Starbucks prices are going up

A tall latte will cost between 15 and 20 cents more after Tuesday.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

On average a drink will cost between 5 and 20 cents more, depending on what you order and where you're making the purchase.

The price of a tall or venti sized latte will go up by between 15 and 20 cents, for example. But the price of a grande (medium in plain-speak) sized latte won't change at all. The cost of a tall brewed coffee and any sized frappuccino won't change either.

The company estimates that the orders of fewer than 20% of its customers will be affected. The price is only changing in U.S. stores, but it will change more in some markets than others.

Related: Starbucks workers could pay $23,000 for 4-year tuition

Starbucks is also raising the price of its packaged coffee sold in grocery stores by about 8%, beginning July 21. While retailers ultimately set the price, customers can expect to pay about $1 more per 12 oz. bag.

The change will actually bring the price back up to what it cost in April 2013, when the company cut the cost, spokesman Zack Hutson said.

He would not specify why the price hike is going into effect, but said the company considers factors like "competitive dynamics" and its overall cost structure.

Hutson said the price hike is not a knee-jerk reaction to the recent rise in coffee prices, which have skyrocketed due to a severe drought in Brazil. Starbucks buys its coffee beans ahead of time and already has enough for the rest of the fiscal year, and some of the next, he said.

The price hike at Starbucks (SBUX) comes about two months after J.M. Smucker (SJM) raised the price of its coffee products, including those for Folgers and Dunkin' Donuts, by 9%.

First Published: June 20, 2014: 2:54 PM ET

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Google hosts all-girl coding party

Actress and producer Mindy Kaling was the host at an event geared toward getting more young girls interested in tech.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

Made With Code aims to address what, according to Google's own research, are the top two reasons women don't get into computer science -- exposure and encouragement.

Actress and producer Mindy Kaling hosted the Made With Code launch event for the initiative in New York on Thursday night, where supporter Chelsea Clinton was also among the 150 in attendance. Clinton is Vice Chair of the Clinton Foundation, whose No Ceilings project works to further the full participation of women and girls in all parts of society.

"It was really powerful for the girls in the room, some of whom have never coded, to see the connection between art, music, dance -- the things they love -- and coding," said Reshma Saujani, founder & CEO of Girls Who Code, a partner of the Made With Code initiative.

Girls Who Code places high school juniors and seniors in coding classes within the walls of major private sector corporations like Google (GOOGL, Tech30), Twitter (TWTR, Tech30), eBay (EBAY, Tech30) and others.

The Made With Code website is a hub for interactive coding projects, video profiles of female coders merging their tech skills with their other interests, and a directory for coding classes, camps and opportunities from partner organizations.

Video profiles on the site include women and girls working in music engineering, studying human robot interactions and at the intersection of fashion and technology.

Related: Black girls take on tech's diversity woes

For the initiative, Google recruited partners and supporters including Girls Inc., Girl Scouts of the USA, MIT Media Lab, National Center for Women & Information Technology, Seventeen magazine, and the influential industry news site TechCrunch.

Google has also pledged $50 million to support nonprofits working to teach girls computer science.

Just a few weeks ago Google released a report revealing a severe gender gap within its own ranks. Only 30% of Googlers are women, with just 17% women on their tech teams. This week, Yahoo (YAHOF) followed suit by releasing numbers on their own staff. Despite having Marissa Mayer as CEO, Yahoo is only 15% female on the tech side of its business.

Related: Google: Overwhelmingly white and male

The numbers illustrate the industry's serious gender gap. In the United States, women make up only 28% of the science and engineering workforce, according to the National Science Foundation.

"We're building a movement here," said Saujani. "We're trying to reach millions of girls and teach them to code. We have a lot of work to do. This is just the beginning."

First Published: June 20, 2014: 4:06 PM ET

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Friday Links

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

A weekly collection of design, data and interactive links.

