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San Jose State University, one of the biggest academic supporters of the growing MOOC (massive open online course) movement, apparently has some vocal dissenters in its ranks.

In the past year, the university has welcomed MOOC providers like edX and Udacity with open arms — in addition to launching a first-of-its kind program with Udacity to award college credit for courses taken on its platform. The school has a growing partnership with edX and plans to create a dedicated resource center for California State University faculty statewide who are interested in online content.

But discord seems to brewing among some faculty.  This week, professors in the Philosophy department said they refuse to teach an edX course on “justice” developed by a Harvard University professor, arguing that MOOCs come at “great peril” to their university.

In an open letter (first published by the Chronicle of Higher Education) to the Harvard professor behind the course, the San Jose State faculty members argued that while they believe that technology can be used to improve education (by enabling instructors to record lectures so students can replay them, for example), they believe MOOCs could “replace professors, dismantle departments, and provide a diminished education for students in public universities.”

Will MOOCs lead to two classes of universities?

Not only do they worry about a future in which fewer perspectives are offered by universities (“the thought of the exact same social justice course being taught in various philosophy departments across the country is downright scary — something out of a dystopian novel,” they say), the professors argue that the MOOC model will lead to two classes of universities.

“One, well-funded colleges and universities in which privileged students get their own real professor; the other, financially stressed private and public universities in which students watch a bunch of video-taped lectures and interact, if indeed any interaction is available on their home campuses, with a professor that this model of education has turned into a glorified teaching assistant,” the letter says.

In the past year, MOOCs have picked up considerable momentum – Coursera, for example, says more than 3 million students have enrolled in a course and 62 top universities from around the world have signed on as partners. And they’re starting to show their effectiveness in blended learning classrooms. In a pilot program at San Jose State, a professor leading an introductory course on electrical engineering incorporated content from the edX course “Circuits and Electronics,” assigning students videos and problem sets to review outside of class. According to edX and San Jose State, the pass rate in that blended class was much higher than the pass rates in conventional classes.

More faculty members show resistance

But as MOOC providers carve out a bigger presence for themselves in higher education, university faculty members are beginning to raise compelling concerns. Last month, faculty at Amherst College voted to reject a partnership with edX, citing similar concerns about the long-term impacts of MOOCs on the U.S. university system. Namely, they argued that they would perpetuate an “information dispensing” model of teaching and lead to a centralized system of higher education that weakens middle- and lower-tier schools.

The San Jose example shows that just because university administrators are willing to embrace the MOOC format, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t deep resistance from their faculty. And, given that some believe that the MOOCs’ honeymoon period is winding down, it wouldn’t be surprising to see more examples like this emerge.

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The collective criminal justice systems of America figured out a long time ago that speeding tickets were a reliable source of revenue. At first the American driver fought back, with contested court cases and innovative new radar detectors. After a while, the police ground them down. Now nearly 95% of people accused of speeding meekly pay their tickets without seeking their day in court. Radar detectors are illegal in many of the states that ticket the most, and such enormous population centers as California, Texas, and New York make an average of $150 each off of each person they ticket. More than one in eight drivers will get a traffic citation in the next year. This economic toll fuels the entire American criminal justice enterprise.

Radar detectors have been around since the 1970s, but they reached the apex of their popularity in the 80s and 90s. Since then police departments, buttressed by compliant legislation, have installed radar detector detectors and moved to new systems like “lidar” that cannot be detected by radar detectors or jammed by ordinary methods. Lidars use laser light, instead of radio waves, to measure the speed of a moving vehicle. They can be foiled by specialized detectors or jammers. Ingeniously devised light-absorbing paints, polarized license plates covers, and banks of reactive LEDs can all defeat lidar. However, that is not a cost effective strategy when it is unknown to the driver which agencies have lidar and which have other systems.

Even if the specific speed detection system used by police is known to the driver, the legal liability citizens expose themselves to by owning a detector can cost more than a ticket. Several states have strict anti-detector laws, as radar detectors cut directly into their revenue source. There are advanced radar detector detection systems, so the police can triangulate and home in on anyone using such a device. Windshield mounting of radar detector systems is against the law in California and Minnesota, and there are many more laws besides these. Radar detectors are thoroughly discouraged by the law enforcement community of America.

Source: TopCriminalJusticeDegrees.org

Instagram plans to announce Thursday that it’s adding a new “Photos of You” feature on the app where users can see Instagram photos that they’ve been tagged in. The new feature makes sense for the company as it thinks about how to make money on the app, since users can tag both people and brands, and the photos will then display Facebook-like tags on a user’s profile screen.

