Category: News

It looks like Samsung is about to respond to the recent criticism of the Galaxy S 4 that the guaranteed 16GB of internal storage turned out to be about only half of that, due to bloatware and the heavy Touch-Wiz UI. Samsung’s initial response was that users should get expansion microSD cards to get some more storage— obviously this wasn’t an acceptable answer to end-users. If a company promises a certain amount of storage, then the phone should actually have that amount of storage, or at least something close to it.

After an outrage from the Android community, Samsung seems to have taken a complete 180 turn on the issue. Today the company announced that it would be looking to update the phone to optimize software in order to free up space for customers. Whether this means they’ll be removing some bloatware or some of the Samsung “smart” features, we know either way that the company is looking to right their wrong. Check out the press release after the break.

“We appreciate this issue being raised and we will improve our communications,” Samsung spokesperson said for CNET UK. ”Also, we are reviewing the possibility to secure more memory space through further software optimisation.

“Samsung is committed to listening to our customers and responding to their needs as part of our innovation process.”

Source: CNET

Come comment on this article: Samsung planning to free up storage space on Galaxy S 4 for users

Jullien Gordon, a founding partner of New Higher, says on the TEDxYouth@Midwest stage , “Our generation has two choices, we can hope or we can hustle.”

Earlier this month, 450 Chicago public school sophomores and juniors, plus 120 of their teachers, crowded into the city’s Harris Theater for TEDxYouth@Midwest, an event all about inspiring, motivating and empowering the young people of a city known for youth gun violence, but full of so much more — culture, history, educators and students dedicated to helping their city thrive.

Chicago’s public schools have been a fixture in the news lately. 54 schools in the city are slated to close in 2013, and according to reports in The Chicago Tribune, the 2011-12 school year brought the highest number of public school students affected by gunfire since 2008. Twenty-four students were killed; 319 students shot.

At TEDxYouth@Midwest, organizers strove to turn the focus from problems, and keep it focused on the potential. 17 speakers addressed the audience, including people like guerrilla gardener Ron Finley, who is planting gardens in South Central LA; Dr. Benjamin Harrison, a researcher working on growing replacement tissue for patients who have lost their own; and Chicago native Zoe Damacela, who started her own apparel line as a high school student in the city.

This year, TEDxYouth@Midwest launched their TEDxMidwest Youth Connections Program, a project pairing TEDxYouth@Midwest students with career experiences designed to open the doors to potential careers — from job shadowing to summer internships to discussions with local entrepreneurs. Through the program, 35 TEDxYouth@Midwest student attendees found summer internships and, next year, the team at TEDxYouth@Midwest hopes to raise that number to 100.

“The event was levels better because of the students’ infectious energy, and its potential to really have a life-changing effect on hundreds of kids and teachers,” said organizer Mike Hettwer. “The speakers were so motivated to speak there.”

The immediate effects of the event shone in students’ responses to comment cards asking how their thinking changed throughout the event. Some of their responses are truly incredible. A sampling:

I used to think… “That once you made a bad decision, that was it for you. People say you write your life’s story in ink — if you make a mistake there is no way to erase it. You are done!”
Now I think… “That I should no longer aim for perfection, but rather strive for success. Success is not measured by how many times you fall, but actually choosing to get up once more then you fall.” 

I used to think…”That you have to use violence in order to make peace.”
Now I think… “But I realize that I can use peace to make peace.”

I used to think… “That because I am considered a minority, I would not be able to do amazing things I really want to do.”
Now I think… “That I can do anything I set my mind to if I do not let anything hold me back. Only I can prevent myself from achieving my goals and my passion.”

I used to think… “I couldn’t get out of Hell.”
Now I think… “I can with Mellody Hobson’s speech.”

I used to think… “I was one of the few teenagers passionate about science.”
Now I think… “TED is all about diversity of ideas and other people are as passionate about science as I am.”

I used to think… “If you come from a broken home, would live in a broken future.”
Now I think… “You can shape your own future and get away from the brokeness.”

I used to think… “This was going to be a long boring program with weird snacks.”
Now I think… “This experience has been the best experience in my whole entire life.”

The audience at TEDxYouth@Midwest was made up of sophomores and juniors.

Dave Gallo, Director of Special Projects at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) talks about the deep sea and its deep secrets.

One of the amazing comment carders from TEDxYouth@Midwest.

