Category: News

This week, all eyes were on Texas, as Google announced that Austin will be its next Google Fiber-connected city. Next week, all eyes will be on New York, as we launch this year’s paidContent Live conference on April 17. We’ve still got a few tickets left, so register today to join our writers, over 40 digital content innovators, investors, and analysts for a full day of panels, workshops, and fireside chats about the future of media. Meanwhile, over on GigaOM Pro, our analysts have been looking back at the past quarter in tech. Read on to see what our analysts have to say about the current market and near term future for mobile, cleantech, and more.

Note: GigaOM Pro is a subscription-based research service offering in-depth, timely analysis of developing trends and technologies. Visit pro.gigaom.com to learn more about it.

Cleantech: Building energy management systems: overview and forecast
Eric Bloom and Richard Martin

What does it take to build bigger, better, and more energy-efficient buildings? Analysts Eric Bloom and Richard Martin take a look at the rapidly-evolving building energy management system (BEMS) market, which leverages big data to monitor and control building energy use and efficiency. While the recent economic slowdown has hampered the BEMS sector, recent research projections still anticipate significant growth over the next decade. Bloom and Martin provide a competitive overview of the BEMS ecosystem, as well as a summary of current market opportunities, key players and recent acquisitions, and future strategies and growth opportunities.

Cloud: Security: Getting to the truth in the enterprise vs. public cloud debate
David Linthicum

What’s the safest way to store your data? Analyst David Linthicum revisits the hotly-contested cloud security debate, taking a look at the arguments for (and against) public cloud solutions versus more traditional enterprise systems. He draws on recent data from Alert Logic to weigh in on the vulnerability of each system, adding his own thoughts and expertise about achieving security in the cloud.

Mobile: Mobile first-quarter 2013: analysis and outlook
Colin Gibbs

It’s been a tumultuous quarter in mobile, for just about everyone except Apple. Analyst Colin Gibbs revisits the big news items and forecasts the potential impact on the mobile market. Highlights include RIM’s attempt at a fresh start as BlackBerry and the long-awaited launch of the BlackBerry10 OS and Z10 handset. Meanwhile, Samsung continued to exert its dominance on the Andoid market, and announced plans that could effectively create a third-party mobile ecosystem to rival Google’s control of the Android operating system. Gibbs also looks at how T-Mobile is shaking up the US carrier market by eliminating service contracts and handset subsidies, and the near-term outlook for the mobile market at large. Lastly, he outlines recent developments and disruptions in the wearable device market, and especially what it means for consumers.

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In a sweeping proposed deal with European antitrust regulators, Google has agreed to include prominent links to competitors like Yelp and TripAdvisor in its search listings, and to label in-house services such as Zagat. The agreement also sets out restrictions on how Google sells advertising and how it treats third party content like news articles and restaurant reviews.

The long-awaited deal is significant because it concludes a multi-year investigation by EU competition authorities, and because it is the first time that Google has bent to government demands over how it presents its search results. The details of the five-year deal, which has yet to be formally announced, were reported on Saturday by the Financial Times.

The terms of the deal

According to the FT, Google’s obligations vary depending on the nature of the search results. The most onerous conditions relate to listings like travel or restaurants where Google has a clear financial interest. In these cases, the company must identify any search listings that are Google-owned, and also provide at least three links to competing search engines. For other Google-related listings that do not produce direct revenue — weather or news, for instance — the company must provide a label.

The labeling will involve markers like boxes, separate page placement and “hover links.” A third party will monitor for compliance with these and other parts of the agreement.

The deal also requires Google to honor requests from news agencies and other sites not to “scrape” their content for use in its search listings, and to provide assurances that it won’t punish these sites by deleting them from the search listings altogether.

The agreement also addresses Google’s advertising practices by preventing it from imposing exclusive ad deals on its partners, and by making it easier for those partners to switch their ad campaigns to rivals like Microsoft and Yahoo.

The FT has a detailed account of the obligations here.

A victory for the EU, the public or Google?

When the deal is formally announced by EU regulators, we can expect to see considerable spin from Google and its competitors about what it really means.

