Fed urges growth as 'fiscal cliff' looms

Reports that Apple will come out with a cheaper iPhone this year divided tech experts yesterday, but soured investors,...

Massachusetts holiday retail sales increased for the third consecutive season after three years of declines.Growth in...

Boeing shares soared yesterday after company officials expressed "extreme confidence" in the embattled 787...

Are we ready for a trillion-dollar coin?The priciest U.S. coin so far has been a 1794 Flowing Hair Dollar that went for...

New Balance makes Disney dealNew Balance is now the official athletic shoe for Walt Disney World Resort and ESPN Wide...

Boeing officials said today they continue to have "extreme confidence" in the company's 787...

New Balance is now the official athletic shoe for Walt Disney World Resort and ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in...

NEW YORK — Nestle Purina PetCare is taking Waggin' Train and Canyon Creek Ranch brand dog treats off the...

Boeing says it has "extreme confidence" in its 787 Dreamliner even as federal investigators try to determine...

NEW YORK — The price of oil slipped below $93 a barrel today, as a report of rising U.S. crude supplies...

Gov. Deval Patrick, in a direct response to Herald reports about city and town workers gaming the state unemployment...

Air limo service Hopscotch Air said it has expanded its fleet of Cirrus aircraft to seven and is planning to launch...

WASHINGTON — A lawyer for two Arizona gun dealers is arguing that the Obama administration overstepped its legal...

WASHINGTON  — A government watchdog says the nation's tax law is so thick and complicated that...

 Japan Airlines is giving more details about a fuel leak on one of their Boeing 787s that delayed a non-stop...

Kitsy Lane, a Maynard-based website that allows anyone to launch their own Internet jewelry and accessories boutique...

WASHINGTON — White House chief of staff Jack Lew is President Barack Obama's expected pick to lead the...

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Faithful flock to @pontifex

Digital Lumens, a Boston-based developer of LED-based intelligent lighting systems, said today it has secured $10...

 NEW YORK — Satellite TV provider Dish Network is offering to buy wireless network operator Clearwire...

LAS VEGAS — If you've always wanted a fork that spies on your eating habits, you're in luck: A company...

The number of students taking at least one online course has now surpassed the 6.7 million mark, while higher education...

LAS VEGAS  — TV makers are trotting out sets with "Ultra HD" resolution at the International CES...

PYONGYANG, North Korea — Students at North Korea's premier university showed Google's executive chairman...

PYONGYANG, North Korea — Google's chairman wants a firsthand look at North Korea's economy and social...

LAS VEGAS  — Sharp is jumping on the "ultrahigh definition" bandwagon by introducing two super-...

LAS VEGAS  — People who don't want to disturb sleeping family members could use a new product from...

Burlington-based speech recognition software company Nuance Communications today announced a multi-year collaboration...

LAS VEGAS — LG is unveiling a 55-inch TV that sports "ultrahigh-definition" resolution with more than 8...

Newton-based "big data" company Attivio said today it has raised $8 million in funding from the General...

LAS VEGAS  — Lego bricks are getting cozy with the iPhone and other Apple devices in the latest incarnation...

Sixty Massachusetts companies will be among the 3,260 exhibitors at this week's Consumer Electronics Show, which...

The next-generation iPhone, expected out this spring, will give Apple customers more choices, including new colors and...

WASHINGTON  — Google chief Eric Schmidt's plan to visit North Korea has put the Obama administration in...

BEIJING — China on Friday joined a global crackdown on price-fixing by manufacturers of LCD screens used in...

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We're... No. 17 on Forbes' 'best states for business' list

Reports that Apple will come out with a cheaper iPhone this year divided tech experts yesterday, but soured investors,...

Massachusetts holiday retail sales increased for the third consecutive season after three years of declines.Growth in...

Boeing shares soared yesterday after company officials expressed "extreme confidence" in the embattled 787...

Are we ready for a trillion-dollar coin?The priciest U.S. coin so far has been a 1794 Flowing Hair Dollar that went for...

New Balance makes Disney dealNew Balance is now the official athletic shoe for Walt Disney World Resort and ESPN Wide...

Boeing officials said today they continue to have "extreme confidence" in the company's 787...

New Balance is now the official athletic shoe for Walt Disney World Resort and ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in...

NEW YORK — Nestle Purina PetCare is taking Waggin' Train and Canyon Creek Ranch brand dog treats off the...

Boeing says it has "extreme confidence" in its 787 Dreamliner even as federal investigators try to determine...

NEW YORK — The price of oil slipped below $93 a barrel today, as a report of rising U.S. crude supplies...