Photo/Video
Seismik | Herman Kolgen explores vertical layering dislocations
8-Bit 3D Art | Ron Burgundy and Boba Fett rendered in 3D printed pixels
Kodama | 20syl's new music video
Milky Way | Michael Shainblum shares 3 tips for photographing the Milky Way

Design/Data viz
Maschinenangst | Vera Idelson's costume and set design illustrations for the Italian Futurist play The Anguish of the Machines
The Story of EBoy | Watch the video, it's great
Visualizing MBTA Data | An interactive exploration of Boston's subway system
LazerBlade | The affordable laser cutter and engraver
Can you find Benghazi? | Can you accurately locate Benghazi?

Code
ArnoldC | A programming language based on the one liners of Arnold Schwarzenegger
Web Starter Kit | Boilerplate & tooling for multi-device development from Google

See last week's links

Have a nice weekend!
@dubly and @talyellin

First Published: June 20, 2014: 4:21 PM ET

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Why I put World of Warcraft on my resume

World of Warcraft helped make Stephen Gillett the chief information officer of Starbucks. He's now COO of Symantec.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

If it isn't clear already, we're talking about the online video game World of Warcraft.

"I put my qualifications on my resume when I apply for jobs," Gillett said. "Here's my guild. Here's my ranking. Here's my biggest online achievement. Some people look at it and say, 'What the hell is this?' And others will be like, 'That's exactly what I'm looking for.'"

It paid off. It helped him land a job at Corbis, and eventually Starbucks. Starbucks (SBUX)CEO Howard Schultz hired Gillett to be the company's chief information officer when the company was in a rut in 2008.

Related story: Amazon unveils 3-D Fire Phone

Gillett said he includes his World of Warcraft achievements on his resume, because it's not just about role-playing games. It shows he exercises leadership in both the physical and virtual realms. Plus, he understands the current societal fascination with earning points and interactive entertainment.

As a guild master, his current duties and responsibilities include organizing dungeon raids and managing the group's virtual bank. And he has a knack for recruiting key talent. Think mages and warlocks.

Those skills transferred to his position as Starbucks' CIO, Gillett says. In that role, he was tasked with saving the company's suffering technology assets. Cash registers were outdated. Computers were scarce. Customer sales were down.

Gillett's answer: Take Starbucks executives on a field trip to the Irvine, Calif., headquarters of World of Warcraft maker Activision Blizzard (ATVI, Tech30). The goal was to expose them to a business model that capitalizes on gaming.

Gillett got approval to start a new business unit, Digital Ventures. The cross between IT and marketing focused solely on improving Starbucks' interaction with customers' devices, like smartphones and laptops.

The result: The company "gamified" the Starbucks experience. Customers can now whip out their smartphones and use a rewards program to rack up points, level up and unlock special abilities -- err, deals. Sound familiar?

The coffee shop chain now considers its "My Starbucks Rewards" program, which boosted sales and customer loyalty, a success.

Related story: Bitcoin Bowl comes to college football

Gillett now plans to take that approach at cybersecurity and antivirus firm Symantec (SYMC, Tech30). He thinks it will start internally -- using games and simulators in the hiring process -- and eventually make its way out to customers. Maybe users will gain points for reporting back software bugs and avoiding bad links.

"I think gamification and the way of thinking about it is applicable to any industry," Gillett said. "Right now we get really good information on malware -- what it does, how it acts. But we have no telemetry on the human part of it -- what people were doing, thinking and believing when they encountered that particular threat."

First Published: June 19, 2014: 9:40 PM ET

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Can enough money buy you eternal youth?

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

No need to go that far.

It turns out, the best kind of anti-aging treatment is inside one's own body, and the rich are taking advantage of it, exploring the latest research in new technologies, genome mapping and stem cell treatments.

Among them is Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison, a large investor of the Ellison Medical Foundation, which supports research exploring the biology that underlies aging and age-related diseases. And there's billionaire Peter Nygård, who says he wants to live forever (or die trying), and has suggested he's found the keys to immortality in stem cell research.

