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Data Center Knowledge will host a free webinar on Thursday, May 30 to bring you a comprehensive look at maximizing efficiency in the data center.

DCK contributor Julius Neudorfer will present on the hot topic of energy efficiency. Neudorfer is CTO at North American Access Technologies, Inc. Following the presentation, there will be a Q&A session with your peers, Neudorfer and industry experts from Digital Realty Trust. Sign up today and you will receive further instructions via e-mail.

Title: Data Center Energy Efficiency
Date: Thursday, May 30, 2013
Time: 2 pm Eastern/ 11 am Pacific (Duration 60 minutes, including time for Q&A)
Register: Sign up for the webinar.

The Data Center Knowledge webinar series continues, providing free, educational content focused on mission-critical issues facing today’s data center managers, owners and investors. Each webinar is an opportunity to learn from top experts in the field.

If you’re already a fan of BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), we’ve got some exciting news designed to make it easier for you to connect with your entire mobile social network. BlackBerry plans to make BBM, our wildly popular mobile messaging service, available for the first time to iOS® and Android™ users this summer, (subject to approval by Google Play and the Apple App Store, as applicable). This means that, once available, you can welcome your friends and family using these other mobile platforms to connect over BBM and share in the Team BlackBerry love.

As we’ve chronicled on our Inside BlackBerry blog for some time now, BBM set the standard for mobile instant messaging with fast and reliable service and an added layer of engagement with delivered and read statuses. You’ve shared with us your stories about how BBM has kept you connected when it mattered most to you. Upon release of the multi-platform BBM service, you can broaden that real-time connection to friends and colleagues on other supported mobile platforms.

In the first version of multi-platform BBM, iOS and Android users are expected to be able to experience the following BBM features:

• The immediacy of BBM chats
• Multi-person chats
• Voice note sharing
• BlackBerry Groups, where BBM users are able to set up groups of up to 30 people and share calendar, photos, files and more

The team here at BlackBerry has definitely been working hard to bring the much-adored BBM experience to a wider group of mobile users. In a recent press release at BlackBerry Live 2013, Andrew Bocking, Executive Vice President, Software Product Management and Ecosystem, at BlackBerry had this to say:

“For BlackBerry, messaging and collaboration are inseparable from the mobile experience, and the time is definitely right for BBM to become a multi-platform mobile service. BBM has always been one of the most engaging services for BlackBerry customers, enabling them to easily connect while maintaining a valued level of personal privacy. We’re excited to offer iOS and Android users the possibility to join the BBM community.”

BBM Quick Facts:

• More than 60 million monthly active users
• More than 51 million daily active users who are connecting with friends or colleagues an average of one and a half hours every day.
• BBM users send and receive more than 10 billion messages each day, nearly twice as many messages per user per day as compared to other mobile messaging apps
• Almost half of BBM messages are read within 20 seconds of being received; indicating how truly engaged BBM customers are

Today, BlackBerry also announced BBM Channels, a new social engagement platform within BBM that will allow customers to connect with the businesses, brands, celebrities and groups they are passionate about. BlackBerry plans to add support for BBM Channels as well as voice and video chatting for iOS and Android later this year, subject to approval by the Apple App Store and Google Play. If approved by Apple and Google, the BBM app will be available as a free download in the Apple® App StoreSM and Google Play store. Additional details about system requirements and availability will be announced closer to the launch.

That’s some pretty big news, indeed. Be sure to share your thoughts with us in the comments below, who will be the first person from your extended network that you introduce to BBM?

Ouch! The latest report from market research company Gartner crushes Microsoft’s dreams of Windows Phone breaking away from the smartphone operating system bottom pack. In Q1 2013, with a low market share of just 2.9 percent, Windows Phone battled with BlackBerry for the consolation spot of third most popular platform (and lost), far away from either Android or iOS. The green droid is still the dominant leader, followed from afar by Apple’s OS.

“There are two clear leaders in the OS market and Android’s dominance in the OS market is unshakable”, says Gartner’s Anshul Gupta. “With new OSs coming to market such as Tizen, Firefox and Jolla we expect some market share to be eroded but not enough to question Android’s volume leadership”. What he doesn’t says is that the future is bleak for both Windows Phone and BlackBerry, which have to showcase their strength to survive the future string of contenders. Let’s take a look at the numbers.