Read much more about TEDx and its extraordinary constellation of events on the TEDx Blog »

As we told you on Wednesday, Apple’s App Store just hit a huge milestone – 50 billion total app downloads (excluding re-downloads and updates, of course). Today, they made it official with a release that mentions a couple other interesting facts.

Count one second. Good. In that time, 800 apps were downloaded from Apple’s App Store. That pace means that every month, Apple now sees more that 2 billion app downloads.

“Apple would like to thank our incredible customers and developers for topping 50 billion apps downloaded,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. “The App Store completely transformed how people use their mobile devices and created a thriving app ecosystem that has paid out over nine billion dollars to developers. We’re absolutely floored to cross this milestone in less than five years.”

In honor of this milestone, Apple gave away a prize for the lucky person who just happened to download number 50,000,000,000. His name is Brandon Ashmore from Mentor, Ohio, and the lucky app was Say the Same Thing, a word game that lets you and a friend bridge word gaps to find common ground. Today, he’s the proud owner of a $10,000 App Store gift card.

This isn’t the first time Apple has done this sort of promotion for a big milestone. Back in March of 2012, when Apple hit 25 billion app downloads, they gave away another $10,000 gift card to a Chinese man who downloaded the popular puzzle game Where’s My Water.

Apple says that the App Store currently boasts over 850,000 apps. They’ve come a long way from the 500 that they started out with way back in 2008.

If you were wondering, the most popular apps of all time out of those 50 billion downloaded are Angry Birds (paid) and Facebook (free).

It’s no secret that Dodge has had a long standing relationship with the Fast and the Furious movie franchise. From Dom’s 1970 Charger to the new Challengers and other Dodge products, Chrysler is banking on the fact that the F&F will continue to help bolster brand recognition with automotive enthusiasts throughout the world. The new film, Fast & Furious 6 is no exception and continues this tradition by incorporating some new Alfa Romeos into the action. Ralph Gilles, SRT CEO sits down for the cameras to tell us about the ins-and-outs of this relationship.

Source: Youtube.com

One of the funniest minutes on late night is back for its 9th installment, and we couldn’t be happier. Ladies and gentlemen, I present Nick Offerman from Parks and Recreations reading tweets from young female celebrities.

In this episode, TV’s Ron Swanson reads tweets from such starlets as Katy Perry, Miranda Cosgrove, and Jennette McCurdy.

If you’re interested, there’s a lot more where that came from.

[TeamCoco]

Though Charles Darwin is known as the father of modern biology, evolutionary biologists are well aware that he got many aspects of evolution wrong. In particular, with no knowledge of genetics Darwin was left to speculate heavily on the mechanisms of evolutionary change.

Now, geologists have discovered another hypothesis on which Darwin was not entirely right. According to a LiveScience report, a new paper published recently in the journal Geology shows that Darwin was wrong about how coral atolls grow.

In his 1842 book The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs, Darwin had originally proposed that coral atolls grow as islands sink and are actually very thick. Though in the 1950s Darwin was proven right about atolls being thousands of feet thick, geologists at MIT have now found that glacially induced sea-level cycles (a mechanism that had not been uncovered in the 19th century) are also responsible for coral atoll growth.

The new paper finds that reefs can grow or not as sea levels rise or sink with the melting of glaciers. With different islands sinking at different rates, the processes combine to create the variety of different atoll growths seen throughout the world. Researchers state that this accounts for reefs that Darwin’s purely subsidence-based ideas don’t.

Being magnanimous, a co-author the the study told LiveScience that Darwin was “mostly right.” The paper points out that the Society Islands, where Darwin gathered evidence for his reef book, is one of the rare places on the planet where glacial cycles and sinking combine in such a way as to create “perfect” atolls.

Kirstie Alley isn’t happy with Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries after some remarks he made about the way his company does things.

Jeffries was quoted in a Salon interview in 2006 as saying: “In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids. Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely….”That’s why we hire good-looking people in our stores. Because good-looking people attract other good-looking people, and we want to market to cool, good-looking people. We don’t market to anyone other than that.”

Though he said the words several years ago, they’re coming back to haunt him now after resurfacing during promotion for a book called “The New Rules Of Retail” by Robin Lewis and Michael Dart. The authors reference the fact that A&F don’t offer XL sizes in their stores, which has garnered a petition on Change.org. Now, the fact that the company openly admits to having exclusionary practices has enraged many, including celebrities.