Some doctors agree that stem cells are a key part of chasing youth.

"If you're a wealthy guy and haven't stored your stem cells, I think you're a total idiot," said Dr. Lionel Bissoon, a New York City physician who sees a number of stressed out, wealthy patients.

Related: It's expensive being rich

They usually come to him with similar problems: "Fatigue, belly fat, erectile dysfunction, tiring very quickly ... all very common with my patients from Wall Street," Bissoon said. The short-term solution to those ailments, he says, is testosterone replacement -- which is relatively affordable at a few hundred dollars a pop -- and IV nutrition.

For the long term he recommends stem cell storage, which works as a sort of rainy day insurance. The cells are extracted, preferably when the patient is on the younger side -- around 30 is said to be a good age -- and can then be used to boost an immune system or help to rebuild damaged organs later.

Dr. Dipnarine Maharaj stores cells at his South Florida Bone Marrow Stem Cell Transplant Institute in Boynton Beach, Fla.

"People are looking and finding ways to be able to help them to live longer to spend the money they've earned," he said. "They spend their retirement going doctor to doctor, and if we can find ways to prevent that it would be good." His clinic sees executives under a lot of stress, a fast way to damage any immune system.

He agrees that it's important to store cells before they become irreparably damaged. To collect and store stem cells at his clinic costs $15,000 for the initial extraction, which includes a year of storage. After that, storage costs $50 per month.

Stem cells aren't the only high-end solution.

Earlier this year, Malaysian billionaire Tan Sri Lim Kok Thay reportedly became one of the initial financial backers of a new genomics and cell therapy technology company called Human Longevity, dedicated to tackling age-related diseases and expanding the human life span.

Another company, Singapore-based Scéil, says it's the first to transform human cells into nearly any tissue type in the body.

"This technology has the potential to reverse, or even cure diseases and repair damaged tissues of your body," the company told CNNMoney in an email. Scéil attempts to obtain "a complete backup" of your genome from a skin sample and stores it for future use. The program costs $60,000 plus storage fees of $5,000 for 10 years, or $25,000 for a lifetime.

Related: No 99%ers allowed

"The aging process can be manipulated," said Sonia Arrison, author of 100 Plus: How the Coming Age of Longevity Will Change Everything, From Careers and Relationships to Family and Faith. "We're just at the beginning. There really is going to be a revolution ... it's going to be possible and not crazy at all to have a human life expectancy of 150 years."

She said that it's already possible to use 3D printers to construct organs, and that process will only get faster and more accessible.

But all that advancement won't be available to all -- at least not at first. "Obviously the rich will get it first," she said, comparing 3D printed organ availability to cell phones, which were once cost prohibitive to the masses. Now, six billion of the world's seven billion people have one, according to a U.N. study.

"It's how long is the timeline between the rich getting it and the poor getting it," she said.

Dr. Anthony Atala, who runs the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in Winston-Salem, N.C., is committed to making sure those outside the 1% get fair access to such technologies, so that "printing" organs on demand becomes something everyone can do.

"Part of the automation is making sure we lower the cost of these technologies," he said.

First Published: June 19, 2014: 9:38 PM ET

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Massachusetts approves $11 minimum wage

Legislators in the Bay State approved an

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

Lawmakers in the Bay State gave final approval on Thursday to legislation that will gradually raise the minimum to $11 an hour by 2017, up from $8 today. Governor Deval Patrick received the bill Thursday evening, said Jesse Mermell, a spokeswoman. He is expected to sign it into law soon.

While Massachusetts is taking the lead among states, the city of Seattle, which recently approved an increase to $15 an hour, still will offer the highest minimum anywhere in the country.

President Obama, who supports a nationwide increase to $10.10, applauded the move, saying Massachusetts "joins a growing coalition of states, cities and counties that are doing (their) part to make sure no American working full-time has to support a family in poverty."

The Massachusetts bill also raised the subminimum base wage for tipped workers to $3.75 from $2.63 currently. While advocates for a higher minimum wage applaud Massachusetts move, they say the increase for tipped workers is subpar.

