Author: Serkadis

Samsung (005930) is gearing up for its next major smartphone launch later this month but even without a new flagship smartphone, the company’s global market share reportedly surged in the first quarter this year. RBC Capital Markets analyst Mark Sue doesn’t officially cover Samsung, but he believes that the South Korean vendor managed to dodge the typical seasonal downturn and show an increase in smartphone market share from Q4 2012 to Q1 2013. Following Samsung’s pre-announcement, Sue believes the company sold as many as 66 million smartphones last quarter — but it’s just getting started.

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Peter Blair Henry, Dean of the NYU Business School and author of “Turnaround: Third World Lessons For First World Growth,” recently participated in an Authors At Google talk. Google has now made video of the talk available for all to learn from.

It runs less than an hour and discusses the book.

More recent At Google talks here.

Minnesota-based Video Guidance reports…

In a first-of-its-kind program focusing solely on elementary student, Video Guidance will provide and deploy video technology to dozens of K-6 elementary schools in Southwest Minnesota. Thanks to a $498,328 Southwest/West Central Service Cooperative grant from the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, the deployment will become the first of its kind in Southwest Minnesota targeting elementary schools. The telecommunications program will connect K-6 students with guest speakers and distance learning classes, and on virtual field trips to Great Lakes Aquarium, Minnesota Zoo, International Wolf Center and Minnesota Historical Society, which are all partners of Video Guidance. …

The telecommunications grant allows for a high-quality, portable Interactive Television (ITV) system to be placed in 36 elementary schools within SW/WC Service Cooperative’s Wide Area Network (WAN), providing advanced educational opportunities for over 9,000 K-6 children.

“Each school will receive a completely mobile video conferencing system configured so that all an educator needs to do is roll the system into the classroom, plug in a power cord and the network cable, and the system will be ready to connect their classroom to an interactive world of possibilities,” said Mike Nelson, account manager for Video Guidance.

The systems can be hooked up to projectors, allowing a large, projected display for larger group assemblies or activities that require the use of a larger space such as a gym or auditorium. Each system will also include a document camera that will allow items such as pages of a book, microscopes, graphs and images to be used in conjunction with the video conferencing system.

This allows educators and students to broadcast a wide variety of information and video to other sites throughout the region and world.

I’m writing this while my most junior associate (age 8) is off school sick and sitting at the table with me. She’s writing a story – but she’s only writing a story because we’re at the coffee shop. If we were home where it’s quieter and she can be louder, she’d be creating a video – which is both easier and more fun for her. It’s exciting to think about the new ways to learn, new skills learned and the whole new experience of education in schools today and nice to know that the schools in SW Minnesota can be leading the pack. I look forward to hearing more about some of the things they do!

Google announced a new redesign for Google Play on Android smartphones and tablets. It starts rolling out today.

Google says the design is “simple, clean and – most importantly – helps you find great entertainment, fast.”

“The new design focuses on bigger images that jump off the page,” says group product manager Michael Siliski. “Similarly themed content is grouped together so you can hone in on a magazine to read or an app to try. As you move down the page, new recommendations continue to appear so there is always more to see and explore. We’ve also simplified purchasing so you can breeze through checkout and get to enjoying your movie rental or other content.”

Here’s a look:

The redesigned app is coming to devices running Android 2.2 and above. You can expect to see it over the next few weeks.

Anticipation has been building deep in the heart of Texas as Google prepares to announce that Austin has become the second city to take part in its Google Fiber project to bring gigabit internet connections to the masses. The formal event is scheduled to kick off at 9am PT, and I’ll be live-blogging the proceedings here.

In the meantime, check out our stories on what this could mean for Austin and broadband development in general.

• The economics of Google Fiber and what it means for U.S. broadband
• Google Fiber is coming to 90% of eligible Kansas City neighborhoods
• As Austin readies for Google Fiber, here’s why you need a gig: even if you don’t think you do
• A quick look at Google Fiber pricing v. the incumbents
• The downsides of a gig: what other towns have learned after getting a gig

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Cloud computing and scalability are often mentioned in the same sentence, but often not when talking about databases. Especially not MySQL databases. A Boston-based startup called ParElastic hopes to change that, and has raised a $5.7 million Series A led by General Catalyst Partners (former VMware CTO Steve Herrod’s new home) to help fund its cause.

