Author: Serkadis

SiriusXM announced the launch of a new personalization feature called MySXM, which enables users to personalize over 50 its channels by creating up to over 100 variations of each.

Channels that take advantage of the MySXM feature let users adjust sliders to impact library depth, familiarity, music style, tempo, region, and over attributes. Eventually, more channels will get the feature.

SiriusXM President and Chief Content Officer, Scott Greenstein, says, “MySXM is a personalization feature built to enhance our already well-loved curated commercial-free music and comedy channels and make an already amazing listening experience even more personal. Our experts set the stage giving you the tools to make the channel your own. You decide how involved you want to get and where you want to take your channel.”

The idea is that you will hear more of the stuff you like and less of the stuff you don’t.

MySXM is a free feature for subscribers, and is included on the iOS and Android apps.

To ensure that the Brad Paisley/LL Cool J song “Accidental Racist” remains a topic of conversation for at least another day or two, SNL offered a spoof of the song on Saturday night’s Vince Vaughn-hosted episode.

Vaughn didn’t appear in the sketch, however, which came as part of “Weekend Update”. Kenan Thompson played LL Cool J, and Jason Sudeikis played Paisley. Most of the sketch is simply their attempt at defending the song, which has drawn a great amount of controversy and ridicule, but they did, of course, offer some new lyrics.

For example, Thompson’s Cool J offers, “If you think NCIS is good, I’ll forget the Aryan Brotherhood.”

In case you haven’t heard the actual song, one of the real lyrics is: “If you don’t judge my gold chains, I’ll forget the iron chains.”

Here’s the latest news on Monticello from Watchdog Minnesota Bureau…

Threatened with a bond-holder lawsuit, the city of Monticello has quietly made a deal to buy time in negotiations with the trustee for  owners of $26 million in revenue bonds for the financially struggling FiberNet broadband network. …

A so-called “tolling agreement” approved by the City Council in March effectively extends the statute of limitations on legal claims bondholders can file against the city while ramping up the pressure to reach a resolution with the temporary agreement, set to expire June 1, 2013.

The article gives a little background…

The development follows the city’s decision to halt debt service payments in 2012, due to an annual operating loss of more than $400,000 and flat subscription rates. For the first few years of operation, FiberNet Monticello dipped primarily into about $4.5 million in profits from the municipal liquor store to make bond payments.

Going forward, however, the city wants to repay bondholders out of profits from the broadband triple-play network, as stipulated in the bond filing. While that arrangement would protect taxpayers from further subsidizing FiberNet, it’s not clear when bondholders would get a return on their investment with the system continuing to operate in the red.

Negotiations continue…

Meantime, behind-the-scenes negotiations continue between the city and representatives for Wells Fargo, the trustee. The confidential nature of the process leaves both bond holders and taxpayers largely out of the loop, including two recent closed-door City Council sessions on the threat of legal action against the city.

And service continues…

“I can assure you, the agreements and negotiations with Wells Fargo and the bondholders, have had NO impact on the operations of Fibernet, nor its customers, suppliers and other stakeholders,” Pultusker said. “I believe City Council’s release of over $200k of funds for Fibernet, is proof of this state of affairs.”

The recreation area at the new CyrusOne data center in Carrollton, Texas features a spiral slide between stories, fitness machines, a rock climbing wall and a putting green. (Photo: Rich Miller)

CARROLLTON, Texas – As you walk through the new CyrusOne data center near Dallas, the tour winds through a modern cafeteria with a stylish eating area, an annex housing foosball tables, and a gaming nook with an advanced video game system. This opens onto one of the most unique spaces in the facility – a two-story recreation area featuring a climbing wall, putting green, and a spiral slide allowing a speedy trip from the fitness machines on the upper level.

The recreation area at CyrusOne reflects a new focus on the data center as a work space for busy professionals, complete with amenities to help them be more productive and unwind a bit. Data centers are designed primarily to house thousands of servers, but the nondescript concrete bunker of the past is giving way to campuses optimized for humans, complete with comfortable offices, conference rooms, theaters and gaming areas.

“We are pairing all our next generation facilities with industry-best office space so it’s a uniquely comfortable experience for our customers,” says Kevin Timmons, CTO at CyrusOne. “They will have ample room to relax, connect, or grab an espresso in an environment a short stroll away from their infrastructure.”

Differentiating Multi-Tenant Facilities

It’s a trend seen primarily in multi-tenant data centers, where customer amenities offer an opportunity to differentiate a facility in a competitive market. This has meant more attention to the needs of data center staff, a unique breed of workers that historically have had to labor in 100-degree hot aisles, work on laptop carts, and traverse man-traps and biometric security just to get to the restroom.

