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Microsoft knows something about cool codenames, but little on how to name actual products. Whistler, Longhorn, Cougar, Blackcomb, Vienna and even Blue all sound great, resounding and promising, but that impression goes away fast when Microsoft baptizes its creations: XP, Vista or 7. The guy with the cool names went on a bathroom break, and all the boring suits took over.

That’s the very same impression I get after reading about Microsoft’s “Looking Back and Springing Ahead” blog post, which touts a number of apparently impressive achievements and future plans that the company has. Lo and behold, there’s even a strategy in place to raise the pace for “updates and innovations” — that’s the “new normal across Microsoft”, according to the company. But then I notice the Windows Blue reference.

On Windows Blue, Frank X. Shaw, corporate vice president of corporate communications at Microsoft, says: “Chances of products being named thusly are slim to none. And don’t start with the ‘so you’re telling me there’s a chance’ bit”. Blue may not be the most imposing name, but it’s out there with the big boys, and now the software giant is practically telling us that the boring route will be used instead.

I can only speculate that Windows Blue will be named Windows 9 or something along those lines, after the product is released into public hands (even as a preview). Admittedly, Microsoft may want to avoid future genitalia puns (which I shall not name) but I expected the company to grow a pair and get bold.

Apple manages to deliver successful operating system releases that users adopt and keep cool, and memorable, nicknames as well. Just think about Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. Anything is better than boring and when you want to hang around with the cool kids, hip is the way to go. Adapt and conquer.

But what else is there in that blog post? Microsoft reveals that Windows Azure has twice as many users with revenue growing three fold, while sales of Windows Server 2012 Datacenter licenses increased in excess of 80 percent. Great news comes from Office 365 “paid seats”, which have tripled year over year during the previous quarter. The software giant also quotes an IDC report that places Windows Phone at 10 percent market share “in a number of countries”, surpassing Blackberry and iPhone shipments in 26 and seven markets, respectively.

This is hardly surprising, but Microsoft also announced that a “unified planning approach” is implemented in order to deliver “devices, apps and services working together wherever [users] are and for whatever [users] are doing”.

Judging by the title of the blog post and the innuendo at the end, Microsoft did not bury the hatchet after Google killed a couple more services under the now-traditional spring cleaning. “See, spring isn’t just for cleaning/whacking away at things. It’s also a time to plant and get ready for summer. So…get ready!” Shaw says.

Final Book Now Available

Beginning with the development of the atomic bomb during World War II, the United States continued to build nuclear weapons throughout the Cold War. Thousands of people mined and milled uranium, conducted research on nuclear warfare, or worked in nuclear munitions factories around the country from the 1940s through the 1980s. Such work continues today, albeit to a smaller extent. The Department of Energy (DOE) is now responsible for overseeing those sites and facilities, many of which were, and continue to be, run by government contractors. The materials used at those sites were varied and ranged from the benign to the toxic and highly radioactive. Workers at DOE facilities often did not know the identity of the materials with which they worked and often were unaware of health risks related to their use. In many instances, the work was considered top secret, and employees were cautioned not to reveal any work-related information to family or others. Workers could be exposed to both radioactive and nonradioactive toxic substances for weeks or even years. Consequently, some of the workers have developed health problems and continue to have concerns about potential health effects of their exposures to occupational hazards during their employment in the nuclear weapons industry.

In response to the concerns expressed by workers and their representatives, DOL asked the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to review the SEM database and its use of a particular database, Haz-Map, as the source of its toxic substance-occupational disease links. Accordingly, this IOM consensus report reflects careful consideration of its charge by the committee, and describes the strengths and shortcomings of both. To complete its task, IOM formed an ad hoc committee of experts in occupational medicine, toxicology, epidemiology, industrial hygiene, public health, and biostatistics to conduct an 18-month study to review the scientific rigor of the SEM database. The committee held two public meetings at which it heard from DOL Division of Energy Employee Occupational Illness Compensation (DEEOIC) representatives, the DOL contractor that developed the SEM database, the developer of the Haz-Map database, DOE worker advocacy groups, and several individual workers. The committee also submitted written questions to DOL to seek clarification of specific issues and received written responses from DEEOIC. The committee’s report considers both the strengths and weaknesses of the SEM and the Haz-Map databases, recognizing that the latter was developed first and for a different purpose. The committee then discusses its findings and recommends improvements that could be made in both databases with a focus on enhancing the usability of SEM for both DOL claims examiners and for former DOE workers and their representatives. Review of the Department of Labor’s Site Exposure Matrix Database summarizes the committee’s findings.

