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Remember the early days of mobile content, before the iPhone, when you’d fire up your mobile browser and see your operator’s “portal”? Those portals are still around, incredibly, but not for much longer.

Juniper Research has just put out a report about mobile content business models and, according to the UK analyst firm, just 6 percent of content downloads now come from these portals, with the rest being attributable to third-party stores, chiefly Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play store. Frankly the 6 percent figure is surprisingly high – report author Windsor Holden told me the portals in question belong to “China Mobile and two or three others”, and even those are “going to wither away over the next few years”.

And the real money isn’t even in app sales, as Holden explained:

“Only a small proportion of apps are monetized at the point of sale. On the App Store it’s at the 10 percent mark, and it’s around 3 percent on Google Play. Where the apps are really making money is in terms of in-app payments and in-app billing. If you look at the highest-grossing apps… none of them are predicated on the pay-for-download model.”

In selling all those virtual swords and poker chips, the standard developer-OS vendor split is 70-30, meaning the carrier needs to try to wrangle some share out of that 30 percent cut. Is that just wishful thinking on the operators’ part? Not necessarily.

What carriers have to offer

According to Holden, there is still a problem that needs to be solved if even more money is going to be made out of mobile apps: in order to buy apps and make in-app purchases, the customer needs to register a bank card. And who doesn’t have one of those? Kids, and a heck of a lot of people in developing countries – in these segments, the ability to buy content with pre-paid phone credit makes a whole lot of sense.

“While operators have never been the best at direct content sales, there is a growing opportunity for operators to monetize their assets,” he said. “On a number of storefronts, including those for Nokia and BlackBerry, the conversion rates when you add carrier billing go up by a factor of 5 or 6 – there’s significant uplift on second or third purchases.”

In the U.S., customers of operators such as Sprint and Verizon can do this for Android apps, and Holden reckons around 15 percent of such transactions take place through carrier billing in that country. Globally, Juniper expects carrier billing-derived mobile content revenues to soar from $2 billion to $13 billion between now and 2017.

Of course, iOS is not part of this party, as Apple doesn’t share like that. However, Holden said, the flow of second-hand iOS devices into developing nations may eventually mean Cupertino is missing out on an opportunity — would it rather share revenues, or not make any?

Welcome evolution

This shift towards giving operators a slice of the pie is, in my opinion, a good thing – not because the operators deserve it by virtue of existing (a stance they’ve taken many times before), but because it rewards them for the use of assets that only they can provide.

We can see an analogy in the slow but steady emergence of carrier apps that exploit the good old mobile phone number. In that case, the operator’s asset is its ability to manage identity — my colleague Kevin Fitchard reported just the other day on an interesting new carrier initiative called OneAPI that shows how serious they are about expanding this role. In the case of app and content sales, the carrier can capitalize on the existing billing relationship it has with its customer — this makes the smartphone game more lucrative for the carrier while making life easier for the customer (see also: carriers getting a cut of Skype credit sales).

Recent years have involved so much struggle on the part of the operators against newer, more nimble players in the mobile value chain, but carriers are starting to find a comfortable and rewarding new position in that chain. In time, this evolution of their role may reshape the mobile ecosystem yet again.

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Pink does really make a difference. To most people a unicorn is just an imaginary creature from children’s books but add the color pink into the equation and Android enthusiasts rejoice about AOKP, one of the most popular custom Android distributions. The team behind Android Open Kang Project has released a new build, a week after the last one, sporting bug fixes, new features and support for more devices.

The AOKP developers have fixed “a really nasty memory leak” which caused the popular custom Android distribution to randomly reboot. A side-effect of squashing the bug is increased speed in navigating the lockscreen. Jelly Bean MR1 Build 5 introduces support for six new devices, for a total of 28 as of the latest release.

The developers have added the LG Nitro HD for AT&T (codename “p930”), LG Optimus LTE for SKT (codename “su640”), LG Spectrum for Verizon (codename “vs920”), Samsung Galaxy Note II for Sprint and Verizon (codename “I900” and “i605”, respectively) and the international Samsung Galaxy S III (codename “I9300”) to the list of supported devices.

The new features include notification panel toggles (quick settings is the default option), new configuration menu for the navigation ring, S Pen support for the Samsung Galaxy Note II and a Quiet Hours toggle.