Gov. Deval Patrick, in a direct response to Herald reports about city and town workers gaming the state unemployment...

Air limo service Hopscotch Air said it has expanded its fleet of Cirrus aircraft to seven and is planning to launch...

WASHINGTON — A lawyer for two Arizona gun dealers is arguing that the Obama administration overstepped its legal...

WASHINGTON  — A government watchdog says the nation's tax law is so thick and complicated that...

 Japan Airlines is giving more details about a fuel leak on one of their Boeing 787s that delayed a non-stop...

Kitsy Lane, a Maynard-based website that allows anyone to launch their own Internet jewelry and accessories boutique...

WASHINGTON — White House chief of staff Jack Lew is President Barack Obama's expected pick to lead the...

16.30 | 0 komentar | Read More

We're... No. 17 on Forbes' 'best states for business' list

Reports that Apple will come out with a cheaper iPhone this year divided tech experts yesterday, but soured investors,...

Massachusetts holiday retail sales increased for the third consecutive season after three years of declines.Growth in...

Boeing shares soared yesterday after company officials expressed "extreme confidence" in the embattled 787...

Are we ready for a trillion-dollar coin?The priciest U.S. coin so far has been a 1794 Flowing Hair Dollar that went for...

New Balance makes Disney dealNew Balance is now the official athletic shoe for Walt Disney World Resort and ESPN Wide...

Boeing officials said today they continue to have "extreme confidence" in the company's 787...

New Balance is now the official athletic shoe for Walt Disney World Resort and ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in...

NEW YORK — Nestle Purina PetCare is taking Waggin' Train and Canyon Creek Ranch brand dog treats off the...

Boeing says it has "extreme confidence" in its 787 Dreamliner even as federal investigators try to determine...

NEW YORK — The price of oil slipped below $93 a barrel today, as a report of rising U.S. crude supplies...

Gov. Deval Patrick, in a direct response to Herald reports about city and town workers gaming the state unemployment...

Air limo service Hopscotch Air said it has expanded its fleet of Cirrus aircraft to seven and is planning to launch...

WASHINGTON — A lawyer for two Arizona gun dealers is arguing that the Obama administration overstepped its legal...

WASHINGTON  — A government watchdog says the nation's tax law is so thick and complicated that...

 Japan Airlines is giving more details about a fuel leak on one of their Boeing 787s that delayed a non-stop...

Kitsy Lane, a Maynard-based website that allows anyone to launch their own Internet jewelry and accessories boutique...

WASHINGTON — White House chief of staff Jack Lew is President Barack Obama's expected pick to lead the...

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Designers to take Downtown Crossing on new path

As major building projects take shape in Downtown Crossing, a design team will look for ways to bring new life to the streets themselves.

Under a yearlong, $200,000 contract with the city, Klopfer Martin Design Group promises to "recast the Crossing" with recommendations for improvements to the 34-block downtown Business Improvement District's roads, sidewalks, wayfinding signs, retail vendors, traffic and public places.

"We think it's an incredible time to be embarking on this project," said Kaki Martin, a partner in the Boston landscape design firm. "It's a diverse district. There are lots of nooks and crannies to be discovered."

Early ideas include a "nondirectional" paving pattern for the natural gathering space between Macy's and the old Filene's building, a pedestrian-only stretch of Summer Street. "So you'd have a surface that connects and lays out as sort of a big carpet," Martin said.

Klopfer Martin has assembled a team of urban designers, civil engineers and vending experts to give Downtown Crossing its first major makeover since the 1970s. They will upgrade pedestrian navigation, highlight destinations, and set standards for street and sidewalk materials.

"So when you're walking in the district, you'll know you're in the district," said Randi Lathrop, deputy director of community planning for the Boston Redevelopment Authority.

Rosemarie Sansone, president of the Downtown Boston BID group, expects a plan "to reframe spaces with programming that encourages use through all four seasons."

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The Ticker

Mass. targets LPL

Massachusetts' securities regulator filed civil charges against LPL Financial for failing to supervise its brokers who sold investments in non-traded real estate investment trusts.

The company, based in San Diego with offices on Boston's State Street, received at least $1.8 million in commissions on the deals, according to Secretary of State William Galvin.

An LPL spokesman said the claims "are substantially overstated" and the company has "always endeavored to promote a strong culture of compliance."

IPO news boosts Harvard Bioscience

Shares of Harvard Bioscience surged by nearly 13 percent after the Holliston company said it would spin off, in an initial public offering, a subsidiary that's developing devices for creating synthetic organs for transplant patients.