[Read the full report]

Topics: Health and Medicine

Springpad has always made it easy to take content from all over the web and organize them in notebooks on its online portal and mobile apps. Now it’s allowing its customers to take those same notebooks outside of its app and display them anywhere on the web.

As part of its upgrade to version 4.0 of its service, Springpad on Wednesday unveiled a notebook-embedding feature for publishers and brands. The idea is that brands will create notebooks full of relevant content for their customers and then post those notebooks on their websites. Customers can browse and interact with those notebooks just as they would through Springpad’s web and mobile apps, and if they find something they like they can save those notebooks into their own Springpad libraries.

For instance, one of Springpad’s new partners, Glamour, is using embedded notebooks to aggregate everything from beauty tips and shopping list suggestions to specific articles on fashions or product pages. Customers never have to leave Glamour’s site to explore that notebook, but if they want to save the notebook it will be copied into a new or existing Springpad account. There the notebook lives on the user’s library – every time Glamour updates it, the customer’s digital copy reflects the new content.

Springpad co-founder and VP of Business Development Jeff Janer said that brands have long been taking advantage of social media and curation services to promote their content and products, but while Facebook and Pinterest generate an awful lot of traffic, there’s limited follow-through. For instance, many customers may “like” a brand’s Facebook profile, but there’s little chance they’ll return to it after the initial liking. Pinterest is a great way for brands to display their wares in a visually appealing way, but beyond the visual, there are few options for displaying other forms of content.

While embedded notebooks are initially targeted at companies  and advertising agencies that will pay Springpad for the service, Janer said they’re just a first step in the startup’s strategy to make all of its user-organized content portable. Right now a lot of loose information flows into Springpad, gets organized and then stays in Springpad. The company wants to encourage users to take those notebooks outside Springpad’s confines and show the world their organizational labors, Janer said.

Right now, anyone can embed a notebook into a Facebook page, but Janer said Springpad is working with blogging platforms and other social networks to increase its reach. Eventually Springpad hopes to make posting a notebook anywhere on the web as easy as embedding a YouTube video.

Springpad 4.0 isn’t quite a facelift of last year’s 3.0 upgrade, which effectively turned Springpad from a note-taking service into a social networking and collaboration tool. But it is supporting another nifty new feature: intent-based search. Springpad has created new search categories that parse a user’s content based on specific interests or activities.

For instance, if you want to be entertained, you can hit the “watch something” button and Springpad will dig up every movie or TV show you’ve ever “sprung” and display them in a menu. Any movie or show that is available instantly through Netflix will pop up on top. Movies that are available for rent or purchase on iTunes or Amazon will appear next. And finally showtimes and prices for films in the theater will appear at the bottom.

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As previously reported, West Virginia is already looking to outlaw the use of devices like Google Glass while driving. Other states are likely to follow.

The device has not even become available for people to buy yet, outside of the lucky chosen few who won Google’s contest. Should this really be outlawed before we can really see how they can be used?

H.B. 3057 was recently introduced in the West Virginia legislature. It would add existing traffic safety rules in the state, specifically including a ban on “using a wearable computer with head mounted display”. This is described as “a computing device which is worn on the head and projects visual information into the field of vision of the wearer.”

The bill doesn’t single out Google Glass, of course (there will be plenty of competing devices), but it is a response to Google’s much hyped device. The bills authors see the amendment as an extension of not texting while driving. It’s understandable that they would want to prevent more deaths from reckless driving before they occur. However, an outright ban on the device could potentially prevent lives from being saved too.

You have to take into account that at this point we have no idea what these devices are really capable of, and it’s highly likely that developers will create applications that actually enhance safety. Consider this talk from one of the Google Glass engineers, who was actually talking about this kind of technology as it pertains to contact lenses (but it still applies here).

During his presentation, he outlines possibilities for the future, which include several types of vision improvement, such as “super vision,” night vision and multi-focal electronic lenses. In other words, it’s possible that at some point, devices like Google Glass could actually be used to help the vision impaired see better and more clearly. It’s possible that they can enhance anyone’s vision at night. Obviously, any of these scenarios could actually prevent auto accidents.

