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The concept of Canonical taking a stab at the mobile market eludes me. Unless we want to split hairs, which I know will happen, Android already is the Linux ambassador across the globe, so why would the world need Ubuntu Touch? Furthermore, any new player starts out with a clean slate, which means many consumers will be skeptical at purchasing devices running the new operating system and therefore developer interest does not surpass a low threshold.

The PC market is not what it used to be a couple of years ago when people rushed out to buy new computers, rather than tablets or smartphones first. In some ways Canonical right now is Microsoft before Windows Phone and Windows 8 — an important player further heading into obscurity down the road unless the boat steers in the right direction. Ubuntu Touch is supposed to give the world a breath of fresh air, the X factor that would sway enough people into switching from Android, iOS, Windows Phone or a feature phone, even.

Truth be told Canonical’s preview for Ubuntu Touch is one of the most basic I have ever laid my eyes upon. Nothing really works in the sense that it only paints (literally I should say) the bigger picture without allowing users to run most of the preinstalled or listed apps. Basically Canonical delivers a cool new gadget that cannot be used for anything except a paperweight.

Normally when you buy a new mobile device, the operating system comes preinstalled. Most people don’t want to install Android, iOS, Windows Phone or Windows 8 on their smartphone or tablet anyway. Canonical’s product, however, cannot be added to the same list, at the moment, as there are no devices running Ubuntu Touch out-of-the-box; instead one has to download the operating system manually and install it on a Google Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 4, Nexus 7 or Nexus 10. Needless to say any of the four must sport an unlocked bootloader and, to make it easy, a custom recovery such as ClockworkMod or TWRP.

Fast forward to the boot process, Ubuntu Touch Developer Preview starts quite fast even on my aging Galaxy Nexus and, shortly after, it displays the lockscreen, which sports the usual suspects — date and time, status bar with notifications, Wi-Fi and volume, battery indicator and the time. On top of the aforementioned items, Ubuntu Touch also adds search on the left side of the status bar and a round disc in the middle of the lockscreen, which right now only displays “14 tweets received”. I can only speculate that in the final version users will be able to rotate the disc (like on an old telephone) and it will display other statuses.

There are no buttons to speak of whatsoever. For someone first using a smartphone running Ubuntu Touch, there is going to be a learning curve involved straight from unlocking the device. It’s done by swiping left from the right edge of the screen — it’s one of the reasons why Canonical must have a pretty explanatory guide on how to use the interface. So it’s unlocked, now what?

Well, Ubuntu Touch now displays the main homescreen, one of the five available, called Home. No surprises there. The other available ones are, from left to right, Music, People, Apps and Videos with Home bang on in the middle. Switching between them can be done by swiping horizontally. It has to be noted that Ubuntu Touch Developer Preview comes similar to a snapshot of the operating system after it was used, so everything is in a frozen state with contacts, apps, etc.

The Homescreens

Let’s take them one by one.

Music, as the name suggests, focuses on music content and, judging by the pictured items on the homescreen, acts as a store similar to iTunes, for instance. Right now it displays Featured, Recent, New Releases and Top Charting categories, all of which contain albums. Users can swipe left and right in the first one to view all the featured content, whereas in the following four Ubuntu Touch only lists four items per each category inside a grid. Needless to say tapping on any album in Music leads nowhere at the moment. There is, however, a basic animation when tapping on an item. It’s just a preview, but I expected more out of it, to be honest.

People is similar to the People hub in Windows Phone and currently displays Favorites, Recently in touch, New Contacts and the A-Z category, the last of which is a list of all the contacts. The names are pretty self-explanatory. Favorites, like the Featured category in Music, shows a horizontal list of contacts which can be navigated by swiping. Tapping on a contact displays the contact’s picture and, if exists, last status on Facebook, home number, email address and home address. Other fields may also be available. Not all fields are active, but I managed to power up the Phone app after tapping on a contact’s phone number.

Recently in touch shows recent interactions, although it is not yet clear on which social network without tapping on the listed item, which will power up the contact’s info. Also, it is unclear as to whether the Recently in touch category displays a list of the most recent interactions between the user and his contacts or the latest social network status from most recently-interacted contacts. It’s a nice concept, but I am not certain if it works all that well in real-life because so many of us have hundreds of contacts across various social networks and we do chat with many people each day so I can only imagine how lengthy the Recently in touch category will become. It might be just too much swiping involved without other tabs on top.

Apps displays the Running Apps, Frequently used, Installed and Available for download categories. There are some interesting items listed, both as installed and available, including Amazon, eBay, Evernote, Pinterest, SoundCloud, Twitter, Wikipedia and YouTube. Obviously listed does not really imply available as well, so the situation might change over time before Ubuntu Touch is released.

Videos embodies the same philosophy as the other homescreens and displays Featured, Recent, New Releases and Popular Online categories. Featured displays a horizontal list with movie posters, while Recent and New Releases revert to a grid of movie posters. Users can tap on a title and either buy or rent the item from Amazon or Ubuntu One, respectively. Popular Online displays a grid of videos, likely only from YouTube.