ParElastic sits in between the application and the underlying database and lets developers scale without having to resort to complicated sharding or maybe even moving the database back in-house where they can run it on a bigger server. Architecturally, Founder and CEO Ken Rugg told me, ParElastic’s Database Virtualization Engine is similar to a parallel database system, although it functions more like middleware that manages multiple database instances as one and is designed for operational rather than analytic workloads.

Because it intelligently balances database load and distributed data across servers, ParElastic is ideal for multitenant situations where multiple users, applications or services are accessing the database simultaneously, Rugg added.

Now, anyone familiar with the next-generation database market might think they’ve heard this story before, and they kind of have. The NoSQL database movement rode into town on the promise of high scalability, and the NewSQL movement furthered that story by bringing scale-out performance to SQL. Some of these databases are even available as cloud services.

However, Rugg explained, there’s a big difference between these options and what ParElastic does. Namely, while NoSQL and NewSQL options require deploying an entirely new database and likely rewriting some application code, ParElastic’s software just overlays customers’ existing cloud databases. Rugg said about half of its early users are running standard MySQL versions on Amazon Web Services, while the rest are spread across cloud providers such as Rackspace, Joyent and LiquidWeb.

Some ParElastic users actually manage existing SQL services such as Amazon’s Relational Database Service and Google Cloud SQL. One even uses it to manage an in-house database environment. And technically, Rugg noted, ParElastic could manage cross-cloud database deployments but, because of the inherent latency hit that would entail, “we wouldn’t recommend that.”

However, he said, the biggest beneficiary of ParElastic aside from the company itself might well be AWS. It is by far the most widely used cloud in the world, but when users reach the limites of their single database instances, Amazon usually tells them to look into sharding or perhaps transitioning to DynamoDB. “None of those are really too friendly for Amazon keeping their customers moving forward in their cloud,” Rugg said.

Further, although certain cloud providers offer better CPU, IO or network performance than AWS does (Rugg cited Rackspace as being particularly strong on IO performance, for example, and ProfitBricks as looking promising on the network front), “Amazon is sort of the lowest common denominator in a number of ways,” Rugg explained. The economics and performance requirements vary from application to application, of course, but ParElastic could help stitch together a number of commodity AWS instances to provide suitable performance at a lower cost than might be possible using the biggest, fastest instances from other providers.

Having watched the cloud market unfold as it has, though, Rugg and ParElastic aren’t banking on AWS — which has a reputation for launching services that compete with startup ecosystem partners — as the future of the business. By supporting other cloud providers that are gaining acceptance (aside from the ones Rugg noted, Google has been impressing some with the performance of its Compute Engine service), ParElastic is in a pretty good position to handle whatever cloud-database market shifts might occur.

“Even if Amazon comes out and says ‘We’re going to replace you with something we built back in the lab,’ that puts us in a great position in terms of validating the market,” Rugg said.

ParElastic’s existing investors — Point Judith Capital,  CommonAngels and LaunchCapital — also participated in the Series A round, which brings the company’s total venture capital to $8.7 million.

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• Understanding and managing the cost of the cloud

Apple’s (AAPL) vision of a hybrid device that combines a touchscreen tablet and a notebook computer has finally been revealed — and it looks a whole lot like dozens of devices that are already on the market. Patently Apple recently dug up a newly published patent that details at least one route Apple may take if it ever decides to launch such a product. And while the hybrid device is novel in some regards, it also closely resembles a number of devices that have been widely available for years now.

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Samsung’s Galaxy Note 8.0 arrives in the U.S. later this week the company announced on Tuesday. Starting April 11, the 8-inch Android tablet with digital ink support arrives on retail shelves and on the web for ordering at $399.99. Amazon, Best Buy & Best Buy Mobile, h.h. gregg, Newegg, P.C. Richard & Son, Staples and TigerDirect.com are Samsung’s retail partners for the Galaxy Note 8.0.