But that’s all just speculation for a possible future. The point is, do we want to have these devices banned before we really know what they can do? For that matter, if the technology makes it to contact lens form, how would any law ever be enforced?

It’s also worth considering what they’re already capable of today, and that is, for one, shifting the focus from devices that require you to look away from the road. You’re taking your eyes off the road when you look at your phone, or even your dashboard/console. With Google Glass, you’re not.

As Matt Peckham at Time says, “West Virginia already bans texting while driving or using a phone without a hands-free device…But isn’t Google Glass also a hands-free device for your eyes? A way of potentially freeing you from looking at things that might otherwise take your eyes completely off the road, whether glancing at your phone to check the time or answer a call or scan the weather?”

Still, it’s not that simple. I, for one, have not had the pleasure of trying one of the devices on, much less driving while wearing and operating one. I can’t speak from first-hand experience. It’s entirely possible that it does create distractions, and maybe there is valid argument for a ban. But banning the devices this early seems like a snap judgment that doesn’t take into consideration all possible factors.

Let’s not forget that Google started creating self-driving cars to reduce the number of auto accidents and make the roads safer. Some states like the idea of these being legal. Of course, driverless cars are more accident prone when humans are involved.

What do you think?

Lead image: Google co-founder Sergey Brin driving while automatically snapping photos from Google Glass

Netflix has just announced that they have gained the exclusive rights to the Wachowskis’ new sci-fi series Sense8. The 10-episode first season will debut on Netflix Instant in late 2014.

This is the first TV series to come from the Wachowskis, who are known as the minds behind The Matrix, V for Vendetta, and Cloud Atlas. Also attached to the project is Babylon 5‘s J. Michael Straczynski.

“Andy and Lana Wachowski and Joe Straczynski are among the most imaginative writers and gifted visual storytellers of our time,” said Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos . “Their incredible creations are favorites of Netflix members globally and we can’t wait to bring Sense8 to life.”

There’s not much in the way of plot details coming out of the announcement. Netflix describes it as a “gripping global tale of minds linked and souls hunted,” and says that it will be a sci-fi thriller told in the Wachowskis’ unique storytelling style.

“We’re excited to work with Netflix and Georgeville Television on this project, and we’ve wanted to work with Joe Straczynski for years, chiefly due to the fact his name is harder to pronounce than ours, but also because we share a love of genre and all things nerdy,” said Andy and Lana Wachowski . “Several years ago, we had a late night conversation about the ways technology simultaneously unites and divides us, and out of that paradox Sense8 was born.”

Netflix’s first foray into big-budget original content, the political thriller House of Cards, was by all accounts a huge hit for the company. It quickly became the most-watched title on the service, and topped IMDb’s list of most popular shows.

The original content strategy seems to have paid off in terms of Netflix’s stated goal – boosting subscribers. One survey showed that House of Cards made 86% of Netflix users more likely to stick around.

Likely, many are sticking around for more high-quality original content.

On April 19th, Netflix will debut the Eli Roth original horror series Hemlock Grove. The company has also announced a new kids series, Turbo: F.A.S.T., set to debut at the end of 2013. We’ve also heard talk of an original series based on the live of Pablo Escobar called Narcos that’s slated for a 2014 release.

Bill Gates‘ philanthropy continues to press hard on issues that may seem odd, but are actually essential to propping up the developing world.

Last year, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) selected a reinvention of the toilet that functions as a solar-powered wastewater treatment system. Now, Gates is challenging inventors to use improvements in materials science to develop a condom that feels good.

As part of the BMGF’s Grand Challenges in Global Health initiatives, the foundation is offering a $100,000 grant to someone who is willing to design a “next generation condom that significantly preserves or enhances pleasure, in order to improve uptake and regular use.”

The idea is that, as reliable and easy-to-use as condoms are, men supposedly experience more pleasure having bareback sex than they do using a condom. The challenge asks:

Is it possible to develop a product without this stigma, or better, one that is felt to enhance pleasure? If so, would such a product lead to substantial benefits for global health, both in terms of reducing the incidence of unplanned pregnancies and in prevention of infection with HIV or other STIs?

