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Windows 8 users have probably come to know three apps very well – Mail, Calendar and People. To help provide a better experience to those using these apps, Microsoft has released an update that improves overall stability while adding new features.

For many, the Mail app is probably the most used app in the Metro interface. As such, Microsoft is making it easier to access mail, especially for those with multiple accounts. The new version of the Mail app now displays all your accounts, and allows users to toggle between them with ease.

The new Mail app can also filter unread messages, or you can put mails into separate folders. A lot of these features are already present in popular email clients like Gmail, but it’s nice to see Microsoft finally adding these features into its own Mail app.

The Calendar app received a few small updates, including colored appointments to make the calendar “easier to read.” The Calendar also features a new Work week view for those who operate on a Monday through Friday schedule.

The People app received a new update in the form of easier sharing. Now users can right-click or swipe from the top to reveal app commands. These commands allow you to easily move between your own profile and the What’s New page that features updates from your friend’s various social network accounts.

Unfortunately, the updates haven’t been completely painless for some. The Verge is reporting that Windows 8 users with a Google account are seeing errors related to Google discontinuing support for Exchange ActiveSync. Google dropping support for EAS was expected, but those who had set up a Google account on Windows 8 before January 30 were promised that they could still use it.

There’s no fix available for Gmail users just yet, but everybody else should be able to take advantage of the new apps without any problem. To do so, just hit up the Microsoft Store Settings, click (or tap) on App Updates, and select the Check for Updates option.

Piriform has released CCleaner 4.00 and CCleaner Portable 4.00, major new release of its popular free cleaning tool for Windows users. Version 4.0 includes two new tools, but for the first time restricts one of these to paid-for users with Pro licenses only.

Version 4.0 also debuts a new program icon and tweaked user interface, added support for cleaning additional programs and the usual raft of performance and stability tweaks, including unspecified improvements to the program’s internal architecture for better performance.

CCleaner 4.0 adds two new tools to its armory, only one of which is available to those running the free version. This is a Duplicate File Finder, accessible from the Tools section of the program. Users select what criteria to match by – including name, size and last modified date – what to ignore and which drives, folders and wildcards to both include and exclude from the search. Users then click the Search button to review and manually select which copy or copies of each duplicate file to delete.

The second new feature is a browser and system monitoring tool, but this is restricted to Pro users only.

The Registry Cleaning tool has been optimized and improved, while Drive Wiper should also now benefit from improved performance. The Startup item detection algorithm has been improved, as has the 64-bit CCleaner build for Windows 7 and 8.

Cleaning support has been extended to Samsung Kies along with the latest versions of Avast! Antivirus (v8), Adobe Photoshop (CS6) and Real Player (v16). The update is rounded off with the usual mix of unspecified performance improvements and bug fixes.

CCleaner 4.00.4064 and CCleaner Portable 4.00.4064 are both available as free-for-personal-use downloads for Windows PCs running XP or later.

Photo Credit: Goydenko Tatiana/Shutterstock

While venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins appears to be retrenching its cleantech investments, the firm also continues to make small investments in young startups focused on the cleanweb, or IT-based cleantech. On Tuesday a Plano, Texas-based startup called Choose Energy announced that it has raised a $4 million Series A investment from Kleiner Perkins and Stephens Capital Partners.

Eight-year-old Choose Energy has developed a service that offers consumers and businesses in deregulated markets options for retail electricity and gas plans. The site is active in Texas, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Illinois, and the company says it will eventually work for the 19 deregulated energy states and 22 deregulated gas states.

While deregulated energy markets have proved to be controversial in some states in the past, as GigaOM Pro analyst Adam Lesser has written, further deregulation could also support business models in areas like smart grid analytics and clean power. It’s been more than a decade since the California electricity crisis and the Enron disaster.

Choose Energy says it is also building tools for retail energy providers to acquire customers based on techniques from telecom, travel, media and other web-heavy industries. The tools used by the cell phone companies to entice new customers to their network are much more sophisticated than what standard retail energy providers are using today. The startup says it has helped 100,000 consumers switch energy suppliers.

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While on my way back from New York, for some odd reason I started playing around with Foursquare and plotting my check-in data using a handful of apps. Very quickly I realized two things: the amount of time I spend in airplanes has doubled every year since 2009, and when I am in San Francisco, I lead a very predictable life and go to only a handful of places — a lot.