Home is where people will revert to after navigating the operating system. The homescreen displays Frequent Apps, Favorite People, People Recently in Touch, Recent Music and Videos Popular Online. Basically Ubuntu Touch wants to provide users with the most important features that they use on the device straight from the default homescreen. If there are also plenty of cat videos in the last category Canonical will hit a home-run with Ubuntu Touch for most YouTube aficionados.

The Same Idea, Just Differently Implemented

The homescreens display a bunch of condensed information that we have grown accustomed to get from various apps individually. Truth be told, Canonical does not revolutionize operating systems, at least not right now. Ubuntu Touch merely gathers relevant pieces and joins them together in four major categories. It’s a very neat way of dealing with information overload and having what matters nearby at a couple of swipes. This is just a glimpse of what’s to come, indeed, but I can only wish that what’s to come will be improved in a number of areas.

I like the concept of Ubuntu Touch, I really do, but I can’t get past its looks. All app icons have rounded corners, which I can live with, but the edges appear to be rounded as well giving them a cartoonish feel. The colors are typical Ubuntu as well and, generally speaking, the overall design of the icons is dated or too kitsch. The background looks like it was ported straight from Ubuntu as well, which is to be expected, but it does not look all that great either and neither do the fonts. Canonical should really consider polishing up the interface.

Then there is the status bar, which is a great concept but difficult to work with nicely on the go. I use my smartphone most of the time when I’m out of the house and then I find it difficult to nail the right swipe to see the battery or volume panel (accessible via status bar). Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to have different panels for each icon in the status bar but not so great in real-life. I see this as a problem even when stationary for elderly people and people with big thumbs.

Big thumbs don’t help either when typing on the keyboard, which more than often does not register a press unless slightly tapping on the key. I don’t have a similar issue with Android, iOS or Windows Phone and I don’t like to pinpoint such problems for mobile operating systems in 2013. Hopefully Canonical will fix this issue in upcoming, and more stable, builds of Ubuntu Touch.

Switching between apps is done by swiping left from the right edge of the screen. Ubuntu Touch switches between them in a certain order and does not currently display a list of running apps without going straight to the Apps homescreen. Another downside of the Developer Preview is that Ubuntu Touch does not deal well with multiple running apps, becoming overly sluggish. Normally the lag exists but it’s made worse in the aforementioned scenario.

Powering up a menu inside the app is done by swiping up from the bottom edge of the screen. Depending on the app it may display a navigation bar (like in the Browser) or a keyboard or absolutely nothing at all because Ubuntu Touch freezes. But when you want to minimize the app, by swiping right from the left edge of the screen there’s another menu, which weirdly enough shows up as well. I can assume that it can be customized to include only a certain number of apps that users want quick access to, but the Developer Preview build leaves that to our imagination at the moment.

Refreshing but Needs Work

Ubuntu Touch is an interesting concept that needs work. That’s the bottom line. Navigating the interface works well through swiping and after using it for a couple of days I have no problem in the lack of on-screen buttons (because this is still a Nexus device that I’m running it on). But when compared to Android, iOS or Windows Phone, Ubuntu Touch lacks polish and, obviously, apps that make smartphones and tablets the mobile devices we know and love. That said…

I was skeptical and, likely, for all the wrong reasons. The Ubuntu Touch Developer Preview is enlightening as to how Canonical envisions yet another smartphone or tablet operating system. And, to be honest, I quite like that vision as it delivers something new and exciting which, unless you view a mobile device solely and solely as a simple tool that doesn’t have a soul, is what we should get more and more. Needless to say there’s an overdose of early adopter syndrome happening, and I love that feeling.

Facebook is looking to further promote their new Gifts feature by giving it a more prominent placement – in the news feed.

Some users have spotted a “Give a Gift” button attached to certain posts by friends – mainly when they’re sharing good news such as landing a new job.

Facebook has already incorporated gifts into live events that are part of the official profile structure – we’re talking birthdays, engagements, and marriages. Those kind of announcements will appear on the top right-hand of your news feed (on desktop) and inside the news feed (on mobile). Clicking on those life events prompts users to “Give a Gift.”

But this is something entirely different. Facebook looks to be testing a system that would identify major life accomplishments (like getting a new job) when spoken about in status updates, and prompt users to give gifts in celebration.

When Facebook first launched Gifts way back in September of last year, I joked that it was the end of the simple “like” or comment being an acceptable form of congratulations – for anything. By working Gifts into more and more situations, Facebook is pushing for Gifting to become the normal way to celebrate a friend’s life achievement.

Of course, this seems to be a limited test as it’s not wide to all users. Facebook runs dozens and dozens of tests every month, many of which never see primetime. But since Facebook is looking for more ways to generate real revenue from Gifts, I suspect that this is a type of test that we’ll be seeing more and more of in the coming months.

[via Inside Facebook]

Researchers at Brown University have built a robotic bat wing, which they believe can serve as as stepping stone toward some interesting new flying vehicles. Hopefully it won’t serve as a stepping stone to some giant bat-like Terminator.

Brown University explains:

The robot, which mimics the wing shape and motion of the lesser dog-faced fruit bat, is designed to flap while attached to a force transducer in a wind tunnel. As the lifelike wing flaps, the force transducer records the aerodynamic forces generated by the moving wing. By measuring the power output of the three servo motors that control the robot’s seven movable joints, researchers can evaluate the energy required to execute wing movements.