At this stage, it’s clear that the deal represents the largest regulatory imposition to date over Google’s search business, which is still the core of the company and its prime money maker. This amounts to a victory for the EU and its high-profile competition commissioner, Joaquín Almunia.

While Google will hardly be celebrating the regulations, the company could have fared far worse. The five-year deal, which is legally binding, means Google avoids the sort of heavy fines and bitter regulatory battles that ensnared arch-rival Microsoft for well over a decade.

Europeans consumers, meanwhile, are likely to continue using Google as they have done so far. Despite repeated accusation by groups and companies tied to Microsoft that Google manipulates its search results, there is little actual evidence that the company blatantly puts its thumb on the scale.

The agreement may, however, serve to give Google critics some peace of mind by providing legal assurances that their worst fears won’t come true. And, as the deal is not finalized, critics and others will have time to comment on its provisions.

A different outcome from America

One of the most noticeable features of the deal is how much it differs from the outcome of a similar investigation carried out by America’s Federal Trade Commission.

In a January report, the FTC concluded a two-year antitrust inquiry by announcing that Google had done nothing wrong in the field of search. While the FTC did extract a pledge the company related to patent abuse, this was more a face-saving measure for the FTC than a burden on Google. (Here’s a plain English summary of the US investigation).

Different laws in the US and EU explain the divergent outcomes. American antitrust laws, for instance, focus on harm to consumers not competitors — a different line of inquiry to what happens in Europe. America also has more robust speech laws. Google argued strenuously that its search results are protected by the First Amendment; the FTC likely folded its cards rather than risk losing a court case over the question.

According to a source familiar with the investigations, Google was also more willing to settle in Europe because a legally binding EU commitment  does not expose the company to civil lawsuits.

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It’s been a while since we’d heard about any games based off NVIDIA’s upcoming Project Shield portable gaming console. NVIDIA certainly realized that and took some time to present a teaser video of a special port of Arma Tactics. The teaser video pretty much showcases everything we’ve come to expect from a Project Shield-based game: awesome graphics, fluid visuals, smooth effects, dynamic shadows and intuitive controls. Yeah… it’s mouthwatering— we know.

It’s looking like the port of Arma Tactics will not only hit Project Shield devices, but Tegra 4 and Tegra 3-based devices as well— so make sure to keep your eyes out in the Play Store for the imminent release in the near-future. In the meantime, check out the trailer video below for yourself.

Click here to view the embedded video.

source: Droid Gamers

Come comment on this article: NVIDIA releases teaser video showcasing Arma Tactics on Project Shield

OUYA ‘s founder and CEO Julie Uhrman has posted a blog on Kickstarter detailing the road map for consoles heading to early backers. I don’t know about anyone else but I am really excited to see that OUYA has their ducks in a row like this. In this roadmap she explains that they have changed one of their partners to speed up production by a few days, as well as put more OUYA reps on the ground to speed things up.

Backers of the  new console can expect to have it  in their hands by the end of May, just in time for the retail orders to start shipping out for June. I myself am looking forward to the June release. I was unable to get in on the Kickstarter so I had to pre-order one from Amazon. I’m sure their are a lot of people that can’t wait to get this device in their hands, and I’m on that list.

Source: Kickstarter.com

Come comment on this article: OUYA confirms all Kickstarter Backers will receive their devices by the end of May

Following a lawsuit over not paying rent for the month of April, electric startup Fisker Automotive was hit with another lawsuit on Friday. Filed in Orange County Superior Court, Fisker’s web site and mobile designer Ignited is suing Fisker over an alleged $535K in unpaid bills (embedded below).

Ignited says it provided Fisker with creative services, advertising, web design, and creative and media buying services. Along with the lawsuit from Fisker’s landlord, the company was also served a class action lawsuit for laying off 75 percent of its workforce, and allegedly not giving the former employees 60 days notice (which would violate the WARN Act). So that’s three lawsuits filed against Fisker this month, and I have a hunch there’ll be more coming.

Fisker appears to be close to bankruptcy and according to Reuters last week, the company hired a firm to look into bankruptcy, and could file at any time. Fisker’s founders have also been asked to attend a hearing on April 24 in Washington D.C., organized by House Republicans. Fisker drew down on close to $200 million in a government loan from the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Program.