The challenge states that condoms have been in use for around 400 years, and have not improved in the past 50 years. However, the scientific advances made in the past 50 years, the initiative reads, have not been applied to this important area:

Material science and our understanding of neurobiology has undergone revolutionary transformation in the last decade yet that knowledge has not been applied to improve the product attributes of one of the most ubiquitous and potentially underutilized products on earth. New concept designs with new materials can be prototyped and tested quickly. Large-scale human clinical trials are not required. Manufacturing capacity, marketing, and distribution channels are already in place.

A better feeling condom could go a long way to convincing some men that they might as well roll one on before sex, if only for their own safety. However, the question of how a condom feels during sex isn’t the only factor that has prevented the condom from better curbing STIs and the AIDS epidemic seen in some regions of the world. Religious beliefs in particular continue to hinder the distribution and adoption of condoms in the developing world – and those can’t simply be engineered away.

With the expansion of cloud computing and various cloud services – many organizations are now further considering some type of cloud model. In many instances, companies looking to keep their data outside of a provider are looking to move to a private cloud platform. Where this type of environment can certainly bring a lot of benefits; the deployment and planning process have to be conducted very carefully. One of the first concepts to understand is that there isn’t just one magical cloud product. Rather, cloud computing revolved around the functionality of many different data center and infrastructure components.

To move to a cloud model, there has to be a solid understanding of those underlying components and how they all work together. Starting with a look at infrastructure and virtualization through process and governance, Cisco’s video discusses the Cisco Domain Ten —the ten essential domains you need to know to get started with the cloud journey.

[Image source: Cisco.com | Cisco Domain Ten – Simplifying Data Center Transformation]

Based upon the many cloud deployments — private and public, enterprise, public sector and service provider – Cisco worked to formulate this comprehensive framework to help you transform your data center and guide new initiatives.  In many cases, these new projects may include cloud, virtual desktop, application migration, and data center consolidation.

Click here to view Cisco’s video on The Cisco Domain Ten framework.  The important takeaway here will be the understanding of the ten key framework areas, or domains, that critical to consider, plan for and address as part of your data center and cloud transformational process.

When the Kindle Fire HD was announced last year, Amazon introduced X-Ray for movies along with it. The software, powered by IMDb, brought up the names of all the actors currently onscreen along with each actor’s filmography. Now that same software is making its way over to the world of television.

Amazon announced today that X-Ray for TV is now available to all Kindle Fire device owners, as well as those using the Amazon Instant Video app on the Wii U. Amazon says that X-Ray will be available for the most popular TV shows on Instant Video including Downtown Abbey, Game of Thrones, Lost, Doctor Who and The Walking Dead.

“X-Ray has been one of the most loved features on Kindle Fire HD since it launched last September,” said Peter Larsen, Vice President, Amazon Kindle. “For people who are passionate about movies and TV, there is no better way to watch than on Kindle Fire HD, which combines an exceptional viewing experience with the unbelievable power of the over 100 million pieces of data in IMDb’s catalog.”

IMDb says that it’s now working to get X-Ray into every movie and TV show hosted on Amazon Instant Video:

“For over 20 years we have been cultivating a vast database of movie, TV and celebrity content,” said Col Needham, IMDb Founder and CEO. “Can’t remember where you’ve seen the actor playing Lord Grantham in Downton Abbey? No problem. Simply tap on the screen and you’ll see a full filmography, where you’ll realize that Hugh Bonneville was also in Notting Hill. Our vision is to make X-Ray available on every movie and TV show—we’re excited to make another big step forward today, and we are working hard to add X-Ray to more TV shows and movies in the future.”

X-Ray continues to be one of things that helps set Amazon Instant Video apart from the competition. It’s also investing in more original content to better compete with Netflix’s House of Cards and the new season of Arrested Development.

Merlin Entertainments Group, the private-equity backed owner of Madame Tussauds and Legoland, is preparing to go public in either London or New York and has been meeting with potential investors, its chief executive said on Wednesday. The world’s second largest visitor attraction operator behind Walt Disney, had revenue of over one billion pounds for the year to Dec. 29 2012, and was valued at 2.25 billion pounds ($3.41 billion) in 2010 when private equity firm CVC Capital Partners bought a stake.

(Reuters) – Merlin Entertainments Group, the private-equity backed owner of Madame Tussauds and Legoland, is preparing to go public in either London or New York and has been meeting with potential investors, its chief executive said on Wednesday.

