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If you’re the owner of RSS.com, there’s probably no better time than now to try and sell it.

On the heels of Google’s decision to kill their popular Google Reader RSS feed product and the outrage spawned by that decision, Ron Sheridan is trying to sell RSS.com. The asking price? $200,000.

He initially acquired the doman for $125,000.

The sale is being brokered by WebsiteBrokerage.com, who also represents brand.com, geo.org, and haircare.com

RSS.com still boasts its plans, which is to “launch a high quality RSS reader, married to a crowd sourced, crowd curated RSS feed directory.”

They says that this “community approach will allow users to drill down to top subject matter content and experts quickly and efficiently.”

That plans never really worked out for Sheridan, and now he’s looking to sell.

With Google Reader on the way out, there’s now a giant void that must be filled (unless you think RSS is dead). Digg has announced plans to build their own Reader replacement. Existing feed readers like Feedly and Newsblur are looking to capitalize on the many Google Reader users looking for an alternative. Will someone step up and bring RSS.com’s plans to life? 200 large is a pretty hefty asking price, but who knows?

[via The Next Web]

If you thought the era of silly shape patents was over, don’t hold your breath. Months after Apple used a patent for rounded rectangles to chase away iPad competitors, Motorola has received a patent for an eight-sided cellphone design.

The Patent Office approved the new “invention” this week and the news was first reported on Twitter by Professor Sarah Burstein:

First, rounded rectangles; now, rounded octagons. D678,232, issued to @Motorola for a “Communication Device.” http://t.co/jLkfsTM3lp—
Sarah Burstein (@design_law) March 21, 2013

Burstein, who is a design patent expert at the University of Oklahoma, explained that her “rounded octagon” comment was tongue-in-cheek but confirmed that the patent had been granted and that it covers the displayed shape of a smartphone.

She added that the scope of Motorola’s design patent is more narrow than Apple’s infamous rounded rectangles patent. Here is a picture from Apple’s patent:

To successfully invoke its new patent against an infringer, Burstein said Motorola would have to show that a consumer would find the supposedly infringing product has the same design as Motorola’s design.

The “rounded octagon” patent is likely to add more grist for critics who question the wisdom of granting monopoly protection over basic shapes and concepts (14 years for design patents, 20 for regular ones). This year, a new law in the U.S. has made it easier to obtain design patents, which are cheaper and faster to get than regular patents. Meanwhile, companies like Apple continue to use a variety of other intellectual property measures like trademark, trade dress and copyright to wrap legal force fields around their products.

The new patent may provide new ammunition to Google, which owns Motorola, in its ceaseless rounds of patent litigation with Apple and other rivals in courtrooms around the world.

The patent can be seen at the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Unfortunately, the USPTO’s website only permits images to be viewed with Internet Explorer, Netscape or Opera browsers. If you’re using another browser, here’s a PDF link.

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A appears a number of Sony Xperia Z handsets are dying and becoming completely useless. Users are reporting that the phone is acting fine and then all of a sudden, poof, it powers down and cannot be turned on again. There doesn’t seem to be anything obvious that is causing the problem, but Sony is aware of the problem and will fix it with the next update. Unfortunately, no timeline was offered.

Some users have found that a hard restart (power button + volume up) can get it working again, so give it a try if you experience the sudden death.

source: xperiablog

 

Come comment on this article: Sony to raise Xperia Z handsets from the dead with software fix

Eight days ago, Google dropped an atomic bomb on the Android Army, with Andy Rubin’s sudden departure as commander-in-chief. Sundar Pichai, who is responsible for Chrome and Apps, assumed Android leadership. The change led to much speculation that the operating system would sometime soon merge with Chrome OS. As the fallout spreads, an answer arrives: The question is irrelevant.

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt tells reporters in India that Android and Chrome OS will not merge but converge, says Reuter’s Devidutta Tripathy. But there’s no quote, just paraphrase, which worries me about context. Fortunately, there is a video that provides context and reveals a different priority: Chrome.

Someone asked Schmidt if either operating system would suffer Google Readers’ fate. “No is the answer. We don’t make decisions based on who the leader is”. Google makes decisions “based on where the technology takes us”.

From today’s many new stories, which focus on the two operating systems remaining separate, you might assume Schmidt addresses question: “Will they merge?” Instead, he responds to one about a Google Reader-like execution and then changes direction.

“Chrome and Chromium are the world’s best HTML5 development and authoring systems”, he says. “You should be using Chrome. It’s faster, it’s safer, it’s more secure than any of your other browser choices. In Android, which is more of a Java-like development environment, it solves a different problem”.