Most of the hardware specifications and pictures line up with what we saw back in January:

• 8-inch LCD with 1280 x 800 resolution
• 5 megapixel rear camera, 1.3 megapixel front camera
• 2 GB of memory, 16 GB of storage (up to 64 GB microSD expansion supported)
• Android 4.1.2 with Samsung TouchWiz
• A 1.6 GHz quad-core processor
• S-Pen and supporting software

The 8-inch tablet is basically a super-sized version of the Galaxy Note 2 smartphone, owing largely to its digitizer support for the S-Pen and similar features. Like the Note 2, the new Note 8.0 supports hovering with the pen for drill-down information in many apps and the ability to run two applications on the screen at one time. I love this feature on my Note 2, but I can see even more value on the larger display of Samsung’s new tablet. Of course, the Note 2 works with cellular voice calls; the same can’t be said of the Note 8.0.

Surely the $399 Galaxy Note 8.0 will be compared heavily to Apple’s $329 iPad mini. I’ve already seen comments and reviews that the Note 8.0 is too expensive by comparison. Even without getting my hands on Samsung’s new slate, however, I find that to be a short-sighted viewpoint.

Yes, the tablet is $70 more. For that premium, you’re getting a slightly higher pixel density, digital pen support, ability to upgrade the memory with a microSD card. Are those features worth the $70? That’s up to you and how you use your mobile devices, of course.

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• How to deliver the next-generation web experience
• The fourth quarter of 2012 in mobile
• What to watch in mobile in 2013

That didn’t take long. Just when we thought Microsoft was wrapping up the whole “Scroogled” thing, they’re back with a big new campaign, this time taking on Android.

Scroogled, as you may or may not know, started as a holiday themed attack against Google over Google Shopping results. While it was Microsoft launching the bitter campaign, Google was painted as the Scrooge-like character. You know, Scrooge? Scroogled? Get it?

Obviously, now that we’re well into April, the word “Scroogled” has a non-holiday themed connotation.

“You can interpret it however you would like,” Microsoft senior director of Online Services, Stefan Weitz, recently told us.

My interpretation is that Microsoft is spending a lot of money to make consumers think that Google is screwing them.

And that continues today with the new campaign against Android, which just happens to coincide with a complaint Fairsearch.org filed with the EU regarding Android, saying that Google uses it as a “deceptive” and competitive advantage. Microsoft, is of course, a major force behind the seventeen-Google-competitor FairSearch coalition.

The Scoogled campaign isn’t quite about that, however. It’s about Google sharing personal info with app makers. The campaign goes like this:

When you buy an Android app from the Google app store, they give the app maker your full name, email address and the neighborhood where you live. This occurs without clear warning every single time you buy an app.

If you can’t trust Google’s app store, how can you trust them for anything?

Obviously, this is a plea to get you to try WIndows Phone. Here are the new ads:

“Unlike Google, Windows Phone Store doesn’t share your personal information with app makers,” Microsoft says. “Google hands over details about you to app makers without any clear warning, placing your personal information in the hands of unknown third parties. The privacy breach could potentially lead to spam and online harassment.”

“It’s not necessary for an app maker to have your full name, email address and neighborhood, so Windows Phone Store refrains from passing on this sensitive information,” the company adds.

As reported in February, the issue at hand had caught the attention of lawmakers.

It wasn’t all that long ago that Microsoft was facing some privacy criticism of its own. Here’s an excerpt from a UPI article from October, sharing comments from Consumer Watchdog, a privacy advocacy group that often criticizes Google in a fashion that in some ways really isn’t all that different than the Scroogled strategy (remember Eric Schmidt the evil ice cream man?):

John M. Simpson, who monitors privacy policies for Consumer Watchdog, said although Microsoft has stated in emails and blog posts it won’t use the information in targeted advertising, the Services Agreement does not.

“What Microsoft is doing is no different from what Google did,” Simpson said. “It allows the combination of data across services in ways a user wouldn’t reasonably expect. Microsoft wants to be able to compile massive digital dossiers about users of its services and monetize them.”

Microsoft is taking every chance it gets to attack Google. Last week, while no “Scroogled” campaign was involved, the company spoke out against Google’s Enhanced Campaigns AdWords offering.

Image: Scrooged

10gen, the creator and proprietor of the extremely popular MongoDB NoSQL database, is growing up fast and on Tuesday announced it has hired Sydney Carey as the company’s first-ever chief financial officer. Carey comes from enterprise software company Tibco where she was executive vice president and CFO.

