Category: News

Cookie Monster is well-known to have an obsession (addiction?) to cookies, but it seems that the blue Sesame Street character can also become a bit belligerent when he doesn’t get paid.

According to a New York Post report, a man dressed as Cookie Monster in Times Square assaulted a two-year-old boy this weekend.

The man, named Osvaldo Quiroz-Lopez, is reported to have posed for a picture with the child and then pressured the boy’s mother for two dollars (for cookies, presumably). According to police, when the mother refused to tip, the man “cursed her” and pushed the boy to the ground. Quiroz-Lopez was arrested on charges of reckless endangerment and endangering the welfare of a child.

This isn’t the first time costumed characters have run afoul of the law in New York City. In December 2012, a man dressed as the video game character Mario in Times Square was arrested for placing his hand on a woman’s thigh. In June 2012, a man named Adam Sandler (not that Adam Sandler) was arrested while wearing an Elmo costume and going on an anti-Semitic tirade in Central Park.

Arlington Capital Partners has acquired MB Aerospace Holdings. Financial terms were not announced. Management also invested. U.K.-based MB Aerospace provides highly engineered components for the commercial and military aero-engine and industrial gas turbine markets.

PRESS RELEASE

Arlington Capital Partners (“Arlington”), a Washington, DC-based private equity firm, today announced the acquisition of MB Aerospace Holdings Limited (“MB Aerospace”), in partnership with the Company’s management team. Headquartered in Motherwell, United Kingdom, MB Aerospace is a leading global provider of highly engineered components for the commercial and military aero-engine and industrial gas turbine markets.

MB Aerospace manufactures complex rings, casings and other engine components for a large and diversified portfolio of aero engine and industrial gas turbine platforms. The Company’s in-depth knowledge of critical manufacturing technologies and global supply chain management allows it to also provide supply chain integration services alongside the manufacture and repair of complex aero-engine components. The Company’s blue-chip customer base includes large OEM’s such as Pratt & Whitney, Rolls-Royce, General Electric, Boeing, United Technologies, GKN, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Volvo Aerospace.

“We are excited about the opportunity to partner with Craig Gallagher and the rest of MB Aerospace’s world-class management team,” said Peter Manos, a Managing Partner at Arlington. “This acquisition creates a global platform with a unique focus on providing manufacturing, engineering and supply chain management services for mature and legacy aero-engine platforms, and we believe the Company’s strong growth prospects will be further enhanced with significant acquisitions.”

Craig Gallagher, CEO of MB Aerospace, commented, “Our partnership with Arlington represents a superb fit with our vision of creating a truly world-class aerospace business focused on aero-engine components. Arlington’s global track record in the aerospace and defense sectors will be invaluable as we seek to expand further both organically and through acquisitions. We look forward to leveraging Arlington’s extensive experience and relationships.”

Jesse Liu, a Principal at Arlington said, “Going forward, MB Aerospace is well positioned to lead a consolidation effort in the highly fragmented mature and legacy aero-engine market. The Company’s best-in-class engineering expertise, strong history of past performance and unique market focus enable MB Aerospace to partner with OEM’s to address overall under-performance issues in their supply chains.”

About Arlington Capital Partners

Arlington Capital Partners is a Washington, D.C.-based private equity firm with over $1.5 billion of capital under management focused on middle market investment opportunities in growth industries including: aerospace/defense, government services and software, healthcare services, business services, education and training. The firm’s professionals and network have a unique combination of operating and private equity experience that enables Arlington to be a value-added investor. Arlington invests in companies in partnership with high quality management teams that are motivated to establish and/or advance their company’s position as leading competitors in their field. www.arlingtoncap.com

About MB Aerospace

MB Aerospace is an international aerospace engineering group providing complex engineering solutions to some of the key names in the aerospace and defense market. The group provides an in-depth knowledge of critical manufacturing technologies and the global supply chain management to support complex aero-engine component manufacture and repair. MB Aerospace supports major corporations to address the root causes of under-performance in their extended and fragmented supply chains and helps safe-guard the continuity of supply in challenging circumstances. Under the leadership of CEO Craig Gallagher and senior management, the Company secured strategic remits with a number of key aerospace and defense companies, divested non-core operations and is well positioned to serve all key aero-engine OEM’s globally. www.mbaerospace.com

The post Arlington Capital Buys MB Aerospace appeared first on peHUB.

