Groupon hasn’t had a great go of things since becoming a publicly traded company; founder and CEO Andrew Mason was ejected earlier this year, and its so-called “third-party” or daily deal revenue seems to be in a state of continuing decline as more customers shy away from or ignore those emails offering flash sales. But under current CEO Eric Lefkofsky, the focus has shifted to a place where users go to search for deals, which is why the redesigns of its mobile and web presences announced today make a lot of sense.
On mobile, Groupon now has a “Local Explorer” feature, which automatically bubbles up content in the city in which a user is currently located (it used to serve this via a ‘Nearby’ tag only). It detects location changes in the background and sends targeted deals via push notifications, too, which is clearly designed to remind users that the app exists when they’re on holiday and perhaps more likely to be in need of discounted meals at restaurants, etc.
There’s now a search bar at the top of every screen on mobile, emphasizing that new focus under Lefkofsky, and users are also greeted with personalized deal collections unique to each when they launch the app, instead of just a generic layout based on their hometown location. Groupon also moves into 12 new markets on the iPad with this update, which is key if the company is targeting travelers.
On the web, there’s likewise a personalized homepage with “curated collections of deals based on the customer’s interests, previous purchases, [and] purchases by other customers with similar interests,” and there’s a new persistent search bar on every page of the site, which also features autocomplete suggestions. Those, too are designed to increase discoverability.
Also new on the web are results that cross all of Groupon’s lines of business, spanning local deals, travel, restaurants and more, which is clearly aimed at generating some generative cross-market sales from users who are looking for more than one thing at once. Search also gets new filters that are designed to help users pinpoint their own specific areas of interest much more clearly.
Groupon may not be doing as well as some would’ve anticipated five years ago on its birthday, but these redesigns are the surest recent sign that it’s turning the prow of what has become a rather large and lumbering ecommerce ship towards new waters. A lot of these changes seem obvious in light of the current trends among online businesses and startups, but that doesn’t mean they can’t still have significant impact on Groupon’s average level of user engagement. Sadly, Groupon still requires an email to sign up for its website, which is perhaps the single most annoying thing about its platform. Baby steps, I suppose.
Groupon hasn’t had a great go of things since becoming a publicly traded company; founder and CEO Andrew Mason was ejected earlier this year, and its so-called “third-party” or daily deal revenue seems to be in a state of continuing decline as more customers shy away from or ignore those emails offering flash sales. But under current CEO Eric Lefkofsky, the focus has shifted to a place where users go to search for deals, which is why the redesigns of its mobile and web presences announced today make a lot of sense.
On mobile, Groupon now has a “Local Explorer” feature, which automatically bubbles up content in the city in which a user is currently located (it used to serve this via a ‘Nearby’ tag only). It detects location changes in the background and sends targeted deals via push notifications, too, which is clearly designed to remind users that the app exists when they’re on holiday and perhaps more likely to be in need of discounted meals at restaurants, etc.
There’s now a search bar at the top of every screen on mobile, emphasizing that new focus under Lefkofsky, and users are also greeted with personalized deal collections unique to each when they launch the app, instead of just a generic layout based on their hometown location. Groupon also moves into 12 new markets on the iPad with this update, which is key if the company is targeting travelers.
On the web, there’s likewise a personalized homepage with “curated collections of deals based on the customer’s interests, previous purchases, [and] purchases by other customers with similar interests,” and there’s a new persistent search bar on every page of the site, which also features autocomplete suggestions. Those, too are designed to increase discoverability.
Also new on the web are results that cross all of Groupon’s lines of business, spanning local deals, travel, restaurants and more, which is clearly aimed at generating some generative cross-market sales from users who are looking for more than one thing at once. Search also gets new filters that are designed to help users pinpoint their own specific areas of interest much more clearly.
Groupon may not be doing as well as some would’ve anticipated five years ago on its birthday, but these redesigns are the surest recent sign that it’s turning the prow of what has become a rather large and lumbering ecommerce ship towards new waters. A lot of these changes seem obvious in light of the current trends among online businesses and startups, but that doesn’t mean they can’t still have significant impact on Groupon’s average level of user engagement. Sadly, Groupon still requires an email to sign up for its website, which is perhaps the single most annoying thing about its platform. Baby steps, I suppose.