According to 10gen CEO Max Schireson, Carey’s presence will be important for the company, which has more than 200 employees and should top 500 in the next couple years. While she helps grow and build the corporate infrastructure in the finance, legal and HR departments,  Schireson can spend more time working directly with customers, partners and products.

Carey told me she’s excited about getting back into a high-growth company, especially one like 10gen that has a disruptive technology and open-source business model. Granted, open-source business models do bring their own unique set of challenges on top of those associated with startup businesses, she noted, but they also open up doors for new business.

“I think 10gen has all the elements there to make that a really good fit for me,” Carey said.

Schireson said Carey’s hire isn’t indicative of a forthcoming 10gen IPO, but that is something on which the company is focused. However, he added, some great companies have went public rather late in their lives, so 10gen isn’t rushing that decision and is instead keeping its attention of product development. The company has raised $86 million in venture capital since launching in 2007.

The addition of Carey is just the latest in a series of executive hires at 10gen that includes a handful of veteran big data and database industry vice presidents, as well as Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales Phillip Carty.

Despite some criticism of its ability to scale beyond a handful of nodes, MongoDB is easily the most-used NoSQL database around, largely because it’s so easy for even novice NoSQL developers to work with and performs well with smaller data volumes. And the MongoDB ecosystem that 10gen helped catalyze is big, growing and potentially very lucrative. There are a handful of popular cloud services around such as MongoLab and MongoHQ, and Rackspace just bought its way into the mix by acquiring ObjectRocket.

Schireson said 10gen might consider some acquisitions that help advance the company’s MongoDB mission, but isn’t really looking at buying its way into the position of a one-stop NoSQL shop right now.

“Right now we’re 100 percent focused on MongoDB,” he said. “Everything we do is somehow related to that.”

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While the tech press awaits invitations for a fifth-generation iPad unveiling rumored to take place later this month, a new report claims the new Apple (AAPL) tablet won’t be launching anytime soon. Citing multiple unnamed sources in Apple’s supply chain, Digitimes on Tuesday reported that volume production of Apple’s fifth-generation 9.7-inch iPad will not begin until July or August. Earlier reports stated that Apple’s next iPad would launch in April but this new report, if accurate, suggests the tablet won’t be released until this fall. Apple’s fifth iPad is expected to feature a complete redesign that adopts the iPad mini’s design identity and reduces the overall footprint of the device.

While Google Glass may not be widely available to consumers yet, it will be soon, and developers are already coming up with interesting apps for the device. As availability approaches, however, it’s becoming clearer that there will be a lot of society-implemented restrictions that come along with it.

We’ve already seen legislation seeking to ban driving while using Google Glass (and other similar devices). But it will certainly not stop there. NBC News has an interesting article about venues that won’t let you in if you’re wearing one. Vegas, in particular is one city where you’re bound to run into some problems. That goes for Casinos, but also strip clubs, as you might expect. Rosa Goligan reports:

“We’ve been dealing with the cellphone videoing and the picture taking over the years and we are quick to make sure that that doesn’t happen in the club,” Peter Feinstein, managing partner of Sapphire Gentlemen’s Club in Las Vegas, told NBC News, explaining that hosts check in any electronics a patron brings that could be used for filming.

“As the sale of [Google Glass] spreads, there’ll be more people using them and wanting to use them at places such as a gentlemen’s club,” Feinstein explained. “If we see those in the club, we would do the same thing that we do to people who bring cameras into the club.”

The movie theater is another place where you might end up having to check your Glass by the door (or at least leave it in your car), as Goligan notes. Major media corporations and film studios already have to deal with their content appearing illegally on sites that sometimes end up in search results. This could add another layer to their issues with the technology giant.

Beyond content protection, some venues likely just won’t accept the device for etiquette reasons. As we know, some restaurants have a problem with people using their smartphones to take pictures of their food. We’ve already seen some take issue with Glass in particular.

The Atlantic recently ran an article about a bar owner who said this on Facebook:

Last night around 9:45 two people walked into the bar. Looked me square in the eye, and acting as if everything was normal they ordered beers.. Oh did I mention they were wearing Google Glasses! In public! In A BAR!

Perhaps this was more a comment on the fashion aspect of Google Glass, but clearly the device is making some people uncomfortable. Perhaps that will change once it becomes widely available. Don’t forget, Google’s working on the fashion obstacle too.

