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One of the most surprising moments of last night’s big PlayStation 4 unveiling was when Chris Metzen, SVP of story and franchise development at Blizzard Entertainment, took the stage. Though he wasn’t at the presentation to announce a new franchise, since Blizzard has been producing PC-exclusive content for years now, his announcement was one that is sure to shake-up the gaming community.

Diablo III will be coming to both PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 consoles. Metzen mentioned that the game is already up-and-running on the PS3, and that a playable version will be featured at PAX East.

“Diablo III looks and plays great on the PlayStation,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard. “We put a lot of care and thought into the PlayStation version to make sure it would deliver an authentic Diablo gaming experience, and we’re really pleased with the results. We can’t wait for players to try it out at PAX East.”

The user interface for the game will be very different in the PlayStation versions, adapted to suit a console controller. The game will also feature a “new dynamic camera perspective” for console gamers. The local and online co-op will be available and some of the newest additions to the PC game, such as the Paragon leveling system and epic Legendary items, will be included.

Pi has currently been calculated to over 10 trillion (10^13) digits. But really, 39 is all you need, as the following video demonstrates.

“You only need 39 digits of pi to be able to measure the circumference of the observable universe within the width of one hydrogen atom.”

Whoa.

[Numberphile via Gizmodo]

Earlier this week, Microsoft launched Outlook.com to all users. This is a webmail offering that launched in in preview last year, but now all Hotmail users are being transitioned to the new experience.

We took a closer look at the new offering here. David Law, the director of product management had to say about the transition from Hotmail:

The upgrade is seamless and instant for people who use Hotmail. Everything from their @hotmail.com email address, password, messages, folders, contacts, rules, vacation replies, etc. will stay the same, with no disruption in service. When upgraded, they’ll also get all the benefits from the redesigned Outlook.com experience–a fresh and intuitive user interface, lots of new features and better performance. And we won’t ever make you switch your email address to an @outlook.com address if you don’t want to.

We expect all people using Hotmail to be upgraded by this summer. And for those that are excited to get the new benefits of the Outlook.com experience, there’s no need to wait. You can upgrade today by simply signing in at Outlook.com and we’ll take care of the rest.

Reactions to Microsoft’s move have been mixed – far more mixed than reactions to the new Yahoo homepage.

Some have wondered what the branding change will mean for Microsoft’s webmail user base.

A representative from brand insights provider Kontera tells WebProNews, “Heading into the month, Outlook.com is trending 22.63% higher than Gmail. Additionally, Gmail is trending 69.85% higher than Hotmail, which further validates Microsoft’s choice in choosing to focus their branding efforts on Outlook instead of rebranding Hotmail. And since their new campaign started, trending for Outlook.com has gone up 10.26% while Gmail went up 2.31%.”

Do you like the new experience better than Hotmail?

Over the past few months, Facebook has added a number of metrics to App Insights. It’s invaluable data that allows developers to analyze where traffic is coming from, and where they can capitalize on said traffic. Now Facebook is adding a new metric that may prove very important as Graph Search gets into the hands of more people.

Facebook announced that it’s adding a Search Results tab to App Insights. In essence, this new metric will tell developers how many people found their app through the search bar. The metrics will tell developers how many clicks were organic and paid. It will also tell you if a user clicked on the app from the search bar, and whether or not they found your app via Graph Search. Insights doesn’t cover clicks from mobile of the search results page yet.

Another change coming to the Facebook platform is an extension of Realtime Updates for the Graph API to include Page posts. Facebook says this change will automatically notify you of any comments or posts on a Page without having to constantly poll said Page. You can read more about it in the documentation.

The final change this week is an update to Facebook’s Platform policies. The new change comes from the branding section, and requires all “app descriptions, display names and icons adhere to [Facebook’s] Advertising Guidelines.” You can read more about that here.

Facebook says it received 241 bug reports this week, and 38 were accepted for further review. The social network also fixed 30 bugs over the past week. You can see the full list at the weekly blog post.

The new ownership of Kansas City data hub 1102 Grand has commenced redevelopment. Amerimar Enterprises and Hunter Newby acquired the property in October 2012 and quickly worked on a master plan to reinforce its position as the leading carrier hotel in the region.

“Kansas City is booming with innovative business opportunities and pushing the limits of telecommunication network capacity and as 1102 Grand is the City’s carrier hotel, these building improvements are necessary to foster continued growth,” said Newby, a joint venture partner at 1102 Grand.  “We look forward to strengthening the building’s infrastructure and providing connectivity options for the many growing companies in the region.”