In a blog post, the company described the update, which will be available on Instagram for iOS and Android:

“There will now be a Photos of You section on your profile. When someone adds you to a photo, you’ll receive a notification and the photo will appear in your Photos of You. Want to make sure you like the photo first? No problem: you can easily adjust your settings so nothing appears on your profile until you approve it. Before your Photos of You section is visible to other people, you’ll have until May 16th to play around and get used to the feature.”

Tagging someone is different than just mentioning them in a comment, so photos you’ve previously been @-mentioned on will not appear on your profile page immediately.

The focus on people and tagging your friends and favorite coffee shop is quintessentially Facebook, a company that’s always talking about people, whether it’s the launch of Facebook Home and a phone organized by “people instead of apps,” or the re-launch of News Feed with the emphasis on large photos of people.

And by being able to tag businesses, like your favorite coffee shop, in addition to your friends, the update points a clear path to Instagram setting up for advertising, which Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg hinted at on Wednesday’s earnings call.

“I’m really proud of how Instagram is going,” Zuckerberg said on the call Wednesday. “Kevin and his team made incredible progress since last april, and the Instagram community is growing even faster than the Facebook community did when it was this size.”

Zuckerberg said advertising on Instagram is “something we’re thinking about,” which wouldn’t be surprising as Instagram moves into its second year under Facebook’s ownership, a deal that was announced in April 2012, but hadn’t produced many changes to Instagram at first. However, tagging people and having a page aggregating photos of you are both very Facebook-like features, and being able to tag brands would set the company up to create brand-specific Instagram accounts and features like Facebook Pages.

For users, it’s important to note that the “Photos of You” will become visible to your followers on May 16, so you can play around with the feature until then and approve photos before they go live to others.

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President Obama today began a three day trip to Mexico and Costa Rica, where he will meet with leaders to discuss ways the U.S. can deepen our economic and trade relationships across Latin America –- relationships that create jobs and growth here at home, and offer our businesses growing markets where they can sell more American-made goods and services abroad.  

Before he left the country, the President spoke in the Rose Garden and announced his intention to nominate two "outstanding individuals" to his Cabinet. 

Penny Pritzker is President Obama's choice for Secretary of Commerce. The President praised the Chicago businesswoman, who was a member of his Jobs Council. "Penny is one of our country’s most distinguished business leaders," he said.

She's got more than 25 years of management experience in industries including real estate, finance, and hospitality. She’s built companies from the ground up. She knows from experience that no government program alone can take the place of a great entrepreneur. She knows that what we can do is to give every business and every worker the best possible chance to succeed by making America a magnet for good jobs.

And Penny understands that just as great companies strengthen the community around them, strong communities and skilled workers also help companies thrive.  

read more

As we all know, the very nature of the enterprise is changing. This is the result of the rapid shifts that have been occurring in the business world over the last few years–the commoditization of goods and services, the individuation of value, the transformation of the workforce–which I discussed in my previous blog post . In order to keep up with these changes and to succeed, future enterprises will need to have three clear characteristics: They will be socially enabled; they will operate as digital business ecosystems, offering innovative services and products as rapidly and inexpensively as possible; and they will view innovation not as an optional advantage, but as the only advantage.

This is very different from the way large businesses have operated for decades. Originally, business consisted of neighbors exchanging the products of their labors, dedicated craftsmen travelling from town to town, and localized general stores. Eventually, businesses became department stores, specialty stores and malls, and finally, today’s e-businesses and networked organizations that support them. Traditionally, they have been hierarchical, fixed, integrated, transaction-based and risk averse. Only a small percentage came up with anything that was truly innovative.

Tomorrow’s businesses will have a very different make-up, and the CIO must lead the charge in the face of these changes. As Erik Brynjolfsson said, to succeed in the future, “We must reinvent our organizations and our whole economic system.”

What does it mean to be a socially enabled enterprise?
Companies are comprised of business units, work groups, communities of practice, and alliances with suppliers, partners and customers. The role of management can be broadly thought of as the processes that tie these components together to produce value. Until now, the goal has been to standardize and optimize transactions among these components to reduce costs and achieve efficiency. Most of these benefits have been achieved.

Now, management needs focus on enabling and optimizing the connection, communication and collaboration between employees, customers, and partners. As those new dynamic business networks form (and dissolve) management moves from trying to plan and direct them towards preparing and mentoring them on the challenges the business faces; staff and control them to engaging their participants and framing their interactions; impose structure and authority to encouraging activity and direction to emerge.

This will lead to new business models, new processes, more meaningful business interactions, innovation, improved and faster decision making, and a more agile organization. Companies that fail to facilitate these interactions will stagnate with old processes and strategies, and eventually fail.

