Author: Serkadis

TIBCO Software (TIBX) announced the launch of TIBCO Cloud Bus, its new subscription-based Integration Platform as a service (iPaaS) offering that leverages the company’s integration expertise and presents users with the ability to drastically shorten time to market and lower costs as they migrate applications and workloads to the cloud.

“With Cloud Bus, TIBCO is combining the deployment flexibility of the cloud with enterprise-class integration features in a single subscription service that customers can run anywhere – on-premise, in the cloud, in bare metal or virtualized environments,” said Matt Quinn, CTO for TIBCO Software. ”TIBCO Cloud Bus provides ready-made integrations across popular SaaS and critical on-premise applications, while allowing subscribers the ability to identify, configure and extend integration templates for their own business context with ease. Finally, and as you would expect from TIBCO, Cloud Bus includes extensive capabilities for real-time integration, meaning changes are reflected in all connected applications as they happen, without waiting for the next batch update.”

Single subscription model

TIBCO Cloud bus subscribers can deploy cloud applications and only pay for what they consume. The solution provides ready-made integrations for a variety of applications such as Salesforce.com and other vendors. Changes are reflected in all connected cloud applications as they happen, without waiting for the next batch update, and connectivity capabilities to deliver real-time integration.

“If a company’s approach to integration is too fixed or locked-in, it could limit the company’s ability to leverage the cloud or switch SaaS providers once it’s there,” said Quinn. ”TIBCO Cloud Bus offers a choice of deployment options, ready-made integrations, and real-time integration support that delivers the flexibility and time to value that enterprises are looking for in moving applications and workloads to the cloud.”

With the first round of announcements behind us, the only thing that’s clear in the inevitable and perpetual Xbox One vs. PlayStation 4 battle is that there is no clear winner. Microsoft finally unveiled its next-generation video game console on Tuesday and once all the dust settled, Anandtech’s Anand Lal Shimpi took a step back and laid out everything we know about these two beastly consoles. Lal Shimpi’s analysis is extensive and thorough, as always, but it boils down to this: Based on what we know at this point, Sony has the edge in terms of specs and raw power.

Continue reading…

The race for screen clarity continues. Apple started it with a 326 pixel per inch Retina display on its iPhone. Now the latest flagship phones from Samsung, HTC and LG have full high-definition displays: These devices cram a 1920 x 1080 resolution into their screens with around 400 pixels per inch. Too bad all of these just got spanked by the competition, even if it is just a prototype.

At the SID Display Week event currently in progress, Qualcomm is showing off its latest smartphone screen tech that tops and eye-popping 577 pixels per inch.

Engadget is on site at the show and captured some video of the 5.1-inch display and its 2560 x 1440 resolution:

The screen uses Qualcomm’s Mirasol technology, which we’ve been covering for the past four years. Sadly, no major product hits have used a Mirasol panel in all that time and Qualcomm says that the smartphone screen is just a prototype; it could be another few years before such a pixel-packing screen is ready for mass production.

Higher resolution isn’t the only benefit here, however. Mirasol uses reflective light and microscopic MEMS (Microelectromechanical systems) to create small airgaps in the display; as the airgap size changes, the light color passing through it is manipulated. As a result, the screens are very power efficient, up to six times more than today’s LCD and OLED screens.

Aside from the time to market then, is there a downside? Because the displays primarily use reflective light — although they can be front-lit — colors often appear washed out as compared to traditional screens. I’m not sure if there’s a solution for that challenge, but my money is on Qualcomm to find one if it exists.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Analyzing the wearable computing market
• Tablet market to hit over 377 million units by 2016
• CES 2012: a recap and analysis

Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk said a couple months ago that Tesla planned to pay off the rest of Department of Energy loan in five years, instead of the allotted ten. Now, according to a tweet from Musk, Tesla could pay off the entire loan today, nine years early. Musk tweeted:

Given govt loan repayment this week (prob Wed), Supercharger update will be next week. Work continuing independent of announcement.

