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  • Apple may have finally found a way to dump Samsung once and for all

    Apple Intel Chip Deal
    Speculation swirled late last year that Apple (AAPL) could be considering a switch away from Intel chips in its notebook computer lines, opting instead to use its own in-house ARM-based chipsets. Such a move likely wouldn’t happen anytime soon, but Intel (INTC) may have found a way to benefit from this eventual shift away from its processors while actually boosting its business with Apple in the process: Build Apple’s in-house chips.

    Continue reading…

  • Linsalata Capital Promotes Faremouth and Beg

    Linsalata Capital Partners has promoted Michael Faremouth to managing director and Murad Beg to principal. Faremouth joined the Linsalata in 2005 and serves as Chairman of Stag Parkway Holding Co. Beg joined LinCap in 2008 and his primary responsibilities include acquisition searches, due diligence, negotiations and portfolio company oversight.

    PRESS RELEASE

    Linsalata Capital Partners (LinCap), a
    Cleveland-based private equity firm, announced today the promotion of Michael
    J. Faremouth to Managing Director and Murad A. Beg to Principal.
    Mr. Faremouth joined the firm in 2005 and serves as Chairman of Stag Parkway
    Holding Company and is a director of Harden Manufacturing, Hospitality Mints
    Holding Company, and Transpac Holding Company.
    Prior to joining Linsalata Capital Partners, Faremouth spent two years at the
    Matco Tools subsidiary of Danaher Corporation. Faremouth began his
    professional career at Ernst & Young where he spent six years successively in
    Audit then the Litigation Advisory Services practice working with manufacturing
    and distribution companies rising to the level of Manager.
    Faremouth has a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in Accounting from
    the University of Michigan and an M.B.A. from the Darden School of Business at
    the University of Virginia. He is a Certified Public Accountant.
    Mr. Beg joined LinCap in 2008 and his primary responsibilities include acquisition
    searches, due diligence, negotiations and portfolio company oversight. He serves
    as a director of Whitcraft Holdings and is a member of the Eatem Foods
    Company’s oversight team.
    Beg’s prior experience includes 13 years of practicing law, ultimately co-heading
    the M&A practice as a partner with Calfee, Halter & Griswold LLP in Cleveland
    counseling privately-held, public company and private equity clients with a
    primary focus on mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, capital raising and other
    transaction activities. Prior to joining Calfee, Mr. Beg was associated with the law
    firm of Cummings & Lockwood.
    Mr. Beg received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Kenyon College,
    and he earned a J.D., with honors, from The Pace University School of Law. He
    serves on the executive committee of Cleveland’s ACG Chapter.
    Located in the Cleveland suburb of Mayfield Heights, Ohio, Linsalata Capital
    Partners was founded in 1984 and has combined its strong financial capabilities
    with extensive operational experience to accelerate the growth of middle-market
    companies. In its more than 28 years of investing, the firm has completed 101
    buy-side transactions totaling more than $3 billion. Linsalata Capital Partners is
    currently investing from its recently raised seventh fund, Linsalata Capital
    Partners Fund VI, L.P. (LinCap VI), with $427 million in committed equity capital.
    # #

    The post Linsalata Capital Promotes Faremouth and Beg appeared first on peHUB.

  • Breaking Bad as a Mid-90s Sitcom [VIDEO]

    The first YouTube mashup that successfully and hilariously reframed a classic film/TV show to fit a different style that I remember seeing was called “Shining,” and it used clever editing and a certain Peter Gabriel song to make the classic horror film look like a family comedy.

    Ever since, I’ve loved this sort of thing. With the right music and editing, you can transform any piece of media into something completely different.

    Take for instance this new trailer for Breaking Bad that re-imagines it as a mid-90s sitcom. It’s wonderful.

    Breaking Bad has a long and storied history of being mashed up. For more, you could check out Pinkman, the Seinfeld mashup. Or maybe this amazing mashup with an old Mentos ad.

    [via YouTube]

  • Protect Your Mac with ESET Cyber Security Pro

    Running Mac OS X without an antivirus solution is not the safe bet that it used to be. ESET Cyber Security Pro includes all the necessary tools for detecting and dealing with malicious code and handling online threats.

    Primarily directed at home users, ESET Cyber Security comes in two flavors, Pro and Standard, with more or less obvious differences be… (read more)

  • Stop Reinventing Disruption

    These days, the term disruption is greatly overused. And unfortunately for the strategists and investors seeking to apply the theory’s brilliance, even the pundits seem to get it wrong.

    Over the course of the past few weeks, two articles crossed my desk touching on this issue. Both articles espoused slightly new definitions of disruption, expanding the categorization of the world that Clay Christensen introduced us to more than 20 years ago. One of the articles reached millions of readers through one of the internet’s most respected technology blogs. The other article reached executives around the globe through publication in the HBR’s print magazine. The similarity between the two: both articles hinted at a sort of “high-end” disruption. Where we’ve traditionally described disruption as the slow climb of scrappy start-ups offering cheaper, lower performing products through models that look unprofitable to the incumbent firms they are attacking, both of these authors argued for a classification of disruption that captured innovative offerings that were superior to existing products.

    Simply put, the argument for “high-end” disruption is a bad one. Not only does it create complexity where none is needed, but it also misses the point of disruption itself.