Fisker raised at least $1.2 billion in funds over the company’s five and half year lifetime. Fisker was backed by venture firms Kleiner Perkins (Ray Lane was a board member) and NEA, and worked with now-defunct broker Advanced Equities.

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With downloadable apps taking over the enterprise, you’d think the days of six-figure enterprise software deals would be drawing to a close. In truth, enterprise deals are alive and well. But if users are doing the downloading, how do enterprise decision makers and purchasing managers get into the picture?  The answer: Your inside sales force.

As I’ve covered previously, the route to the enterprise begins with freemium app distribution and conversion. The second phase is Inside Sales.

Inside sales are the future of enterprise sales

Just as there has been a sea change from outbound to inbound marketing, the tech industry is experiencing a similar wholesale shift from outside direct sales reps to inside sales teams. In fact, inside sales jobs are growing at 15X the rate of outside sales roles. Not only is it the future of enterprise sales, it’s also likely all you can afford at the early stages of a company’s growth.

In contrast to traditional outside sales, which is done in-person and tends to involve extensive travel and time expenditures, inside sales is professional B2B sales done remotely via phone, email and chat. It is strategic selling that requires managing a deal through a multi-stage process, multiple touch points with the customer, establishing value and an ROI for the product and supporting complex purchasing methods, like procurement departments, but importantly without visiting the customer.

This is about closing mid-sized transactions in volume – Salesforce.com was built exclusively this way during its first five years. It’s also how you move the billing relationship from a user and credit card to a company so you can grow the deal over time. Recently, there have been many examples of apps that started with a freemium product but offer compelling enterprise value that is monetized by inside sales teams, including Box, Evernote, FreshBooks and Expensify, and Jigsaw, which was acquired by Salesforce for $175 million. And across the many companies I have worked with, this is a common approach that has led to success.

The elements of an inside sales team

So how do you know if you’re ready to build an inside sales team? Truthfully, if the product is shipping it’s never too soon.  A key test is the price at which you are converting free users to paid. There are a lot of apps that only charge 99 cents or $4.99 a month for the premium version. That won’t cut it – your margins won’t support a sales force. You’ll need a price point of at least $25 to $50 per user per month to validate the value of your product and make enterprise sales work. At that price or above, a workgroup of 10 to 20 users can be sold within a customer account for $5,000 to $10,000 per year. Over time, you’ll be able to increase the deal sizes through premium features like administrative functionality.

Your first inside sales team should consist of the company founder/CEO and two salespeople. My advice is not to hire an experienced VP of Sales to build your team. Instead, the founder/CEO needs to become a student of the science behind sales.

In the early stages, the founder/CEO can sell the product better than any high-priced rep or VP. That’s because emotion plays a big role in buying new technology from an unproven startup. No one creates emotion and enthusiasm like a founder. This is what you should look for in your first sales hires as well. Your first reps are likely to be a colleague or a rep with inside sales experience from other startups.  They aren’t likely sitting at Oracle.

First steps and expectations

To get started, hire two reps so you can train them together and expect that one won’t make it. Your first reps should sit next to the founder/CEO, who should plan to spend time sitting in on sales calls and monitoring progress on a daily basis. Salesforce.com’s product is the gold standard for managing inside sales, but there are a number of other tools to try:

(Disclosure: The author’s company, Rembrandt Venture Partners, is an investor in InsideView and PaperShare; and the author serves on the board of Webtrends.)

This is how the founder/CEO figures out how to close mid-size deals in volume, and just like any other start-up situation it takes a lot of trial and error until you achieve traction.

The typical inside rep will make $40,000 to $60,000 per year in base salary. Including bonus, their on-target earnings (OTE) will be between $100,000 and $120,000. Check Payscale or Glassdoor for the latest figures. It’s obviously higher in places like the Bay Area, Boston and New York, but it’s important that your first reps sit down the hall from you. Over time, it will make sense to grow this function in lower-cost areas such as Salt Lake City, Austin, Seattle or Scottsdale, which are all known for having a lot of inside sales talent and experience.