In order to pay off the loan, Tesla is holding an equity and debt offering, and could raise a billion dollars (boosted from the initial $830 million) from selling shares and convertible senior notes. Musk says he’ll buy $100 million worth of common stock in the offering.

If Tesla pays back the entire loan today — or sometime soon — it will be a remarkable feat. Tesla raised a $465 million loan from the Department of Energy’s controversial Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing program back in the Summer of 2009. The funds helped the company build its factory in Fremont and transition from a small scale manufacturer of its first-gen Roadster electric sports car into a larger scale manufacturer of its Model S electric sedan.

Tesla was one of only five companies to receive the loans, and one of three startups. Two of the other startups that raised funds from that program, Fisker Automotive and The Vehicle Group, are struggling. Fisker, which makes the electric hybrid sports car the Karma, is near bankruptcy and The Vehicle Production Group, which makes a natural gas-powered van for disabled passengers, has shut down.

Tesla can also afford to pay off the loan early because it’s just come off of its first profitable quarter in the company’s 10-year history. Tesla also generated a record amount of revenue ($561.8 million) in the quarter, and raised its annual guidance of the amount of cars shipped by 1,000 to 21,000 this year.

Tesla stock has been on a tear this month, and is was trading at $89.24 this morning.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Ups and downs for cleantech in Q1
• Waiting for the EV market to materialize
• The fourth quarter of 2012 in cleantech

Sony might not have revealed its console hardware during the PlayStation 4 unveiling, but at least we walked away with a pretty good idea of how buying and selling games would work. Microsoft finally took the wraps off of its next-generation Xbox One video game console on Tuesday and many people were left with more questions than answers. The gameplay demos we saw during the presentation looked fantastic, but how exactly does buying and reselling those wonderful new games work?

Continue reading…

When it comes to U.S. carriers, just about everyone dreads the thought of having to call customer service to resolve an issue. Some carriers are certainly worse than others, of course, and the annual American Customer Satisfaction Index survey found that Verizon Wireless once again was ranked highest in customer service quality by subscribers. The company scored 73 points out of a possible 100, up 3 points from 2012. Sprint was flat in the No.2 spot with 71 points while AT&T gained a point to hit 70. T-Mobile remained the lowest-ranked major carrier as its score slid to 68 in 2013 from 69 last year. The full press release follows below.

Continue reading…

At Google I/O last week, Google announced that it was bringing conversational search to the desktop. Voice search features available to mobile users are coming to the desktop via Chrome.

You’re supposed to be able to just talk to Google without clicking any buttons, and ask it questions, and otherwise perform searches. You’ve been able to use Voice Search from the desktop by clicking the microphone icon for some time, but now you shouldn’t have to click.

Unfortunately, that functionality isn’t quite available, but the Chrome update that is supposed to bring it to users has gone live, along with the makings of said functionality.

When you update to version 27.0.1453.93, you can click the microphone icon, and it will ask you if you want Google to start listening, so you shouldn’t have to click any longer. The problem is that Google is not responding to queries after that, unless you click the mic icon as usual. It does at least speak answers back to you now. You can also continue the “conversation” in a natural way (at least on some queries), and Google will understand that you’re still talking about the same subject.

Danny Sullivan uses the example of asking, “How tall is Barack Obama?” then asking, “How tall is he?” Google delivers without missing a step. It understands that “he” is Barack Obama. But you still have to click the mic icon.

In the demo at Google I/O, Google illustrated that you would be able to say, “Okay, Google,” and conduct your search from there (not unlike the famous “Okay, Glass” command).

Right now, Google may be listening to what you’re saying, but it’s not quite up to the Star Trek experience just yet.