Meryl Streep issued a statement to the press today sharing her thoughts on the late Margaret Thatcher. Streep played Thatcher in the film “The Iron Lady,” directed by Phyllida Lloyd. Streep won an academy award for the role.

Here’s what she had to say about Thatcher (via The Washington Post):

“Margaret Thatcher was a pioneer, willingly or unwillingly, for the role of women in politics.

It is hard to imagine a part of our current history that has not been affected by measures she put forward in the UK at the end of the 20th century. Her hard-nosed fiscal measures took a toll on the poor, and her hands-off approach to financial regulation led to great wealth for others. There is an argument that her steadfast, almost emotional loyalty to the pound sterling has helped the UK weather the storms of European monetary uncertainty.

But to me she was a figure of awe for her personal strength and grit. To have come up, legitimately, through the ranks of the British political system, class bound and gender phobic as it was, in the time that she did and the way that she did, was a formidable achievement. To have won it, not because she inherited position as the daughter of a great man, or the widow of an important man, but by dint of her own striving. To have withstood the special hatred and ridicule, unprecedented in my opinion, leveled in our time at a public figure who was not a mass murderer; and to have managed to keep her convictions attached to fervent ideals and ideas- wrongheaded or misguided as we might see them now-without corruption- I see that as evidence of some kind of greatness, worthy for the argument of history to settle. To have given women and girls around the world reason to supplant fantasies of being princesses with a different dream: the real-life option of leading their nation; this was groundbreaking and admirable.

I was honored to try to imagine her late life journey, after power; but I have only a glancing understanding of what her many struggles were, and how she managed to sail through to the other side. I wish to convey my respectful condolences to her family and many friends.”

For more thoughts on Thatcher’s passing from the Twitterverse, go here.

If there’s a poster child for the phenomenon of “native” advertising — also known by other names, including sponsored content — it is BuzzFeed, the digital-only publisher created by Huffington Post alumnus Jonah Peretti. Unlike some content companies that are just experimenting with these new forms of advertising, BuzzFeed has staked its future on the format, refusing to carry traditional ads. But as a recent profile of Peretti and his company in New York magazine makes clear, reinventing advertising is no walk in the park — and while BuzzFeed may have a head start, it is still far from that goal.

As the NY magazine piece points out, word of mouth is the holy grail for advertisers: customers talking about your product (or something related to your product) without you paying them to do so is the ultimate recommendation. Madison Avenue legend David Ogilvy said it was “like manna from heaven, but nobody knows how to do it on purpose.” In a nutshell, that’s what Jonah Peretti has been trying to do ever since he himself went viral in 2001, after a stunt he came up with involving a Nike shoe and some bad press for the company’s foreign manufacturing.

This is fundamentally the same reason advertisers are interested in social networks like Facebook and Twitter: because they are hoping to figure out how to both create “social” advertising messages and target them in such a way that they don’t really seem like advertising, thereby encouraging users to share them. The only problem is that no one really knows how to do that (Note: We’re going to be talking about sponsored content and other monetization methods with BuzzFeed president Jon Steinberg, among others, at paidContent Live on April 17).

How does virality work? No one really knows

Everyone can recognize a viral campaign when they see them after the fact, but no one quite knows how to produce them in any kind of scientific way. Microsoft researcher — and Peretti friend — Duncan Watts has studied this area more than just about anyone, and he and the BuzzFeed founder (who co-authored a paper in 2007 on the topic for Harvard Business Review) both have algorithms that try to describe the process. But Watts admits it is far more chaotic and difficult to predict than those algorithms suggest.

“We have this very Newtonian view of causality,” Watts, a square-jawed Australian, shouted over the din. “Like, billiard balls hitting each other, that’s the most complicated thing that we can wrap our heads around.” But his research suggests that the commonly understood, Gladwellian model of virality, with its linear progression through influencers and tipping points, doesn’t really reflect the way viral messages spread.

Even Peretti, who has gained a reputation for being able to engineer virality, seems to concede that it is harder than most people think. The New York magazine piece says the BuzzFeed founder became visibly irritated when told that some advertising industry critics don’t see the site’s sponsored content as being that valuable — with one ad agency executive arguing that showing readers “a bunch of cats” isn’t really helpful when it comes to doing actual marketing. “Could you make a list of cute animals that gets 5 million views? It’s actually really hard,” Peretti shot back.