This plan includes a complete overhaul of the electrical and cooling infrastructure. A permit has been secured for two additional 2 megawatt generators and has commenced construction on the first new generator. During the installation of the new generators, the partnership will be simultaneously increasing the incoming electrical service at the property by 66 percent to 5 MVA.

“These infrastructure improvements are in response to existing customer growth and robust new demand we are seeing in the market,” said Gerald Marshall, CEO of Amerimar Enterprises and owner of 1102 Grand.

Cooling Upgrades

Cooling upgrades will include significant capacity increases, as well as redundancy at each level from origination to delivery. The building will also benefit from a full façade repointing and selective replacement and resealing of windows. With these improvements, the new owners seek to secure the building envelope and eliminate any potential points of intrusion that could compromise the data center operations.

The partnership will also be upgrading the building management systems to monitor all security, fire alarm, fire suppression, cooling and power systems from one central command center, which will also be available remotely. The size of the facility’s support team has nearly doubled as well.

The project ownership cited the importance of cooperation from the city of Kansas City, Missouri, and the leadership of the Planned Industrial Expansion Authority, which have authorized the public-private partnership necessary to reinvigorate the historic structure.

European technology investor Amadeus Capital Partners has joined Montezemolo & Partners as an investor in Bellco. The business is a developer of equipment for haemo-dialysis used in kidney disease and is based in Mirandola, Italy.

PRESS RELEASE

European technology investor Amadeus Capital Partners has joined Montezemolo & Partners as an investor in Bellco, one of Europe’s leading and most innovative developers of equipment for haemo-dialysis used in kidney disease.
Bellco is based in Mirandola, Italy, in one of the largest medical technology clusters in the world that is also a centre of excellence for renal disease treatment and research. With plants in Mirandola and Toulouse, France, Bellco specialises in sophisticated products for extra-corporeal blood filtration. The company employs some 370 people at its two plants and at subsidiary operations in Spain, Belgium, Sweden and Canada and in 2012 generated over 100 million euros’ revenue and EBITDA approaching 15 million euros.
Building on a long tradition of technological innovation in haemo-dialysis, with “the right therapy” at its core, Bellco last year introduced new dialysers for both chronic and acute renal failure and launched a new generation of patented dialysers to treat sepsis and acute lung injury in intensive care units, as well as the first dialysis system for new-born babies.
Amadeus Partner, Andrea Traversone, said: “This is a highly innovative technology company with a long track record and an enviable reputation for reliability. We are delighted to join Montezemolo, whom we already know well and respect as a leading private equity and growth investor, in taking Bellco to the next stage of its development. Bellco’s products have the potential significantly to improve chronic haemo-dialysis worldwide and to revolutionise the acute dialysis sector with unique, patented therapies for life-threatening conditions.”
The underlying market drivers for renal therapies include growing elderly populations, increased incidence of early stage renal disease, largely due to diabetes and hypertension, and a shortage of kidney donors for transplantation.
Montezemolo invited Amadeus to join as a co-investor in Bellco on the basis of Amadeus’ experience of building successful medical technology companies, including Solexa and Optos. Montezemolo and Amadeus are co-investors in the worldwide market leader in insurance telematics, Octo Telematics.
Advisers on Amadeus’ investment were McDermott, Will & Emery, Milan.
END
For further information, please contact:
Chantal Ligertwood, PR for Amadeus, 07976 229 210

About Amadeus
Amadeus Capital Partners is one of Europe’s leading technology investors. Since its inception in 1997, the firm has raised over £500m for investment and backed more than 85 companies in communications and networking hardware and software, cleantech, medtech, computer hardware and software, media, and e-commerce. Major businesses built by Amadeus include CSR plc (LSE:CSR), the leading producer of single chip bluetooth radios for short range connections, Solexa Ltd, the developer of next generation genetic analysis systems, merged into Illumina, Inc. (ILMN) to create the world-leader in gene-sequencing technology and Transmode, a networking solutions business, which had an over-subscribed IPO on NASDAQ OMX Stockholm in 2011.

The post Amadeus Backs Dialysis Tech Co Bellco appeared first on peHUB.

Sterling Partners has backed Kids Care Dental Group, a pediatric dental care practice that serves toddlers, children and teens. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Kids Care is based in Sacramento.