This confirms what I observed last week. Rubin’s stepping aside and Pichai taking responsibility is about the browser, not an OS merger. “There will be more commonality for sure, but they certainly are going to remain separate for a very, very long time”, Schmidt says. “They solve different problems”.

But the context for the problems solved is Chrome. On Android, “it” — Chrome — “solves a different problem”. Google’s go-forward platform of choice isn’t Android or Chrome OS but the browser.

Chrome and Chromium fulfill Netscape’s late-1990’s vision for a browser-based platform, something Microsoft sought to prevent.

The browser, as development platform, can co-opt operating systems like iOS, OS X or Windows, while also fronting Chrome OS. The browser is more natural fit for Google services and anchors them anywhere.

By contrast, Android, while hugely popular, is constrained by OEM partners like Samsung. Google delivers fresh features to Chrome and Chrome OS users about every six weeks. Chrome Beta for Android updates are considerably more frequent.

Android updates are less frequent and carriers and device manufacturers logjam dispatch. For example, Jelly Bean, which released in July 2012, makes up just 25.5 percent of the devices accessing Google Play in the 14 days before March 5. Meanwhile, during fourth quarter, Samsung accounted for about 43 percent of Android smartphone sales, according to Gartner. Who primarily controls the user experience? Not Google.

Chrome, by contrast, is all about Google. The platform connects the company’s core services and generates revenue via advertising. Chrome can go everywhere, and — to re-emphasize — co-opt other operating systems. The browser engine supports apps, too, whether web-based or running on Android.

I think Schmidt is decidedly clear about Google’s platform of choice, which absolutely favors Chrome OS over Android long term. Chrome is why.

Police showed up at a man’s house this past weekend, without a warrant, demanding to see all of his guns, after a photo of his young son holding a .22 was spotted by a concerned citizen on Facebook. The story has been receiving a great deal of attention in the heat of the gun control debate.

The man, Shawn Moore of New Jersey, took to the Delaware Open Carry forum to share his story. He wrote:

The fight has officially been brought to my front door. Last night I was out with a buddy of mine. I got a text from my wife that the cops and dyfs are at the house and they wanna check out my guns and needed me to open my safe.

I’m instantly on my way. I get in contact with evan Nappen on the way. I explain the situation. I walk in my house and hand the phone to the first cop I see. Then direct all of em outside. Dyfs got a call because of a pic on my son holding a gun. They wanted to look around and check all my guns out, make sure they were all registered. Obviously that didn’t go well because I refused. I had Nappen on speaker phone the entire time so they had to deal with both of us. They kept trying to pressure me to open my safe. They had no warrant, no charges, nothing. I didn’t budge. I was told I was being “unreasonable” and that I was acting suspicious because I wouldn’t open my safe. Told me they were gonna get a search warrant. Told em go ahead. Nappen (my lawyer) asked me for the dyfs workers name. she wouldnt give it. i asked for credentials and she wouldnt show em. i tried to take a pic of her and she turned around real fast and walked away. After a while of them threatening to take my kids, get warrants and intimidation they left. Empty handed and seeing nothing.

People it can happen that fast. Most people wouldn’t have stood up to them like I did.

He also posted the photo of his son holding the gun that started off the whole thing:

“They never even saw the picture,” he Moore wrote. “It was all hear say. Just a phone call saying someone saw a pic of a child holding a gun.”

Moore himself has three different kinds of gun certifications, and his son is actually certified himself, according to reports. The Blaze reports:

Shawn’s son is also someone who has been certified by the state of New Jersey. In order for a person under the age of 18 to go hunting in New Jersey, they must be accompanied by a parent or adult supervisor, and they must also pass a state firearms hunter safety test. The young Mr. Moore passed the test and his father was NOT his instructor.

According to The Daily Caller, Moore is considering taking legal action.

Three months after rolling out a product intended to help people with prediabetes reduce their risk of developing the disease, San Francisco-based Omada Health has raised $4.7 million.

The Series A round, led by U.S. Venture Partners, with participation from The Vertical Group, Founder Collective, NEA, TriplePoint Capital, Kapor Capital, and angel investors, brings the companies total amount raised to $5.5 million.

The company said the new financing will go towards supporting the commercial rollout of its flagship product Prevent, the 16-week online program for those at risk for developing diabetes. The funding will also help the company expand into new disease categories — co-founder Sean Duffy said they’re eyeing type 2 diabetes and adult weight loss.

As we noted when Omada first launched Prevent, it combines CDC-backed research, digital devices (like wireless scales), social support from peers with similar health profiles and good design to encourage necessary behavior change.