Users that have had Screenshot set as a navigation ring target or have uninstalled an app which was used as a navigation ring target must go into ROMControl and reset the navigation ring, because SystemUI may cause force closes (crashes).

AOKP Jelly Bean MR1 Build 5 is available to download from AndroTransfer and Goo.im. There is also a new Google Apps package available to go along with it, based off Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean.

If you want to check-in on Foursquare more often, but think the process takes too long, today’s iOS update is for you.

Foursquare is now letting users check-in faster by employing a “tap and hold” feature in the app. Now, you can simply hold the place at which you’re checking-in (once accessed from the check-in icon at the top right) and Foursquare will check you in without taking you to the official check-in screen.

You can also tap and hold the blue check-in suggestion bar that pops up at the top of your feed when the app sense you’re nearby a certain location.

You’ll know it’s working by the green progress bar and the “Checking you in” status.

Although Foursquare has moved on to emphasizing other uses for their service (like as a true local search and discovery destination) and “moved beyond the check-in” as we all like to say, they still remind us that checking-in is vital to the service:

“Remember: each time you check in, you’re teaching us about the restaurants, bars, and shops you like, so we can give you even smarter recommendations in Explore. And now that it takes just a split-second, it’s even easier to check in everywhere you go,” they say.

The coverage of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s death wasn’t complete until someone brought the whipping of aliens and cancer cereal to the mix. Thankfully, Next Media Animation has stepped up to the plate. Kudos.

News out of CeBIT, the largest consumer electronics show in the world, indicates that Samsung will no longer be selling its Windows RT tablet in Germany and other unspecified European regions. A company spokesperson explained the reason to Heise Online, saying forecasted sales are low. This follows Samsung’s prior decision to not even launch its Ativ Tab with Windows RT in the U.S. But if you’ve followed the Windows tablet product cycle for the past few months, this really shouldn’t be surprising.

I pointed out the problem with Windows RT back in January. It’s not a bad operating system or product. In fact, I like the touch-friendly experience provided by Windows RT and the modern user interface. If it had more apps that I use on a daily basis, I’d like it even more. And the battery life of such slates is typically in the eight to 10 hour range thanks to the power efficient ARM chips inside. There’s a problem, however: consumers can get full Windows 8 tablets running on Intel’s Atom chip for comparable prices.

Here’s a generic breakdown of the product market from my January post that illustrates why there’s a very limited market for Windows RT currently:

“Consumers have three choices when it comes to Windows tablets. They can buy

1. ARM-based: A Windows RT tablet for around $500 that has acceptable performance, a Desktop limited to Microsoft Office use, no support for legacy software and a device that runs for about 10 hours on a charge.
2. Intel Atom-based: A Windows 8 tablet for around $500 that has slightly better performance, no desktop or software installation limitations and runs for 8 to 10 hours on a charge.
3. Intel Core-based: A windows 8 tablet for around $900 that offers the best performance, has no desktop or software installation limitations and runs for 4 to 5 hours on a charge.”

Let’s look at Samsung’s own tablets in this scope.

Using Amazon’s site for Germany, you can find the Samsung Ativ Tab with 32 GB of storage running Windows RT for 600.39 euros. But the Samsung Ativ Smart PC with 64 GB of storage running Windows 8 is 629 euros. For an extra five percent out of pocket, you get similar battery life, more local storage capacity, the same modern user interface and — this is key — the ability to run hundreds of thousands of legacy apps.

If you don’t need support for Windows applications, you might opt for the Windows RT version, I suppose, but why not pay the small premium as a “just in case” scenario and the greater storage capacity? I would, particularly because I’d also gain my choice of browser.

Again, the issue with Windows RT products isn’t necessarily the product itself. The issue is that it’s generally priced too comparably to Windows 8 systems that offer more. Samsung knows this. I’d argue that Samsung actually already knew this and that’s why it never launched the product in the U.S. to begin with. Selling its Windows RT tablet in Europe was probably more wishful thinking rather than a long-term strategy.

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Love can sometimes make us do incredibly stupid things. For one Chinese man, his expression of love made Van Gogh’s little stunt look sane.

The Metro reports that Gou Wen, 22, sent the love of his life a bottle of his own sperm as a token of his adoration. Despite it being the most insane, and kind of disgusting, way to show one’s love, the woman accepted the gift. Unfortunately, she thought it was moisturizer and didn’t even realize what it was until after she had smeared it over half of her face.