The world’s second largest visitor attraction operator behind Walt Disney, had revenue of over one billion pounds for the year to Dec. 29 2012, and was valued at 2.25 billion pounds ($3.41 billion) in 2010 when private equity firm CVC Capital Partners bought a stake.

“We are definitely now considering our options,” Chief Executive Nick Varney told Reuters, adding a sale would allow it to pay down debt of 1.27 billion pounds as at the end of December, and help fund expansion in the U.S and Asia.

The company said as part of any IPO it would consider bringing its leverage level down below 3 times earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation from a current multiple of 3.6 times.

Merlin, owned by the Danish investment company Kirkbi A/S that controls Lego Group, and private equity firms Blackstone Group and CVC, put off plans for a listing in 2010 due to jittery markets.

After years of subdued activity, European initial public offerings (IPO) have picked up over the last few months as improving stock markets boost investor confidence.

Last week, British insurer esure, estate agent Countrywide and wind farm investment fund Greencoat UK Wind raised a combined total of more than 1 billion pounds ($1.52 billion) from selling their shares in London.

PREPARING THE GROUND

With the summer months being Merlin’s key trading period, Varney said the group would likely make a decision towards the end of summer, with a float possible in late 2013 or early 2014.

“We’ve been putting a lot of work into preparing the ground and making sure that if we do (IPO) … we can move relatively quickly and with people knowing and feeling comfortable about what they are dealing with.”

Varney said the company, which currently earns 20 percent of its revenue in the U.S., would prefer to list in London, but was also considering New York. He declined to comment on how much Merlin might be worth.

Walt Disney shares trade at 16.4 times prospective earnings for 2013.

Late last year Seaworld Parks and Entertainment, also backed by U.S. private equity company Blackstone, filed with U.S. regulators for an initial public offering.

On Wednesday Merlin reported a 16.5 percent rise in operating profit to 258 million pounds for the year to Dec. 29, as expansion in the U.S. and Asian markets helped mitigate the impact of the euro zone crisis, wet weather and London Olympics.

The group opened seven new attractions in 2012, taking it to almost 100 over four continents, and will open another six this year including a Sea Life centre in Manchester, England and Legoland discovery centre in New York.

A listing would likely include some new shares to help pay down debt, but the bulk would come from existing shareholders reducing their stakes, chief financial officer Andrew Carr said.

Kirkbi has a 36 percent stake, while Blackstone and CVC have 34 percent and 28 percent respectively.

Merlin had hired Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, UBS and Nomura as advisers in 2010 before abandoning its plan.

“It’s good that the market seems to be opening again, it’s been closed for a long time, there does seem to be a lot of appetite,” said Varney, adding that it had not yet appointed banks. (By Kylie MacLellan and Neil Maidment)

The post Reuters – Merlin Entertainments Plans Share Sale appeared first on peHUB.

The director of Nokia’s Here mapping platform, Sylvain Grande, is leaving the company to join SoundCloud, GigaOM can reveal.

Grande, who will take on an as-yet-undisclosed role at the Berlin-based audio platform firm next week, worked on Here Maps (formerly Nokia Maps) since the end of 2008. He ran the teams – also located in Berlin — that develop Here for Windows Phone, the web and other platforms. According to his LinkedIn profile, he was also “strongly involved in Nokia Maps’ key partnerships (from negotiation to delivery) with Yahoo!, Microsoft and others”.

Nokia tells me Grande won’t have a direct replacement as such. He reported to Thom Brenner, Nokia’s vice president of applications, location and commerce, and various members of Brenner’s team will take over his responsibilities.

The move comes at an interesting time for both SoundCloud and Nokia’s Here platform. SoundCloud has done a great job becoming the so-called YouTube of audio, but is only now starting to get serious about making money. Meanwhile, last month Nokia announced that it is opening up the Here platform to third-party developers, a shift that I reckon points to a strengthening of the platform’s significance for the company.

Grande’s jump to SoundCloud isn’t unprecedented. Indeed, SoundCloud co-founder Eric Wahlforss used to work at gate5, the Berlin mapping company that, along with Navteq and Plazes, was acquired by Nokia to form the underpinnings of what is now Here. Sources tell me at least one other developer has also left Nokia’s Berlin operations for SoundCloud, so there appears to be some active courting going on.