At the time, Duffy said, “Our goal is to serve as a complement to [Centers for Disease Control diabetes prevention] efforts and expand the reach to more people with fun and beautiful experiences that represent the best of the consumer web.”

Given the CDC statistic that one in three American adults have prediabetes (meaning that their blood glucose levels are higher than normal but not high enough to be diagnosed as diabetic) Omada chose a worthy target with its first product, as have other startups, including Ginger.io and Glooko. But the company’s approach to disease prevention could be easily applied to other conditions.

It builds off of evidence-based research to provide an online program that includes a curriculum, online health coach and cohort support. When participants sign up for the $120 per month program, they’re placed into small groups with others with similar BMIs (body mass index), ages and locations. And as they progress through the four months and learn about diet, exercise and other healthy habits, they’re guided via the web with a a simple social networking-like interface. The company hasn’t disclosed names but said Prevent is being used within a select group of self-insured employers and providers in the United States.

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Job one of someone operating a data center is keeping it online. At the Structure Data event in New York City, three women responsible in some way for keeping the data centers of Microsoft, Goldman Sachs and Facebook online discussed how they gathered the info needed to prepare their data center and hardware for Hurricane Sandy.

By far the biggest challenge was faced by Tamara Budec, VP of critical systems and engineering at Goldman Sachs & Co., who had to deal with tracking the weather, but also preparing to move the data and software systems that in some cases are on decades-old legacy systems. In the aftermath of Sandy she faced a different challenge, namely wondering if the stock exchange would open or if banks would end up trading electronically from their back office.

Whatever they decided would affect the capacity she needed to plan for the day. As for Facebook, it was on alert, but its capacity planning issues are tied more to planning out for the next 18 months and supporting the growth in users and new products. Heather Marquez, manager asset strategy and optimization at Facebook, said, “Granted we are surprised by last-minute product launches,” but in general she and the Facebook team work hard to be ahead of the demand.

Massive scale means bigger data and more opportunities

The panelists also addressed the new challenges associated with massive scale. Amaya Souarez, director of data center services at Microsoft, started off philosophically, “When you’re building a cloud scale infrastructure you need to start with acceptance … and build a cloud software that is resilient in and of itself.”

She quickly got practical when it came to the topic of tracking data and metrics that Microsoft uses to charge business units for use of the data centers. She said the computing company now charges people based on the kilowatts of power used. “We track all performance on a per watt per performance basis, and so we look at this data and come up with more efficient models,” said Souarez.

She added that they are charging back carbon emissions to the business as well, with the goal of using the data about the operations to improve the world. For example she said, “We still have older systems and want to transition them to the most effective overall platform.”

Data also is helping Microsoft reduce spending on unneeded equipment. For example Souarez said that the firm’s Boyton, Va. data center expansion doesn’t come with backup generators, because a look at the preceding six years of data showed that the power didn’t go out often enough and that the services hosted in that area were able to be switched over to another site in case of failure.

Data isn’t everything

Yet, the data can’t help in every situation. Budec noted that the firm is interested in pursing the flexibility and resiliency offered by software defined networks and software defined data centers, but that she is having a tough time coming up with return on investment metrics. Yet, she knows that the transition would have advantages for the company, but still isn’t sure of the metrics she needs to prove it.

“Basically you’ll let an OS run your facility,” Budec said. “It’s coming to be more of a trend … but engineers are not ready to let go with manually running that equipment.”

She also said, “With a scale out distributed compute model, which is becoming more and more how we operate, we’re abstracting the physical from the infrastructure, so capacity and asset tracking is harder and more challenging.” For example she said that you have an increase in the number of servers, despite the physical decrease in machines.

Beyond the increasing complexity and more data generated by their operations, the three panelists ended with the observation that data doesn’t always mean everything. Souarez noted that while data will help you in your discussions, it takes a lot of personal committment and interactions. “Even though you may have the data that doesn’t mean you will always win the argument … It does take personal influence as well.”

Check out the rest of our Structure:Data 2013 live coverage here, and a video embed of the session follows below:

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When Continuuity CEO and founder Todd Papaioannou was setting up Yahoo’s architecture it was like his home-brew computing club days all over again. As Chief Cloud Architect, Papaioannou and his 120-person team were tasked with setting up 45,000 Hadoop servers in Yahoo’s 400,000 node private cloud.

The idea was to create a stable platform over which 5,000 Yahoo developers could build their applications. What Papaioannou wound up with was “a bunch of redneck architecture.” Every team took bits of code from here libraries from there and cobbled together something a clever teenager might cobble together in his garage — except on a massive scale. Once the architecture was in place it took developers four or five months to launch applications and innovation stalled.