Some advertisers are resistant to the idea

So one reason why BuzzFeed’s attempt to reinvent advertising is going to be a lot harder than it looks would be simple resistance from the ad industry itself: for all of Peretti’s talk about how sponsored content can bring back the creativity and storytelling aspect of advertising, many agencies and other players don’t seem convinced that putting their brand name on a piece about dogs who look unimpressed is going to help them move more product. The BuzzFeed founder may see this as short-sighted, but it is still a hurdle.

Another barrier is related to this one: namely, the fact that some of BuzzFeed’s sponsored content winds up doing the exact opposite of going viral. According to the NY magazine story, some of the content that Virgin America and other brands spent hours creating in collaboration with BuzzFeed — tinkering with it until they were convinced they had engineered it to be as viral as possible — more or less fell flat and disappeared without a trace. One post had just 350 shares on Facebook, which is the equivalent of a damp squib in social-networking land.

“Other campaigns running on the site… showed smaller results: Geico, 140,000 views; GE, 65,000 views; Pepsi Next, 44,000 views. These numbers don’t quite match the hype around native advertising, which might be why ad agencies sound much less enthusiastic about the medium’s transformative potential than publishers do.”

It’s also expensive — and potentially risky

A third hurdle to BuzzFeed’s ambitions is implied by both of the others, and that is the cost of producing the kind of content that the site wants to lure advertisers into sponsoring. All of the meetings that the NY magazine piece describes, in which a dozen or more editors work on posts and then decide which ones to market heavily (a process that somewhat ironically includes the use of ads on Facebook and elsewhere) makes for an expensive process.

And one final hurdle is the one highlighted by blogger Andrew Sullivan in a series of posts about the evils of sponsored content and of BuzzFeed’s approach in particular: namely, that the site will be unable to maintain the trust of its readers if it blurs the line between editorial and advertising too much. The NY magazine story describes several posts that could easily be mistaken for ads — even though they aren’t — and other posts that began as non-sponsored content and then were more or less recreated as advertising for specific brands.

BuzzFeed has $20 million in new financing, and New York magazine estimates that based on what it charges for a piece of sponsored content, the site could make as much as $40 million in advertising revenue this year. But building a profitable business based on the creativity of human beings in an area as unpredictable as online content — while retaining some credibility — is not an easy task. Just ask the traditional media industry.

Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Shutterstock / Everett Collection as well as Flickr users Nils Geylen and 401K, and Shutterstock / Eldorado3D

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Taipei, Taiwan: It was a powerful (6.0) earthquake that ripped through central Taiwan that caused me to think about the similarities between Japan and Taiwan’s energy futures. A day after I arrived in Taiwan a little over two weeks ago, the strong earthquake caused my family’s apartment of the 11th floor in Taipei to sway back and forth — the tremor killed one person, injured at least 19 near the epicenter and invited anti-nuclear newspaper articles the following morning.

As a close neighbor of Japan, Taiwan’s energy future shares similarities for both energy technology development as well as energy challenges. Both island countries have traditionally relied mostly on imported fossil fuel resources and are highly earthquake prone, which have fueled intense debates over nuclear power policies as well as a further push into clean energy.

A wind farm in Miaoli, Taiwan.

A week after the quake, I hiked to a seaside town about two hours south of Taipei, and was greeted with a coastline dotted with wind turbines. On another excursion during the trip, a hydroelectric dam near Taipei exposed distressingly low water levels and a big swath of dry lake shores. The water from the reservoir irrigates farms and supplies drinking water for homes and businesses. Like parts of the U.S. gripped by drought, Taiwan needs more rain and to figure out ways to make up for the shortfall.

Renewable energy, resource conservation and protests over nuclear power are nothing new in the history of energy development in many parts of the world. But population and economic growth, which taxes and at times destroys our environment, requires much more thoughtful planning for where and how we produce energy. Taiwan, along with mainland China, and post-Fukushima Japan, are increasingly being forced to address these issues.

Look to Japan

Japan has become a hot market for solar energy and other renewable energy generation, as well as energy storage, after an earthquake wrecked the Fukushima nuclear power plant in March 2011. The government put in place generous subsidies for alternative energy development. Both IHS and Bloomberg New Energy Finance predict that Japan will add more solar power generation than any country except China in 2013.

A map of wind farms in Taiwan.

The Fukushima disaster prompted Taiwan to re-examine its nuclear power policy and stirred protests against the construction of a fourth nuclear power plant, which is actually close to completion.