PRESS RELEASE
Sterling Partners, a growth-oriented investment firm with more than $5 billion of assets under management, today announced a partnership with Kids Care Dental Group (“Kids Care”), a leading multi-unit pediatric dental care practice that serves toddlers, children and teens. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Via six office locations throughout the Sacramento area, Kids Care offers an exceptional patient experience for parents and kids alike. Each practice provides a comfortable and fun environment, dentists with advanced education in pediatric dentistry, staff that has training for and experience in treating and interacting with children, and a robust suite of high-quality oral health services including dentistry, orthodontics and oral surgery.

Dr. Aaron Reeves, Kids Care founder and chairman, will remain a partner and continue as a board member.

“We chose Sterling Partners due to their track record for growing healthcare companies that focus on quality patient experiences,” said Dr. Reeves, who founded the practice in 2002. “Sterling shares our long-term vision for expansion, attracting top talent, forming new relationships with families and changing the way kids and their parents think about going to the dentist.”

“As a firm that is drawn to purpose-driven businesses, we were attracted to Dr. Reeves’ steadfast devotion to providing a differentiated dental model for kids,” said Dan Hosler, a Sterling Partners principal. “We will leverage our experience operating multi-unit businesses to help the company accelerate its growth trajectory so that its dental health professionals can focus on what they do best: providing a positive patient experience that builds lifelong oral hygiene habits.”

About Kids Care Dental

Kids Care Dental Group is an American Dental Association-, California Dental Association- and Pediatric Dentistry Association-certified practice conceived and dedicated to serve the special needs of toddlers, children, and teens. The practice’s 170+ professionals are committed to providing excellent dental care while promoting lifelong oral hygiene habits in a comforting and fun atmosphere. Kids Care’s differentiated approach revolutionizes pediatric dentistry by offering parents and kids a non-traumatic and easily accessible dental experience. For more information on Kids Care Dental Group, visit www.kidscaredentaldentalgroup.com.

About Sterling Partners

Sterling Partners is a private equity firm with a distinct point of view on how to build great companies. Founded in 1983, Sterling has invested billions of dollars, guided by the company’s stated purpose, INSPIRED GROWTH(TM), which describes Sterling’s approach to buying differentiated businesses and growing them in inspired ways. Sterling focuses on investing growth capital in small and mid-market companies in industries with positive, long-term trends – education, healthcare, and business services. Sterling provides valuable support to the management teams of the companies in which the firm invests through a deep and dedicated team of operations and functional experts based in the firm’s offices in Chicago, Baltimore and Miami.

The post Sterling Partners Backs Kids Care Dental Group appeared first on peHUB.

Last night, Sony unveiled the PS4 to the masses. Well, the company revealed the controller and the hardware specs, but not the actual machine itself. That wasn’t super important, however, as we got a good look at a number of games running on prototype PS4 hardware.

We already knew that Evolution Studios, team behind the Motorstorm franchise, and Guerilla Games, team behind the Killzone franchise, would be at the show with their new games. Both studios did not disappoint with Evolution showing off DriveClub and Guerilla showing off Killzone Shadow Fall. Both games do an excellent job of showing off the raw power of the PS4.

Other first-party Sony studios were there as well including Sucker Punch and Mark Cerny from Sony Japan studios. Sucker Punch is making a spin-off of its inFamous franchise called Second Son that seems to be a multiplayer version of the super hero open world game set in a futuristic London. The other is Knack, a new IP from Mark Cerny that looks absolutely adorable.

Finally, Sony showed off some quality third-party content in the form of new IP and an highly anticipated indie title. The new IP from Capcom, codenamed Deep Down, looks a lot like Dragon’s Dogma and Dark Souls had a disturbingly evil child that wants to consume players’ souls. The other is Jonathan Blow’s The Witness, the highly anticipated indie title from the creator of Braid.

There were a number of other game prototypes and vague announcements at the show. Media Molecule is working on some kind of sculpting concert simulator thing. Square Enix promised a new Final Fantasy to be shown at E3. Finally, David Cage of Quantic Dream showed off a creepy floating head.

Watch this ad for the fast-food chain Sonic and tell me what you think the problem is.

Here’s what I think is wrong: It violates the new “sweetness” trend. Sometime in the last 5 years, perhaps more, we have seen the emergence of a new trend that says what we want from the world and public personalities, for some purposes, is a certain sweetness. Once disdained as sentimental, maudlin, mawkish, and when exhibited in public, embarrassing, sweetness is back. Sweetness is big. Sweetness, against all odds, and quite against character, is having a celebrity moment.