Testing showed the robot can match the basic flight parameters of bats, producing enough thrust to overcome drag and enough lift to carry the weight of the model species.

Hat tip to LiveScience

Twenty years ago today, an improvised explosive contained in a truck was detonated in the public parking garage below the North Tower of the World Trade Center.  Improvised explosive devices (IED) continue to pose an ongoing threat, both here at home and abroad.  Our capability to identify and disrupt them before they occur, as well as to respond after an attack, has improved greatly. We have come a long way in twenty years. 

Today, with the publication of the policy statement on Countering Improvised Explosive Devices, we both recognize the progress we have made, and rededicate ourselves to the next phase in our efforts to implement measures to discover, prevent, protect against, respond to, recover from, and mitigate IED attacks and their consequences.

We will seek to develop even smarter solutions, and make the most efficient use of our resources, by enhancing our capability to share information regarding these threats, synchronizing standards and procedures, prioritizing and aligning activities according to risk management principles, and leveraging the expertise and resources of industry and foreign partners in pursuit of our shared interests.

The threat from IED use is likely to remain high in the near future, and will continue to evolve in response to our abilities to counter them. A whole-of-government approach that integrates Federal, state, local, tribal, territorial, private sector, and global participation in counter-IED activities will best position the United States to discover plots to use IEDs in the United States, or against U.S. persons abroad, before those threats become imminent.

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There’s a time and place for every notification in Android. Consumers won’t be happy if you constantly spam them, but smart notification design is key to enhanced engagement. Learn more about it in this week’s Android Design in Action.

This week’s video tackles not only notification design, but the design process behind Google Now:

Join Nick Butcher, Adam Koch and Roman Nurik as they discuss various elements of Android Design. This week, Alex Faaborg from the Android UX team at Google stops by to talk about the when and the why of notifications and walks through a design process case study for Google Now.

Apple (AAPL) shares got a boost Tuesday afternoon on rumors that the company may announce a split on Wednesday during its annual shareholder meeting. The rumor comes from former money manager and current TheStreet.com contributor Douglas Kass, who did not disclose his source. “High above the Alps my Gnome is hearing a rumor that Apple will announce a stock split at tomorrow’s shareholder meeting,” Kass wrote in a post on Twitter, providing no further details. Apple shares rose more than 1.4% on the rumor after nearing a new closing low.

The CEO of electric car maker Tesla, Elon Musk, said Tuesday that Tesla plans to cut in half the time it will take to pay back its loan to the Department of Energy. Musk made the remarks at the Department of Energy’s ARPA-E Summit in a discussion with DOE Secretary Steven Chu.

Musk said Tesla has ten years to pay back the $465 million loan, which it won back in the summer of 2009, and Tesla plans to reduce that time in half and get it repaid in under five years. Tesla already started paying back its loan, and made its first payment of $12.7 million to the DOE in the fourth quarter of 2012. It plans to make its second payment by March 2013.

During the discussion at ARPA-E, Musk said that if the DOE got so much attention for failures like Solyndra, it should get praise for its successes like Tesla.

Tesla has successfully been transforming from a small-scale electric car maker, into a company that’s producing its second electric car the Model S at a scale of 20,000 cars per year at a factory in Fremont, Calif. During the company’s earnings call last week, Tesla said it would turn its first profit ever (on a non-GAAP basis) in the first quarter of 2013. Musk said he was confident that Tesla could also be profitable for other quarters this year, too.

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• The fourth quarter of 2012 in cleantech
• Cleantech and investment in 2013
• Ups and downs for cleantech in Q1

For sales managers, this is not an easy question to answer. The number of salespeople affects profitably by impacting both revenues and costs. It’s easy to estimate costs by looking at historical compensation, benefits, field support, and travel costs per salesperson. But it’s much more difficult to predict revenues, as it requires understanding how complexities such as customer needs, the economy, and the effectiveness of your and your competitor’s salespeople, influence a sales force’s ability to generate sales.

Most companies use financial decision rules to determine how large their sales forces should be, but regrettably, these rules often lead to poor decisions. Consider three commonly-used rules.

Add a Salesperson when there are Enough Sales to Pay for that Person

This “wait and see” approach to adding salespeople views the sales force as a cost item justified by sales, rather than as an investment that drives sales. An “earn-your-way” strategy is sometimes necessary in markets with high uncertainty or when a company is cash-strapped. But when leaders take this conservative growth approach even when there is reasonable certainty of success and available financing, they undersize their sales forces and forfeit opportunity. One pharmaceutical company’s overly-cautious sales force expansion strategy resulted in too little support for a new product launch and cost the company 17% of profits over three years.

Split a Territory as Soon as Its Sales Hit a Threshold Level

At one company, when a territory hits $3 million in sales, sales leaders split the territory and give a portion of it to a new salesperson. The current salesperson’s “reward” for working hard to build business is to have his territory reduced. Over time too many salespeople are placed in geographies where salespeople were successful initially and too few are placed in other geographies where considerable market potential remains untapped. Another downside is that salespeople in territories with sales approaching $3 million have incentive to stop selling in order to keep their territories intact.