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Apple Insider has been working hard to unearth information about the Apple data center project in Reno, Nevada. After a drive-by shed little light, the site has obtained some aerial photos and one close-up of a new structure on the Apple site.

“As the project site was still being finalized, the company asked for permission to begin work on an initial, aproximately 20,000-square-foot structure to get head start on the construction project,” AppleInsider reports.

This is similar to the approach the company has taken in Prineville, Oregon, where a small structure was deployed quickly, with two larger buildings to follow.

What does this Apple facility look like? Hop over to Apple Insider for a quick look at the photos, and then come back. It’s a long, rectangular structure with a sloped roof with a peak in the center. Let’s see, where have we seen something like that before …

That’s an image of the Yahoo “Computing Coop” data center in Lockport, New York. The similarity shouldn’t be too surprising, since one of the Yahoo data center executives who worked on the Yahoo Lockport project, Scott Noteboom, now is a leader of the data center team at Apple.

There are some similarities between the two designs, but some differences as well. Both retain the “coop” structure, adopted from chicken coops that channel hot air into the upper area of the building. Both have large louvers and fans, effectively turning the building into a huge air handler to circulate air around the IT equipment.

But the Apple facility in Reno appears to be missing the “cupola” that runs along the crest of the roof on the Yahoo data centers, which allows rising server waste heat to be evacuated from the highest point of the roof. This suggests that Apple is using a different approach in handling the removal of hot air. The AppleInsider photos don’t present a full view of the positioning of the louvers on the side of building, but there are large fans and louvers at the end of the facility – which could mean an airflow pattern in which fresh air enters the side of the building, flows through the servers, and then through the hot aisle and into a plenum that brings the hot air out through the end of the building. Or not – only Apple knows for sure.

It’s interesting to note that the design in Reno is different from the smaller “tactical data center” that sits alongside the 500,000 square foot main building at Apple’s campus in Maiden, North Carolina. Here’s a photo from Apple:

As is the history with Apple, many of the technical details remain undisclosed. But what’s clear is that Apple is using a combination of small and large facilities, and mixing traditional big-box brick-and-mortar structures with pre-fabricated  modular components to speed its time to market. It’s a flexible approach that matches facility design to capacity planning – as well as the possibility that workloads are being matched to different types facilities (as Facebook has done with its cold storage data center).

Sometimes, kids have trouble saying certain words. And sometimes, it’s hilarious. In my opinion, this kid knew exactly what he was doing by the end of the video. Well played, kid, well played.

You know where this is going…

[aaronreynolds via reddit]

Google has released Chrome 26 FINAL for Windows, Mac and Linux. The latest release proffers three relatively minor new features, including improved spellchecking, plus 11 specific security fixes.

The most notable changes in Chrome 26 are improvements to the spell-checker tool. All supported dictionaries have been refreshed, while Korean, Tamil and Albanian support have all been added. Those using the Google Sync feature will be pleased to learn that any custom words added to the dictionary can now be synced to other devices along with other settings.

Also tweaked is the “Ask Google for suggestions” spell-checking feature. The feature — powered by the same technologies found in Google’s search engine — now supports checks for grammar, proper nouns, homonyms — words with the same spelling or sound, but a different meaning — and context-sensitive spell-checking, albeit only in English at present.

At the present time, only basic support is implemented in Windows and Linux, with the features expected to roll out over the next few weeks. Mac support should follow soon. The Ask Google for suggestions feature isn’t switched on by default – right-click inside a text box and enable it from the Spell-checker options sub-menu.

Also added in version 26 is a Windows-only feature that allows users to now save desktop shortcuts for individual user profiles on the desktop allowing users to quickly launch Chrome with their user settings applied. The option appears when creating a new user, and the shortcut places the user profile icon on top of the default Chrome icon for easy identification.

The final new feature is the addition of an asynchronous DNS resolver on Mac and Linux platforms – the feature is already present in the Windows build. The asynchronous DNS resolver is used to help speed up DNS resolution time – the time taken for a typed web address to be translated into its actual four-digit IP address before the site can be loaded.

11 specific security fixes and “rewards” have also been implemented in Chrome 26, including two rated high: one ensures isolated websites are run in their own process, while the other fixes an issue — “use-after-free” — in Web Audio. Google Chrome 26 FINAL is available now as a free download for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Battery Ventures led a $20 million Series C round for Q2ebanking, a provider of electronic banking software for banks and credit unions. Return backers Adams Street Partners and C&B Capital also participated in the round. Q2ebanking is based in Austin, Texas.

