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Samsung (005930) is reportedly set to buy a 3% stake in struggling panel maker Sharp Corporation for approximately $110 million. The deal will ensure Samsung sees “a smooth supply of large-sized TV panels and help bolster the Japanese company’s chances of survival,” Reuters reported on Wednesday. “Rather than the amount of investment, it is the partnership with Samsung that Sharp gains that is important,” noted Tetsuro Ii, CEO of investment firm Commons AM. “Sharp gains an opportunity to use the Samsung platform.” Sharp also builds display panels used in Apple’s (AAPL) iPad, and it is reportedly developing larger displays to be used in Apple’s much rumored HDTV that is currently in development.

As health-tracking companies battle it out for consumers’ hearts and minds — and wrists — Basis Science has announced that it has raised $11.5 million for its own sensor-based band that monitors a variety of health indicators.

The Series B round was led by Mayfield Fund and included existing investors, DCM and Norwest Venture Partners. Basis said that Tim Chang, Managing Director at Mayfield, joins its board of directors and technology analyst and active digital health investor Esther Dyson and healthy living expert Deepak Chopra join its advisory board.

With the new funding, CEO Jef Holove said the company will focus on hiring, especially seeking expertise in cloud services, hardware and software, and scaling its manufacturing.

The new funding comes as interest in consumer health tracking devices, particularly those that worn on the wrist, is ballooning. Users can choose from the Nike Fuelband to the Jawbone Up to the Fitbit Flex (see disclosure below) to other options.

At $199, Basis is more expensive than the Up ($129), Fuelband ($149.99) and Flex ($99.95) and it’s bigger than its competitors’ sleek bands, which may be a turn off for those who want to downplay the accessory. But Holove said the Basis band uses four sensors to capture motion, heart rate, perspiration and skin temperature, as opposed to just one (an accelerometer) used by rivals. With those sensors, it can do more than just track activity and calories burned, it can monitor sleep and heart rate as well. He also said that its dashboard, which encourages healthy habits on top of displaying data, is better able to keep users engaged. He previously told GigaOM that, in the future, the company may upsell users on more advanced cloud services that could offer better analytics or more data storage.

“We believe our foundation… will continue to give a much more comprehensive picture of health than anything else on the market,” Holove said in an email. “As we gain more user feedback, we will also continue to evolve our healthy habits approach to build engagement over time.”

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Debt collector Encore Capital Group Inc. has agreed to buy Asset Acceptance Capital Corp. for $200 million to strengthen its position in a highly fragmented industry, Reuters reported. Encore’s offer of $6.50 per share represents a premium of 13 percent to Asset Acceptance’s Tuesday closing price. Warren, Michigan-based Asset Acceptance buys individual consumer accounts, including credit card, telecommunications, and consumer loans.

(Reuters) – Debt collector Encore Capital Group Inc (ECPG.O) has agreed to buy Asset Acceptance Capital Corp (AACC.O) for $200 million to strengthen its position in a highly fragmented industry.

Encore’s offer of $6.50 per share represents a premium of 13 percent to Asset Acceptance’s Tuesday closing price.

Warren, Michigan-based Asset Acceptance buys individual consumer accounts, including credit card, telecommunications, and consumer loans.

Its shareholders will have the option to receive their consideration in cash or Encore stock or a combination of both.

Encore bought Propel Financial, a tax lien company, for $187 million in May last year.

Encore shares closed at $30.07 on Tuesday on the Nasdaq.

(Reporting by Ashutosh Pandey in Bangalore; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)

The post Reuters – Encore Capital to Buy Asset Acceptance Capital for $200M appeared first on peHUB.

Actifio, which says it helps companies simplify and streamline operations by consolidating multiple copies of content that proliferate across applications, now has $50 million in Series D funding led by Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV) to push that vision. That brings its total venture backing to more than $105 million.

Waltham, Mass.-based Actifio wants companies to adopt its copy data store technology to reduce extra copies of the data they generate and collect to, ideally, a single “golden” copy.

Existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, ATV, Greylock Israel, and North Bridge Partners also participated in this D round, which comes more than a year after a $33.5 million C round. Prior to that Actifio received $8 million in a July 2010 Series A round and $16 million just two months later in a Series B round.

CEO Ash Ashotush told me a few months ago that companies spend too much making and managing lots of copies of data. “If we employ virtualization technology, one copy of that data can be reused and reconstituted for any use—sharing and analysis,” he said.