Keep Sales Force Costs at a Constant Percentage of Sales

A sales force stays affordable by keeping costs in line with industry or company benchmarks for a sales force cost-to-sales ratio. But this is not the same as maximizing profits. Although it’s counterintuitive, when a sales force is undersized, adding salespeople increases the cost-to-sales ratio and also increases profitability. You can always reduce the cost-to-sales ratio by cutting headcount, but the impact on profitability is positive only if the sales force is already too large. Maintaining an industry average cost-to-sales ratio is especially harmful to small-share companies that want a competitive share-of-voice. Sustaining a historical ratio is also dangerous during a business downturn; it may result in excessive downsizing that amplifies the impact of the downturn and leaves the company poorly positioned for a turnaround.

A Better Approach

Financial decision rules alone are not enough for figuring out the right size number of salespeople. A better approach requires three steps.

Step 1. Look at four sources for signs that the sales force is under- or over-sized. If customers complain about inadequate service, if salespeople protest about too much work and travel, if sales activity focuses mostly on order taking instead of prospecting, and if competitors are expanding their sales forces, it’s likely that your sales force is smaller than it should be. On the other hand, if customers avoid returning your salespeople’s calls, if salespeople feel they don’t have enough opportunities, if sales activity emphasizes too many non-critical tasks and low-value customers, and if competitors are downsizing their sales forces, it’s likely your own sales force is too large.

Step 2. Do analysis that focuses on customers, not financial constraints. This requires understanding and segmenting customers according to their needs and potential, and determining what sales process and how much sales force time is required to meet those needs and realize the potential. By aggregating time required across customer segments, you can estimate the number of salespeople required to effectively cover your customer base.

Step 3. Look at financial ratios (such as sales force cost-to-sales) as a final check. Adjust as needed to ensure affordability. Often, by shifting coverage of lower-value customer segments to more efficient channels such as telesales, it’s possible to improve financial ratios while giving up minimal coverage of market potential.

Finally, keep in mind that changes in sales force size have both short-term and long-term impact. The cost impact is immediate, but the revenue impact accrues slowly and accelerates with time. When expanding the sales force, it takes new salespeople time to get acclimated and make sales, and for the new customers they acquire to make repeat purchases. Alternatively, when downsizing a sales force, loyal customers may continue to buy for a while despite reduced sales force coverage. But eventually, repeat business dwindles away. The best sales force sizing decisions look at profitability over at least a three-year time horizon. If leaders under pressure to deliver short-term results focus only on the first-year impact, they will under-size the sales force – our research indicates by 18% on average. As a result, they sacrifice long-term profitability.

The TED2013 stage might make you want to climb. Inspired by a treehouse, the spectacular stage brings together huge, winding tree limbs and structures that evoke the Swiss Family Robinson. The stage features multiple levels which speakers can utilize for their talk. We’ve given up the red carpet this year, yes, but added a new detail we love: the waving TED flag. To sum it up: it’s our most playful stage yet.

Get ready for session 1, “Progress Enigma,” starting at 11am PST. Follow along here on the TED Blog, where we’ll be writing a recap of each speaker’s talk, in real time.

Shares of Internap have surged after the company recorded a strong quarter, indicating it is striking the right chords with its diverse portfolio of colocation, managed services and cloud. The company has also been touting what it calls “Cloudy Colo,” a true hybrid solution available through a single portal. The strong finish to the year and the cloudy colo concept are signs that Internap has found its identity.

In two trading sessions since the release of its fourth quarter earnings, shares of Internap have gained 11.5 percent, rising from $7.91 at Thursday to a close of $8.81 on Monday. The fourth quarter saw the highest quarterly revenue, segment profit and adjusted EBITDA in company history.

Revenue for 2012 was $273.6 million, with fourth quarter revenue of $69.7 million. Internap’ revenue was up 2 percent from the previous quarter. The high growth was attributed to its data center services segment, which includes Voxel which Internap acquired in 2011. Data center services revenue hit $43.7 million, up 24 percent compared to same time last year, and up four percent from the third quarter. For the full year, data center services generated revenue of $167.3 million, up 25 percent over last year. IP services was flat, but slightly down year over year. Customer churn was down. The company counted 3,700 customers as of December 31, 2012.

Strong Finish to 2012

“We are pleased with the strong finish to 2012,” said Eric Cooney, President and Chief Executive Officer of Internap. “The continued execution of our growth strategy is reflected in full year revenue and Adjusted EBITDA growth of 12 percent and 20 percent, respectively. Successful integration of the Voxel business and focus on our organic colocation, hosting and cloud infrastructure businesses have delivered full-year growth in data center services revenue of 25 percent.

“As we look forward to 2013, the priority is simple – focus on continued execution of the strategy to deliver a platform of high-performance, hybridized IT Infrastructure services,” Cooney continued. “We remain confident that the opportunity for long-term profitable growth and stockholder value creation is significant in the market for outsourced IT Infrastructure services.”