“In case you haven’t been paying attention, Yahoo may have had a few product issues from time to time,” Papaioannou told an audience Thursday at GigaOM’s Structure:Data conference in New York City.

What Papaioannou learned from the experience was one big lesson:

“Hadoop is hard – let’s make no bones about it,” Papaioannou said. “It’s damn hard to use. It’s low-level infrastructure software, and most people out there are not used to using low-level infrastructure software.”

That experience with Yahoo led him to found Continuuity, which creates an abstraction layer called AppFabric on top of Hadoop and HBase, which Papaioannou said would help companies and developers avoid the problems he encountered at Yahoo.

Check out the rest of our Structure:Data 2013 live coverage here, and a video embed of the session follows below:

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Microsoft’s latest, and now retired, Scroogled campaign focused on accusations that Google violates your privacy by screening your emails and serving ads. It’s true that Google does serve ads on emails through a computerized algorithm, but one congressman has bought into Microsoft’s claim.

During an ECPA hearing this week, Rep. Louie Gohmert was questioning Google’s Richard Salgado about Gmail and privacy. The congressman somehow got it in his head that Google sells private information contained in your emails to advertisers. From there, the conversation slowly devolved into Gohmert asking inane question after inane question with Salgado doing his best to explain that Google doesn’t actually sell information to advertisers while Gohmert insists that it must.

Anyway, just watch the exchange.

Email privacy is incredibly important, and Gohmert’s intentions are noble. He obviously wants to protect email from the prying eye of government. Unfortunately, he displays a total lack of understanding of how email and online advertising works.

What’s interesting is that Salgado, in his written testimony, argued that ECPA should require law enforcement to obtain warrants before accessing private emails. Gohmert completely disregards this testimony as he starts to wonder if Google will start working with the government to scan for keywords, like “terrorism” or “Benghazi.”

As Salgado says, it’s an apple and oranges situation. The tools that Google provides to advertisers are inherently different to the the tools used by law enforcement. Even if the government did snoop on your email, it wouldn’t be using an advertising algorithm because it wouldn’t return any information. Law enforcement’s goal is to collect data, and Google’s email advertising does no such thing.

[h/t: TechDirt]

The U.S. intelligence community has plenty of information about the countries and regions where its adversaries operate, but it needs more than that — it needs better ways to understand the context of that information, and how it changes over time, Samantha Ravich told attendees at GigaOM’s Structure:Data conference in New York on Thursday. Ravich, the co-chair of the National Commission for the Review of Research and Development in the Intelligence Community, said intelligence analysts need to work hand-in-hand with technologists and data scientists to find those new ways of understanding context.

Ravich used the example of Tunisian fruit vendor Mohammed Bouazizi, who set himself on fire two-and-a-half years ago as a way of protesting police brutality and corruption in his country and triggered a series of events that resulted in what many now call the “Arab Spring” — revolutions and uprisings in Egypt, Syria and other countries, and the toppling of dictators like Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Libya’s Muammar Ghadafi. These events have fundamentally changed the political picture in the region, she said, but how they happened and why is still poorly understood by intelligence analysts.

Most intelligence, Ravich said, is still much more like a snapshot in time — a photograph rather than a video, or a snippet of conversation — and so it doesn’t provide the kind of understanding of the shifting flow of events that could help analysts see such events coming more easily, or even influence them.

The intelligence strategist also used a poem to illustrate her point, one that referred to a man in the water waving his arm — a man who turned out to be drowning, rather than just enjoying a swim. A photo of that man would make it virtually impossible to determine that he was drowning and not just waving, Ravich said, but if we could see him in motion, and put him in some kind of context, then we might have a better chance of figuring out whether to send rescue or simply wave back.

In order to solve those kinds of problems, she said, technologists and data scientists need to work together to come up with better tools that can take the vast quantities of information the world is constantly generating, and put that into some kind of context so that threats and potential courses of action become more obvious.

Check out the rest of our Structure:Data 2013 live coverage here, and a video embed of the session follows below:

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Twitter is being sued in France for failing to disclose the identities of users wrapped up in an anti-Semitic hashtag controversy that has spanned five months.

Here’s my attempt to make a long story short:

Back in October of 2012, a hashtag emerged on Twitter that many users found exceedingly offensive. The hashtag, #unbonjuif, roughly translates to “a good jew.” Some Twitter users jumped on the hashtag, posting photos of dust-filled dustpans and other anti-Semitic jokes alongside the hashtag.

A handful of French anti-racism groups called out Twitter, asking that the site remove all of the offending tweets. Eventually, as the pressure mounted, Twitter complied.

