Author: Serkadis

If you’ve been using AirDroid, which I deemed an app every Android owner should try in 2013, you already know the software is great. With it, you can manage your phone, move files to or from it, change ringtones and more right from the browser of a computer on the same Wi-Fi network. AirDroid 2 is now available in Google Play and it gets even better with more features such as the ability to access your Android smartphone over a mobile broadband network.

To enable the features over 3G and 4G networks, the AirDroid folks are running servers to act as an intermediary. That means you’ll need an AirDroid account. Although the app is free, remote access to your phone through AirDroid on mobile broadband is limited to 1 GB for file transfers and such. Take a peek at how the app works:

The biggest feature is surely the access via non-local networks, but there’s plenty of other new features including: find my phone, remove device wipe, and a way to remotely enable the front-facing camera on your phone. This is handy if your phone is stolen or lost because there’s no indicator on the phone to tell someone that the camera is on.

Why Google hasn’t outright bought this app is beyond me, but that shouldn’t stop anyone from grabbing a download; especially now that it’s usable on any data connection.

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Recent reports indicated that Google bought Wavii, a mobile startup, which has received some comparisons to Summly, which Yahoo recently acquired and integrated into its iPhone app.

Now, Wavii has confirmed the acquisition. CEO Adrian Aoun says in a note posted to Wavii’s homepage (via TechCrunch):

You probably know us best for our app that takes the deluge of information streaming across the web and condenses it into fast, fun updates. While we won’t continue to offer this particular service, we’ll be using our natural language research at Google in ways that may be useful to millions of people around the world.

To all of our loyal Wavii users, we owe you a big thanks for all of your feedback and involvement throughout this journey. We look forward to taking our technology to the next level and delighting you with what we come up with next!

Natural language has long been a big interest of Google’s, and we’ve already seen the company do a great deal with it. The better its technology gets, the better the overall experience should be for Google and Android users,perhaps with Google Now and Glass (though we don’t know exactly how Google intends to use Wavii’s technology specifically).

Here, you can watch an interview we did with Aoun last year for a better idea of Wavii’s background.

Whether you’re fighting mutant cyborg dogs in a hellish, post-apocalyptic wasteland or, more likely, dealing with potentially radioactive substances on a daily basis, the MTM ‘Rad’ watch may be the wrist droid you’re looking for.

MTM makes so-called ‘Special Ops’ watches which are bold, large, and usually made of coated steel or titanium. However, every once in a while they come out with something unique. This new timepiece costs $1,500 and includes a built-in radiation detector that can sense rate and dose of radiation as well as warn you when you’ve gone over a preset boundary.

The counters are completely self-contained and surprisingly small. The battery should last two years and, although this thing looks big, it’s actually quite light and watch writer Paul Hubbard wore it in a 5K race and on a plane where he got a reading of “3.7 micro sieverts/hour.” You can also transmit readings to a computer via an IR transfer system that is built into the watch.

Who is this for? Hubbard writes:

In short, if you’re in need of a Geiger counter (and, let’s face it, in these Mad Maxian times I think we all are) this may be just the wrist-mounted Pip-Boy for you.

This week, Google held its Test Automation Conference in New York. This is an event that brought together engineers from a variety of organizations to discuss test automation. It was a two-day event, and it streamed live when it was happening (April 23-24). Now, Google has made Day one’s content available for anyone to benefit from at their leisure.

The interior of a Q9 Networks data center. The Toronto-based provider is expanding in Calgary.

Here’s our review of some of this week’s noteworthy links for the global data center industry:

Q9 expands in Calgary. Q9 Networks announced that it has opened a new phase of capacity at its largest suburban Calgary site. Over $190 million was invested on facilities in western Canada. The new Calgary build is the third in a series of planned expansions at the suburban site. Over 40 percent of the announced expansion has been already sold. All of Q9′s Calgary data centre facilities are interconnected with Q9′s data centres in British Columbia, providing customers with a range of business continuity options by leveraging multiple Q9 data centers. ”We have been proudly serving the data centre needs of Albertans since 2002,” says Q9 Chief Executive Officer, Osama Arafat. “In that year, we opened our first facility and we’ve been building in Calgary ever since. Today’s announcement demonstrates our continued success and ongoing commitment to meeting the growing needs of our many blue chip customers in Western Canada.”