Taiwan also subsidizes clean power and plans to increase solar and wind energy development. Late last year, the government raised the 2013 target for new solar energy generation by 30 percent to 130 megawatts. The country is pushing for wind farm construction on the coast because it already has made use of suitable wind resource island, according to Taiwan Power Co. By the end of 2012, Taiwan had 559.66 megawatts of cumulative wind power generation capacity and 134.3 megawatts of solar power generation capacity, the utility said.

Shihmen Dam in Taoyuan, Taiwan.

Renewable electricity generation capacity (excluding hydropower) accounted for just over 6 percent of Taiwan’s total (41.4 gigawatts). In terms of the actual power produced — solar and wind farms can’t generate power around the clock — and renewable electricity made up nearly 3 percent of the total power produced, according to Taiwan Power’s most recent, 2012 sustainability report.

Solar energy should play a larger in Taiwan given that, like Japan, Taiwan is home to major solar cell makers. Promoting more solar energy production also will help Taiwan’s domestic solar manufacturers, who also have been hit hard by an oversupply of solar cells in the global market over the past two years. The glut has caused prices to crash and forced many solar manufacturers to go out of business.

The low water level at the Shihmen Dam.

One of the largest Taiwanese solar cell makers, Neo Solar Power, recently announced a survival plan to merge with another Taiwanese solar cell maker, DelSolar. Neo Solar said the combined company will have “close to 2 gigawatts” of production capacity, which would be comparable to First Solar’s  capacity of 1.9 gigawatts.

For Taiwan and its 23.3 million people, adding more solar and wind power makes economic sense and helps it to gradually reduce its reliance on imported fossil fuels and perhaps its own struggle with whether to build more nuclear power plants over the long run. As the nation takes cues from Japan, and others, expect to see a greater push into clean power, and more controversy over nuclear.

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Today, we remember the 11 million lives taken during the Holocaust — a catastrophe that thoroughly transformed our world. As we take time to honor lives lost, we look towards people like Viktor Frankl, who gave this talk “Why to believe in others.”

A Holocaust survivor and renowned author, in this rare clip, Frankl discusses the importance of searching for the meaningful, not the material. His firsthand experience with suffering has not disheartened him; instead, he discusses the importance of optimism and positivity. Viktor Frankl delivered this talk in 1972, but his message is just as applicable now –- and today of all days — as it was some 40 years ago.

Below, some more talks to watch to help us remember the Holocaust, and learn to move forward and prevent acts of genocide in the future.

Ben Dunlap: The life-long learner Ben Dunlap: The life-long learner When Ben Dunlap tells the story of his life, it is as though it was all preparation for his encounter with Hungarian Holocaust survivor Sandor Teszler. In this touching talk from TED2007, he shares the invaluable lessons learned from their sweet friendship.

Sarah Kaminsky: My father the forger Sarah Kaminsky: My father the forger At TEDxParis 2011, Sarah Kaminsky shares the story of her father’s life — a story she herself did not hear until she was an adult, when she learned of his role in World War II as a master forger, as he sacrificed his time and risked his life to save countless others.

Moshe Safdie on building uniqueness Moshe Safdie on building uniqueness Architect Moshe Safdie designed Yad Vashem, Jerusalem’s Holocaust Remembrance Museum. In this talk from TED2002, he explains the motivations behind its design — the emotions he wished to evoke, and how he honored victims through its building.

Samantha Power on a complicated hero Samantha Power on a complicated hero In this talk from TED2008, Samantha Power opens a discourse for understanding how genocides like the Holocaust are able to continue for years, despite public knowledge. Power emphasizes the need for a truly global movement in order to prevent crimes of such great magnitude.

The rumors are true. Residents of Austin, Texas can celebrate the imminent arrival of Google Fiber.

The news doesn’t come from Google of the city of Austin (yet), but rather a press release by Gig.U, a coalition of 30+ universities that promote ultra-high-speed brandband in the U.S.

“Gig.U congratulates Google and the City of Austin for their initiative to bring a world-leading network to one of the world’s great research university communities. This effort will pay enormous dividends for the country, as it will help develop the human capital America needs to lead a global economy that increasingly creates value with big data and big bandwidth,” says Gig.U Executive Director Blair Levin.

Earlier we told you that Google had inadvertently published a blog post stating that Google Fiber was in fact on its way to Austin. The post was quickly removed. Reports also indicated that Google was readying a launch event, and had sent out some invitations.