At an Actifio users conference a few months ago, Keith Bucknall, lead technical architect  for the U.K.’s Equity Insurance Group, said Actifio is a key part of his company’s unified storage and backup platform that makes it easier to perform backup, data protection and recovery, as well as data migration and management.

TCV general partner, Rick Kimball, joins Actifio’s board which already includes Andreessen Horowitz’s Peter Levine, North Bridge Venture Partners’ Jamie Goldstein, ATV’s Bob Hower, Greylock Partners’ Erez Ofer, and Netezza founding CEO Jit Saxena.

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Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. said it will form a marketplace for trading in shares in unlisted companies in a joint venture with SharesPost Inc, whose private trading platform has run into regulatory trouble, Reuters reported. The stock exchange operator will own a majority of the venture, Nasdaq Private Market. Specific terms were not disclosed. The new market, to be based in San Francisco, will launch later this year, pending regulatory approvals, and will be led by SharesPost founder Greg Brogger. SharesPost’s online trading platform, which matched buyers and sellers of unlisted shares, was charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission last March for failing to register as a broker-dealer before offering securities.

(Reuters) – Nasdaq OMX Group Inc said it will form a marketplace for trading in shares in unlisted companies in a joint venture with SharesPost Inc, whose private trading platform has run into regulatory trouble.

The stock exchange operator will own a majority of the venture, Nasdaq Private Market. Specific terms were not disclosed.

The new market, to be based in San Francisco, will launch later this year, pending regulatory approvals, and will be led by SharesPost founder Greg Brogger.

SharesPost’s online trading platform, which matched buyers and sellers of unlisted shares, was charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission last March for failing to register as a broker-dealer before offering securities.

SharesPost’s broker dealer and investment advisory business will continue to operate separately from the joint venture, the companies said in a statement.

SharesPost began in 2009 and its fortunes rose in step with technology startups such as Facebook Inc and LinkedIn , which traded on the market before they went public.

Recent legislation, the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, has boosted opportunities for trading of unlisted companies. Under the act, an unlisted company can have 2,000 shareholders, up from 500.

The post Reuters – Nasdaq, SharesPost to Set Up Exchange for Unlisted Stock appeared first on peHUB.

In certain ways cars are like cigarettes. They’re addictive, enjoyable and at days end everyone has their favorite brand. Manuel Leon Minassian is an Alfa Romeo nut, so much so that he’s not actually sure how many he owns. Collecting for almost 22 years, Manuel has mostly Alfa’s with a few Mercedes, Audi’s and Ford’s mixed in for good measure. His favorite though? His 1972 Alfa Romeo Berlina that he custom tailored to his taste.

Source: Petrolicious.com

Peterson Partners has raised $140 million for its eighth fund, the firm announced. The Salt Lake City, Utah, private equity firm makes investments of between $2 million and $15 million in companies, and has backed companies including JetBlue Airways and Azul Airlines.

PRESS RELEASE
Peterson Partners today announced that it has raised its eighth fund, in the
amount of $140 million, with participation from prominent U.S. business and
investment leaders.

“This new fund enables us to continue to serve as reliable capital partners to
our current and future portfolio companies,” said Dan Peterson, managing partner
of Peterson Partners. “We look forward to continuing to help outstanding
entrepreneurs build great businesses in the years ahead. We are gratified that
our limited partners have trusted us to find and nurture the kinds of leaders
and companies that have provided thousands of jobs at home and abroad.”

The current Peterson Partners portfolio includes an extensive collection of
innovative, high-value companies across various industries, including JetBlue
Airways and Azul Airlines in the travel industry, Ladder Capital in financial
services, QMC in communications infrastructure, CLEO in software, Integra in
healthcare services, and Packsize in the supply chain management industry.

Peterson Partners is led by Founder Joel Peterson, and Partners Brandon Cope and
Dan Peterson. Joel Peterson, former managing partner at Trammell Crow Company,
currently serves as chairman of JetBlue Airways, is a professor at Stanford`s
Graduate School of Business, and sits on the Board of Overseers at the Hoover
Institution. Dan Peterson, with deep experience investing in a variety of
industries, including automotive, financial services and high tech, has served
as managing director at Z Capital and partner at Trammell Crow. Brandon Cope,
previously with Peterson Ventures and McKinsey & Company, has led several
investments in a variety of industries and serves on a number of boards of
directors.

