Author: Serkadis

Google has stepped up its infrastructure spending once again, to the tune of $1.2 billion in the first quarter, according to its earnings report released on Thursday. That’s a 20 percent quarter-over-quarter increase, and the previous quarter’s $1.02 billion represented Google’s second-biggest quarterly investment ever.

There’s not much to say about this uptick in spending that hasn’t been said before. Essentially, Google has to keep on spending to keep its services running as well as possible and as efficiently as possible. Competing against Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft in everything from search to mobile to cloud computing costs a boatload of cash. Rolling out Google Fiber — soon to be in three cities — certainly isn’t cheap, either.

Apples-to-apples comparisons can be tough, because everyone’s businesses are different and decisions to build or buy new gear can affect expenditures, as can massive new headquarters. But here goes: In its fiscal third quarter earnings announced on Thursday, Microsoft claims it spent $930 million. Facebook, Apple and Amazon have not yet released their latest earnings, although both Apple and Amazon spent more than $2 billion on “property and equipment” in the previous quarter. Facebook spent $198 million and another $89 million leasing property and equipment.

This quarter’s $1.2 billion also represents a nearly 2x increase over last year’s first quarter infrastructure spending for Google.

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Sure, we have our Roombas and a few AR Drones here and there, but researchers expect that we’ll have many more – and better – robots within the next few years and that the overall market should hit $6.5 billion by 2017.

According to ABI Research’s Consumer Electronics Research Service, the consumer robotics market is currently at about $1.6 billion and growing. A slow economy and fairly expensive parts has stagnated things for the time being but improved devices and more interesting implementations – home helper robots, for example – could push the market up considerably.

As we’ve seen in our visit with Bossa Nova Robotics, devices like the Mobi ball bot can move through crowded spaces and help out in unique situations. While it’s still no Rosie the Robot, I could imagine a cleaning bot that could also help move heavy objects as a team effort and robots that can inspect chimneys and drains. Interestingly, the problem of safety begins to crop up when talking about consumer robotics.

Obviously the question remains: did the robots start the fire on purpose?

via RoboticsTrends

Microsoft released its Q3 earnings, including $20.49 billion in revenue. Operating income was $7.61 billion. Net income was $6.06 billion.

CEO Steve Ballmer said, “The bold bets we made on cloud services are paying off as people increasingly choose Microsoft services including Office 365, Windows Azure, Xbox LIVE, and Skype. While there is still work to do, we are optimistic that the bets we’ve made on Windows devices position us well for the long-term.”

In addition to the results, the company announced that CFO Peter Klein will leave at the end of the current fiscal year after four years in the role and 11 years with the company.

“I’ve had a great experience as CFO and overall in my time at Microsoft,” Klein said. “We have an incredibly strong finance organization, and I’m looking forward to working with my successor on the transition through the end of the fiscal year.”

Here’s the release in its entirety:

REDMOND, Wash. — Apr. 18, 2013 — Microsoft Corp. today announced quarterly revenue of $20.49 billion for the quarter ended March 31, 2013. Operating income, net income, and diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $7.61 billion, $6.06 billion, and $0.72 per share.

These financial results reflect the net recognition of revenue related to the Windows Upgrade Offer, Office Upgrade Offer and Pre-Sales, and the Entertainment and Devices Division Video Game Deferral, partially offset by the European Commission fine. The following table reconciles these financial results reported in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) to non-GAAP financial results. We have provided this non-GAAP financial information to aid investors in better understanding the company’s performance.

Download: Web

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“The bold bets we made on cloud services are paying off as people increasingly choose Microsoft services including Office 365, Windows Azure, Xbox LIVE, and Skype,” said Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer at Microsoft. “While there is still work to do, we are optimistic that the bets we’ve made on Windows devices position us well for the long-term.”

The Microsoft Business Division posted $6.32 billion of revenue, an 8% increase from the prior year period. Adjusting for the net recognition of revenue related to the Office Upgrade Offer and Pre-Sales, Microsoft Business Division non-GAAP revenue increased 5%. During the quarter, we launched the new Office, enhancing productivity and the user experience through new mobility, social, and cloud features.

The Server & Tools business reported $5.04 billion of revenue, an 11% increase from the prior year period, driven by double-digit percentage revenue growth in SQL Server and System Center.

