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DataSite is adding an additional 18,000 square feet of purpose-built data center to its Marietta, Georgia facility, where it’s offering a product it calls hybrid colocation. The company has invested $19 million in the current phase of expansion, with future phases bringing the total investment to $30 million.

The company’s two properties are DataSite Marietta and DataSite Orlando, which each have their own unique evolution. While DataSite has been offering wholesale colo for a while in Orlando, the 73,000 square foot Georgia project offered an alternate approach.

“Marietta was a canvas upon which we could paint the data center we wanted to build,” said Jeff Burges, CEO of Burges Property + Company. “With this, we’re announcing the next iteration: the colocation footprint.”

The new space at DataSite Marietta is designed to provide a minimum of 2 megawatts of UPS load in a standard footprint, and is scheduled to begin accepting customers this month. DataSite is carrier and vendor neutral and has designed its offerings to be flexible enough for clients with specific data center requirements.

What is Hybrid Colo?

The hybrid colo offers customers options in how they provision four key infrastructure components: The main utility (switch gear and utility service),  the generator plant, the UPS plant and the cooling plant. This approach was developed to address users that didn’t want to be a colo customer, allowing them the option to own and control the pieces they want, even with their money.

“We dedicated and delivered exclusive use of UPS and cooling for a particular user at Marietta,” said Burges, citing one example of a hybrid arrangement. “It was one case where I said: I’m going to build you your own UPS and cooling plant. But generator and switch gear, that’s an expensive proposition – so you’ll share, and then get your own UPS and cooling.”

A customer can eventually able to take over the management, operations and service levels of the cooling, or they can elect to have DataSite team to maintain it.

The company plans to announce 1-2 more facilities this year in undisclosed locations, which will also feature a flexible product model. “You have to be able to accommodate 40 watts a square foot, and 400 watts a square foot,” said Burges. “We’re trying to be as broadly flexible as we can.”

Tracking the Industry’s History

Burges’ career tracks the growth and evolution of the data center industry. As CEO of Burges Property + Company, he started out with a commercial real estate background, operating large office complexes, which included some laboratory space. “The experience in labs gave me background in specialty real estate,” said Burges.

The company’s first real foray into IT facilities was the acquisition of 274 Brannon Street, a long distance hub building in San Francisco. “We did not go in on purpose, it was luck,” said Burges. “We brought great improvements. We took that model and became arguably the biggest telecom owner in the country. We got in, and then we got out, very healthy and very happy. We were stingy about what we bought and we were careful. The telecom hotel evolution over 4-5 years gave us unique insight heading into the data center business.”

The company was wise to take advantage of the Exoduses and Abovenets and Worldcoms, companies that expanded too fast and built top-quality facilities that were largely empty when the bubble popped. “We started to acquire these beautiful, empty data centers in 2004-06,” said Burges. One such facility was 1920 East Maple in El Segundo, Calif., which it sold one year later in 2005 to Equinix.

“Perhaps the finest building was the ATT facility in Orlando in late 2004,” said Burges. “We bought it and sat on it for a while. The most difficult thing is to capture that low basis if you can. If you can acquire something well engineered it is a vastly better proposition.”

During 2005-2007 Burges says the nature of customer requirements began to change. “Then, we were still in that ‘I need to own and control UPS and cooling system’ stage,” he said. “That is changing now. In 2009-10, there was a move to trusting the colo operator.

“DataSite Marietta represents a history book of that evolution,” said Burges. “We went ahead and recapitalized our Datasite Marietta and Orlando. We opened both buildings in 2009 with vastly different models.”

Matching the Infrastructure to the Customer

DataSite Orlando is a wholesale data center, with the company entering its third phase of build-out. Orlando has 8 megawatts of critical load. DataSite Marietta was built to suit. Half of DataSite Marietta is occupied, and with the other half, the company is building out its Hybrid Colocation offering.

The company believes that there is a gap between the cutting edge designs touted by many providers and the needs of most data center customers.

“There’s a lot of talk about efficiency and low PUE, but what we see the market wanting is boring and typical,” said Burges. “What we’ve been successful with is heat exchangers and managed chilled water. The majority of the clients are still air cooled, under 200 watts per square foot. We go cautiously into the high density world. I fear the future for some of the folks who have gone mechanical enclosure, 20kW (rack density), because it comes down to the almighty dollar.

“Our customer base is a vast array of meds, feds and eds,” said Burges, referring to healthcare, government and education tenants. “They all have their own way of doing things, but we find that static UPS is the way to go. Continuous power systems have too many points of failure.

“We’re practical. We have tremendous redundancy and a terrific uptime record. Customers are able to grow by the rack and not have to decide what the footprint is going to be 10 years from now,” said Burges.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 requires the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to set mandatory levels of cellulosic biofuel for refiners to blend into transportation fuels.  In order to restrain EPA, the law requires that the mandate be based on …

Independent developer The Behemoth impressed lots of fans with top-notch titles like Alien Hominid HD or Castle Crashers and now, after a pretty lengthy wait, the studio has finally released BattleBlock Theater.

The new title promises to deliver a hectic side-scrolling puzzle platformer experience that emphasizes not just going through a hilarious story b… (read more)

When Braintree bought Venmo for $26.2 million in August what it got was a peer-to-peer payments provider that replicated the ease of a PayPal money transfer within its mobile apps. But two months ago, Braintree started tweaking Venmo’s technology as a payment identity tool on iOS, called Venmo Touch.