Internap has shifted its focus over the years. The company was founded in 1996 on its expertise in IP services and route optimization. It later added colocation and content delivery services, but has had its stumbles, most notably the 2006 acquisition of VitalStream, which led to a $99 million write-off amid customer support problems. Cooney became CEO in 2009, and immediately focused on the company’s colocation business. Since Internap was realizing higher margins on its company-owned data centers, and began phasing out its use of third-party space and building data center space. The company rolled out 26,000 square feet of company-controlled data center space in 2012.

Sneak Peak: Cloudy Colo

The company is working on what it informally calls “Cloudy Colo.” It is an extension of its core data center OS platform, with some customers using the beta version.

“Our whole goal is to redefine what the limitations around colo are,” said Raj Dutt, Senior VP of Technology at Internap and former CEO of Voxel. “We’re going to start giving visibility and control into the obvious things that people don’t get from colo – reboot, bandwidth, inventory management asset management, the ability to hybridize managed cloud in the same portal.

“Through software – DCIM-like software – customers can focus at stuff in the rack rather than outside of the rack,” said Dutt. “DCIM has barely started in terms of inside the rack. The roles of machines are changing, and DCIM falls short on this. This is where it starts to get interesting.”

Offering up a variety of services through one portal from colo to cloud, as well as giving DCIM-like insight into total infrastructure, will aide Internap in cross-selling its services.

“This makes colo great for colo customers,” said Dutt. “It also makes colo within reach for cloud guys. As cloud customers need colo, it’s an easier way to go about that. From an infrastructure standpoint, we don’t think the cloud is the be-end and end-all,” he said. “If you’re deploying any application, the best solution is a hybrid situation.”

Dutt noted that Internap offers everything from colocation to dedicated servers to cloud. “Very few people offering all of these product sets as one infrastructure fabric,” he noted.

Dutt believes the economics of cloud are often misinterpreted, and cloud is not always the most cost-effective approach for the customer. ”I’d rather sell 100 racks of cloud than 100 racks of colo any day,” said Dutt, stating that the margins for providers are simply better for cloud within the same footprint.

Dutt atttributes Internap’s success with its diverse portfolio to one thing. “The market certainly got more educated,” he said. “More and more people are treating infrastructure as a competitive weapon more than cost center.”

It’s still early, so there’s no formal “cloudy colo” product yet. The company is evaluating different models. However, all indications are that Internap is working on giving customers deeper control and analytics across the portfolio, from colo to cloud, with deeper DCIM-like functionality. A formal announcement is most likely coming within the next quarter.

Cablevision has filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against Viacom in New York Tuesday in an attempt to break up the bundle of channels that Viacom is selling the cable operator. Cablevision’s lawsuit alleges that Viacom is forcing the operator to carry 14 networks it and its customers don’t want, including MTV Hits and VH1 Classic.

The operator now wants to invalidate a deal the two parties struck just two months ago, and instead just get the good stuff. You know, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, and maybe a little bit of MTV proper.

Cablevision sent out the following statement about the lawsuit:

“The manner in which Viacom sells its programming is illegal, anti-consumer, and wrong. Viacom effectively forces Cablevision’s customers to pay for and receive little-watched channels in order to get the channels they actually want. Viacom’s abuse of its market power is not only illegal, but also prevents Cablevision from delivering the programming that its customers want and that competes with Viacom’s less popular channels.”

A Viacom spokesperson sent us the following statement in response:

“At the request of distributors, Viacom and other programmers have long offered discounts to those who agree to provide additional network distribution. Many distributors take advantage of these win-win and pro-consumer arrangements. Reflecting the highly competitive cable programming business, these arrangements have been upheld by a number of federal courts and on appeal. Viacom will vigorously defend this transparent attempt by Cablevision to use the courts to renegotiate our existing two month old agreement.”

The lawsuit also alleges that Viacom threatened “massive financial penalties” if Cablevision refused to carry the 14 lesser-watched channels in question. The operator is asking for a permanent injunction that would bar Viacom from bundling its lesser-watched channels with its more popular core offerings.

On paper, this lawsuit is an interesting challenge to the cable bundle, which has been largely dictated by the broadcasters. Operators have long said that they would like to sell their customers smaller and more flexible bundles. Broadcasters have made this impossible by either directly bundling all their channels into one big package, or by other conditions that make sure operators can’t sell bundles without certain channels.

However, it’s unlikely that this lawsuit will be fought out until the bitter end. Because at the core, this is about something else: Broadcasters have in recent years significantly increased the carriage fees for their fares, leading to a number of nasty fights that left consumers without their favorite channels for weeks. In the end, content owners always won, and carriers caved in, agreeing to pay more before their customers have yet another reason to cut the cord.

Cablevision and Viacom negotiated a last-minute carriage agreement in late December. Details of that deal were not made public, but it’s obvious that Cablevision wasn’t happy with the outcome. Now it wants to get a better deal, and threatening the bundle is the biggest asset it has in this fight.

Image courtesy of Flickr user  nyghtowl.

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Astonsoft Ltd has released EssentialPIM Free 5.5 and EssentialPIM Pro 5.5, major new versions of its Windows personal information manager. Highlights in this new release include support for iCloud synchronization, native Dropbox support and improved CardDAV tools.

Also updated are EssentialPIM for iOS 2.6 and EssentialPIM for Android 1.8.2, mobile apps designed to give users access to their EssentialPIM data while on the move. While iOS users only see minor bug fixes in this update, Android users will enjoy major improvements to the Calendar and Contacts modules.