Sweetness has a couple of faces. It expresses an openness to the world, a wish to be useful, an innocence, a goodness, a guilelessness, a disinclination to insist on your own interests. If there is a poster girl, it is Jess (Zooey Deschanel), the female lead in New Girl, the new show from Fox. New Girl turns out to be a veritable shrine to sweetness, as four roommates rescue one another from the stream of misadventures with madcap enthusiasm and a touching generosity.

Why sweetness? Well, we are coming out of an era of some darkness. We seemed almost to celebrate skepticism and snark. We dwelt upon the grimmest aspects of the human experience. TV and movie making were increasingly ghoulish, with new standards of viscera and depravity. Shows like CSI and NCIS dwell lovingly on the crime victim. Bright lights and strategically placed towels protect our sexual sensitivities, but everything else on the autopsy table is enthusiastically examined. Once the standard bearer of heartlessness, The Silence of the Lambs (1991) now looks a little quaint. Since its release, we have seen a succession of werewolves, vampires, serial killers, and human monsters of every kind. If you are 40 or under, you’ve grown up on a steady diet of heartlessness.

The darkness trend is obvious even in the world of sports. Boxing used to encourage the conceit that however brutal, the sport was bound by a code of gentlemanly conduct and the Queensberry rules — the so-called sweet science. This world has been supplanted by mixed martial arts, where as I understand it, if you don’t kick the other guy when he’s down, you don’t grasp the opportunity.

The sweetness counter-trend explains lots of things in popular culture. For instance, it helps illuminate the rating crisis at NBC’s Today Show, where Matt Lauer stands accused of having pushed out Ann Curry, and Savannah Guthrie stands accused of having failed to replace her in the hearts of America. Ann is genuinely sweet, whereas Matt and Savanaugh are, sometimes, merely mechanically so. Sweetness used to be optional. For the time being, TV hosts must treat it as obligatory.

Back to that spot from Sonic. These guys, always sitting in the front seat of a car at a Sonic, are always engaged in some happy speculation, as goofy as anything ever featured on Seinfeld, and sometimes funnier and more interesting. These guys epitomize sweetness. They have a quality of cheerful irrelevance and brave incompetence. They were harmless, guileless, and sweet.

So what’s wrong with this particular ad? Suddenly our dear Sonic friend reveals himself to be a guy so heartless he would steal his best friend’s wife. The veil is torn from our eyes. The lamb is a wolf. The goof is a villain. The Sonic participation in sweetness ends with a bang, then a whimper.

Brands must ride new trends the way gulls ride thermals. Everything gets easier. (And this is why planners matter so much. They are charged with scrutinizing culture and finding these trends.) When the brand runs against the trend, it takes heroic efforts just to get back to zero.

Executives at GameStop (GME) breathed a collective sigh of relief Wednesday night as Sony (SNE) finally dispelled rumors that its next-generation PlayStation 4 video game console would block used games. Sony unveiled the PlayStation 4 during a press conference on Wednesday and while it did confirm that PlayStation 3 titles will not be natively supported on the new console, Sony executive Shuhei Yoshida told Eurogamer that “used games can play on a PS4.” Sony’s next-generation video game console is powered by an eight-core Jaguar CPU, an AMD Radeon GPU and 8GB of RAM, and it will launch ahead of the holidays this year.

A favorable feature article in Barron’s can lift some stocks with a “Barron’s Bounce,” while a tough critique will also be felt in the markets. Last Saturday Barron’s followed up on a slide in Rackspace shares by taking a critical look at the methods used to value data center companies on Wall Street. That kicked off a series of articles in the financial press and blogosphere debating the merit of data center investments. Here’s a review of this week’s action:

Adjusted for Reality, Neither Rackspace nor Equinix Shine – Barron’s Tiernan Ray focused on the use of adjusted EBITDA: “Investors have cooled a bit on some of the best-known data-center REITs, such as Digital Realty Trust (DLR) and Dupont Fabros Technology (DFT). Their stocks are down 6% and 4%, respectively, this year, on results that failed to sustain the magic. And that makes one wonder about the data-center names that aren’t REITs, but that investors like to think of as if they were. Cases in point: Rackspace Hosting (RAX) and Equinix (EQIX), both of which are way overvalued on the basis of reported earnings and that, given their massive investment costs, make little to no actual cash profit.”