“Our enterprise business continues to thrive,” said Kevin Turner, chief operating officer at Microsoft. “Enterprise customers are increasingly turning to Microsoft for their IT solutions and as a result, we continue to take share from our competitors in key areas including hybrid cloud, data platform, and virtualization.”

The Windows Division posted revenue of $5.70 billion, a 23% increase from the prior year period. Adjusting for the recognition of revenue related to the Windows Upgrade Offer, Windows Division non-GAAP revenue was flat. During the quarter, we added to the Surface family of devices with Surface Pro.

The Online Services Division reported revenue of $832 million, an 18% increase from the prior year period. Online advertising revenue grew 22% driven by an increase in revenue per search.

The Entertainment and Devices Division posted revenue of $2.53 billion, an increase of 56% from the prior year period. Adjusting for the recognition of revenue related to the Video Game Deferral, the division’s non-GAAP revenue increased 33% for the third quarter. Xbox LIVE now has over 46 million members worldwide, an 18% increase from the prior year period.

“Our diverse business continues to deliver solid financial results, even as we navigate the evolving device market,” said Peter Klein, chief financial officer at Microsoft. “Looking ahead, we will continue to invest in long-term growth opportunities to drive our devices and services strategy forward and deliver ongoing value to shareholders.”

Business Outlook

Adjusting for the European Commission fine, Microsoft is revising operating expense guidance downward and now offers a range of $30.2 billion to $30.5 billion for the full year ending June 30, 2013. Microsoft also offers preliminary fiscal year 2014 operating expense guidance of $31.6 billion to $32.2 billion, representing 4% to 6% growth from the mid-point of fiscal year 2013 adjusted guidance.

CFO Transition

The company also announced Microsoft CFO Peter Klein will leave the company at the end of the current fiscal year, after nearly four years in role and 11 years at the company. Microsoft will be naming a new CFO from its finance leadership team in the next several weeks.

“It has been a pleasure to work with Peter as CFO,” Ballmer said. “He’s been a key member of my leadership team and a strategic advisor to me, and I wish him the very best.”

“I’ve had a great experience as CFO and overall in my time at Microsoft,” Klein said. “We have an incredibly strong finance organization, and I’m looking forward to working with my successor on the transition through the end of the fiscal year.”

Webcast Details

Peter Klein, chief financial officer, Frank Brod, chief accounting officer, and Chris Suh, general manager of Investor Relations, will host a conference call and webcast at 2:30 p.m. PDT (5:30 p.m. EDT) today to discuss details of the company’s performance for the quarter and certain forward-looking information. The session may be accessed at http://www.microsoft.com/investor/ . The webcast will be available for replay through the close of business on Apr. 18, 2014.

Adjusted Financial Results and Non-GAAP Measures

For the third quarter fiscal year 2013, GAAP revenue, operating income, and earnings per share included the recognition of revenue for the Windows Upgrade Offer, the Office Upgrade Offer and Pre-Sales, and the Entertainment and Devices Division Video Game Deferral, partially offset by the European Commission fine. These items are defined in our Form 10-Q for the quarterly period ended March 31, 2013. In addition to these financial results reported in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), we have provided certain non-GAAP financial information to aid investors in better understanding the company’s performance. Presenting these measures without the impact of these items gives additional insight into operational performance and helps clarify trends affecting the company’s business. For comparability of reporting, management considers this information in conjunction with GAAP amounts in evaluating business performance. These non-GAAP financial measures should not be considered as a substitute for, or superior to, the measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP.

Non-GAAP Reconciliations

Windows Division

 

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Microsoft Business Division

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Entertainment and Devices Division

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About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Forward-Looking Statements

Statements in this release that are “forward-looking statements” are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially because of factors such as:

• intense competition in all of Microsoft’s markets;
• execution and competitive risks from our increasing focus on devices and services;
• significant investments in new products and services that may not be profitable;
• Microsoft’s continued ability to protect its intellectual property rights;
• claims that Microsoft has infringed the intellectual property rights of others;
• the possibility of unauthorized disclosure of significant portions of Microsoft’s source code;
• cyber-attacks and security vulnerabilities in Microsoft products that could reduce revenue or lead to liability;
• improper disclosure of personal data that could result in liability and harm to Microsoft’s reputation;
• outages, data losses, and disruptions of our online services if we fail to maintain an adequate operations infrastructure;
• government litigation and regulation that may limit how Microsoft designs and markets its products;
• Microsoft’s ability to attract and retain talented employees;
• delays in product development and related product release schedules;
• unfavorable changes in general economic or market conditions, disruption of our partner networks or sales channels, or the availability of credit that affect demand for Microsoft’s products and services or the value of our investment portfolio;
• adverse results in legal disputes;
• unanticipated tax liabilities;
• quality or supply problems in Microsoft’s consumer hardware or other vertically integrated hardware and software products;
• impairment of goodwill or amortizable intangible assets causing a charge to earnings;
• exposure to increased economic and regulatory uncertainties from operating a global business;
• geopolitical conditions, natural disaster, cyber-attack or other catastrophic events disrupting Microsoft’s business; and
• acquisitions, joint ventures, and strategic alliances that adversely affect the business.

For further information regarding risks and uncertainties associated with Microsoft’s business, please refer to the “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and “Risk Factors” sections of Microsoft’s SEC filings, including, but not limited to, its annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, copies of which may be obtained by contacting Microsoft’s Investor Relations department at (800) 285-7772 or at Microsoft’s Investor Relations website at http://www.microsoft.com/investor/.

All information in this release is as of Apr. 18, 2013. The company undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statement to conform the statement to actual results or changes in the company’s expectations.

Google released its earnings report for the first quarter, posting $14 billion in revenue, up 31% year-over-year.

“We are working hard and investing in our products that aim to improve billions of people’s lives all around the world,” says CEO Larry Page.

Revenues from Google-owned sites were $8.64 billion, or 67% of total Google revenues. Partner sites generated $3.26 billion. “Other revenues” were $1.05 billion. Revenues from outside the U.S. were $7.1 billion.

Paid clicks increased 20% year over year, and 3% quarter over quarter. CPCs decreased 4% year over year and 4% quarter over quarter.

We’ll update with more from the conference call.

Here’s the release in its entirety:

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – April 18, 2013 – Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2013.

The accompanying tables have more details on the non-GAAP financial measures that are most directly comparable to GAAP financial measures and the related reconciliations between these financial measures.

Google may be a company of many personalities — browser and operating system developer, connected-device manufacturer, fiber-optic Internet servicer, search giant and social network, among many others. But the core business is still about one thing: Advertising, as calendar first quarter results, delivered today after the closing bell, show.

Revenue rose 31 percent to $$13.97 billion, year over year; operating income, excluding Traffic Acquisition Costs, was $3.48 billion, up from $3.39 billion. Net income climbed to 3.35 billion up from $2.89 billion. That’s $9.94 earnings per share, including costs associated with discontinued operations.

Average analyst consensus was $14.04 billion revenue and $10.69 earnings per share, for the quarter. Revenue estimates ranged from $9.81 billion to $15.12 billion, with estimated year-over-year growth of 72.5 percent.

“We had a very strong start to 2013, with $14 billion in revenue, up 31 percent year-on-year” Larry Page, Google CEO, says. “We are working hard and investing in our products that aim to improve billions of people’s lives all around the world”.

Turn the Page

First quarter marks just a few days short Larry Page’s second anniversary returning as CEO (April 4). Google’s master had a busy quarter. The company:

• Launched Chromebook Pixel
• Set Google Reader to close July 1
• Sidelined Android chief Andy Rubin
• Opened the Chrome Beta for Android channel
• Consolidated Android and Chrome leadership
• Hired Guy Kawasaki as Motorola chief evangelist
• Axed more than a half-dozen products or services
• Moved Google Maps from Commerce to Search group

That’s just a short, short list of the many strategic actions or adjustments made in just one quarter.

There is clear consolidation underway as the CEO brings trusted executives — those with whom he resonates or who share his vision — closer to the inner circle. Meanwhile, a different Google emerges as Page’s vision, and that of his lieutenants, propagates — one that: cross-integrates more products and services, releases updates at faster pace and is much, much, much more aggressive in the market place. The Google you thought you knew is something else.

Financial Highlights

TAC. Google’s financials include Traffic Acquisition Costs — that’s revenue shared with partners. For Q1: $2.96 billion, compared to $2.51 billion a year earlier. TAC was one-quarter of revenue in both quarters.