Austin will become the third location to get Google’s high-speed service – as right now it’s only available in Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri. There’s no word yet on exactly when and how fast Google will be deploying the network in the city.

We’ll update with more information as we hear it.

[via Engadget]

WASHINGTON D.C. — IER Director of Regulatory and State Affairs Daniel Simmons was cited in a FOX News article today on the Federal Government’s various wind energy initiatives. Simmons’s comments demonstrate the duplicitous nature of the government’s 82 wind-related initiatives …

HP is now selling its first Project Moonshot systems–the bleeding edge of servers–which HP states is “the world’s first software-defined server to run Internet scale applications.” Also, 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.

There’s been an overall movement toward ultra-low power servers, and Project Moonshot is HP’s attempt. HP clearly sees an opportunity in building low-power, many-core servers, which can slash power usage over large footprints of Internet infrastructure.

As CEO Meg Whitman said, “We’re living in a period of enormous change. There will be hundreds of billions of devices going to be connected.” As the IT world enters the era of the Internet of Things where every device and appliance is connected, creating and storing data, an increasing demand for compute is evolving. ” It’s no longer about petabytes, but brontobytes,” said Whitman. “And all of this takes a lot of elements in the background. We’re on a path that is not sustainable from a space, cost, and energy perspective.”

Converged Infrastructure

The Moonshot 1500 platform uses a converged infrastructure, using workload-optimized, extreme low-energy “server cartridges” in a unique enclosure that pools resources across thousands of servers through using HP Converged Infrastructure technology. This allows the sharing of resources—including storage, networking, management, power and cooling.

The HP Moonshot 1500 System chassis is similar to a blade chassis, but on steroids. It is a 4.3U (7.5 inches tall) chassis that hosts 45 independent hot-plug ProLiant Servers, all attached to multiple fabrics.

One moonshot system can get 180 servers in the system, including built-in switches. High-speed uplinks connect all the servers, with 10 terabits per second of I/O. One rack of Moonshots can replace 8 of traditional 1u 2p servers. It uses 89 percent less energy, 80 percent less space, 97 percent less complexity, which leads to 77 percent less cost.

While the first Moonshot version on the market uses Intel processors, additional servers shipping later in 2013 will take chips from multiple partners such as AMD, Calxeda, Applied Micro and Texas instruments.

Project Moonshot represents a new class of server designed to run Internet-scale workloads, and target specific workloads such as those that support gaming, genomics, telecom, video analysis and more.

Client-server infrastructure was not designed to handle the level of computing that Internet-scale organizations are running, according to HP, and that the economics behind social, mobile, cloud and big data will deteriorate.

The company also announced the Pathfinder Innovation Ecosystem: a program focusing on servers for different workloads. There are Internet-scale organizations today operating over one million servers. Additionally, many enterprises in finance have tens of thousands of servers. HP sees the opportunity to market a solution that meets the needs of these kinds of businesses. HP working on how to move large enterprises from a general purpose server, and move to a new era of software-defined server. The future is all about the software-defined server, according to HP. These are servers, which are specifically designed for different workloads and they’re looking to power a range of applications.

HP first revealed it was building such low-power machines in the fall 2011.

Close up of Moonshot 1500 from HP. The company today rolled out the units which use low-power processors.

Here is what Facebook Graph Search has looked like for me until today:

Everybody else that has had Graph Search that I have seen has had the same design. That is until last week, when we spotted a new design the company started testing. This one had more of a classic Facebook search feel to it, including a white box with a magnifying glass icon in it:

Today, we’re seeing several more variations. This one is only slightly different than the one above, with straight edges instead of rounded, and the icon on the opposite side:

This one is similar to the original one, but cuts down on the text to just say “Search”:

It gets right to the point. But then there’s also this one:

Facebook tests different designs and features with certain subsets of users all the time, so it’s not really surprising that people are seeing different looks, but it seems like the’ve kicked up the experimentation in recent days.

There are still a lot of Facebook users that don’t have access to Graph Search. The company did say when it was introduced that it would be rolling out slowly. They weren’t kidding. Who knows what it will look like by the time the entire user base has it?

Preference?

The most telling sign that you’re doing something right: other companies try to one-up you. If you make what you consider a big announcement and no one says boo, then it probably wasn’t all that effective. But if you can make a competitor jump and make a counter move, you just might be onto something. This is the case right now with T-Mobile and Virgin Mobile of Sprint Prepaid Group.