A beta project with three of its customers — TaskRabbit, HotelTonight and Wrapp – Venmo Touch allowed you to transfer credit card info from iPhone app to iPhone app, preventing customers from having to re-enter their credit card info every time they did business with a new brand or downloaded a new app. Instead, a customer could just hit the “Pay with Venmo” button and enter his or her credit card security code.

Now Braintree is taking Venmo Touch out of beta and offering it to all of its customers (though still only in iOS), and it’s using it as recruitment tool to get new ones. Traditionally Braintree has been the payments processor for e-commerce startups like Airbnb, Uber and Rovio, but now it wants to move into brick-and-mortar retail – or at least power the m-commerce transactions for traditional brick-and-mortar brands. Through a new partnership with Branding Brand — which builds mobile apps for the likes of American Eagle Outfitters, Costco and Crate & Barrel – it hopes to embed Venmo Touch in some pretty high-volume retail apps.

Chicago-based Braintree is already starting to see a big uptick in mobile transactions: $2 billion of its $8 billion in annual transactions are now coming from mobile apps and mobile websites.

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The April 15 deadline for filing personal income tax returns in the United States is quickly approaching. According to the 2012 Taxpayer Attitude Survey, 87 percent of Americans believe that cheating on taxes is wrong. Moreover, 95 percent of those surveyed reported that their personal integrity affects their honest reporting on tax forms.

And yet: According to a recent estimate, the gap between actual and claimed taxes due in the United States amounts to roughly $345 billion, more than half of which, the IRS estimates, is lost because people misrepresent their income and deductions. These people give in to the temptation to cheat even though they must sign a statement at the bottom of the tax form declaring that the information provided is “true, correct, and complete.”

The survey data captures what people think — but not how they act. From research that I’ve done, the same tendency exists in other facets of our lives. When confronted with the opportunity to cheat, most people engage in behavior that violates their own ethical goals.

Fortunately, simple interventions can help. For instance, consider a study that my colleagues and I conducted a few years ago [PDF] in collaboration with a major U.S. car insurance company. As part of the study, we sent 13,488 of the company’s customers a form that asked them to report the number of miles they had driven the prior year, as indicated on their cars’ odometers. Cheating by under-reporting mileage would come with the financial benefit of lower insurance premiums.

On about half of the forms sent out, customers were supposed to sign to indicate their truthfulness at the bottom of the form. The other half of the forms asked the customers to sign at the top of the form. The average mileage reported by customers who signed the form at the top was more than 2,400 miles higher than that reported by customers who signed at the bottom of the form.

Our follow-up research [PDF] demonstrated that signing at the top of the form (before reporting information that could be inflated) increased the salience of ethical standards by highlighting people’s self-identity and improving their ethicality.

This research hints at how simply nudging people toward more ethical behavior can have important implications for organizations, which commonly bear substantial costs from dishonesty. For instance, according to a recent estimate, U.S. companies lose approximately $600 billion per year to employee theft and fraud. Most of us understand that we slip up occasionally, despite our best intentions, and that others do as well. And so it’s useful for organizations to consider some simple interventions that can help their customers and employees stick to their ethical principles.

Organizations often use codes of ethics that employees must read and sign to indicate their intended compliance. But codes are insufficient on their own. To be effective, they need to be integrated into the organization’s culture, and their importance just be stressed and discussed. For instance, the CEO as well as senior management in an organization should make their commitment to the codes of ethics visible and clear to employees, and communicate the value they put on ethics in orientation programs, annual reports, newsletters, meetings, and training sessions.

Organizations can also benefit more from the type of ethical nudge that would likely improve our honesty on our tax forms. Think, for instance, about the contracts we sign that explicitly stipulate the terms and agreements that different parties are expected to adhere to during a transaction or negotiation. Though we might hope that people read these documents carefully before signing, having them sign at the bottom of the form might cause them to miss important information and sign to terms they may not be able to uphold. When organizational representatives provide inaccurate numbers and sign contracts without carefully considering all the details of a business agreement, the business relationship and the company’s reputation are put in jeopardy.

Moving the signature line to the top of a contract, along with a statement declaring the numbers reported are accurate, might cause signees be more truthful about the information they are declaring. And it may also lead them to pay more attention to the details specified in the document they are signing. The application of such simple ethical nudges could span to other contexts, such as reminding financial advisers of their fiduciary duty to their clients and doctors of their Hippocratic oaths.

The estimated U.S. personal income tax gap of $345 billion is clearly formidable. But we may be able to narrow it over the years, one signature at a time.

For almost three years many of the creators of Sun’s Zettabyte File System have been slaving away in a Menlo Park, Calif. building trying to build a chip that would improve the performance and reliability of flash memory for high performance computing, newer data analytics and networking. Funded by Andy Bechtolsheim, the startup is called DSSD, and a recent hiring campaign plus the release of several patents offers some clues as to what this stealthy startup is about.

DSSD was founded in 2010 by Jeff Bonwick and Bill Moore — both part of a select few of engineers with experience building out storage operating systems. With the backing of Bechtolsheim, a Silicon Valley rock star and co-founder of Sun Microsystems, who has backed Google and co-founded switch startup Arista, the company has some of the smartest people in the Valley working there. No one from the company wanted to comment on the story.

