13 diciembre 2010
La publicación Tabbloid de hoy NOTICIAS PERSONALES PARA UD.
TECHCRUNCH
robinw 13 DIC 2010 09:14A.M.
iYogi, an independent remote consumer tech support company based in India and New York, this morning announced that is has secured $30 million in a fresh round of financing, led by Sequoia Capital India, with existing investors Canaan, SVB Capital Partners, SAP Ventures and Draper Fisher Jurvetson participating. The round comes less than a year after investors injected $15 million into the company – iYogo has raised a total of $57.6 million to date. ALL THINGS DIGITAL iYogi says it plans to use the proceeds to expand its on-demand remote tech support services outside the existing consumer market and the Windows OS platform, and to address the growing need for supporting mobile consumer devices.
Multitouch Pioneer Jeff Han Starts to Think Small (Devices) [Mobilized]
iYogi’s planned roll-out to new geographies include launching its tech support services in Europe, the Middle East and India, in addition to
13 DIC 2010 09:00A.M.
its existing services in North America, Canada, the UK and Australia. For years now, Jeff Han has been working on large-screen multitouch displays.
The company says it has solved more than 2 million tech problems for consumers since its inception – it claims 300 percent growth for its premium annual subscription service in the past 12 months alone. To support its growth, iYogi this year increased its force of “Global Tech Experts” from 1,200 to more than 5,000, across eight new centers in multiple geographies.
Han and his company, Perceptive Pixel, are best known for creating the giant touch wall that John King and others at CNN use to break down the elections. While Apple, Microsoft and others have targeted consumers, Perceptive Pixel has focused on niche professional markets, especially the defense and government sector.
CrunchBase Information iYogi
But, after years of watching the small touch-screen device market from the sidelines, Han said he thinks he is pretty close to creating his first products that will run on those devices.
Information provided by CrunchBase
“Mobile is interesting,” he said in an interview last month at his New York offices (They are in the Manhattan building that Google is buying with an amazing roof view seen below). “How can you ignore a billion devices being sold every year.”
1
La publicación Tabbloid de hoy NOTICIAS PERSONALES PARA UD.
13 diciembre 2010
Han said there is a reason he has stayed focused on the high end of the market.
TECHCRUNCH
“I have a personal bias,” he told Mobilized. “I want computers to be functional, not just playful.”
13 DIC 2010 09:00A.M.
db
The modern tablet, he said, is the first consumer device that has enough pixels and the precision sensors to potentially be of interest to Perceptive Pixel. In particular, Han said he is intrigued by the idea of using tablets to allow meeting participants to interact with a nearby larger touch screens that might be in use by someone leading a meeting.
When DailyBooth finally released an iPhone app back in July, it made a lot of sense. After all, the iPhone 4 had just been released and it featured a front-facing camera for the first time — the perfect tool for a service which asks you to take pictures of yourself. Unfortunately, while the idea was right, DailyBooth’s first iPhone app just wasn’t very good. So the completely redid it. And I’m happy to report that version 2 is finally one worthy of your gaze.
“We’re looking at mobile and slate devices as a way to tie into this family of collaboration (products),” he said, noting that’s where it is spending its energy when it comes to mobile, as opposed to coming up with some killer app that works only on smaller screens. “There are a lot of smart people creating mobile apps.”
While the first app was a basic way to scan DailyBooth and upload simple pictures of yourself, version 2 includes many more of the service’s core features. This includes a live feed, profile views, activity views, messages, following/follower views, friend finding, and “ghosting”.
Han said his first mobile efforts should come out early next year–in the first quarter or early in the second quarter, though he wouldn’t give more specifics.
The first and the last features are really cool. The live feed automatically refreshes as new DailyBooth pictures come in. Not too many iPhone apps utilize this live view, but it works for DailyBooth as
Whatever Perceptive Pixel ends up doing in the tablet space, Han said his plan is to eventually have it support multiple operating systems, though Han said the company will probably only qualify certain devices. So far, he said, Apple’s iOS and the iPad seem best suited to the applications he has in mind, while the real-time touch performance on Android has certain issues.
pictures are quick scan items — and they come in slightly slower than text-based messages. The other excellent feature is “ghosting”. A big part of DailyBooth is looking at someone’s picture then mimicking it in the replies. The ghosting feature allows you to easily do this as it shows you a slightly transparent version of the picture your trying to mimic, so you can line yourself up with it.
“We’re not going to just let it run on anything out there,” he said. “Some of them just can’t guarantee a good user interface.”
While DailyBooth could technically be lumped into the latest craze of picture taking apps, CEO Brian Pokorny likes to distinguish it as a “front of the phone” app versus the others which are “back of the phone” apps. Obviously, he’s talking about the camera there.
[ See post to watch video ]
It is interesting just how DailyBooth users utilize pictures to communicate through images of themselves, rather than of other things. And now they finally have a solid app to do it with. You can find the new app here in the App Store.
2
La publicación Tabbloid de hoy NOTICIAS PERSONALES PARA UD.
13 diciembre 2010
DailyBooth, co-founded by Ryan Amos and Jon Wheatley and initially incubated by YCombinator, was able to raise $1 million in seed funding from the likes of Sequoia Capital, Betaworks and angel investors such as Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake and ex-Googler, Chris Sacca.
GIGAOMTECH
dailybooth3 13 DIC 2010 09:00A.M.
Android Coming Soon The company is planning on releasing an Android app soon. “Android is currently in the works right now,” Pokorny said, pointing out that with more smartphones coming to market with front-facing cameras, it makes more sense for DailyBooth to support them. There has been an explosion in the number of mobile photo sharing applications, with well-known venture capitalists opening their checkbooks for such companies. Frankly, I have been surprised that DailyBooth hasn’t pushed into the mobile arena more aggressively, a question I posted to Pokorny when I ran into him a few weeks ago. After all, DailyBooth is growing at a rapid clip on the web. This Twitter-meets-Flickr like service is a lightweight social network that has found favor with the younger demographic, one of the main reasons it has grown so rapidly. It works well because it allows folks to easily share their daily lives through pictures and short pithy comments.
Brian Pokorny, CEO of DailyBooth
Front Camera Revolution
DailyBooth, a San Francisco-based social photo sharing service is making the much-awaited leap from the web to the mobile Internet by launching the final version of its iPhone app. The company had launched a beta version of its app earlier this year. This new enhanced version of the app replicates DailyBooth’s web features such as a live feed, comments and follow/following on the small screen.
However, as much as it has been successful on the web, it has been noticeably missing on the mobile front, giving opportunity to new mobile-only photo services such as PicPlz and Instagram. Pokorny doesn’t see those services as his competitors, mostly because he sees DailyBooth as a “front of the phone” app” while others are “back of the phone apps.” (Nevertheless, no one can take Instagram lightly, which has been growing at a breakneck speed.)
“We’ve started over and built this from the ground up,” said CEO Brian Pokorny, who before joining the company was a well-known Silicon Valley investor with Ron Conway’s SV Angel. “In addition to the iPhone, the app will be great for all of the new iPod Touch (devices) launched a few months ago that all have a front facing camera,” he added.
“The content generated from these apps are primarily objects while the content from DailyBooth is all about people and faces,” he argued. “The user base is also different, as our users are predominantly under the age of 25 and view the Internet as an extension of their lives. They are comfortable with face communication, as many of have grown up with web cams as the norm.”
3
La publicación Tabbloid de hoy NOTICIAS PERSONALES PARA UD.
13 diciembre 2010
Just as YouTube is about broadcasting videos and Apple’s Facetime is about communication, DailyBooth is about communication through the medium of pictures. Pokorny said DailyBooth is much more “of a new type of platform for social communication through pictures via photo comments back and forth between users,” versus back-of-thephone apps, which “offer a broadcast style communication or a window into what your friends are currently looking at.”