Interxion London offers access via BT Cloud.  Interxion (INXN) announced that BT will offer a range of its BT Radianz services from Interxion’s City of London data center campus.  BT can also offer its BT Radianz Hosting services for remote management of customers’ network and IT inside the Interxion data center. Additionally Interxion’s customers can benefit from the availability of BT Radianz Venue Interconnect, which provides optimized low-latency connectivity between Interxion’s London campus and data data centers in five key financial centers – Milan, Stockholm, Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo. “Our customers demand fast, secure and reliable access to international trading venues, which are exactly what the BT Radianz Cloud delivers globally,” said Tom Regent, president global banking & financial markets, BT Global Service. ”As the automated global trading community seeks ever-faster communication, the need for optimised low-latency access to execution venues and trading platforms is increasingly important.  We believe that offering access to BT Radianz Services from Interxion London will create many new business opportunities for both of our companies.”

Colt expands European network.  Colt announced a strategic expansion of its European network with the extension of its high-capacity infrastructure to Cork, Ireland’s second largest city. This expansion follows the completion of a new low-latency route between Dublin and London last year, a key component of a multimillion euro, five year program of investment by Colt across Europe. “Cork is an exciting place for Colt because of its substantial potential to grow as a hub for large multinationals, particularly in the well-established ICT and pharmaceutical sectors. By extending our network to Cork, we’re making a strong statement of confidence in the region and its ability to prosper in the inward investment space thanks to its business-friendly environment and skilled workforce.”

Star Trek: The Video Game lives up to the worst of the television series from which it draws inspiration but has no chance of hitting the high notes that it provided and fails to capture the magic that powered the J.J. Abrams reboot of the movie series.

The game could have been one of the lesser episodes of the original television series, but it c… (read more)

In an era of software-defined everything, the API (Application Programming Interface) is becoming more and more crucial in addressing rapidly changing IT environments, and to leverage software development and delivery as a competitive advantage. Several companies recently have been acquired, or received funding for bringing APIs to the forefront, and getting deeper into the data center.

CA to acquire Layer 7 Technologies

CA Technologies (CA) announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Layer7 Technologies, a leading provider of API management and security. The announcement was made at the CA World 2013 conference this week in Las Vegas. Complementing CA’s Identity and Access Management suite, Layer 7 products will help organizations better manage and secure APIs and speed delivery of cloud, mobile and composite applications. API management software enables organizations to govern API activity, as well as expand the network of API developers by offering a convenient API development platform that provides all the tools necessary to discover, publish and test APIs.

“The addition of Layer 7 and the synergy across our technologies will improve how we securely support organizations in their cloud, mobile and ‘Internet of things’ initiatives,” said Mike Denning, Security general manager, CA Technologies. “We use APIs every day, whether accessing flight data from our mobile device, using Google Maps from a hotel website or making payments online. There are billions of API calls a day and that number is going to increase with the proliferation of smart devices, ranging from vehicles, meters, TVs and other devices, as they start interacting over APIs. Without API security and management, thousands of business services are vulnerable to disruption.”

MuleSoft acquires ProgrammableWeb

Affirming its faith in APIs as the future of connectivity, MuleSoft announced that it has acquired ProgrammableWeb, a company that pioneered the idea of open APIs. ProgrammableWeb has the world’s largest and most active community of API developers and consumers. The combined API directories of MuleSoft’s APIhub and ProgrammableWeb form the world’s largest and most complete repository of APIs.

“APIs are the catalyst for a new era of hyperconnectivity, and our acquisition of ProgrammableWeb underscores our commitment to connect the New Enterprise,” said Greg Schott, president and CEO of MuleSoft. “Together with ProgrammableWeb, we’re extending our platform to give customers and developers a single, authoritative voice on APIs and a centralized venue for resources that enables developers and companies to fully embrace the API phenomenon.”

“The number of APIs continues to grow exponentially, and we’re passionate about providing the best information and resources available to the API community,” said Adam DuVander, executive editor of ProgrammableWeb. “MuleSoft’s industry leadership, financial strength to invest in ProgrammableWeb’s growth and commitment to growing the API ecosystem make it the perfect home for us, and we’re ready to join forces to further evangelize the importance of APIs.”

3scale raises $4.2 million

San Francisco and Barcelona-based API Management solutions provider 3scale announced $4.2 million of new funding in a round from Javelin Venture Partners and Costanoa Venture Capital. 3scale’s flexible platform is immediate, self-service, and lets businesses build a solid foundation for their API program and scale confidently to serving 10’s and 100’s of Millions of API transactions per day. The new investment will help broaden 3scale’s set of services and bring it to a global audience, enabling even more valuable APIs and API delivery by its customers.

