Back 9 links for business: Killer molasses wave and a robot who barfs

Links that got us thinking on Friday, January 4:

1. 10 weirdest deaths by technology.
2. A vomiting robot is really a next generation user interface.
3. Can Google Street View really affect your property value?
4. Apple didn't offer, but Waze politely declined.
5. Confiscating $600,000 in pirated Apple products from China.
6. Fantastic Friday: Balancing home and work with technology.
7. What the Google wrist-slap means to  ...
   January 4, 2013 | 6:40pm EST

App-titude: What the heck is a Ruzzle?

It’s time to get our Friday on! We bring you, App-titude, our weekly look at a highlight from the app ecosystem. Sometimes the trends reveal themselves to us slowly after we pore over piles of data, and then other times the anomaly is readily app-arent.

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Zipcar, Steve Case, and the confusion between transactional and transformational

Nothing like the transactional—Avis' $500 million takeout of Zipcar—to get us talking about the transformational. As in, what this moment means for the "sharing economy."

This buyout, like many before it, kick-started the "but what does it all mean?" cycle, which tends to follow the usual coverage frenzy regarding who made the most money in the deal. The latter is usually easier to answer. In  ...

Small sisterhood of fashion billionaires

Once Tory Burch and ex-husband Chris Burch ended their legal battles over the company they co-founded—with an agreement forged on New Year's Eve—one thing became clear: The settlement made Tory Burch a very rich entrepreneur.

Chris Burch's sale of about half of his 28.3 percent stake in Tory Burch, LLC values the closely held operation at about $3.3 billion, and that makes designer Tory Burch  ...

McDreamy steams toward coffee bid victory

Grey’s Anatomy star Patrick Dempsey aka Dr. McDreamy appears to have come to the rescue again, announcing Thursday night that his company’s bid for the Tully’s Coffee chain has effectively pried it right out of rival Starbucks’ hands.

He told Seattle TV station KOMO-TV that his Global Baristas investment team beat out the seven groups interested in buying the bankrupt chain during  ...

MegaBits eyes mobile for monster battle games

Combining a love of the classic monster games—think Pokemon, Digimon, and Tamagotchi of the 1990s—and today’s mobile technology, the team at MegaBits LLC is hoping to fill a void they see in mobile gaming.

The 12-member, Pittsburgh-based team launched a Kickstarter campaign Thursday aiming to raise $55,000 to launch its first iPhone game: an augmented reality massively multiplayer online  ...

Retail trend to watch: the hotel popup

During the presidential inauguration week in Washington, the luxury brand Montblanc—known for its leather goods, fine writing instruments, jewelry and watches—will be setting up its first-ever pop-up shop in the St. Regis hotel, the company announced today.

The century-old brand is hardly the first to seize onto the temporary retail shop—we’ve seen indie brands, big-box stores like  ...