Most Enterprise 2.0 startups are subscription businesses, so quotas should be tied to Annual Revenue Requirement (ARR) or Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) with accelerators for contract lengths greater than one year. A typical quota for your first rep is $500,000 of ARR. Over time, enterprise sales reps often settle around a $1 million quota. However, for the first six to 18 months, you should pay commissions based on the number of deals closed, regardless of size. This helps build momentum within the team and recognizes you don’t really know what deal size and volume to expect.

Even if you have a popular app that has some paid conversions, it’s not a slam-dunk that you will be able to successfully transition to inside sales. It’s possible that your product is better suited to single users rather than teams or that you’re not priced competitively compared to the perceived value.

Nevertheless, don’t get discouraged. In practice, if you can close some deals with an inside rep or two, you can sell more with more reps – the scaling is nearly linear. Once you’re really cranking at a high level, it’s probably time to deploy outside direct salespeople to sell very large deals to the largest enterprises.

Scott Irwin (@scottirwin) is a general partner at Rembrandt Venture Partners, where he focuses on Enterprise 2.0 and SaaS investments.

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Most weather applications focus only on relaying information about the meteorological conditions, but YoWindow proposes a more lively approach that shows the weather in real-time, with animated landscapes.

At the moment the developer makes it available in two editions, one free and one paid ($19.98/€16.60). Obviously, the free version comes with a few cutbacks … (read more)

When we were working on the National Broadband Plan, which was released in 2010, we were dismayed to learn that not one American city had made it to the list of “fastest cities in the world” – and worse, there was no prospect of any joining the list in the foreseeable future.

This obviously concerned us, as that list means far more than simply being fast. As our analysis suggested, America needs a critical mass of communities with world-leading bandwidth in order to develop the human capital required to design, build, operate and, above all, innovate on top of the best networks in the world.

Thankfully, it  looks like that list is finally about to get a little more red, white and blue.

The key to boosting economic development

This week’s announcement that Google is bringing its Google Fiber product to Austin, last week’s news that the North Carolina Next Generation Network (NC NGN) project had eight bidders, and similar projects in communities including Chattanooga, Chicago, Seattle and Gainesville, suggest that local leaders are starting to crack the code for how to drive network upgrades in their communities.

What these efforts have in common is leadership that understands that world-leading connectivity is the foundation for future economic development and competitiveness. Though still nascent, anecdotal evidence is mounting of success stories, from the bond rating increase Kansas City received (thanks in part to Google Fiber), to the miraculous turnaround of Chattanooga, which as Tom Friedman reports has changed the city from “a slowly declining and deflating urban balloon, to one of the fastest-growing cities in Tennessee.”

Local leaders are learning to build agreements with private enterprise that work for both the private and public interests. These efforts lower deployment and operating costs as well as risk, while at the same time creating numerous public benefits including attractive service levels and reasonable consumer pricing. These agreements, in effect, are new versions of the social contracts that enabled phone companies and cable companies to build out their networks in the last century.

While the network upgrade may seem to be only about speed, in actuality it will also drive other public improvements as well. Expectations are that the upgrade Kansas City is now enjoying will result in increased adoption of information technologies, more effective government use of broadband for education, health care, public safety and other public goods – as well as creating competition.

Of course, this is a dance in which it takes “two to tango,”  and it would not work without private sector entities willing to find a way to provide abundant bandwidth. Google deserves much praise for leading the charge, and the fact that the Research Triangle’s NC NGN project received a number of bids –  including from the incumbent cable provider Time Warner Cable – suggests others are finally starting to figure out the new math.

Local leaders can’t wait for federal moves

Federal policymakers certainly understand the importance of faster networks, but as a recent workshop at the FCC demonstrated: The federal government’s actions, other than a one-time Recovery Act investment, have been neutral, at best, and probably negative.  There are positive steps that can, and should, be taken.

Sen, Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) wisely noted that the E-rate program – which delivers bandwidth to schools and libraries – should be updated to provide gigabit connectivity to the classroom. This program could be structured to catalyze broader community upgrades.  Other federal agencies can be enlisted to support community efforts in ways that will not cost taxpayers more but will result in better services.