The Smartphone OS War

In Q1 2013 Android reached a 74.4 percent share in the smartphone market, which represents an increase of 30.75 percent compared to the 56.9 percent from the same period, last year. Green droid sales exceeded 156.1 million units, up from 83.6 million in Q1 2012.

By contrast, iPhone’s market share decreased by a significant 19.11 percent from 22.5 percent in Q1 2012 to 18.2 percent in Q1 2013. Sales did not follow the same trend and are higher, up from 33.1 million to 38.3 million units in the same respective time-frames.

“Apple is faced with the challenge of being increasingly dependent on the replacement market as its addressable market is capped”, says Anshul Gupta. “The next two quarters will also be challenging, as there are no new products expected to be coming before the third quarter of 2013”.

BlackBerry, which is still the third-largest player in the smartphone realm in Q1 2013, reached a 3.0 percent market share. That’s down by 55.88 percent from Q1 2012 when it had 6.8 percent of the market. Sales are also down from 9.9 million to 6.2 million units in the same respective time-frames.

Windows Phone, the fourth most popular smartphone OS, closely follows BlackBerry with a 2.9 percent market share in Q1 2013. That’s up 52.63 percent from Q1 2012 when it reached a 1.9 percent market share. Sales follow the same increasing trend, rising from 2.7 million to 5.9 million units in the same respective time-frames.

At the bottom of the pile are Bada and Symbian, which have a combined market share and sales of 1.3 percent and 2.7 million units, respectively. That’s not enough to trouble Windows Phone nor BlackBerry. Interestingly enough, Symbian fell from 8.5 percent market share and sales of 12.4 million units in Q1 2012 to 0.6 percent market share and 1.3 million sold units.

That’s a significant drop, attributed to Nokia’s commitment (Symbian’s largest supporter at the time) to use Windows Phone as its main smartphone operating system as well as the decay of the platform in the light of Android handsets and iPhones.

The Top Smartphone Vendors

Smartphone sales have increased from 147 million in Q1 2012 to 210 million units in Q1 2013, which represents a 42.85 percent growth. Samsung continues to dominate the smartphone vendor charts in Q1 2013 with 30.8 percent of the market, up by 11.59 percent from the 27.6 percent market share in Q1 2012.

Gartner is confident that the company’s latest Android flagship, the Galaxy S4, will be a hit among smartphone buyers. “We expect the new Galaxy S4 to be very popular despite being more of an evolution than a truly revolutionary device compared to the S3” says Anshul Gupta.

The South Korean manufacturer is followed by Apple with 18.2 percent market share. The top five is completed by LG, Huawei and ZTE with 4.5 percent, 4.4 percent and 3.8 percent of the market, respectively.

The top phone manufacturer is also Samsung with 23.6 percent market share and sales of 100 million units, followed by Nokia with 14.8 percent market share and sales of 63.2 million units. But, the Finnish company actually takes the tenth spot in the smartphone vendor charts. Clearly, Windows Phone is not working out so well for Nokia to enter the top five.

Go Cheap

“The Chinese and local manufacturers have been exemplary at addressing the demands of buyers by offering affordable devices with optimum features such as 2.5G (EDGE) instead of 3G in a smartphone”, says Gartner. “In the smartphone market, local and Chinese manufacturers are making faster inroads as they account for 29 percent share in the first quarter of 2013, up from 13.2 percent a year ago”.

Gartner suggests that the key to increasing sales and market share is low-end and affordable smartphones. At the moment Apple is the sole manufacturer that does not offer such a device, while other makers such as Samsung, LG, Huawei, ZTE and even Nokia have released cheaper smartphones that cater to a less demanding audience.

Photo credit: M.Khebra/Shutterstock

With a still small, but growing, market around people that want to rent out their personal cars to their neighbors, some consolidation seemed inevitable. On Tuesday startup RelayRides, which was one of the first companies to jump into the neighborhood car sharing market, announced that it has acquired Wheelz, a startup that had originally focused on building car sharing communities at universities.