My sources tell me the startup is building a new type of chip — they said it’s really a module, not a chip — that combines a small amount of processing power with a lot of densely-packed memory. The module runs a pared-down version of Linux designed for storing information on flash memory, and is aimed at big data and other workloads where reading and writing information to disk bogs down the application.

This fits with the expertise of the team, but this is a problem that others are trying to solve as well with faster and cheaper SSDs and targeted software to to optimize the flow of bits to a database. But the proposal here appears to be about designing an operating system that takes advantage of the difference in Flash memory when compared to hard drives to boost I/O.

For example, on old disk drives you store a group of bits in sequential order, but in reality those bits may get dropped anywhere in the drive. After regular use, when you delete a file, a tombstone marker is placed on the “deleted” file and you have to then find that tombstone and re-write just the amount of data in that space and then find more space for the rest. So the data goes everywhere.

But the DSSD system sounds like it treats files not as a series of bits but as an object that gets a name. That name is the file’s address and it stays the same for the life of the file. The result is there’s no central index that stands between sending the data to storage and storing it, and people can write to it in parallel and not worry abut overwrites. It is both faster and can scale out.

For more details, we can turn to the six patents that DSSD has filed. In mid-March Storage Mojo unearthed patents affiliated with the company that imply it is building a type of faster object-level storage using Flash that’s more durable. From the Storage Mojo article:

So what are they building? They are taking a radically different approach to the problem of high-performance transaction processing storage. The use of flash is a given in TP, and the extra durability, scalability and guaranteed read latency would be very attractive in large TP applications.

The most surprising piece is the object storage-like characteristics suggested by the patents. But handling billions of small objects at high-speed in a flat namespace would make it easy to distribute object indexes among hundreds of users, reducing file system I/O latency. The 3D RAID could eliminate the encoding overhead inherent in advanced erasure codes while providing similar robustness, enabling way-beyond-RAID6 availability.

For those who aren’t storage or computing buffs, the problem here was well explained in a fireside chat that Bechtolsheim had with my colleague Om Malik at our Structure:Data 2011 conference. In it Bechtolsheim outlines the problem that the network causes for access to big data around the 6-minute mark and the need to build new interfaces that can take advantage of the parallelism inside flash chips compared to hard disks. If you do that, you can expand the capabilities of flash beyond just density because you can write data to it faster, meaning the network no longer gums up the works.

Of course, when talking about using flash in more places, there’s always the question of whether this architecture will offer enough of a performance gain to justify the higher price per gigabyte of flash over a hard drive, but for that information we’ll just have to wait.

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Academy Award-winning screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala has died. She was 85.

According to a report from the Associated Press, Jhabvala died in New York after battling an unnamed illness.

Jhabvala got her start in the film industry in 1963, when she penned the screenplay adaptation for her novel The Householder. From then on, she collaborated with Merchant Ivory Productions on over 20 movies. She won best adapted screenplay Oscars for her work on both Howards End and A Room with a View.

In addition to her success as a screenwriter, Jhabvala was also an award-winning novelist. She began writing in the 1950s, with stories about life in India. She won the 1975 Booker Prize for her novel Heat and Dust, which tells the story of a woman who travels to India and falls in love with a Nawab.

(Image courtesy Cmacauley/Wikimedia Commons)

LinkedIn is currently testing user mentions, something that other networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ have had for some time and that users rely on quite heavily. Simply put, user mentions in posts let the people you’re talking about know that you’re talking about them.

If you’re currently part of the test, you’ll see a new tip box on your status update box. It’ll say “Now you can type a name to mention a member of company.”

Typing a name of a person or a company prompts a drop-down menu with choices arranged with the most likely suggestions (your actual connections) at the top.

Like Facebook, the mentions simply appear as links to the users’ profile inside the status. When someone mentions you in a post, you’ll receive a notification.

Apart from the aforementioned ability to tip people off to your statuses, mentions give users browsing their feeds and easier way to check out other users.

A LinkedIn spokesperson told The Next Web:

“We are currently testing the ability for members to directly mention each other in professional conversations on LinkedIn. This test is part of our ongoing efforts to help members further engage with their networks in meaningful ways across the LinkedIn platform.”

Remember the HDW: Colourform Test Pack  Beta trial that HD Widgets released in early February? Well it’s now an official app in the Play Store, so if you’re an HD Widgets user, go grab it now for 99-cents. This is an add-on theme pack, so you will need the HD Widgets app in order to use Colourform. If you’re new to HD Widgets, you might want to check it out since it’s one of the best looking widgets for showing you the time, date, and weather, along with some cool utility switches.

With the Colourform theme pack you get:

• 58 more widgets for phones & tablets – 2 – 1×1 / 5 – 2×1/ 36 – 4×1 / 12 – 4×2 / 1 – 6×1 / 2 – 6×2 (tablets)
• ICS / JB style
• tons of color settings w/ full color range
• background opacity, tiles, & textures
• new Quick Settings & Indicators
• more Roboto fonts including the 4.2 hipster clock

Check out their demo video below and hit one of the download links to get started.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Play Store Download Link – Colourform HDW Theme Pack

Play Store Download Link – HD Widgets

Come comment on this article: Colourform (HDW theme pack) for HD Widgets officially out of Beta

In early March, Facebook introduced its new News Feed to the world. The new News Feed puts much more of an emphasis on consuming content with larger pictures among other changes. Facebook has already given developers a few tips on how to get the most out of it, but now it’s starting to dole out the rules and regulations for the new News Feed.