ALL THINGS DIGITAL
Dell To Acquire Compellent [NewEnterprise]
I think Pokorny makes a good point, though I wouldn’t call DailyBooth a means of communication. I see it more as asynchronous interaction. I find it fascinating how different demographic groups adapt the Internet to interact differently. Nevertheless, it would be interesting to see how successful DailyBooth is on mobile. It certainly has the makings of what I think is a good mobile photo service – it is “a unique and more immersive, two-way service” that is designed from the perspective of the “mobile user.”
13 DIC 2010 08:21A.M.
Related GigaOM Pro Research (sub req’d): • How to Market Your iPhone App • App Developers Are You Ready for HTML5 and Metered Data? • Why Google Launched App Inventor
Three months after losing a bidding war for storage company 3Par to Hewlett-Packard, Dell said today it has reached a deal to acquire Compellent, another storage company. Dell will pay $27.75 a share, or about $960 million. This is higher than what Dell said it expected to pay when it announced that talks were underway last week.
DailyBooth @ Web 2.0 2010 View more presentations from DailyBooth.
It’s the latest move in the roll-up of storage companies by larger IT providers. The wrestling match over 3Par had driven up Compellent’s share price, and prior deals by IBM for Netezza and EMC’s grab of Isilon Systems. Something tells me it won’t be the last. Here’s the press release: Dell to Acquire Compellent * Fast-Growing Compellent Technologies, Inc. Provides an Intelligent, Powerful and Easy to Use Virtualized Storage Platform * Compellent’s Channel Focus Will Further Extend Dell’s
4
La publicación Tabbloid de hoy NOTICIAS PERSONALES PARA UD.
13 diciembre 2010
PartnerDirect Relationships, Offering New Set of Storage Products to All Members
“We are excited about our merger with Dell. This is the next logical step in our goal to scale our products, channel
* Transaction Expected to Be Accretive to Dell Non-GAAP Earnings in Its Fiscal Year 2012 ROUND ROCK, Texas & EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Dell (NASDAQ:DELL – News) and Compellent Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:CML – News) today announced they have entered into a definitive agreement for Dell to acquire Compellent, a rapidly growing provider of highly-virtualized storage solutions with automated data management features, including tiering and thin provisioning, for enterprise and cloudcomputing environments. The acquisition is the latest strategic investment by Dell as it expands its portfolio of enterprise-class storage solutions and is consistent with Dell’s strategy to help customers better manage data growth, reduce storage costs and dramatically simplify the management of IT infrastructure.
and team worldwide,” said Phil Soran, President, CEO and Chairman of Compellent. “With Dell’s scale and technology leadership, we accelerate the adoption of our virtualized platform, Fluid Data, to redefine the value of enterprise storage for data centers and cloud computing.”
The acquisition of Compellent will deliver on Dell’s commitment to provide its customers solutions that are open, capable and affordable. Dell delivers an open and integrated approach to data management that drives efficiency and dramatically reduces costs by streamlining operations.
About Dell
Upon closing the transaction, Dell will quickly make Compellent an integral part of its industry-leading storage portfolio, including PowerVault, EqualLogic and Dell/EMC. Compellent expands Dell’s award-winning storage solutions, which now offers customers innovative systems and choice at every storage tier, from direct-attach to highly-virtualized SANs.
About Compellent
Terms and Closing Under terms of the agreement, approved by the boards of directors of both companies, Dell will pay $27.75 per share in cash for each share of Compellent for a total equity value of approximately $960 million, and aggregate purchase price of approximately $820 million, net of Compellent’s cash. The transaction, which is subject to approval by Compellent’s shareholders and customary closing conditions, is expected to close in early 2011.
Dell Inc. (NASDAQ:DELL – News) listens to customers and delivers worldwide innovative technology, business solutions and services they trust and value. For more information, visit www.dell.com.
Dell also plans to keep Compellent’s existing operations in Eden Prairie, Minn., and will invest in engineering,
Compellent Technologies (NYSE:CML – News) provides Fluid Data storage solutions that automate the movement and management of data at a granular level, enabling organizations to constantly adapt to change, slash costs and secure information against downtime and disaster. This patented, built-in storage intelligence delivers significant efficiency, scalability and flexibility. With an all-channel sales network in 35 countries, Compellent is
support, operations and sales capability to grow this business.
one of the fastest growing enterprise storage companies in the world. For more information and news, visit www.compellent.com and www.compellent.com/news.
Compellent sells its solutions through an extensive network of channel partners. Dell plans to maintain and enhance the strong channel program that Compellent has developed. Dell also signed a reseller agreement with Compellent that extends the storage portfolio it can offer its worldwide customer base, effective immediately. Quotes “Compellent is a natural complement to Dell’s expanding enterprise storage portfolio. The Compellent storage platform will enable Dell to provide customers additional mid- and high-end network storage solutions that simplify and reduce the cost of data management,” said Brad Anderson, senior vice president, Enterprise Product Group. “Compellent’s design focus on intelligently managing data to increase efficiency, agility and resiliency is consistent with Dell’s approach of building solutions that can quickly scale to meet the most demanding enterprise environment.”
5
La publicación Tabbloid de hoy NOTICIAS PERSONALES PARA UD.
13 diciembre 2010
TECHCRUNCH
robinw 13 DIC 2010 08:17A.M.
Fabulis, the social network for gay men, is now Fab.com, a far more memorable (domain) name. The young company behind the site, which is designed to help gay men discover people, places and activities all over the globe, has also raised $1.75 million in Series A funding from First Round Capital, The Washington Post Company, Baroda Ventures and Zelkova Ventures.
ALL THINGS DIGITAL
Judge Deals Paul Allen a Setback in Patent [Voices]
The financing comes on top of an earlier $1.25 million in angel financing, bringing the startup’s total of capital raised to nearly $3 million.
13 DIC 2010 08:00A.M. By Don Clark, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
Fab.com has also gotten a number of enhancements, coinciding with the revamp.
Billionaire investor Paul Allen’s patent lawsuit against some of the biggest names in high technology ran into a stumbling block as a federal judge in Seattle dismissed the complaint for not describing its allegations specifically enough.
Now over 110,000 members strong, the company has just launched a global directory of “gay-friendly places” with accompanying rankings, reviews, tips and photo uploads, complementing the site’s interactive profiles and database of gay-relevant events.
U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman on Friday set a Dec. 28 deadline for the plaintiff, a company controlled by Mr. Allen called Interval Licensing LLC, to file an amended complaint. A spokesman for Mr.
Fab.com also offers an iPhone app, which includes the ability to check in, identify your current location, rate places, name the people you’re with, upload images and more.
Allen said it plans to do so soon, calling the judge’s order a “procedural issue” that won’t halt the case.
The startup says 40% of its members log in at least 10 times per month, while 25% visit more than 50 times per month. The site welcomes more than 5,000 new users on a weekly basis.
The suit, filed in August, names tech companies Google Inc., its YouTube subsidiary, Apple Inc., Facebook Inc., Yahoo Inc., AOL Inc., eBay Inc. and Netflix Inc., as well as OfficeMax Inc. and Staples Inc., as defendants. The complaint accuses them of infringing four patents covering technology developed at Interval Research Corp., a Palo Alto, Calif., lab and technology incubator that Mr. Allen financed but that closed down about a decade ago. Mr. Allen is a co-founder of Microsoft Corp.
CrunchBase Information Fabulis Information provided by CrunchBase
Read the rest of this post on the original site
6
La publicación Tabbloid de hoy NOTICIAS PERSONALES PARA UD.