“Abercrombie clothes are for people who are cool and look a certain way and are beautiful and are thin’ and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That would make me never buy anything from Abercrombie,” Alley said. “I’ve got two kids in that bracket, but they will never walk in those doors because of his view of people — forget women, his view of just people.”

Jeffries’ comments have received so much backlash that a filmmaker, Greg Karber, went on a mission recently to find A&F clothing at Goodwill stores and donated every piece he found to homeless people in his city. So far, Jeffries has had no comment.

In the debate over email privacy, law enforcement has usually been on the side claiming a warrant requirement when accessing email would impede investigations. It’s a good sign then when the largest law enforcement agency – the Department of Justice – comes out in support of a warrant requirement.

The Hill reports that Attorney General Eric Holder told the House Judiciary Committee that the Justice Department would be in support of legislation that requires law enforcement to obtain a warrant before accessing email. His support gives a major boost to those who want to update the ECPA – a decades old bill that allows law enforcement to obtain emails without a warrant as long as said email is more than 180 days old.

Of course, Holder did have some reservations. He said that any update to the ECPA should include exemptions for “certain very limited circumstances.” For example, he said that law enforcement agencies shouldn’t have to obtain a warrant for civil investigations.

It was encouraging, however, to hear that Holder is in support of “the general notion of having a warrant to obtain the content of communications.” It’s only slightly less encouraging to think that his idea of exemptions may cut our large swaths of the bill, thus making it less effective.

If the Justice Department truly is in favor of updating the ECPA, it will be interesting to see which one it comes out in favor of. Many hope that it would support Rep. Zoe Lofgren’s bill – The Online Communications and Protection Act. It’s a far reaching bill that not only requires a warrant before accessing email and other online communications, but also requires a warrant when accessing any geolocation data from mobile device carriers.

Lofgren’s bill may be too far reaching for the Justice Department though. It may instead opt to back something like the ECPA Amendments Act of 2013, a bill from Sen. Patrick Leahy that only requires law enforcement to obtain a warrant when accessing email. It says nothing about geolocation data.

Regardless, the Justice Department’s support may not even be enough to pass anything this soon. Both the House and the Senate are wrangling with other issues at the moment, and it looks like ECPA reform has been put on the back burner yet again.

What a week! We’ve seen a lot of exciting news come out of BlackBerry Live and BlackBerry Jam Americas this week including app launches and announcements, partner demos, the future vision for BlackBerry from Thorsten Heins, and more. Today we wrap up BlackBerry Live with a flourish – be sure to check out the hands-on labs, breakout sessions, the BlackBerry Store, and the Showcase. Check out the video below for today’s morning brief:

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

If you missed the keynote general sessions, you can replay the full videos for BlackBerry Live and BlackBerry Jam and their respective web sites.

Make sure that you check out the daily specials in the BlackBerry Store, including HS250 Bluetooth headsets, and microfiber pockets for BlackBerry Z10 smartphones.

What are you most looking forward to today? Share in the comments below.

Google says they want to help you tackle your digital to-do’s as quickly as possible, and to this end they’ve added some new quick action buttons to Gmail that let you interact with important emails right from the inbox, without ever opening the email.

Starting today, Google will begin to roll out a few new quick actions inside Gmail, including event invite responses that link to Google Calendar, places reviews that let you rate a restaurant, for instance, right inside Gmail, and one-click actions like confirming a product or site registration via email.

“These buttons appear next to certain types of messages in your inbox and let you take action on an email without ever having to open it. For example, you can RSVP to your friend’s party invitation or rate that restaurant you went to last night all right from the inbox. You’ll be checking things off that to-do list in no time,” says Google.

Another quick action involves check-ins for flights. Although the quick action button in this scenario takes you outside of Gmail for confirmation, flight emails now feature a useful card with all the pertinent info – time of departure, terminal and gate, estimated arrival time, and whether of not the flight is on time.

Google is also asking developers to add custom actions to their emails, and they say that they hope to add many more action in the near future. Developers can go here for more info. These new actions should hit your Gmail inbox in the coming weeks.

If you’re curious about more new stuff from Google (and there’s a lot of it), check out all the news from Wednesday’s I/O conference keynote.

Newvem made its name monitoring your Amazon Web Services workloads and recommending where you can extract savings with another instance type or where you need to close security gaps. Now it’s adding analagous services for Microsoft Window Azure as well.