During its weekly Operation Developer Love update, Facebook said that it’s going to start rolling out the new News Feed to more users. In preparation, Facebook says that developers should update their images. News Feed photos must now be at least 200×200 pixels, but Facebook encourages developers stick to 600×600 pixel images for the best experience across desktop and mobile.

So, what happens to images smaller than 200×200 pixels? Facebook says they may not show up at all. They also says that rectangular photos may be cropped automatically to fit within the new square environment of the new News Feed. As for other requirements, images can not be bigger than 4 Megapixel or 5 megabytes. Facebook will only support JPG, PNG, GIF and BMP formats in the new News Feed as well.

In other changes, Facebook will start defaulting new apps to its “sandbox mode.” In other words, all new apps can only be accessed by admins and developers when they’re first submitted. Developers now don’t have to worry about users accidentally accessing an unfinished app.

Keeping in line with its 90-day notice on breaking changes, Facebook has also announced the breaking changes that will go into effet on July 10:

Social plugins will require an absolute URL in the ‘href’ parameter
Social plugins, such as the Like Box and Like Button, will require an absolute URL in the ‘href’ parameter.

Page ‘category’ field name change
We are renaming the ‘category’ field to ‘category_lists’ for Pages Graph API

Stream table will throw exception with invalid filter_key
Query stream_filter table for a set of valid stream filters. The stream table will throw an exception if called with an invalid ‘filter_key’ option.

Removing ‘publish_checkins’ permissions
Publishing a Checkin object is deprecated in favor of creating an Open Graph story with a location attached. You can also create a Post with a location attached using the ‘publish_action’ permission.

FQL Checkin table ‘page_id’ change
We are renaming ‘page_id’ to ‘target_id’ for the Checkin table.

Removing ‘version’ field for Groups
We introduced ‘version’ field to indicate whether the group was created prior to launch of the current groups product in October 2010. We are removing this field as all Groups on Facebook are now the same version. This impacts both Group Graph API and Group FQL Table.

Photos will no longer return larger sizes than the uploaded version
‘images’ field in photos and photo_src table will no longer return image sizes larger than the original uploaded version of the photo.

Cannot create multiple create actions for the same Open Graph object
We are no longer allowing multiple create actions for the same Open Graph object, as documented here.

Deprecating ‘comments’ field from ‘stream’ FQL table
We are deprecating the ‘comments’ field from ‘stream’ FQL table. Please select the ‘comment_info’ column to fetch the ‘can_comment’ and ‘comment_count’ fields (formerly called ‘can_post’ and ‘count’), and use the comment table directly to retrieve the list of comments.

Removing ‘xid’, ‘reply_xid’, ‘username’ and ‘comments’ from ‘comment’ FQL table
We are removing the fields on the FQL ‘comment’ table that were used exclusively for legacy Comments Plugins — ‘xid’, ‘reply_xid’, ‘username’ and ‘comments’. We now treat comments the same across plugins and within Facebook. Please query for comment replies left on the plugin the same way as you would for other comments.

Removing ‘count’ from ‘comments’ Graph API connection
We are removing the undocumented ‘count’ field on the ‘comments’ connection in the Graph API. Please request ‘{id}/comments?summary=true’ explicitly if you would like the summary field which contains the count (now called ‘total_count’)

Mobile App Install Ads change
We are updating the Creative Spec parameter ‘app_platform_type’ to ‘mobile_store’. The possible values for mobile_store are now “itunes”, “itunes_ipad”, and “google_play”.

Conversion spec and tracking pixel ID changes
We are deprecating the use of ‘tracking_pixel_id’ when specifying the desire to track a conversion pixel in an ad. You should instead specify the pixel in the newly launched tracking_specs field. We are also deprecating the use of conversion specs in bid types that are not optimized for actions (e.g. CPM, CPC, and oCPM when no bid value is placed on actions). You should instead use tracking_specs to track conversions for these bid types.

Custom Audiences change
We have changed the targeting spec parameter ‘excluded_user_adclusters’ to be ‘excluded_custom_audiences’. Additionally, the endpoint to create and retrieve your custom audiences is now: https://graph.facebook.com/(act_adaccountid)/customaudiences.

Accessing link stats change
App access tokens will be required for accessing the link_stat FQL table. App access tokens will also be required for retrieving data from Graph API endpoint for link stats, ie: http://graph.facebook.com/?id=http://example.com.

Graph API search changes
App access tokens will be required for all search Graph API calls except Places and Pages. Search for application will no longer be supported.

Open Graph apps using custom actions for fitness, books, movies, and TV
As announced in March, any apps that previously used custom actions to represent this type of sharing will need to move to common actions by July 10, 2013.

Removing ‘page_friends_of_fans’ metric
We are removing the metric: ‘page_friends_of_fans’ from the Insights Dashboard and the Insights API.