RelayRides says it will acquire, among other things, Wheelz’s DriveBox technology, which enables Wheelz users to unlock and drive away in a rented car, without having to meet with the owner and get a key. Picture it basically like one of Zipcar’s unlocking and verification systems.

When RelayRides launched its business, it used to install this type of unlocking and verification technology in the users’ cars, but the installation process was lengthy and expensive. Later RelayRides started working with GM on connecting this type of system with GM’s Onstar technology. However more recently, RelayRides started opting for manual key swapping as a main option.

RelayRides staunch competitor Getaround launched its service around a box that car owners install in their cars themselves and which renters can use to automatically unlock cars using their smart phone. With Wheelz’s DriveBox tech, RelayRides can get back into the business of making car swapping more automated and easier for customers.

RelayRides has raised $13 million from Google Ventures, August Capital, General Motors, Shasta Ventures, and General Motor Ventures. Wheelz has raised at least $14 million from Zipcar and Detroit-based transportation investors Fontinalis Partners. The companies wouldn’t release terms of the deal.

The market for this type of peer to peer car sharing is still very early. Also execution and making people feel comfortable with the systems is key to growing this industry.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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• Opportunities and risks in the share economy
• Ups and downs for cleantech in Q1
• Why Zipcar is tapping the college market

At BlackBerry Live 2013, BlackBerry has announced BlackBerry Channels. Channels is a natural evolution for BBM as it adds a more public and social element to what has always been a fairly private network of users. BBM has gone from what was a very intimate adding process to what seems more open, with brands and individuals being able to set up a space within BBM where people can interact. It should be interesting to see how well this is received because social networks are generally more open than being smartphone-specific.

Channels launches in beta today with a few channels already set up including Mercedes, Alicia Keys, Goo Goo Dolls and more.

Every few years someone pops up with a claim that they’ve uncovered the legendary formula for Coca-Cola. The soft drink company has kept the formula a carefully guarded secret for decades, and always shoots down claims. In 2011, public radio show This American Life spoke with one of the people who claim to have the original formula, but Coca-Cola officially denied the authenticity of the recipe:

Now, another person has come forward with what they believe to be the world’s most sought-after formula. According to an NBC 11 report, a Ringgold, Georgia man named Cliff Kluge states that the has “accidentally” found the formula.

The man told reporters that he and his wife bought a box of letters at an estate sale. The box contained a cola recipe that Kluge believes is the real deal. He states that it is very similar to the recipe uncovered by This American Life.

Kluge is now auctioning off the formula on eBay, asking for a starting bid of $5 million and a Buy Now price of $15 million.

Coca-Cola has stated, as it always has, that this formula is another in a series of failed attempts to recreate Coca-Cola, and that the only copy of the real thing is locked in a vault in Atlanta.

Final Book Now Available

Responding to the challenges of fostering regional growth and employment in an increasingly competitive global economy, many U.S. states and regions have developed programs to attract and grow companies as well as attract the talent and resources necessary to develop innovation clusters. These state and regionally based initiatives have a broad range of goals and increasingly include significant resources, often with a sector focus and often in partnership with foundations and universities. These are being joined by recent initiatives to coordinate and concentrate investments from a variety of federal agencies that provide significant resources to develop regional centers of innovation, business incubators, and other strategies to encourage entrepreneurship and high-tech development.

Building the Illinois Innovation Economy is a study of selected state and regional programs to identify best practices with regard to their goals, structures, instruments, modes of operation, synergies across private and public programs, funding mechanisms and levels, and evaluation efforts. This report reviews selected state and regional efforts to capitalize on federal and state investments in areas of critical national needs. This review includes both efforts to strengthen existing industries as well as specific new technology focus areas such as nanotechnology, stem cells, and energy in order to improve our understanding of program goals, challenges, and accomplishments. As a part of this review, The Committee on Competing in the 21st Century: Best Practice in State and Regional Innovation Initiatives is convening a series of public workshops and symposia involving responsible local, state, and federal officials and other stakeholders. These meetings and symposia will enable an exchange of views, information, experience, and analysis to identify best practice in the range of programs and incentives adopted.

Building the Illinois Innovation Economy summarizes discussions at these symposia, fact-finding meetings, and commissioned analyses of existing state and regional programs and technology focus areas, the committee will subsequently produce a final report with findings and recommendations focused on lessons, issues, and opportunities for complementary U.S. policies created by these state and regional initiatives.