Except for one small thing: While the data shows that I lead a pretty boring life, it doesn’t reflect the “emotions” behind the data. Why, you might ask, is this important? The answer is that as we move towards a quantified society, one shaped by data, we start to dismiss things that aren’t easily quantifiable. Empathy, emotion and storytelling — these are as much a part of the business as they are of life. Without these, we might as well residents of starliner Axiom.

The problem with data is that the way it is used today, it lacks empathy and emotion. Data is used like a blunt instrument, a scythe trying to cut and tailor a cashmere sweater. Some folks do a better job of making data interesting — like the fine folks at Foursquare. They use cutesy phrases to remind me of my coffee addiction and occasionally point out that Jared Kim and I are besties when it comes to eating ramen noodles or visiting Hakkasan, but they don’t really tell the whole story and they need to do more.  I will get to that in a minute.

The idea of combining data, emotion and empathy as part of a narrative is something every company — old, new, young and mature — has to internalize. If they don’t, they will find themselves on the wrong side of history.

The Uber-side Story

Let’s explore this idea further with what is my most used service: San Francisco-based local transportation startup Uber. As someone who doesn’t drive and doesn’t own a car, Uber has been a godsend. And that is why I am hoping that they stay in business — for a long time. Selfish, much? Of course! That is why I am perhaps harder on them than any other startup, poking holes in their strategies, ranting on Twitter and occasionally praising them for their awesomeness.  Time and again, Uber finds itself in the eye of the (public relations) storm, and to me the reasons are pretty obvious.

If you look at the relatively young history of Uber, you would see that it is a company that has done many things right and a couple of things very wrong. It has figured out how to remove friction between a traveler and transportation by reducing it to mere minutes. In doing so, Uber has also become the first next-generation commerce company to use connectedness to its advantage. It has also figured out how to organize what is a disorganized and poorly managed business: local transportation.

Uber’s secret weapon is the data it is collecting, but what it has failed to use that data in the most powerful kinds of ways. Data tells the service that there are fewer cars on the road and massive demand, and out comes surge pricing. This makes perfect business sense — except when it is in New York City battered by Hurricane Sandy. Ooops! The company failed to factor in the “emotion” and “humanness” in its data.

A better approach would have been to give people discounts based on the time they had to wait, and make up the difference to the drivers (or even give them bonuses for working around the clock). Yes, it would have been costly, but it would have cemented the “Uber cares” sentiment.

The whale theory

Uber (and I don’t mean to pick on them, because it applies to all companies) should be thinking about using data to create positive experiences. A good way to start is to take a cue from the casinos (or Zynga): make the “whales” happy.

Shutterstock/Dan Kosmayer

If someone is a big spender on their service, then they should get to the front of the line and get an Uber car before everyone else. Sure, they can create loyalty discounts, but time saved (and a clean experience) is what’s more important to an Uber customer. (This shoe store in Manhattan knows how to use data to make customers happy, and perhaps others should take a hint from them.)

Uber should give the whales an experience that puts a higher premium on their time than that of occasional users. Match up these whales with the best cars and the top-ranked drivers so they will keep spending. In other words, use data to shape experiences.

Some might say that this is yet another example of data darwinism at work – and in one sense it is — but big spenders get big perks from casinos and hotels (and some airlines). Uber wouldn’t be doing anything wrong if it followed suit, as I don’t think of them as an essential service. I am and will remain wary of the idea of data darwinism creeping into essential services.

Using data to shape experiences has to become the default for all startups, regardless of whether their focus is on consumers or large companies. Almost every day I come across an app that has an astonishingly beautiful interface, only to find it incredibly vapid and unintelligent. A lovely interface comes alive when married to data and the insights and context it brings.

Coffee and empathy

What will it take to build emotive-and-empathic data experiences? Less data science and more data art — which, in other words, means that data wranglers have to develop correlations between data much like the human brain finds context. It is actually not about building the fanciest machine, but instead about the ability to ask the human questions. It is not about just being data informed, but being data aware and data intelligent. Sean Gourley, co-founder of Quid, in his keynote speech at Structure: Data, noted:

Data scientists are presented with a set of parameters to optimize over, yet they don’t take the time to step back and say, should I even be optimizing this at all. Data science, I believe, we need to re-imagine it, because data is incredibly powerful. We need to step back from the scientific notations and start thinking of it as data intelligence. Data intelligence has a slightly different philosophy that embraces some of the messy and unstructured nature of the world that we do live in.