Removing the ability to “Select All” or “Pre-Select” for Requests
As part of our efforts to improve user sentiment, we have updated our platform policy so that apps may not offer a select all option or pre-select multiple recipients to receive requests. Other Request dialog functionality will remain the same.

On a final note, 30 bugs were fixed in the last week, and 34 were accepted for further review. Check out the blog post for the full list of fixes.

Samsung (005930) plans to follow in Apple’s (AAPL) footsteps by opening new shops inside of Best Buy (BBY) stores nationwide. The company plans to open 500 Samsung Experience Shops inside Best Buy stores on April 8th and will expand that number to 900 in May. By early summer Samsung will have 1,400 mini-stores inside Best Buy locations nationwide. The Samsung Experience Shops, which will vary in size with the largest being around 460 square feet, will give consumers access to the company’s full lineup of products including smartphones, tablets, laptops, cameras and various accessories, all in one place. Samsung had briefly considered opening its own stores in the U.S., however the company decided to partner with Best Buy instead. Samsung’s press release follows below.

Continue reading…

PRO’s: Great styling, gobs of torque, impressive performance, great price.

CON’s: Narrow 245-series tires, aging 5-speed transmission, may be a little too aggressive for some.

FINAL THOUGHT: A modern muscle-sedan that provides tire shredding performance in a package that’s all-day comfy and wonderfully styled.

Hurdling down Interstate 680 in Northern, CA in the new 2013 Chrysler 300 SRT8 is an exercise in restraint. On the one hand you’ve got this big American luxo-sled that’s reminiscent of the big Chrysler’s of yesteryear. And on the other you’ve got a player that has the ability to put some serious hurt on the best that Europe and Asia has to offer, something that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

The 300 SRT8 is about as bold and brash as the American automobile gets. It sports high style and aggressive looks, and with a naturally aspirated power-plant that has the ability to turn the back tires into liquified goop, it’s definitely a forced to be reckoned with. This is an old-school muscle sedan that’s made for driving hard and fast. It’s the crown jewel of Chrysler’s fleet and it isn’t a car that’s going to be on everyone’s playlist. Enthusiasts will make comparisons between the SRT8, BMW’s M5 and Mercedes AMG cars. But understand that this car appeals to your emotions, American’s especially, on a completely different level.

Where the M5 and AMG’s are technological marvels that sport terabytes of tech, the SRT8 is a pad and pencil. It’s a blunt force object in a sea of razor sharp precision, and this ladies and gentlemen is precisely why I love it.

Okay, down to business. Under the hood lies SRT’s 6.4-liter 392 cu.in. HEMI V8 that produces 470 hp and 470 lb.ft. of torque. It’s big mill has the ability to get this 4,365 lbs sedan to 60 mph in 4.5-seconds, blitz the quarter mile in 13-seconds and onto a top speed that lies in the mid-170′s. Some people out there are going to bitch about the aging 5-speed transmission, and rest assured that a new 8-speed auto is on the way, until then though, the 5-speed unit, while not new and fancy, still does a great job of slamming all that power down to the pavement.

From a ride quality perspective the 300 SRT8 comes with a new 3-mode suspension. Auto, Sport, and Track are your choices and all exhibit subtle changes. In my opinion, Auto mode was simply too soft, and Track was too harsh. This is after all a big sedan, not a Miata. Therefore go with Sport as it will provide the best combination of performance and comfort for daily use.

Handling wise the big Chrysler has the ability to hold its own with pretty much everything out there that’s in the same class. Remember people, you’re not race drivers (and if you are sorry), so understand that whether a comparison test shows this car leading or trailing in one area or another as compared to the competition, the odds of you being able to tell the difference are nill. Also, this is not a track car. Yes, you can venture there every now and again, but if tracking a car is your passion, then buy something else as this is not your baby.

One area that Chrysler has really stepped up its game is the interior. A nicely sculpted dash with monster size touch screen greet you, while fresh analog gauges tell you everything you need to know.

Yes, there is a function that will tell you G-forces, acceleration and breaking times, but I found this to be a bit gimmicky. Will you use it once or twice? Probably, otherwise I really didn’t see it’s appeal.

It must be said though that the Garmin based navigation system, climate and audio controls are intuitive and very easy to use compared to other cars in this class. Then there are the SRT8 seats which provide the best combination of sport-support and all-day comfort that I’ve seen on a sub-60k sedan.

Braking wise we’re looking at 14.2-inch rotors up front and 13.8-inch out back. Combine that with 4-piston Brembo calipers and integrated brake cooling ducts, and you’ve got a car that will haul you down to a stop in no-time flat.

The 2013 Chrysler SRT8 is a great car. It’s a car that will make you grin whenever you mash the gas, giggle when you throw it into a corner, and relax on those long road trips. I’ve owned a BMW M5, driven all manner of AMG car and even owned an older SRT8, all of which have been great cars. However this car appeals to the American in me, the hot-rodder and the muscle car enthusiast, and while it’s not perfect, it does hit all the right buttons for a price that is completely reasonable.

Hello, Arrested Development fans. Today we’re learning the official release date for the 4th season, which will premiere on Netflix.

Set your calendars for May 26th at 12:01 am PT. That’s when you’ll be able to start streaming all 15 (yes, 15) new episodes of the show in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Ireland, Latin America, Brazil, and Scandinavia.