But some of the groups, including the French Jewish Students Union (UEJF), decided to push Twitter a bit further. They demanded that Twitter give up the names of all of the users associated with the #unbonjuif tweets, so that they could be prosecuted under local anti-hate speech laws. Twitter wasn’t too keen on this idea, and that led the UEJF to file a summons against the company back in November.

In January, a French court ruled that Twitter must provide the identities of the requested users, to comply with French law. Twitter said that they would review the decision.

And that brings us up to date. The UEJF has officially taken action against Twitter, suing them four roughly $50 million for failing to carry through with the court’s order. Twitter apparently had two weeks to hand over the names, and that time has come and gone.

“Twitter is playing the indifference card and does not respect the ruling,” said UEJF President Jonathan Hayoun. “They have resolved to protect the anonymity of the authors of these tweets and have made themselves accomplices to racists and anti-Semites.”

Twitter reserves the right to give up any information it holds on users if requested by law enforcement or by a court order. They say so in their terms of service – this is not part of the debate. In the past, however, Twitter has gone to bat to protect user privacy when they sense some government overreach. In September of 2012, Twitter gave in to the Manhattan D.A.’s office and gave up the deleted, inaccessible tweets of an Occupy Wall Street protester – but only after they fought it tooth and nail.

You may remember that they also blocked a neo-Nazi account in Germany last year, utilizing their self-appointed authority to censor content locally if they saw fit. Blocking or removing content is one thing, but disclosing the identities of users in order to aid in regional hate-speech laws is a different ballgame.

[UEJF via JTA]

Congressman Duncan Hunter, representative for California’s 50th congressional district, this week wrote a terse letter to Transportation Security Administration (TSA) Administrator John Pistole. The letter detailed an account of alleged mistreatment of a wounded marine by TSA officers and demanded an explanation for the event.

Hunter’s letter alleges that a Marine, later identified as Cpl. Toran Gaal, was “humiliated” as he passed through security at Phoenix Sky Harbor International airport. Gaal, who lost both of his legs to explosive in Afghanistan, was traveling from Phoenix to San Diego with several other marines.

TSA agents allegedly asked Gaal to stand, which he cannot do on his own. They are also alleged by Hunter to have forced Gaal to remove his prosthetic legs (presumably looking for some sort of James Bond rocket launcher). This is before he was taken to a second screening area for his wheelchair to be examined.

From Hunter’s letter:

One of the Marines in particular, who lost both of his legs to an Improvised Explosive Device, was confined to a wheelchair with limited to no mobility. The individual escorting this Marine asked the TSA officer which of two checkpoints to enter and received the response, “either one,” only to be told moments later they should have entered a different way. As a result, a TSA officer asked the Marine to stand and walk to an alternate area, despite the fact that he could not stand or walk on his own. With numerous TSA officers sitting and unwilling to assist, an officer then made him remove his legs, then put them back on, only to advance to a secondary screening location where he was asked again to stand, with extraordinary difficulty, while his wheelchair was examined for explosives.

Though Hunter stated he recognizes the necessity of passenger screening, he wrote that he is “concerned by the apparent lack of situational awareness and respect among TSA officers – specifically when it comes to the treatment of war wounded.”

The TSA has replied to the allegations, telling the Arizona Republic that surveillance footage of the incident shows the marine was never forced to remove his prosthetics.

View more videos at: http://nbcsandiego.com

Samsung (005930) has gone from laughable “copycat” to mainstream media darling in no time at all thanks to its meteoric rise, and the company isn’t expected to relinquish its lead anytime soon. In fact, market research firm IHS iSuppli believes the vendor’s Galaxy S 4 will be a smash hit that helps Samsung double its lead over the next closest competitor in 2013.

Continue reading…

By Stephen Eisenhammer

As the way we shop changes,  commercial property investors might be the ones losing out.

The rise of online retail is hitting demand for bricks and mortar shops, according to analysts at Aviva Investors, and could spell an end to rental income growth over the next two decades.

An estimated 20 percent of UK retail space will become surplus to requirements in the coming years due to shoppers using the web, according to research by the British Council of Shopping Centres. David Skinner, Chief Investment Officer of Real Estate at Aviva, reckons the trend has just gone up a gear:

The growth of internet shopping has been a key issue of commercial property investors for years but the pace and scale of change has been greater than many had anticipated

According to Skinner average real rental value growth will fall to between 0 percent and 1 percent per year throughout the next two decades.

Retailers will require less space… In many mature markets, internet retailing will be a force behind lower aggregate floorspace demand, which implies a depressive effect on rental growth.