Let me explain by using my favorite coffee shop as an example. The raw number of check-ins at the coffee shop tells me that I am boring and predictable. Anyone who doesn’t know me well will draw the same inference. But parse the data in more granular manner and correlate it with other information and you start to see a picture that understands the emotional value of that data.

Let’s run with this example. The service needs to realize that I visit said coffee shop first thing in the morning (something that can be inferred from the time of the check-in.) It also needs to learn that the coffee shop is a few miles from my home, which tells you that I go out of my way to go there.

The service also knows that I check-in with a handful of people, whose relationship to me can be inferred from the social graph. Add to the mix the fact that I have left tips and taken photos at that spot. Now, compare it to all other coffee shops I have checked into and how they rank against this one location. Add all of them up, and you end up with a rudimentary conclusion: I don’t go to this coffee shop simply because it’s an interchangeable part of my daily routine, or because it’s on my way to work. I visit it because it is my happy place, my one cup (or dozen) of zen. And a company like Foursquare could use that fact to package even more compelling experiences for me.

Data needs stories

The key to getting the context is to think in terms of stories. Sean put it best when he said:

“Data needs stories, but stories also need data. Data, when its put up in front of you as a number, it gets stripped of the context of where the data came from, the biases inherent in it, and the assumptions of the models that created it.”

The symbiotic relationship between data and storytelling is going to be one of the more prevalent themes for the next the few years, starting perhaps inside some apps and in the news media. I was reminded of the future filled with data narratives when I saw this visualization – Out of Sight, Out of Mind, by Pitch Interactive. It takes data about drone attacks and makes them visual and easy to understand, and in doing so, elicits a strong reaction.

But it merely scratches the surface — presenting a slight improvement on an infographic that might have appeared in the pages of a magazine. In a future where we have tablets and phones, packed with sensors, the data-driven narratives could take on an entirely different and emotional hue.

As for Uber and Foursquare, they should start by thinking, how do we make our customers feel special?

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Our upcoming paidContent Live conference will highlight some of the biggest names disrupting the media business. To get warmed up for the show, we’re kicking off a podcast mini-series featuring in-depth discussions with creators in film, online content, ebooks and other forms of digital media who are successfully building their own independent empires. And who better to start that series than filmmakers Lisanne Pajot and James Swirsky, who created the critically acclaimed first feature-lenth documentary about indie games, Indie Game: The Movie?

With this podcast, we’re at Inception-level “indie”: talking with indie filmmakers who used indie financing to make a film about indie game developers.

If you like this chat, then you’ll definitely want to attend paidContent LIVE, happening in New York City on April 17.

(Download the Indie Game podcast)

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MLB all-star pitcher Virgil Trucks has died at the age of 95.

The Detroit News is reporting that Trucks was admitted to a hospital near his home in Calera, Alabama on March 21 for pneumonia. He died on March 23.

Trucks was born in Alabama and began playing in the minor leagues in 1938. By 1941 he made his debut for the Detroit Tigers, the team with which he would play most of his career. He made the Major League Baseball all-star team twice and during his 1952 season threw two no-hitters. Trucks played for a variety of other teams, including the St. Louis Browns, the Chicago White Sox, and the New York Yankees, the team with which he ended his pitching career in 1958.

After his pitching career in the MLB, Trucks went on to coach baseball. He was part of the coaching staff of the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Atlanta Braves, and the Tigers before his retirement in 1974.

The Tigers honored Trucks this week and the organization posted a picture to its twitter account depicting Trucks in his prime:

Follow @tigers

Detroit Tigers
@tigers

Today the #Tigers remember 1945 World Series Champion, Virgil Trucks. http://t.co/WpBiihzUkL

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

Last week, Senators Mike Enzi and Dick Durbin were accused of trying to “sneak” through legislation similar to the controversial Marketplace Fairness Act as a budget amendment. They succeeded in getting that through the Senate.

The basic premise of the legislation is that it would enable state governments to collect sales tax from online retailers that don’t reside in their state for purchases from residents in their states. As previously noted, the main difference between the actual Marketplace Fairness Act and what was just passed in the Senate, is that the amendment doesn’t include mandatory simplification, and is non-binding. Still, supporters of the Marketplace Fairness Act are considering it a win.

Would such a law be good for businesses? For consumers? Share your thoughts.