“As products and services we rely on for our daily lives—from travel info to e-commerce, thermostats to elevators—increasingly connect to internet applications through machine-to-machine interfaces, the need for robustly managed API’s becomes critical,” noted Noah Doyle, Managing Director of Javelin Venture Partners. “We are proud to lead this new round of funding for 3scale because it will bring high grade solutions to a wide market, which no provider has done before.”

Intel acquiring Mashery

Although not officially announced by the company, ReadWrite Enterprise reported that Intel (INTC) is acquiring Mashery. San Francisco based Mashery is a company that specializes in linking together web-based software and services. Mashery has 125 employees, and has raised a total of $35 million from investors. Helping over 175 top brands, Mashery lists customers of its API technology and services like USA TODAY, Comcast, Hoovers, Rdio, Associated Press, Coke, and more. The two companies have collaborated in the past, to deliver the Intel Expressway API Manager. Positioned as a ‘composite API platform’ the 451 Group published this analyst report and the Intel and Mashery API Platform.

Betaworks, the company behind Bit.ly, news.me, Chartbeat, and now Digg, has added Instapaper to is portfolio.

Instapaper has served as a nice complement to news readers like Google Reader (or whatever you’re using these days). It’s great for when you find things you want to read later that you didn’t actually get to through your reader, and don’t have easy access to the star feature. With Digg building a Google Reader replacement of its own, it will be interesting to see if Instapaper plays a role.

Of course some current alternatives to Google Reader basically render Instapaper unnecessary. Feedly, for example, offers its version of the Google Reader starring for any page you visit on the web, and adds it to your reader. Still, the addition of Instapaper could be a key element of Digg’s creation. Either way, people already known and like Instapaper, and it will continue to have its own user base.

John Borthwick told TechCrunch in an email that Instapaper will be a “perfect fit with Digg and its forthcoming reader.

Instapaper creator Marco Arment discusses the situation in a blog post:

When I launched Instapaper in 2008, it was a very basic web app. It quickly expanded to define the pillars of the read-later market: a one-click “read later” bookmarklet, a web sync service, an adjustable text view optimized for reading, and an iPhone app with offline saving. I did almost everything myself, which worked well for the first few years, but for the past year, I’ve had a lot of trouble keeping up with it.

Instapaper is much bigger today than I could have predicted in 2008, and it has simply grown far beyond what one person can do. To really shine, it needs a full-time staff of at least a few people. But I wouldn’t be very good at hiring and leading a staff, and after more than five years, I’d like an opportunity to try other apps and creative projects. Instapaper needs a new home where it can be staffed and grown, but I didn’t want to give it to a big company that would probably just shut it down in six months.

Being familiar with Betaworks (apparently eating lunch at their office a lot), Arment figured they’d be the right company to acquire a majority stake in Instapaper. Betaworks evidently agreed.

According to Arment, the deal is structured so that Instapaper will remain a top priority, and he will continue to advise the project indefinitely.

Facebook announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Parse, a cloud-based platform for cross-platform apps. It lets developers create create rich social apps integrated with Facebook across platforms like iOS, Android, HTML5 , etc.

The two companies have already been working closely together. Parse is one of Facebook’s technology partners. Parse Social enables developers to allow users to use Login with Facebook and save and associate their information, without having to set up their own backend.

Parse Social uses Facebook’s native SDKs for iOS, Android, Windows 8 and JavaScript, so developers can add Facebook functionality a few lines of code.

“By making Parse a part of Facebook Platform, we want to enable developers to rapidly build apps that span mobile platforms and devices,” says Facebook’s Douglas Purdy. “Parse makes this possible by allowing developers to work with native objects that provide backend services for data storage, notifications, user management, and more. This removes the need to manage servers and a complex infrastructure, so you can simply focus on building great user experiences.”

“[We] have seen first-hand how important their products and community are to developers,” says Purdy. “We don’t intend to change this. We will continue offering their products and services, and we’re excited to expand what Facebook and Parse can provide together.”

In a blog post, Parse CEO Ilya Sukhar said he expects the transaction to close soon. Terms were not disclosed. TechCrunch says it’s “heard” the deal is worth $85 million.

The latest Akamai report has been released, tracking worldwide broadband growth from Q4 2012. The US does not rank highly by international standards; Minnesota does even worse when compared to other states. We don’t do well with speed or adoption. We saw the same results last August.

