10 things in tech you need to know today
1. Slack, the $2.8 billion (£1.85 billion) work chat and collaboration startup, is getting ready for an IPO. Stewart Butterfield, Slack's founder and CEO, said in an interview with The Australian Business Review that the company recently kicked off an "IPO readiness" program.
2. HP CEO Meg Whitman has revealed she is going to partner with Microsoft to sell Microsoft's cloud, Azure. The news comes after HP decided to close its public cloud computing business and not compete head on with Amazon, Microsoft, Google and IBM.
3. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has successfully landed a space rocket back on Earth and marked the occasion with his first ever Tweet. The rocket was launched by aerospace firm Blue Origin, which was founded by Bezos in 2000.
4. Three Goldman bankers have left for Uber, people familiar with the matter told Reuters. The news wire said the bankers are the latest to leave Wall Street banks for Silicon Valley startups, where the lure of more flexible hours - and in some cases stock options and share grants - can be hard to resist.
5. People are using Airbnb for hookups around the world - and the company isn't happy about it. Business Insider spoke to some of the promiscuous travellers.
6. A new Instagram trend has men covering their beards with glitter. The trend seems to have begun with a social media pair known as "The Gay Beards," who frequently post photos of their beards covered with everything from Cheetos to ribbon.
7. Uber has formed a board to address growing safety concerns. The six members of the Global Safety Advisory Board will aim to reduce the risk of rides. Uber has come under fire for its relaxed background check practices, which have failed to identify people with a criminal record.
8. Legendary tech investor Michael Moritz has warned that "people underestimate China, especially in Europe." Moritz is chairman of Sequoia Capital, which has built up its reputation after investing in many of America's hugely successful technology companies when they were young, including Google, Apple, Facebook, and Yahoo.
9. Apple has launched a service in the UK that allows for items to be collected in-store within an hour of ordering online. The "Personal Pickup "service launched in the US in 2011 and expanded to Australia and Canada earlier in November.
10. Vine has launched an Apple Watch app that plays tiny videos on your wrist and keeps wearers up to date on how many times their videos have been looped. Vine's watch app has been in the works since at least June, when it was demoed on stage during an Apple event.