Upon discovering what had happened, Zeng Lin, 19, had Wen arrested. He will be forced to pay her $300 for her trouble, and the inevitable therapy that will come from this chance encounter.

Strangely enough, it doesn’t seem that Wen is a psychopath, but rather just a confused man that really doesn’t know how to express his feelings. He’s quoted as saying: “I love her so much but she didn’t know it and I didn’t know how to tell her, so I did that thinking it was the ultimate way to show love.” He even admitted he was wrong, and said that he would “find another way” to win her love.

I don’t think Lin will be accepting any more gifts anytime soon, but maybe they’ll get together down the road. They can then look back and have a big laugh over the time he sent her a bottle of his semen. It’d be a hell of a story to tell the kids.

Check in on what dead-eyes and shovel-face are up to in this hilarious “honest trailer” from ScreenJunkies.

There’s more fun to be had at the expense of Twilight. Check out slapping fish, leftover cake, and more in last year’s awesome Bad Lip Reading of the original movie.

The T-Mobile-MetroPCS merger may be encountering vocal objections from Metro shareholders, but the companies aren’t hearing a peep out of the U.S. Department of Justice. On Wednesday, T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom said the DOJ has let the antitrust clock run out – typically a 30-day waiting period – without invoking its powers to investigate or block the merger.

That’s one major hurdle overcome to closing the deal, which would make T-Metro a publically traded company majority owned by DT, though it still faces regulatory scrutiny from the Federal Communications Commission as well as vote from Metro stockholders.

The DOJ’s tacit blessing, however, isn’t a trivial matter. The Justice Department has become much more actively involved in U.S. telecom deals ever since it joined forces with the FCC to kill AT&T-Mo in 2011. Since then it has thrown up a roadblock to Sprint’s mammoth deal with Softbank, citing national security issues. It also played a big role is shaping Verizon’s spectrum acquisition and partnership with the cable providers, though it eventually let that deal slide through despite its potential impact on broadband competition.

The fact that T-Metro’s paperwork passed through the DOJ’s offices without a word is a good sign that the deal will surmount its remaining regulatory hurdles without a hitch. While the DOJ has frowned on consolidation among the Big 4 U.S. operators, this deal would combine the smallest nationwide operator with the biggest regional operator and put T-Mobile in a much stronger spectrum position. Since AT&T-Mo, regulators have been, first and foremost, concerned with maintaining the four-operator equilibrium at the top of the mobile market.

The combined spectrum of T-Mobile USA and MetroPCS as compiled by Mosaik

MetroPCS has set a vote for on the deal on April 12. The hedge funds opposing the deals want MetroPCS to negotiate better terms with DT – creating either a less debt-laden final company or giving Metro shareholders a better payout – but so far they only represent a little more than 10 percent of the voting shares of the company. But DT seemed worried enough about their influence to issue a warning Wednesday to those stockholders.

“The MetroPCS board unanimously recommends that stockholders vote their shares FOR all of the proposals relating to the proposed combination with T-Mobile,” DT said in a statement. “The failure to vote or an abstention has the same effect as a vote against the proposed combination.  If stockholders vote against the proposed combination, there is no assurance that MetroPCS will be able to deliver the same or better stockholder value.”

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We love hearing historical stories about Robin Hood-like men, about bank robbers, pirates and outlaws on the run. Criminals form part of our collective imagination and are part of our origin story. For many Americans, rogue individuals were instrumental in “how the West was won.” But in the present, our empathy for criminals is rarely piqued; unless, of course, we’re watching The Wire or reading about 18th century pirates (and imagining Johnny Depp).

In every day practice, many of us hold a deep fear of criminals — of drug dealers, terrorists and “others” that pose threats to our sense of security, violate our laws and transgress against our moral frameworks. If we look at a criminal from two hundred years ago, we can be blown away by their ingenuity, but if we face them in real life, we see their assets as societal deficits. Why is it that we can honor them when they are gone, but not make use of their talents while they are here?

Quite simply, our fear prevents us from recognizing and finding appropriate channels for the talents of our criminal population. As a result, we have institutionalized a simple formula for dealing with such individuals: capture, punish and isolate.