What does it mean to operate in a digital business ecosystem?
A digital ecosystem is a business community of organizations and individuals transacting across a distributed, adaptive, open, social, technical system with collaboration, transparency, constant evolution, self-organization, scalability and sustainability. This is not a new idea. Each participant focuses on its customers (including members of the ecosystem) and what it does best while distributing all other enterprise activities dynamically and fully to other participants, in order to deliver value to each other’s customers with rapidity and agility. In the same way that markets have always outperformed command economies, the transactional efficiencies possibly lost are more than made up for by the ecosystems value effectiveness.

Digital business ecosystems dynamically create and operate value chains that extend their participants’ markets. This allows the smallest of firms to compete globally with the largest of firms. The European Commission believes that digital business ecosystems are critical to Europe’s future competitive ability, and the key to realizing “this promise of fostering the development of those technologies, systems, applications and services that are critical to achieving higher growth, more and better jobs, and greater social inclusion.” Also, the concept of digital business ecosystems has drawn more academic business, economics, process, scientific, mathematic, systems theory, and engineering attention than any other business idea.

What does it mean to view innovation as the only competitive advantage?
The nature of competition is changing. With the evolution of cloud computing, even the smallest, least-funded organization in an out-of-the-way town can appear and deliver like the largest. Any need or demand can and will be met faster than ever. Traditional economic frictions and barriers to market entry are disappearing. The downplayed downside of this convenience is that there is usually no long-term profit from such ventures.

When enterprise value propositions are racing to the bottom, commodization, and the limits of efficiency driven margins, there is one form of profit left: monopoly profits. Those moments in time when you have an offering that no one else has — a unique value proposition. Such propositions come from innovation. This is why innovation is so important and takes up so much room in press and annual reports. Innovation is the key to the future — innovation in business models, business processes as well as products and services. Only innovation can break the chains of commoditization that a global and frictionless economy encourages. Innovation is the only insurance against irrelevance. It’s the only antidote to margin-crushing competition, the only hope for out-performing the economy, and the only way to truly amaze and delight your customers.

The Rise of the CIO
CEOs don’t think CIOs understand the business, and how to apply IT in new ways to benefit the business. CIOs must become aware of the changes in the business world and the enterprise and how these changes are affecting the roles in the C-suite and their own leadership role. They must then help lead the enterprise’s evolution to a socially enabled environment and a digital business ecosystem, and provide the platform upon which innovation is encouraged, nurtured and manifested.

But CIOs also need to not get caught up in the technology trap. Changing technology alone will not cause the changes discussed here; changing management will. The CIO’s role becomes one of helping management change by supplying vision, direction and supporting technology. Gary Hamel asserts that management innovation is the critical component and starting point for all innovation-in terms of operations, technology, product, strategy, etc. He also identifies many validating examples, including the history of consistent military competitive advantage: those able to break with the past and imagine new ways of motivating, staffing, training and deploying warriors. The key is not size, scale, technology, tactics or strategy — though each provides transient advantage for a short time. Adaptable, agile management above all sustains competitive advantage.

The contribution of CIOs to all this is to rise up and enable, facilitate and accelerate its uptake by their organization. It is the CIO who is the one person in the organization to best understand how it operates, since every transaction passed through his or her systems. It is the CIO who best understands where the technology is going and how it can be applied, both to develop new methods for generating existing value, and to old methods to generate new value. Therefore, it is the CIO who should guide and mentor the rest of the organization into its 21st century model. In the last post of this series, I will explore how exactly the CIO should begin this process.

Many organizations are approaching the tipping point being described in this series of blogs. Stepping into the role of strategic visionary and business driver requires CIOs to have a completely new conversation with their C-suite colleagues. To begin the conversation, Dell, HBR and CIO magazine are sponsoring a Harvard Business Review panel discussion, “Change the Conversation, Change the Game,” through a webinar, broadcasting live from The CIO Leadership event in Boca Raton, Florida May 5-7, 2013.

It can sometimes be unsettling when a person winks at you from across the bar. A Google Glass developer has brought things to a whole new level with a new application that allows Google’s wearable computing device to snap a picture with a simple wink of the eye. Developer Mike DiGiovanni was able to enable the wink gesture in Google Glass and has released the source code so that others to utilize the feature as well. The application, cleverly known as Winky, allows users to snap a photo even if the screen is turned off, effectively eliminating the need to issue a voice command.

Continue reading…

As promised, Dan Rosenberg aka djrbliss on the XDA Developers forum released some additional details about his attempts to unlock the Samsung Galaxy S 4. Yesterday he posted a pic showing the unlocked bootloader that seemed to indicate he had recovery capabilities. He confirmed that in his latest post on the subject where he reports his work will allow custom kernels and recoveries.