The feature is also a bit buggy, as people are seeing “no internet connection” sometimes even when they have internet connections:

[via 9to5Google]

On Tuesday VMware (VMW) unveiled vCloud Hybrid Service, an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud built and operated by VMware. The virtualization pioneer’s entry into the public cloud arena prompted lots of analysis and commentary from around the web. Here’s a look at some of the most notable posts:

Gartner – Lydia Leong comments on her CloudPundit blog: “VMware has previously had a strategy of being an arms dealer to service providers who wanted to offer cloud IaaS. In addition to the substantial ecosystem of providers who use VMware virtualization as part of various types of IT outsourcing offerings, VMware also signed up a lot of vCloud Powered partners, each of which offered what was essentially vCloud Director (vCD) as a service. … In theory, this was a sound channel strategy. In practice, it didn’t work.”

The Register – From Timothy Prickett Morgan: “the vCloud Hybrid Service is not so much about competing against AWS, Rackspace Cloud, and other public clouds as it is about giving the now 500,000 customers using the ESXi hypervisor to virtualize their servers a place where they can burst their workloads and a reason to buy vCloud Director and other tools in the VMware box.”

Ars Technica – Here’s the “where” question answered:”VMware’s US-based services will be available to early access customers in June and will be generally available in the third quarter of this year from data centers in Santa Clara, CA; Dallas, TX; Las Vegas, NV; and Sterling, VA. Services will be offered from data centers in Asia and the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) sometime in 2014. Customers outside the US aren’t prohibited from using the US-based services, but they would have to handle some latency.”

ITworld – Another reason the Vmware cloud isn’t an Amazon killer: “Individual developers won’t be able to sign up quickly and easily to start using compute services from VMware. The vCloud Hybrid Services are sold either on an annual or monthly basis. I’m not exactly sure yet but that sounds like services will be sold the same way that VMware products are sold today – through sales people or partners. There won’t be any chance to visit a web site, plop down a credit card and get to work.”

GigaOm – Jordan Novet has details on pricing: “The vCloud Hybrid Service actually has two flavors: a Dedicated Cloud mode has “physically isolated and reserved compute resources” for predictable workloads and a Virtual Private Cloud for seasonal workloads that require greater elasticity but are multitenant in nature. The former service will start at 13 cents an hour for a 1 GB virtual machine with a single processor on an annual basis, while the latter will start at 4.5 cents an hour on a monthly basis.”

Google announced all the way back in November of 2011 that it would be shutting down Google Checkout in favor of a transition to Google Wallet.

This week, Google announced that in six months, Google Checkout will officially be dead to merchants. They will no longer be able to accept payments using Google Checkout starting November 20th.

“If you don’t have your own payment processing, you will need to transition to a different solution within six months,” says Google Wallet senior product manager Justin Lawyer. “To make things easier, we’ve partnered with Braintree, Shopify and Freshbooks to offer you discounted migration options.”

“If you are a U.S. merchant that does have payment processing, you can apply for Google Wallet Instant Buy, which offers a fast buying experience to Google Wallet shoppers,” adds Lawyer.

Developers for Google Play the Chrome Web Store and Offers Marketplace will continue to be supported, and will automatically transition to the Google Wallet Merchant Center in the coming weeks. Shoppers will simply be able to use Google Wallet to make purchases on merchant apps and sites, as well as on Google properties.

For HTC, when it rains, it pours. Over the last 18 months, the company has watched its smartphone sales slow and profits wither. Now there reports that key personnel have left the company, the most recent being Chief Product Officer Kouji Kodera, according to The Verge. At a time when the HTC One flagship is on the market and the company should be looking ahead to the next big product line, that doesn’t bode well for the company’s future.

Kodera isn’t the only recent departure, however, which makes the situation a little more bleak. Here are a few more joining the exodus, per The Verge:

“It’s not just Kodera. In the past three-odd months, HTC has lost a number of employees in rapid succession — most recently Jason Gordon, the company’s vice president of global communications. Other fresh departures include global retail marketing manager Rebecca Rowland, director of digital marketing John Starkweather, and product strategy manager Eric Lin.”

I knew that Lin had left: He moved recently to become a Product Marketing Manager for Skype after five years with HTC. The others are news to me, but in hindsight, perhaps not surprising given the company’s rough ride of late: delays for the HTC One flagship phone due to supply issues and the lack of buzz around the HTC First, a phone that highlights the Facebook experience.