This formula has become a curse, resulting in an epidemic of incarceration across the United States. In the last thirty years, the U.S. prison population has grown by over 500 percent. Not only does the U.S. lead the world with the highest incarceration rate, nearly one-quarter of the entire world’s inmates have been incarcerated here. Worse, 70 percent of the formerly incarcerated end up back in jail. And the costs of mass incarceration are staggering. It can cost as much as $60,000 a year to house a prisoner, which means the annual cost to taxpayers exceeds $60 billion. Think about the repercussions of investing this money in incarceration instead in our education or healthcare systems.

So how, as a society, do we develop new instincts towards criminals and what strategies can be effectively employed to reduce the rate of incarceration and the rate of recidivism? And relatedly, how do we recognize a black-market innovator who may have all the talent of a Richard Branson or a Jay-Z, but lacks the opportunities for a leg-up in the formal economy? To solve this problem, we first need to recognize the talents of the gangster. A resume from the underground is full of hustle and street skills that aren’t acknowledged by employers. That is to say, given the applied “street smarts” and talent — the art of the hustle, the leadership and prowess of running a drug business — what is it all worth?

Many gangsters are natural born innovators with restricted economic opportunities. Nobody understands this better than Catherine (Cat) Rohr, who quit her job in private equity to become a champion for the incarcerated. As she told us, “Initially I had this attitude that people in prison were the scum of the earth, that they were a waste of tax dollars.” But in getting to know the prison population better, Cat’s position began to change. “I suddenly realized I was meeting entrepreneurs in prison. That these guys who had run drug businesses had all these entrepreneurial characteristics like scrappiness, charisma, and real skills in leadership and management.” With this realization, Cat began a life committed to honoring the talents and skills of those in prison.

As part of this journey, Cat launched a program called Defy Ventures, in New York, that provides a business incubator for ex-offenders who then have an opportunity to compete for $150,000 in seed capital for their businesses. At the core of Cat’s program is a powerful acknowledgement of the skills and talents that former drug dealers and gang leaders possess. From there it’s just a matter of pivoting these street skills into the world of formal entrepreneurship. For many ex-cons, who face discrimination from employers after getting out of prison, Cat’s program offers an MBA-like training matched with exposure to leading entrepreneurs, investors, and potential employers.

Of course, we also need to find ways to stop crimes before they happen. One of the most important interventions we can make on that score — that also relies on changing our stereotypes of criminals — is by treating violence as a contagion, not as an act done by some “bad guy.” One of the biggest plagues on our society is violence. Yet, we too often have discourse around violence where violent individuals are cast as deviants or bad people. Instead, what if we began to treat violence like a disease that is transmitted and spread, much like the common cold?

This is exactly what Dr. Gary Slutkin has been doing with his program Cure Violence. As Gary told us, “Usually problems are stuck, not because we don’t care or there’s not enough money, but because the diagnosis is wrong.” Having spent decades in the field of infectious disease treating things like malaria and tuberculosis, Gary’s journey into transforming violence began as a simple observation: the patterns around violence “outbreaks” are nearly identical to the way that infectious diseases spread. With this insight, Gary sought to transform how we go about treating violence. “The most critical thing is to disrupt the transmission of violence,” Gary told us.

In practice, this led Gary to develop something called “violence interrupters,” which are effectively outreach workers who are called into delicate situations where violence might occur. So, for example, if people in a particular neighborhood hear about a potential retaliatory shooting or a conflict that is brewing between gangs, they can call in violence interrupters who go into the neighborhood and attempt to prevent the violence from being transmitted.

These interrupters are often from the communities where the violent outbreaks are occurring and many of them have been in prison and/or have had their own experiences with violence. As a result, they have a trust and credibility with the communities they work in that allows them to be much more effective than the police force, which often has little ability to intervene in the prevention of violence.

Ultimately, in seeing violence as a public health issue that can be changed through behavioral norms, Cure Violence is throwing away the stigma that people who commit acts of violence are somehow bad or morally depraved. As Gary joked, “You can’t even see bad under the microscope. There is no place in science for the concept of bad or the concept of enemy.”

In both recognizing the talents of these innovators, albeit working in society’s black markets, and transforming our attitude towards individuals who commit such acts of violence, we not only grow our empathy for those that we have cast out but we also begin to distance ourselves from an ineffective economy of punishment that has held sway for far too long.