Will The Sun Keep Shining On The Cloud Storage REITs? – Seeking Alpha’s top-rated REIT blogger, Brad Thomas, follows up on the Barron’s critique, and sees value: “In all likelihood two new data storage companies will convert to REITs soon and the massive ‘brick and mortar’ data-lords will almost triple the size of the sector. Rackspace Hosting (RAX) and Equinix (EQIX), with markets caps of $8.09 billion and $10.93 billion respectively, will likely enter the REIT-dom as both companies look to exploit the favorable tax friendly structure. It’s plain to see the benefits for converting to a REIT structure as Mr. Market has rewarded both data companies for the mere suggestion of being a REIT. The same has been true for other REIT wannabes. I suppose that’s great for yield-hungry investors who are looking for added diversification in the form of sustainable rental income that is paid out in the form of dividends. But let’s take a closer look at the two new players in data-dom and see if there’s a reason to reserve a seat, in advance, for the flight to REIT-dom.”

Data Centers Vs. Hosting Providers: Why The Distinction Is Critical For Investors – At Minyanville, Fil Zucchi says the distinctions between business models is getting lost in the valuation debate. “As pointed out in a research note by Stifel Nicolaus, Barron’s makes no distinction between ‘data centers’ and ‘hosting companies.’ But understanding the difference is critical accurately valuing the stocks. The former lease ‘physical space’ where customers can place their servers, and the data center supplies power, cooling systems, and storage facilities. In the case of ‘hosting companies’ such as Rackspace, it may or may not own the real estate in which the servers reside, but in any event its primary business is to ‘lease’ its servers to clients who want to host their websites without having to manage the IT infrastructure. From a valuation standpoint, the distinction is critical.”

What has the market had to say since the Barron’s article? Shares of Rackspace closed at $54.98 Wednesday, down from $58.96 at Friday’s close, a decline of 6.7 percent. Equinix ended yesterday’s session at $215.62, down 3.9 percent from Friday’s close of $224.48.

A new version of Basho Technologies‘ increasingly popular Riak open-source NoSQL distributed database has added upgrades for enterprise customers, a growing area of interest for the Cambridge, Mass.-based company.

Basho supports Riak, a database that allows sites such as GitHub and Bump Technologies to store, replicate and retrieve data at scale, even when multiple nodes fail. As an open-source product, companies can adopt it easily after using legacy hardware to do similar work, and users have found it to be effective at a large scale. The next-generation feature upgrades have added to the original version by increasing bandwidth between databases in clusters as part of a premium data center replication service.

Delivering improved performance and higher bandwidth by allowing more than one transmission-control protocol (TCP) connection for the replication of data on clusters across data centers, the new version of the replication function is designed to meet the needs of customers operating the largest-scale systems. Riak 1.3 came about after what amounted to a rewrite of the original programming, said Andy Gross, Basho’s chief architect. Hundreds of companies employ the current replication feature, according to a Basho blog post, and can now roll out the new version.

Going forward, the company could very well add block storage capability, not unlike Amazon Web Services’ Elastic Block Store.

Whether or not that comes to pass, though, Basho has come a long way since its founding in 2008 in response to Amazon asking for a database that could support its cloud infrastructure.

Last year Basho came out with Riak Cloud Storage for companies that want to offer Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) compatible with AWS’ S3 storage product. It’s easy to understand why. The AWS application programming interface (API) is now the standard for cloud storage, as my colleague Barb Darrow wrote.

To date the company has raised $39 million. That includes investments from IDC Frontier and Tokyo Electron Device Limited, among other groups. Comcast, Best Buy, Yahoo Japan and Github have signed up as users.

Through a spokeswoman, Basho reported several indicators of growth in the past year: The payroll has grown to 115 employees from 60. It has opened offices in London and Tokyo. And now 25 percent of Fortune 50 companies use Riak.

Basho’s chief technology officer, Justin Sheehy, will speak about why companies don’t need to put big-data strategies in place at the GigaOM Structure:Data conference on March 20-21 in New York.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Understanding and managing the cost of the cloud
• A near-term outlook for big data
• NewNet Q4: Platform mania and social commerce shakeout

Google Glass is slowly working its way into the general public’s hands, as Google has begun the process of letting average people strap on the device for personal use. Googlers (especially Sergey Brin) can’t seem to find a time where they think it’s inappropriate to advertise Google Glass. The Project Glass wave is coming, but one big question remains.

Will people actually want to walk around all day wearing Google Glass? I mean, Google’s Eric Schmidt even had his doubts way back in 2010, saying, “I’m not sure you really want to walk through town with these odd glasses on, you know, looking like an airforce jetfighter or something,”

It looks like Google is very aware of this possible roadblock. In order to make the glasses a little more stylistically acceptable, Google is apparently in talks with Warby Parker, the online startup that sells affordable, trendy glasses and sunglasses. The New York Times cites two anonymous sources that say Google is looking to Warby Parker help make Google Glass a bit more fashionable.