Peterson Partners will use the proceeds of its Fund VII to make private equity
investments of between $2 million and $15 million. The firm provides growth and
buyout capital for companies with revenue between $10 million and $50 million.

About Peterson Partners
Peterson Partners, based in Salt Lake City, Utah, is one of the Intermountain
West`s most successful private equity firms. Specializing in small to mid-sized
companies, Peterson Partners has a track record of successful investments
including JetBlue, Vivint, EnergySolutions, 3form, Access CIG and Diamond
Rental. Founded in 1995, Peterson Partners has managed over $350 million in
committed capital through seven funds.

The post Peterson Partners Raises $140M appeared first on peHUB.

What was your favorite TED talk this year? I found both Amanda Palmer’s and Nilofer’s spectacular. Yet, this year, TED made me wonder about Great Ideas, and our relationship with them. And I began to ask myself: even if we enjoy a great TED talk, should the rise of “TED thinking” concern us just a tiny bit?

Let me be very clear: I use that phrase not to refer to the extravaganza that is TED, and though I use TED as an example, this post isn’t really just about TED — but let the phrase “TED thinking” serve as a shorthand for the way we’ve come to think about ideas and how we share them, whether it’s through an 18-minute talk, an 800-word blog post, or the latest business “best-seller.” Hence, this post isn’t really about TED (so please don’t leave me raging comments saying “But my favorite TED talk!!!”). “TED thinking” is just a symptom: and the underlying syndrome is our broken relationship with Great Ideas. Herewith, my tiny argument:

TED thinking assumes complex social problems are essentially engineering challenges, and that short nuggets of Technology, Edutainment, and Design can fix everything, fast and cheap. TED thinking’s got a hard determinism to it; a kind of technological hyperrationalism. It ignores institutions and society almost completely. We’ve come to look at these quick, easy “solutions” as the very point of “ideas worth spreading.”

But this seems to me to miss the point and power of ideas entirely. Einstein’s great equation is not a “solution”; it is a theory — whose explanations unravel only greater mysteries and questions. It offers no immediate easy, quick “application” in the “real world,” but challenges us to reimagine what the “real world” is; it is a Great Idea because it offers us something bigger, more lasting, and more vital than a painless, disposable “solution.”

Yet in the eyes of TED thinking, it is of limited, perhaps little, value. One can imagine Einstein being invited to give a TED talk on E=MC2 — and the audience wondering “Well, what’s the point of this? What can we use it to do? How can we make megabucks from this, next year?” When ideas are reduced to engineering challenges, the focus naturally becomes near-term utility in the so-called real world. We focus on implementation without ever stopping to question our assumptions. But Great Ideas don’t resound because they have “utility” in the real world — they are Great for the very reason that they challenge us to redefine the reality of our worlds; and hence, the “utility” of our lives.

So Great Ideas aren’t just “solutions”. Indeed, many of the Greatest Ideas are problems. Guernica doesn’t offer any solutions to the problem of human suffering: it asks us to do something more vital, and more worthy: to reflect on, consider, and perhaps so gain a truer intimacy with the problem of war, violence, atrocity, and its permanence throughout history. Picasso would never have been invited to deliver a TED talk about Guernica because it offers no quick, easy, palatable solution (“Human Violence: Let’s End It!!” #fivewordTEDtalks). Instead, it offers the precise opposite: a hard, unflinching, uncompromising portrait of grief. TED talks get rapturous standing ovations — but stand in front of Guernica for 18 minutes and exactly the opposite will happen: you will, and should, cry.

Great Ideas, then, don’t merely easily please us with their immediate utility — often, they break our hearts with desperate futility; with both the aching impossibility and sure inevitability of the trials and tests of human life. But that’s precisely what makes them Great.

Now: Yes, there was recently a TEDx in Pakistan — and there, beset by fundamentalism and violence, I believe it’s a tremendous force for good. But that’s the lowest of bars. You and I must aim higher.

The idea of our age is that Great Ideas can be simplified, reduced, made into convenient, disposable nuggets of infotainment — be they 18-minute talks, 800-word blog posts, or 140 character bursts. But can they — really? Could Aristotle really deliver the resounding, history-redefining message of the Nicomachean Ethics in…eighteen minutes? Or a series of “thought leader” blog posts on LinkedIn? Or would that, in a very real sense, cheat you and I of the power and purpose, the meaning and message, the very import and impact of the larger body of work?