Late last month T-Mobile rebranded itself as an Un-Carrier, since it did away with contracts and subsidies. Those are long standing institutions in the cellular industry, but consumers appear to be searching for alternatives. While titans Verizon and AT&T continue to add customers, prepaid is making a strong push. Carriers such as Cricket and MetroPCS continue to add customers, while MNVOs of major networks are also growing.

Virgin Mobile used to be an MVNO of the Sprint network, though Sprint had a stake in it for many years before purchasing it outright a few years ago. It is now part of Sprint Prepaid Group, along with Boost Mobile, which Sprint acquired when it bought Nextel. Virgin made waves when it introuced its Beyond Talk plans, which originally featured an unlimited data and messaging plan for $25 per month. They’ve since increased it to $35, but the excellent deals still remain.

Previously competition with T-Mobile was mostly with Sprint, since both offered postpaid services. But with T-Mobile horning in on prepaid, it’s apparently time for Sprint’s Virgin Mobile to fight back. They recently launched a campaign that not only directly compares the services (with Virgin winning out, of course), but also offering customers a $100 credit when they switch from T-Mobile to Virgin. That’s quite an incentive, and Virgin says it’s only part of the savings.

The comparison, as you can see, uses the Samsung Galaxy SII, which is a good one given its slot as a value smartphone. At $5 per month less than T-Mobile, and with a phone that is $114 less, Virgin is boasting a savings of $334 over two years, which includes the credit for switching.

The promotion drives home the new landscape in the mobile world. In the past Sprint might have made comparisons to a new T-Mobile offering. Then again, perhaps not, because Sprint was the larger player and had little reason to make such comparisons. But T-Mobile is larger than any current prepaid carrier, and so is ruffling some feathers. This is Virgin’s way of trying to hit a relative giant with a slingshot.

Virgin doesn’t make any misrepresentations in the comparison graphic, and in fact note an advantage of T-Mobile’s — its mobile hotspot feature — albeit in smaller print. They also make the assumption that their 3G EVDO network is faster than the throttled speeds on T-Mobile, which I don’t think is necessarily true.

You can check out the promotion for yourself and see if it works for you. It is pretty clear, though, that the competition in prepaid just got a little fiercer.

The post Sprint’s Virgin Mobile Gunning for T-Mobile’s Un-Carrier Plans appeared first on MobileMoo.

Video has been an ongoing bright spot for the online ad industry, offering brands the chance of a TV-like experience while providing publishers a healthy revenue stream. Now, the video ecosystem is changing rapidly as the industry grows and more ad buyers turn to automated buying.

A new study by Forrester Research claims that so-called “programmatic” buying or “real time bidding” will account for nearly 25 percent of online video ad purchases by next year. This mirrors what is going on in the world of display advertising where more big advertisers are using ad tech tools to serve ads to diverse audiences in real time.

The report, which was commissioned by SpotXchange (an online video exchange that has skin in the ad game), also says that premium publishers have been slower to adopt programmatic bidding, in part because they fear it will undercut the value of their inventory. The report predicts, however, that many of these hold-out publishers will change their position as brands get accustomed to programmatic buying and begin to demand it.

The impact of programmatic on video ad prices is debatable. People in the ad tech industry point out that automated ad buying is simply a tool — not a reflection of ad quality. By this reasoning, publishers can hold their pricing line if they wish while also ensuring that their space is available in real time when there is a surge in demand. Conversely, as the report points out, publishers remain wary that brands will use the tools (as they did for display advertising) to drive down prices.

Overall, the future of video prices in the short term may be determined less by ad tech tools than by more basic principles of supply and demand. On this front, the good news for publishers can be seen in this chart which shows online ad spending rising quickly:

Another recent report is even more optimistic — pegging the 2013 number at $4.1 billion.

The bad news, though, is that the word is out about video’s promise and more and more people are showing up to grab a slice of the pie. Ad industry sources told the Wall Street Journal last month that there is ”not enough to feed everybody.” The Journal reported that, despite brands beginning to reallocate their TV budgets, prices are already under pressure; $15 to $20 per thousand views (CPM’s) last year versus a CPM of $17 to $25 in 2011.

The Forrester report also predicts that video ad inventory will be become increasingly divided between private and public exchanges.