[Read the full report]

Topics: Industry and Labor

Prepublication Now Available

Despite efforts over the past several decades to reduce sodium intake in the United States, adults still consume an average of 3,400 mg of sodium every day. A number of scientific bodies and professional health organizations, including the American Heart Association, the American Medical Association, and the American Public Health Association, support reducing dietary sodium intake. These organizations support a common goal to reduce daily sodium intake to less than 2,300 milligrams and further reduce intake to 1,500 mg among persons who are 51 years of age and older and those of any age who are African-American or have hypertension, diabetes, or chronic kidney disease.

A substantial body of evidence supports these efforts to reduce sodium intake. This evidence links excessive dietary sodium to high blood pressure, a surrogate marker for cardiovascular disease (CVD), stroke, and cardiac-related mortality. However, concerns have been raised that a low sodium intake may adversely affect certain risk factors, including blood lipids and insulin resistance, and thus potentially increase risk of heart disease and stroke. In fact, several recent reports have challenged sodium reduction in the population as a strategy to reduce this risk.

Sodium Intake in Populations recognizes the limitations of the available evidence, and explains that there is no consistent evidence to support an association between sodium intake and either a beneficial or adverse effect on most direct health outcomes other than some CVD outcomes (including stroke and CVD mortality) and all-cause mortality. Some evidence suggested that decreasing sodium intake could possibly reduce the risk of gastric cancer. However, the evidence was too limited to conclude the converse—that higher sodium intake could possibly increase the risk of gastric cancer. Interpreting these findings was particularly challenging because most studies were conducted outside the United States in populations consuming much higher levels of sodium than those consumed in this country. Sodium Intake in Populations is a summary of the findings and conclusions on evidence for associations between sodium intake and risk of CVD-related events and mortality.

[Read the full report]

Topics: Food and Nutrition

If you’re anything like me, seeing that ‘R’ in a delivered BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) message is like colour to my eyes (see what I did there?). I am obsessed with knowing that my messages have been delivered, read and when they’re being responded to.

Today, BlackBerry takes BBM to the next level with BBM Channels
extending the BBM experience to brands, artists, businesses and communities, you will now be able to connect with individuals and groups in real time. Stay up to date on your favorite things. Receive timely updates and participate by commenting on, liking and sharing posts. Or choose to express yourself and create a channel of your own – and create, edit & publish in an instant.Starting today, BBM customers can connect and share the MERCEDES AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team on their BBM Channels.

Top BBM Channels Features:

• Create a channel – Create, edit and publish in an instant, and there are no limits to the number of followers you can have in your channel. Securely manage your channel from either a BlackBerry smartphone or the web.
• Discover channels – BBM Channels includes a carousel that lets you discover new channels. You can share channel invites within a BBM chat, and people can be added or invited using the channel’s PIN or QR code.
• View – View profiles for each BBM Channel you choose to follow.
• Subscribe – Subscribing to a channel allows the channel owner to send you timely and relevant updates, giving the subscriber instant access to your news, deals, events or whatever you want to communicate. Subscribers can choose to receive notifications when new posts are available.
• Participate – Participate and engage in conversations with your favorite people or communities by “Commenting” and “Liking” posts from channels you subscribe to. Channel owners have the option to directly chat one-on-one with a subscriber.
• Monitor engagement – Easily use built-in measuring tools to assess and monitor follower engagement and interaction

Today, BlackBerry also announced plans to bring BBM to iOS® and Android™ users this summer. BlackBerry expects that iOS and Android users will also be able to experience BBM Channels later this year, subject to approval by the Apple App Store and Google Play.

BBM with BBM Channels is now available in beta for BlackBerry 10 smartphones, as well as BlackBerry smartphones running BlackBerry 5 OS through 7.1. For BlackBerry OS customers*, BBM Channels is part of the new BBM version 8, which also offers enhanced navigation tools, with tabbed viewing for quick and easy access to contacts, chats, groups, recent updates and BBM Channels. Furthermore, it allows the option to share your enhanced profile information with BBM contacts or within invitations. The beta releases can be downloaded for free on BlackBerry Beta Zone**. Customers can sign up to BlackBerry Beta Zone for free at www.BlackBerry.com/betazone. For more information about BBM, please visit www.blackberry.com/bbm.