13 diciembre 2010
ALL THINGS DIGITAL
TECHCRUNCH
Former AOL Media Boss Bill Wilson Rounds Up the Old Gang [MediaMemo]
robinw 13 DIC 2010 07:43A.M.
13 DIC 2010 07:55A.M. Former AOL content boss Bil Wilson, who left the company early this year and landed in September at radio owner Townsquare Media, has been a busy guy. High up on his to-do list, apparently: Hire a whole lot of people who worked at his old company. Wilson, who is heading up digital for his new employer, has brought on 10 former AOL team members, and put them to work building out new sites.
Dell has officially announced that it aims to pick up Compellent, a provider of storage solutions with automated data management features for enterprise and cloud environments, for $27.75 per share in cash for each share of Compellent (a total equity value of approximately $960 million). The aggregate purchase price is about $820 million, net of Compellent’s cash. This is slightly more than what Dell initially named as the terms of the merger agreement last week.
You can see some of the results today at Taste of Country , a new music portal meant to compete with the likes of Viacom’s CMT.com, among others.
And Wilson’s group is also launching new local sites for 30 of the 171 radio stations Townsquare operates. They’re scheduled to overhaul the remaining 141 stations within the next 3 months. It will be interesting to see if Townsquare has any luck breaking open the market for local Web sales. Radio is traditionally driven by local ad sales (which is one of the reason that Internet radio still hasn’t really taken off yet after all these years), but radio owners have largely been content to let their Web assets languish. Wilson’s team that’s trying to solve that includes Jared Willig, who used to run Moviefone at AOL; Sun Sachs, formerly VP of Design and product at AOL Media; and Pete Schieke, former head of AOL Radio. Wilson was one of the last high-profile AOL execs to leave after former Google sales boss Tim Armstrong took the reins in the spring of 2009; he has since restocked the company with a long roster of exGooglers.
7
La publicación Tabbloid de hoy NOTICIAS PERSONALES PARA UD.
13 diciembre 2010
ALL THINGS DIGITAL
TECHCRUNCH
Who Wants Nortel’s 4G Patents? [Digital Daily]
trends on twitter 13 DIC 2010 04:16A.M.
13 DIC 2010 06:15A.M.
Twitter has just released their list of top trends on Twitter for 2010. Surprisingly, Justin Bieber did not dominate the list. Instead, the Gulf oil spill did. The service says that 25 billion tweets were sent in total in 2010. Below, find the lists of the top overall trends following by the top trends for different categories: Nortel was once a cornerstone of the telecom industry. These days it’s little more than an estate sale, a now-bankrupt company auctioning off the valuables of a fallen titan.
1. Gulf Oil Spill 2. FIFA World Cup 3. Inception 4. Haiti Earthquake 5. Vuvuzela 6. Apple iPad 7. Google Android 8. Justin Bieber 9. Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows 10. Pulpo Paul
Last year, Nortel sold its optical networking and carrier ethernet business to Ciena for $769 million and its wireless business to Ericsson for $1.3 billion. Soon it will sell off its patents as well, among them some thought to be essential 4G wireless technologies like Long Term Evolution (LTE) and Service Architecture Evolution (SAE). And that IP is drawing a lot of interest from the likes of Research in Motion, Nokia, Google and Apple, none of whom wants to see it in the hands of a rival, particularly as 4G’s commercial availability broadens.
News Events: 1. Gulf Oil Spill
Sources tell me all three companies are participating in the auction and Reuters reports that final bids are due in a matter of weeks. Said
2. Haiti Earthquake 3. Pakistan Floods
one, “whoever buys these patents is buying a hell of an advantage.”
4. Koreas Conflict 5. Chilean Miners Rescue
Reached for comment, Apple and RIM declined. Google and Nokia People: 1. Justin Bieber 2. Dilma Rouseff 3. Lady Gaga 4. Julian Assange 5. Mel Gibson
did not respond.
Movies: 1. Inception 2. Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows 3. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World 4. Despicable Me 5. Karate Kid Television: 1. MTV Music Video Awards 2. Pretty Little Liars
8
La publicación Tabbloid de hoy NOTICIAS PERSONALES PARA UD.
13 diciembre 2010
3. True Blood 4. Walking Dead
ALL THINGS DIGITAL
Viral Video: Groupon’s Andrew Mason Doesn’t Kiss Google and Tell! [BoomTown]
5. Grammy Awards Technology: 1. Apple iPad 2. Google Android 3. Apple iOS 4. Apple iPhone 5. Call of Duty Black Ops
13 DIC 2010 03:16A.M.
World Cup: 1. FIFA World Cup 2. Vuvuzela 3. Pulpo Paul 4. Dunga 5. Diego Maradona Sports: 1. Lebron James 2. Wimbledon 3. Manchester United 4. Brock Lesnar 5. Celtics Hashtags: 1. #rememberwhen 2. #slapyourself 3. #confessiontime (Hashtag started by Usher) 4. #thingsimiss 5. #ohjustlikeme
It seems as though there is no one that Groupon’s Andrew Mason won’t talk to, in the wake of the failed acquisition of his social buying site by Google. In a series of interviews over the last week, the Groupon CEO and Cofounder chit-chatted about start-up’s growth, waxed poetic over its Chicago roots and marveled on what it’s like riding a rocket ship to the moon. Plus, Mason is quite charming doing it, making all kinds of quips and crazily endearing statements that reporters eat up with a big spoon. Except that he goes all coy about the single biggest gorilla in the room–or shall we say, Borg? That would be telling us exactly why the search behemoth did not gobble Groupon up, despite a $6 billion price tag. At least Mason is funny, as you will see here on a segment last week on the “Charlie Rose” television show. The interview includes Mason’s explanation at the end about how not talking about what happened with Google is like not talking about old dates (Personally, I am a veritable blabfest about old dates, Andrew, so call me sometime, as I have some very good stories!). Enjoy:
9
La publicación Tabbloid de hoy NOTICIAS PERSONALES PARA UD.
13 diciembre 2010
ALL THINGS DIGITAL
ALL THINGS DIGITAL
What’s Really Wrong With BlackBerry (And What To Do About It) [Voices]
Telling a Mother’s Story Through Her Facebook Status Updates [Voices]
13 DIC 2010 03:05A.M.
13 DIC 2010 03:03A.M.
By Michael Mace, CEO, Cera Technology
By Ian Shapira, Staff Writer, The Washington Post
Just a couple of weeks after Research in Motion turned in a good earnings report, the death watch over the company has resumed, with Business Week magazine running a long article that mocks co-CEO Jim Balsillie (even picking on his duck-emblazoned tie) and saying that RIM needs to learn how to market as well as Apple (link).
Several weeks ago, my wife Caroline and I were stuck inside Chicago’s O’Hare airport, waiting for a flight home, and, to burn some time, she logged onto Facebook. She tapped my arm and pointed at her screen. Read the rest of this post on the original site
Read the rest of this post on the original site ALL THINGS DIGITAL
Why WikiLeaks Is Bad for Scholars [Voices]
ALL THINGS DIGITAL
What It’s Like to Participate in Anonymous’ Actions [Voices]
13 DIC 2010 03:02A.M.
13 DIC 2010 03:04A.M.
By Daniel W. Drezner, Professor of International Politics, Tufts University
By Gabriella Coleman, Professor, New York University Let me share one of my recurring nightmares with you. I’m delivering a paper on why the United States pursued a particular strategy during an international negotiation.