CNET’s chief political correspondent Declan McCullagh put it well: “It appears to be intended as a clever political hack: secure plenty of votes on a non-binding Internet tax amendment, then use those vote totals to argue there’s sufficient support for S.336 when it’s up for a binding vote later.” This is a sentiment shared by opponents of the legislation, such as eBay.

Wired quotes Durbin as saying, “Today’s vote proves that an overwhelming majority of Senators support this bipartisan legislation to level the playing field for brick-and-mortar retailers.”

It’s important to note that the Senate didn’t just vote on this issue. It was only one of many amendments to the bigger budget proposal, so it’s hard to say how much real support there was for this legislation itself.

Chris Morran at The Consumerist said on the day the vote took place, “The amendment is one of numerous budget amendments being put before the Senate and passed late Friday afternoon by a vote of 75 to 24. If that number maintains through the voting process on the actual Act, it means that opponents would not have the numbers to force a filibuster. However, it is worth noting that today’s vote does not bind the senators to voting the same way if and when the Act comes up for debate.”

The Alliance for Main Street Fairness, a coalition supporting the Marketplace Fairness Act, shared some reactions to the vote from small business owners:

“It’s about time small business owners like me got some good news from Washington,” said Tee Miller, owner of Black Mingo Outfitters in Georgetown, South Carolina. “Now that the Senate has voted in support of the Marketplace Fairness Act, it’s time for Congress to act quickly and pass this much-needed legislation so I can finally compete fairly with online-only retailers who have enjoyed an unfair price advantage for far too long. Thank you, Senator Graham for showing South Carolina retailers and small businesses your support.”

“Today, Senators Warner and Kaine voted with Virginia’s local businesses to close the online sales tax loophole,” said Sarah Pishko, owner of Prince Books in Norfolk, Virginia. “Their vote in support of the Marketplace Fairness Act is the first step to ensure taxes are applied fairly and government isn’t picking winners and losers by making some businesses collect taxes while others get a free pass. I want to thank them on behalf of Virginia business owners for voting to support Main Street.”

The coalition itself calls the vote a “win” on the Marketplace Fairness Act. Again, this topic was only one of many amendments.

R Street, a Washington-based think tank, has an open letter to Congress calling for opposition to the Marketplace Fairness Act (via Forbes). It was written earlier this month, before the vote. Here’s a sample from that:

Despite what some supporters claim, this legislation is bad news for conservative principles and the cause of limited government. It would dismantle proper limits on state tax collection authority while causing serious damage to electronic and interstate commerce.

S. 336 would countenance an enormous expansion in state tax collection authority by wiping away the “physical presence standard,” a baseline protection that shields taxpayers from harassment by out-of-state collectors. Current law dictates that a state can only require a business to collect its sales tax if it is physically present within its boundaries. Far from a “loophole” intended to advantage the Internet, it is the result of a Supreme Court decision grounded in a bedrock foundational principle of tax policy: states must not be allowed to extend their taxation and regulatory authorities beyond their borders. Dismantling this protection for remote retail sales would create a very slippery slope for states to attempt collection of business or even income taxes from out-of-state entities.

Furthermore, the bill would create a decidedly “unlevel” playing field between brick-and-mortar and online sales. Brick-and-mortar sales across the country are governed by a simple rule that allows the business to collect sales tax based on its physical location, not that of the item’s buyer. Under the “Marketplace Fairness Act,” that convenient collection standard would be denied for online sales, forcing remote retailers to interrogate their customers about their place of residence, look up the appropriate rules and regulations in thousands of taxing jurisdictions across the country, and then collect and remit sales tax for that distant authority.

Imposing this unworkable collection standard on remote retail sales but not on brick-and-mortar retail sales would not only be unfair, it would result in enormous complexity while damaging interstate commerce. Online sellers would be weighed down by substantial compliance burdens associated with the existence of over 9,600 separate taxing jurisdictions, each with its own unique definitions, holidays, and rates. The bill’s paltry “small seller exception” of just $1 million (when the Small Business Administration sets the limit as high as $30 million in some cases) in remote sales does little to mitigate the damage.

In addition to R Street, it has signatures from American Commitment, Americans for Prosperity, Americans for Tax Reform, Campaign for Liberty, Center for Freedom and Prosperity, Center for Individual Freedom, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Digital Liberty, FreedomWorks, The Heartland Institute, Institute for Policy Innovation, Less Government, National Taxpayers Union, Rio Grande Foundation and Taxpayers Protection Alliance.