Rosenberg also confirmed he had achieved the unlocking on an AT&T variant of the Galaxy S 4. However, he is not planning to release any details until Verizon starts to ship their version later this month. If you think you will be interested in unlocking your new Galaxy S 4 using Rosenberg’s tools, he does recommend that you not accept any OTA updates prior to his publishing his release despite the risk of missing out on security updates.

source: XDA Developers forum

Come comment on this article: More details about Samsung Galaxy S 4 bootloader hack revealed

The Washington Nationals, who are finishing a four-game series with the Atlanta Braves today, are reporting that MLB TV cameraman Reuben Porras has died.

The 61-year-old Porras suffered a heart attack at Turner Field in Atlanta on Wednesday while setting up his equipment. Nationals Head Trainer Lee Kuntz and Nationals Assistant Coach John Hsu were reportedly able to revive the cameraman in the off-field media room where the incident occurred. They performed CPR and used an automated defibrillator until medical personnel arrived.

According to a Comcast Sportsnet report on the event, Kuntz was informed later that Porras had died at an Atlanta hospital. Kuntz stated that this was the first time he had to use CPR during his job, though the entire Nationals staff receives CPR training each year.

Director Eli Roth, whose Hemlock Grove was recently released as a Netflix original series, appeared on The Adam Carolla Show to discuss a variety of things. The topic of Kickstarter came up, and it sounds like this might be an avenue Roth could explore for getting films made in the future.

Thanksgiving anyone?

“This new Kickstarter thing is changing everything,” says Roth. “I’ve actually thought about funding movies this way, because you don’t have to pay back any investors, and then basically whatever the release plan is, like you own the movie one hundred percent, and you have nothing to lose. You don’t have to pay anybody back.”

Carolla also mentions that he’s shooting a Kickstarter video with Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston, so we’ll be on the lookout for that.

Babson Capital Management said Thursday that it provided subordinated debt and made an equity co-investment to support Swander Pace Capital’s buy of Caleel + Hayden Holdings Inc., which does business as glōProfessional. Babson said it was the sole provider of mezzanine capital for the deal. Denver-based glōProfessional develops and makes mineral-based cosmetics under the glominerals brand and premium skin care products under the glotherapeutics brand.

PRESS RELEASE

Babson Capital Management LLC, a global investment management firm with more than $180 billion in assets under management and operations on four continents, today announced it provided subordinated debt and made an equity co-investment to support Swander Pace Capital’s acquisition of Caleel + Hayden Holdings Inc., dba glōProfessional.

Babson Capital was the sole provider of mezzanine capital on the transaction.

Denver-based glōProfessional is a leading developer and marketer of mineral-based cosmetics under the glominerals brand and premium skin care products under the glotherapeutics brand.  glo serves over 5,000 dermatologists, cosmetic surgeons, aestheticians, spas and salons (the “professional channel”) both domestically and internationally, as well as select specialty retailers.  The company also recently launched to the same customer base a line of hair care products under the gloessentials brand name.

“Swander Pace Capital is delighted to partner with Babson Capital’s Mezzanine & Private Equity Group on the acquisition of glōProfessional, and we look forward to working together again on future transactions,” said Swander Pace Managing Director Mo Stout. “As with several previous portfolio investments, all parties to this transaction benefited from Babson Capital’s experience and expertise in the lower middle market, its highly collaborative approach, and its reliability and responsiveness.”

“Babson Capital is excited about the opportunity to extend our successful partnership with Swander Pace through our participation in the glōProfessional investment,” said Michael L. Klofas, Managing Director and head of Babson Capital’s Mezzanine & Private Equity Group. “The management team of glōProfessional has built a strong position in a growing market, and we believe Swander Pace, with its reputation and track record in the beauty and personal care categories, is the perfect partner to help grow the glōProfessional brand.”
About Swander Pace Capital
Swander Pace Capital is a leading private equity firm specializing in investments in growth-oriented, lower middle-market consumer companies. Since its inception in 1996, Swander Pace has used its expertise in this industry to pursue a consistent strategy of acquiring or investing in consumer products companies with leading market positions in attractive, defensible niches. With offices in San Francisco and New Jersey, Swander Pace provides portfolio companies with a unique mix of financial and strategic consulting support to create long-term investment value. Swander Pace has led successful private equity investments in consumer companies with total revenues in excess of $2.0 billion. For more information, visit www.spcap.com.
About Babson Capital
Babson Capital Management LLC and its subsidiaries serve institutional investors around the globe and have $180.5 billion in assets under management as of March 31, 2013. Through proprietary research and a focus on investment fundamentals, we develop products and strategies that leverage our broad array of expertise in global corporate debt markets, structured products, debt and equity financing for commercial real estate, and alternatives. The firm’s subsidiaries include Cornerstone Real Estate Advisers LLC and Wood Creek Capital Management, LLC. Babson Capital is a member of the MassMutual Financial Group and is on the web at www.BabsonCapital.com.