Imagine I invented an Orgasm Machine. Press the button, and poof!! Effortless, instantaneous climax. Sounds great, right? But my machine would also rob you. Perhaps not of pleasure; but of the tension of love, the challenge of desire, and the drama of sex. TED is like an Orgasm Machine for the human mind. It gives us the climax of epiphany, without the challenge and tension of thought.

And in that way, I think TED thinking cheats us. Not just the “audience,” but all of us. By putting climactic epiphany before experience, education, and elevation. Sure, we can spend our lives, in this digital age, getting quick hits of epiphany from our pundit overlords. In that sense, TED thinking is like a one-night stand with ideas. One night stands can be fun, and may sometimes even lead to something more — but they’re not the great, worthy love affairs that change our lives. So I worry: TED thinking encourages something like an obsession with trivia — when it’s the searing, painful, transformative experience of Big Love you and I should be aiming at.

The TED-ification of ideas turns them into something like superficial commodities. Yet, Big Love is never just skin-deep: it involves mind, heart, body, and soul. And so while “turning complex ideas into plain English” is surely important, critical thinking asks all of us to get not just comfortable with “communication”, but uncomfortable with all the complexity, ambiguity, and nuance of a great relationship.

“Ideas conferences” like TED present us with something like an ethical vacuum. There are no sources of evil in TED world — apart from a “lack.” Insufficient Technology, Edutainment, and Design (or “innovation”, “growth”, “insights”): these are the only shortcomings the human world faces. There is no venality; no selfishness; no cruelty; no human weakness that is not readily amenable to the cure-all of Perfect Technology, Edutainment, and Design.

Hence, in TED world, there are heroes, but no villains. There are self-reliant supermen; but no rent-seekers, no criminals, no charlatans, no mountebanks, no fraudsters, schemers, or…just plain humans. There is good, but no evil. No ethics is possible given this calculus. It is an anti-ethics that perfectly describes the vacuity of our age. In this sense, TED thinking is a kind of Nietzschean enterprise: one beyond good and evil, where Supermen save the world. Yet, the real world asks us to have an ethical calculus precisely because the human heart is capable of great cruelty; of evil, of indescribable atrocity.

To me, this is the greatest and truest failure of today’s idea industry: it is a mind without a heart. TED thinking cheats us of the better angels of our nature; of ethos itself, the highest, truest, and noblest of all the arts of human thought.

Great ideas, then, demand something from us — something more than pleasure. They demand more than just our “attention” — and far more than our standing ovations. They demand not just our eyes, wallets, and hands, but our hearts, minds, and souls. They demand our heartbreak, our hurt. They demand our minds don’t just “accept” — but, as critical thinkers, object, protest, question.

In this way, Great Ideas demand precisely the opposite of TED thinking. They demand our lasting engagement, dedication and commitment; our time and energy; our frustration and infuriation; our suffering, passion, and pain — not merely our easy wonder and wide-eyed astonishment. They demand not just our rapture, but something more human: every bit of our fuller, truer, better selves.

That is precisely how Great Ideas change us: not merely by pleasing us, but by challenging us. That is precisely how they elevate us: not merely by pandering to us, or by provoking us, but by enlightening the whole of us. That is precisely what makes Great Ideas truly worthy — not just easily palatable, and commercially profitable.

Let me be clear: once again, this isn’t just about TED — but the ideas industry, and how, ironically, it oft seems hell-bent on turning each and every human on planet Earth into either a breathless “pundit” or a zombified “consumer”. But we are better — each and every one of us — than that. We are pilgrims on a hard journey; searching for the timeless, simple truths of lives well-lived. The pundits shout to our caravans from the bazaars, touting their potions and tonics. But it is only Great Ideas, waystones shimmering faintly in the distance, which have pointed and will point generations of voyagers before us and after us, that will guide us towards the waters of life itself. That is why they matter.

“TED thinking” is shorthand for the ideas industry’s obsessive, infantilizing, and creepily weird fixation with “innovation”, with “growth”, with “change”, with “value”, “utility”, and “marketability.” It is the epiphany industry. But epiphany should never be an industry. Why? Not just because such a casual approach to human thought reduces and simplifies, stripping and emptying us. But because it promises to spoil the timeless beauty of The Real Thing: The very idea of Great Ideas. The notion that ideas are worthy not merely because they “solve our problems” — but because they challenge us with problems to which our lives are the truest answers.