Unfortunately, as we discussed in a recent speech, the federal government seems ill equipped to approach the opportunity with the analytic, experimental, action-oriented frame of mind that we see in the Gig.U communities. We are hopeful that with new leadership coming to the FCC, this will improve. To date, however, it has been local leadership in partnership with companies willing to invest ahead of the current market that is driving the engine for American leadership in a big bandwidth economy.

For gardeners everywhere spring’s arrival is a time for new beginnings and hope; fail to tend to your garden, however, and you don’t get to harvest.  So it is with bandwidth: There is still much to do, the projects that are underway still have hurdles to cross, more communities need to consider how existing projects chart a path for their community, and the federal government must figure out how to move beyond rhetorical support. But now we are finally taking the first steps, have seedlings taking root. With a little luck, they will flourish and spread at gigabit speed.

Blair Levin is the Executive Director of the University Community Next Generation Innovation Project, or Gig.U; he led the development of the National Broadband Plan in 2010 for the Federal Communications Commission. Ellen Satterwhite is Program Director at Gig. U; follow her on Twitter @esatts.

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Having your identity defined by your athletic ability is something of a double-edged sword. On the one hand when you’re at the peak of your career, life is sure to be a wonderful thing. But what about when it ends – what then? Roland Sands was a professional motorcycle racer, however when his career ended he struggled with what came next. What he found was that he didn’t have to reinvent himself, but rather utilize the skills he learned as a racer and designer to form his own design, motorcycle and apparel company.

Source: Youtube.com

Do you suffer from “sore elbows, wrists and hands from having to hold small and awkward shapes?” Have you found that “products are confusing to impossible to control?” Do you know what a phthalates is and are you embarrassed by the packaging of your favorite personal massager products? Has Revel Body got a product for you.

This crowdfunded project aims to make your alone time (or time spent with friends) more rewarding. The product, essentially a sonic vibrator, is designed for ladies and, presumably, men. The team, led by Robin Elenga, has created a high-frequency system for offering a better “buzz” during those moments when you’re visiting the Palms Hotel.

The product offers “50 percent more power” and “400 percent vibration range” and reduces the vibrations felt in the hand and focuses those vibrations on sore muscles and/or your vagina.

The product uses a resonating motor to offer a larger range of vibration speeds and sensations and it’s shaped like a tennis ball to reduce the strain on wrists and other body parts. It’s run on a rechargeable battery that connects to any USB port and offers nearly silent operation, unlike similar linear-motor-powered vibrators. Because it doesn’t exactly look like a traditional vibrator you could even put it in a place of honor on your bedside table or office desk.

The vibrator comes (to your house) for a pledge of $140. You can get two for $220. They are hoping to raise $50,000 and are nearly there so they just need that extra push to get them over the edge. I suppose, given the circumstances, we should probably help them out.

This morning, President Obama, sent the message below to the White House email list, explaining why he asked Francine Wheeler to deliver the Weekly Address. If you didn't get the email, be sure to sign up.

Hello, everybody —

Each week, like many presidents before me, I sit down to record a short address to the nation. It's something I take very seriously because it offers a chance to bring focus to an issue that needs to be part of the national dialogue.

But today, I've asked someone to take my place.

Francine Wheeler is a mother. She and her family live in Newtown, Connecticut. Four months ago, her six year-old son Ben was murdered in his elementary school, along with 19 other children and six brave educators.

Joined by her husband David, Francine shares her perspective about the steps we can take to reduce gun violence and prevent the kind of tragedy she understands all too well.

It's a message that every American should hear:

read more

Hopefully, we are soon approaching the time when Apple will reveal its roadmap for iOS for 2013 — most likely sometime this summer when the company holds its annual Worldwide Developers Conference. Since I’ve used other mobile operating systems over the last year, this year leading up to the reveal of iOS 7, I have a longer wish list for what I’d like to see in it than I have in the past.

While I may be wishing upon a star here, I’m hopeful that Apple beginning support for a third-party audio interface is a sign of change from Cupertino regarding features they may add to iOS. I’m  also hoping Jony Ive brings us some great changes to the user interface design iOS.