If it becomes law, the Marketplace Fairness Act would only allow states to determine whether or not they want online businesses to collect tax. It would not require states to collect sales tax from online businesses. Either way, it’s going to amount to more taxes for online shoppers. Some believe it’s unlikely that it will make it to law given the fierce debate.

Should this become law? Do you think it will? Let us know what you think in the comments.

In order to combat showrooming, one Brisbane, Australia store is taking to some rather extreme measures.

The store is now charging people a $5 “just looking” fee in the hopes of deterring them from using the store as a physical showroom, and then running off to buy the same products online.

If the customer ends up buying something, the $5 fee is waived.

“There has been high volume of people who use this store as a reference and then purchase goods elsewhere. These people are unaware our prices are almost the same as the other stores plus we have products simply not available anywhere else. This policy is in line with many other clothing, shoe, and electronic stores who are also facing the same issue.”

The sign went viral on reddit, as user BarrettFox said that “when they open tomorrow I’m going to see how many times I can walk in and out without paying the toll.”

AdelaideNow tracked down the specific store, which happens to be a Celiac supplies store in Coorparoo, a suburb of Brisbane. The owner of the store, which sells gluten-free products, says that she was tired of “spending hours each week giving advice to people who leave empty-handed.”

She claims that around 60 people a week would come in, browse, ask her questions, and then leave to buy the product online (she assumes).

“I can tell straight away who are the rat bags who are going to come in here and pick my brain and disappear,” she said.

Many business owners, from companies as large as Best Buy to small businesses like this one, can surely relate to the frustrations of seeing people use their store as a testing ground for Amazon. But on the other hand, if you have competitive prices and hard-to-find products, do you really need to be charging a $5-a-head browsing fee?

Pissed off at people for showrooming or not, it simply seems like bad business any way you look at it.

[h/t BoingBoing]

I love hardware. That’s why I want you guys to bring some of the coolest hardware projects imaginable to Disrupt NY this year. That’s why I want you guys in our Hardware Alley. And now time is running out.

Hardware Alley is a one-day celebration of hardware startups both young and old. The goal has always been to show off amazing hardware that we have written about over the past few months, as well as a few surprises. Last Disrupt we featured the guys from Thermovape, Makerbot, and Lit Motors. This year we want to fill Disrupt NY with more amazing companies.

We will close applications shortly, so hurry hurry. We’re nearly full as it is.

For more details on Disrupt head over here. We’re looking for new or even unlaunched products, as well as potential Kickstarter projects. Prototypes are fine as long as they’re amazing.

You can see the previous Hardware Alley participants here. You can sign up here. Bootstrappers can contact me directly at [email protected] if you need a break on price. Hope to see you in the alley… the Hardware Alley.

Our sponsors help make Disrupt happen. If you are interested in learning more about sponsorship opportunities, please contact our sponsorship team here [email protected].

Roadie run still looks ridiculous, the characters should feel the effects of steroid use, weapons are not so much killing tools as carnival effect dispensers and many elements of the game feel lifted straight out of the space marine mythology.

But Gears of War remains one of the most important shooter franchises of the current console generatio… (read more)

Particularly in the current economy, how can a small company safely and effectively grow? Much has been said recently about the impact of higher taxes — should the company postpone hiring? Rely more heavily on on part time or contingency staff?

Our company, Fishbowl, is sitting at approximately 100 employees. However, while our employee base has stayed relatively stable for the past two years, our revenues have soared by more than 60 percent year over year since 2007.

How have we accomplished it? Having an excellent product and hiring the right talent is key. However, much of our success is due to our highly unusual compensation strategy that motivates everybody in the business to help the company grow.

We put every member of the company — and we do mean everyone — on commission. In our opinion, every employee contributes to sales, so we pay everyone based on company revenues, instead of using a more traditional bonus or profit-sharing plan. The commission ratios vary from development to marketing to finance, administration, sales and customer support, and in the various areas are based on the metrics the individuals are most able to directly control. In some respect, every person’s compensation is configured as a base plus commission. Furthermore, the commission is paid every month.

Consider the advantages of this compensation plan:

• Every employee is inherently motivated to help the company focus on creating revenue.

• Job security and company stability increases, as the company’s greatest cost — payroll — rises and falls automatically along with revenue creation.

• In a company that can’t offer stock options, this is a structure that acts like a stock dividend, motivating teams to pull together and to pull harder as they think of the company’s good.

• It closes the inherent gaps and divisions between departments by ensuring everyone is focused on revenue, profit, and savings, versus individual department agendas.