Paid Clicks increased 20 percent year over year and 3 percent sequentially.

Cost-Per-Click rose 4 percent yearly and quarterly.

International: $7.5 billion outside the United States, accounting for 55 percent of revenues — that’s up 1 percent by year and quarter.

Motorola Mobile revenues reached $1.02 billion, or 7 percent for consolidated Google results.

Google revenue (excluding Motorola) was $12.95 billion — that’s up from 22 percent from $10.65 billion a year earlier.

Google-owned sites: $8.64 billion, up 18 percent from $7.31 billion.

Google Network (e.g., partner sites): $3.26 billion, up 12 percent from $2.91 billion.

Other: $1.05 billion, up 150 percent from $420 million.

MORE TO COME

Photo Credit: meneame comunicacions, sl

Continue reading…

Today, after the closing bell, Microsoft revealed what might be the closest-watched quarterly results in 11 years. Fiscal third quarter, like the one in 2002, marks a time of record-low PC shipments, with blame falling on the newest operating system. In recent weeks, every idiot arm-chair pundit imaginable has taken to the web to proclaim Windows 8 a failure and prophesying Microsoft’s doom.  Not so fast. This company is still a money machine.

For fiscal Q3, ended March 31, Microsoft revenue reached $20.49 billion. Operating income: $7.61 billion and net income was $6.06 billion, or 72 cents a share.

Average analyst consensus was $20.56 billion revenue and 68 cents earnings per share, for the quarter. Revenue estimates ranged from $19.57 billion to $21.65 billion, with estimated year-over-year growth of 18.1 percent. Microsoft missed revenue consensus but exceed EPS forecast.

Several factors mitigated results: Office and Windows pre-sale and upgrade offers and European Commission fine.

“The bold bets we made on cloud services are paying off as people increasingly choose Microsoft services including Office 365, Windows Azure, Xbox Live, and Skype” CEO Steve Ballmer, says. “While there is still work to do, we are optimistic that the bets we’ve made on Windows devices position us well for the long-term”.

Windows 8 Dog and Pony Show

Microsoft’s big problem is declining PC shipments — during calendar first quarter (same as fiscal Q3) bad enough to rank as weakest since IDC started tabulating numbers in 1994. Many analysts and computer market watchers anticipated that Windows 8 would lift sagging shipments, which five months later are worse.

“At this point, unfortunately, it seems clear that the Windows 8 launch not only failed to provide a positive boost to the PC market, but appears to have slowed the market”, Bob O’Donnell, IDC vice president, claims. O’Donnell joins a chorus of Windows 8 blamers, offering a simply unfair and inaccurate assessment. Like today, PC shipments collapsed ahead of Windows XP’s release in 2001 and stayed slow for at least another year. As I explained three days ago, the market similarities are surprisingly close, including global economic malaise.

Many pundits look at smartphones and tablets as the PC’s demise, and Windows with it. Consumers shift spending away from personal computers to these devices, which is the evidence. In 2001-02, the phenomenon was similar, but the devices different — big-screen TVs and MP3 players. I wouldn’t write off the PC just yet.

Something else: Apple, which had been immune to Windows PC sales ills, is afflicted, too. According to IDC, U.S. Mac shipments fell 7.5 percent in calendar first quarter. If Windows 8 is to blame, why is Apple down, too? The point: The market dynamics are complex. The economy. Sales shifting to smartphones and tablets. PC saturation. Suffice to say that Windows 8 didn’t revive PC shipments, which according to IDC fell for 10 consecutive quarters but one — calendar Q3 2011. That’s quite different from being the cause.

Microsoft bet big on touch to compete with these other devices. Demand for traditional PCs is weak, which makes sense given it’s a mature product category. Touchscreen models, whether true tablet or hybrids, offer something different, but not necessarily more enough. They compete with media tablets like Apple’s iPad that offer similar top-line functionality for hundreds of dollars less. For many consumers, iPad, or even smaller tablets, is good enough. So on a touchscreen-to-touchscreen comparison, media slates win, and that phenomenon has little to do with Windows 8.

“The majority of consumers remain unwilling to pay the price premium for touchscreen capabilities on PCs at this stage”, Isabelle Durand, Gartner principal research analyst, says. “But, even so, touchscreens and Windows 8 will represent key opportunities for PC manufacturers in the second half of 2013”. The personal computer will be radically different, and even unrecognizable, in three years, I predict.