TUESDAY, APRIL 20, 2010, AT 6:19 PM Tornado Kills at Least Five in Oklahoma
FRIDAY, APRIL 29, 2011, AT 3:07 PM Obama Gets Firsthand Look at a Tornado Damage
TUESDAY, APRIL 20, 2010, AT 6:19 PM Tornado Kills at Least Five in Oklahoma. Very long title. Long long long. Tornado Kills at Least Five in Oklahoma. Very long title. Long long long.
TUESDAY, APRIL 20, 2010, AT 6:19 PM Tornado Kills at Least Five in Oklahoma. Very long title. Long long long. Tornado Kills at Least Five in Oklahoma. Very long title. Long long long.
Double-pronged attack could treat common children's cancer
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
1-Nov-2013
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Contact: Lauren King lauren.king@icr.ac.uk 020-715-35380 Institute of Cancer Research
A dual-pronged strategy using two experimental cancer drugs together could successfully treat a childhood cancer by inhibiting tumour growth and blocking off the escape routes it uses to become resistant to treatment, finds a new study.
Scientists at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, found that combining two separate molecularly targeted therapies could stop processes driving growth in a cancer called rhabdomyosarcoma, a major cause of cancer death in children.
The drugs, called AZD8055 and AZD6244, block two different signalling pathways involved in cancer growth acting like road-blocks on two separate routes that cancers could otherwise use to evade treatment.
The study, published in Clinical Cancer Research today (Friday, 1 November), was funded by the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre for Cancer at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), with additional funding from Cancer Research UK, The Royal Marsden Hospital Charitable Fund and the Chris Lucas Trust.
Rhabdomyosarcoma tumours can form anywhere in the body and resemble primitive muscle tissue. Despite advances in treatment options, there has been little improvement in outcome for patients with rhabdomyosarcoma in decades and they remain difficult to treat.
Previous research has shown that many rhabdomyosarcomas display activity of the PI3 Kinase signalling pathway, which plays a key role in cancer growth. However, blocking this pathway in other cancer types can lead to alternative signalling pathways becoming active to compensate, allowing resistance to treatment to develop.
In this study, scientists at the ICR targeted the PI3 Kinase pathway and a second pathway called MAP Kinase, to assess any compensatory signalling and determine if blocking both pathways could effectively inhibit rhabdomyosarcoma cell growth.
The researchers found that the PI3 Kinase pathway was active in 83% of rhabdomyosarcoma samples from patients, and that 43% of these also showed activation of the MAP Kinase pathway. In experiments on rhabdomyosarcoma cells to block either pathway alone, they saw compensatory signalling through the alternative pathway, suggesting that inhibiting both pathways is an essential approach to treatment, irrespective of whether MAP kinase signalling was initially activated.
The researchers tested rhabdomyosarcomas with drugs known to be effective against the PI3 Kinase and MAP Kinase pathways. When they tried the drugs AZD8055 and AZD6244 separately they saw reduced cell growth and a decrease in levels of markers showing the activity of the signalling pathways. However, compensatory activity was clearly evident.
But when they combined the two drugs they found a synergistic effect, with cell growth reduced to a greater extent than with either treatment alone. They saw similar synergistic results when AZD8055 and AZD6244 were used together in mice with rhabdomyosarcoma tumours, with tumour marker levels reduced to less than 30% of those in controls.
Co-author Dr Janet Shipley, Team Leader in Sarcoma Molecular Pathology at The Institute of Cancer Research, said:
"Rhabdomyosarcoma is the main type of sarcoma to affect children and little improvement has been made recently using conventional treatments like chemotherapy and radiotherapy - survival rates for some patients with this disease remain bleak. More effective targeted treatment is desperately needed. Our study shows that treating with one or other of these two drugs is not a good strategy but that combining them is a very promising option."
Co-author Dr Jane Renshaw, Senior Scientific Officer at The Institute of Cancer Research, said:
"We found that while most rhabdomyosarcoma tumours seem to have active PI3K signalling, inhibiting this pathway alone isn't enough to be an effective treatment. Cross-talk between the PI3 Kinase and MAP Kinase pathways means that cancer is able to find an alternative route, like traffic finding a way around a road-block. Targeting both pathways using two drugs together stops that compensatory action.
"These two drugs are being tested for use against cancers in adults so the next step will be to progress with clinical trials for children using the dual approach."
Nell Barrie, Cancer Research UK's Senior Science Communication Manager, said:
"Understanding the inner workings of cancer cells is crucial to finding the best ways to tackle the disease. This lab research emphasises the importance of targeting each cancer's weak points and combining drugs to develop more effective treatments which are urgently needed to improve survival for children's cancers like rhabdomyosarcoma. Further research and clinical trials will shed light on whether this promising drug combination could help save more lives."