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Looking to add an intelligent scale to your home? You may already have one and not even know it.

Nintendo’s Wii Fit Balance Board can measure your weight, in addition to being used for sports games and exercise apps on the Wii console. The MoDaCo blog notes a free Android app called FitScales taps into Nintendo’s accessory without wires, enabling you to use the device as a smart scale.

After installing the app and providing it with your height, you can sync your Android with the Balance Board and then stand on it to have your weight captured. Thanks to the wireless connection, your weight will appear on your phone. Even better: FitScales uses the available APIs to send your weight data to either your FitBit (see disclosure) or RunKeeper account, just like a traditional web-connected scale would do.

Note that FitScales supports Android 2.1 to Android 4.1, so if you’re running Android 4.2, you’ll have to wait for an upgrade before your device is supported. And there’s one user experience challenge in the app: You have to sync the board and phone every time you use the app, which is a bit of a pain.

I don’t know how many Wii Fit Balance Boards have been sold by Nintendo, but I think this app is brilliant. It extends an older piece of hardware at a time where health gadgets are picking up steam. Effectively, we can repurpose our own Balance Board, which is collecting dust right now, saving the $100 or more it would cost to buy a dedicated Wi-Fi scale.

Disclosure: Fitbit is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of GigaOM. Om Malik, founder of GigaOM, is also a venture partner at True.

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Google Glass can do a lot of things, but can it be used in sports?

Google Glass Explorer Joseph Lallouz might have answered that very question this week when he wore Glass to his hockey game. What follows is six minutes of first-person hockey that feels all too real and incredibly immersive.

Now, Glass has no chance of replacing traditional sports broadcasting, but it would be an incredible compliment. Just imagine a broadcast of a football game switching to a live feed from the players as the game starts. Even better, people watching the game could switch between players to get whatever view they desire.

Google Glass has a lot of potential, but the controlled demos from Google haven’t really sold me on Glass entirely. Watching a hockey game from the perspective of a player has.

[h/t: Reddit]

SJF Ventures has held a final close on its $90 million for its third fund, raising more than three times the amount of its second fund, which totaled $28 million, the firm announced Thursday. Investors in the new fund include Citi, Deutsche Bank, MetLife, Prudential Financial, Cambridge Associates, Mercer Consulting, and Trillium Asset Management, SJF said in a press release. SJF employs six investment professionals and has offices in New York, San Francisco and Durham, N.C.

PRESS RELEASE

PR Newswire

SJF Ventures Raises $90MM Third Fund, Tripling Size of Previous Fund

DURHAM, N.C., NEW YORK, and SAN FRANCISCO, May 2, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — SJF Ventures conducted the final closing on its third fund with more than $90MM in capital commitments, tripling the size of the previous $28MM second fund. The target for SJF Ventures III was $75MM and the fund was substantially oversubscribed at its final April closing. “We are honored that so many investors choose to join our partnership,” said David Kirkpatrick, SJF Managing Director and Co-Founder. “We are particularly excited that a wide variety of bank, insurance, foundation, family office, pension, mutual fund, and individual investors have recognized that SJF’s impact investing strategy can yield above market financial and mission results.” SJF’s current, second fund is performing in the top quartile all US venture capital funds of its vintage year.

SJF Ventures invests in high growth, positive impact companies seeking expansion capital rounds of $1MM to $10MM. SJF has invested in 36 portfolio companies over the last decade. “We realize SJF’s success is due to the exceptional results achieved by our portfolio companies such as Aseptia, BioSurplus, CleanScapes, Community Energy, eRecyclingCorps, Fieldview, Optoro, MediaMath, MedPage Today, and ServiceChannel,” said David Griest, SJF Managing Director. “We are eager to find the next set of great entrepreneurs for our third fund.”

SJF Ventures has a team of six senior investment professionals, based in offices in Durham, NC, New York and San Francisco, and invests nationwide. SJF has particular expertise and focus on the asset recovery, recycling & reverse logistics, energy & resource efficiency, intelligent infrastructure, sustainable agriculture and food, education, health and wellness sectors.