The commission structure encourages transparency and team participation. Everyone knows what the monthly operational “nut” is. Each day the employees get a report on how how far we are toward that revenue goal. Beyond the break-even sum, two-thirds of additional revenue goes to the commission pools for each department to share among its members. One-third goes to the company.

Yes, we are entrusting employees with sensitive and confidential information. But in our model, the team is highly engaged as compensation decisions act as an invisible “belt” to hold our decisions in check. Every team decides as a unit how to distribute their portion of profits. Do we need another programmer to meet a critical goal? As the developers look at the discretionary fund they’ll divide, they help to decide if the time is right for an additional programmer who can help to drive new features for future profit, or if they are able to “crunch it up” a little to keep the funds for themselves and accomplish the work on their own.

Towards the end of every month, we see individuals from every department offering extra resources and help to other divisions. A developer or member of a support team may go to the sales department, for example, to say, “I have an extra half hour. Is there anything I can do to help you finish a sale?”

Are there any disadvantages to this structure? Only a few:

• The commission plan is different for every role and for every department. Ratios range from 10 percent salary and 90 percent commission for salespeople to 80 percent salary and 20 percent commission for programmers and engineers. This can make for a complicated structure at times. We’re perpetually improving our ability to adjust and adapt.

• Is payroll difficult? In theory, it could be — but in practice, as long as we ensure the commission numbers are accurate, each department can submit its list of amounts within the payroll software and the automated payroll system takes care of the rest.

• Are there legal technicalities? Yes. It does require support from HR to build a program to ensure that we are compliant at all times with overtime pay requirements under the FLSA (Fair Labor Standards Act). We continually receive counsel from compensation professionals to ensure our programs are sound and correct.

• The structure of commission is so foreign to many employees that we’ve actually missed some prospective hires. Because of the commission structure, our base salaries are typically lower than average (by perhaps 20%), and in a very lean month there will perhaps be no commission at all. However, in fruitful months, the commission can increase employees’ income by as much as even 40-50%. Even so, there are admittedly some individuals who are unable to adapt to the prospect of compensation that may vary by as much as 50% every month.

Here are some specific examples to illustrate our structure. For a junior programmer who might make a market-rate salary of $60,000, we’d offer perhaps $48,000 plus commission. Then we would show them our revenue history, pointing toward the strong possibility that, based on this record, that they will actually make $65-75,000 per year. For an administrative employee, perhaps we would pay $10 an hour coupled with a 30-40% commission. In many months, the individual would make $15 an hour and even as much as $20 an hour, with commission actually matching their salary. (While skeptics might wonder how and admin can drive sales, in fact these employees have significant power to assist directly and indirectly in helping us close our company’s sales; they are often the ones that touch our customers the most.)

Overall, we pay more than market compensation through our commission model, by 20-50 percent. Yet in a lean month, we have sufficient revenue to cover the core expense “nut” without depleting savings or relying on borrowed operational funds.

On the whole, our employees have applauded our structure. In hindsight, we realize the hires who wouldn’t join Fishbowl due to their perception our compensation system seems risky probably aren’t as entrepreneurial and highly motivated as those who have joined us.

After a short while on this program, we have found the majority of our employees to be highly resistant to going away from this plan.

Interestingly, our structure has made it easier for potential stars to determine and to control their rising wages. We seldom need to change a base salary. Individuals who are ready for an increase are ready to build, sell, train and support to a greater degree (in other words, to produce more revenue). This means that the rise in income is something our team members can largely influence and control on their own. As a point of reference, as incomes for the majority of incomes actually decreased in 2011 and 2012, our employees’ incomes increased by an average of 19% in 2012. We considered it a profound achievement for us as a company, and for them.

If we ever considered changing our base-plus-commission plan, we suspect we’d have a mutiny on our hands. We believe this structure could benefit every small company in 2013 that is looking for an effective way to stay safe in the current economic climate while also accelerating their ability to grow.

Brocade (BRCD) has introduced its Fabric Vision technology, a storage area networking (SAN) hardware and software solution that simplifies SAN deployment and management, and provides improved visibility into the storage network. The solution is a mix of tools and features that enhance the company’s Gen 5 Fibre Channel portfolio.