Hicks pleads guilty in $2.3M scheme

Onetime Andover resident Andrey C. Hicks pleaded guilty to defrauding investors — reportedly including NBA player Kris Humphries — of $2.3 million in a hedge fund scheme through his Locust Offshore Management firm in Cambridge.

Hicks faces up to 20 years in prison at his March 6 sentencing.

Pfizer pays $55M over Wyeth case

Drug giant Pfizer agreed to shell out $55 million to settle allegations that its Wyeth subsidiary promoted the drug Protonix for uses that were not approved by regulators.

Pfizer, which bought Wyeth in 2009, specifically denied allegations of wrongdoing.

Fewer CEOs expect hiring dip

The Business Roundtable said that 29 percent of its member CEOs plan to increase hiring over the next six months, the same as in September when the group released its previous quarterly survey. But only 29 percent expect hiring to decrease vs. 34 percent in the previous report.

TODAY

The Commerce Department releases retail sales data for November.

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Faithful flock to @pontifex

Pope Benedict XVI's debut tweet kicked His Holiness' coolness factor up a notch yesterday, but the 85-year-old's messages of faith will have more merit if he actually socializes with his growing flock of followers, social media experts say.

"It's one thing to know the Pope's on Twitter but when the Holy Father — or one of the cardinals — responds to me on Twitter, it's like, wow, then I'm connected," said Todd Van Hoosear, principal of Cambridge social media consulting firm Fresh Ground. "That's social. That's where they really ought to take it eventually."

Using the moniker @pontifex, which is Latin for pontiff, and typing on an iPad tablet, the pope tweeted: "Dear friends, I am pleased to get in touch with you through Twitter. Thank you for your generous response. I bless all of you from my heart."

Six more tweets followed with faith-related messages and questions, and the pope quickly amassed nearly 1 million followers. He also is following seven users himself. The pope's posts will be simultaneously tweeted in English, Spanish, Italian, German, Polish, Arabic and other languages.

Emerson College marketing professor David Gerzof Richard said the pope can expand his "significant influence" by following other religious leaders on the social media site.

"It would be kind of cool if he was following the Dalai Lama and other folks out there," he said. "It would be like, 'We're all in this together,' as opposed to just saying, 'I'm going to tell you what's up.' "

While Twitter is nothing new to Cardinal Sean O'Malley, who has close to 7,300 followers, the Archbishop of Boston won't be directly messaging the pope anytime soon, said Scot Landry, the Archdiocese's secretary for Catholic Media. Landry said anyone looking to pepper the pope with questions can do so through such hashtags as #askpontifex.

"Once you start following people, it's going to be difficult to be as inclusive as the Holy Father wants to be," Landry said.

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The Ticker

Healthier tax revenue

State tax revenue is projected to be flat for the current fiscal year but rise next year, according to the Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University.

The group estimates tax revenue will jump by 5.1 percent to $22.19 billion in fiscal 2014 — due to "strong" personal income tax revenue and "positive" corporate tax revenue growth — after holding steady at about $21.11 billion for 2013, the current fiscal year.

Mass. pending home sales up

Single-family homes put under agreement last month were up 28 percent, while pending condo sales were up 28.5 percent compared to a year ago, marking the 19th straight month of increases, according to the Massachusetts Association of Realtors.

TripAdvisor soars on Diller deal

Shares of Newton-based online travel website TripAdvisor climbed more than 22 percent yesterday before closing at $40.91 after media executive Barry Diller and The Diller-von Furstenberg Family Foundation sold nearly 4.8 million shares of the company to Liberty Interactive Corp. Liberty now owns 18 million shares of common stock and nearly 12.8 million shares of Class B stock, representing 57 percent of the total votes of all classes of the company's stock.

SynapDx raises $6M

Southboro-based SynapDx Corp. has received $6 million from investors to further develop a test designed to identify children with autism spectrum disorders by age 3. The company said its blood-test approach measures differences in RNA gene expression to pinpoint children with a higher risk for ASDs.

TODAY

MassDOT holds a public meeting on the Government Center Station renovation project.

The Federal Reserve releases a statement on interest rates and monetary policy, followed by a news conference with Chairman Ben Bernanke.

TOMORROW

Retail sales for November are released.

The Producer Price Index for November is released.

State Treasurer Steven Grossman has promoted Jessie Saintcyr, left, to deputy treasurer. Hired at the Treasury in January 2011, Saintcyr most recently served as an assistant treasurer and director of human resources and employment counsel.

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Redbox Instant streaming plan takes on Netflix

LOS ANGELES — DVD kiosk operator Redbox is launching a challenge to Netflix's streaming-video supremacy.

Later this month, Redbox will offer an unlimited streaming-video plan that includes movies from Warner Bros. and pay TV channel Epix, along with four nights of physical DVD rentals, for $8 a month, or $9 a month if customers want Blu-ray discs.

