickstarter success story. A startup raised almost $1.5 million last fall for tiny new wireless headphones that claimed to be the first that could charge through a phone. They promised delivery a month later. But Apple didn’t approve the device, so everyone who wanted the headphones for their iPhone will get headphones that don’t work as advertised—if they get them at all. Nothing has shipped yet.

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Dave Vos, the head of Google X’s Project Wing drone delivery program, says drones are safer than commercial aircraft.

Look up into the sky in 2017 and you could see drone deliveries happening on a regular basis, says Dave Vos, the head of Google X’s Project Wing drone delivery program. “Moving people and stuff around the planet in an efficient way is where I want to get,” Vos told an audience at an Aero Club aviation industry event in Washington, D.C., earlier this week.

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The shoe-designer-turned-executive says he’s ever vigilant about becoming closed off to new ideas.

Fast Company editor-in-chief Bob Safian sits down with Nike CEO Maker Parker, who tells us about one of the most dangerous pitfalls for businesses—becoming formulaic.

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The newly formed Planetary Defense Coordination Office will monitor potential asteroid and comet threats to our planet.

In a move that could easily double as a plotline in a sci-fi flick, NASA has created a task force that will be charged with scouting for asteroids and other potentially devastating threats to planet Earth. The Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) will manage projects that seek to “find and characterize asteroids and comets that pass near Earth’s orbit around the sun” and liaise with federal agencies to coordinate the appropriate response, according to NASA.

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Lyft said it is already fulfilling 2,500 requests for rides per week via its medical partners.

Lyft, an app that lets you hail a ride with a smartphone, is expanding into a surprising new demographic: senior citizens without smartphones.

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