Investors in SJF Ventures III include banks such as Citi, Deutsche Bank and State Street Bank; the endowments of the Annie E. Casey, F. B. Heron, Jesse Smith Noyes, and Park Foundations and the Wallace Global Fund; insurances and financial services firms MetLife and Prudential Financial, Inc.; mutual and pension funds Calvert Equity Portfolio and MMBB Financial Services; Investors’ Circle members; family offices including Armonia, the Gary Community Investment Company and OpenBox; and clients of Abacus Wealth Partners, Athena Capital Advisors, Ballentine Partners, Cambridge Associates, the CAPROCK Group, Effective Assets, Federal Street Advisors, Filament Advisors, ImpactAssets, Imprint Capital, Mercer Consulting, Natural Investments, Threshold Group LLC, Trillium Asset Management, Veris Wealth, and Watershed Capital. Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP acted as legal advisor to SJF Ventures.

www.sjfventures.com

SOURCE SJF Ventures

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Connecticut Innovations has invested $500,000 in P2 Science Inc. of New Haven, Conn., investing through its Seed Investment Fund. P2 Science is a specialty chemical company. Connecticut Innovations is a quasi-public authority focused on growing Connecticut businesses.

PRESS RELEASE
Connecticut Innovations (CI), the state’s quasi-public authority responsible for growing Connecticut businesses through innovative financing and strategic assistance, today announced that it has made a $500,000 investment in P2 Science Inc. of New Haven, Conn., through its Seed Investment Fund.

“We are delighted to invest in this Yale spinoff, co-founded by the Yale-affiliated scientist and administrator who is widely considered to be the father of green chemistry,” said Claire Leonardi, chief executive officer and executive director of CI. “We are also excited by the prospect of P2 Science establishing a production facility in the Greater New Haven region for its specialty chemicals. Investments supporting technology transferred from Connecticut universities to local, emerging ventures, such as P2 Science, are a high priority for the Malloy administration.”

P2 Science is a specialty chemical company dedicated to producing high-value, high-margin consumer and industrial product ingredients from biomass. The company’s products will be vegetable-based equivalents of chemical ingredients previously only available from petrochemical sources and will be suitable for direct substitution for such ingredients in customer products. Because they will be derived from soy, canola, palm and other oils, as well as wood, grass and other plant-based feedstocks, P2 Science’s products will meet the growing demand for renewable alternatives.

“We have appreciated the financial and strategic support provided by Connecticut Innovations to date. They are an excellent partner and we look forward to a continued strong relationship as we execute our business plan,” said Neil A. Burns, chief executive officer of P2 Science.

The company has developed a novel chemical process, known as hybrid ozonolysis, to convert biomass into aldehydes for use in fragrances and flavors, di-acids for use in cosmetics and polymers, and derivatives of aldehydes, such as alcohols, esters and surfactants, for use in cosmetics, personal care products and lubricants. P2 Science has licensed some of its intellectual property from Yale University and has established a collaborative relationship with the University of Alberta.

CI’s investment of $500,000 in P2 Science was part of a $675,000 financing round also involving Elm Street Ventures. In 2012 and earlier in 2013, CI provided pre-seed funding to P2 Science. Following CI’s recent investment, CI managing director of investments Daniel Wagner joined P2 Science’s board of directors.

CI’s Seed Investment Fund provides investments of up to $1 million to Connecticut-based, emerging technology companies at the pre-Series A stage of development. CI has invested a total of $10.5 million in 19 companies through this fund since it was launched six years ago.

About Connecticut Innovations Inc.
Connecticut Innovations (CI) is a quasi-public corporation providing equity, debt and bond financing and other forms of financial assistance to companies in all stages of the business life cycle, from startup to later stage. CI offers its portfolio companies strategic guidance and collaborations with partners in business, finance, education, government and nonprofit sectors. CI’s initiatives are designed to grow the state’s economic and technology base, and to stimulate business investments and job creation. For more information on CI, please visit www.ctinnovations.com.

About P2 Science Inc.
P2 Science is actively developing customer and partner relationships in the fields of flavor and fragrance ingredients, cosmetics, lubricants, polymers and surfactants.

The post Connecticut Innovations Puts $500K into P2 Science appeared first on peHUB.

Network equipment vendor Brocade (BRCD) this week rolled out a broad strategy to boost its offerings for software defined networking (SDN). The initiative spans both software and hardware, with a central component being the Brocade VCS Fabric technology. Brocade describes its approach as “On Demand Data Center,” and said it is a logical step on the path toward mass customer adoption of SDN.