CyrusOne, which offers both colocation cages and wholesale suites, is among a growing number of companies seeking to create more comfortable working environments for data center staff.

• At Vantage Data Centers, office space and other customer amenities account for about about 20 percent of the space in its new 60,000 square-foot facility in Santa Clara, Calif. In addition to two 20,000 square foot (3 megawatt) data halls, the building includes 12,000 square feet of conference rooms, kitchenettes, locker rooms with showers and Class A office space.
• The hallways of the RagingWire Enterprise facility in Ashburn, Virginia, are lined with original artwork, including some pieces created by RagingWire staffer Julie Bjorgum from recycled materials from the construction of the facility. The data center also features abundant office space and conference rooms, as well as a colorful break area and dining space, and a separate area for gaming and video.
• The SuperNAP in Las Vegas also features many visual flourishes usually seen in enterprise office space and includes a plush theater that is available for customer events.
•  IO has nearly 80,000 square feet of office space at its huge IO Phoenix data center, which also includes meeting rooms and several amphitheaters.

CyrusOne’s Timmons says the focus on amenities was driven by demand from customers, who have quickly snapped up all the available office space in the company’s Texas facilities. When Timmons and his team set out to design new facilities in Phoenix and Dallas, they included a generous office component in each project.

The Phoenix facility features 96,000 square feet of Class A office space and conference rooms, complete with a glass atrium and facade. In Dallas, CyrusOne has 30,000 square feet of office space for its headquarters operations, and another 30,000 square feet of office space for customers, plus the cafeteria, conference rooms and recreation areas.

These customer-friendly flourishes have their greatest value in the premier data center markets – including Silicon Valley, northern Virginia and Dallas – where customers can choose between a number of service providers. But they also hold appeal for enterprises that operate data centers at their headquarters buildings or on a corporate campus, where the servers are within walking distance of office space for IT staff. These companies with on-premises data centers are a key target audience for multi-tenant data centers, and the availability of office space and amenities could ease the decision to shift gear to third-party facilities.

Here’s a look at some of the other amenities at the CyrusOne Dallas facility:

The data center features a cafeteria and dining area with a sleek modern design. (Photo: Rich Miller)

Not your ordinary vending machine: This unit is fully stocked with a variety of cables and connectors that customers may need, provided at cost by CyrusOne. (Photo: Rich Miller)

Signal Ops is a unique video game experience created by Space Bullet Dynamics Corporation, which aims to take the first-person shooter mechanics and radically innovate it by giving players a chance to indirectly control a team of four members using monitors and mediated commands.

The official description from the developers says Signal Ops is a multi-perspectiv… (read more)

An interesting Twitter exchange between Googlers Matt Cutts and Tim Bray:

Follow @mattcutts

Matt Cutts
@mattcutts

A great article about why you should consider giving up news: http://t.co/p32BilNFxc

Follow @timbray

Tim Bray
@timbray

@mattcutts Except for, the world is run by people who care about what’s going on in it. Want to be one of them, or not?

Follow @mattcutts

Matt Cutts
@mattcutts

@timbray all I know is the two times I’ve given up news/social media for 30 days have been among my most productive months.

 Reply  ·  Retweet  ·  Favorite
10 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto

If you follow the adventures of Matt Cutts, you no doubt know that he regularly engages in “30 day challenges,” in which he spends a month focusing on some goal. For January, his challenge was “no news, no Twitter, fewer emails, and no social media in general”). It was a quiet time for Google algorithm update news to say the least.

“In general, when I wanted to hop onto Techmeme or Google News or Hacker News or Twitter/Nuzzel, instead I opened up my to-do list,” Cutts wrote of his experience. “As a result, I got a ton of stuff done in January. I quickly learned that if something important was happening, I’d hear about it from someone else.”

The article Cutts points to in the tweet above comes from The Guardian, and is called, “News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier”.

According to that, news: misleads, is irrelevant, has no explanatory power, is toxic to your body, increases cognitive errors, inhibits thinking, works like a drug, wastes time, makes us passive, and kills creativity.

It’s an interesting read. I’ll give it that.

Microsoft is considering a smartwatch device, reportedly having asked parts suppliers to provide suitable hardware earlier in the year. According to the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft hasn’t yet committed to the project, which will use a small touchscreen for the watch face. Time may be against the company if it waits too long.

As someone who bought a Microsoft smartwatch in 2004 — did anyone else purchase a SPOT Watch? — I’m confident the company has the know-how to build a wearable gadget. My SPOT Watch offered news, weather, calendar notifications and other useful data on my wrist.

The idea was sound, but Microsoft made a fatal mistake: It used FM radio signals for the watch’s connectivity, right as mobile broadband technology was getting off the ground. As a result, the limited, one-way network technology for SPOT Watches was quickly outdated.