“We are doing something very ambitious that can only be done with Netflix as partners and on their platform. Finally my simple wish for the show is coming true: that it be broadcast every second around the clock to every television, computer or mobile device in existence,” said series creator and executive producer Mitch Hurwitz.

We’ve made a huge mistake! There are actually 15 new episodes of @arresteddev on May 26. twitter.com/netflix/status…

— Netflix US (@netflix) April 4, 2013

“Arrested Development is now widely viewed as one of the top TV comedies of all time and Mitch Hurwitz is bringing it to Netflix in a brand new way, crafted for the on-demand generation that has come to discover the show in the years since it last appeared on TV,” said Ted Sarandos, Chief Content Officer for Netflix. “The highly anticipated return of this show is sure to make history all over again.”

History, indeed. I’m sure that there are plenty of Arrested Development fans out there that still can’t believe that it’s actually coming back with new episodes. There’s a lot of hype, so hopefully it doesn’t disappoint. Plus, this season (4) on Netflix may be all you get. A couple of months ago, we heard that Netflix is not planning on producing additional seasons of Arrested Development. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said that it be a “one-off, non-repeatable” event.

Still, we have 15 (hopefully) glorious episodes to look forward to. Get excited, AD fans.

Russian search leader Yandex announced a redesign of its homepage today. The goal, according to the company, was to make the most relevant information more visible and more easily accessible.

The page is less cluttered than previous versions (you can see them all here), and has less text. They’ve replaced images with blocks of text, and placed related items together. News from big media outlets, for example, are now placed with news from blogs.

“We have moved the most popular services to a more visible position and our specialist services went to the background – for example, Yandex.Mail is now in a more prominent spot, while Yandex.Direct and Yandex.Metrica have moved down to the bottom of the page,” the company explains. “The Yandex.Maps feature has been expanded, so that users can now find the nearest pharmacy or cafe with one click, along with taxis, public transport routes and panoramas. As a result, the homepage is both simpler and more functional.”

According to Yandex, the new page is up to 50% faster than the previous one.

“Yandex is both a search engine and the gateway to the internet for millions of people,” said Vera Leyzerovich, head of desktop and mobile products at Yandex. “On the homepage, besides the search bar, users are accustomed to seeing information that they need every day – news, weather, exchange rates, the traffic situation. But the more data it includes, the harder it is to navigate. On the new version, we have retained the emphasis on search and kept the page informative and familiar for its users, but at the same time we have made it clear and uncluttered, so people will enjoy visiting it again and again.”

A report came out earlier this year that Yandex had surpassed Bing in search queries.

Fenox Venture Capital has backed I AND C-Cruise.Co Ltd., which operates a solar power web portal in Japan. Terms of the investment were not disclosed.

PRESS RELEASE
Fenox Venture Capital announces its first green tech investment in I AND C-Cruise.Co, Ltd. (IACC), which operates “Green Energy Navi,” the #1 solar power web portal in Japan. Fenox VC has a proven track record of helping Asian businesses achieve global expansion. With the investment from Fenox, IACC plans to launch their North American operation this June.

Today, “Green-Energy Navi” is a marketplace that matches solar power solutions to consumers’ energy requirements. Their web portal presents consumers with user reviews and cost estimates for convenient comparison and selection of solutions from multiple vendors. Additionally, consumers are given practical information such as best practices, government subsidies and tax incentives for using solar energy.

Fenox Venture Capital has achieved numerous successes in its investment into Japanese companies and bringing them to the global market, as a result of its deep global understanding. “IACC has great potential to expand into the United States and global market,” said Anis Uzzaman, General Partner at Fenox Venture Capital. “The company can leverage upon its proven business model in Japan and excel internationally.”

“We were seeking a global partner for our international expansion,” said Kazuyuki Uemura, CEO of IACC. “With Fenox VC’s global connections in the United States and Europe, as well as their deep understanding of Japanese and Asian culture, they are the best partners in our endeavor.”

Today, 300,000 Japanese households install alternative energy sources each year. As of February, IACC is the largest Japanese marketplace in this industry with more than 40,000 subscribers, and 400 manufacturers and service providers online. With a yearly revenue today exceeding USD 10 million and with a growth rate of 500% year over year, the expansion into the United States will give IACC another big boost in their upcoming financial performance.

About Fenox Venture Capital
Fenox Venture Capital is a global VC, headquartered in Silicon Valley and focused on providing seed, venture, and growth-stage funding to emerging technology companies in North America, Asia, and Europe. Fenox VC invests globally in the consumer Internet, retail and software sectors. Among its recent investments are Lark, DJZ, Bottlenose, Socialize, Roximity, Incident (gTar), Dream Link Entertainment (DLE) and Optilly.

About I AND C-Cruise (IACC)
I AND C-Cruise.Co, Ltd. (IACC) operates the web portal “Green Energy Navi” which enables consumers to find the optimal solar power installation, and make the transition to solar power solutions. IACC is committed to providing the best services to environmentally-conscious consumers. In addition to solar panels, they supply HEMS and related green tech services to consumer and other corporations.

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Summit Materials has acquired Westroc Inc. an aggregates and ready-mix concrete company in Utah. Summit Materials was founded in 2009 by CEO Tom Hill and investors including Blackstone Capital Partners V L.P., and Silverhawk Capital Partners.