“While one of the more attractive benefits of virtualization is a reduction in capital expenses, we are starting to see the operational expenditures of highly virtualized environments increase because they lack proper orchestration, automation and management tools,” said Zeus Kerravala, founder and principal analyst with ZK Research. “Brocade’s On-Demand Data Center strategy provides a resilient and complete blueprint that unifies vital areas of the data center, from Fabrics to storage to physical and virtual infrastructure. Additionally, this strategy provides a pragmatic route for the adoption of emerging Software-Defined Networking technologies.”

Software solutions

For software networking solutions, Brocade announced release 6.6 for its vRouter family, which is based on technology acquired in its purchase of Vyatta, and will support Multicast routing and Dynamic Multipoint VPN (DMVPN), two technologies that are critical for large enterprises and cloud service providers. The Vyattta vRouter is platform and hypervisor-agnostic and deployed in environments ranging from virtual private data centers to public clouds.

As a part of its application delivery controller portfolio Brocade announced the Virtual ADX, which provides a virtual application delivery platform that increases the speed of application resource deployment and differentiated services for dynamic cloud environments. The company also enhanced its cloud provisioning capability with an update to Brocade Application Resource Broker and continued work on the OpenStack plugin for load balancing as a service.

Hardware solutions

Brocade announced a new four-port 40 GbE MLXe module for data-intensive services, that features wire-speed performance on the 40 GbE module. For smaller networks Brocade announced new versions of its compact NetIron CER routers, featuring up to four ports of 10 GbE. NetIron software updates were also introduced, which include enhancements for high-performance routing and SDN capabilities. he new release supports OpenFlow Hybrid Port Mode technology, to help customers simultaneously deploy OpenFlow and traditional routing on the same port for a seamless migration path to SDN.

Brocade was an integral vendor in the March 2013 launch of CyrusOne’s Texas Internet Exchange, an interconnection platform deployed across CyrusOne facilities in Austin, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio. “Given the massive data we transport for some of the world’s largest companies, CyrusOne cannot solely rely on traditional networking practices to solve modern business challenges,” said Josh Snowhorn, vice president and general manager of InterConnection at CyrusOne. “The Brocade MLXe routers enable CyrusOne’s infrastructure to evolve with our customers’ needs, whether that requires scaling from 10 Gigabit to 100 Gigabit Ethernet or implementing new technologies that allow us to better serve them.”

Fabric Orchestration for OpenStack

Brocade announced its continued support for the OpenStack initiative and its ongoing commitment to bringing open network solutions to enterprise and service provider customers through the introduction of a new Brocade VCS fabric plugin that delivers powerful on-demand fabric provisioning capabilities in OpenStack-based cloud environments. The VCS plugin is available as a component of the OpenStack Grizzly release and is an essential part of the On-Demand Data Center strategy.

“The benefit of deploying a private or public cloud built on OpenStack is that it gives the customer the utmost level of flexibility and control when provisioning essential components within an open cloud architecture. The inclusion of Brocade as a part of the Rackspace Private Cloud reference architecture addresses the desire of our customers to have choice in their distributions,” said John Igoe, vice president of Rackspace Private Cloud. “Innovative companies like Brocade, who are committed to supporting open initiatives, enable customers to fully capitalize on their IT investments without risk of vendor or technology lock-in associated with proprietary platforms.”

Additionally the company is taking a leadership role in the OpenStack development community with the delivery of a Fibre Channel blueprint for storage networking. Brocade is also a founding board member and platinum sponsor of OpenDaylight, a common software-defined networking platform.

“I’m not arguing that this stuff shouldn’t exist,” says Juan Enriquez. “I’m saying that precisely because this stuff is so powerful, we should be careful and think about what we’re doing, instead of treating it like a lark, thinking if we post something at 2am that no one will care.”

The Boston-based entrepreneur and many-time TED speaker is mulling the impact of social media and new technology in an interview with the TED Blog yesterday. As he asks in this short talk from TED2013, what if the “digital tattoos” we create by using programs such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google are in fact as enduring as any embellishment on our physical selves? Shouldn’t we at least try to avoid being branded with the digital equivalent of an embarrassing tramp stamp?

Juan Enriquez: Your online life, permanent as a tattoo It’s a new metaphor for an old topic, one that’s busied writers and thinkers of every generation. As Enriquez himself points out, the ancient Greeks were terribly taken with ideas of immortality and how they might be remembered. Yet he believes that in modern life we’re not at all savvy about the long-term consequences of impulsive decisions. He points to Andrea Benitez, the young Mexican woman who recently ran afoul of social media when she proudly and publicly wrote about getting her father to shut down a restaurant she considered didn’t treat her with enough deference. “Now she’s ‘Lady Profeco,’ essentially Lady Macbeth,” says Enriquez of the girl, who’s been roundly trashed within social media, even the subject of an article in The New York Times.