That issue was one of market timing and I can’t help but wonder as to the timing of this report. From the Zune music player to the new Surface RT hardware and now a potential smartwatch, it seems like Microsoft is chasing form factors instead of leading innovation.

It’s been clear, for example, that the PC industry has been undergoing a radical shift in both sales and demand for the past few years. Why? There are many reasons — economic and hardware longevity, for example — but a new market for consumer tablets in early 2010 is a key one. Yet, Microsoft couldn’t react quickly enough: Surface RT, with its touch-friendly interface, didn’t hit the market until late 2012.

The wearable gadget market started gaining attention last year — see the Pebble, MetaWatch and others — so if Microsoft wants to be a serious contender here, it needs to pick up the pace. It’s not too late yet; the market for wearable gadgets is just getting started. The last thing Microsoft needs right now, however, is for an Apple iWatch or Google Now timepiece to hit the market sooner rather than later.

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

• Analyzing the wearable computing market
• The future of mobile: a segment analysis by GigaOM Pro
• What the Google-Motorola deal means for Android, Microsoft and the mobile industry

Dish Network proposed a $25.5 billion merger with Sprint Nextel on Monday. Under the proposal, which has been submitted to the Sprint Nextel Board of Directors, Sprint shareholders would get $7.00 per share.

The proposal is designed to upstage the pending $20.1 billion acquisition form Softbank, which has yet to close.

Dish Network Chairman Charlie Ergen said, “The Dish proposal clearly presents Sprint shareholders with a superior alternative to the pending SoftBank proposal. Sprint shareholders will benefit from a higher price with more cash while also creating the opportunity to participate more meaningfully in a combined Dish/Sprint with a significantly-enhanced strategic position and substantial synergies that are not attainable through the pending SoftBank proposal.”

“A transformative Dish/Sprint merger will create the only company that can offer customers a convenient, fully-integrated, nationwide bundle of in- and out-of-home video, broadband and voice services,” he added. “Additionally, the combined national footprints and scale will allow Dish/Sprint to bring improved broadband services to millions of homes with inferior or no access to competitive broadband services. This unique, combined company will have a leadership position in video, data and voice and the necessary broadband spectrum to provide customers with rich content everywhere, all the time.”

According to Dish, the proposed combination will “result in synergies and growth opportunities estimated at $37 billion in net present value, including an estimated $11 billion in cost savings.”

The company has shared Ergen’s full letter to Sprint Nextel Chairman of the Board, James Hance, Jr.:

Dear Jim:

Charlie Ergen
Chairman

No official announcement has been made yet, but reports have come out indicating that Google has settled with the European Commission in a two-year antitrust investigation. This one goes far beyond the settlement the company recently reached with the Federal Trade Commission in the United States.

Under the proposal, as it’s being reported, Google will label its own results, and it will show competitors’ links in cases where it shows its on results. The New York Times reports:

Google will not have to change the algorithm that produces its search results, the people said. Under the proposal, Google agrees to clearly label search results from its own properties, like Google Plus Local or Google News, and in some cases to show links from rival search engines.

…

In areas where Google does not make money from search results, like weather or news, the company will label the results as Google-owned properties. In areas where Google sells ads, like local business reviews, it will show links to at least three competitors. In areas in which all search results are paid ads, like shopping, Google will auction links to rivals.

Like in the U.S., Google will also have to give sites a way to keep their content from being included in vertical search results while letting them stay in regular search results. According to the Times, sites will be able to keep portions (as much as 10%) of their content out of Google so users are compelled to visit the site. It gives the example of Yelp keeping out business hours.

Additionally, Google is reportedly agreeing to be policed by an unknown third party, and will face fines if it doesn’t comply with the terms. This will go on for five years.

With the proposal, Google will avoid a lengthy and costly legal battle in Europe.

According to Bloomberg, Google competitors aren’t happy with the details of Google’s proposal that have surfaced, despite going significantly further than the concessions made in the U.S.

Last week, FairSearch announced a complaint with the EU claiming that Android gives Google an unfair advantage in search. More on that here.

Last month, Google released an opt-out tool for sites to keep content out of its vertical search engines.

Teradata (TDC) today introduced the Teradata Active Enterprise Data Warehouse 6700 platform, a new core analytic brain for big data sets, along with a new fabric-based hyper-speed nervous system. The new offerings expand the company’s Unified Data Architecture, which brings together Teradata, Teradata Aster, and Hadoop technology, as well as partner tools such as SUSE Linux, Intel Xeon processors and now Mellanox InfiniBand.