Anonymous, who have been on a week long sprint/spree to paralyze website sites like Mastercard and Paypal, are often described in the news as a “group” with “members.” This is usually followed by a series of prolonged qualifications and caveats because many characteristics we usually associate with groups don’t seem to apply comfortably with Anonymous: there are no leaders, anyone can seemingly join, and
Read the rest of this post on the original site
participants are spread across the globe, although many of them can be found on any number of Internet Relay Chat Channels where they
ALL THINGS DIGITAL
discuss strategy, plan attacks, crack jokes, and often pose critical commentary on the unfolding events they have just engendered.
Why Drudge Is a Poor Target for Copyright Vigilantes [Voices]
Read the rest of this post on the original site
13 DIC 2010 03:01A.M. By Jeff Bercovici, Blogger, Forbes.com There’s undeniably something wrong with the current state of the digital media ecosystem, which lets aggregators and bloggers free-ride profitably on the efforts of newspapers that themselves are often losing money. But suing Matt Drudge and trying to take control of his website, as one plaintiff did yesterday, is a funny way of going about fixing it. Read the rest of this post on the original site
10
La publicación Tabbloid de hoy NOTICIAS PERSONALES PARA UD.
13 diciembre 2010
ALL THINGS DIGITAL
New Verizon Wireless CEO Dashes Into 4G Service [Voices] 13 DIC 2010 03:00A.M. By Shayndi Raice and Roger Cheng, Reporters, The Wall Street Journal Verizon Wireless’s new chief executive, Daniel Mead, is pulling right into the fast lane.
(Of course, Twitter hasn’t revealed the secret formulas that helped it aggregate, tabulate and rank these topics.)
Two months after he took the job Oct. 1, Verizon plunked down its biggest bet in years by launching an expensive new fourth-generation wireless broadband network. It promises super-fast Web surfing that will make it easier, for example, to watch video on smartphones and tablets.
In the Twitterverse, after the BP oil spill and soccer, the next most popular topic of conversation in 2010 was the movie “Inception,” followed by the Haiti Earthquake and the Vuvuzela. The iPad, Android, Justin Bieber, Harry Potter and Pulpo Paul round out the top 10. It’s an odd list, indeed.
Mr. Mead will have to cut through the noise from competitors claiming similar capabilities and persuade customers Verizon’s is better. He will also have to keep Verizon’s lead as the industry shifts to relying more on data services.
The person most discussed on Twitter in 2010 was obviously he-ofthe-dedicated-servers, Mr. Bieber. (It’s somewhat shocking that world events and tech gadgets were able to keep the teen phenom out of the top spot overall.) Beating out her royal highness Lady Gaga, the No. 2 person on Twitter was Brazilian president-elect Dilma Rousseff (pictured).
Then there are the reports that the country’s largest wireless carrier, which has built a deep and lucrative relationship with Google Inc., might soon get to carry Apple Inc.’s iPhone. (A spokesman declined to comment.)
Here’s the full 2010 list, courtesy of Twitter, followed by 2009’s list for comparison.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
2010 Twitter Trends Overall Top Trends
ALL THINGS DIGITAL
Shocking Bieber Upset: Oil Spill Tops Twitter’s 2010 Trends [NetworkEffect]
1. Gulf Oil Spill 2. FIFA World Cup 3. Inception 4. Haiti Earthquake 5. Vuvuzela 6. Apple iPad 7. Google Android 8. Justin Bieber 9. Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows 10. Pulpo Paul
13 DIC 2010 03:00A.M. Although World Cup tweeting caused record high volume and infrastructure demands on Twitter, the most-discussed topic on Twitter in 2010 was actually the Gulf Oil Spill, the San Franciscobased company said tonight. The South Africa-hosted World Cup came in at No. 2.
News Events: 1. Gulf Oil Spill 2. Haiti Earthquake 3. Pakistan Floods 4. Koreas Conflict 5. Chilean Miners Rescue People: 1. Justin Bieber 2. Dilma Rouseff 3. Lady Gaga
11
La publicación Tabbloid de hoy NOTICIAS PERSONALES PARA UD.
13 diciembre 2010
4. Julian Assange 5. Mel Gibson
People 1. Michael Jackson 2. Susan Boyle 3. Adam Lambert 4. Kobe (Bryant) 5. Chris Brown 6. Chuck Norris 7. Joe Wilson 8. Tiger Woods 9. Christian Bale 10. A-Rod (Alex Rodriguez)
Movies: 1. Inception 2. Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows 3. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World 4. Despicable Me 5. Karate Kid Television: 1. MTV Music Video Awards 2. Pretty Little Liars 3. True Blood 4. Walking Dead 5. Grammy Awards
Movies 1. Harry Potter 2. New Moon 3. District 9 4. Paranormal Activity 5. Star Trek 6. True Blood 7. Transformers 2 8. Watchmen 9. Slumdog Millionaire 10. G.I. Joe
Technology: 1. Apple iPad 2. Google Android 3. Apple iOS 4. Apple iPhone 5. Call of Duty Black Ops World Cup: 1. FIFA World Cup 2. Vuvuzela 3. Pulpo Paul 4. Dunga 5. Diego Maradona
TV Shows 1. American Idol 2. Glee 3. Teen Choice Awards 4. SNL (Saturday Night Live) 5. Dollhouse 6. Grey’s Anatomy 7. VMAS (Video Music Awards) 8. #bsg (Battlestar Galatica) 9. BET Awards 10. Lost
Sports: 1. Lebron James 2. Wimbledon 3. Manchester United 4. Brock Lesnar 5. Celtics
Sports (Teams, Events, Leagues) 1. Super Bowl
Hashtags: 1. #rememberwhen 2. #slapyourself 3. #confessiontime (Hashtag started by Usher) 4. #thingsimiss 5. #ohjustlikeme
2. Lakers 3. Wimbledon 4. Cavs (Cleveland Cavaliers) 5. Superbowl 6. Chelsea 7. NFL 8. UFC 100 9. Yankees 10. Liverpool
2009 Twitter Trends News Events 1. #iranelection 2. Swine Flu 3. Gaza 4. Iran 5. Tehran 6. #swineflu 7. AIG 8. #uksnow 9. Earth Hour 10. #inaug09
Technology 1. Google Wave 2. Snow Leopard 3. Tweetdeck 4. Windows 7 5. CES 6. Palm Pre 7. Google Latitude 8. #E3 9. #amazonfail 10. Macworld
12
La publicación Tabbloid de hoy NOTICIAS PERSONALES PARA UD.
13 diciembre 2010
Hash Tags 1. #musicmonday 2. #iranelection 3. #sxsw 4. #swineflu 5. #nevertrust 6. #mm 7. #rememberwhen 8. #3drunkwords 9. #unacceptable 10. #iwish
TECHCRUNCH
mike-butcher 13 DIC 2010 02:39A.M. ALL THINGS DIGITAL
What Privacy Problem? Web Ad Targeter Media6Degrees Raises $17 Million [MediaMemo] 13 DIC 2010 12:00A.M.
Today TechCrunch Europe is coming to Moscow, Russia, for our first ever TechCrunch Moscow event (to be held in English). The Live video stream is here. TechCrunch Moscow is at the first Russian private tech incubator, the Digital October Center, located in a historical manufacturing building Krasny Oktyabr (or “Red October” / Красный Октябрь in Russian). The event is sold out but there’ll be full day packed with speeches by the leaders of the industry and a chance to preview promising Russian tech startups.
One way to gauge what’s really going on with privacy and Web advertising: Follow the money. If investors really think privacy problems are going to weigh the industry down, it’s going to be a lot harder to get checks out of them.
Co-organised by TechCrunch Europe together with Kite Ventures and Telemarker, our partners have also put together a dedicated event web site and a dedicated Twitter feed. We’ll be using the Twitter hashtag #TCMoscow.