Earlier this week, Google opened up a contest of sorts that allows people to plead their cases on why they should be one of the first people in the world to get a pair for personal use. Google asks that interested parties apply via Twitter or Google+ with the hashtag #ifihadglass. It must be a short application (50 words or less) and can contain photos and even a short video. If selected, applicants will receive an invitation to become a “Google Glass Explorer” and will be given the privilege of pre-ordering the new smart glasses for $1,500.

Google also unveiled an impressive new Google Glass video called “How It Feels [through Glass],” which features POV shots of the various uses of Google Glass.

Crestview Partners has teamed up with employees of Victory Capital Management to acquire Victory for $246 million. The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter. Victory Capital is based in Cleveland, Ohio, and provides investment advisory services to institutional clients.

PRESS RELEASE
Crestview Partners, a leading private equity firm based in New York, has teamed with employees of Victory Capital Management to acquire Victory for $246 million. Upon completion of the transaction, Victory will be an independent firm with the senior management team, portfolio managers and other employees owning a significant amount of the outstanding equity. The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter.

As of December 31, 2012, Victory managed and advised approximately $22.1 billion in equity and fixed income assets on behalf of its institutional and individual investors. Under the new ownership structure, David Brown and Christopher Ohmacht will continue to lead Victory and will be appointed to the company’s new Board of Directors along with two representatives from Crestview and three independent directors. Brown will become the Chief Executive Officer, and Ohmacht will become President.

Victory will continue to operate under its present brand name and remain headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio with offices in New York, NY, Cincinnati, OH, Denver, CO and Tampa, FL.

David Brown stated, “We are pleased to partner with Crestview, a firm that is well known and respected for its asset management expertise and integrity. This new ownership structure will preserve our successful multi-boutique operating model and provide an opportunity for real equity ownership to our employees that will align our interests with those of our clients, today and well into the future.”

Mr. Brown continued, “From the day-to-day perspective of our clients and investment professionals, nothing significant will change. Strategically, we will have an ownership structure that provides our firm with the ability to drive future growth and to continue delivering leading investment performance and high quality service to our clients.”

Richard DeMartini, a Partner at Crestview, added, “We are very pleased to be partnering with the Victory team. Victory is an outstanding firm with excellent investment talent and distribution expertise. The company is very well managed, under the leadership of David Brown and Christopher Ohmacht. Victory has a team of outstanding portfolio managers with a history of strong investment performance.”

For many years Victory has operated with autonomy over its strategic business and investment processes. Recently, Victory completed several meaningful enhancements to its technology and operations infrastructure, including outsourcing its technology platform to Citi. These changes have minimized the company’s reliance on its parent company and will enable the team to complete this transaction in a seamless manner.

Victory will continue to operate with nine autonomous investment teams, each retaining authority for investment decision making while being supported by the broader Victory organization for risk management, trading, research, sales, client service, compliance, technology and operations. The individual Chief Investment Officer and team that manage each portfolio will not experience any significant change in the resources received from Victory.

About Victory Capital Management
Victory Capital Management is headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio with offices in New York, Cincinnati, Denver and Tampa. As of 12/31/12, Victory had $22.1 billion in assets under management and advisement with 144 employees.

The firm provides investment advisory services to institutional clients including corporations, non profits, public funds, Taft-Hartley and sub-advisory clients. Victory offers international and domestic equity and domestic fixed income products to these investors through separate accounts and commingled funds. Institutional assets under management at 12/31/12 totaled $14.7 billion.

Victory is the investment advisor to The Victory Funds, a collection of 19 mutual funds, offering a variety of share classes. The firm also offers retail and retirement clients Separately Managed Accounts through wrap fee programs and access to its investment models through Unified Managed Accounts. Victory had $7.4 billion in retail assets under management and advisement as of 12/31/12.

About Crestview Partners
Crestview Partners is a value-oriented private equity firm based in New York with approximately $4 billion of capital under management. The firm is led by former partners and leaders in the private equity business and senior management of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. Crestview’s investment strategy is focused in four sectors: financial services, media, energy and healthcare.

The post Crestview Partners Buys Victory Capital Mgmt appeared first on peHUB.

A woman who will turn 105 years old in April is having to lie about her age on Facebook because the site doesn’t allow user birthdays to surpass a certain point.

Marguerite Joseph says she uses Facebook mostly to stay in touch with family which is scattered across the country, but is frustrated by the fact that she has to input her age as 99 due to a glitch in the system. Mrs. Joseph’s granddaughter, Gail Marlow, helps her update her profile on the site and responds to messages since her grandmother is legally blind. She says when she tries to update Mrs. Joseph’s birthdate to 1908, it’s automatically changed to 1928.