PRESS RELEASE
Summit Materials (“Summit”) is pleased to announce the acquisition of Westroc, Inc. (“Westroc”), an aggregates and ready-mix concrete company in Utah, and the purchase of certain aggregates, ready-mix concrete, asphalt and paving assets based in Wichita, Kansas from Lafarge North America, Inc. (“Lafarge, Wichita Assets”). Summit acquired mineral reserves in excess of 100 million tons through these transactions.

Westroc, based in Pleasant Grove, Utah, operates two aggregates sites and seven ready-mix concrete plants along the Wasatch Front. The Lafarge, Wichita Assets are comprised of two aggregates operations, three ready-mix concrete plants and one asphalt plant located in metro Wichita and the broader southeast Kansas area.

Tom Hill, CEO of Summit, commented, “We are delighted to welcome these businesses and their employees to Summit. They expand our footprint in Utah and Kansas and we look forward to continuing to provide the highest quality products and services to our many valued customers.”

About Summit Materials
Summit Materials was formed in 2009 to develop a leading business in the aggregates and heavy-side building materials sector through strategic acquisitions. Summit Materials was founded by its CEO Tom Hill and a group of investors that include members of its management team, Blackstone Capital Partners V L.P., and Silverhawk Capital Partners. Tom Hill is the former CEO of Oldcastle Inc., the U.S. division of CRH, Plc. To date Summit Materials has completed over 20 acquisitions, and through its three regions, East, Central, and West, it conducts operations in Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. Further information is available at www.summit-materials.com.

About The Blackstone Group
Blackstone BX +0.36% is one of the world’s leading investment and advisory firms. Blackstone seeks to create positive economic impact and long-term value for its investors, the companies it invests in, the companies it advises and the broader global economy. The firm accomplishes this through the commitment of its people and flexible capital. Blackstone’s alternative asset management businesses include the management of private equity funds, real estate funds, hedge fund solutions, credit-oriented funds and closed-end mutual funds. The Blackstone Group also provides various financial advisory services, including financial and strategic advisory, restructuring and reorganization advisory and fund placement services. Further information is available at www.blackstone.com.

About Silverhawk Capital Partners
Silverhawk is an independent investment group established in 2005 to invest in management buyouts and other private equity transactions in the Industrial, Energy/Natural Resources and Business Service sectors. The partners of Silverhawk have invested as a team and operated businesses since 1989. Further information is available at www.silverhawkcapitalpartners.com.

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The WWE may dominate the world of professional wrestling, but it will soon find itself paying up for using one of its former wrestlers’ images.

According to a report from the Associated Press, the WWE has settled a lawsuit with Owen Hart’s widow, Martha. The lawsuit, which was filed in 2010, alleged that Owen Hart’s estate is owed royalties for the WWE’s use of the wrestler’s image in the years since his death. It also claimed that the WWE had violated a contract restricting the use of Hart’s image, including his name. The details of the settlement have not yet been made public.

Owen Hart died on May 23, 1999 during a WWE (WWF at the time) pay-per-view event billed as Over the Edge. The 34-year-old wrestler was to have entered the ring by being lowered from rafters of the Kansas City, Missouri arena where the event was taking place. During the stunt, Hart’s harness malfunctioned and the wrestler fell over 70 feet to the ring below. He was taken to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead.

The Hart family has already sued the WWE for negligence over Owen’s death, and received an $18 million settlement in 2000.

(Image courtesy Mandy Coombes/Wikimedia Commons)

We already reported that Samsung is planning on opening Experience Shops within Best Buy stores, but what we didn’t know was how many stores. According to a press release, the plan is for 1400 stores. You can expect to see 900 stores by early May with the remainder to follow by early summer. The emphasis will be on mobile products such as smartphones, tablets, laptops, connected cameras, and accessories.

Best Buy is one of the more popular electronics retailers so this makes sense for Samsung. Instead of opening full-fledged stores, this is more cost effective. Samsung is planning on selling 500 million smartphones this year, and Experience Stores like these can only help them achieve their goal. Hit the break for the full press release.

SAMSUNG JOINS FORCES WITH BEST BUY TO PROVIDE CONSUMERS A UNIQUE MOBILE SHOPPING EXPERIENCE

Samsung Experience Shops in 1,400 Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile stores creates a destination where consumers can experience Samsung’s extensive mobile ecosystem of products and learn how they work together from dedicated Samsung experts

Richardson, TX – April 4, 2013 – Samsung Electronics announced today a unique relationship with Best Buy, the world’s largest consumer electronics retailer, centered on retail innovation for customers to explore, purchase, activate and service the broadest portfolio of Samsung mobile products and accessories. The Samsung Experience Shop™ will be installed in more than 1,400 Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile specialty stores across the U.S. beginning this month. By early May, 900 Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile specialty stores will feature the Samsung Experience Shop, with the remainder launching by early summer.

At the Samsung Experience Shops, consumers can experience Samsung’s full range of mobile products including smartphones, tablets, laptops, connected cameras and accessories, all in one location. The shops enable consumers to interact with and buy Samsung’s latest mobile products and experience how the devices connect together to enrich their lives.