The offering is a direct attack on Netflix Inc. and is priced even lower than the $10-a-month DVD and streaming plan that Netflix abandoned a year ago. The lowest price plan from Netflix that combines DVDs-by-mail and streaming is now $16 a month.

The new service, called Redbox Instant by Verizon, is "targeted squarely at movie lovers," said Shawn Strickland, the chief executive of the joint venture between Redbox parent Coinstar Inc., which is based in Bellevue, Wash., and New York-based Verizon Communications Inc.

The service won't include TV shows when it launches on an invitation-only basis before the end of the year. Video game disc rentals, which cost $2 a night, are also not included in the plan.

While the price and features of the Redbox service are similar to what's offered by Netflix, its library is smaller and focused mainly on the most popular Hollywood fare, which Strickland says are the movies that "really matter in the marketplace."

Redbox kiosks carry the top 200 recent movies from the major studios and rent DVDs out for $1.20 per night and Blu-ray discs for $1.50 per night with the swipe of a credit card. The streaming plan will feature about 5,500 movies from the libraries of Warner Bros. and Epix, which is owned by Paramount Pictures, MGM and Lionsgate.

That means subscribers could stream movies such as "The Hunger Games" over computers and certain connected Blu-ray players and Internet-enabled TVs. For now, video game consoles will not be able to play Redbox streaming titles.

In comparison, Netflix has an estimated 60,000 titles available for streaming on a nearly ubiquitous array of devices and has an unrivalled DVD library with more than 100,000 titles.

While it's priced attractively, the new service could have limited appeal for the absent-minded. DVD renters who neglect to return discs will start having to pay extra after their four nights of rentals are used up each month. Unused rental credits won't roll over into the following month. Netflix DVD subscribers keep discs as long as they want, but don't get new ones until shipping the ones they have back in the mail.

The deal marks another expansion for Epix, which licensed its movies to Netflix in a blockbuster $1 billion, five-year deal in 2010. The exclusivity of that pact expired in September, allowing Amazon.com Inc. to also license Epix movies for subscribers of its Amazon Prime annual shipping service.

Epix CEO Mark Greenberg said the expansion onto Redbox will help grow its customer base since Redbox's customers tend to be younger than its current subscribers.

"We're expanding the pie by adding more people to the mix. I think that's healthy," he said.

Greenberg said he's indifferent to whether subscribers get Epix movies from Redbox Instant, Amazon, Netflix or through their TV providers.

But he noted that its 10 million TV subscribers will have access to Epix movies and original shows 90 days earlier than their Redbox counterparts, a head start that helps protect the value of Epix for cable, satellite and telecom TV partners such as Cox Cable and Verizon FiOS.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Applauding Amazon on tax-collect pact

Municipal advocates hope Amazon.com's agreement to start collecting Massachusetts sales taxes will result in more aid for struggling cities and towns, while Bay State retailers welcomed a more level playing field with the world's largest online seller.

Brookline Booksmith co-owner Dana Brigham called the news "fantastic."

"It takes away at least one of the reasons that people find Amazon so much cheaper than bricks-and-mortar stores," she said. "It's a competitive advantage that they have had every day that they've been in business."

Amazon signed an agreement with the state Department of Revenue to start collecting the 6.25 percent state sales tax on online purchases made by Massachusetts customers beginning Nov. 1, 2013.

The announcement comes amid a prolonged slump in state tax revenue. The DOR estimates the collections will net additional state tax revenue in the low tens of millions of dollars in the first year and continue to grow.

"It's good news," said Geoffrey Beckwith, the Massachusetts Municipal Association's executive director. "It's clear that state tax revenues are not coming in an adequate level to support the budget, which is why the governor instituted budget cuts last week."

Local aid is down 32 percent, or $416 million, since 2008, Beckwith noted. "If the Internet loophole can be closed, perhaps we can reverse that," he said.

The state pledged to work with Amazon on federal legislation authorizing states to require all catalog and Internet sellers to collect state sales taxes.

The Massachusetts Main Street Fairness Coalition — comprised of retailers, local elected officials and other groups — had been pushing Gov. Deval Patrick for a deal this year after Amazon opened a Cambridge software office and bought a North Reading robotics company. Amazon had agreed to collect sales taxes in other states where it has offices.

The state's announcement said Amazon plans to "create hundreds of high-tech jobs in Massachusetts in coming years." Jay Gonzalez, the state's administration and finance secretary, said Amazon is interested in expanding its presence in Massachusetts, but could not provide specifics. Amazon declined comment.

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