“All of our family members always asked how grandma was doing on my Facebook page,” said Marlow. “So I decided I would set up a page of her own so she could stay connected to her family in Canada…every time I tried to change the settings to the right year, Facebook always came back with an unknown error message and would send us right back to a year she wasn’t born in. I would love to see her real age on Facebook, I mean in April she’s going to be 105. It’s special.”

Marlow says she’s messaged Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, about the issue. Facebook released a statement soon after regarding the glitch.

“We’ve recently discovered an issue whereby some Facebook users may be unable to enter a birthday before 1910. We are working on a fix for this and we apologize for the inconvenience.”

Mrs. Joseph isn’t the only person to have a problem putting down their correct age on the social media site; last year, 105-year old Maria Colunia Seguar-Metzgar had the same issue.

Images: Facebook

Mrs. Joseph at 16

Final Book Now Available

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) Roundtable on Health Literacy focuses on bringing together leaders from the federal government, foundations, health plans, associations, and private companies to address challenges facing health literacy practice and research and to identify approaches to promote health literacy in both the public and private sectors. The roundtable serves to educate the public, press, and policy makers regarding the issues of health literacy, sponsoring workshops to discuss approaches to resolve health literacy challenges. It also builds partnerships to move the field of health literacy forward by translating research findings into practical strategies for implementation. The Roundtable held a workshop March 29, 2012, to explore the field of oral health literacy.

The workshop was organized by an independent planning committee in accordance with the procedures of the National Academy of Sciences. The planning group was composed of Sharon Barrett, Benard P. Dreyer, Alice M. Horowitz, Clarence Pearson, and Rima Rudd. The role of the workshop planning committee was limited to planning the workshop. Unlike a consensus committee report, a workshop summary may not contain conclusions and recommendations, except as expressed by and attributed to individual presenters and participants. Therefore, the summary has been prepared by the workshop rapporteur as a factual summary of what occurred at the workshop.

[Read the full report]

Topics: Health and Medicine

A nifty little update to one of my favorite free task management smartphone apps makes it even better. Both the latest iPhone and Android versions of Any.DO help bring focus to daily tasks with a fun feature called Any.DO Moment. Instead of manually waiting for — and possibly putting off — a time to review your tasks, Any.DO Moment helps plan your day every morning.

The new feature is configurable to run at a specific time on any day of the week. When that time hits, the application opens and quickly walks through all of your open tasks.

For each of these, you simply tap the appropriate planning option: Today, Later, Done, Delete. Choosing Today or Later provides additional options for specific times or future dates. Any.DO will then juggle the tasks around to the days of your choice, or remove any tasks you mark as complete. The end result? You’ve done a daily task review and have a better handle on what needs to be done today:

Not only does the Any.DO Moment feature help bring focus to the day; it does so in way that’s fast, intuitive and somewhat fun. And this approach can help improve productivity, based on Any.DO’s own internal data. Says Any.DO CEO Omer Perchik:

“We’ve been testing the feature secretly in the past month and we’re seeing over 30 percent increase in engagement and over 20 percent improvement in retention. The feedback is simply remarkable. We keep receiving emails from people who say they feel far more organized and relaxed since they started using the Any.DO Moment. “

More organized and relaxed? Yup, I can see that after using Any.DO Moment on my mobile phones.

I’m no longer looking at my task list as an annoyance, but more as a tool to get things done.  Instead of being overwhelmed with an ever-growing list of activities, I feel like I’m in better control of my activities. A scheduled daily review of tasks — good practice regardless of the tool involved — combined with a fast, simple mobile interface definitely make it easier to get things done.

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After unveiling the Snapdragon 600 and Snapdragon 800 at CES 2013, American mobile giant Qualcomm has on Wednesday taken the wraps off two new processors. The Snapdragon 200 and Snapdragon 400 join the company’s latest lineup for smartphones and tablets, targeting the low-end and mid-range mobile market.

The Snapdragon 400 is the mid-range mobile processor and, to some extent, resembles the now-traditional Snapdragon S4 found in a number of currently-available smartphones such as the HTC Windows Phone 8X, Nokia Lumia 920 or Samsung Galaxy S III (US variants). The Snapdragon 400 features dual-core Krait CPUs with speeds of up to 1.7GHz per core or quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPUs with speeds of up to 1.4GHz per core.