The theory behind tools like these is basically this: sure, public cloud computing is billed as cheap, but too often it turns into a wasteland of dormant instances and other fallow resources. So as inexpensive as it can be, it’s not necessarily efficient or as cheap as it could be. Companies like Newvem, Cloudability, Cloudyn, CloudVertical et al say they can help you optimize all that and save more.

Newvem for Windows Azure covers many of the same core usage and cost metrics as the AWS version. A “heat map” helps users visualize their workloads as they move from on-premise implementations to the cloud, according to Newvem VP of marketing Cameron Peron. The free beta is available now to all Azure users. Newvem’s AWS version started out free as well, and a base level of capabilities remain free, but as of late last year, the company started charging for higher-level services.

Newvem said it sees Azure — which launched its AWS-like Infrastructure-as-a-Service  capabilities last month — gaining traction.

“The size of the Azure installed base is probably one of [Microsoft’s] best-kept secrets,” Peron noted. Well, not that secret since Microsoft recently said Azure is a $1 billion-a-year business – a claim that some find difficult to swallow. Newvem would not comment when asked if Microsoft helped fund its Azure tool, but given that Microsoft wants to build the Azure ecosystem and compete better with AWS (as well as the spanking new Google Compute Engine), I’d say it’s a safe bet.

It’s also true that companies like Newvem, which built services around AWS, have been perplexed to see AWS adding richer and deeper monitoring and management services like Trusted Advisor. Given that, it makes sense that these companies offer multi-cloud capabilities.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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For millennia people have run by feel, an “art of combining our breath and mind and muscles into fluid self-propulsion over wild terrain,” says Christopher McDougall in his anthropological study of the topic.

Many of us still run this way, of course, but for how much longer? Now we can lace up a pair of “smart” sneakers and instantly shift from running by feel to running by metrics. Guesses at how far and how fast are replaced by real time stats on pace and meters travelled.

If you think you’ll never make the switch, think again. As Nike learned from studying millions of users, the magic number of times a runner needs to see her data before becoming a more “science-based” runner is just five. Once a person crosses that threshold they are “massively more likely” to keep running by metrics than by feel alone.

That’s a great number. Here are five more I’ve come across in my ongoing study of the field of auto-analytics.

Auto analytics have a long tradition in the U.S. Benjamin Franklin was an early adopter, though his self-tracking experiments grabbed fewer headlines than his apocryphal kite-flying ones. Franklin quantified his progress toward achieving 13 personal goals, assigning himself a “little black spot” on days he failed to make progress on a particular goal.

New research (PDF) suggests that 69% of Americans participate in some self-tracking behavior just in areas related to health and wellness. Within this group of self-trackers there’s a fundamental behavioral switch going on from analog tracking to digital. Old-school methods requiring you to painstakingly detail your life with pen and paper are being replaced by tech that can collect data automatically or passively, and even interpret the data for you. Already 21% (PDF) of people who self-track use smartphone apps or gadgets that make self-tracking behavior more efficient and the data more dependable.

We take for granted now that, standing in a hotel lobby, we can find the quickest route to our destination, learn the name of the song playing and change a meeting time, all witha few taps. We navigate the external world this way. But have you thought much about using algorithms to discover the seemingly invisible and silent world within yourself, of cognition, physiological functioning, and emotions?

More of us will eventually do this. By 2018, 485,000,000 wearable computing devices will ship globally, including smart watches and smart clothing, according to ABI Research. And don’t suspect this just means we’ll all be wearing dorky electronic glasses. Sensors will detect everything from the number of steps we take to minutes of REM sleep per day. Many killer apps for wearable analytics probably haven’t been imagined yet.

People tend to gravitate toward the health and wellness applications of auto-analytics. But they will be used for “softer” disciplines too, like innovation and creativity. Traditionally measures of creativity, cognition, and focus have been a “mysterious art,” as Tom Davenport points out. But many types of wearable computing will allow professionals to migrate from art to science in the way they monitor their work and try to improve the thinking part of their job performance.

Consider that lab research using EEG headbands already shows users tend to have a measurable spike in gamma-band brain waves 0.3 seconds (PDF) before the “aha!” moments that spark the creative process. Many of these headbands are coming out of labs and are now available on store shelves, allowing anyone (who’s willing to look a bit geeky) to measure their neurons firing and seek patterns in their creative thinking, and adjust your routines to enhance creativity.