*BBM requires a BlackBerry service plan on BlackBerry smartphones running BlackBerry OS.
**BlackBerry Beta Zone is not available in all markets.

Google Glass probably shouldn’t be operated by two-year-olds. The $1,500 hardware seems to be pretty fragile, and I would be afraid that a kid would break it. One father, YouTube user chrisangelini, threw caution to the wind, however, when he let his two-year-old son take Google’s new hardware for a test drive.

As expected, the results are adorable.

[h/t: Reddit]

A lot of people are asking about Alicia Keys’ role at BlackBerry and at BlackBerry Live 2013, she announced a few projects that she’s working on at the company under Frank Boulben’s leadership. Keys began her keynote talking about how women are central to BlackBerry and she wants to help foster that relationship. She mentioned that women, while they graduate at higher rates then men, have a problem getting into the technology industry at the same rate as men.

The BlackBerry Scholars program is a program to help encourage women to get into the tech industry by providing four year scholarships for women in science and technology programs. She also announced that BlackBerry will be funding creative projects around the world and helping artists to create.

Go to blackberry.com/scholars for more details.

A Houston woman has been charged with one count of injury to a child with intent to commit bodily injury, a felony, after waiting seven hours to take her son (aged 14) to the hospital after he suffered a gunshot wound to the leg.

What was Deborah Tagle, aged 55, doing during that time? Apparently she was attempting to find treatment options using WebMD. And the whole thing was caught on in-house surveillance video. From KHOU in Houston:

The video shows Pete Jesse Rodriguez, 24, who is also a resident of the home, pointed a pistol directly at the teen, police said. Rodriguez is accused of tracking the teen’s movement with the pistol and eventually pulling the trigger. The victim was shot once in the upper left thigh with a high-caliber bullet, police said. The teen lay on the floor for several minutes before getting up. Police said the teen and his mother initially looked up gunshots on WebMD.com. Then, seven hours later, the teen’s mother drove him to Mainland Center hospital, police said.

The shooter is charged with injury to a child with intent to commit serious bodily harm and is being held on bond.

The kid is reportedly recovering and in stable condition.

Police did not say whether or not the mom’s WebMD searching produced any viable treatment options. A quick search of WebMD leaves much to be desired in terms of gunshot treatment advice – although after spending a few minutes on the site I’m 100% convinced I have a brain tumor.

[KHOU via UPROXX]

Here’s a roundup of some of this week’s news headlines from the network sector:

Level 3 Announces Carrier Cloud Voice Solution.  Level 3 Communications (LVLT) announced the launch of a Carrier Cloud Voice solution. This frees CLECs (Competitive Local Exchange Carrier), wireless carriers, cable multiple system operators (MSOs) and telcos to focus on growth, rather than concentrating efforts on building or expanding a voice network. Through an agreement with cloud-based voice platform provider Alianza, Level 3 is providing a complete outsourced voice solution for service providers that are looking for ways to add voice, while avoiding significant up-front investment and ongoing operational costs. The joint solution combines Level 3′s Enhanced Local Service and Alianza’s cloud-based voice platform, which includes a hardened set of APIs for back-office integration, billing and service management. ”For communications providers expanding in today’s market, adopting a cloud-based voice platform solution can reduce costs and allow them to concentrate resources around more critical core business activities,” stated Cindy Whelan, principal analyst at Current Analysis. “Level 3′s carrier cloud voice solution is an attractive hosted VoIP platform enabling communications providers to accelerate the time to market, while avoiding onerous capital investment costs and minimizing the operating costs associated with operating a carrier-grade voice service.”