The most eye-catching new feature in EssentialPIM 5.5 is native Dropbox support — users can now easily access their EssentialPIM data from multiple PCs by storing their database in the Dropbox cloud folder. EssentialPIM can automatically download, upload and pack the database from this location, and the effect is seamless.

Also added in version 5.5 is full support for Apple’s iCloud and the CardDAV synchronization service, the former being of most benefit to EssentialPIM for iOS users. As with other supported cloud services, including Google, CalDAV and Yahoo!, however, the feature is restricted to EssentialPIM Pro 5.5 users.

Enhancements in version 5.5 include better CalDAV support, plus improved synchronization with both Android and iOS apps. The update also promises to have fixed all known issues since the last release.

EssentialPIM for Android users also gain new features with the 1.8.2 release. These include a new Calendar module, which now syncs with EssentialPIM’s own Calendar module in Android as opposed to the native Calendar app. At the present time, Agenda and Day views are available, with more to follow.

There are also improvements to EssentialPIM’s Contacts support, with all contact fields now being synchronized with the native Contacts app along with photo synchronization support.

EssentialPIM Free 5.5 and EssentialPIM Free Portable 5.5 are both free-for-personal-use downloads for PCs running Windows XP or later. EssentialPIM Pro 5.5 is available as a free trial download, with full licenses starting from $39.95. Both EssentialPIM for iOS 2.6 and EssentialPIM for Android 1.8.2 are free downloads.

Photo credit: tele52/Shutterstock

Intel on Tuesday said it was getting into the software business with its own Hadoop distribution. The move is a potential blow for startups such as Cloudera, Hortonworks and MapR that are offering their own distributions of Hadoop, but it’s also an admission by the chip vendor that the opportunity in big data isn’t only to be found in selling hardware.

In a conference held in San Francisco, VP and General Manager of Intel’s Datacenter Software Division Boyd Davis explained Intel’s history in Hadoop that stretches back to 2009 and stressed that Intel is going to share some aspects of its Hadoop distribution, but not all. Intel has a distribution of Hadoop it has released in China, but today it’s bringing it to the United States Intel’s version of the Hadoop distribution uses Hadoop 2.0 and YARN, which is a cutting-edge version of  platform compared with what most Hadoop users have deployed thus far.

Why Intel wants to push its own version of Hadoop

Boyd introduced partners such as and Cisco, which has tuned the Intel Hadoop distribution for its own servers. Intel also hosted a panel that included executives from SAP, Red Hat and Savvis to discuss the challenges of big data and the promise of Hadoop and big data.

Davis was up front about Intel’s rationale for releasing its own distribution, namely that it was worried about the fragmentation and possible uncertainty associated with current Hadoop distributions. That could be read as a dig against the many startups already offering Hadoop distributions, all of which are slightly different (of course, Intel’s will be slightly different, too). Like all of the existing players such as Cloudera and MapR, Intel will open source certain aspects of its distribution, but will also keep software to itself.

Inside the data center, it’s no longer just web servers that matter

For example, Davis stressed that Intel will not share its management and monitoring software, which could be highly valuable for enterprise customers. The Intel software could coordinate with Intel’s data center management software and make managing a variety of workloads easier. And hidden in that coordination might be one Intel’s aims in pushing its own version of Hadoop — the threat of ARM chips used in Hadoop clusters.

Dell, Calxeda and others are evaluating the use of lower-performance, lower-power chips in Hadoop clusters, a market Intel would hate to cede in the data center as data grows and analytics becomes more important. To that end, Intel has also optimized its Hadoop distribution for solid-state drives, something that other Hadoop companies haven’t done so far.

When asked about Atom and the use of lower-performance processors for Hadoop, Davis noted that while people are using lower-end processors for Hadoop , but that those uses tend to have slower networking. Davis says that when you combine high-end processors with 10 gigabit Ethernet and Hadoop, customers get the performance that they want.

So while Intel may tout stability and consistency as the reason for it’s decision to become a major player in the software market for big data, it’s also driven by the changes in the data center that threaten the grip Intel has on the hardware inside the data center. The cloud and big data has changed the workloads and hardware requirements for the data center and Intel is playing the long game in trying to release software that can be tuned to its chips.

The Hadoop drama isn’t over yet

Intel isn’t the only big vendor touting its own homegrown version of Hadoop. On Monday, EMC’s Greenplum division announced an entirely revamped version of its Hadoop distribution that’s merged with it’s flagship analytic SQL database. These big companies have big existing businesses to protect and lots of resources to put into doing it. As my colleague Derrick Harris wrote on the EMC news:

Looking past his competitive boasting, though, it’s easy to see [Greenplum’s Scott] Yara’s greater point when you ask him what all this Hadoop talks means for the data warehouse business on which Greenplum was built. He points to the mainframe business that fell from its high perch decades ago but still drives billions a year in revenue. A single MPP database system is still faster on certain workloads than SQL on Hadoop, but that gap will close over time and “I do think the center of gravity will move toward HDFS,” he said.