Skinner also said falling demand would lead to rising income risks as well as effect leases, forcing landlords to offer more flexible tenancy agreements.

The winners for Trevor Green, head of institutional equities at Aviva Investors, are companies with a successful, multi-channel strategy that can adapt to the rise of online retail. Green names supermarket chain J Sainsbury as a good pick.

 

As I mentioned in my last blog post, I recently travelled to Bamyan and Uruzgan to see whether Strengthening Provincial Administration and Delivery (SPAD) – a UK/Denmark funded programme – can make a difference there. Bamyan is a province in the centre-west of the country and famous for the monumental Buddha statues that the Taliban sadly destroyed in 2001. It is a beautiful province with lots of potential for tourism. It has azure blue lakes, majestic mountains and great cultural heritage, evidenced by the recognition of UNESCO.

At the same time, it is a poor province: over half the population lives below the poverty line, compared to a third nationwide. Only one in five adults can read or write and just 14% of households have access to safe drinking water (National Risk and Vulnerability Assessment).

It was great to see during my visit that both government and elected officials are keen to improve the situation through the funds that SPAD provides. We heard how a relatively small amount of money can have a big impact which includes building wells or allowing government officials to travel around and inspect schools. We explained how the money will get to the province, starting by local people deciding on the most important priorities. This means people can also hold their government to its promises. It was great to discuss the programme with Habiba Sarabi, the only female governor in Afghanistan.

While in Bamyan, we also met the beneficiaries of the UK and the New Zealand agricultural programme. Farmers explained how pleased they were with the faster harvesting of potatoes thanks to new tractors. Overall, the production of potatoes (Bamyan potatoes are now famous across Afghanistan) and wheat has doubled in the last few years. Read more about this project here.

I also travelled to Uruzgan, a remote and mountainous province, bordering Helmand and Kandahar, which is equally poor. Only 1% of women can read or write, and no children under two years have been vaccinated. Almost all children between the ages of six to 15 work, compared to every fifth child in the rest of Afghanistan.

In Tirin Kot, the capital, we met a large number of people including district governors and their deputies from three remote districts. They gave us a fascinating insight into their daily challenges, such as not having funding to buy stationery for their offices. Everyone we spoke to was eager to improve the situation and do their job better.

All these meetings helped me understand local conditions better, and that helping the government provide better services to the people is the right thing to do. My colleagues have since been back to both provinces and seen that government officials have gotten together with local people to come up with plans for how to best use their budget, with the help of the Independent Directorate of Local Governance.

There is a lot of enthusiasm for the planning. Once this is complete and funds start to flow, we will see the impact, just like in Helmand!

 

After securing a valuable domain name last year, London-based OnApp has launched CDN.net.  The content delivery network (CDN) is a user customizable and usage-based solution, catering to budget and quality demands on a completely pay-per-use basis.

The company’s vision is to use its distributed infrastructure and service provider relationships to allow the end user to provision a highly customized CDN service “on the fly,”, which can be matched to individual needs and personalize in exactly the way the user wants. Taking on the established and large networks of CDN companies like Akamai and Limelight, CDN.net hopes to sell a federated capacity directly to end users.  It offers access to 30 premium PoPs, and a total of 160 locations across 40 countries.

The OnApp CDN.net service can be setup using its marketplace locations, as a CDN PoP in a company cloud, using  internal infrastructure to make CDN servers, or used to sell spare capacity on the CDN marketplace.  Its primary use-case examples are for web acceleration, application performance, and rich media content streaming. Like a pre-paid phone card, the CDN.net features pay-by-usage pricing, with no long-term contracts or commitments – recharging an account when necessary.

“Today’s rich content demands plague online businesses with bounce-back, high latency and downtime that are harmful to their customer retention, marketing, and SEO efforts,” says James Fletcher, marketing director for CDN.net. “That’s why CDNs are now essential for all web property owners. However, buying CDN is generally an expensive, frustrating experience where customers pay for resources they don’t end up using, and get a pre-packaged service that doesn’t match their business.”

At HostingCon 2012, Data Center Knowledge spoke with OnApp CMO Kosten Metreweli about OnApp’s cloud products, including its cloud platform, its CDN marketplace and cloud storage offerings. Here’s a video of the conversation:

 

On Monday, Feb. 18, Burger King woke up to one whopper of a social media problem. The company’s Twitter account had been hacked — its name changed to McDonalds and its background replaced with an image of Fish McBites. In the hour it took for officials to regain control, hackers proceeded to send 53 tweets to the burger chain’s more than 80,000 followers, ranging from the mildly funny (“if I catch you at a wendys, we’re fightin!”) to the patently offensive (“We caught one of our employees in the bathroom doing this…,” with an image of a drug user shooting up).

