Therese Poletti’s Tech Tales: The two views of Snapchat: An app that…

From New York to Silicon Valley to its hometown in Southern California, investors and analysts are sharply divided about Snap Inc. and its potential ahead of a highly anticipated initial public offering. Investors are hoping that the Snapchat parent company’s much hyped IPO , the first from a “unicorn” tech company this year, will revive the moribund market for IPOs.

Facebook Ropes in Xiaomi’s Hugo Barra To Head VR Division

Facebook recently appointed Hugo Barra, the former Google executive who left Xiaomi Corp, to lead all of its virtual reality efforts including Oculus. In a surprise Facebook post on Wednesday night, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed to the media, “Hugo shares my belief that virtual and augmented reality will be the next major computing platform.

Stanford scientists see big potential for tiny wires

Assembled with the help of diamondoids, the microscopic nanowires can be seen with the naked eye because the strong mutual attraction between their diamondoid shells makes them clump together, in this case by the millions. At top right, an image made with a scanning electron microscope shows nanowire clusters magnified 10,000 times.