With HTC’s fall from prominence in the U.S., it’s possible — likely even — that the Tawian-based company consolidates operations back to its home country. With Apple and Samsung dominating U.S. phone sales, it may make sense for HTC to concentrate more effort on the bigger opportunities in Asia. To do so really doesn’t require much of a U.S. presence, sadly.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• What the Google-Motorola deal means for Android, Microsoft and the mobile industry
• Mobile 2012 and beyond
• Research In Motion: future scenarios for its fate

As Pandora struggles to fight off a new wave of competition from the likes of industry giants like Google and Apple, the company recently announced a new feature that could definitely boost interest in its services. Dubbed “Pandora Premieres,” the new feature allows users to stream new albums in their entirety a week before they are released to the public. Upcoming albums can be streamed on-demand from start to finish for one week until they are released, and then they will be mixed in with Pandora’s standard streaming radio offering. Pandora Premieres is available to Pandora subscribers at pandora.com/premieres, and the company’s full press release follows below.

Continue reading…

Google I/O has come and gone without any new Chrome OS hardware. Was it a bust for Chromies? Not at all, but most of the news were behind the scenes services and provided context for Chrome’s cross-platform future vision.

You can see some of that future in Chromium for the Mac, which is getting the Chrome App launcher. Our extension of the week dovetails with Google’s new Play Music All Access subscription service. And while Kevin still loves the Chromebook Pixel, he pleads with Google to add one important function to Chromebooks: Support for Google Play movie and TV downloads.

Show notes

Hosts: Chris Albrecht and Kevin C. Tofel

• So what was Google I/O like, what’s new for Chrome and what new services did Google add?
• More Intel-powered hardware builds are being tested
• Chromium for Mac getting the App launcher
• What’s Google’s vision for Chrome? To take over the world, of course!
• Extension of week: Better Music for Google Play Music
• When will Google add movie and TV downloads for Chromebooks?

Got questions, tips or tricks for an upcoming GigaOM Chrome Show? Find Kevin on Google+, Twitter (@kevinctofel) or via e-mail ([email protected])

(download this episode)

Subscribe to RSS

iTunes

Stitcher Radio

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Analyzing the wearable computing market
• Carrier IQ and the continued erosion of operator trust
• Siri: Say hello to the coming “invisible interface”

In an effort to deliver emergency organic food directly to the many victims of the super-tornado that recently struck Oklahoma City, the editor of Natural News is pledging $10,000 in food and cash donations to the victims of the Oklahoma City super tornado. This donation…

Call them mentally ill; call them creatively maladjusted or anything you want. There are some people who genuinely struggle and need help coping with issues in their psyche. We need a decent plan to help these people heal and to enable the ones who may never heal…

Practically everything you have been told by the mainstream scientific community and the media about the alleged detriments of greenhouse gases, and particularly carbon dioxide, appears to be false, according to new data compiled by NASA’s Langley Research Center. As…

Summer is coming. The weather is finally starting to warm up after a long, cold, gray winter. As temperatures rise, kids and parents will begin to look for ways to stay cool, and one of the most favorite pastimes is taking a dip in the local public pool. There’s only…

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand why genetically modified foods are dangerous, but if you look closely, you may just find the name of one listed among the names of more than 800 scientists from around the globe who have joined forces in an open letter…

In yet another example of how an out of control goliath state system can cause more harm than good, a teenage boy who was diagnosed with autism at a young age has risen to stellar heights after quitting the special ed system with the help of his concerned mother. State…

Despite being one of the top electronics corporations in the world, Apple, Inc. has been paying no corporate income taxes to any country overseas in which Apple does business, even though it has earned tens of billions of dollars. The finding, unearthed by U.S. Senate…

There has been a lot of rhetoric on both sides of the issue regarding the current “immigration reform bill” that the Senate has taken up, but one thing you likely haven’t heard about at all is the scope and breadth of power the massive 850-page-plus measure contains…