    Disruption is an answer to a seemingly paradoxical question: “Why do the best resourced firms, with well trained employees, access to distribution channels, and funds, fail time and time again when combated by scrappy start-ups?” Two decades ago, Professor Christensen realized that more often than not, the innovations that displace these giants were those that offered cheaper, lower performing products and services in ways that incumbents found unprofitable. Incumbents were happy to walk away from these offerings. If integrated steel mills had built mini-mills to compete with their disruptors, their margins would have been compressed as they fought for share at the bottom of the market. If retail pharmacies had immediately embraced 90-day mail programs, they would have expedited the cannibalization of their existing business. If Dell, HP, and Lenovo had pushed netbooks and tablets in the early 2000’s their profitable PC businesses would have suffered.

    Disruption is a story of rational responses to a changing environment. It’s the sensible retreat from your low margin business towards your more demanding, more profitable customers. At least, it’s a sensible retreat until you recognize that you’ve given away your business and there is nowhere left to run.

    If a start-up starts launches a better product, at a higher margin, to an incumbent’s best customers — that’s not disruption. That’s just…innovation. Disruption shouldn’t be a term used to describe any successful innovation. If it is, it loses its significance. So the question becomes, why do people get it wrong so often?

    Often when pundits suggest the presence of “high-end” disruptions, what they’re really witnessing is a very effective disruption by a better alternative. The case studies offered in both of the articles above are good examples of this — cell phone GPS apps and Uber. Both are fantastic disruptive innovations, but they’re easily explained by Christensen’s initial, simple model — you don’t need to invent “high end disruption” to explain them.

    It’s tempting to use examples like these to justify this “high-end” disruption idea. After all, both services are now far superior to the offerings they have displaced (TomTom, towncar companies) and both are used by “high-end” customers — people wealthy enough to afford smartphones and, in the case of Uber, pretty expensive taxi rides. But if you look deeply you can recognize the flaws in that logic. Take for instance, GPS mapping on cell phones. Initially, cell phone guidance was pretty crummy when compared with the GPS systems offered by Garmin or TomTom. Apps lacked voice navigation, dynamic user interfaces, and drew on limited data plans. And though eventually they passed their competitors, it took years. It wasn’t a case of high-end disruption, but classic disruptive innovation: start with a barely-good-enough product that captures consumers too cheap to buy the existing, expensive product, then make it better and better until one day, it’s as good as, or better, than the incumbent product.

    High-end disruption is an impossible proposition, because when innovation yields a premium product, firms can rationally respond. They can charge more, cover their costs, and adapt. And disruption itself represents exactly the opposite scenario. It’s the rational retreat from an entrant with an extendable core advantage (we addressed in our December HBR article, “Surviving Disruption“). It’s the paradox that plagues managers of successful firms, tempted to make all the right decisions, right up until they’re flung off a cliff.

    The pace of disruption is changing. But the path of disruption is not.

    Initially, Christensen claimed that the disruptions he observed occurred over the course of 10-30 year cycles. His assertion stressed how much foresight was required to engage in the self-disruption that so few corporations tended to perform. However, when Professor Christensen suggested that disruption occurred over this time-frame it was 1992. And not even he could imagine the pace of information exchange today. It took decades to build national businesses and truly global businesses were a relatively new phenomenon, brought about by an IT revolution. Today, it takes mere months for a business to reach global scale. Logistics are easy to manage, billing happens in an instant, and a digital storefront built in the US is equivalent to a digital storefront anywhere else. With 2.4 billion people accessing the internet today, we shouldn’t be shocked that the pace of disruption has picked up.

    Yet it’s important to recognize that just because the pace has picked up doesn’t mean the pattern has changed. Disruption still represents the type of business that draws a rational retreat from up-market competitors.

    As managers, often it’s enticing to assert that new pathways or types of disruption have developed, in order to explain why we’re missing taking note of them time-and-time again. The reality is that, today, everything is just moving faster. As managers, we no longer have the luxury of missing potential disruptions for months or years. If we don’t spot them on the horizon as soon as they appear, our business’s well-being falls in jeopardy — but the disruptive threats we must watch for follow the same trajectory they always have. Throwing new jargon at the phenomenon helps no one.

    Not all successful products will fall into the category of disruptive innovation. Was the iPhone a case of “high-end disruption”? No. It was simply a better expensive smartphone than the BlackBerry; and RIM’s failure to adapt doesn’t mean they were “disrupted.” It just means they lost.

    To preserve the significance of the term disruption, it’s vital that people stop using it as a synonym for “awesome innovation.” In fact, sometimes an “awesome innovation” is just that… and not a disruption. So don’t be fooled by pundits (like him, or him, or even him). If you want to understand disruption, go to the source.

    I promise: it’s worth your time.

  • Nook Video Snags Content from Lionsgate, MGM, Paramount, and More

    Today, Barnes & Noble’s Nook Media announced a bunch of new content licensing deals with some major players.

    These deals will bring movies from Lionsgate, MGM, Paramount Pictures, Relativity Media, National Geographic, Little Pim, and Film Buff to the Nook HD and the Nook HD+.

    “With the addition of these industry-leading studio partners, NOOK Video continues to expand its already robust offering, providing customers with an even wider selection of their favorite movies and TV shows,” said Jonathan Shar, Vice President & General Manager, Emerging Digital Content, NOOK Media LLC. “Combined with NOOK’s seamless UltraViolet™ integration, we are offering customers one of the most dynamic and accessible movie and TV show stores available.”

    If you’re wondering what content, exactly, is coming to the Nook Video catalog – it’s some top-notch stuff.