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Just one week after Sprint’s version received an update, T-Mobile’s Galaxy S II has finally received the upgrade to Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean. Owners should be able to update now through Samsung KIES or via OTA by navigating to “Settings” and “About Phone”. Here are the new features and enhancements:

• Buttery Smooth Performance & Great Stability (Thanks to Project Butter)
• Full User Interface Revamp (Same UI as of the Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note II)
• TouchWiz Nature UX
• Samsung’s S Cloud services
• Improved Camera features
• New Lockscreen With Many Customization Options
• New Features like Direct Call, Smart Stay and Pop-up Play
• New Widgets (From Galaxy S III)
• 2 Home screen modes
• New Notification bar With More Notification Toggles
• Google Now

Source: SamMobile

Come comment on this article: T-Mobile Galaxy S II Receives Android 4.1.2

Google, who is no stranger to international dustups over its maps and street view service, has run afoul of India’s federal mapping agency over a recent project to improve upon the country’s maps.

Google first announced the Mapathon back in February, saying that they were trying to create better maps for India, “a country where even paper maps have historically lacked in details.” Google offered prizes to participants – including Android tablets, phones, and various bits of Google swag. All Google asked people to do was add location details via Google Map Maker.

The Mapathon officially began on February 12th and was over by March 25th.

According to Google India, the Mapathon was a huge success. They reported new information on 32,000 emergency locations like hospitals, 82,000 food updates, and 42,000 map updates on places of worship. None of the information collected via Map Maker had anything to do with “sensitive places,” according to Google.

But the Indian Survey agency wasn’t too happy about it, and they asked Google to cease the promotion as it was “likely to jeopardize national security interest and violates National Map Policy.”

The Indian federal survey and mapping agency has filed an official complaint, and the head of the agency says that they plan to take the issue to Parliament later this month. Apparently, local law says that companies must obtain expressed permission from the proper authorities in order to operate a map project like the one Google sponsored. Failure to do so opens up such companies to local prosecution.

But Google India spokesperson Roy Chowdhury says that Google did in fact informed local officials of its mapping project, and that it complied with all local regulations.

“We take security and national regulations very seriously, and we’re open to discussing specific concerns with public authorities and officials,” said Chowdhury.

[Wall Street Journal (paywall) via Search Engine Land]

I want to thank Janet Keough for the following update. I have worked with Jan on some of their efforts in Cloquet Valley and I am always so impressed with her and the whole team of dedicated community leaders – especially since community leader seems to be a labor of love or necessity, not a paid position…

Some progress is being made toward better broadband in a group of townships north of Duluth known as the Cloquet Valley Internet Initiative.  In the last few months, this group of intrepid folks has completed two feasibility studies and established a new website (www.connectcloquetvalley.com), thanks to help from the Blandin Foundation, St. Louis County and Lake County, and AgStar Financial.  These efforts are starting to realize results, with modest improvements in broadband speed and efforts underway to expand the scope of improvements.

The first study was conducted by U-reka Broadband Ventures, and it provided an expert overview of internet availability in the 9-township region.  Through interviews with the regional internet providers, the U-reka team gave us an assessment of the real potential for expansion and upgrades.  U-reka worked with the townships to test actual speeds, and they gave us recommendations for next steps.  Their report can be found in the Cloquet Valley Internet Initiative website.

The second study was an engineering and business analysis by Compass Consultants, Inc., and was also a collaborative effort with the township team.  The engineering analysis was based on property locations that had been assembled by the townships and on the results of the townships’ market questionnaire (Thanks to the Blandin Foundation for help with the questionnaire!).  The study looked at FTTH and FTTN-DSL options, and included maps, technology needs, a set of best, moderate and worst case business plans, and scenarios for fulfilling capital needs.  An executive summary can be found in the CVII website.

We are taking the advice of our consultants seriously, and in fact, incremental improvements have already been realized.  Immediate improvements are coming to many citizens who are trying mobile wireless options or the upgraded satellite systems, Exede and Gen4.  Some townships are having discussions with the electric cooperative, Cooperative Light and Power, about deploying fixed wireless along with advanced electric metering systems.  We are continuing to pursue fiber-based options, but our feasibility studies have shown us the reality of cost of this technology.  We are seeking partners with interests in rural, underserved markets such as ours.  And we are continuing to learn about broadband opportunities and issues.

We have learned a great deal about the challenges to bringing high speed broadband to rural areas.  The cost of fiber projects can be daunting ($4000-10,000 per premise!).  Partnerships are critical.  And there are many dimensions to meeting these challenges in rural areas, including public policy, incentives for providers, shifting market interest, evolution in electric utilities, rapid technology development and progress in neighboring areas; all these are in play to potentially align with local strategies!