When we think of Big Data, we tend to think of large organizations, even nations, crunching terabytes of information. But you have Big Data inside yourself. Consider the BodyMedia FIT Armband, which contains four sensors and collects 5,000 data points a minute on your metabolism, sleep patterns, and activity levels. That’s 2.4 million data points in a work day.

What’s more, this is the kind of big data that comes with analysis: The wearable technology uses code and insights from IBM analytics teams to crunch your data and offer algorithm-generated recommendations on how users might improve personal decisions on diet and exercise to optimize health.

We began by mentioning how the ancient art of running can now be made scientific. Now think broadly about what other once-immeasurable forms of human movement might benefit from quantification, from karate kicks to dance moves to top-spin forehands.

Apple’s recently amended 84-page patent filing shows the extent to which the company has been thinking about changing self-measurement the way it changed music. As one analyst sums up: “the company is…developing an entire wearable/detachable computing platform and ecosystem comprised of wireless sensing systems for monitoring…sports activity, athletic training, medicine, fitness and wellness in humans.”

Most intriguing is Apple’s interest in developing wearable devices that offer users quantitative insight on movement in business and industrial settings. Soon you might be measuring your attempts to “manage by walking around (MBWA)” or to use more hand gestures during key client presentations.

Frederick Taylor’s famous Time and Motion studies aimed to make factory work more scientific. Imagine if Taylor had the tools we’ll have now. It looks like we’re moving toward a New Taylorism, only this time, the worker takes control of measuring effectiveness. It could create increased autonomy through self-knowledge, and revolutionize, again, management, and the way they live and work.

Ringadoc, a San Francisco startup that helps doctors manage patient phone calls, has raised an additional $700,000 in seed funding.

The round, which included Siemer Ventures, Telegraph Hill Group and Dr. Lyle Dennis, a neurologist and founder of HealthKeep, brings the startup’s total amount raised to $1.9 million. Previous investors include FF Angel, Practice Fusion CEO and founder Ryan Howard and former president of One Medical Group Sharon Knight.

The startup launched in 2010 as a service for providing on-demand telephone and video chat access to physicians. For $40, consumers could use Ringadoc to connect with doctors anytime, day or night. But earlier this year, in a bid to bring more doctors on to its network, it pivoted to its current product, which targets physicians with an after-hours messaging and phone service.

Typical after-hours messaging services require patients with after-hours questions to leave messages with a non-medically trained operator, who then looks up an on-call doctor and passes the message along. When the doctor calls back, the patient needs to recount her symptoms all over again.

With Ringadoc, patients leave a secure message with a cloud-based answering service that automatically finds the appropriate physician – patients only need to explain their issues once and the cost, Ringadoc says, is cheaper than most existing systems. To date, the company said it has handled more than 100,000 phone calls for physicians.

With the new funding, CEO and founder Jordan Michaels said the company plans to beef up sales and marketing, as well as enhance the product so that it could integrate with other tools used by doctors’ offices, including practice management and electronic health records systems. Since Ringadoc is capturing valuable patient engagement data through its telephone calls, Michaels said, they want to enable doctors to make the most of that functionality.

“We’re tracking a lot of two-way conversations and that’s an important piece of the health care conversation,” Michaels said. “Our vision is to be on the frontline of virtual care for patients.”

For now, the company is focusing on its physician-focused product. But, later this year, he said, it could start expanding to patients and restore the startup’s initial mission of providing on-demand physician access to patients.

Recognizing the need to address the shortage of doctors in the U.S., other companies are also working to streamline physician-patient communication and promote virtual health care. For example, PingMD targets physicians with a mobile app for more efficiently communicating with patients and peers, HealthTap offers consumers a mobile- and web-based service for messaging and querying doctors and Sherpaa works with employers to help patients and doctors connect via video chats and phone calls.

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Miss USA, Nana Meriwether, isn’t shy when it comes to talking about her crush; maybe it’s because they’re both royalty.

Meriwether, who has a model’s physique and stands at a statuesque 6′ tall, was overjoyed to hear that Prince Harry is 6’2″ and says that must mean the two of them were meant to be together.

“Perfect!” she said. “We are meant to be! Miss USA is like royalty in America so it’ll be a pleasure to meet him…It would make a great story — we should totally get married.”

Sadly, it’s unlikely the prince would be down for marriage just for the story, and since he’s already got a girlfriend it doesn’t look like she’ll be earning a new title soon. But she isn’t the only one who admires Harry; she was joined at his charity fundraiser in New York by several celebrities, including Will.i.am, who had nothing but kind things to say about the young royal.