The New York Post is reporting that Los Angeles Clippers star Lamar Odom during a custody battle over his 14-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son. The children’s mother, Liza Morales, was never married to Odom.

The report states that while Odom’s and Morales’ lawyers spoke in another room, Odom managed to catch a 20-minute nap on a courthouse bench before being rudely awoken by a court officer. Odom claimed that he was both jet-lagged and flu-stricken.

Despite playing in the NBA since 1999, being named to the NBA All-Rookie Team, and playing for the U.S. national basketball team in the 2004 Olympics, Odom is, perhaps, most known recently for marrying reality TV star Khloé Kardashian. The couple’s wedding was featured on the reality TV show Keeping Up With the Kardashians, and they were later featured in a spinoff reality TV show titled Khloé & Lamar. Part of the child custody battle is over whether the children can appear on Odom’s reality TV shows, or whether they will be a part of Morales’ reality TV show, Starter Wives.

To say that Samsung’s Galaxy lineup is ‘diverse’ is a huge understatement. More evidence of Samsung overtaking every level of the smartphone lineup is the soon-to-be-announced Samsung Galaxy Pocket Neo. As the name suggests, this little fella will be pint-sized. It’ll come in two versions: with and without dual SIM capability. This new device is very similar to the Pocket Plus as well as last year’s Galaxy Pocket which raises a little bit of confusion.

The Pocket Neo is said to launch with a 3-inch display (320 x 240) with QVGA resolution and a 2 megapixel camera. Again, these vitals are not much different, if at all, from the Pocket Plus or last year’s Pocket for that matter aside from the 4.1 Jelly Bean OS. The only color offering rumored at launch for the Pocket Neo will be silver, at least initially. We’re thinking maybe since it’s very similar to the Pocket Plus, that maybe the Neo is being targeted in emerging markets.

source: SamMobile

Come comment on this article: Low-range Samsung Galaxy Pocket Neo slated for May launch

See, if enough people complain and bloggers and journalists write enough misinformed, sensational stories, image-conscious Microsoft goes into public relations damage control. That’s the case with Office 2013, which gets new licensing terms that grant you the right to move the software to another PC.

Under the old agreement, Microsoft used activation technology to bind the productivity suite to one computer. The software couldn’t be transferred. The restriction comes with another nick, which isn’t changed: With this version, Microsoft takes away generous multi-PC rights available with older versions. Like I expressed in late January, “Microsoft really doesn’t want you to buy Office 2013” but subscribe with Office 365 instead. Nothing is changed, there. Today’s concession is all PR blush.

“Based on customer feedback we have changed the Office 2013 retail license agreement to allow customers to transfer the software from one computer to another”, Microsoft spokesperson Jevon Fark explains. “This means customers can transfer Office 2013 to a different computer if their device fails or they get a new one. Previously, customers could only transfer their Office 2013 software to a new device if their PC failed under warranty”.

The “feedback” is negative press, rather than customer complaints. You can be sure of that. Because all the licensing term changes point in one direction: Microsoft pushing consumers and smaller businesses to subscribe through Office 365 rather than buy perpetual license rights. For example, by Microsoft limiting Office 2013 installations to single PCs, Home and Student pricing goes up 180 percent and Home and Business by 76 percent, unless buyers choose 365 instead.

Those people doing so won’t run into the one-PC-forever restriction, as they can install the suite on up to five devices. Microsoft asks consumers to pay $99 for the privilege with gusto appeal — five sure seems like lots less cost than one, until the terms are examined: One year usage versus forever.

Microsoft’s problem is all the bad buzz about the one-computer licensing limitation — hence today’s usage rights tweak. There hasn’t been as much backlash about the multi-license changes, so they stay the same, which is good for the plan of pushing everyone to subscriptions that expire rather than perpetual rights that don’t.

“While the license agreement accompanying Office 2013 software will be updated in a future release, this change is effective immediately”, Fark says. “These transferability options are equivalent to those found in the Office 2010 retail license terms”.

So, there you go. Buy Office 2013, install on one PC today and transfer to another tomorrow. No, wait! Once every 90 days. See, the devil really is in the details.

Photo Credit: Jeff Cameron Collingwood/Shutterstock

YouTube has just announced that Sesame Street is the first non-profit to hit 1 billion views on their YouTube channel.