If Google manages to make the device more closely resemble actual glasses, one has to wonder how easy it will be to enforce any action against them. I wonder how they’ll enforce the inevitable contact lens version. That glass-while-driving ban might run into some simliar obstacles.

Well, if the cops are wearing their own Google Glass, they might be easier to detect.

Google’s latest stable channel of Chrome includes developer support for rich browser notifications in web apps. This isn’t the rumored Google Now integration coming to Chrome, but it does bring the browser one step closer to having proactive, useful pop-ups of actionable information. Don’t look for the new feature on Chrome for Mac or Linux though: for now, the notification support is only baked into the Windows and Chrome OS versions.

François Beaufort, newly hired by Google after months of publicly finding and sharing information on the company’s browser efforts, found the notification code in the latest Chromium stable channel. He notes that “we should start to see bubbling some of them (notifications) quite soon now.”

That means developers have yet to add support for these bits in their web apps but can do so now. So far, I’ve only seen a few notifications on the Chromebook Pixel and all of them have been from Google services. Google Voicemails, missed Google Voice calls, incoming Gmail messages and Google+ Hangout invitations have all appeared for me recently.

Why are the notifications important? They bring the Chrome browser closer to a one-stop shop for online needs; more like a true operating system. These notifications are actionable — you can click them to jump into the appropriate web app, for example — but not obtrusive since they’ll disappear in a few seconds on their own if no action is taken. Think of them like notifications on your smartphone. They provide relevant, real-time information but you can choose to ignore any further action until later.

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When HP first announced its Project Moonshot server initiative in November, 2011, the announcement centered on the potential for low-power ARM chips from Calxeda to be the agent of transformation. Yesterday HP began selling its first production servers … based on Intel Atom chips.

As HP touted its new servers as game changers, Calxeda is again talking about how its ARM technology is still … well, the future. The company today reaffirmed  its “ongoing commitment” to  Project Moonshot, saying HP servers based on Calxeda technology will be in production “later this year.”

“We were honored to be selected by HP to be among the very first Project Moonshot partners at the November 1, 2011 launch and to have our processors incorporated into HP’s first generation of extreme low energy servers,” said Calxeda CEO, Barry Evans. “Since that time, the two companies have worked closely to advance extreme low-energy processing technologies, which have received positive industry response, and outstanding early customer implementations.”

HP says Moonshot consists of a “comprehensive roadmap” of workload-optimized ProLiant servers that will incorporate processors from partners including AMD, AppliedMicro, Cavium and Texas Instruments, as well as Calxeda and Intel. This approach is part of HP’s focus on flexibility, offering customers more options for processors and  faster iteration of server designs.

With Moonshot, HP is providing an architecture that adapts some of the concepts of blade chassis, centralizing components like power supplies and fans at the chassis level, with hot-swappable server cards that can be used to customize compute processing with particular workloads. This ability to match different processors to specific workloads is one of the most interesting features. And that’s where Calxeda and the other chip vendors come in.

Calxeda says that once its Moonshot server arrives, it will offer better TCO than the Intel Atom Centerton based products unveiled today.   The server will feature four ECX-1000 servers, running at 1.4 Ghz, each with 4 GB DRAM.

But by the time Calxeda’s Moonshot server is ready for production, Intel may be moving the goalposts again. In the second half of 2013, Moonshot servers will begin using the next generation of Intel’s Atom chips, known as Avoton. Intel says Avoton will quadruple the densityof the current prodiuct with 4 Avoton SoCs per server. Avoton is built on Intel’s 3D tri-gate 22-nanometer process technology and is based on a new microarchitecture codenamed “Silvermont.”

“We have not only enabled the first Moonshot system to lift-off, but with Avoton we will also bring HP Moonshot’s customers a revolution in energy efficiency and performance per watt to drive major TCO improvements when processing lightweight web scale workloads,” writes Intel’s Raejeanne Skillern in a blog post.

Will Moonshot reverse a trend in which the largest server purchasers have been working with original design manufacturers (ODMs) or next-generation designs from the Open Compute Project? It remains to be seen, but the progress of Moonshot will give data center operators initial options to manage the energy being used in their facilities. A key question is whether HP’s focus on converged infrastructure – standardized around HP hardware, software and services –   will gain traction in the fast-moving landscape for web-scale servers.