So use that context to think about this news: Media6Degrees, a behavioral advertising technology startup, has raised a $17 million funding round led by Menlo Ventures. Earlier investors U.S. Venture Partners and Venrock, who had helped the 2-year-old company raise another $12 million before the new B round, are re-upping. The money is supposed targeted for general expansion, not M&A, says
13
La publicación Tabbloid de hoy NOTICIAS PERSONALES PARA UD.
13 diciembre 2010
CEO Tom Phillips, who joined the company in 2009 after a 3-year stint at Google.
exclusivity ends.) But until three days ago, I had never used a product with attributes that are both insanely awesome and shockingly awful at the same time. Welcome into the world, Cr-48.
Phillips says his company will end up booking $20 million in revenue in 2010. And he says that by Q4 it had ramped up to a $30 million annual run rate — that is, it will do about $7.5 million in the last 3 months of the year.
Now, Google has made it very clear that they don’t intend to release this product as it stands. As such, they’ve more or less asked those they’ve sent it to not to review it as a completed product. But it’s pretty much impossible to avoid talking about the hardware here because for most of us, it is the first and only gateway we’ve had into Chrome OS. Plus, there’s a lot of interest in this particular device among our readers, so I’m going to talk about it.
Media6 describes what it does as “Social Targeting”, which makes it sound as if it’s trying to find links between your various social networks. But the company’s work has nothing to do with your Facebook or Twitter profiles. While it doesn’t like the term “behavioral targeting,” that’s essentially what it’s doing.
Simply put: the hardware is pretty bad. Actually, maybe not so much bad, as annoying as all hell. But the only reason it’s so annoying is because Chrome OS, even in its very early, fairly rough stage, is that good. Well, potentially that good.
In a nutshell, Media6 Web marketers track the surfing behavior of their existing customers, then trying to find similar behavior patterns — a matching “social signature” — for other surfers, so it can show them ads.
While Jason wrote up his initial thoughts after a day with the device, I’ve been using it as my primary machine for just about three days now. Also, I likely have a different perspective as I’m currently traveling — something which a Chrome notebook should be perfect for.
Depending on your perspective, that’s either creepy, or a commonsense strategy to help advertisers spend their money more efficiently. If it does weird you out, you can go ahead and opt out. But Phillips and his company would like you to know that the company never tracks individuals – only their anonymized browsers. Still don’t want any part of this stuff? In theory, companies like Media6 will be in trouble if lots of surfers really do start opting out of data collection. They can do that by telling individual Web sites and ad networks not to track them — or, more ominously, by using browsers with “do not track” filters built into them. But we’re a very long way from that kind of change. And the startup’s investors seem to be betting that it’s never going to come.
TECHCRUNCH
ch2 12 DIC 2010 07:04P.M.
The Design Initially, when I took it out of the box, I sort of wanted to laugh at the Cr-48. Jason compared its look to that of one of the old 12-inch PowerBook G4s. But actually, I think it’s closer to a combination of an old 12-inch iBook and one of the previous generation MacBooks — the one that came in black. In fact, when you open it up and start typing on it, it feels very similar to that MacBook. Of course, that MacBook is also a few years old already. And when compared to the new MacBook Air, this thing looks like a bloated dog. One covered in some kind of rubber blanket. The fact that it has a VGA port, an ugly side grill for the fan, and yet only one USB port, doesn’t help. But again, this is a prototype device. So we have to cut Google some slack here. As far as I know, they haven’t said which of their manufacturing partners made this thing, but let’s hope it was the cheapest device possible for them to produce and that’s why it exists as it does.
Every piece of technology has both good and bad attributes. Nothing is perfect. Not even the iPhone. (Well, at least not until that AT&T
14
La publicación Tabbloid de hoy NOTICIAS PERSONALES PARA UD.
13 diciembre 2010
I really do hope that’s the case. The Setup Okay, so I took it out of the box and laughed. But then I opened the lid. Immediately, the thing booted up. No need to press the power button. 15 seconds later, it was walking me through a very easy-tounderstand tutorial on how to use Chrome OS. After a few minutes reading it, I was asked to take a picture of myself (for my profile picture) with the built-in camera (above the screen), then I was all ready to go. That’s it. I signed in with my Google account, and the browser launched. My bookmarks, extensions, and web apps were all automatically synced. I was ready to go pretty much instantly. The Keyboard
Now I was impressed. Very impressed. This is absolutely the future of computer set-ups.
Moving on. So, the trackpad quickly soured my Chrome OS experience. But after I figured out little tricks to better maneuver (mainly using the excellent keyboard and its shortcuts), I was back on track. After a day, I was frustrated. But after two days, I was really, really liking Chrome OS. And even certain things about the Cr-48 specifically.
The Trackpad But the love affair quickly turned sour when I started using the Cr-48 trackpad. Jason called it a “turd”, but I think that’s being too kind. It’s maybe the worst excuse for a piece of technology that anyone has created in the past five years. It’s so much worse than any other trackpad I’ve ever used in recent memory, it’s almost unbelievable. Those bug reports from a few weeks ago make sense now.
For example, every computer should absolutely have a search button in place of caps lock. I can’t remember the last time I’ve used caps lock. And yet, there it is, right there in a vital place on the keyboard. On the Cr-48, I think the search button rivals the spacebar for my most-often-hit key. You click it an it launches a new tab reach to search away in the omnibox. It’s fantastic.
And it also makes sense why Google isn’t selling the Cr-48 at all, despite the high demand. If they sold this product with this trackpad, Google may not be allowed to ever attempt to make another branded product ever again. If you think I’m exaggerating, use one.
Also awesome are the window-switching and full screen mode buttons on the Cr-48. OS X, with Spaces, essentially allows you to do this type of window-switching, but I’d argue that it’s better on Chrome OS because everything is simplified. If you want to open a new window (as opposed to a new tab), it will reside on another screen. That said, it is a little tricky to navigate if you have more than two windows open — hitting the button will cycle through them in order.
Everytime I point at something and click down, the cursor moves below or above where I had originally pointed. I’ve now taught myself to aim slightly higher or lower than where I want to click. But I have to guess which it will be. It’s a crapshoot. Trying to double click with two fingers is ever worse. If you’re used to casually doing it with ease on a MacBook, this will be your hell. To get it to work, you essentially have to lift two fingers about a foot in the air, then bring them down in a perfectly straight line at a rapid speed while making sure that they both hit the pad at the exact same time. Okay, I may be exaggerating a bit there, but it’s really bad.
Full screen mode has existed on Chrome for some time, but the keyboard shortcut makes it more accessible than ever before. And on smaller screens (like the 12-inch on on the Cr-48), it’s very nice. The Speed
Two finger scrolling? It’s perfect if you like randomly jumping to various parts of webpages for no reason.
Speed is the other major weakness of the Cr-48. It’s running an Intel Atom chip which is apparently clocked at 1.66 GHz. That may seem like it would be fast enough to run a web browser, but it’s not. Well, not if you’re doing anything with Flash turned on.
Okay, I’ve made my point. This trackpad is a disgrace. It’s an abomination. I don’t know if it’s hardware or software or both (likely), but it’s just terrible. I’m tempted to do the unthinkable: buy a mouse.
When we initially reported on the Flash issues that Cr-48 users were having, many of our favorite commenters (who may or may not make a living developing for Flash) were quick with the typical “bias!” nonsense. Of course, a few hours later, none other than Adobe themselves admitted the performance of Flash on the Cr-48 was unacceptable, and said they were working on it. Good, because beyond watching a small YouTube clip with no other
15
La publicación Tabbloid de hoy NOTICIAS PERSONALES PARA UD.