A homier home screen

My biggest complaint about iOS is how the home screen is really just the apps that I use the most and therefore place them on the first screen. I want my home screen to be much more than that, though. I want to see today’s weather, the traffic on the way to work, what meetings I have that day, and today’s hit list on my task manager. I don’t want this limited to information obtained from just Apple apps, either. I want it to be able to read my tasks from Things, or whatever task management app I’m pretending will help get me organized this month.

That’s why I think Panic is on to something with Status Board. I like the idea of a customizable widget screen that I see when I unlock my device. I’d rather see a dashboard than a grid of icons.

Because sharing is caring

One Android feature I really like is the ability to share data between apps. If I have Instapaper installed and I’m in Chrome, I can send a page directly to Instapaper. Ditto for Evernote. Both of these are applications I use almost daily. While installing bookmarklets isn’t a gigantic hassle, it’s definitely not as good as a systemwide sharing tool.

I’d like to get an email I need to take action on, and “share” it with Things to create a task. It would be doubly nice if it could apply some intelligence and deduce the due date for the task, similar to how iOS creates calendar events based on a date and time in your email.

Preview on iOS

When Preview support for Documents in the Cloud was announced as part of Mountain Lion, I would have bet money on Preview making its way to iOS. Good thing I didn’t, or I would be out a fiver or more. So, here’s hoping Preview shows up in iOS 7 so I can sync my PDFs. While I do use programs like PDFPen, for simple PDF reading it seems overkill. PDFPen’s strengths are the ability to edit and e-sign documents, which may be more than most people need. Most of us probably just need an easy way to sync important PDFs. In my case, very few of the PDFs I want to sync are ones I want to edit; I mainly want them for reference.

Central document repository

Apple’s sandboxing, where apps can’t directly read another app’s data, is probably a good thing for security. However, when it comes to actually getting some work done, it’s a pain in the rear end. I may be wishing for unicorns, rainbows and a pretty pony here, but I really hope at some point Apple allows something like a Documents app, where I can keep PDFs, Office-type apps, text files and the like for any application to read and write too. This way, if a certain word processor app doesn’t handle a feature I need very well, I can easily open the file in that app. Using the Open With command, while a work-around, usually means I end up with multiple copies of a document strewn about several apps.

Printing to non-AirPrint devices

I have zero inclination to buy an AirPrint printer, given how infrequently I need to print from iOS. However, I wish Apple would put in a few generic drivers so people on the road with only an iPad might be able to print out items like documents, travel itineraries, boarding passes and directions.

Changing default apps

I want to be able to change default apps, especially browsers. I’ve had a few problems syncing bookmarks across multiple devices using Safari and iCloud, so I switched to Chrome as my browser. This has a secondary benefit of letting me access my bookmarks easily on my Android and Windows devices. I’d hope this would simply be something you set in Settings, where there would be an option for “Default Browser” and you can choose from the browsers you have installed.

Final thoughts

The only one of my wish list items I really expect to happen at some point is Preview. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Apple introduce a better home screen, especially with Jony Ive more involved with the design process. I doubt we will ever see an app like a Documents app, but a guy can dream.

How about you? What things would you like to see in iOS 7?

Thumbnail image courtesy of Flickr user Yutaka Tsutano via Compfight cc

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Deutshe Telekom, who is already in the process of overseeing the T-Mobile/MetroPCS merger, was recently approached by Dish Network’s chairman to discuss a possible merge between Dish and T-Mobile. This proposition was before April 10th, when Deutshe Telekom announced their revised T-Mobile deal. Currently, there’s nothing concrete about these “talks.” Deutshe Telekom is fully invested in taking care of their current merger, and will only consider the deal after the current MetroPCS transaction is over and after they’ve verified a deal with Sprint Nextel isn’t possible.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Dish try to wedge themselves into the mobile market, and I seriously doubt it’ll be the last, assuming this merger never happens. We’ll be sure to keep you updated as soon as any other details come to light.

source: Bloomberg

Come comment on this article: Dish Network in talks with Deutsche Telekom about T-Mobile merge

View of sunset over the exterior of Google’s data center in St. Ghislain, Belgium. (Photo: Connie Zhou for Google)

For your weekend reading, here’s a recap of five noteworthy stories that appeared on Data Center Knowledge this past week. Enjoy!