Average Measured Connection Speed by Country/Region – US is #8

Average peak connection speed, we’re worse with US at #13.

In terms of adoption US is #8 – the report measures broadband and “high broadband” defined as 10 Mbps and up. (US ranks #13 for plain old broadband – defined as 4 Mbps.)

Akamai only reports on the Top Ten of each listing – except as you can see above including info on the US when it doesn’t make the Top Tem list. So while I don’t know where Minnesota ranks in terms of speeds and adoption, I can tell you we aren’t in the Top Ten of any metric. You can see on the maps below that the ranking lean heavily to the East Coast.

It’s discouraging. We hear in rural areas of Minnesota about how good broadband can help reach and retain business and residents. And I’ve heard people talk about lack of broadband has the opposite effect. I don’t think it’s a far stretch to point out that the same effect may be seen at the state and international level. Minnesota and the US may be overlooked by businesses.

I’m most interested in the Akamai rankings – but their highlights from the last 5 years were interesting too…

This issue of the State of the Internet Report marks the end of five years of publication — the near equivalent
of an eternity in Internet time. Over this half-decade period, we have seen:

• The rapid rise of mobile phones and tablets using Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android operating systems as the  primary devices for accessing Web content

• The exhaustion of IANA’s central pool of IPv4 address space, and the ongoing depletion of available IPv4 address space across the Regional Internet Registries

• Growth in IPv6 adoption across major backbone networks, end-user networks, major Web sites, and leading content delivery networks, including Akamai

• The development of “national broadband plans” in countries around the world, laying out target connection speeds and adoption/availability targets for the next several years

• “Internet disruptions” used as a means of control in some countries during periods of political unrest, where  international Internet connectivity is severely limited, or severed entirely

• Growth in Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks as a means of protest, targeting government, financial services,  commerce, and other enterprise Web sites and applications

Digital Realty’s building at 350 East Cermak in Chicago, a key hub in the region’s digital economy, and one of the most conencted buildings in the country. (Photo: Rich Miller)

The digital world is tied together by fiber. It runs under streets and sidewalks, through conduit underground and risers inside skyscrapers. Fiber connects the world’s data centers, but sometimes a customer will need just the right cable transmitting bits to a specific provider or partner. And it doesn’t always exist.

Digital Realty wants to fix that problem. The company will build dark fiber infrastructure to connect its key Internet gateways and data center buildings, making it easier and cheaper for customers to connect with the carriers and clouds of their choice.

Digital Realty will run high count dark fiber between buildings, allowing it offer a “plug and play” Gigabit Ethernet product as well as straight dark fiber cross-connects to customers, carriers and service providers campus-wide. Dark fiber is cabling that is in place but not yet carrying customer traffic. Having dark fiber already in place between physical locations allows customers to “light” unused cabling, enabling traffic to flow without having to dig up streets and sidewalks to lay new fiber.

For Digital Realty’s enterprise-heavy customer base, the initiative will simplify the deployment of hybrid environments, enabling private clouds within data centers to easily connect with public cloud providers. It will also ensure that customers have easy access to their choice of carriers and can easily create direct connections with high-traffic Internet destinations like social networks and video hubs.

The launch of this important strategy takes our global portfolio to the next level in terms of network connectivity, which is a key factor for customers when selecting a data center provider,” said Michael Foust, chief executive officer of Digital Realty. “When combined with our scale, expertise and global footprint, this initiative will give customers a one-stop shop for all of their data center needs.”

Foust made it clear that by making dark fiber available, Digital Realty won’t be competing with its customers.

“The important distinction here is that we are not building a network, nor are we becoming a reseller,” said Foust. “The goal of this initiative is to ensure a robust offering of network and carrier products and services in every Digital Realty location, making our portfolio the easiest place for both wholesale and retail colocation customers to locate their data centers.”

By offering friction-less fiber, Digital Realty removes the connectivity complexity from the decision-making process of choosing a data center provider. If a carrier isn’t already “in the building,” there’s a cost involved in establishing that physical connection, which can change the economics of the deal. By building its own dark fiber infrastructure, Digital Realty is leveraging its financial strength to simplify this part of the site selection process, and gain an advantage over its growing field of rivals in the wholesale data center business.