“I am a great admirer of Prince Charles and his charity work and I think it is incredible Harry has made it part of his legacy to carry this on. He doesn’t have to do what he does, so I applaud him. He’s a party prince, a soldier and a philanthropist. He’s a regular guy. If Harry was a movie character he would be Iron Man,” he said.

Google gave an incredibly lengthy keynote to open up Google I/O on Wednesday. This included a number of announcements pertaining to Android, Google Play, Chrome, Google+, Search and Google Maps, yet still didn’t come close to covering all of the company’s announcements for the day.

At the end, CEO Larry Page made a surprise appearance, and engaged in a Q&A session with audience members.

More Google news here.

Anyone paying attention to the internet knows that Google announced a while bunch of goodies yesterday. On the mobile front, Google Play Music All Access looks stupendous. It’s like Spotify integrated into your Google Play Music library, rendering Spotify and other music apps redundant for Android users. While that announcement garnered plenty of attention, Google did announce another mobile development. They will sell the Galaxy S4, unlocked, for $649.

Reportedly the announcement drew boos from the Google I/O crowd due to the price tag. It defies our expectations for what a phone costs, by a significant sum, so the reaction isn’t surprising. Yet expectations aren’t the only issue at play here. The way the system works in the US, consumers have little incentive to use unlocked, unsubsidized phones.

(And another reason why we shouldn’t be restricted in unlocking our phones in the first place.)

A customer with an upgrade can walk into an AT&T store and purchase a Galaxy S4 for $199.99, and then pay $90 per month for cellular service. To bring an unlocked Google Galaxy S4 to AT&T would incur the same $90 per month charge, but would cost the consumer an additional $450. Therefore, it only really benefits consumers who want the S4 but do not have an upgrade — although they could simply pay the full price at AT&T. At $640, a consumer would save $10 that way.

The only advantage of owning a locked phone in the US is the ability to eventually take the phone to T-Mobile. Previously you’d have encountered the same issue there, paying the same price as someone who is repaying a subsidy. The way T-Mobile works now you can pay $70 per month for unlimited everything. If you were to buy a Google unlocked Galaxy S4, it could work if you activated it with T-Mobile.

Of course, T-Mobile itself sells the Galaxy S4. You can walk out of a store with it for $150, and then $20 per month for 24 months. That brings the total device cost to $630, not only $20 cheaper than Google but also spread over two years. Since the value of money diminishes with time, you make out much better paying the $150 up front and the $20 per month. If you just want it outright, you can pay the $630 up front if you wish and still save that $20.

There might be some cases where buying the unlocked version does make sense. But for the average consumer, purchasing the phone through AT&T or T-Mobile still makes sense. Maybe if you could bring a phone to more than one other carrier, and if you weren’t paying a monthly fee that takes into account a subsidy, an unlocked Galaxy S4 would make sense. But the way the carriers currently run the business it doesn’t add much value.

The post Google’s Unlocked Galaxy S4 Shows Lacking Value in Unlocked Phones appeared first on MobileMoo.

Mellanox (MLNX) announced its intent to acquire privately held Kotura, a leading innovator and developer of advanced silicon photonics optical interconnect technology for high-speed networking applications.

The approximately $82 million deal will boost Mellanox’s ability to deliver high-speed networks with next generation optical connectivity. Kotura holds over 120 granted or pending patents in CMOS photonics and packaging design. When combined with Kotura technology, the Mellanox interconnect products will reach 100Gb/s and beyond, and have longer reach optical connectivity at a lower cost, allowing users to further reduce their capital and operating expenses.

“We believe that silicon photonics is an important component in the development of 100 Gigabit InfiniBand and Ethernet solutions, and that owning and controlling the technology will allow us to develop the best, most reliable solution for our customers,” said Eyal Waldman, president, CEO and chairman of Mellanox Technologies. “We expect that the proposed acquisition of Kotura’s technology and the additional development team will better position us to produce 100Gb/s and faster interconnect solutions with higher-density optical connectivity at a lower cost. We welcome the great talent from Kotura and look forward to their contribution to Mellanox’s continued growth.”