And Burger King wasn’t alone. Less than 24 hours later, a similar fate befell Jeep. Hackers replaced the company’s Twitter avatar with a Cadillac logo and explained to Jeep’s 100,000-plus followers that the company had been sold because its employees and CEO were found using drugs. These incidents followed closely on the heels of a security breach at international media retailer HMV in late January, when a disgruntled social media manager hijacked one of the company’s social media accounts and aired to the world details about recent layoffs and mismanagement.

So what’s a socially engaged company to do? Banning social media altogether is no longer a realistic option. The simple fact that Burger King, Jeep, and HMV have hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter and Facebook speaks to the power of the medium. Retreating from social media means ceding a significant competitive advantage.

But there are ways to reduce risks. At the helm of HootSuite, a social media management tool for companies, I’ve learned that common sense, a little training and the right technology go a long way. While it may be too late for Burger King, these steps should keep your social media account from being similarly Hamburglarized:

Get serious about passwords. Believe it or not, the most common password in 2012 was still “password” (followed closely by “123456”). Few people realize that an effective password is often the only thing standing between you and a cyber attack. Instead of choosing your cat’s name or your personal details, consider strategies like using the first letter of each word of a common phrase or song lyric. (“I can’t get no satisfaction” becomes ICGNS.) Or save yourself the trouble altogether and use password generating and management tools like LastPass.

Also, rein in who has password access. A telling detail emerged from HMV’s social media meltdown. Evidently, senior management had no clue what their company’s Twitter password was, who had access to it or how to shut the account down. From an IT perspective, this is terrifying. A better approach is to use what’s known as single sign-on technology (which we use at HootSuite). Business-grade social media management systems allow employees to log into social media accounts with the same username and password used for their company email. The master switch for turning accounts on and off remains in the hands of the IT department, who can also revoke access from individual employees, should the need ever arise.

Centralize social media channels. Large companies are sometimes surprised to discover that their employees have started dozens of “corporate” social media accounts, often without official permission. A crucial first step in getting social media security under control is to consolidate all of these accounts within a single social media management system, which allows users to publish to multiple profiles on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other networks from one secure interface.

This kind of system also acts like an extra firewall. One of the most common ways for hackers to gain access to passwords and sensitive data is through malicious links posted on social media sites and elsewhere. Click on what looks like a great deal, for instance, and you might end up on a bogus site where malware is instantly downloaded to your computer. The better social media management systems out there have built-in malware and spam prevention tools, which will automatically issue a warning before opening suspicious pages.

Control who can post messages. Social media accounts at consumer brands like Nike and Whole Foods can have millions of followers. Entrusting the keys to these accounts to entry-level employees or interns carries significant risk. A better approach is to use a social media management system that restricts who can publish messages. For example, in the HootSuite platform, companies can grant certain employees limited permission to draft messages, which must then be fed into an approval queue for senior management to sign off on before publishing. This ensures that all social messaging meets company standards and no illicit tweets or posts slip through.

Offer basic social media education. Just a few years ago, social media was a dorm room toy. Today it’s a cornerstone of marketing and sales strategy at the planet’s biggest companies, poised to unlock some $1.3 trillion in value in the years ahead. Giving employees access to this kind of power without any basic education is tantamount to handing over keys to the car without a driver’s ed course. Structured training on security and compliance issues, as well as on more advanced themes like using social media to sell to clients and improve internal workflows, is critical. Fortunately, some of the best social media tools now come equipped with online courseware and webinars for their users.

The combination of social media education and technology can dramatically reduce the possibility of a security breach — either from outside the company or from within.

Ed. note: This post was first published on the official blog of healthcare.gov. You can see the original post here.

In the three years since the Affordable Care Act became law, the slower growth of health care costs is saving money in Medicare and the private insurance market, helping to curb previously skyrocketing premiums and making Medicare stronger.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that Medicare and Medicaid spending would be 15 percent less — or about $200 billion— in 2020 than was previously projected, thanks to this slower growth. Medicare spending per beneficiary rose by just 0.4 percent in 2012, while Medicaid spending per beneficiary actually dropped by 1.9 percent last year. We are making Medicare stronger, too, by spending smarter, promoting coordinated care, and fighting fraud. Not only does this ensure that taxpayer dollars are spent wisely.  It means that those who count on Medicare — our grandparents, parents, our friends, and neighbors – will have it for years to come.