    The Hunger Games, the Twilight movies, Tyler Perry’s Madea Gets a Job, Skyfall, Rocky, Fargo, Flight, Paranormal Activity 4, Act of Valor, Safe Haven, House at the End of the Street; independent films from Film Buff’s catalog including Charles Swan and Exit from the Gift Shop; and TV shows like Mad Men, Border Wars, Great Migrations, Amazing Planet; as well as educational content via Little Pim, the leading foreign language learning program for young children, plus many more.

    Barnes & Noble’s Nook division took a hit over the holidays and the company posted poor Q3 results. I guess snatching some great content for Nook Video is a start. I mean, it can’t hurt.

  • Eddie Murphy Gets Beverly Hills Cop TV Show Cameo

    It’s been known since last fall that Eddie Murphy is trying to resurrect Beverly Hills Cop as a network TV show. The comedian/actor is producing the show, which will star character Axel Foley’s son.

    At the time it was announced, Murphy speculated that Axel Foley would be the chief of police in Detroit and would “show up here and there” in the pilot episode. Now, it has been confirmed that Murphy and his Beverly Hills Cop co-star Judge Reinhold will both make cameos in the TV show’s pilot episode.

    Reuters is reporting that Murphy will reprise his role as Axel Foley and Reinhold will again be playing Billy Rosewood, who “has scored a big promotion from his old job.” Brandon T. Jackson, who played Alpa Chino in the 2008 movie Tropic Thunder, will be playing Foley’s son. The pilot is being filmed for CBS.

  • Can States Do A Better Job Of Protecting Online Privacy?

    In cyberlaw, 2012 was defined by the federal government attempting to pass laws that either broke the Internet, or helped protect it. Neither side was successful, however, and the year was marked by a number of defeated laws on both side. Now a new force is attempting to pass similar laws, and it just might have a chance.

    It was reported this week that at least one state is throwing its hat into the digital privacy legislation arena. The move could trigger more states moving forward with their own digital privacy laws to counter any attempts by the federal government to destroy online privacy. Now only one question remains – will it work?

    Do you think the states can succeed where the federal government has failed? Let us know in the comments.

    One of the major threats facing digital privacy is the practice of warrantless location tracking. In essence, a government agency, usually law enforcement, can request your location data through a smartphone without a warrant. This was put to the test last year in a case involving a drug trafficker that was tracked via location data on his cellphone. This data was procured without a warrant, and the defense argued that this was a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected this reasoning in a 2-1 decision that said there was no violation:

    “There is no Fourth Amendment violation because Skinner did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the data given off by his voluntarily procured pay-as-you-go cell phone. If a tool used to transport contraband gives off a signal that can be tracked for location, certainly the police can track the signal.”

    In other words, the court said that data stored by third parties is not protected by the Fourth Amendment. Under this logic, any information that we own, but is stored by a third party, is open to warrantless search and seizure. This goes beyond location tracking, and into stored digital communication that is transported via third party services like email, cloud storage, etc.

    This is where the federal lawmakers come in. Rep. Zoe Lofgren has been a major proponent of online privacy for many years, and even introduced an email privacy bill last year to amend the decades old ECPA. She unfortunately failed last year, but it back at it again this year with a greatly expanded bill that covers email and location data – The Online Communications and Geolocation Protection Act.

    “Fourth Amendment protections don’t stop at the Internet. Americans expect Constitutional protections to extend to their online communications and location data,” Rep. Lofgren said. “Establishing a warrant standard for government access to cloud and geolocation provides Americans with the privacy protections they expect, and would enable service providers to foster greater trust with their users and international trading partners.”

    As its name implies, Lofgren’s bill contains a number of protections for digital communications and location data. Here’s a breakdown of its core tenets:

  • Require the government to obtain a warrant to access to wire or electronic communications content;
  • Require the government to obtain a warrant to intercept or force service providers to disclose geolocation data;
  • Preserve exceptions for emergency situations, foreign intelligence surveillance, individual consent, public information, and emergency assistance;
  • Prohibit service providers from disclosing a user’s geolocation information to the government in the absence of a warrant or exception;
  • Prohibit the use of unlawfully obtained geolocation information as evidence;
  • Provide for administrative discipline and a civil cause of action if geolocation information is unlawfully intercepted or disclosed.

    • There are a number of factors in Lofgren’s favor this time around that could see this particular bill being passed. There are unfortunately an equal number of factors that could easily see this bill defeated, just like all the other ones.

    Do you think Lofgren’s bill can succeed where other proposed federal law has failed? Let us know in the comments.

    Lofgren’s bill aims to change federal law, and as such, has many obstacles on its way to becoming law. There has to be an easier way to enact change, right? That’s what lawmakers in Texas are betting on as it’s become the first state to propose a digital privacy bill.

    It was revealed this week that both the Texas Senate and House have introduced bills that would require a warrant when requesting location data from in-state cellular carriers. The bill also would require these in-state carriers to submit annual transparency reports revealing how many requests for data were made, and from which agencies the requests came from.

    Unlike Lofgren’s sweeping bill, the Texas bills only target geolocation tracking. The bills don’t introduce any kind of digital communication protection clause as that would be too difficult to enforce on the state level. As is the case with state laws, it wouldn’t have any effect on federal agencies’ ability to request data without a warrant. It would only be good enough to protect citizens from data requests coming from in-state agencies and law enforcement.