The Near Field Communications Forum (NFCF) was established in 2004 as a non-profit industry body designed to encourage advancements in NFC technologies. We have seen this technology slowly making its way into mainstream smartphones from all major manufactures (except Apple) over the past few years.

Google joined the NFCF in March 2011 as a “principal” member, and has not advanced up the board structure…until now. Google has upgraded its status on the Forum to “top-tier sponsor level“. This basically means that Google now has a say in the running of the consortium. Google has a vested interest in advancing NFC technology. After all, their Wallet app for Android would be useless without it. Google Wallet allows consumers to tap their phone to an NFC enabled reader and wirelessly transfer funds straight to the vendor, making transactions quick and painless (on select handsets).

Google joins the likes of big players like Broadcom, Intel, MasterCard, Visa, Sony, Qualcomm, and Samsung at the sponsor level. (Next scheduled consortium will be held in Seoul, Korea, 18-22 March 2013).

Source: The Next Web

Come comment on this article: Google Joins Board of Directors at NFC Forum

In what could be the most surprising news of the year, it seems Chrysler-Fiat employees are deliberately sabotaging production on the 2013 Ram 1500 pickup over “poor morale.”

Sadly, this story is true and, probably the most shocking aspect of it is, the UAW isn’t involved. It seems the Warren Truck Assembly plant recently switched the employees shift schedules around according to Autoblog.com. The new shift plan calls for four, 10-hour days for workers with some working evenings and weekends. The workers apparently weren’t happy with this “flexible” work schedule and decided to protest without UAW support.

As part of their protest, they decided to intentionally sabotage the Ram 1500 production. The Detroit News said, “only 16 of the 58 trucks built at the Warren Truck Assembly Plant during the model’s first hour passed final inspection. While quality eventually improved over the course of the day, just over half of the units built on Thursday were approved for shipment. Even with workers ordered to stay late to fix their mistakes, some 1,078 units remained outside the facility with defects.”

What makes this even more shocking is that the UAW supports Chrysler and thinks the new schedule could actually create more jobs.

The UAW told the Detroit News:

“The international union, including myself and staff from the UAW-Chrysler Department, met with workers from Chrysler’s Warren Stamping Plant at a town hall meeting recently to explain (the alternative work schedule) first approved by UAW Chrysler members in 2003,” said Holiefield, head of the union’s Chrysler Department, in an email to The Detroit News on Wednesday.

“The Flexible Operating Pattern has been effective at several other plants and has created thousands of jobs in communities surrounding these plants,” he added. “(I)t’s proven to be successful, allowing the company to operate at maximum capacity to meet customer demand, and in the process, creating jobs, and in general, employees understand the reasons for the schedule.”

Chrysler spokeswoman Jodi Tinson said that Chrysler is “aware of their complaints, and we understand that change is difficult.”

Apparently, the protests pissed Chrysler off and they have recently suspended without pay one of the protesters.

Seems like if the workers REALLY understood the plan, they wouldn’t intentionally sabotage the Ram truck production. But, hey what do we know.

Are things so bad for Chrysler-Fiat that their own workers don’t even like them? And what is up with Chrysler workers being in the news? Remember not that long ago an arbitor gave the Chrysler employees that smoked pot and drank on their lunch break their jobs back.

This news comes at a bad time for Chrysler-Fiat as they try to shake decades worth of quality issues, drum up business with their new Ram 1500 and are trying to convince new buyers that diesel in the way to go (see: Jeep Grand Cherokee diesel, Ram 1500 diesel and just announced Jeep Wrangler diesel).

Our fearless leader Jason has the following insight: Toyota has a much better relationship with workers, lower labor costs, and Toyota workers would NEVER, ever, ever, EVER dream of turning out a defective truck to send a message to management. Every 2013 Ram-Fiat buyer had better ask for a big discount, as they could be buying a lemon. What’s more, Ford and GM are going to face similar problems once the moratorium on UAW strikes is over.

Initially, I planned on going on a rant about Chrysler quality and leadership issues. However, I think this story speaks for itself. Sound off your thoughts below.

Related Posts:

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The post Chrysler Workers Deliberately Sabotage Ram Production – Quality Issues? appeared first on Tundra Headquarters Blog.

Wow. You don’t mess with the EU antitrust regulators. This is something Microsoft has discovered to its cost after being landed with a 561 million euros ($731 million) fine for failing to promote a range of other browsers to Windows users in the European Union (EU).