In honor of this milestone the Count has made a video, well, counting the views. Check it out:

During the iPad Mini event last year, Apple announced native Asian language support would be coming to iBooks. Now iOS fans in Japan can take more advantage of this native support as the iBookstore has made its way over to the island nation.

Apple announced this morning that the iBookstore has officially launched in Japan. Much like the launch of the Kindle Store in Japan, Apple is touting a number of exclusive titles in hopes that customers will choose their store over the competition.

We’re excited to launch the iBookstore in Japan with a wide selection of Japanese publishers and authors,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. “We think customers are going to love how engaging and interactive the books are to read, and how beautiful they look on iPad.”

The biggest grab for the iBookstore is a collection of digital novels from Ryu Murakami. The novels contain experimental ways to tell stories in a digital format, including the addition of interactive emails in each chapter.

Children’s books, like the charming Piyo-Chan: A Letter for Piyo, have been updated on the iBookstore as well to include new interactive and visual elements.

Apple’s real win against Apple, however, comes in the form of its exclusive selection of digital manga. The company announced that a full color version of Hirohiko Araki’s JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 4 is exclusively available on the iBookstore.

With this news, expect Amazon to kick its Japanese Kindle business up a notch. There are a lot of readers in Japan, and securing exclusive titles is the way to win in that particular market. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that the winner will be whomever is able to secure Murakami Haruki’s next novel, which is set to be published next month.

I’m posting this from a chilly New York, where I’m attending the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women (CSW).  It’s a sight to see so many women in colourful national dress, queueing in snow flurries to get past security at the UN General Assembly on 1st Avenue.

One of the reasons I’m here is because the theme this year is “the prevention and elimination of all forms of violence against women.” Orchid Project is a London-based NGO with a vision of a world free from female genital cutting (FGC) so this year’s CSW is particularly relevant.

FGC has been discussed at the UN level for years. We’ve had all sorts of instruments and tools debated and signed up to. However, recently there’s been renewed energy and discussion around this issue. In fact, you might call it a “perfect storm” of events that have led to a groundswell of opinion changing and moving towards action.

First Regional Public Declaration for the abandonment of FGC in Ziguinchor, Senegal. Picture: Angela Rowe/Tostan

These have included a recent UN General Assembly resolution “to intensify global efforts for the elimination of female genital mutilation” in December 2012, updates from UNICEF that prevalence figures of FGC are dropping globally and our own experience with our partner at country level, where communities are choosing to abandon the practice at an exponential rate.

Yesterday, an event was hosted by UNICEF, UNFPA and the Missions of Burkina Faso and Italy to the UN. With quite a line-up of speakers including the First Lady of Burkina Faso herself and DFID Minister Lynne Featherstone, it was a hot ticket for anyone involved in work on ending female genital cutting, and the room was packed.

We heard from representatives from Niger and Kenya as well as UNICEF, UNFPA and UNESCO and then the UK Minister, Lynne Featherstone, began by telling us about how she came to learn about the issue of FGC. She talked about her ministerial role as Champion for Ending Violence Against Women and Girls Overseas, a position she held before joining DFID. She also said that in her former portfolio as Home Office Minister, it had proven very difficult to get a prosecution for FGC.

This made finding out about the work of our partner Tostan in 2011 all the more important; she said that she really began to understand more about behavioural change and that she was inspired to hear that communities were choosing to abandon the practice. The Minister also mentioned that she will be visiting some of Tostan’s projects in Senegal later this month.

She then paused, looked up at the room and clearly and slowly said: “I want to support work in Africa. This is why the UK government has chosen to play a leading role and will now invest £35 million to help end this practice.” It was actually a breathtaking moment. A small silence followed, then, as the news sank in, people started to applaud.

We have been aware for some time that DFID was considering a large scale investment in ending FGC, but it was incredible for me and others in the room to hear just how sizeable this support will be. I was invited to make a short comment and was able to say on behalf of civil society organisations how much we welcomed the announcement of resources.

The Commission on the Status of Women was the ideal venue for the Minister to make this announcement, witnessed by and paying tribute to a room packed with women, who have been working tirelessly towards ending this practice.

We hope that DFID’s funding injection will encourage other donors to join this movement, and will make a considerable impact on reducing the prevalence of female genital cutting.