Hadoop is a juggernaut when it comes to big data. Intel is a juggernaut when it comes to data center infrastructure. Its decision to enter into the open source software market is a big one for the chip company, for the Hadoop ecosystem and for the myriad startups playing in this space. It’s a topic we’ll explore more during our Structure Data conference in New York on March 20 and 21.

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The more I use Google’s new Chromebook Pixel, the more I consider buying one; I have to return the loaner laptop next week. To many, that sounds insane: “Pay $1,299 for a browser?” is the common comment theme I’m seeing. And it’s a fair point if you do more than just work on the web. Even me, a Chromebook owner since last June, occasionally strays outside the Internet for some activity. Can that actually be done on a Chromebook Pixel? Actually, yes it can, because because you can use other operating systems on this hardware.

After researching over the weekend and asking some Googlers themselves, I found out that unlike prior Chromebooks, there is a BIOS option that is writable: meaning the Pixel’s startup software isn’t locked down as much as prior Chrome OS devices. Google included a copy of SeaBIOS with the Pixel, currently allowing for the installation of Linux distributions. Here’s an instruction page on how to do this and the following explanation from Bill Richardson, who works at Google:

“Chrome OS firmware normally consists of three distinct BIOS images. First, there is the read-only BIOS, which is (duh) read-only. It can’t be modified without disassembly. Then there are two read-write BIOS images, called RW A and RW B. The read-only BIOS is what runs when the machine is first powered on. It checks the two read-write BIOSes (A, then B), looking for one that is correctly signed by Google. If it finds one, it jumps to that image, which then looks for a valid kernel, and so forth. If there is no valid RW firmware (or some other fault has occurred), the execution stays in the RO BIOS and enters Recovery mode.

With the Pixel, we’d added an extra (unverified) BIOS slot. It only works in developer mode, and you have to explicitly enable it, but we’ve put a copy of Seabios in the Pixel firmware.”

The second option for running an alternative platform on the Pixel is a tool created by David Schneider, another Googler. Called crouton — standing for ChRomium Os UbunTu chrOot enviroNment — the downloadable tool supports running Ubuntu in a virtual instance within Chrome OS.

This means you can run the standard Chrome OS environment and a fully usable Ubuntu build at the same time. To toggle between the two environments, you simply press Ctrl-Alt-Refresh (F3) for Ubuntu or press Ctrl-Alt-Back (F1) for Chrome OS according to Richardson, who shared this picture of the end result.

Of course, if you want to run Mac OS X or Microsoft Windows, you’re out of luck on a Chromebook Pixel, but as a Googler reminded me in this thread, you can always use Chrome Remote Desktop to connect to another system. Bensen Leung, a Linux Kernel engineer on the Chrome OS team, told me he uses that method — in addition to the above Linux approaches — to connect to desktops on other platforms.

Are these ideal solutions for a laptop that costs $1,299 or more? Probably not for most folks, but they do provide options outside of just using a web browser.

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VidIQ has spent the last year quietly working with companies like AOL to help them manage and monitor their growing catalogue of YouTube videos. On Tuesday, backed by some prominent investors including Mark Cuban, the company opened shop to the general public.

According to VidIQ CEO Robert Sandie, big companies have learned the power of Twitter and Facebook as marketing tools but are overlooking YouTube, which he describes as the world’s “second biggest social network.”

To fill this gap, VidIQ is offering tools that let companies monitor and manage their videos and apply some SEO zest to help their videos rise in search rankings. He explained that most companies are failing to apply even basic search strategies to their YouTube content, meaning it’s still relatively easy to achieve big improvements in YouTube visibility.

“It means an organic boost in video traffic,” said Sandie in a phone interview. “Like the early days of the web, when you could get a headstart on Google or Yahoo or Alta Vista, it’s still early on in YouTube.”

VidIQ’s primary SEO tool is a box that prompts users to add more keywords to their videos. It also provides guidance about the optimal time to publish new videos.

The company also offers analytics tools that Sandie says can deliver important demographic information such as the ratio of male to female viewers. And, like HootSuite does for Twitter and other social media, VidIQ lets users monitor comments and buzz about their YouTube videos.  Other broader social media management companies, like Unified Social, also offer some social marketing services for YouTube but Sandie says VidIQ offers a unique YouTube listening platform to monitor and engage influencers.

To start, VidIQ is offering two versions of its products: a free one that small users can apply to manage single YouTube channel and a more sophisticated enterprise package for a fee.

VidIQ says it has so far raised more than $800,000 from Mark Cuban, Scott Banister, David Cohen, and others.

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What’s the difference between someone with a good idea and a person who can transform their ideas into real impact? To tackle the world’s biggest problems, we need to be able to identify and support the people who are capable of creating lasting change. At Acumen Fund, we spend a lot of time trying to find and train aspiring and established leaders from around the world who have the right mix of talent, ideas, and passion.

And what we’ve found time and again is: Resilience matters most.

Resilient leaders have three key characteristics:

1. Grit: Short-term focus on tasks at hand, a willingness to slog through broken systems with limited resources, and pragmatic problem-solving skills.
2. Courage: Action in the face of fear and embracing the unknown.
3. Commitment: Long-term optimism and focus on big-picture goals.