    So, what’s the big deal then? Why is this so important when the protections are so weak? In this case, it’s all about the idea, and what it represents. A successful passage of this bill would send a message to other states that it can protect their citizens’ digital privacy in a small way. If enough states pass similar bills, it would also send a strong message to the federal government to enact similar laws on the national level.

    The beauty of our government is how the states can influence national decision making. It’s happened in the past, and is still happening today in various other legal arenas. Digital privacy is an important topic, but the toxic environment in Washington has prevented any meaningful reform. We now have a chance to enact change, no matter how small, across the country one state at a time.

    Do you think the states could kickstart a push for federal law reform? Or are the potential protections offered by states enough? Let us know in the comments.

    [Image: jmtimages/flickr]

  • Microsoft teases Skype integration with Outlook.com

    Little over two weeks ago Microsoft took down the “opening soon” digital cardboard sign and officially introduced Outlook.com into the wild as a stable product. And if you’re already a user or if you have seen the commercials, then you already know that the email service delivers Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter integration, among other supported cloud services.

    But there’s one that is still missing, and a very important product integration at that — Skype. In mid-May 2011 Microsoft purchased the popular voice, video and text chatting service for $8.5 billion, a not so small chunk of change by any means. Naturally, in the cloud-connected era, integration with the software giant’s cloud products is the next logical step, especially in the midst of heavy competition from Google which, for instance, includes Google Talk integration with Gmail.

    Microsoft has released a new commercial for Outlook.com which takes users through all the important features like the clean design, Office web app and social network integration before taking a surprising turn. When showcasing the Messaging panel, Outlook.com also sports two big buttons underneath the text input box with video camera and phone pictograms. Needless to say that’s video and audio calling, in layman terms, with Skype powering the new functionality straight from Outlook.com.

    The video shows Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter icons after a big “connected” with the Skype logo ending the video alongside a “coming soon” sign. It is worth noting that Joe Belfiore, Microsoft’s Windows Phone manager, also said that Skype integration will make its way to the People hub in Windows Phone as well, but again with the same “coming soon” estimate.

    Photo Credit: Goodluz /Shutterstock

  • Kindle Paperwhite is my new favorite gadget [Review]

    When I wrote Why I Love Kindle back in February I said I was intending to upgrade to a Kindle Paperwhite soon. Three weeks later, timed so I can buy a Kindle copy of my own book (my publisher only supplies free paperbacks), and that’s exactly what I’ve done.

    The Kindle is one of those very rare devices that you don’t really need to upgrade. New features, an improved screen, touch support – it’s all well and good, but when you’re reading something you’re pretty oblivious to anything other than the words on the page. Or rather the screen. That said, moving to the Paperwhite from a second generation Kindle is a huge leap forward.

    The big difference of course is the Paperwhite comes with a frontlit, high-res capacitive touchscreen. A frontlit screen means exactly what it says. It’s lit from the front. So instead of a light shining into your eyes, it shines on the screen. This means you can read the Kindle comfortably at night without the need for a torch or reading light. It also has another benefit. It brightens up the screen, so instead of a grey-ish display you get one that’s white. Paperwhite in fact.

    Because it’s touchscreen, there are no actual buttons to worry about, except the on switch at the bottom of the device. Moving around is just a case of touching the left and right sides of the screen to turn pages, and tapping the top of the display to access the menu. If you want to look up a word you just press and hold it for a bit, then let go and the definition pops up. You can share and highlight text or add notes in the same way.

    The Paperwhite lets you access books stored on the device or, if you prefer, in the cloud, and the top menu lets you adjust the screen brightness (turn it up for brightly lit rooms, or dim it for darker locations), go shopping for new books on Amazon, and access the options. You can switch between list and cover view, sort your books by creating collections, sync and check for items and launch the experimental browser. The settings screen lets you turn Aeroplane Mode on or off, configure Wi-Fi, and access device and reading options.

    Compared with my second generation Kindle, the Paperwhite is tiny. It’s smaller all round, thinner and lighter but with a slightly taller screen. Of course my old Kindle had a large keyboard on the bottom so that’s part of the reason for the difference in size.

    The text is sharper (the PPI has risen to 212 from 169), which combined with the frontlight makes reading more pleasurable. Well depending on what you’re reading of course. You still get the ghosting, as well as the E Ink flicker when the screen refreshes itself but it’s faster and so less noticeable.

    A friend who owns a Paperwhite said she struggled a bit with the device because she found it a little awkward to hold one handed without accidentally touching the screen and calling up menus or flipping pages. I haven’t experienced that problem, but that might be just how I hold it, or down to the fact I’ve shelled out on a case that makes the device easier to grasp.

    Although Amazon was having a sale on third-party cases when I purchased my Paperwhite, I ignored those in favor of buying Amazon’s official Leather Cover in Ink Blue. This only fits the Kindle Paperwhite and automatically turns the e-reader on when you open it (so you need never use the one physical button if you don’t want to). A lot like the Smart Case on my Apple iPad.

    Just one more chapter…

    There are two features new to me that I quite like. Time to Read is very clever and analyses the speed you read at and gives you an estimate of how long it will take you to read the next chapter, or the entire book. If you’re wondering if you have enough time to read the next chapter before turning in for the night, it can tell you with reasonable accuracy.

    The other feature is X-Ray. This shows you information about the important characters in the book or on the page. It requires the book you’re reading to have this feature enabled, and a lot of books won’t (my new novel doesn’t for example). That said, although I’ve tried X-Ray out and think it’s quite clever, I don’t imagine I’ll be using it much, if at all.