As part of a settlement that followed an EU antitrust investigation back in 2009, Microsoft agreed to offer a Browser Choice Screen pop-up to European customers which would allow them to choose which browser they wanted to use — rather than simply just forcing Internet Explorer on them. This followed an investigation triggered when Norwegian browser maker Opera complained that by bundling IE with Windows Microsoft was effectively killing the competition.

The screen, which first appeared in March 2010, provided logos and links for Firefox, Maxthon, Opera, Chrome, and Internet Explorer (presented in a random order). It was supposed to run until at least 2014, but the Windows 7 Service Pack 1 release in February 2011 removed the feature. It has since been reinstated, 14 months later, but that’s not good enough for the EU watchdog.

“Legally binding commitments reached in antitrust decisions play a very important role in our enforcement policy because they allow for rapid solutions to competition problems,” Joaquin Almunia, the Competition Commissioner said. “Of course, such decisions require strict compliance. A failure to comply is a very serious infringement that must be sanctioned accordingly”.

As huge as the fine is, it could have been much, much worse for Microsoft. The EU antitrust regulators could theoretically have fined the Redmond, Wash.-based technology giant up to 10 percent of its global annual revenue. Which would have amounted to a staggering $7.4bn.

Of course the watchdog would never have actually done that — it’s not in anyone’s interests to level that degree of fine on a major corporation — but it’s sobering to know the EU regulators actually have that degree of power.

The $731m figure was arrived at because Microsoft fully co-operated with the watchdog at every stage of the second investigation set up to determine what had happened.

“I hope this will make companies think twice before they ever think of breaching their international obligations,” commissioner Almunia said in a statement. Or rather an understatement.

While Microsoft blames a “technical error” on the reason for the Browser Choice screen’s disappearance, it’s the fact that it remained MIA for 14 months that was the company’s ultimate undoing.

In a statement released this morning, Microsoft said: “We take full responsibility for the technical error that caused this problem and have apologized for it. We provided the Commission with a complete and candid assessment of the situation, and we have taken steps to strengthen our software development and other processes to help avoid this mistake — or anything similar — in the future”.

Photo Credit: zimmytws/Shutterstock

Apple’s (AAPL) has reportedly had difficulties negotiating with major music labels over royalties tied to a streaming music service currently in development. One option the company seemingly explored in its efforts to bring a new service to market was a cooperative effort with Beats Electronics. According to Reuters, Apple executives held talks with Beats boss Jimmy Iovine to discuss partnering on a subscription-based streaming music service. Beats recently announced its Project Daisy music subscription service, but did not provide many details so it may be possible that discussions are ongoing. According to the report, the meeting between Apple CEO Tim Cook and Iovine was “informational” and covered a wide range of topics.

Bloomfire, a company based in Austin, Texas, has received $8 million in Series A funding from existing investors to continue to get enterprises to sign up for the Bloomfire’s web-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) for sharing internal videos, quick answers, files and other information among a given company’s employees.

The new investment, from Austin Ventures and Redpoint Ventures, brings the total venture funding to $18 million. The company counts more than 200 companies as customers.

Along with the funding news, Bloomfire is announcing new features for its SaaS product, including the ability for multiple users to produce a single item, such as a post, and drag-and-drop functionality to quickly add content from outside the site.

The competitor question for Bloomfire, which identifies itself as a knowledge-sharing tool, is an interesting one. Because the site can do so many things, different kinds of companies can compete with different parts of the site, said the company’s CEO, Craig Malloy. Socialcast (see disclosure), Yammer and others let users maintain their own social pages and share information internally. With Jive Software, users can collaborate on products and projects and post updates. Quora-like companies for the enterprise, such as AnswerHub and Quandora, specialize in the internal Q-and-A component. And enterprises can share and store documents on Box, Dropbox and other sites.

Malloy looks forward to seeing how all the various technologies shake out in the next couple of years. It could be, he said, that even more blending will occur, with companies pulling in web conferencing. In any case, it’s worth wondering if it’s wiser to support a long of technologies or go big on just one.

Disclosure: SocialCast was backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True.

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It’s another edition of the weekly call-in show where we answer your tech questions. We start off the show with some commentary on phone unlocking and then move on to listener questions about OTT services, Android switchers and Samsung’s influence on Android.