Google Invests $390 Million to Expand Belgium Facility » Data Center Knowledge – Google continues to make big infrastructure investments, in this case in a key facility powering European services. The company is investing 300 million Euros ($390 million in U.S. dollars) to expand its data center in Belgium. Its the latest in a series of expansion announcements for Google, which sees its data centers as the technology engine powering its online search and advertising platform.

HP Project Moonshot: Low-Power Chips To Increase Density – HP is now selling its first Project Moonshot systems. The Moonshot 1500 is using a low-power processor–specifically Intel’s Atom 1260 processor found in cell phones–that uses less energy, less space and reduces complexity and cost.

Intel Continues to Rethink the Rack of the Future – Intel is continuing to advance its vision for new data center designs that rethink the traditional placement of components within the server and rack. After unveiling a prototype at the Open Compute Summit in January, Intel today offered details on a similar initiative by China’s largest Internet companies, and promised to release reference designs to help OEMs and end users deploy these designs.

Inside Microsoft’s European Cloud Hub – If there’s a poster child for Ireland’s ideal climate for free cooling, it would be the huge data center in Dublin that powers Microsoft’s online services in Europe. Our photo feature, Inside Microsoft’s European Cloud Hub, examines how Microsoft has optimized its data center design to make efficient use of fresh air, and follows the path of the air through the giant facility.

CoreSite Leases Entire Data Center in Santa Clara – It’s not every day you see a company lease an entire data center building in one shot. But that’s what CoreSite Realty has accomplished with its newest project in Silicon Valley, where it is nearing completion on a 101,250 square foot build-to-suit project that has been pre-leased by a single large customer.

Stay current on Data Center Knowledge’s data center news by subscribing to our RSS feed and daily e-mail updates, or by following us on Twitter or Facebook or join our LinkedIn Group – Data Center Knowledge.

There’s no doubt it’s a data driven world. But increasing concerns about companies’ collection and uses of personal internet user data have given rise to a few solutions.

One is a personal data locker where users would be able to store their own information and grant companies limited access, rather than abide by companies’ privacy policies. Some people have even talked about compelling companies to disclose the data they keep on consumers, even though it might be hard to understand and use.

But others are simply opting out of the data revolution.

Stopping tracking in its tracks

One CEO has in mind an approach that comes from the opposite direction. Rather than ask companies to disclose more, Bill Kerrigan, the chief executive of Abine, believes internet surfers should avoid letting companies detect their activity in the first place; or at least try to limit the amount of new data companies can gather to tie with existing information about end users.

Abine introduced its browser extension for blocking online tracking in February 2012. The DoNotTrackMe extension is free, although the company charges for another service: the (temporary) removal of information from popular online data collectors such as Spokeo and ZabaSearch. And later this year, Kerrigan said, Abine will release a service for consumers to get proxy email addresses and phone numbers for plugging into websites that demand that information.

Besides Abine’s DoNotTrackMe feature, there are other options for preventing tracking. Free privacy and security software from AVG includes the option, for example. There’s also PrivacyChoice’s free Privacyfix web application, which displays the sites that have installed cookies on a computer for tracking activity and the data being shared through Facebook, Google and LinkedIn. Internet Explorer 10 was released last year with the do-not-track option in place by default, putting Microsoft on the side of privacy advocates, not advertisers.

The trouble is, if companies can’t see consumer demographics or preferences, websites might not be able to delight customers with responsive features. For example, without location information, Google Now would be considerably less powerful. At a recent event in San Francisco, Hilary Mason, the chief scientist at bit.ly, raved about Google Now. “For the first time (a product) takes everything (Google) knows about me and actually gives me something I want,” she said.

Similarly, at GigaOM’s Structure:Data conference in New York last month, executives at other companies that require location and other personal information from users agreed that users are willing to sacrifice personal information if they like what they can get in return.

Bringing data back

Andreas Weigend, former chief scientist at Amazon.com and now a consultant and Stanford University lecturer, is in the habit of asking executives what they could do to impress their customers by using data. He also tends to raise the question of how much data, if any, companies should share with its customers.

For example, should an airline grant access to a recording of his or her most recent phone call to the airline? He raised the question to David Cush, president and CEO of Virgin America, at a 2011 conference on big data. (A video shows what happened; fast forward to 5:40.)