    I’ve only had my Paperwhite for a short while, but already I’m loving it. I’ll be keeping my second generation Kindle because I like the physical keyboard and will use it for making notes on my next novel, but for day-to-day reading, I’ll be permanently attached to the new device, and as I do a lot of reading at night, the combination of the frontlight and Time to Read means I’m already powering through my current choice of book.

    If you own a non-Paperwhite Kindle, or another eBook reader, do you have any plans to upgrade, or are you happy to stick with what you’ve got? Comments below please.

    If you’d like to buy a copy of my novel — I Know What You Did Last Supper — I believe Amazon might just have it in stock. You can also read an extract here.

  • Telx Gets New Tenant for NJ Data Center Campus

    The raised-floor area at the Telx data center in Clifton, NJ.

    The raised-floor area at the Telx data center in Clifton, NJ.

    Colocation provider Telx said this week that DBR360’s public and private cloud solutions will be available at the NJR2 and NJR3 data center facilities located at the Telx campus in Clifton N.J. DBR360 will offer its Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) to leverage Telx’s high-density of networks and interconnection services for both new and existing clients.

    The Telx’s Clifton datacenter campus encompasses its NJR2 data center facility at 100 Delawanna Avenue and the soon to be completedNJR3  flagship facility. The Telx Clifton campus is a managed, carrier-neutral, secure environment for enterprises, digital media and bio-pharm companies, financial services, network providers and carriers. The expanded campus provides Telx and DBR360 customers with access to an end-to-end cloud and network infrastructure service for IT organizations with enterprise cloud performance.

    “Uniting a robust network infrastructure into the cloud served is a natural fit for Telx’s high density network interconnection services,” said Anthony Lobretto, vice president of engineering and technology solutions, DBR360. “Most cloud providers offer network connectivity limited to access over the internet. Many of our customers require private networks that provide greater levels of performance, security and integration with their existing corporate networks. Oftentimes the network aspect of cloud computing is overlooked.”

    “Partnering with DBR360 on this endeavor further illustrates Telx’s role as a cloud enabler. The breadth of network and cloud service providers within our facilities is a distinguishing advantage,” said John Freimuth, Telx’s General Manager of Cloud and Enterprise Solutions. “Some clients have preexisting relationships with carriers, and the flexibility of our network combined with the customized solutions offered by DBR360, allows us to mirror our customers network architecture to their specific needs within our facility.”

    DBR360 is a managed service provider that integrates advanced networking technologies and virtualization infrastructure into private and public cloud solutions. DBR360 is headquartered in Fairfax, VA.

  • Apple reportedly slashes 9.7-inch iPad orders due to iPad mini cannibalization

    Apple 9.7-Inch iPad Orders
    The iPad mini might be a much hungrier cannibal than Apple (AAPL) had anticipated. Unnamed sources have told Digitimes that Apple has drastically cut its 9.7-inch iPad shipment estimates from 60 million to 33 million in 2013, due largely to the unanticipated popularity of the iPad mini. According to Digitimes‘ sources, Apple is ramping up iPad mini production and has boosted its projected shipments from 40 million to 55 million this year. However, Apple’s supposed new estimates also show a possible drop in overall iPad demand since it now projects to ship 88 million iPads and iPad minis this year, down from the 100 million reported earlier.

  • Spotify Expanding Its Web Player Beta in the U.K.

    Spotify is opening up its closed beta for its new web player in the U.K., letting more people have access to the browser-based music streaming experience.

    We first learned that Spotify was finally planning on launching a web player back in November of 2012. The player functions much like the desktop app, except it’s a bit more sparse, lacking app connections and some of the social features. It’s a barebones player that definitely gets the job done, however.

    “We’re letting a number of users in the UK test out a beta version of our basic web player, which we’re gearing up to release later this year,” a Spotify spokesperson told The Next Web.

    In January, Spotify axed music downloads in Europe.

    The faster they roll out this web player around the world, the better Spotify is able to compete with the onslaught of streaming music competitors like Rdio, Rhapsody, and as we learned earlier this week, possibly some sort of big subscription service from Google’s YouTube. The beta expansion in the U.K. means we’re that much closer to a full launch in the U.K.

    Although the web player is not technically available in the U.S. right now for most (accessing play.spotify.com simply redirects to the Spotify home page. But you can access it through what appears to be a loophole through a band’s Facebook page by clicking here.

  • Alvin Lee Dies; Guitarist Was 68

    Guitarist Alvin Lee, most famous for playing lead guitar and singing with the band Ten Years After, has died.

    According to a Los Angeles Times report, Lee died in Spain on Wednesday, March 6 due to complications from routine surgery.

    Lee learned to play guitar as a teenager and formed Ten Years After in 1966. The band found success in England and went on to fame in the U.S. after it played an 11-minute version of its song “I’m Going Home” at the Woodstock music festival in 1969.

    After leaving Ten Years After in 1974, Lee went on to record and tour with a variety of famous musicians. In 1973 he and Mylon LeFevre released On the Road to Freedom, and album recorded with guest stars such as George Harrison and Steve Winwood. Lee pursued a solo career throughout the 70s, and in the 80s toured with artists such as John Mayall and Mick Taylor.

    Lee’s last album, titled Still on the Road to Freedom, was released in September 2012.

    (Image courtesy Jim Summaria/Wikimedia)

  • GigaOM 2013-03-07 09:15:51

    Oracle execs love to talk about their aspirations for the company’s server business. Only they shy away from the “s word”– they prefer to use term “engineered systems” to describe the honking big Exadatas, Exalogics, Exa-whatevers stuffed with CPUs, storage, Infiniband connectivity, oh, and lots of Oracle software.