Looking at the global numbers, IDC puts calendar first quarter shipments down 13.9 percent, while Gartner is a bit more optimistic (-11.2 percent). IDC and Gartner estimate U.S. PC shipment declines of 12.7 percent and 9.6 percent, respectively.

Something else lost in all the punditry: Microsoft actually encouraged existing Windows customers not to buy new PCs. Promotional pricing make the new version lower than any of its predecessors, as I explained answering in January question “Why are Windows 8 sales so good when PC shipments are so bad?” So the real measure of Windows 8’s success or failure is actual license sales, not PC shipments.

MORE TO COME

Google has shared a new Tech Talk (it actually took place on March 27) on YouTube called Sleep-posium 2013, in which a handful of doctors discuss sleep.

Google is, apparently, “making a sleep a priority.”

One of the most exciting announcements back in the Summer of 2009 for the biofuel folks, was the much-discussed potentially $600 million deal between upstart startup Synthetic Genomics, led by genome guru Craig Venter, and oil giant Exxon to make algae fuel at commercial scale. While that partnership seemed to strain a bit in late 2011, I’ve never been quite clear on what actually happened to the plans.

But in a detailed Bloomberg article on Chevron’s move away from biofuels, Venter and Synthetic Genomics have finally confirmed that the Exxon-funded research didn’t produce the desired results and was subsequently down graded. The article says that in late 2011 an algae strain that proved promising in the testing greenhouse, didn’t hit its performance milestones in an Exxon pond in Texas.

As a result, Bloomberg says that Exxon changed the contract to focus on long term research instead of commercial production, and Synthetic Genomics was forced to lay off more than half its staff that were working on biofuel development. Venter also clarified back in late 2011, that the Exxon deal was to research naturally occurring algae cells only (not synthetic ones), and Venter hoped that Exxon would come around to funding the research based on synthetic algae cells.

Venter says that biofuels made from algae that will be able to scale, and compete with oil, will have to be synthesized and will not come from nature. In the Spring of 2010, Venter and his team successfully created the first synthetic bacterial cell, which was controlled completely by a synthetic genome. Alas, perhaps algae fuel won’t be the first application for that ground breaking research.

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A group of researchers at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have created microbatteries that charge 1,000 times faster than normal batteries and can, feasibly, “jump-start a car” while powering a cellphone. The group, led by William King, is working on shrinking the batteries down to fit inside a “credit-card thin” device.

The batteries use a design that offers a much larger surface area for the cathode and anode which improves discharge as well as charge rate. While cathode (or plus side) improvements have existed for a while, this is the first one that also improves the “minus side” or anode.

In practice, the batteries could help create devices last 30 times longer or transmit farther distances – albeit with a hit in battery life. Many batteries either have a high power – the ability to pump out a lot of juice quickly – or high energy – the ability to store that juice and mete it out. Capactitors, for example, charge quickly but express their power very quickly as well. Li-Ion batteries hold energy but take a long time to charge. Because these batteries can hold so much energy and charge so quickly, you get the best of both worlds.

“Now we can think outside of the box,” said James Pikul, a graduate student on the project. “It’s a new enabling technology. It’s not a progressive improvement over previous technologies; it breaks the normal paradigms of energy sources. It’s allowing us to do different, new things.”

You can read the paper here but be warned it’s a bit nerdy and bit pricey to download.

via Extremetech

Archos, a French company that has been building inexpensive tablets longer than most, is now entering the smartphone market. On Thursday, Archos announced a trio of Google Android smartphones with dual-SIM capability that it will sell at full price. But don’t expect to pay the $600 or more that a flagship phone often lists for: these Archos handsets range in price from $99 to $249 without a contract.

All three devices offer the basic, native Android experience, just like Google’s Nexus phone line. That could appeal to many who prefer Android’s user interface over HTC’s Sense or Samsung’s TouchWiz interfaces, for example. Of course, at this price, you won’t get the hardware that’s inside a Google Nexus flagship. The internal components aren’t bad for the price, but you won’t find support for LTE. Instead, all three devices use 3G/HSPA networks with download speeds up to 7.2 Mbps.