The problem with pushing for data disclosure on a large scale is it will take a lot of pushing from consumer groups, and opt-in from one company at a time could take many years. Legislation might not be ideal, either, as people could just go to different countries if they don’t like the policies governments set in place.

For now, both data ownership and data masking have drawbacks. But give this some time. As more companies dream up more ways to target consumers, and consumers become more weary of being tracked and targeted, better solutions to the privacy problem are likely to pop up in response.

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Turns out the fortune cookie that came with your chop suey isn’t actually Chinese … and neither is the chop suey. So where did they come from?

Jennifer 8. Lee hunts for General TsoIn this TED Talk, journalist Jennifer 8. Lee shares the origins of some of America’s favorite “Chinese” food, and takes us on a culinary tour of Chinese restaurants around the world — whose menus often do not resemble those of restaurants in China.

This week’s TEDWeekends on the Huffington Post explores culinary cross-cultural evolutions, with great essays about the origins of our associations between cuisines and cultures. Below, find three great essays to pique your interest. And make you hungry.

Jennifer 8. Lee: Made in the USA… Chinese Food

When a dish really hits a nerve with the American palate, it can take off across the entire country, facilitated by food vendors’ freedom to copy good ideas. We saw it happen with General Tso’s chicken. We’re seeing it happen with other Asian-influenced culinary creations too…

When I was researching my book on Chinese food in America, The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, it puzzled me why Korean cuisine (unlike many of its Asian brethren) had not gone mainstream yet.

Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Indian and Vietnamese restaurants had all hit critical mass, with footholds in suburban towns. But Korean cuisine remained mostly ensconced within Korean-American communities, with an occasional lone outpost defiantly offering bibimbap. This puzzled me, because Korean savory barbecued meats — short ribs, grilled marinated beef — should be widely appealing to an American palate, which never met a barbecue recipe it didn’t like. But Korean restaurants basically remained serving Korean clientele, with the occasional Chinese family, like mine, that celebrated our Thanksgivings there. Read the full essay »

Fabio Parasecoli: General Tso Chicken: An Immigrant Life Saga

When I was studying Asian languages in Italy, back in the 1980s, the few Chinese restaurants open in my native city of Rome only served two kinds of desserts: fried fruit and fried ice cream — the unlikely creation that Jennifer 8. Lee singles out in her TED Talk about Chinese American food. When I moved to Beijing to pursue my studies, I soon discovered that these crunchy treats are unheard of in China. Chinese cooks in Italy likely came up with the concoctions to meet the expectations of Italian customers.

Fried ice cream, just like the General Tso’s Chicken, highlight the role of immigrants in facilitating the global circulation of culinary traditions, and in shaping the food of their host communities. These two examples show how moving populations have practiced the adaptation, assimilation, and appropriation of foreign or unfamiliar flavors, dishes, techniques, and behaviors all around the world. Culinary exchanges have been taking place for a very long time in the most remote corners of the globe, and they were not always peaceful and enjoyable. Lee reminds us that nineteenth century Asian immigrants to the U.S. were disparaged for eating rice, instead of more civilized fare. Sicilian cuisine still echoes the food traditions of the Islamic communities that once ruled the Mediterranean island in the Middle Ages. Roti became a common dish in many Caribbean locations after farmers were brought from India to work in the sugarcane plantations after the abolition of slavery. Read the full essay »

Theodore Johnson: African Americans and the Watermelon Stereotype

A photo of my expecting mother eating a slice of watermelon is a family favorite. She attributes my lifelong disdain for the fruit to the fact that she ate it every day while pregnant with me. I carry this story in the form of an oval, deep green blemish on my left hand. It’s true — I’m a black man with a watermelon for a birthmark.

In many countries and cultures around the world, this would be unremarkable. But in the United States, where watermelon is associated with historic African-American stereotypes, my birthmark takes on a more complex symbolism. Just as the undesirable leftovers of farm animals, such as pig intestines and feet, are linked to the slave diet, watermelon is the food most associated with the 19th and 20th century depictions of blacks as lazy simpletons. Read the full essay »