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Double-pronged attack could treat common children's cancer
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
1-Nov-2013
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]
Share
Contact: Lauren King lauren.king@icr.ac.uk 020-715-35380 Institute of Cancer Research
A dual-pronged strategy using two experimental cancer drugs together could successfully treat a childhood cancer by inhibiting tumour growth and blocking off the escape routes it uses to become resistant to treatment, finds a new study.
Scientists at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, found that combining two separate molecularly targeted therapies could stop processes driving growth in a cancer called rhabdomyosarcoma, a major cause of cancer death in children.
The drugs, called AZD8055 and AZD6244, block two different signalling pathways involved in cancer growth acting like road-blocks on two separate routes that cancers could otherwise use to evade treatment.
The study, published in Clinical Cancer Research today (Friday, 1 November), was funded by the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre for Cancer at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), with additional funding from Cancer Research UK, The Royal Marsden Hospital Charitable Fund and the Chris Lucas Trust.
Rhabdomyosarcoma tumours can form anywhere in the body and resemble primitive muscle tissue. Despite advances in treatment options, there has been little improvement in outcome for patients with rhabdomyosarcoma in decades and they remain difficult to treat.
Previous research has shown that many rhabdomyosarcomas display activity of the PI3 Kinase signalling pathway, which plays a key role in cancer growth. However, blocking this pathway in other cancer types can lead to alternative signalling pathways becoming active to compensate, allowing resistance to treatment to develop.
In this study, scientists at the ICR targeted the PI3 Kinase pathway and a second pathway called MAP Kinase, to assess any compensatory signalling and determine if blocking both pathways could effectively inhibit rhabdomyosarcoma cell growth.
The researchers found that the PI3 Kinase pathway was active in 83% of rhabdomyosarcoma samples from patients, and that 43% of these also showed activation of the MAP Kinase pathway. In experiments on rhabdomyosarcoma cells to block either pathway alone, they saw compensatory signalling through the alternative pathway, suggesting that inhibiting both pathways is an essential approach to treatment, irrespective of whether MAP kinase signalling was initially activated.
The researchers tested rhabdomyosarcomas with drugs known to be effective against the PI3 Kinase and MAP Kinase pathways. When they tried the drugs AZD8055 and AZD6244 separately they saw reduced cell growth and a decrease in levels of markers showing the activity of the signalling pathways. However, compensatory activity was clearly evident.
But when they combined the two drugs they found a synergistic effect, with cell growth reduced to a greater extent than with either treatment alone. They saw similar synergistic results when AZD8055 and AZD6244 were used together in mice with rhabdomyosarcoma tumours, with tumour marker levels reduced to less than 30% of those in controls.
Co-author Dr Janet Shipley, Team Leader in Sarcoma Molecular Pathology at The Institute of Cancer Research, said:
"Rhabdomyosarcoma is the main type of sarcoma to affect children and little improvement has been made recently using conventional treatments like chemotherapy and radiotherapy - survival rates for some patients with this disease remain bleak. More effective targeted treatment is desperately needed. Our study shows that treating with one or other of these two drugs is not a good strategy but that combining them is a very promising option."
Co-author Dr Jane Renshaw, Senior Scientific Officer at The Institute of Cancer Research, said:
"We found that while most rhabdomyosarcoma tumours seem to have active PI3K signalling, inhibiting this pathway alone isn't enough to be an effective treatment. Cross-talk between the PI3 Kinase and MAP Kinase pathways means that cancer is able to find an alternative route, like traffic finding a way around a road-block. Targeting both pathways using two drugs together stops that compensatory action.
"These two drugs are being tested for use against cancers in adults so the next step will be to progress with clinical trials for children using the dual approach."
Nell Barrie, Cancer Research UK's Senior Science Communication Manager, said:
"Understanding the inner workings of cancer cells is crucial to finding the best ways to tackle the disease. This lab research emphasises the importance of targeting each cancer's weak points and combining drugs to develop more effective treatments which are urgently needed to improve survival for children's cancers like rhabdomyosarcoma. Further research and clinical trials will shed light on whether this promising drug combination could help save more lives."
###
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| E-mail
Share
]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Circle Internet Financial has launched with $9M of Series A funding to increase mainstream adoption of digital currencies like Bitcoin by providing a payment platform for consumers and merchants. Investors include Jim Breyer, Accel Partners and General Catalyst Partners.