13 diciembre 2010
tabs open, Flash is basically unusable on the Cr-48. And that’s annoying because Google has decided to bake Flash into not only
And again, that’s on Google’s prototype machine.
Chrome, but Chrome OS as well. So extensions like Flash Block are your friend here — or go to about:plugins and disable Flash directly until Adobe gets the mess sorted out.
But as I indicated above, the Air runs circles around the Cr-48 in just about everything else when it comes to performance. The one area where the Cr-48 does seem to have the MacBook Air beat is battery life. Google claims 8 hours, but I think it actually may be more. Because I’m in Europe, I turned off the cellular antenna (since Verizon connectivity obviously won’t work here) and I’m seeing closer to 10 hours of battery life on a full charge when connected to WiFi. The MacBook Air has fantastic battery life as well, but Cr-48 is definitely better.
But even beyond Flash, the Cr-48 just feels very slow when compared to any other modern computer. Typing, for example, often lags on sites such as WordPress (which I’m using right now). And opening new tabs and windows takes a few seconds longer than it would on a normal machine. All of this is would seem to be because Google included only 2 GB of RAM in the Cr-48. But I have a MacBook Air with only 2 GB of RAM and it flies. Google really needs to work with their OEM partners to get this lag sorted out before these Chrome notebooks start shipping. And I have to believe they will.
And again, just imagine what that will mean when someone actually creates a Chrome notebook that they intend to sell. The Cr-48 is a little bit bulky, but if they trim it down to around Air size, I bet they could still get at least a solid 7 or more hours out of the system. This seems to be one huge benefit of only running a browser. Chrome OS And let’s finally talk about that browser. Quite a few people were shocked when Chrome OS was revealed to be little more than Chrome — and that’s it. But that simplicity is the OS’s strength. It removes several layers of junk that most people these days never use on a computer. I know that personally, roughly 95 percent of what I do on a computer these days is in the web browser. Of the other 5 percent, 4 percent of it could probably be done in the browser too (light image editing, taking notes, etc). The other one percent is more difficult but those are mainly things (iTunes media management, Photoshop) that I only need to do some of the time and can use a desktop machine for.
Beyond Prototype
That’s the thing: Chrome OS isn’t going to fully replace anyone’s desktop anytime soon. But it could become a very viable on-the-go
In fact, in many ways, the Cr-48 reminds me a lot of the G1, the first Android phone Google shipped (with HTC) a couple years ago. They
computing solution.
both were clearly step one of a platform that would quickly evolve. And the Cr-48 even sort of feels like the G1 to the touch.
Even in its current beta state, Chrome OS has definitely been a perfectly adequate travel companion these past three days (Cr-48 trackpad aside). And it’s only going to get better. And if Chrome’s (the browser) evolution is any indication, it’s going to get better very quickly.
I still have a G1. Looking at it now compared to the newer Android phones is pretty humorous. The platform has clearly come a long way. And that gives me a lot of hope for Chrome notebooks as well. As it stands now, two things about this the Cr-48 currently standout: the boot-up time and the battery life. Both are excellent. The Cr-48 goes from being off to the log-in screen in 15 seconds. That’s slightly above Google’s stated 10 second mark, but it’s still very, very good. When you log-in, it takes another 15 seconds or so to load all your profile information and Chrome preferences from the web. So you’re looking at a total time from zero to working in 30 seconds. For comparison, the new MacBook Air, with its new solid state drives, goes from zero to working in about 18 seconds. But that’s without booting up Chrome (or your web browser of choice on OS X) and waiting for it to load a page. That adds another 5 seconds or so. So they’re very close in terms of startup speed between the two systems.
16
La publicación Tabbloid de hoy NOTICIAS PERSONALES PARA UD.
13 diciembre 2010
Panels As Jason hit on quite a bit in his post, one of the most interesting things about Chrome OS will be how developers support it. Right now, most Chrome Web Store apps are little more than mildly glorified extensions, or just links to web apps already in existence. Meanwhile, one of the coolest features of Chrome OS, panels, are barely used. Developers can and should change this quickly. Prettification Another thing that bugs me about the OS currently is that Google seems determined to maintain some of Windows awful aesthetics. More directly: fonts look like shit.
The Connected Computer So while Google CEO Eric Schmidt says the world is now ready for Chrome OS, I think we’re still at least a year — and maybe a few years — away from this type of system being viable for most average consumers. But I think it’s fantastic that Google is willing to go out on a limb now to help the transition along.
Chrome on Mac easily looks much better than Chrome OS does for this very reason. Hopefully Google will add some polish here as Chrome OS pushes forward. Also, the look and feel of the top toolbar (the area to the right of the tabs) is pretty poor. Google could and should do a much better job here.
Of course, the payoff for them looks be huge if they lead this new era of computing. And the risk is fairly minimal. Even if Chrome OS takes a while to take off, Google has more than enough capital to keep the project going for a long time — just like they did with Android at first.
And while we’re on the subject, Chrome’s already dicey themes all look even worse with Chrome OS. Google should just stick to some simple color options and leave out all the BS. No, I don’t want my Chrome OS to look like an ice cream cake any more than I wanted Windows to look like a hot dog stand. But that, of course, is just my opinion.
In many ways, smartphones have and will continue to help us with this transition. The assumption of always having a connection to the web is now built into most of our daily lives. What good is a smartphone when you’re not connected? Maybe just for playing some games. Computers will eventually be the same way. Until games are fully online as well — something which the Chrome Web Store is trying to make happen.
Connectivity The biggest factor holding up Chrome OS is mostly out of Google’s control: WiFi infrastructure. While WiFi is fairly widespread, it’s far from everywhere. And Chrome OS is worthless without connectivity. I mean, it’s completely and utterly useless.
I don’t think anyone disagrees that computers that are always connected to the Internet are the future, it’s just that Google is taking it to the extreme right now with these machines. It’s Internet or nothing. It’s bold.
That’s exactly why Google teamed up with Verizon to offer back-up 3G
Price
connectivity. But beyond the paltry 100 MB they give you for free each month, that type of connection can get expensive quickly just to be able to simply use your computer.
While Google hasn’t yet stated how much they (and their OEM partners) intend to sell Chrome notebooks for, that price is going to be crucial. It obviously needs to be low. Very low.
Further, many deals will have to be worked out in various different countries for that level of connectivity. That’s why my Cr-48 isn’t fully travel-ready here in Europe, for example (there is no Verizon here).
If Google wants these to compete with Windows machines, sub-$500 should do the trick. And if they can bring them in with better hardware than the Cr-48 for something like $300, I think they’re going to sell a ton of them next by next holiday season.
So what happens when you boot up your Chrome notebook without a connection? Well, you get an error — a very confusing one. This has happened to me a few times in the past few days. I boot up the computer, enter my password, and it says there’s a problem with my password. Only that’s not true. It’s just that I’m not connected to the network, so it can’t verify my password (Google really needs to change the wording there).
And Google keeps reiterating that they intend Chrome OS to work on other platforms as well. You can imagine desktop machines running Chrome OS might be perfect for schools and libraries. And Google could of course bundle Google Apps with them. Hell, I could even see them subsidizing Chrome notebook costs to get them available to all students in certain school districts that commit to Google Apps.
The problem here is that if you’re on a network with a password, you have to log-in to Chrome OS as a guest, connect to the network and entire the password, then log out and log back in to your Google account. A pain. And something that a lot of users are going to experience again and again.
Actually, a big competitor for the Chrome notebooks may end up being the new MacBook Airs. Both are now trying to redefine just what exactly portable computing is. There’s no denying that the Air is
17
La publicación Tabbloid de hoy NOTICIAS PERSONALES PARA UD.