Men supporting abandonment of FGC – First Regional Public Declaration for the abandonment of FGC in Ziguinchor, Senegal. Picture: Angela Rowe/Tostan

Ending FGC is a huge goal, but with the support of governments, donors, civil  societies and communities themselves, it begins to feel like the vision of a world  free from female genital cutting within a lifetime, could  well be on its way. I feel privileged to have been in the room in New York yesterday, to be one of the first to hear this news.

This year’s CSW is not set up to be easy, given the controversial topic of violence against women, the lack of Agreed Conclusions last year, and the potential for regression. But it gives me hope for the Commission that the UK government is now choosing to invest in a previously taboo and hugely under-resourced human rights issue that has affected over 130 million women alive today.

Vistar Media has raised $1.5 million in a seed round led by Valhalla Partners. Mercury Fund and Ben Franklin Technology Partners also participated. Vistar Media develops “place-based” media ad serving technology.

PRESS RELEASE
Vistar Media, the first digital out of home programmatic media platform, announced today that it has closed its initial institutional round of funding. Valhalla Partners led the $1.5M seed round, with Mercury Fund also participating, along with Ben Franklin Technology Partners and others.

Vistar Media’s founding team includes Jeremy Ozen, Michael Provenzano (previously a co-founder of Invite Media), and Mark Chadwick (Invite Media’s Chief Architect). The company’s deep experience in real-time bidding (RTB) platforms positions them favorably to develop this new segment, and they enjoy a substantial first-mover advantage in the digital out of home media segment.

The company’s platform enables brand buyers and agency trading desks alike to harness the precision of RTB and the scale of digital out of home while leveraging the enormous creative palette available in that medium. Vistar Media has also released Real World Retargeting™, enabling retailers to leverage the highly effective tactic of retargeting across a new media landscape. TechCrunch covered this funding first.

“Vistar Media’s team of programmatic display media experts is positioned to take advantage of the trend in what many regard as the most interesting segment for programmatic, digital out of home,” said Kiran Hebbar, General Partner at Valhalla Partners. “The next five years will bring us closer to the vision portrayed in science fiction movies like Minority Report, with advertisers delivering messages with far more precision and relevance across all digital channels in one buy, and seeing far less waste in their campaigns.”

Vistar Media has executed campaigns for several agency trading desks and ad networks, including WPP’s Spafax unit among others. These campaigns have been targeted to geographic regions as broad as multiple states and as narrow as multiple zip codes.

“The most successful digital media models have been those that upend the traditional way buyers and sellers transact. Search, for example, reverses traditional direct marketing every time a user makes a query,” said Blair Garrou, Managing Director of Mercury Fund. “Vistar Media is enabling a similarly new model, transforming the staid billboard or placard into the largest palette, eventually making it the smartest palette too through their technology.”

“People take for granted today that programmatic display is a thriving segment online,” said Provenzano. “But, when we launched Invite Media, relatively few people knew what programmatic display meant, let alone where it was going. There’s no such resistance today in the digital out of home segment, and we’re already seeing tremendous growth in our business.”

About Valhalla Partners
Valhalla Partners is a trusted partner and advisor to technology entrepreneurs in their quest to build world-class companies. Based in Vienna, Virginia, the firm’s management team has made more than 120 investments over the past twenty years and produced almost $1 billion of investment proceeds. Valhalla prefers investments where the mission of the company is to innovate, challenge and fundamentally change the dynamics of new and existing markets. Investments by Valhalla’s team include Adaptly, Advertising.com, AvailTVN, JumpTap, LeftHand Networks, Nirvanix, PlaceIQ, Progress Software, Proxicom, RealOps, Register.com, Riverbed Technologies, SafeNet, ServiceBench, SolidFire, Videology, Trilogy, and webMethods. Valhalla Partners brings the full power and network of its experienced team to every investment it makes, helping companies grow faster and smarter regardless of size or maturity.

About Mercury Fund
Mercury Fund is a seed-stage venture capital firm that makes equity investments in compelling and novel software and science-based startup opportunities. Mercury partners with extraordinary entrepreneurs to build globally competitive businesses, focusing on technology innovation originating in the U.S. Midcontinent. The firm has a particular interest in startups associated with seed accelerators, incubators and universities, and frequently invests prior to the formation of a business plan or complete management team. Since inception in 2005, Mercury has become one of the most active seed-stage venture firms in the U.S., becoming a “go-to” fund for entrepreneurs at the earliest stages of idea generation, company formation, and market execution. For more information, please visit www.mercuryfund.com.