The “Digital Realty Ecosystem” program will launch later this year in the company’s major campus locations in the New York, London, Chicago, Boston, Ashburn, Va. and Santa Clara, Calif. It will then be expanded across the company’s portfolio, which spans 22 million square feet of technology properties across three continents and 32 geographic markets.

The additional dark fiber capacity may prompt new business relationships between Digital Realty’s customers, according to John Sarkis, vice president carrier and connectivity operations for Digital Realty and the architect of the plan.

“The Digital Realty Ecosystem is designed to give customers a neutral, efficient, and connectivity rich environment for our customers to connect, not only to any carrier of choice, but directly to one another,” said Sarkis. “In addition, this ecosystem will provide an underlying infrastructure for carriers and service providers to deliver their entire portfolio of products and services to our customers, without the major capital intensive deployment costs hindering their business models.”

In early January, Pinterest began testing its new look, which started rolling out to everyone in mid-March. Reactions have been mixed. Now, they’ve made some additional updates.

“As we’ve rolled out our new look, we’ve heard from our community about things they love, things they miss, and things that could make Pinterest even better,” a spokesperson for the company tells WebProNews. “Thanks to the feedback, we’ve made some changes. The most significant changes are a new notifications system that keeps you up on all of the activity around your account, as well a typeahead to offer suggestions while you search.”

After you pin something, you can check out related boards or go straight to your pin by clicking “See it Now”.

For those who missed the “via” feature, Pinterest has added a way to see who things were pinned from when you click on a pin.

You can also now mention friends in pin descriptions and comments using an “@” before their name.

The “Find Friends” feature lets you see which of your Facebook and Twitter friends are on Pinterest.

Pinterest has added more notifications, with “Recent Activity” located in the upper right hand corner, and notifications for when someone follows you or your boards; repins, likes or comments on pins, and mentions. Old notifications will also be there for future reference.

There’s also an improved search functionality, with search suggestions as you type.

Soon, Pinterest says it will start letting you know when new pins have been added to your home feed. They’re also thinking about adding the ability to rearrange your pins, search for your pins, and to create a board within a board. These would likely be welcome features.

Also in the cards is the ability to know when you’ve already pinned something to prevent duplicates.

They’re still rolling out the new design.

For the first time ever, more smartphones than feature phones shipped globally. Research firm IDC shared its data in a report on Friday, noting the historical highlight: Of the 418.6 million handsets shipped during the first quarter of 2013, 216.2 million where smartphones. And in the battle for smartphone supremacy  Samsung stole the show, shipping 70.7 million smartphones to Apple’s 37.4 million.

As these company’s battle for the top spot, it’s interesting to note which competitors aren’t on the top 5 smartphone shipments list. Namely: HTC, BlackBerry and Nokia, all of which were on the list together as recently as the last quarter of 2011. Now it’s LG, Huawei and ZTE that round out the top 5 after Samsung and Apple.

It should be noted that Apple is the only vendor that reports sales and not shipments, but even that fact doesn’t support the idea that Apple outsold Samsung. It’s simply not a reasonable expectation that Samsung has 33.3 million smartphones sitting around in inventory worldwide.

Unless Samsung stumbles in a big way, it’s not likely another Android handset maker will outsell Apple’s iPhone any time soon. For all intents and purposes, Samsung is the de-facto Android standard, having built a huge audience with its line of Galaxy smartphones. This strategy started in 2010 and as we pointed out in mid-2011, Samsung was poised to become the smartphone king. Let’s see how long it keeps the crown.

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A good time was had by all recording this week’s new wrap up podcast! Erica Ogg called into the studio to break down Apple’s latest earnings. Then Eliza Kern popped in to chat about the recent hack of the AP Twitter account (and subsequent dip in the stock market), and we top things off with Janko Roettgers and a lively discussion about Amazon, Netflix and the future of TV.

(Download this episode)

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SHOW NOTES:
Hosts: Chris Albrecht, Tom Krazit
Guests: Erica Ogg, Eliza Kern, Janko Roettgers

Apple’s earnings and the popularity of older iPhones

The AP Twitter hack and what it means for Twitter and its users

Amazon’s set-top box and Netflix’s grand vision for TV

PREVIOUS WEEKLY WRAP UPS:
More media, more problems and more #Music on Twitter

Bitcoins bite the dust, uh-oh Aereo and Austin’s fiber

Facebook’s phone-y home, Tesla rides the lightning and Das Boot

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• How consumer media will change in 2013
• Connected consumer third-quarter 2012
• Who and what to watch in the new era of the living room