For $99, the entry-level Archos 35 Carbon gets you a 3.5-inch IPS display with low 360 x 480 resolution. Internal memory is just 4 GB, which can be expanded with up 32 GB on a microSD card. The Android 4.0 device runs on a 1 GHz Qualcomm 7225A chip and includes aGPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0 and can be a hotspot. The two cameras — front and rear — only capture VGA quality images.

The $219 Archos 50 Platinum is a 5-inch handset with 960 x 540 resolution and IPS screen, running Android 4.1.2. The Platinum gets a big performance boost over the Carbon with a quad-core Qualcomm 8225Q running at 1.2 GHz paired with 1 GB of memory. Internal memory still tops out at 4 GB but can be expanded with removable storage. The same connectivity options from the Carbon are here. The two cameras, however, get a vast improvement: 8 megapixel on the rear camera with 720p video capture and 2 megapixels on the front.

An additional $30 moves you up to the Archos 53 Platinum at $249. A cursory scan of the specs shows me that the $30 gets you a larger version of the Archos 50 because the specs appear to be the same. The key difference is the screen, which is a 5.3-inch IPS panel using the same qHD resolution as the Archos 50. You do get a larger battery, however, than the slightly smaller, cheaper model.

Archos plans to begin selling the smartphones by the end of May in Europe. I haven’t seen any indication of whether the handsets will arrive in the U.S., but I suspect you can always order one from overseas if you want a low-cost, unlocked Android phone without a homescreen skin.

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One of the latest “At Google Talks” Google has shared on YouTube is actually a musical performance. Heathers, the twin sister duo out of Dublin, performed their song “Forget Me Knots” at Google Ireland. It actually took place bac, in September, but Google has just made the video available.

More recent At Google Talks here.

There’s gold in them thar telecommunications networks, and Guavus wants to help carriers find it. On Thursday, the San Mateo, Calif.-based big data company announced it has raised another $9 million in funding — from new investors Goldman Sachs and TransLink Capital — bringing the company’s total investment to $87 million and helping to finance acquisitions and a global expansion into Asia.

In a nutshell, Guavus is trying to make telcos — including “all tier-1 mobile operators” — smarter by letting them make sense of the data they’re networks are generating. Those companies are historically alright at using their demographic and billing data to improve their marketing efforts, but they’ve been largely blind to what’s happening on their networks, Founder and CEO Anukool Lakhina told me during an interview a few months ago. However, he said, “The magic happens in marrying and infusing that network data with the demographic and billing data.”

To get a better sense of how Guavus does what it does, I suggest reading Stacey Higginbotham’s October 2012 interview with Lakhina. You can also watch his presentation from our Structure: Data event just last month.

Guavus has actually been rather busy lately. In January, it closed a $30 million funding round and then bought mobile-analytics startup Neuralitic Systems less than two weeks later. When I spoke to Lakhina about that acquisition, he said the plan is to use Neuralitic’s marketing and application expertise to help customers automate business processes, promotions and other functions based on their newfound insights into what’s happening across the entire company.

Feature image courtesy of Shutterstock user Pavel Ignatov.

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A look at the new Facebook dashboard reporting its data center efficiency metrics.

The era of real-time data has arrived for the data center industry’s leading energy efficiency metric. Facebook has launched a public dashboard that provides up to the minute data on the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of its first two company-built data centers in Oregon and North Carolina. The social network is also providing data on its use of water, a topic of growing interest in data center design and operations.

Facebook isn’t the first company to make its PUE data public, as Google has been publishing its data center metrics since 2008. But with the new dashboards for its server farms in Prineville, Oregon and Forest City, North Carolina, Facebook is presenting “near real-time” data that includes the temperature and humidity at both sites, which is useful for analyzing the impact of environmental variables on data center efficiency. The dashboard features detailed data on the past 24 hours, as well as separate charts that allow users to review performance data over longer periods, ranging from 7 days to 1 year.

The PUE metric compares a facility’s total power usage to the amount of power used by the IT equipment, revealing how much is lost in distribution and conversion. The Prineville data center has had recent PUE measurements as low as 1.06, while the Forest City facility has recent readings of about 1.10. Once the Facebook data center in Luleå, Sweden comes online, the company will begin publishing data for that site as well.