Active Enterprise Data Warehouse platform 6700

“With adoption of fabric-based computing, Teradata offers a high-speed, private analytic network with flexible configurations as the backbone of the entier Teradata Unified Data Architeture,” said Scott Gnau, president Teradata Labs. “The speed of connection and robust management of fabric-based computing empowers our customers to take hyper-speed analytics and business insights to a new level.”

The new 6700 platform leverages the fabric-based computing benefits of its BYNET software on high-speed InfiniBand networking. BYNET is Teradata’s secret sauce, providing on-the-fly, in-query data sorting, unique point-to-point and broadcast communication functions.  Using InfiniBand from Mellanox, communication is 20 times faster, and brings scalability, performance and reliability for processing large amounts of data. Workload performance has been boosted by 40 percent over previous version by leveraging the Intel Xeon processor E5 family. The Teradata Active Enterprise Warehouse has up to eight times more memory per cabinet, with a typical system reaching multi-terabytes of memory. These system performance enhancements enable customers to do the same data warehouse work using up to 50 percent less energy as compared to the Teradata platform of two years ago.

“Data analytics has become a competitive asset for today’s enterprises that enables quicker reaction and response to changing business conditions and consumer behavior,” said Motti Beck, director, Enterprise Market Development at Mellanox Technologies. “When the Teradata Unified Data Architecture is integrated with Mellanox’s end-to-end InfiniBand solutions as the fabric-based computing foundation, customers reap the benefits of data analytics performance and response time. Together with Teradata, we enable organizations to transform their data into a competitive business advantage.”

Teradata Enterprise Access for Hadoop

Teradata announced Enterprise Access for Hadoop to offer business analysts streamlined, self-service, cost-effective access to Apache Hadoop. As a part of the Unified Data Architecture, the new technology enables business analysts to reach through Teradata directly into Hadoop to find new business value from the analysis of big, diverse data. Offering Teradata smart loader for Hadoop and Teradata SQL-H the solution features robust security, workload management, and comprehensive standard ANSI SQL support on Apache Hadoop.

“As a key component of the Unified Data Architecture, Hortonworks Data Platform provides a reliable Apache Hadoop distribution for enterprise users,” said Bob Page, vice president, products, Hortonworks. “The deep integration of Hortonworks Data Platform with both the Teradata data warehouse and Teradata Aster discovery platform provides users with easy access to data, while giving enterprise IT the advanced security it requires.”

Teradata Studio with Smart Loader for Hadoop enables point and click convenience for browsing moving data between Teradata and Hadoop for analysis and self-service intelligence. Teradata SQL-H gives any user or application across the enterprise direct, on-the-fly access to data stored within Hadoop through ANSI SQL, leveraging the security, workload management, and performance of the Teradata data warehouse. The integrated data ware house is a cornerstone of the Unified Data Architecture, enabling real-time delivery of intelligence to front line decision-makers.

“Today’s announcement of Teradata Enterprise Access for Hadoop is another example of our agressive commitment to building out the Teradata Unified Data Architecture,” said Scott Gnau, president Terdata Labs. “Teradata Enterprise Access for Hadoop empowers organizations to dig deeply into files and data residing in Hadoop and combine the data with production business data for analyses – and action.”

For more on storage news and trends, bookmark our Storage Channel.

Continue reading…

DISH Network, the satellite pay-tv company has decided it wants to buy Sprint Corp and has offered $25.5 billion for the beleaguered third placed wireless carrier. They are offering $7 a share, or about $4.76 a share in cash and about $2.24 in DISH stock. That’s 13 percent or about $5.4 billion higher than the $20.1 billion offered by Softbank of Japan.

The cash component of DISH’s proposal is an 18% premium over the $4.03 per share implied by the SoftBank proposal while the equity portion represents approximately 32% ownership in the combined DISH/Sprint versus SoftBank’s proposal of a 30% interest in just Sprint, DISH claimed  in a press release. DISH CEO and chairman Charlie Ergen said:

“The DISH proposal clearly presents Sprint shareholders with a superior alternative to the pending SoftBank proposal. Sprint shareholders will benefit from a higher price with more cash while also creating the opportunity to participate more meaningfully in a combined DISH/Sprint with a significantly-enhanced strategic position and substantial synergies that are not attainable through the pending SoftBank proposal.”

DISH is trying for a complete makeover from its slow growing Pay-TV business and has been acquiring spectrum to build a nationwide LTE network, though from the looks of it, it will take it a long time to actually roll out the network. It recently asked FCC for a four year extension to build out its network.

PS: A full analysis of the news to follow. In the interim here is the DISH website where they outline the entire proposal and have explained their bid in  detail.

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

• A look back at mobile in Q1
• 2012: Data, spectrum and the race to LTE
• GigaOM Research highs and lows from CES 2013