Compared to other states, which have set higher wage bases for tipped workers, "Massachusetts is a real outlier," said Paul Sonn, general counsel for the National Employment Law Project. If a tipped worker doesn't earn the equivalent of the full minimum wage, after counting both the subminimum base plus tips, employers are supposed to make up the difference. But, Sonn said, "there' s a lot of room for evasion."

Related: What's the minimum wage in your state?

Raising the minimum wage has become a bit of a trend at the state level. Michigan lawmakers also recently approved a phased-in increase to $9.25 by 2018.

Vermont approved a bill last month that raises its minimum wage to $10.50 by 2018 as well, as did Maryland lawmakers, who chose to raise that state's minimum to $10.10.

Lawmakers in Minnesota, Delaware, West Virginia, Connecticut, New York, California and Hawaii have also approved minimum wage hikes this year or last.

At the federal level, however, lawmakers have reached stall speed on the minimum wage issue. Senate Democrats have put forth a proposal to raise the federal minimum to $10.10 an hour, up from $7.25 currently. Even if it passes the Senate, it faces an uphill battle in the House.

CNNMoney's American Dream Poll earlier this month found that 71% of people surveyed favor a hike in the federal minimum wage. And of those, 36% said it should be increased to $10.10 an hour, while 16% said it should be even higher.

--CNN's Kevin Conlon contributed to this report

First Published: June 19, 2014: 10:38 PM ET

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The million-dollar app that says 'yo'

The new 'Yo' app revolutionizes communication as we know it with one simple word.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

A new mobile app called Yo lets users interact with friends and contacts in zero characters -- yes zero. And you thought 140 characters was tough! In place of an actual message, users send and receive push notifications with one simple, single, predetermined greeting: "Yo."

Here's how it works according to the app's how-to lesson; "Wanna say 'Good morning' to friends? JUST YO THEM. Wanna say 'Thinking 'bout you' to your love? JUST YO. Wanna say 'Are you up?' YO."

Yes, "yo" (present participle "yoing") is now a verb. No, it's not a joke.

Yo has garnered $1 million from investors according to its creator, Or Arbel. He just moved to San Francisco from Tel Aviv last week to pursue Yo full-time after quitting his gig as the co-founder and chief technology officer of a social investment startup.

Related: Amazon unveils 3-D Fire Phone

"The 'yo' means everything," says Arbel. That's a profound statement coming from the guy who first called the idea for the app "stupid."

The former iOS engineer at Mobli was asked by the company's CEO, Moshe Hogeg, to quickly cook him up an app he could use to ping his personal assistant in lieu of cumbersome texts and phone calls. After dismissing the idea and getting on with his busy schedule, Arbel eventually realized the genius. After an eight-hour coding session, Yo was born.

There is no email registration, no connecting with Facebook (FB, Tech30) or Twitter (TWTR, Tech30). You actually don't even have to open the app itself to reap its benefits. The "yo" can mean anything to anyone. It's totally up to you. It can mean you've arrived to meet your friend at the movies. Your kid is ready to be picked up from school. It's the new passing notes in class. The new smartphone side-eye without the side-eye emoji.

Related: Mobile apps overtake PC Internet usage in U.S.

Arbel sees real potential for the app to change communications beyond the social sphere, as well. Imagine ordering a tall double caramel macchiato at Starbucks (SBUX) and simply waiting for a "Yo" to come through your phone when it's ready, instead of straining to listen for a barista to shout your name. Or receiving a "Yo" from your airline at the airport when it's time to board your flight. In a recent real-life iteration, the user WORLDCUP is now sending out "Yo"s every time a team scores a goal in a championship football match.

The app is currently available for download from the Apple (AAPL, Tech30) app store and Google (GOOG) Play.

If you still don't get it, don't worry. "In the beginning, I didn't get it either," Arbel admits. It'll hit you soon...