Juniper Launches JunosV Contrail Products.  Juniper Networks (JNPR) introduced JunosV Contrail, a family of products which includes the JunosV Contrail Controller, an open, standards-based controller for software-defined networks (SDN). Products in the JunosV Contrail family are based off of intellectual property that Juniper gained when it acquired software networking startup Contrail Systems late last year. The products will deliver a virtual network solution that easily integrates into existing data centers to centralize control across different client IT architectures and multiple cloud platforms. The solution virtualizes the network to enable seamless automation and orchestration among private and public cloud environments, elastic management of IP-based network and security services, and a “Big Data for Infrastructure” offering for enhanced analytics, diagnostics and reporting. ”After reviewing SDN solutions from different vendors, China Mobile Research believes that Juniper Networks’ JunosV Contrail provides a very competitive architecture for a scalable and interoperable infrastructure,” said Lu Huang, Technical Manager, China Mobile Research Institute. ”After completion of the trials later this year, we expect to lead the market with production deployment of a multi-vendor SDN solution.”

Infinera Selected by BICS.  Infinera (INFN) and BICS, a global provider of international wholesale carrier services, announced the selection of the Infinera DTN-X platform to upgrade BICS’ Pan-European network. The Infinera DTN-X delivers 500 Gigabit per second (Gb/s) long haul super-channels, enabling BICS to deliver flexible and cost effective 100 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) services. The DTN-X platform was selected for the scalability, efficiency and simplicity that the solution delivers. “The Infinera DTN-X allows BICS to provide flexible solutions and ensures a faster service implementation, translating into a shorter time to market for our customers,” said Johan Wouters, SVP Capacity Business Management at BICS. “This new platform will enable the aggregation of multiple high speed services on a single OTN interface. The advanced control plane offers the possibility of self-provisioning for high capacity services, making BICS the perfect network outsourcing partner.”

For more on networking, visit our Networking Channel.

Every day, women around the world are helping to lead, transform and innovate in the fields of technology and science. BlackBerry and Alicia Keys want to celebrate these leaders and help encourage young women to explore the opportunities presented in the STEM fields.

This morning, BlackBerry and Alicia Keys have announced the creation of  the BlackBerry Scholars Program, a scholarship program designed to inspire women to enter fields of study that will shape the future of technology and mobile computing.

Starting today, women around the world entering four-year degree programs in accredited colleges and universities in the areas of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math with an interest and/or aptitude in the mobile computing space are encouraged to submit their application nominations for scholars for the 2013 school year.

The BlackBerry Scholars Program will provide full, four-year tuition scholarships to outstanding women globally who are seeking degrees at accredited colleges and universities in the areas of STEM with a particular interest or aptitude in the area of mobile computing.  This scholarship program is the first step in BlackBerry’s long-term commitment and multi-tiered strategy to engage young women at every step of their education from high school to college, and as they rise through the workforce.

Applications for the 2013 school year will be accepted online only and will be due by 5pm EDT on June 26, 2013. To learn more about the “BlackBerry Scholars” Program and the nomination and application process, please visit www.BlackBerry.com/scholars .

For more information on other projects that BlackBerry’s Global Creative Director Alicia Keys is working on please visit http://www.BlackBerry.com/KeepMoving.

Tim Tebow is a man without a country these days; after a season with the Jets which can only be described as disappointing, the young QB was cut in favor of Mark Sanchez, and there are rumors floating around that several teams don’t want him because of the media baggage that will inevitably follow. But one team has made an offer, and if he takes it, it’ll mean no NFL training camp this season.

The Philadelphia Soul says they want to see him on the gridiron and have reportedly sent him an offer, including a list of plays they would use with him. Tebow has yet to respond, but co-owner Ron Jaworski and Coach Clint Dolezel say they’re hoping they’ll get a chance.

“I haven’t heard back from him and I’m not going to push it,” Jaworksi said. “If he decides he wants to play Arena Football, we’ll make a spot for him.”

Jaworski thinks Arena Football could be just the thing Tebow needs to strengthen his game and says it would force him to really look at his weaknesses.

“One [criticism] of Tebow is that he is slow and methodical,” Jaworski said. “He would be forced to quicken it up in this league and it would be good training for him. You can learn a lot in this league. It’s about processing information and getting the ball out . . . or you get whacked.”

GraphLab, a popular open source project dedicated to graph analysis and machine learning, is trying to capitalize on the excitement around graphs by spinning off a commercial entity, GraphLab Inc. GraphLab creator — a University of Washington machine learning professor — Carlos Guestrin will lead the new Seattle-based company, which has raised $6.75 million from Madrona Venture Group and NEA.