Today, we are announcing that thanks to the Affordable Care Act, more than 6.3 million seniors and people with disabilities on Medicare have saved more than $6.1 billion on prescription drugs since the health care law was enacted three years ago. This is the result of the law’s closing of the prescription coverage gap known as “the donut hole.”

Nearly 3.5 million people with Medicare saved an average of more than $706 each on their prescriptions in 2012.

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I’m a big fan of Google Reader. I don’t just access it every day, I access it, probably on average, every couple of hours or so (and still do, despite my switch to Microsoft). I have hundreds of feeds in there, and thousands of stories starred. So really I should be gutted that Google has decided to kill it off. But I’m not.

I was at first though. I even signed the petition to get Google to change its mind, even though I knew it was futile. But then I took a step back and realized that what initially seemed like devastating news for a Reader fan such as myself, was actually a blessing in disguise.

Google has slowly been killing off Reader for a while. The service had a minor interface refresh in 2011, but only so Google could turn off friending, following, sharing items, and commenting in favor of adding Google+ integration, which reduced the service’s usefulness for a lot of people. While Google Reader has continued to serve its core purpose, it hasn’t grown, or evolved. In fact it’s been left to stagnate, unloved and all but forgotten. Its end for a long time has been nigh.

Google says a dwindling user base is the reason it plans to end Reader’s life on 1 July, but it’s a dwindling user base that Google itself engineered. If it had pushed the service, sold the benefits of it, updated it, added features and re-introduced sharing, Reader use would likely have grown and flourished, not withered and died. But Google doesn’t want Reader any more. It wants us to forget about feeds and embrace social sharing instead. It wants us to embrace Google+.

RSS Isn’t Dead

With Reader as the dominant service, but left to stagnate, RSS as a technology has largely fallen out of favor (arguably it never reached its true potential anyway). But now that Google is closing Reader — the search giant removed the service’s entry from the black menu bar that runs along the top of Google pages yesterday — suddenly feed readers are back in the news. Services like Feedly are getting a huge amount of new users as the Reader exodus begins in earnest. And alternatives many of us have never heard of, such as The Old Reader, NewsBlur, Goodnoows, and Rolio, are all picking up thousands of new users too. Services that previously would have struggled to get anyone to choose them over Reader are now enjoying massive growth. There’s competition once more in the world of feed readers, and competition is always good. It’s what drives success and innovation.

While I’ve yet to settle on a Google Reader replacement I really like, I’m not too worried. Digg says it is working on a new RSS tool which should be ready by the time Reader goes under, and I’m sure Digg won’t be the only company building a service for all those many Reader refugees who’ll be left without a home when Google does pull the plug.

After all there are hundreds of thousands of users who still believe in and rely on RSS, even if Google no longer cares about them. And a lot of those people looking for a good service are influential journalists, bloggers and people who like to ensure they have their finger on the news pulse at all times. They’re good people for any media savvy firm to cater for.

Yahoo would be a great fit for a Reader alternative, as would Microsoft (although I can’t see the latter building an online RSS service when it offers feeds directly through Internet Explorer, and RSS lacks the cool the company craves anyway).

Google abandoning Reader actually reminds me of when Microsoft stopped development on Internet Explorer at IE6. MS believed the browser couldn’t be improved and so left it alone, left it to stagnate. And that was exactly what was required for Mozilla to steal a massive chunk of users with a modern browser that was being actively developed and introduced hot new features, like tabs.

In closing Reader, Google hasn’t killed off RSS, it’s simply released its choke hold on the technology, and with luck — if the right savior surfaces at the right time — maybe we’ll finally get the product Reader could have become, with the sharing and commenting features that Google took away restored once more.

Or is that all just wishful thinking on my behalf?

Photo Credit: Aaron Amat/Shutterstock

Prepublication Now Available

Energy and mineral resources are essential for the nation’s fundamental functions, its economy, and security. Nonfuel minerals are essential for the existence and operations of products that are used by people every day and are provided by various sectors of the mining industry. Energy in the United States is provided from a variety of resources including fossil fuels, and renewable and nuclear energy, all with established commercial industry bases. The United States is the largest electric power producer in the world. The overall value added to the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) in 2011 by major industries that consumed processed nonfuel mineral materials was $2.2 trillion.

Recognizing the importance of understanding the state of the energy and mining workforce in the United States to assure a trained and skilled workforce of sufficient size for the future, the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) National Energy technology Laboratory (NETL) contracted with the National Research Council (NRC) to perform a study of the emerging workforce trends in the U.S. energy and mining industries. Emerging Workforce Trends in the U.S. Energy and Mining Industries: A Call to Action summarizes the findings of this study.

[Read the full report]

Topics: Industry and Labor | Energy and Energy Conservation