Select Best Buy stores will have Samsung Smart Service™, which includes dedicated Samsung Experience Consultants™ and Best Buy blue shirt sales associates to assist customers with purchasing and activating mobile products on the carrier of their choice, understanding their device and supporting them throughout the lifecycle of their product. The specially trained Samsung Experience Consultants will assist with product demonstrations, basic product services, Samsung account set up, warranty registration and post purchase support.

“Samsung has been delivering the latest innovation across the consumer electronics category for some time,” said Dale Sohn, president of Samsung Telecommunications America. “With the Samsung Experience Shops, we are ensuring consumers get the most of that innovation by learning how to leverage their mobile devices across our ecosystem of consumer electronics. Consumers will have one place to not only explore and learn about our full portfolio of mobile products, but also the support of a Samsung expert to help with selecting and servicing them. This will truly be a unique mobile shopping experience.”

The shops vary in size, with the largest being approximately 460 square feet. Within the larger shops, the Samsung Connected Solutions™ area creates a place for customers to see how easily Samsung devices connect and share content across multiple screens.

“We look forward to showcasing Samsung products in the Samsung Experience Shop in all Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile locations. This is part of our Renew Blue transformation strategy – working closely with vendor partners to innovate and drive value, while also updating our stores to focus on growing and profitable categories,” said Shawn Score, head of U.S. Retail for Best Buy. “Our promise to our customers is simple: we’re committed to providing the best value, service and selection. Our partnership with Samsung on the Samsung Experience Shop is another way we’re delivering on that promise.”

In addition to the in-store experience, a Samsung Experience Shop launches today online – www.bestbuy.com/samsungexperienceshop – featuring product shopping aisles and a full overview of the Samsung Experience Shop.

Come comment on this article: Samsung Experience Shops coming to 1400 Best Buy Stores

The Pritzker Group has hired David Hirsch as vice president, operations. Hirsch previously served as a manager in Crowe Horwath’s transaction services practice.

PRESS RELEASE
The Pritzker Group today announced that it hired David J. Hirsch as vice president, operations support to provide financial and accounting services across the investment firm’s family of companies.

Hirsch, 33, previously served as a manager in Crowe Horwath’s transaction services practice, providing buy-side and sell-side advisory services to private equity and corporate clients. A graduate of the University of Illinois, Hirsch received his CPA in 2003 and also spent five years in Deloitte & Touche’s audit and enterprise risk services group.

The Pritzker Group, led by Tony and J.B. Pritzker, has a 10-year history of acquiring and growing middle market companies. The firm is expanding its investing activities, which remain focused on family and entrepreneur-owned companies that lead their markets.

Other recent notable hires include Investment Partner Michael Nelson, former managing partner at Wind Point Partners, who leads The Pritzker Group’s manufactured products investment team.

“The Pritzker Group is building out its operations team to provide support for our growing family of companies,” said Paul Carbone, managing partner of private equity. “David will be responsible not only for transaction support, but also helping our companies coordinate purchasing, implement best practices and manage audit and tax responsibilities. The operations support team has a mandate to add value to our companies by working in partnership with our management teams as they execute their growth plans.”

About The Pritzker Group’s Middle-market Investment Team

The Pritzker Group’s middle-market investment team acquires North American-based companies with enterprise values between $75 and $400 million, focusing on quality businesses with leading positions in the manufactured products, healthcare and services sectors. The firm’s proprietary capital base allows for broad flexibility in its investment horizon, transaction structure and approach to creating long-term value, making it an ideal partner for entrepreneur- and family-owned businesses. The Pritzker Group brings large-company credibility, relationships and expertise to the middle market and can support its companies with additional growth capital. The firm’s middle-market and venture capital teams have acquired or invested in more than 100 companies over the past decade.

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WebKit has been powering Google’s Chrome Web browser since its launch in 2008. Google says that “its flexibility, performance, and thoughtful design” made it an obvious choice for Chrome when it launched, but the modern Web and modern Chrome require something different. That something different is Blink.

Google announced that it’s developing Blink, a fork of WebKit that will become the rendering engine for Chrome and Chrome OS. Google is moving to its own rendering engine in the hopes that it can reduce the complexity found in both WebKit and Chromium projects.

There is bound to be some concern from Web developers over Google abandoning WebKit. Google anticipated that concern, and said that Blink won’t bring a lot of change to how developers currently code for the Web. In fact, the initial work on Blink will be strictly focused on “internal architectural improvements and a simplification of the codebase.”

Of course, the greater implication here is that Google is introducing more competition to the Web. Web developers are already having to optimize Web sites for WebKit, Trident and Gecko. Google says that Blink is only a good thing, however, as it feels “multiple rendering engines… will spur innovation and over time improve the health of the entire open Web ecosystem.”

The philosophy held by Google seems to be shared by Mozilla as the non-profit announced a new Web rendering engine called Servo yesterday. The engine, being co-developed with Samsung, is being built with the mobile Web in mind.

It will be interesting to see if Google’s prediction of increased competition comes true. The company says that it will work with other Web vendors to make sure Web standards are observed, and that interoperability is retained. Still, I’ve always been of the opinion that we already have too many rendering engines, but Google and Mozilla may just prove my fears unfounded as we move into this next wave of Web development.

If you want to follow Blink development, check out Google’s project page.