About Vistar Media
Vistar Media’s place-based media ad serving technology provides the industry with its first programmatic platform. With Vistar, media buyers and place-based networks can now seamlessly transact across guaranteed and non-guaranteed inventory. With the power of real-time reporting and data driven audience targeting, place-based media can become part of every digital media campaign, with the most precise targeting available and the largest palette anywhere.

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Another day, another OpenStack announcement. Rackspace on Wednesday unveiled an update to its OpenStack-based private cloud with a new single dashboard for deploying, configuring and running those clouds in a company’s data center.

OpenCenter aims to make it easier for enterprises to automate rollout of updates and deploy their cloud in the first place.  ”Deploying high-availability used to take a lot of manual steps but we can now point and click to do that in OpenCenter,” said Scott Sanchez, director of strategy for Rackspace. OpenCenter, he said, is part of an overall operations “fabric” that will let us roll things out faster, provide continuous deployment and updates right into the private cloud.

The OpenCenter code is free and available under the Apache 2 license.

More host operating systems to choose from

The new private cloud option utilizes OpenStack’s Folsom code base and will be updated to the newer Grizzly release when it comes out next month. Rackspace said its public cloud already uses Grizzly. Also with this private cloud release, customers can choose between Ubuntu, Red Hat Enterprise Linux or CentOS as their host operating system. In the previous private cloud, Ubuntu was the default host OS.

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Partners Group has closed its latest fund, Partners Group Global Value 2011, with EUR 680 million ($886.3 million) in commitments, the firm announced. The fund will fund private investments including private equity transactions, secondary purchases, fund commitments and mezzanine financings, the firm said. Partners Group is headquartered in Zug, Switzerland.

PRESS RELEASE
Partners Group, the global private markets investment manager, has closed its 2011 vintage Global Value program with EUR 680 million in commitments, showing the continued appeal to investors of an integrated, global approach to private equity investing.

The program is the third and largest in Partners Group’s Global Value series, following 2006 and 2008 vintage programs, which closed on over EUR 400 million and over EUR 530 million respectively. The Global Value programs invest in direct, secondary and primary private equity investments as well as select mezzanine investments worldwide, allowing Partners Group the flexibility to build an “all-weather” portfolio by targeting the most attractive segments of the asset class in different markets and market conditions.

At the time of its final close, Partners Group Global Value 2011 was already more than 50% committed to a range of private equity investments, diversified across geographic regions, industries and transaction types. Completed investments include Global Blue, a leading global provider of travel-related financial services including tax-free shopping refund services, and SBF Group, the largest sporting goods retailer in Brazil.

Dr. Stephan Schäli, Partner and Head of Private Equity at Partners Group, comments, “Both Global Blue and SBF Group stand to benefit from a growing middle class consumer group in emerging markets, an investment theme we believe will remain resilient to the volatility still seen in global markets. The Global Value 2011 program has also already benefitted from distributions from several mature assets in its secondary portfolio, as well as the early repayment of a mezzanine investment in a healthcare provider. With the market showing some pricing pressure for secondary investments, we continue to focus on assets at their inflection point where value can still be created and also on providing structuring solutions in complex transactions for the benefit of both sellers and buyers.”

Investors in Partners Group Global Value 2011 include a mix of new and prior investors from corporate and public pension plans, insurance companies and financial institutions from around the world. With its integrated investment approach, the program will draw on the expertise of Partners Group’s global team while benefiting from the extensive deal flow generated through the firm’s private equity platform.

About Partners Group
Partners Group is a global private markets investment management firm with over EUR 28 billion in investment programs under management in private equity, private real estate, private infrastructure and private debt. The firm manages a broad range of customized portfolios for an international clientele of institutional investors. Partners Group is headquartered in Zug, Switzerland and has offices in San Francisco, New York, São Paulo, London, Guernsey, Paris, Luxembourg, Munich, Dubai, Singapore, Beijing, Seoul, Tokyo and Sydney. The firm employs over 600 people, is listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange (symbol: PGHN) with a market capitalization of over CHF 5.5 billion and a major ownership by its partners and employees.

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