Circle is a payment platform that wants to make it easy for businesses and consumers to use Bitcoin and other digital currencies. Despite its association with Deep Web black market Silk Road, as well as concerns over its stability, more consumers and companies are beginning to show interest in Bitcoins because they can facilitate online payments at lower costs and with greater security and privacy than existing electronic payment methods. One potential draw for merchants is avoiding the fees and risks of fraud and chargebacks associated with credit cards.
For consumers, Circle says it is building a secure platform that will protect consumer privacy. For businesses and charities, it will provide tools and services that enable them to accept digital currency payments with no transaction fees.
Circle is based in Boston, with international operations headquartered in Dublin, Ireland. The company is regulated by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a bureau of the U.S. Department of Treasury, as a money transmitter and is seeking state licenses. John Beccia, the former chief regulatory counsel for the Financial Services Roundtable in Washington, D.C., will also serve as Circle’s general counsel and chief compliance officer.
Allaire also co-founded of Allaire Corporation, creators of Web development language ColdFusion. Allaire Corp. was acquired by Macromedia in 2001, where Allaire became CTO and helped oversee the creation of a Flash-based application platform.
“Bitcoin and digital currency represent a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to shape the future of the Internet and global commerce,” said Alliare in a statement. “There’s a tremendous opportunity to make payments easier, more secure and less costly for consumers and businesses. Digital currency can dramatically reduce the friction and costs currently experienced in the world by merchants and consumers.”
Jim Breyer, Partner at Accel Partners, will join Circle’s board of directors, as well as David Orfao of General Catalyst Partners.
“The dramatic global growth in mobile, social and online commerce is creating the need and potential for a real global digital currency. With Jeremy’s vision for Circle and track record as an Internet pioneer, the opportunity here is to potentially build a significant global company,” said Breyer.
Ask A VC: AngelPad’s Thomas Korte On NYC Expansion, The Incubator’s New $7M Funding Round And More
In this week’s special episode of Ask A VC from Disrupt Europe in Berlin, Germany, AngelPad founder and former Googler Thomas Korte talked to TechCrunch about his incubator’s strategy, expansion and more.
Korte, who launched AngelPad in 2010 with six other ex-Google employees, explained why he’s kept the incubator small, with only around 10-12 startups per session (with two sessions per year). Korte also told us that AngelPad is heading east for its next session, debuting a new session in New York City (interested founders can apply here, and the deadline is Sunday).
While AngelPad was bootstrapped for the past three years with the backing of its founders, Korte also revealed that AngelPad just raised $7 million in outside investment from undisclosed LPs.
As of January of this year, AngelPad had seen 62 companies participate in five sessions. In 2012 alone, AngelPad’s 62 total companies raised $56 million, which is on top of the $25 million they had raised in 2011. The incubator has also seen some impressive exits from portfolio startups, including Twitter’s recent $350 million acquisition of MoPub.
When Brian Klug joined me on the Vector podcast last week, I asked him if including the Apple A7 chipset in both the iPhone 5s and the iPad Air and Retina iPad mini meant the phone was way overpowered, or the tablets were way underpowered. He answered in the best way possible - that the phone was ridiculously overpowered. As part of his iPad Air review, Brian's colleague, Anand Lai Shimpi, puts some context to that ridiculousness. From AnandTech:
This is the first Apple SoC that’s able to deliver good amounts of memory bandwidth to all consumers. A single CPU core can use up 8GB/s of bandwidth. I’m still vetting other SoCs, but so far I haven’t come across anyone in the ARM camp that can compete with what Apple has built here. Only Intel is competitive.
As John Gruber pointed out on Daring Fireball in his review, it's roughly the same amount of raw power as a 2010 MacBook Air. That's the machine I primarily ran iMore on for a year. And now that's in my phone, and in my tablet. Insane.
Pop open Wikipedia and go read Anand's whole review.
There’s now a search bar at the top of every screen on mobile, emphasizing that new focus under Lefkofsky, and users are also greeted with personalized deal collections unique to each when they launch the app, instead of just a generic layout based on their hometown location. Groupon also moves into 12 new markets on the iPad with this update, which is key if the company is targeting travelers.
Also new on the web are results that cross all of Groupon’s lines of business, spanning local deals, travel, restaurants and more, which is clearly aimed at generating some generative cross-market sales from users who are looking for more than one thing at once. Search also gets new filters that are designed to help users pinpoint their own specific areas of interest much more clearly.
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