In the global smartphone market, Samsung (005930) is a force to be reckoned with. The company extended its lead during the fourth quarter as it shipped an astounding 63.7 million smartphones, representing 29% of the global market according to research firm IDC. Samsung’s next closest competitor was Apple (AAPL) which sold 47.8 million iPhones for 21.8% of the market during the same time span. The story is much different when it comes to tablets, however. IDC estimates that Samsung shipped 7.9 million tablets in Q4 2012 for 15.1% of the global market, which represented big year-over-year growth put still paled in comparison to Apple’s 43.6% share. In other words, Samsung still has a lot of work to do.

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FairSearch.org, the organization made up of Google competitors mostly in (but not limited to) the the travel industry, has filed a new complaint with the EU. The angle this time is Android, which the coalition has deemed “a deceptive way to build advantages for key Google apps in 70 percent of the smartphones shipped today”.

The organization says:

FairSearch.org has filed a complaint with the European Commission laying out Google’s anti-competitive strategy to dominate the mobile marketplace and cement its control over consumer Internet data for online advertising as usage shifts to mobile.

“Google is using its Android mobile operating system as a ‘Trojan Horse’ to deceive partners, monopolize the mobile marketplace, and control consumer data,” said Thomas Vinje, Brussels-based counsel to the FairSearch coalition. “We are asking the Commission to move quickly and decisively to protect competition and innovation in this critical market. Failure to act will only embolden Google to repeat its desktop abuses of dominance as consumers increasingly turn to a mobile platform dominated by Google’s Android operating system.”

The New York Times reports that EU antitrust chief Joaquin Almunia said he’s receiving proposals from Google this week aimed at clearing up concerns about search practices, as he has been leading an investigation into them. The Times says he’s not commenting on the Android complaint from FairSearch, but noted that the EU has been looking into Android separately.

The timing of this complaint from FairSearch is interesting, given that just days ago, Facebook introduced the Android-specific “Facebook Home,” which lets Android users have a Facebook app that dominates the device, and pushes everything else (including Google apps and even search) into the background. Clearly some Google competitors are not only finding ways to compete on Android, but are even making the basis for their new mobile strategies Android-specific.

Even if Facebook Home doesn’t directly compete in search right now, Mark Zuckerberg has indicated that Graph Search will make its way to the product in time. Remember, that hasn’t even rolled out to mobile yet. It’s also worth noting that vertical search services, particularly on mobile, have already shown they can chip away at Google searches. Facebook, for that matter, recently renamed the “Nearby” feature in its mobile app to “Local Search”.

FairSearch consists of 17 companies whose members including Microsoft, Oracle, Expedia, Nokia, and TripAdvisor. Microsoft, by the way, isn’t very happy about Facebook Home either. Considering Bing’s partnership with Facebook, perhaps that will change once Graph Search makes its way to it.

Rumors surfaced over the weekend that Google (GOOG) was in the midst of acquisition talks with messaging giant WhatsApp. Such a move would have been a big boost for Google and it reportedly would have given WhatsApp a billion-dollar payday. Unfortunately, the source was unproven and it looks like the rumor was completely false. AllThingsD spoke with WhatsApp’s business development boss and he flat-out denied that any talks had taken place. “Neeraj Arora, WhatsApp’s business development head, told AllThingsDigital today that the company is not holding sales talks with Google,” AllThingsD’s Liz Gannes wrote. The acquisition would certainly have been a big one for Google — WhatsApp recently announced a new milestone, stating that it processed more than 11 billion outbound messages this past New Year’s Eve.

Carter Validus Mission Critical REIT continues to acquire data center properties. On Monday the company said it has paid $12 million to acquire a data center property in Andover, Massachusetts, about 25 miles north of Boston.

The property is fully leased under a long term, net lease to a leading provider of advanced network communications, including cloud computing and managed services. The purpose-built facility, originally constructed as a build-to-suit for a major telecommunications company, totals 92,700 square feet and has benefited from extensive capital investment by the current tenant.

“We are pleased to continue to expand our diversified portfolio of mission critical real estate assets throughout key markets across the United States,” said John Carter, CEO of Carter Validus Mission Critical REIT, Inc.