PRESS RELEASE
March 27, 2013 – Croft & Bender, an Atlanta-based investment banking and private equity firm, is pleased to announce the successful completion of a $20 million Series C financing for its client, Q2ebanking. The funding was led by Battery Ventures, a Boston-based venture capital firm, with additional participation from existing investors including Adams Street Partners and C&B Capital.

Headquartered in Austin, Texas, Q2ebanking is a leading provider of highly secure electronic banking solutions for banks and credit unions throughout the U.S. The Company’s ebanking platform provides flexible deployment options for online banking, mobile and tablet banking, voice banking as well as a security application to effectively mitigate fraud risk for community focused financial institutions. By utilizing a single platform approach, Q2 delivers a more streamlined, better managed, fully featured solution designed to take full advantage of the anytime, anywhere aspects of the e-channel delivery model, enabling financial institutions to maximize their value contribution and better serve the needs of their customers.

The company provides its solutions for approximately 400 financial institutions, reaching over 3 million online users. The company has exhibited impressive revenue growth of 51 percent in 2012 and 49 percent in 2011.

Croft & Bender was retained as the exclusive financial advisor and placement agent to Q2ebanking in the capital raise. “We received inbound interest from a number of different parties about participating in our Series C round. Croft & Bender knew what we were looking for in a partner and had the experience to coordinate an efficient process that enabled us to quickly evaluate our alternatives and choose the best partner. We are thrilled with the result and excited to be partnering with Battery Ventures,” said Q2ebanking CEO Matt Flake.

“We are very fortunate to be involved with Q2ebanking. The combination of its best-in-class electronic banking solutions for banks and credit unions, driven management team, and accolades as one of the best places to work shows the company’s dedication to its core values and culture that will ensure its continued success,” commented Steve Tye, Managing Director of Croft & Bender.

The post Q2ebanking Adds $20M in New Financing appeared first on peHUB.

Yes I know, an Amazon phone has been rumored for what seems like an eternity, but the latest rumor is they will go into mass production during the later part of the 2nd quarter. As far as specs go, it’s rumored that it will come with a 4.7-inch display. Apparently they were initially going to go with a 4.3-inch display, but they went bigger since that’s what everybody (other than Apple fanboys) seems to want these days. The rest of the specs aren’t confirmed and supposedly Amazon is still “enhancing other specifications”, which could be the reason for the delays we reported about a couple of weeks ago. This one should be interesting so stay tuned.

source: DigiTimes

Come comment on this article: Amazon Kindle smartphone to go into production in Q2 with a 4.7-inch display

I am uncomfortable with the growing emphasis on big data and its stylist, visualization. Don’t get me wrong — I love infographic representations of large data sets. The value of representing information concisely and effectively dates back to Florence Nightingale, when she developed a new type of pie chart to clearly show that more soldiers were dying from preventable illnesses than from their wounds. On the other hand, I see beautiful exercises in special effects that show off statistical and technical skills, but do not clearly serve an informing purpose. That’s what makes me squirm.

Ultimately, data visualization is about communicating an idea that will drive action. Understanding the criteria for information to provide valuable insights and the reasoning behind constructing data visualizations will help you do that with efficiency and impact.

For information to provide valuable insights, it must be interpretable, relevant, and novel. With so much unstructured data today, it is critical that the data being analyzed generate interpretable information. Collecting lots of data without the associated metadata — such as what is it, where was it collected, when, how and by whom — reduces the opportunity to play with, interpret, and gain insights from the data. It must also be relevant to the persons who are looking to gain insights, and to the purpose for which the information is being examined. Finally, it must be original, or shed new light on an area. If the information fails any one of these criteria, then no visualization can make it valuable. That means that only a tiny slice of the data we can bring to life visually will actually be worth the effort.