Facebook is also advancing the use of Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE), a metric that was developed by The Green Grid to measure a facility’s impact on the local water supply. Some approaches to data center cooling use large volumes of water that can impact the local supply of potable water and test the capacity of area sewage systems. Facebook was among the first companies to report WUE.

“We’re proud of our data center efficiency, and we think it’s important to demystify data centers and share more about what our operations really look like,” Facebook’s Lyrica McTiernan wrote on the Open Compute Blog. ”Through the Open Compute Project (OCP), we’ve shared the building and hardware designs for our data centers. These dashboards are the natural next step, since they answer the question, ‘What really happens when those servers are installed and the power’s turned on?’ ”

To encourage other data center operators to follow its lead, Facebook said it would make available the code used to create the dashboards.

“We’re excited about sharing this data, and we encourage others to do the same,” writes McTiernan. “Working together with Area17, the company that designed these visualizations, we’ve decided to open-source the front-end code for these dashboards so that any organization interested in sharing PUE, WUE, temperature, and humidity at its data center sites can use these dashboards to get started. Sometime in the coming weeks we’ll publish the code on the Open Compute Project’s GitHub repository … We encourage you to treat this as a starting point and use these dashboards to make everyone’s ability to share this data even more interesting and robust.”

As I reported in October in 2011, and others picked up on about five months later, Google would be launching a Google+-based comment platform for blogs.

Today, Google made the announcement, but it’s only for Blogger blogs, at least at this point. The feature can be enabled from the Blogger dashboard.

“Now when you’re browsing your blog’s comment threads, you’ll see activity from direct visitors, and from people talking about your content on Google+,” says Google Principal Engineer Yonatan Zunger . “For example, if there’s a public Google+ discussion about one of your blog entries, those comments and replies will also appear on your Blogger blog. This way you can engage with more of your readers, all in one place.”

“Your blog readers will now have the option to comment publicly, or privately to their circles on Google+,” adds Zunger. “And when they’re browsing blog comments, they can view all of them, just the top ones, or only those from the people in their circles.”

Everyone will, of course, only see the comments they have permission to see.

Facebook has had a similar offering for quite some time, and it’s a bit surprising that it’s taken Google this long to offer something, and still only for Blogger.

You can see the feature in action here.

Lithopanes are objects created to let light through to different degrees, allowing you to create a sort of greyscale image that is visible when the plate is placed against a light source. Created by the folks at Makerbot, the lithopanes are completely customizable and you can upload your own images that will then print in about an hour on a standard printer.

You can see the Thingiverse Thing here and use the Customizer, the company’s own interactive API and object modeler, to upload your own photo. They recommend using a light plastic and choosing a square picture. I foolishly heeded neither of those recommendations so I essentially printed a black, opaque ABS coaster when I tried this on my Makerbot. I’m currently printing it out in light green ABS to see what happens.

The Customizer lets you do all sorts of amazing things, including DIY iPhone cases and customizable rings. It’s striking how close to magic a lot of this stuff is these days, especially with with online tools and inexpensive printers. We, in some ways, live in the future.

Enlighted, a startup using sensor and big data software to control lighting and power in large commercial buildings has hit a few milestones this week. The company, which we put on our 12 smart grid startups to watch in 2012, has raised a sizable $20 million round, and has also doubled the size of the building space under management over the last five months, to hit 10 million square feet of commercial real estate.

Enlighted says its customers include Google, LinkedIn, Bank of New York, Turner Broadcasting and the City of San Jose. New investors RockPort Capital and DFJ JAIC joined the round, along with existing investors Kleiner Perkins, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Intel Capital.

The startup’s lighting control tech can individually measure and manage lighting at each light fixture and can cut energy consumption from lighting in office and commercial buildings by 50 to 75 percent. The sensors can detect light level, occupancy, temperature and power consumption in the 100 square feet under each light. The company says it’s saved some 15 gigawatts of electricity since it began installations two years ago.

Enlighted’s first customer was green carpet company Interface Global, which used the lighting management system on its 35,000 square foot facility located in Acworth, Ga. Interface says it was able to cut its lighting power by 70 percent, and achieved a return on investment in 18 months.

Big data analytics and sensor tech — IT — is appearing as one of the bright spots in cleantech startups these days. Some investors call this the so-called Clean Web, or using digital tech to manage resources from energy to water to food.

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