    On the company’s second quarter earnings call in December, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said Oracle’s $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems made it “a leader in the highly profitable Engineered Systems segment of the hardware business.”  In his view, that’s a better, more lucrative place to be than in “low-margin undifferentiated products like commodity X86 servers.” Leave that race to the bottom to the Dells of the world, he seems to say. (In fact at one point during Oracle’s Sun acquisition, he actually did say that.

    Here’s the problem, since it entered the hardware business, Oracle hasn’t sold enough engineered systems to make up for lost sales of lower-end machines, according to third-party researchers. Its hardware revenue and unit share is headed south.

    For the fourth calendar quarter of 2012,  Oracle server revenue  was down 18 percent year over year according to both Gartner and IDC. Meanwhile, as GigaOM’s Jordan Novet reported last week, the “other” server vendors — companies like Quanta and Wistron – saw their aggregate revenue rise nearly 22 percent in the fourth quarter compared to the year-ago period.

    In units, the “other” category saw 35 percent growth. These are the types of servers that sell into huge web-scale data centers run by Facebook and Amazon. Oracle’s own figures reinforce this narrative. In its third quarter, ending in November 30,  2012, Oracle hardware systems revenue fell 23 percent to $734 million from $953 million for the year-ago period.

    gartnerq4server Gartner Server #s The IDC findings are below. idcserverq4 Obviously, Oracle sees huge potential in these high-end boxes — Nomura Securities’ analyst Rick Sherlund said “the Exaseries of servers are growing about 100 percent, but that has not been enough to offset the loss of the other business yet.” The question is how patient Oracle is prepared to be. I’ve reached out for comment and will update this if one is forthcoming. Here’s the thing, while Oracle regroups and repositions its server business, the trajectory for “other” servers is way up and Oracle keeps heading in the other direction. It’ll be interesting to see if there’s any indication of a change on Oracle’s third quarter earnings call March 20.

    Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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  • LSI, NetApp Collaborate on Server-based Flash

    LSI-WarpDrive_HR

    LSI has announced its Nytro WarpDrive family of application acceleration PCIe flash cards, which are designed to address application performance by converting server-based flash into hot data cache for critical applications. The cards are among the first PCIe flash devices to be fully tested and qualified with NetApp’s intelligent server caching software.

    “Flash memory adoption in the enterprise is a powerful complement to hard-disk-based network storage,” said Tim Russell, vice president, Data Lifecycle Ecosystem Group, NetApp. “Deploying flash as a high-speed cache in the server is a simple and cost-effective way to significantly reduce latency and I/O bottlenecks, while providing enterprise-level data protection and manageability for the entire infrastructure. Working with our server cache partners, we’re able to offer customers a complete end-to-end, high-speed solution.”

    LSI Nytro WarpDrive cards deployed in conjunction with Flash Accel software deliver automated and intelligent caching of hot data to PCIe flash storage, and an optimized cost per IOPS and cost per gigabyte across flash and hard drives. Combined, it is an easy to use, fully tested, end-to-end solution. Test results have shown a reduction in application and server latency by up to 90 percent while increasing throughput by up to 80 percent. Storage efficiency is also improved by minimizing the number of input/output operations between servers and back-end storage systems, which frees up shared storage resources to handle additional workloads. In addition, the Nytro WarpDrive card’s advanced “off-loaded” multiprocessor architecture uses up to four times less CPU and memory resources than competing solutions.

    “LSI Nytro WarpDrive cards help datacenter managers contend with massive data growth by increasing the speed and responsiveness of critical applications,” said Gary Smerdon, senior vice president and general manager, Accelerated Solutions Division, LSI. “The combination of Nytro WarpDrive cards and Flash Accel software allows for an optimized use of flash while extending its significant performance and TCO benefits to any server connected to NetApp storage.”

    Nytro WarpDrive cards range in capacity from 200GB to 1.6TB of MLC or SLC flash memory and are designed for simple, plug-and-play integration into today’s low-profile, high-performance system chassis.

  • Google expands European Street View

    Despite some setbacks in Germany a couple of years ago, Google is pushing ahead, today announcing a new expansion of its Street View service on the continent. Ulf Spitzer, Google’s Street View Program Manager, today took the wraps off of a major update to the company’s Maps offering in the old world.

    For the first time, Google has added street level imagery for Bulgaria, adding the cities of Sofia, Plovdiv and Varna, Veliko Turnovo and Koprvishtitsa. Not stopping there, the search giant also covered the ski resorts of Borovets, Bansko and Pamporovo, as well as the Architectural and Museum Reserve Tsarevets and the popular tourist destination of the Black Sea coastline.

    Russia, which had already been partially covered by Street View, with Moscow and St. Petersburg having been done, now has the city of  Sochi, site of the 2014 Winter Olympics added, as well as the Golden Abode of Buddha Shakyamuni, the largest Buddhist temple in the Republic of Kalmykia.

    Spitzer also added that “in the UK we’re refreshing some imagery in major cities like London, Manchester, Glasgow and Cardiff, as well as filling in some of the gaps where we had no Street View coverage. For example, we’ve added brand new images to parts of the Scottish coastline, in pockets of East Anglia and parts of South Wales”.

    The addition of Bulgaria brings Google’s total to 48 nations covered by Street View and the company is continuing to push into new locations.