To be a part of the show, just call in and leave a voicemail at 262-KCTOFEL. If you do, we’ll play back the question on the show and answer it. Or you can tweet me at @kevinctofel on Twitter. Each week, I’ll answer as many questions as I can while keeping the podcast to a manageable amount of time: 20 to 30 minutes at most.

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Hosts: Chris Albrecht and Kevin C. Tofel

• Why are a few big name iPhone users switching to Android; is the start of a trend?
• What are your favorite over the top services?
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Podcast: Kabam founder on scaling globally and designing for different platforms

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If you own a Samsung Galaxy Stellar, you’re about to be in for some exciting news. Verizon has announced owners of the device are about to get an OTA notification indicating an extensive update is at hand. The update comes in at a hefty 400MB in size and not only brings items like network improvements, but it (finally) brings Jelly Bean (Android 4.1) and all the standard Jelly Bean goodies like Google Now and an improved UI. Naturally the update is being rolled out in phases, so if you own the device and don’t see it right away just sit tight— it’s on the way and will be there sooner than later.

source: Verizon

Come comment on this article: Verizon announces Jelly Bean update for Samsung Galaxy Stellar smartphone

This story was updated at 4.55am PT with a quote from Microsoft.

Well whaddya know. When you’ve been the subject of a lengthy antitrust investigation and you settle with the authorities by promising to clean up your act, then “accidentally” go back to doing what you were doing in the first place and you get caught, you might find yourself in expensive trouble.

That’s what happened with Microsoft and its bundling of Internet Explorer (IE) with Windows in Europe, and now we see the result: a €561 million ($732 million) fine, handed down on Wednesday by Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia.

That’s a lot of money. What happened?

Last decade, Opera complained to the European Commission about the fact that Microsoft bundled IE with Windows, to the detriment of third-party rivals such as Opera, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari and Google Chrome. The resulting antitrust case was dropped in 2009 when Microsoft promised to introduce a browser choice or “browser ballot” screen, so when users fire up a copy of Windows for the first time and open IE, it will ask them which of the various browsers on the market they’d like to go with.

As part of the deal, Microsoft agreed to submit an annual compliance report to the European Commission. For a couple years, everything went according to plan, right up until Microsoft’s December 2011 compliance report, which assured Almunia’s office that everything was hunky-dory. Only it wasn’t: the browser choice screen (BCS) had somehow been left out of Windows 7 Service Pack 1, which came out in February 2011, and Microsoft’s report was false.

When the Commission found out in mid-2012 and opened a fresh investigation into Microsoft and its bundled browser, the company immediately confessed, blaming the BCS’s omission on a “technical error” that somehow went unnoticed for more than a year. Microsoft said it had pushed out the BCS software to the 15 million affected users as soon as it realized its error, but Almunia nonetheless put the company on notice that it could face a fine of up to 10 percent of its global annual turnover: around $7 billion.

So it could have been much worse. Why not the full amount?

According to Almunia, “such a breach is of course very serious, irrespective of when it was intentional or not, and it calls for sanctions”.

However, he said on Wednesday that he set the figure at the level he did — around one percent of turnover — because “once the breach was discovered Microsoft cooperated with us and provided information which helped the investigation”.

And that’s why this isn’t even a record for Microsoft in terms of EU antitrust fines.

Incidentally, Microsoft says it won’t appeal this time round:

“We take full responsibility for the technical error that caused this problem and have apologized for it. We provided the Commission with a complete and candid assessment of the situation, and we have taken steps to strengthen our software development and other processes to help avoid this mistake — or anything similar — in the future.”

Could Microsoft be in a similar situation again?

Tough question. The reason the European Commission came down so hard on Microsoft in the first place was that Windows was so utterly dominant in personal computing -– it really mattered if IE was bundled and the ordinary user may have been left unaware than rivals existed.

We can see the results for ourselves. Chrome is now the world’s leading web browser, ahead of IE and Firefox (which also benefited greatly from the decision). And if you play around with IE10, the most recent version, you will see an iteration of the browser that reflects Microsoft’s need to keep up with those rivals: the company was forced to be competitive, which is surely one of the key points of antitrust law.

However, times change. While Windows still dominates the personal computing market by installed base, the PC sector – by which I mean the hardware, distinct from the concept of personal computing – is unarguably in decline as the world shifts to mobile. So, while in the 2000s Microsoft was the titan stomping all over OS X and Linux (by market share), today we find Windows 8 battling it out against iOS and Android across several hardware form factors.