I see these qualities in the Global Fellows who are selected to work with Acumen’s investee companies across Africa and South Asia during a 12-month fellowship. These individuals bring exceptional skills and business expertise to their work. But that is not enough. It’s their ability to dig deep, roll up their sleeves and immerse themselves in the unglamorous trenches of seemingly intractable problems while remaining focused on long-term goals that allows them to buck the status quo and deliver meaningful change.

Grit: Natalie Grillon, a former Peace Corps volunteer and recent MBA graduate, embodies grit. She’s working in a remote area of war-torn Northern Uganda to develop an organic sesame business as part of Gulu Agricultural Development Company, which provides more than 40,000 smallholder farmers with access to international markets.

Overseeing a staff of 35 and a network of 50 buyers, Natalie wakes up each day determined to grow the business by training more farmers and improving their product quality. Some days she’s holed up analyzing financials and others she’s loading trucks for shipment. She has to be both an empathetic listener and stern director, often at the cost of not always being “liked” — a tradeoff she’s accepted. She works 12-14 hours seven days a week and pushes through daily challenges and physical fatigue.
The sesame business is new to this part of Uganda and is already increasing the yields of more than 10,000 farmers, providing them with new income that can go to school fees or production tools. Farmers, who until recently lived in IDP-camps, now live lives of freedom, dignity and choice. For Natalie, the unrelenting pace of work and many headaches are worth it.

Courage: I recently visited with current fellow Jay Jaboneta, a social entrepreneur from the Philippines who is embracing the unknown in Pakistan. He’s working with Pharmagen Healthcare Limited, a water-supply company that provides up to two million liters of clean, affordable water each month to low-income customers through water purification shops in Lahore.

By design, fellows are often pushed out of their comfort zone — required to live and work in regions or sectors that are unfamiliar. This was the case with Jay and, prior to his arrival in Pakistan, he was admittedly anxious about his safety as a foreigner in Lahore, his ability to integrate into a new culture without speaking the language, and stepping into a role that required him to learn how to market water products to BOP customers.

Jay has been able to excel in an environment filled with unknowns. He’s currently launching a rebranding and marketing campaign to make clean water more accessible to low income consumers. Now part of the community, he’s also learning Urdu one phrase at a time and speaks of dear friends and the doodh pati chai he’s learned to make with them.

Commitment: Abbas Akhtar, an entrepreneur and software engineer originally from Pakistan, is fulfilling a promise he made to himself long ago: to return to Pakistan, after years in the US, and contribute to the country’s long-term development. Abbas now works at Ansaar Management Company (AMC), a low-cost housing and management company that provides affordable housing to more than 30,000 people outside of Lahore.

Equipped with several years work experience at Apple, Google and an advanced degree from Johns Hopkins, Abbas could choose from any number of developed markets in which to live and work. But he chose his country of origin to fulfill his personal commitment. He readily admits it hasn’t been easy to adjust to the frequent power outages, cold days and nights without reliable heat, and long road trips between projects, but he’s more committed than ever to apply all that he can to AMC this year and Pakistan for years to come. And his commitment is already contributing to the growth and sustainability of AMC with the potential launch of two new community sites, which could provide 200 new homes to 1,000 BOP-customers.

While still early in their careers, Natalie, Jay, and Abbas exemplify the resilience it takes to drive lasting change on the ground. Above all, their experiences highlight not only what’s needed to build new systems, but also, what’s needed most to be a social impact leader.

And resilience can be trained. At Acumen, we focus on building not only the fellows’ financial and operational skills, but also what we call “moral imagination”, which requires balancing opposing values — humility and audacity — to see the world as it is and to imagine the world for what it could be. During their two-month training in New York, fellows spend time in the shoes of low-income customers accessing goods and services, honing their empathy skills; they prototype human-centered design projects with IDEO.org and create business model canvases, building strong listening skills to understand customers’ needs. They develop deep self-awareness by challenging their perceptions about leadership and authority by using Cambridge Leadership Associates’ Adaptive Leadership framework. Fellows draw on these experiential exercises to strengthen their resolve when facing challenges on the ground.

Too often we confuse management skills with leadership. We need to remain focused on building leaders who have the resilience to face stubborn problems head on for lasting social impact. The more we collectively define what it takes, the better we’ll be able to identify and train this next generation.

Follow the Scaling Social Impact insight center on Twitter @ScalingSocial and register to stay informed and give us feedback.

It’s not quite Star Wars: Battlefront III, but today Sony will be releasing the Star Wars Pinball downloadable content (DLC) for Zen Pinball 2.

The add-on will cost $10 and includes three different tables: “Star Wars Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back,” “Boba Fett,” and “Star Wars: The Clone Wars.” The content is available as “Cross-Buy,” which means it can be bought once and played on both the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita. Zen Pinball 2 can be downloaded for free via the PlayStation Network.

It seems that Sony really is getting serious about cultivating free-to-play experiences on PlayStation platforms. The company today released the multiplayer portion of Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception for free as well.

A preview for the “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” table has been posted by Sony. It shows Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano battling their way through the clone wars. 3-D animated sequences, or “main missions,” are activated by progressing through the game (in this case, lighting the “council” lamps in the table’s center).