  • Google launches (and sells out of) a $30 Nexus 7 dock

    In the better late than never category, Google introduced a simple dock for its Nexus 7 tablet on Wednesday evening. The $29.99 accessory charges a Nexus 7, while propping it up in portrait mode. A 3.5 millimeter headphone jack in the dock supports external speakers when playing music from the tablet, which also supports wireless music playback over Bluetooth. Sadly, in what’s becoming a recurring theme, the dock is sold out as of Thursday morning.

    Nexus7+dock

    I bought a Nexus 7 after reviewing one last July but later sold it in favor of an iPad mini; not because Google’s tablet didn’t have a dock available, but because I use multiple mobile platforms to maintain perspective. If I still had my Nexus 7, however, I’d be quite miffed for two reasons. It really shouldn’t take a half-year or more to introduce simple accessories for a product. And once they finally arrive, why add insult to injury by not producing enough inventory?

    Nexus 7 dock inventoryThe odd thing to me is that it’s not as if Google doesn’t know how many Nexus 7 tablets have been sold. Yes, the tablet can be purchased outside of the Google Play store at some brick-and-mortar retailers, but Google surely keeps track of Nexus 7 activations.

    While it can’t predict demand perfectly, Google — with all of its data and algorithms — should have a better handle on expected demand; especially if it wants to really compete in the hardware market with Nexus devices, Chromebooks and Chromeboxes.

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  • Aereo TV: Barely Legal By Design

    In a post yesterday, I mentioned Aereo TV, a new Barry Diller-backed business launched last year, calling it an example of a start-up that is “barely legal by design.” Since the courts are about to make a ruling that will profoundly affect its prospects, it might interest you to learn more about how its entire business is engineered to exploit existing copyright law.

    First, this service takes full advantage of unchallenged U.S. law that makes over-the-air television free to anyone who puts up an antenna and connects it to a receiving device. Unlike countries such as the U.K., for example, the U.S. has no television license tax. Broadcasters in the U.S. make their money based on advertising, plain and simple.

    Second, it relies on the seminal 1984 Sony Betamax case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that using a home videocassette recorder to “time shift” programming received over the air for later viewing did not violate copyright law. Even though the VCR was technically making a copy of the program without a license to do so, the Court found that copying fit into a narrow exception to the otherwise exclusive rights of the copyright holder — an exception known as a “fair use.”

    Since the programming was being made available at no charge, the Court reasoned, making a copy simply to watch at another time did not disturb the market of the copyright owner — the key to fair use analysis. While the VCR was capable of illegal uses — notably making more copies and selling them to others — the studios who sued Sony had asked the court for an outright ban on the device, a request the Court rejected. If some VCR owners were going beyond time-shifting, the Betamax decision held, then the plaintiffs needed to sue those individuals and not the maker of the device.

    Both the reasoning and the borders of the Betamax case have proven difficult for courts to fully unravel, and innovators have been exploiting that confusion ever since. If a home VCR used for time shifting was legal, for example, why not its digital equivalent, the DVR? And if viewers were exercising “fair use” with VCRs in their home, why not a DVR located
    offsite but controlled by the consumer through the cable system?

    Those were questions addressed in a 2008 case brought by television networks against cable provider Cablevision, which had created a service known as the “Remote Storage” DVR. The system configured virtual DVRs for each Cablevision customer — essentially cheap high capacity hard drives — maintained at Cablevision’s facilities. Operated by customers through their cable box, the remote DVRs separately recorded and stored the program selections of each individual customer, then replayed them at the customer’s convenience.

    To fit within the Betamax decision, Cablevision designed its RS-DVR system to store individual copies of the program, even though from an engineering standpoint it would only have needed one to handle the replay. If a million customers each asked Cablevision to record the season finale of “Top Chef,” well, Cablevision’s remote DVRs would make a million separate copies of the show as it was aired and store them on the remote DVRs. When each individual later pressed play, they were watching the copy “they” recorded. Just like a home DVR.

    The plaintiffs in the Cablevision case argued that the remote DVRs were really just a ruse to let Cablevision offer their content as on-demand programming without paying extra for it. The difference between a home VCR and a remote DVR was legally significant, they said. Indeed, it was the difference between fair use and an unauthorized rebroadcast. But the court agreed with Cablevision, and allowed the service to continue.
    That gave Aereo the opening they needed. Aereo, like Cablevision, runs data centers that receive and record TV programs, in Aereo’s case based on customer programming entered via the Internet. Unlike Cablevision, however, which captured content it was already receiving from its channel partners, Aereo TV simply gets its content from the airwaves.

    To preserve the “fair use” defense of the Betamax and Cablevision cases, however, it does so by maintaining hundreds of thousands of tiny antennas (each about the size of a dime) — one for each of its customers. It’s just like having your own antenna and a DVR at home, the company argues, except that the antenna and the DVR are both remote, and you control both through the Internet and not your television. It’s not just timeshifting. It’s “placeshifting.”

    Just as Cablevision only needed one copy of the programming stream, Aereo only needs one antenna. The individual antennas and the software to manage them are there solely to satisfy the legal requirement that the individual consumer make and access her own personal copy.

    So what’s the real innovation here? Is it the company’s unique combination of cheap, miniature antennas and cheap data storage controlled by proprietary software and combined to create a cloud-based service that piggybacks on the customer’s existing Internet connections to simulate a small cable company? Or is the innovation the close reading of relevant case law, and a business model that just barely extends existing precedents to allow Aereo to operate without paying any licensing fees to the content providers?