We are using our new website to educate our citizens about what broadband internet can do, and helping them connect with the state and national dialogue on broadband.  The website was made possible through the Blandin Community Resources Program who helped us get the website started and designed.  We hope the website can show regional leaders and regional broadband providers that there is a good market in our rural area!

Annette Funicello, actress and one of the original Mouseketeers, has died. She was 70 years old.

According to a statement from The Official Disney Fan Club, Funicello died at Mercy Southwest Hospital in Bakersfield, California. Her death was cause by complications from Multiple Sclerosis (MS). Funicello had suffered from MS for over 25 years.

Funicello got her start on screen as one of the original cast members of The Mickey Mouse Club, which began airing in 1955. She proved to be a popular member of the cast, and went on to star in Disney films such as The Shaggy Dog, Babes in Toyland, and The Monkey’s Uncle

“Annette was and always will be a cherished member of the Disney family, synonymous with the word Mousketeer, and a true Disney Legend,” said Bob Iger, CEO of The Walt Disney Company. “She will forever hold a place in our hearts as one of Walt Disney’s brightest stars, delighting an entire generation of baby boomers with her jubilant personality and endless talent. Annette was well known for being as beautiful inside as she was on the outside, and she faced her physical challenges with dignity, bravery and grace. All of us at Disney join with family, friends and fans around the world in celebrating her extraordinary life.”

After leaving Disney, Funicello went on to star in several Beach Party movies, including Beach Party, Bikini Beach, Pajama Party, and How to Stuff a Wild Bikini.

Last month, Facebook launched the new Timeline look with more focus on interests, and let users showcase stories from apps in dedicated collections (this is all still in the process of rolling out). Today, the company announced that it is rolling out new tools to make it easier for developers to set up their apps’ Open Graph stories and timeline collections.

“Common action and object types such as ‘video.watches’ and ‘music.listens’ no longer require configuration within Open Graph tools,” explains Facebook’s Caroline Schafer, in a post on the company’s developer blog. “To start publishing common actions, simply select the SDK that you use and paste in the sample code that we provide for each action type.”

Documentation for this is available here.

Facebook has also made it easier for developers to create custom actions and object types, enabling them to preview the stories that their apps can publish to the News Feed. Once a story’s configuration is finalized, developers can hit “Get Code” in the Open Graph dashboard, and past it into the app to publish the action with logged in users.

Documentation for this is here.

“In addition to News Feed stories, users can now add your app’s content to dedicated collections on their timeline and About page,” says Schafer. “For example, a recipe app can include collections such as ‘Recently Cooked Recipes’ or ‘Top Recipes.’ Collections can also have different layouts, such as lists, map, and gallery below.”

Documentation for this is here.

Developers must submit their app’s News Feed stories and timeline collections for approval, so Facebook can make sure they’re up to snuff with their quality guidelines. The review status can be seen in the Review Status section of the dashboard. Developers will also receive alerts when submissions are made, approved or returned for changes.

Lots of large companies in North America are expanding their data centers this year or next, and the desire to run internal private clouds is a major motivating factor, according to the results of a new survey of IT decision makers. Despite all the flak private clouds have taken, it’s clear they have a piece of the cloud market, and that piece appears to be growing.

Of the 300 IT executives surveyed, 98 percent expect to expand their data centers in 2013 or 2014, and 61 percent cited establishing internal clouds as an extremely important reason, according to the study, commissioned by data center builder Digital Realty Trust and conducted by Campos Research and Analysis. Better security, energy efficiency and new applications and services are among the other stated reasons for expansion.

The hankering for private clouds is fascinating. It shows that objections to the concept could be fading. Critics say private cloud can’t replicate the cost savings that can derive from going with massively scaled shared-resource public clouds exemplified by Amazon Web Services. Others see private cloud deployments as unduly influenced by vendors trying to parlay their dominance in the current server and software realm into cloud. But, then again, regulatory or compliance concerns still rule out the use of public clouds, as GigaOM Research analyst David Linthicum wrote in February (subscription required).

The wider availability of the OpenStack cloud platform has surely made a difference in the rise of private clouds. It’s helped plenty of companies build private clouds, including eBay, Intel and Yahoo. That trend could keep up, but so could the rise in the adoption of public clouds.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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