The announcement follows Carter Validus’ announcement last week that it has purchased the Raleigh Data Center property for $19.5 million. The multi-tenant data center is located near Raleigh-Durham International Airport in Morrisville, NC. The 143,770 square foot property, originally constructed in 1997, is 100 percent leased to four tenants.

“Given the property’s desirable location and long term leases with high-quality tenants, we believe that the Raleigh Data Center is a great addition to our growing portfolio of mission critical real estate”, said Carter.

Carter Validus Mission Critical REIT is focused on two sectors, data center and healthcare, citing societal trends that it believes will boost demand for data storage and outpatient healthcare. The company owns properties in Dallas, Atlanta and Philadelphia.

Podcasts are an awesome way to connect your content with audiences, and they are especially good for doing so in an increasingly mobile world — but they aren’t necessarily awesome at generating money.

Slate runs some of the best podcasts in the news business, but during a recent Reddit “Ask Me Anything,” editor David Plotz wrote “[Podcasts] are probably not profitable dollar for dollar directly, but they are so good for our brand that we might do them even if we didn’t make a dollar on them.”

Another guy who is pretty bullish on the power of podcasting is Jeff Ullrich, Co-Founder and CEO of the Earwolf podcast network. Founded in 2010 and self-funded with $30,000, the network claims to have made a real business out of podcasting. According to Ullrich, the company generated more than $1 million in revenues last year with 70 percent of that coming from advertising.

We thought Ullrich’s DIY approach to building a budding content empire was a nice complement to our upcoming paidContent LIVE conference (April 17 in New York City), which is all about how technology is changing the media business. So we sat down with him for our own podcast:

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How Hugh Howey’s Wool became a self-published smash hit

How Indie Game stayed indie and became a hit

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Startup EcoMotors has reached a “massive inflection point” in the life of its business, as Khosla Ventures partner Andrew Chung explained it to me in an interview last week. On Tuesday the five-year-old startup, which is backed by Khosla, Bill Gates and Braemar Energy Ventures, announced that it has struck a deal to have Chinese auto parts giant Zhongding Power build a $200 million factory in the Anhui Province in eastern China that will make EcoMotor’s efficient, low cost and light weight engines.

The factory will be the first in the world building EcoMotor’s “opoc,” opposed piston, opposed cylinder engine, at a commercial scale. When it starts production in 2014, the factory will aim to produce 150,000 engines per year. There’s also an adjacent site that could expand production to 400,000 engines per year down the road.

Strategic deals with huge Chinese companies are becoming a valuable way for Valley cleantech startups to move into commercial production and actually have a chance at succeeding. In particular Khosla Ventures has been adept as of late at helping its companies navigate deals in China.

Chinese parts company Wanxiang invested $420 million into GreatPoint Energy – a company based in Cambridge, Mass. that converts coal into cleaner-burning natural gas — in order to commercialize GreatPoint’s technology in China. LanzaTech, which turns gases emitted from industrial processes into biofuels and biochemicals, is working with Chinese coal producer Yankuang Group to build a coal to fuel project in China. Khosla Ventures has invested in both of these firms.

By partnering with a giant like Zhongding, EcoMotors doesn’t have to raise and spend a lot of money on infrastructure. In return, Zhongding will sell the engines domestically in China — these particular engines will be powerful ones used for generators, off-road vehicles and commercial vehicles. Chung called the strategy “cleantech done right.”

EcoMotors’ engine can be 20 to 50 percent more efficient, 20 to 25 percent lower in cost to buy, and half the size and half the weight of a traditional engine. For car manufacturers the capital savings are even greater — at 30 to 40 percent — when using EcoMotors engine to build an efficient vehicle. When placed in a passenger light weight vehicle, the engine could deliver a 100 MPG, 5-passener, car.

The Chinese car market, as well as the engine market, are the largest and fastest growing in the world. And the Chinese government has set very aggressive goals to reduce the country’s air pollution and carbon emissions.

EcoMotors is a particularly unusual investment for a venture capital firm because the internal combustion hasn’t seen much innovation in decades. But the global trends of needing this innovation are clear: more and more countries are pushing for lowered car emissions, air pollution is a massive problem throughout developing countries, and the cars that will catch on in the price conscious developing markets will be cars that use fuel efficiently and thus save their customers money. Other startups working on efficient engines include Pinnacle Engines, Achates Power, Grail Engine Technologies, and Transonic Combustion.

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