13 diciembre 2010
a much, much sexier device both in look and feel than the Cr-48. But it’s also likely to be several hundred dollars — and maybe even a
Information provided by CrunchBase
thousand dollars more expensive in some cases. Again, that’s why Google needs to nail the price points and nail the execution with their OEM partners on these. I have some doubts as to whether that will happen or not initially, but even a mediocre Chrome notebook should put quite a bit of pressure on low-end Windows machines, at the very least. As I wrote a year ago, it would be the Microsoft squeeze. Back Offline To finish up this post, I actually moved back from the Cr-48 to my MacBook Air. One reason is that the typing lag was driving me insane. The other is that image insertion — and image management, is still pretty tricky with Chrome OS. So I’m back to a machine with more than just a browser. This is actually the first time I’ve extensively used this machine in three days. It’s a little weird seeing the browser shrunk into a window. And I actually like it taking up the full screen more (that’s easy enough to do on a Mac or PC with Chrome, the browser). In a slightly weird twist, I actually don’t like seeing all the, yes, chrome. What’s the point? ALL THINGS DIGITAL Of course, I do cherish the speed of this Air versus the Cr-48. Oh and the trackpad. My god the trackpad. It actually works! It’s a thing of beauty that I will never take for granted again.
Gawker Hacked. If You’ve Left a Comment on a Nick Denton Site, Change Your Password ASAP. [MediaMemo]
So there you go, I’m pretty divided right now on Google’s first take at the Chrome notebook. It’s both brilliant and bewildering. It’s both the future and a nightmare. But it’s definitely not boring, which is more than you can say for a lot of “new” technology these days. Watching it mature will be fun. But first the hardware needs to grow up.
12 DIC 2010 03:47P.M.
If I could buy the Cr-48 right now, would I? No. But I’d download Chrome OS and install it on some cheap netbook. Or maybe even this
Have you left a comment on one of Gawker Media’s sites? If so, you should change your password there, and on any other sites where
Macbook Air…
you’ve used the same login/password combination, as soon as possible. Gawker says its “user databases appear to have been compromised” by hackers. More background from Mediaite.
CrunchBase Information Google Chrome OS
18
La publicación Tabbloid de hoy NOTICIAS PERSONALES PARA UD.
13 diciembre 2010
GIGAOMTECH
calling from the airport to tell the kids to turn down the resolution on their web video.
meters 12 DIC 2010 03:00P.M.
• Price Caps. The EU has already been active in capping roaming fees and monthly bandwidth charges. • Network Enhancements and Trade-Offs. The same way that increased gas prices drive fuel efficiency, usage-sensitive pricing will drive enhancements in compression algorithms, less chatty protocols, and less predictive caching. Drivers pay thousands more for hybrids to save on gas, similarly, it may be worth spending processing resources to save on network resources. • Application Design Changes. Rather than dumping a voluminous amount of data, expect more, well, more buttons, such as at the top of this article, requiring continuous positive acknowledgement. Higher interactivity demands lower latency, therefore greater application dispersion.
Ed.: This is the second of a two-part post. The first post ran on Saturday.
• Increased Caching and Premises Appliance Sharing. No matter how many times my kids stream the same movie, our players fetch all of the content anew. Expect more caching, subject to laws and DRM. And, expect players from various manufacturers to query each other.
In yesterday’s post, I outlined arguments from a much lengthier analysis (PDF) regarding recent carrier announcements concerning tiered pricing for broadband services. Not only is such pay-per-use a clear trend, but arguably the natural outcome of rational consumer decision-making, as light users actively choose not to subsidize heavy ones by paying for more capital-intensive resources than they use. However, if pricing plans are no longer “unlimited,” but increasingly granular and usage-sensitive, one can predict massive disruptions in the current ecosystem and reversal of some trends of the last few years. However, as with all such shifts, this will create new opportunities and drive new technology breakthroughs. Here are some thoughts on such a future:
• Congestion Pricing. A number of cities have instituted dynamic congestion-based pricing for tolls and roads, and it has been proposed to do the same for the Internet. Simplified congestion pricing might mean free nights and weekends. They knew to wait until after 9:00 p.m. to call Aunt Martha, and may learn to have an immersive multi-screen 3-D, high-definition video call with her after 9:00 p.m. as well.
• Fewer Ambient Applications. There will be less live streaming video from coffee pots. In other words, less passive push, more active pull.
• Security. Letting your neighbor tap into your wireless access point may not seem like such a good idea anymore. Expect more users to turn security on, and more access point vendors to focus on simplicity and usability of security administration.
• Truth in Labeling. Foods and beverages need to disclose calories from protein, fat, and carbohydrates. Apps and content may need to disclose total data transferred or peak data rates. Drugs need to disclose potential side effects (may cause congestive heart failure), apps and content may need to do the same (may cause congestive network failure).
• Peer-to-peer. If letting your neighbor uncontrollably increase your monthly data bill is unwise, perhaps neither is letting everyone on the planet using your peer-to-peer client do the same. Some telcos are implementing edge optimization for content delivery, using peer-to-peer in the set-top box. Usagesensitive plans will drive a need to differentiate traffic which a user generates vs. traffic that the provider generates.
• Certifications and Guarantees. It’s easy to blame a network provider for high charges, but you don’t blame the electric company when your kids leave the lights on or the water company because a broken faucet ran up your bill. Similar to Energy Star labeling for appliances, programs may be developed to certify “bandwidth-efficient” endpoints. Or, guarantees: “This app will never transfer more than 50 MB per month or double your money back.”
• Intelligent, Policy-Based Optimization. Better to cache that movie now or download it tonight, when the forecast is for a twenty percent chance of lower data transfer rates? A predictive optimizer that believes rates will drop but knows you won’t stay awake long enough to watch the movie anyway may make the decision for you.
• Real-time and Projected Monitoring and Billing. Taxis provide visibility into the amount owed in real-time. You have electricity, gas, and water meters at your house. Providing ubiquitous access to your current data consumption, rated to provide visibility into your projected bill, is next. You may be
• End-to-End Open Interoperability and Integration. Some TVs can talk to media players via “HDMI Consumer Electronics Control,” others can’t. Expect device manufacturers to increasingly support interoperable control so that a streaming media player doesn’t rack up charges when no one is watching.
19
La publicación Tabbloid de hoy NOTICIAS PERSONALES PARA UD.
13 diciembre 2010
• Conservation Culture. People have learned to turn their thermostats down in the winter, and to wait for sales on Black
Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):
Friday and Cyber Monday. Lack of concern for usage under flatrate plans is sometimes referred to as “moral hazard,” but I would just describe it as “rational indifference to consumption at zero marginal cost.” Reduced consumption is a well-known effect of metered pricing.
• Report: The Connected TV Marketplace • App Developers: Are You Ready for HTML5 and Metered Data? • Mobile Operators’ Strategies for Connected Devices
• Cost-Based Adaptivity. Technologies such as Scalable Video Coding degrade gracefully to smaller screens and lower frame rates and quality due to network congestion. Future technologies may do the same based on real-time network data pricing. • Return to Ownership. Recent trends have favored ondemand rental over ownership. Shifting breakeven points may cause these trends to moderate or even reverse. Don’t toss that DVD shelving unit yet. If you can rent a house with an option to buy, perhaps similar models will emerge where streaming a movie will entitle you to a discount on purchasing it on physical media. • Shifting Business Models and Ecosystems. People who drive to the video store for a DVD (as some still do) expect to pay for the data transport costs (e.g., fuel, car wear and tear). People who rent by mail expect that the cost of delivery and return postage is borne by the video service. Expect a variety of customer-pays, provider-pays (i.e., bundled pricing), and advertiser or other third-party supported models to vie to become accepted industry practice, although in any event, the consumer ultimately pays with either eyeballs or hard dollars. Creative partnerships between content providers and network service providers will also materialize. “With connection charges, this movie will cost $1.57 to view. This offer expires in five minutes and prices are not guaranteed until you press ‘Watch Now.’”