“Our customers run their most critical applications and store their most important data on Brocade Fibre Channel infrastructure to support highly virtualized and emerging cloud-optimized data centers,” said Jason Nolet, vice president of the Data Center Networking Group at Brocade. “They depend on Brocade to continue innovating and developing solutions that solve real-world problems today and that can adapt to evolving requirements into the future. Today’s announcement underscores our investment and laser-focus on leading the Fibre Channel industry with innovative technology and solutions built upon standards-based networking and management.”

Brocade’s Fabric Vision technology is comprised of policy-based tools, management tools, monitoring tools, customizable health and performance dashboard views, and cable and optic diagnostic features. It combines Brocade hardware capabilities, the embedded Brocade Fabric OS operating system, and Brocade Network Advisor management software. It provides administrators with the ability to anticipate and preempt problems before they impact operations, accelerate application deployments and dramatically reduce operational costs.

Brocade is committed to develop new SAN solutions based on components that conform to the Gen 6 Fibre Channel industry standard, which is expected to be finalized by the end of 2013. It has already initiated research and development for Gen 6 Fibre Channel technology to address the evolving storage networking needs of enterprise data centers. Brocade is also working with the OpenStack Foundation to develop open source software that will simplify management of Fibre Channel fabrics in cloud architectures.

Brocade 6520 Switch

Brocade also announced a high-density fixed-configuration SAN switch. The new Brocade 6520 Switch features  96 Fibre Channel ports in a 2U form factor, delivering industry-leading port density and space utilization for data center consolidation projects. The density of the new 6520 means fewer inter-switch links, fewer cables and fewer switches to manage – resulting in more reliable fabrics and lower overall costs. The new Brocade 6520 Switch and new Brocade Network Advisor 12.0 are available now through Brocade OEM partners Fujitsu, HP and NetApp, as well as through Brocade channel partners. These new products will be offered later this year by other OEM partners, including Dell, EMC and HDS.

“Increasing infrastructure complexity continues to drive requirements for ongoing consolidation and simplification of IT resources,” said Dan Iacono, Research Director, Storage Systems, IDC.  ”Storage Area Network (SAN) management software, such as Brocade Fabric Vision technology, can improve the administrator’s ability to better monitor, manage and operate their storage networks, which can allow more time for the administrator to provide value back to the business.”

“Transitioning to virtualization or IT-as-a-Service stresses legacy storage architectures and outdated networks, often causing system downtime and limited application performance,” said Tom Joyce, Vice President, Marketing, Strategy and Operations, Storage at HP. ”Modern converged storage designs such as HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage, coupled with high-performance Gen 5 Fibre Channel technologies from Brocade, minimize workflow disruptions by accommodating today’s unpredictable workload demands, enabling organizations to drive innovation while delivering exceptional customer service.”

As movies such as Psycho and Identity demonstrate, small motels are often the setting for nightmares. However, one actor saw a nightmare come true this week after being attacked at a Travelodge.

Clive Mantle, the actor who played Lord Greatjon Umber in the HBO series Game of Thrones, was attacked at a Travelodge in Newcastle on Sunday. According to The Guardian, Mantle had a portion of his ear bitten off during the attack. Surgeons were able to reattach the lost portion of his ear.

Mantle reportedly requested that fellow hotel guests keep their noise levels down before he was attacked. Two men were arrested in connection with the attack, and one has been charged with wounding with intent.

Mantle was part of a traveling production of The Ladykillers that had been performing at a Newcastle theatre. He has withdrawn from the production following the attack.

The annual Game Developers Conference is already underway this week, and Sony came out the first day announcing a number of titles for all of its platforms, including the PS4. Interestingly enough, all the of the titles announced for its platforms are indie titles created by small studios. It speaks volumes to Sony’s renewed commitment to indie titles that it touched upon at its PS4 reveal event in February.

Indie games may not be what some gamers were expecting from Sony, but the focus on these small titles is a major boost to Sony’s reputation at an increasingly indie-focused event like GDC. It doesn’t hurt that the majority of the titles shown at GDC also show an incredible amount of promise.

For the PlayStation 4, Sony only announced two indie games for the platform – Blacklight: Retribution and Primal Carnage: Genesis. The former is a free-to-play shooter supported by microtransactions. Sony is already experimenting with free-to-play on the PS3 with games like Dust 514 so it will be interesting to see what the platform holder does with FTP games on the PS4.

As for Primal Carnage: Genesis, the game is an episodic first-person shooter title that could very well be seen as the spiritual successor to Dino Crisis.

As for other platforms, a number of games are being developed for both the PS3 and PS Vita.