First Published: June 18, 2014: 4:47 PM ET

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Ay, caramba! Argentina on verge of default

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

The South American nation might not make its next interest payment that's due by July. Time is short, and Argentina is running out of options, especially after a major court ruling earlier this week went in favor of the creditors.

At this point Argentina only has one path: Negotiate with its remaining creditors, including several American hedge funds. That's what the country plans to do, according to reports Wednesday from Reuters and Bloomberg. Argentine officials are expected in New York next week.

Argentina's stock market tumbled a whopping 10% Monday as the default worries escalated, but it has since reversed some of those losses.

How did it get this bad? Back in 2001, Argentina's economy was in serious trouble, and the country defaulted on $93 billion in debt. In the years since, it managed to convince a large contingent of its creditors to take new bonds worth a fraction of the old ones. But some very patient hedge funds, including Elliott Management subsidiary NML Capital, decided to hold out for a fuller payment (they're nicknamed "the holdouts").

Meanwhile, Argentina paid its more agreeable creditors and ignored the holdouts.

Related: Despite risks, investors rush into risky debt

In 2012, Federal Judge Thomas Griesa of New York's southern district ruled that this wouldn't do. He ordered Argentina to turn over $1 billion to the spurned debt investors. Argentina appealed, but the Supreme Court declined to hear the case Monday.

The country's stock market fell 10% after the court decision, although it has rebounded the past two days and is now only 4% down for the week. The country's bonds have not been as lucky: both yields and the cost to insure Argentinian debt have spiked in the wake of the ruling. Yields rise when bond prices fall.

There's a lot riding on this for Argentina. This is "World Economic Cup" kind of pressure. If Argentina messes this up, U.S. investors will be far less likely to loan to the nation, and it needs the money. Annual GDP growth was just 1.4% last quarter, a slow rate for an emerging market economy, and the country had to devalue its currency in January.

Related: Here's some background on how rough things are in Argentina.

Henry Weisburg, a lawyer from firm Shearman & Sterling who specializes in international financial disputes and has been watching the case closely thinks that this week's developments mark the end of Argentina's court wrangling and open the door to other venues.

"I think that period is about to end, and this is going to become a much more political and financial matter," Weisburg said.

First Published: June 18, 2014: 5:34 PM ET

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T-Mobile: Stream all the music you want

T-Mobile CEO John Legere announced a new program called Music Freedom on Wednesday.

SEATTLE (CNNMoney)

The feisty wireless carrier announced a new program Wednesday that will let users stream music on certain apps without it counting toward monthly network data caps.

T-Mobile is calling the program Music Freedom, and it will initially include Spotify, Pandora, Rhapsody, iTunes Radio, iHeartRadio, Slacker, Samsung Milk and Beatport.

T-Mobile CEO John Legere said at an event in Seattle that 113 million U.S. mobile users now stream music, up from 19 million in 2009. But at present, he added, many users limit their mobile streaming for fear of extra charges when they exceed their monthly data caps.

"It's a pain point, it's a big one, it's a growing one, and we decided not just to step in slightly, but to completely eliminate it forever," Legere said.

T-Mobile (TMUS) has already gotten rid of extra charges for customers who exceed their high-speed data limits, though service does slow down once those limits are passed. With Music Freedom, customers who have exceeded their data limits will still get free high-speed music streaming.

While customers will likely be enthused, T-Mobile's Music Freedom program could draw concern from advocates of net neutrality, the principle that all data online be treated equally by Internet service providers.

The worry is that when certain services get privileged access to customers, established companies could gain a permanent advantage over new competitors.

AT&T announced a similar program earlier this year dubbed "sponsored data," under which content from paying businesses doesn't count against monthly data caps. The Federal Communications Commission is currently working to finalize new net neutrality regulations, though those won't apply to the mobile Internet.

Legere dismissed concerns about Music Freedom's net neutrality implications, saying new services could be quickly included in the program.

T-Mobile chief marketing officer Michael Sievert said the company isn't getting paid by the services participating in Music Freedom.