TECHCRUNCH
Electrons revolve around the brain. Concept of idea. 12 DIC 2010 02:54P.M.
The counter-argument to this whole chain of thought is that the cost per bit (stored or transferred) is approaching zero. That sounds compelling, but the inverse of that argument is that the amount of bandwidth per user is approaching infinity, so the real question is which trend outweighs the other. The answer can be found in the fact that carriers’ annual capital expenditures are well north of a hundred billion dollars globally on network infrastructure and they’d like to see a return on that investment. Many industries have providers offering pay-per-use and/or flat-rate plans. Other industries seem to gravitate to unlimited pricing, and then swing back to usage-based models. The evolution of pricing models for fixed and mobile bandwidth will offer challenges to some businesses, but opportunities for others to differentiate themselves with greater transparency or by developing new features and products that implement some of the ideas above.
Living in Silicon Valley, one gets used to meeting people who are optimistic and who talk about changing the world. But as I lamented in this piece about the Valley’s obsession with Facebook and Twitter apps, most of its entrepreneurs either think too small or are focused on the wrong things. So, even though I am enthusiastic about its ability to take risks and innovate, I’ve been skeptical about whether Silicon Valley can really think big enough to solve global problems.
Joe Weinman leads Communications, Media, and Entertainment Industry Solutions for Hewlett-Packard. The views expressed herein are his own. Image courtesy Flickr user mugley.
20
La publicación Tabbloid de hoy NOTICIAS PERSONALES PARA UD.
13 diciembre 2010
That was until I visited Singularity University, located on NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, this week.
drug formulations. In other words, rather than standard medicines that are formulated for everyone, it may be possible to create personal prescriptions based on a person’s DNA. Medicines that can’t be brought to market because they cause an adverse reaction in a tiny proportion of the population can be prescribed to those who benefit. I was also delighted to learn how Berkeley Bionics will soon make it possible for people who are paralyzed and confined to wheelchairs to start walking again. I saw one person who already is.
To say that I was blown away with what I learned and saw in just a few hours would be an understatement. I left Singularity’s campus with the same excitement that I used to feel as a child about how engineering and science will, one day, save the world. The experience recalled childhood fantasies of technologies that connect the human brain to a central computer to share knowledge; bionic organs that give people superhuman strength; and nano-organisms that monitor and repair the body and cure disease. And I was reminded of my childhood fears of cyborgs becoming smarter than humans and taking over the world. All the great stuff from sci-fi movies.
The university is hardly two years old, and I didn’t expect it to have enjoyed any successes. But its executive director, Salim Ismail, says that the school has already inspired many. It had four team projects start companies last summer, and 15 this summer. These startups include Acasa, which constructs houses through 3D printing; www.getaround.com, which provides peer-to-peer car sharing; and one that is looking to use beamed power to launch spacecraft. One student even returned to Israel and caused the country to change its energy policy to focus more on solar rather than nuclear sources (and as a result, solar-energy use is going exponential).
Singularity University was founded by futurist Ray Kurzweil and X Prize founder Peter Diamandis, in 2009. It has a who’s who of the scientific community on its board and notable backers like Google. The name of the university comes from a Ray Kurzweil book, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. In 2005, Kurzweil postulated that technology is hurtling humanity toward the next great evolutionary leap. By 2029, according to Kurzweil, computers will achieve human intelligence, and by 2045 we’ll be able to upload our consciousness into what, today, is called the cloud. So even if our bodies don’t live forever, our minds will.
So there is lots of hope for Silicon Valley and the world. But we need to get our top technologists, academics, and political leaders to spend a few days at Singularity University so that they start thinking big again. We also need to get American children excited again about studying engineering and science. And we need to reignite the passion in graduates of engineering programs at schools like Duke, Berkeley, and Stanford. Too often, they choose to become management consultants and investment bankers.
No, the school doesn’t teach science fiction. It aims to solve the grand challenges that humanity faces—such as poverty, famine, disease, global warming, and dwindling energy supplies—by teaching select groups of business executives, technologists, and government leaders the advances that are occurring in “exponential technologies”. It challenges its students to think about radical new innovations that will affect the lives of a billion people within 10 years. “Exponential technologies” are those technologies that don’t grow gradually, but at light speeds—in fields like robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), computational neuroscience, and nanotech.
Editor’s note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. You can follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa and find his research at www.wadhwa.com.
The university runs a 10-week graduate studies program and shorter executive programs. Classes are taught by the foremost experts in each field—like Dan Barry, three-time NASA astronaut; Vint Cerf, internet pioneer and Google executive; Daniel M. Kammen, UC Berkerley energy resources professor and Nobel Peace Prize winner; and Daniel Kraft, Stanford professor of stem-cell biology. Students learn about disruptive innovations and their implications and brainstorm on the sequences in which the next technology revolutions will happen. During my visit to Singularity University, I attended Dan Barry’s class on robotics and AI, Daniel Kraft’s lecture on advances in stem-cell biology and genome testing, and a demonstration of a new device being developed by Berkeley Bionics. I don’t know why, but I had long believed that AI was a legacy of the 70s and was a failed technology. I was surprised to learn that AI techniques are actually becoming commonplace today: in cyberwarfare, in Google’s new car, and even in new generations of toys. And a genome test—which would have cost over a billion dollars two decades ago—will soon cost less than $100. Advances in genome testing, it is postulated, may make it possible to create personalized
21
La publicación Tabbloid de hoy NOTICIAS PERSONALES PARA UD.
13 diciembre 2010
boxes. ALL THINGS DIGITAL Amazon.com is offering free shipping on purchases of $25 or more until Friday, unless you have an Amazon prime subscription. WalMart is offering free shipping–with no minimum–on 60,000 items until Dec. 20. And, Dec. 17 has been coined Free Shipping Day with lots of merchants trying to get shoppers to do last-minute spending
No Lumps of Coal for Retailers as Shopping Soars to $22 Billion Online [eMoney]
online without the penalty of shipping costs.
12 DIC 2010 02:36P.M.
With five to eight days remaining for consumers to take advantage of free shipping offers before Christmas, the online shopping season still has a lot of legs left. In the first 40 days of the holiday shopping season, comScore estimates that more than $21.95 billion has been spent online, increasing 12 percent vs. last year. The most recent week saw a spike in sales with $5.15 billion in spending, an increase of 11 percent over last year, as two days each pushed passed $900 million. But still, it’s likely that the biggest shopping day online has yet to occur. The industry would like you to believe that its “Cyber Monday,” the Monday following Thanksgiving, is the busiest, and while spending hit an all-time record of $1.03 billion on that day this year, procrastinators typically spend more as we get closer to Christmas. This Monday, Dec. 13, has been coined “Green Monday,” presumably after the color of money. EBay came up with the term after that day in 2007 kicked off one of the busiest shopping weeks online. This year seems particularly robust, as shoppers become even more comfortable seeking discounts online. ComScore chairman Gian Fulgoni, surmised: “This coming week, beginning with Green Monday, should see some of the heaviest online shopping activity of the season and we expect at least one more day to surpass the billion dollar spending threshold.” But the holiday shopping season will naturally slow down starting on Friday, Dec. 17, as free delivery offers expire and it becomes more difficult to get guaranteed delivery by Christmas Eve. Until then, the post office can assume its sleighs will be packed full of cardboard
22