    Of course there are larger trends at work here. Consumers raised on the Internet’s “pull” model of content delivery are starting to revolt against the pre-packaging of channels offered by cable and satellite providers. Some consumers — soon, perhaps, most — prefer to get their programming a la carte, and on whatever devices they happen to have in front of them.

    As Internet TV devices and services from Apple, Roku, Boxee, Slingbox, Hulu and others test out new ways of distributing and monetizing television programming, Aereo argues that it’s just pushing the envelope slightly, and in a direction the courts have already determined is legal.

    Too far, according to local broadcasters, who sued the company almost from the moment of its launch. Broadcasters say the company is retransmitting their programming without paying fees required by law for cable and satellite providers. Aereo says it’s just helping its customers exercise established fair use rights using the latest technology, for which the company charges a correspondingly modest fee.

    Who’s right? Digital rights advocates at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, for one, are siding with Aereo. Calling the broadcasters’ arguments “depressingly familiar,” EFF says the case is really about who gets to profit from new technologies that make TV watching better. The broadcasters, the group says, argue that every innovation someone else invents is theirs to control; that “they have a right to the profits generated, and a veto power over features.” Aereo is just a rerun of Betamax, the group argues, and Aereo should win.

    Not so fast. Many local broadcasters are already struggling to stay profitable and relevant as fewer and fewer consumers get their programming over the air. They increasingly rely on the FCC-regulated retransmission fees paid by cable and satellite packagers, a trend that will only increase as more network programming becomes available on the Internet and the need for local affiliates shrinks further. If Aereo succeeds and more viewers cut the cord with cable and satellite, many of the stations Aereo relies on may not stay in business. Obviously that doesn’t help anyone.

    Legal hair-splitting aside, in other words, what’s clear here is that the supply chain of the content industry is coming apart. No one knows yet who will be left standing when a new one is ultimately forged, or in what position they’ll find themselves. Both sides here are counting on the courts to protect their position. If Aereo’s only innovation is to gingerly pluck legal loopholes to accelerate the destruction, broadcasters are equally guilty of using the law — in this case FCC regulations going back to the early days of cable television — to hold them off until they can figure out what else they can do in a future content ecosystem.

    This isn’t a fight about control of new technology that makes television better. It’s about which law will determine the winners and losers in an industry where disruptive change is inevitable: Betamax and Cablevision on the one hand, or the FCC’s retransmission rules on the other. Neither, of course, was intended or anticipated to decide the future of Internet television. Once again, technology change has outpaced legal change, causing yet another collision at their accident-prone intersection.

    So far, Aereo has won the early skirmishes in the lower court, fighting off a request by broadcasters for a preliminary injunction. (For a similar service offered on the West Coast by another startup, the maverick has lost the early rounds.) But in the fall, a federal appeals court in New York took up the Aereo case. A decision is expected sometime soon that will likely save or sink Aereo. The company, meanwhile, has announced plans to expand its service to 22 additional markets.

    Interestingly, the three-judge appellate panel included, by chance, Judge Denny Chin, who was the trial judge in the 2008 Cablevision case. Chin had ruled against the Remote Storage DVRs, but his detailed opinion was harshly rejected on appeal. Now Chin is himself an appellate judge, and one of the three votes that will decide Aereo TV’s fate.

  • iPad, meet Android: RemotePlay makes sharing media between mobile devices easy

    This is neat: A new app called RemotePlay makes it easy to beam photos, music, videos and even documents from your mobile device to other devices in the same network. RemotePlay’s Android version launched on on Google Play Thursday, and an iOS version is close to being launched as well.

    I had a chance to try both versions this week, and liked what I saw. Especially RemotePlay’s ability to bridge the divide between Android and iOS is impressive.

    RemotePlay’s local group sharing features are intriguing as well: Want to show everyone in your home network the same photo or all your coworkers the same document? Then just share it with the RemotePlay app, and you’ll even be able to close it on their machines when you’re done talking about it.

    Here’s a quick video demo of the app running on my iPad 2 and my Nexus 7:

    RemotePlay has been developed by Piddas21, a new Taiwan-based startup that was founded last year by Quanta Computer. You may not have heard of Quanta, but there’s a good chance that you may be using one of their products. The ODM manufacturer makes Apple’s Macbooks as well as PCs for a whole bunch of other companies. Altogether, it’s responsible for the assembly of one out of three laptops in the world.

    Piddas21 CEO and Founder Joe Lin told me during an interview Wednesday that the goal of his subsidiary was to find new revenue opportunities for Quanta’s customers. “80 percent of our customers are desperate for new innovations,” he said. Software and services are one of these opportunities, and Piddas21 is exploring this area by going directly to consumers. “We want to get firsthand user experiences,” Lin said.

    RemotePlay is a combination of a proprietary discovery protocol and plain old HTTP for file transfer. The app is also doing some transcoding to make content from iOS devices playable on Android devices. I noticed that this process can lead to a bit of a lag when sharing videos, and Lin told me that the company is looking to add more flexibility to the transcoding process.

    The company is also working on a Windows 8 version, and wants to add an easy way to share entire media collections and photo slideshows. That way, you’ll be able to literally run your presentation on your colleague’s iPads.

    An ad-supported version of RemotePlay is available for free on Google Play, and the company has said that it won’t actually display any ads within the software for the first three months. A permanently ad-free version will cost users $1.99.

    Image courtesy of Flickr user Tsahi Levent-Levi.

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