Graph analysis is among the hottest techniques around for making sense out large datasets, primarily by determining how tightly different data points are related or how similar they are. The term “graph” came into the broader lexicon along with social networks which built social graphs to assess the relationships among their millions of users, but the technique has much broader uses.

Guestrin said GraphLab’s algorithms are used in a lot of recommender systems, but he also cites fraud detection in banking networks and intrusion detection in computer networks as potential applications. We’ve covered graphs as the analytical model of choice for everything from content recommendation to tracking lab work in genomics. Really, though — especially when combined with machine learning — graph analysis can be applied to anything where there’s too much data for a person to possibly analyze the relationships between every point.

Google also famously uses a graph-processing system called Pregel as part of PageRank. Although a number of graph databases and other projects have popped up in the past few years, Guestrin said GraphLab is actually a contemporary of Pregel. He and some colleagues at Carnegie Mellon built a small system for their lab about five years ago, then released it into the open-source world with few expectations that it would catch on. Now, he added, Pandora and WalmartLabs are among the project’s user base.

Among those other projects are graph databases such as Giraph (an open source, Hadoop-based Pregel clone developed at Facebook) and Neo4j (which also has a commercial arm, called Neo Technologies), as well as Twitter’s Cassovary and fellow University of Washington project Grappa. Guestrin said GraphLab can work with most of them, particularly if they’re not designed to do machine learning at scale like GraphLab is. Some efforts, he noted, are focused on simply storing data in graph form (e.g., databases) or in providing simple graph analysis.

As for when we’ll actually see the results of the effort to commercialize GraphLab, Guestrin said it will be a while. Right now, he’s focused on the next open source release of GraphLab in July. However, the company will begin engaging with commercial users over the next several months to determine what types of features they would expect in commercial graph-analysis software.

The bigger question to come out of all this graph activity, though, is how big a market we’ll ultimately see for graph-analysis or any other specific technique. As companies get more comfortable with big data from a technical standpoint, they’re getting more interested in the different types of analysis it allows for too. This is evidenced by the quest to make Hadoop support myriad processing frameworks aside from MapReduce.

We already have a handful of commercial graph products on the market — including an industrial grade one called YarcData from supercomputer maker Cray — but how many will there eventually be? And if graph analysis is all the rage right now, what comes next?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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• A near-term outlook for big data
• 12 tech leaders’ resolutions for 2012
• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution

This is the fourth article in a series on DCK Executive Guide to Data Center Designs.

While most data centers have some basic form of Build Management System (BMS), any new design needs to include a highly granular network of sensors in virtually all of the systems and sub-systems of the facility power and cooling infrastructure. Older, general purpose BMS systems typically had simple alarms to warn of equipment failures and perhaps a moderate amount of basic information on energy use. In recent years, it became clear that as data centers grew larger and used more complex systems, it became more difficult for operators to keep track of all the critical infrastructure system operational details on maintenance requirements and energy efficiency.

A newer more sophisticated class of systems designed specifically for data centers have been developed which are known as Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM). They not only encompass monitoring energy usage and efficiency optimization, they can improve operational reliability, by early detection of operational anomalies. DCIM systems also can help track and schedule preventive maintenance and spot any trends of recurring problems.

While DCIM software varies widely based on vendor offerings and continues to evolve, the data center design should include pre-installed or provision for sensors at all the critical systems and sub-systems. You need to in review a variety of DCIM vendor offering to see which product features offers what you need. Regardless of your choice, make sure that you include the pre-installation of sensors in the design phase. Adding sensors after building the facility is both costly and can be intrusive if the systems are already operational. Examples would be energy monitoring for every CRAC/CRAH and if a chiller system is involved Chilled water flow metering, as well as energy monitoring all the individual components such as compressors, pumps and fans. This information will allow you to optimize cooling system operation and energy efficiency. Moreover, with real-time monitoring and maintenance management you can detect trends and anomalies and proactively address potential issues before they become critical problems.