Related: T-Mobile CEO blasts AT&T and Amazon on Twitter

T-Mobile also announced a new streaming service Wednesday in partnership with Rhapsody called "unRadio" that will cost $5 a month, cheaper than Spotify's mobile service. T-Mobile is also allowing customers to "test drive" its network with an iPhone 5s for seven days free of charge.

The announcements are T-Mobile's latest moves in an ongoing marketing campaign it's dubbed the "un-carrier" strategy.

The goal is to upend the mobile industry, and T-Mobile has been doing that by eliminating contracts, dropping international roaming charges and offering to pay competitors' customers $650 to switch over.

So far, T-Mobile's "uncarrier" push has paid off in the form of increased market share. The company said last month that it added a record 2.4 million subscribers in the first three months of this year, its fourth consecutive quarter with more than 1 million total net additions.

Related: Sprint wants T-Mobile, but don't count on it

But these efforts have come at the cost of narrowing margins and widening losses. T-Mobile finished the first quarter with a loss of $151 million, up from $20 million in the last three months of 2013.

Wednesday's event came a day after the voluble Legere bashed Amazon for lining up AT&T (T, Tech30) as the exclusive service provider for the new Fire Phone.

"The odd thing is, big + bigger = fewer options for customers," Legere tweeted.

But T-Mobile is itself in the process of finalizing a $32 billion merger with Sprint (S), according to reports earlier this month.

If approved by regulators, the deal would unite the nation's third- and fourth-largest carriers into a combined entity with subscriber numbers comparable to industry leaders AT&T and Verizon (VZ, Tech30).

Legere declined to comment on the rumored Sprint merger, though he said T-Mobile's "un-carrier" effort will continue regardless of what happens.

"I believe the competition in the U.S. wireless industry is much better because T-Mobile exists," he said. "In anything we do, it will be about the un-carrier revolution and the T-Mobile company and brand getting bigger and stronger and changing the industry."

First Published: June 18, 2014: 10:57 PM ET

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GM recalls another 3.4 million vehicles

The Buick Lacrosse and other vehicles are included in the new recall.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

The new recall affects cars from model years 2000 through 2014. The ignition switch can move out of the run position, turning off power steering and power braking while the car is being driven. Extra weight on the key chain can jostle the ignition when the vehicle strikes something in the road like a pothole.

Some model years of the Chevrolet Impala, Cadillac Deville and DTS, as well as the Buick Lacrosse, Lucerne and Regal are included in this recall.

Monday's announcement comes after a review of ignition switch issues in the wake 2.6 million recalled Chevrolet Cobalts and other small cars for a similar problem. At least 13 deaths have been blamed for the earlier ignition switch problem.

It took the company more than a decade to recall those cars, and the automaker is currently under investigation and facing several lawsuits over the delay.

Related: Barra set to testify again on GM recall

Monday's recall pertains to a different ignition switch and requires a different solution, GM spokesman Alan Adler said.

Owners of cars included in the Cobalt recall must get the ignition switch replaced, but those affected by Monday's recall don't have to. Instead, GM dealerships will add an insert to the key that closes the slot and leaves only a small hole where a key ring can be attached.

Dealerships are expected to start fixing owners' keys in the next few weeks. Until then, owners are urged to remove any additional weight from their key chains.

GM engineer Ray DeGiorgio was involved with the design of both ignition switches, according to Adler. DeGiorgio was placed on paid leave at the start of the Cobalt investigation and is no longer with the company.

The automaker also issued five smaller recalls Monday, affecting about 194,000 vehicles worldwide. More than half of those are Cadillac ATS and CTS cars with a problem that could prevent the driver from shifting gears. The company said it is unaware of any related crashes or injuries.

GM (GM) said it expects to take a charge of about $700 million for recalls this quarter, on top of the $1.3 billion in recall-related charges that it's already announced this year.

First Published: June 16, 2014: 4:16 PM ET

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