This matters because the core concept of competition law is what is known as “significant market power” – the European Commission felt it had to crack down on Microsoft because it had such power in the established personal computing market. Now it’s losing its grip on that power, and quickly.

We are unlikely to see antitrust regulators crack down on Microsoft, or indeed Apple or Google, in the same way again – at least the way the market is shaping up now.

Windows 8 is still an unknown quantity. Someone out there may want to complain that the iPad comes with Safari preinstalled and doesn’t prompt the user to install Chrome or Opera, but, while the iPad is the dominant tablet, it isn’t so dominant that it requires that kind of regulatory intervention. Also, the tablet market is in itself immature, so early regulation could be seen as distorting the market rather than protecting the consumer.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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Berlin software developer Ashampoo GmbH has released Ashampoo WinOptimizer 10.1.0, the latest version of its Windows system optimization tool. WinOptimizer 10, which provides one-click tools for privacy, cleaning and optimizing PCs, debuts four new modules, plus a brand new user interface.

The tool, which is available as a 10-day trial by default (users can extend this by a further 30 days by registering for a free key), also comes with four updates for existing modules, enhanced Windows 8 support and user-definable favorites.

The most striking thing about WinOptimizer 10 is its brand new interface. The overtly blue appearance of version 9 is replaced by a steel grey look. The main screen provides a summary of the three key areas WinOptimizer addresses: cleaning, optimizing and protection. Users can then go for a one-click scan, with options for easily reviewing and “hiding” (ignore) individual issues, or letting Ashampoo fix the problems automatically.

Alternatively, users can opt to optimize manually via the program’s Modules section. Four new modules have been added to version 10 to take the grand total to 32 — these are a duplicate file finder, obsolete shortcuts checker, fonts manager and System Restore manager, the latter allowing users to review and delete individual Restore points.

In addition to these new modules, four existing tools have also been enhanced. The File Wiper adds an option for wiping free disk space to prevent recovery of previously deleted files, while the Internet Cleaner and Drive Cleaner promise faster performance. The Drive Cleaner — along with the Registry Optimizer module — has also been improved by providing more accurate detection rates for better results.

While WinOptimizer 9 came with support for Windows 8, version 10 promises enhancements for users of Microsoft’s latest operating system. There’s a revised task scheduler, and Windows 8-tailored tweaks to go with compatibility improvements.

Other user interface tweaks include redesigned overview and statistics pages for better clarity, and user-definable favorites. The Favorites screen has always displayed the most frequently accessed modules in WinOptimizer, but from version 10 users can now pin up to four of their favorite modules to this screen for permanent access: from the Modules page, roll the mouse over an individual tool and click the star icon that appears next to it to add (or subsequently) remove that module from the Favorites screen.

Ashampoo WinOptimizer 10.1.0 is available now as a free trial download for PCs running Windows XP or later. The full version comes with a MSRP of $39.99, although upgrades and discounts are available for existing and trial users.

Photo Credit: Amy Walters /Shutterstock

Emerging market issuers have been busy this year, but investors aren’t getting much of a return, as rising Treasury yields steal their lunch.

Joyce Chang, head of emerging markets research at JP Morgan, told the Emerging Market Traders’ Association yesterday that:

Returns are lacklustre, barely breaking positive territory.

This despite the fact that there has been $62 billion in emerging market issuance in the first two months of the year, compared with last year’s record totals of $333 billion.

The problem is that improving U.S. growth prospects and expectations that the Federal Reserve will take the brake off the money-printing pedal have improved the investment and yield appeal of developed world assets.

As Chang said:

It seems the Ben Bernanke plan is working.

Ten-year Treasury yields have risen as much as 40 basis points this year, breaching 2 percent last month. Emerging sovereign debt spreads have widened 30 bps in that time. High-yield issuers have been out in force as result, with emerging market high yield issuance of $26 billion this year already close to full-2012 levels, according to Chang.

Unfortunately I couldn’t stay long at EMTA – sorry about the coughing fit, everyone – but Maarten-Jan Bakkum, emerging markets strategist at ING Investment Management, also said U.S. Treasuries were a worry. Emerging equities too have disappointed this year, with returns barely in the black.

On a visit to the Reuters building yesterday, Bakkum, who is neutral on emerging markets, said:

 Rising U.S. yields are potentially a big problem for flows to emerging markets. They reflect the better growth environment and increase the chances that the Fed will take liquidity off the table. You can expect more nervousness in emerging markets.