In addition, every point in power distribution system to the IT equipment should have Branch Circuit Monitoring pre-installed. This will allow you to integrate real-time information from IT systems energy usage and correlate it to computing activity to provide for better capacity planning, resource optimization and avoid islands of stranded capacity and improve facility side provisioning of IT equipment deployments. No new data center should be designed or built without some form of DCIM system as part of the base infrastructure system. While DCIM requires additional investment, it can ultimately lower the TCO by improving operational and energy efficiency, while reducing the number of data center and IT support staff.

The complete Data Center Knowledge Executive Guide on Data Center Design is available in PDF complements of Digital Realty. Click here to download.

Welcome to the world of the sub-$1,000 3D printer. Manufacturer Pirate3D has promised that their Buccaneer printer will cost a mere $347, about $1,700 less than the cheapest extrusion-based printer available. The printer can print at a maximum of 100 microns – the same as the Makerbot’s – and prints at 50mm/s. It connects to your computer or mobile device via Wi-Fi and is made of stamped steel.

The output of the printer looks to be just on the edge of acceptable, especially given the price, but as this stream of photos shows, the Buccaneer has a 5.8×3.9×4.7 in build area, about half the size of a Replicator 2 and the prints are a bit jagged. The renders they’ve provided show a 3D printer that looks, at best, to be on par with the Form One in terms of quality.

Am I certain this thing will ever ship? Not really. Depends far too much on exciting “blog updates” and highly stylized photos to be an actual product just yet and $347 is quite low. Given that a good extruder is somewhere in the $50 to $75 range, there can’t be much going on in the brains of this machine and they’re going to have to cut corners somewhere. I obviously hope that this thing works as advertised – given that you can now sell a home games console for $99 it seems feasible that they can get 3D printer prices down as well – but, as in everything, you get what you pay for.

They are also planning a Kickstarter campaign shortly so you’ll be able to line up for one of these puppies in a few days.

On Monday, news came out that Groupon had a new POS app for the iPad available in the App Store. Well, it turns out there’s a little more to the story than that.

“What happened was that a limited beta version of the app that we’re announcing today slipped out into the store for a short period and was quickly taken down,” a spokesperson for the company tells WebProNews.

The official announcement is now out, and it’s really the new Breadcrumb POS. It’s a free iPad app for eateries, salons, spas and retail merchants to “replace their outdated cash registers”.

“Breadcrumb POS expands the number of merchants currently served by the company’s Breadcrumb family of POS products from restaurants and bars to include all brick-and-mortar businesses,” the company says.

“With this launch we can help every local business replace their outdated cash registers with a modern, affordable, money-saving tool that allows them to save on credit card transaction fees and run their businesses better,” said Mihir Shah, VP Merchant OS at Groupon. “The successful adoption of Breadcrumb Pro by restaurants and bars has been very encouraging, with some of the finest venues in the country using it to run their businesses. As a result, we decided to launch Breadcrumb POS and bring the power and simplicity of this product to more merchants.”

Rates are 1.8 percent plus $0.15 per transaction (MasterCard, Visa and Discover) with no hidden costs or monthly fees. Processing is free on the first $5,000 in credit card transactions (promotional offer).

More on the offering here.

Fox has confirmed the long-discussed reboot of Carl Sagan’s landmark documentary series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage starring none other than famed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.

According to the LA Times, the network made their announcement on Monday at their upfront presentation. The series will start with 13 episodes, set to air sometime in 2014. Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane is attached as a producer.

Sagan’s original Cosmos series is one of the most beloved and popular documentary series in the history of television. Broadcast on PBS in 1980, Cosmos was the most watched series in the public television history until Ken Burns’ The Civil War series overtook that title.

We’ve known that something like this was in the works, as reports of a Cosmos reboot starring Tyson was reported back in 2011. No additional details emerged at that time, and nearly a year later Tyson confirmed on Twitter that we could expect the new Cosmos series to launch in Spring of 2014.

The new show’s host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, is easily the most renowned astrophysicist around. He currently directs the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space, and has hosted a PBS show before – NOVA ScienceNow from 2006 to 2011. He’s also a frequent contributor to the alternative nightly show circuit, including The Daily Show, and Real Time with Bill Maher. Oh, and he’s quite popular on the internet.

Earlier this week we learned that Fox is also bringing back the popular action series 24 – but at this point it’s a one-time thing and it will only run 12 more episodes.

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