Once we’ve narrowed the universe of data down to those that satisfy these three requirements, we must also understand the legitimate reasons to construct data visualizations, and recognize what factors affect the quality of data visualizations. There are three broad reasons for visualizing data:

• Confirmation: If we already have a set of assumptions about how the system we are interested in — for example, a market, customers, or competitors — operates, visualizations can help us check those assumptions. They can also enable us to observe whether the underlying system has deviated from the model we had and assess the risk of the actions we are about to undertake based upon those assumptions. You see this approach in some enterprise dashboards.
• Education: There are two forms of education that visualization offers. One is simply reporting: here is how we measure the underlying system of interest, and here are the values of those measures in some comparative form — for instance, over time, or against other systems or models. The other is to develop intuition and new insights on the behavior of a known system as it evolves and changes over time, so that humans can get an experiential feel of the system in an extremely compressed time frame. You often see this model in the “gameification” in training and development.
• Exploration: When we have large sets of data about a system we are interested in and the goal is to provide optimal human-machine interactions (HMI) to that data to tease out relationships, processes, models, etc., we can use visualization to help build a model to allow us to predict and better manage the system. The practice of using visual discovery in lieu of statistics is called exploratory data analysis (EDA) and too few businesses make use of it.

Assuming the visualization creator has gotten it all right — a well-defined purpose; the necessary and sufficient amount of data and meta data to make the visualization interpretable; enabling relevant and original insights for the business — what gives us confidence that these insights are now worthy of action? Our ability to understand and to a degree control three areas of risk can define the visualizations’ resulting value to the business:

• Data quality: The quality of the underlying data is crucial to the value of visualization. How complete and reliable is it? As with all analytical processes, putting garbage in means getting garbage out.
• Context: The point of visualization is to make large amounts of data approachable so we can apply our evolutionarily honed pattern detection computer — i.e., our brain — to draw insights from it. To do so, we need to access all of the potential relationships of the data elements. This context is the source of insight. To leave out any contextual information or metadata (or more appropriately, “metacontent”) is to risk hampering our understanding.
• Biases: The creator of the visualization may influence the semantics of the visualization and the syntax of the elements of the visualization via color choices, positioning, and visual tricks (such as unnecessary 3D, or 2D when 3D is more informative) — any of which can challenge the interpretation of the data. This also creates the risk of “pre-specifying” discoverable features and results via the embedded algorithms used by the creator (something EDA is intended to overcome). These in turn can significantly influence how viewers understand the visualization, and what insight they will gather from it.

Ignoring these requirements and risks can undermine the visualization’s purpose and confuse rather than enlighten.

Visualizing Data
An HBR Insight Center

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If you’ve been on Facebook in the last day or two, you’ve probably seen a whole lot of red equal signs as people change their profile pictures to show their support fo marriage equality. ‘Equality’ was the top term buzzing on Facebook on Tuesday, followed by DOMA, and Supreme Court. Also on the list: Prop 8, SCOTUS and Defense of Marriage.

It’s been interesting to see the creative ways people are using the red equal sign in their own ways. Appropriately, Martha Stewart Living went the cake route:

The post currently has nearly 14,000 likes and nearly 16,000 shares. The profile picture is still Martha Stewart’s face, however.

The red equal sign image started with the Human Rights Campaign, which posted it on their Facebook page. It’s a play on the campaign’s logo, which is traditionally yellow on blue.

It’s highly likely that many of the red equal signs will continue to penetrate your Facebook news feed throughout today, as the court will hear arguments on the Defense of Marriage Act. As previously reported, a number of tech companies, including Facebook itself (and Google), have filed an amicus brief arguing that the act is bad for business.

Mashable, which pointed to the Martha Stewart image has a slideshow of various brands that are showing their support.

Residents of Santa Clara, Calif. not only have a new smart meter program but free outdoor Wi-Fi to boot. The city’s non-profit electric municipal utility, Silicon Valley Power (SVP), is taking advantage of connected electric meters by integrating support for a second public unencrypted Wi-Fi channel, allowing the city to blanket the airwaves with free Wi-Fi.

SVP expects to support around 5,000 daily connections on the new public network, which has an SSID, or network name, of “SVPMeterConnectWiFi.” There’s no login, no password, nor credentials of any kind needed to use the outdoor wireless network. Utility data from the meters will be sent securely, however.

While the new network should add convenience around town, residents shouldn’t expect super high speeds: SVP says the connections will top out around 1 Mbps, which is slightly slower than 3G mobile broadband speeds. But for occasional use to check email, social networks and other light usage, those speeds should be more than sufficient; plus, you can’t beat the price!

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