Enriquez is not arguing that Ms. Benitez should have been free to exploit her father’s status. Neither is he saying that the solution is to swear off social media for good. Rather, he’s advocating a path of conscious tolerance. “We’re demanding that young people be responsible for stuff that lasts for a long time,” he says. “Folks should pay attention.”

But isn’t Enriquez just being old school, I ask? Sure, he and I might be horrified by the idea of every last thoughtless jape of our younger selves being captured and broadcast to a virtual audience of millions. But, well, it wasn’t. Why does he think those growing up in a new status quo won’t simply figure out the best way to manage the deluge? Might not society mores shift, so that what he sees as a permanent stain might in fact be as fleeting as a temporary tattoo? “I do wonder,” he allows. “If all our lives become transparent, if you actually get a full picture of the good and the bad of someone sitting next to you in church, how would our societal norms change?”

“I don’t know that there’s one answer,” he adds. “I’d like to think we’d be more tolerant, but often when things are exposed we clamp down and deem something unacceptable.”

In other words, it’s the grey areas we should watch for, and we should foster open conversation about the impact of our media on our actions and behavior. The solution isn’t to deny digital, though heaven knows there are plenty of such ideas in the works. (Enriquez mentions these glasses designed to impede facial identification software.) Instead, we must be thoughtful, smart, and conscious of the decisions we’re making, the tradeoffs we’re making, and the potential consequences of our actions. To apply (whisper it) common sense. That’s a concept that’s as old as the ancient Greeks … and one that’ll never go out of style.

It has been a bit of a rocky road, but Microsoft now says it has successfully migrated a whopping 300 million active Hotmail users to its newer Outlook.com email service and now claims 400 million users of that service. According to a blog post announcing the milestone on Thursday:

“Today, we’re excited to announce that we’ve completed upgrading all Hotmail customers to Outlook.com. Coupled with the growing organic excitement for Outlook.com, this has pushed us to over 400 million active Outlook.com accounts, including 125 million that are accessing email, calendar and contacts on a mobile device using Exchange ActiveSync.”

And, the transition required the migration of 150 petabytes of data over in six weeks, no small feat. Given the comments on our earlier story about the transition (or “forced migration” as some put it), there are more than a few disgruntled Hotmail users out there, an issue Outlook Group Product Manager Dick Craddock addressed in the blog:

“Of course, whenever a widely-used consumer service makes any substantial change, there will always be some folks that don’t like it, and that shows up in the feedback, too. It’s gratifying in a sense because it means those customers loved the previous set of changes we made. With a communication service that is constantly evolving, we try to strike the right balance between bringing out major improvements and keeping true to what our customers love.”

Microsoft also more tightly integrated Outlook with its SkyDrive cloud storage and added support for SMTP send, which makes it easier to send a message from an alias. Microsoft, which dominated the work email landscape with its Exchange Server and Outlook combo, is facing really tough competition as Google Mail and Google Apps have taken hold. This story was updated at 10:37 a.m. PDT to correct the number of Outlook.com users. The 400 million count used earlier represents more than 300 million active Hotmail accounts plus new customers.

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Just one day after SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son attacked the Dish Network over its plan to buy U.S. wireless carrier Sprint, Dish chairman Charlie Ergen hit back by saying that Sprint would benefit by being owned by an American company and not by a foreign company such as the Japanese SoftBank. Reuters reports Ergen said that in addition to offering a higher price for Sprint, Dish would be the best choice to run Sprint because “we are an American company and the modernization of Sprint’s network will have to be done from the U.S.”

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“Hi, my name is Alan and I am…” okay, no, I’m not an alcoholic but I do love a good beer. I am especially a fan of dark brews — stouts and porters. I have had the Untappd app on my Android phone for a while, and now those on Microsoft’s mobile platform can partake in the fun.

Untappd launches today on Windows Phone, making drinking a social activity — though perhaps it has always been that, except for George Thorogood. Untappd allows you to record all of the different brews you sample, discover new ones and even check-in as if it were Foursquare. The latter makes it easy to meet up with friends who are out imbibing.

The app gives users the ability to find nearby craft beers and micro-breweries, check out what brews are trending and see what  their friends are drinking. Once you make your selection, you can rate it, post a photo of it and share it with friends or the world. Untappd will also share to Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare. It even has badges you can unlock based on location and the styles you try.

Untappd is a free app and arrives in the Windows Phone Store today, though for some strange reason the app is dated May 5. It is version 1.0 for the mobile platform, and if you enjoy a good beer, especially a craft brew, then you will want to check this one out.