Kotura launched its low-power 100 gigabits per second (Gb/s) optical engine to support the interconnect fabric at the OFC/NFOEC conference last year. Mellanox expects to establish its first R&D center in the United States at Kotura’s Monterey Park, California location, and retain Kotura’s existing product lines to ensure continuity for customers and partners.  It also believes the proposed acquisition will enhance its competiveness and its position as a leading provider of high-performance, end-to-end interconnect solutions for servers and storage systems.

“This acquisition is important for both companies to enable interconnect innovation for data centers that require solutions that move data faster and more efficiently. Together, we can execute faster and deliver better solutions based on Kotura’s silicon photonics platform that delivers the demands of 100Gb/s interconnects and beyond,” said Jean-Louis Malinge, president and CEO of Kotura, Inc. “We are delighted to join the Mellanox team and look forward to working together to propel the combined company’s further growth.”

ECB chief Mario Draghi returns to London next week almost 10 months on from his seminal “whatever it takes” speech to the global financial community in The City  – a speech that not only drew a line under the euro financial crisis by flagging the ECB’s sovereign debt backstop OMT but one that framed the determination of the G4 central banks at large to reflate their economies via extraordinary monetary easing. Since then we’ve seen the Fed effectively commit to buying an addition trillion dollars of bonds this year to get the U.S. jobless rate down toward 6.5%, followed by the ‘shock-and-awe’ tactics of the new Japanese government and Bank of Japan to end decades.

And as Draghi returns 10 months on, there’s little doubt that he and his U.S. and Japanese peers have succeeded in convincing financial investors of central bank doggedness at least. Don’t fight the Fed and all that – or more pertinently, Don’t fight the Fed/BoJ/ECB/BoE/SNB etc… G4 stock markets are surging ever higher through the Spring of 2013 even as global economic data bumbles along disappointingly through its by now annual ‘soft patch’.  Looking at the number tallies, total returns for Spanish and Greek equities and euro zone bank stocks are up between 40 and 50% since Draghi’s showstopper last July . Italian, French and German equities and Spanish and Irish 10-year government bonds have all returned about 30% or more. And you can add 7% on to all that if you happened to be a Boston-based investor due to a windfall from the net jump in the euro/dollar exchange rate. What’s more all of those have outperformed the 25% gains in Wall St’s S&P 500 since then, even though the latter is powering to uncharted record highs. And of course all pale in comparison with the eye-popping 75% rise in Japan’s Nikkei 225 in just six months!! Gold, metals and oil are all net losers and this is significant in a money-printing story where no one seems to see higher inflation anymore.

But with both Fed and BoJ pushes getting some traction on underlying growth and the euro zone economy registering it’s 6th straight quarter of contraction in the first three months of 2013, maybe Draghi’s big task now is to convince people the ECB will do whatever it takes to support the 17-nation economy too and not only the single currency per se. Last year’s pledge may have been a necessary start to stabilise things but it has not yet been sufficient to solve the economic problems bequethed by the credit crisis.

Coincidence or not, Draghi speech on Thursday is flanked by keynotes from his monetary allies. Fed chief Bernanke  speaks on Saturday and then to testifies to the congressional Joint Economic Committee on Wednesday, BoJ head Kuroda holds a press conference after the bank’s policymaking meeting ends on Thursday and outgoing BoE governor King speaks Friday. G20 sherpas meet in Russia this weekend, while EU leaders meet in Brussels on Wednesday. The big economic data set-piece of the week will be critical flash global PMI readings for May – is business finally pulling out of the early year funk or is confidence still evaporating?

Main economic events and data releases for next week:

G20 sherpas meeting in St Petersburg Sat/Sun

Fed’s Bernanke speech on long-run economic prospects Sat

Italy March Industry orders Mon

Irish PM Kenny in Boston Mon

Japan 40-yr JGB auction Tues

UK April inflation Tues

Japan April trade Weds

BOJ news conference after latest policy meeting Weds

BoE minutes Weds

EU summit Weds

German 10-yr bund auction Weds

US April existing home sales Weds

Fed’s Bernanke testifies to Joint Economic Committee of Congress Weds

FOMC minutes Weds

Global May flash PMIs Thurs

Spain govt bond auction Thurs

UK April retail sales/Q1 GDP revision Thurs

ECB’s Draghi speaks in London Thurs

EZ May consumer confidence Thurs

US April new homes sales/March house prices Thurs

SAfrica rate decision  Thurs

German May Ifo sentiment Fri

French May business climate Fri

Italy May consumer confidence Fri

US April durable goods orders Fri

BoE’s King speaks in Helsinki Fri