The GPU of choice is the Adreno 305, which comes under the Adreno 320 found in the Snapdragon 600 and Snapdragon S4 Pro. There is support for “key modem technologies”, including HSPA+, TDSCDMA and W+G CDMA as well as multi-SIM capabilities. The Snapdragon 400 features LPDDR2 or LPDDR3 RAM and support for up to 13.5MP cameras as well as Miracast for wireless content streaming.

The least impressive of the two, for power-hungry users that is, is the Snapdragon 200. Qualcomm’s processor features quad-core ARM Cortex-A5 CPUs with speeds of up to 1.4GHz per core, an Adreno 203 GPU, LPDDR2 RAM, GPS, multi-SIM capability and support for up to 8MP cameras, HD video playback and CDMA or UMTS modems. Nothing shouts high-tech there, but seeing as the Snapdragon 200 aims to conquer the entry-level smartphone market that’s to be expected.

Qualcomm did not provide any details as to when we can expect to see the new Snapdragon processors inside new smartphones and tablets.

Gary Bunyan is Global DCIM Solutions Specialist at iTRACS Corporation, a Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) company. This is the 10th in a series of columns by Gary about “the user experience.” See Gary’s previous columns on Turning DCIM’s Big Data into Actionable Insight and Unlock Your Capacity By Unplugging Your Ghost Servers.

With more and more computing resources being deployed in denser and denser data center spaces, it’s no wonder data center professionals are focused on cooling. The data center is now at the epicenter of today’s hottest businesses, essential to their competitive positioning and market success. But no matter how dense the data center gets, its servers, blades, and other IT assets must be kept cool.

Cooling is an expensive necessity in many data centers. Customers – like the one in the Middle East I was just visiting – are always looking to provide just the right amount of it.

What’s the “right” amount of cooling? It’s the perfect balance between under- and over-cooling in a consistent flow across all of your assets. Not enough cooling and the servers are at risk. Too much cooling and you’re spending more on energy that you need. Uneven cooling and you get thermal inconsistencies – areas either too hot or too cold. The right amount of cooling – and you’re running the most efficient infrastructure possible, minimizing both your cooling costs and your risk.

The trick is to use a DCIM solution that offers you live data about thermal conditions at the individual server level, and sends you real-time alerts if a threshold is in potential of being reached. Instead of guessing about server temperatures, DCIM gives you actual inlet and outlet readings at the device level in your dashboards. Armed with this knowledge, you can run a “lean machine” that minimizes cooling while keeping your assets safe. This tightrope can only be walked safely if you have real-time information at your fingertips. Guesswork is way too dangerous.

Beware of Thermal Hot Spots

Using a DCIM tool with visualization lets you identify, manage and resolve potential hot spot issues on your floor before they turn into problems. The key is to be proactive, not reactive. Here’s how it works:

Forensics: Identifying the Source of the Hot Spot

(1) A thermal hot-spot alert goes off in your DCIM environment. If you’re using a visualization tool, you can instantly see the problem area highlighted in red. The alert is being fed by real-time data from any number of sources depending on your environment – Intel DCM, Power Assure, RF Code, or other data feeds. With a few clicks, you interrogate the alert and learn that rising temperatures in the top U positions of 3 racks are about to go critical.

(2) You run forensics at the device level, looking at a live data feed of inlet and outlet temperatures from each affected server. You confirm that server inlet/outlet temperatures have exceeded thresholds.

(3) With a few clicks – still within the DCIM system – you review maintenance schedules and reports. You learn that a CRAC unit is still offline, past its scheduled repair window.

(4) With a few more clicks, you interrogate the servers under threat and identify which business unit owns them – you confirm they are revenue-generating applications with direct impact on profitability. So you must take action immediately.

Resolution: Migrating the Applications to a Safer Environment

(5) Using DCIM’s predictive what-if scenarios, you quickly determine where you can move the applications running on the endangered servers – you need to migrate them to cooler IT assets with the appropriate power and connectivity.

(6) You confirm your migration strategy in the safety of the DCIM software and give your technicians a clear set of instructions – complete with automatically-generated 3-D diagrams – so they know exactly what to do.

(7) You confirm with the business unit and secure approval to move the applications, then dispatch you technical teams to execute the move.

8) Once you’ve confirmed that the CRAC maintenance has been completed and the CRAC unit is back online, you migrate the applications back to the original servers.

The Bottom Line – Uninterrupted Revenue for the Business

Identifying and resolving hot spot issues is relatively easy when you have the right DCIM tools.  And the benefits are quantifiable:

• Optimum business continuity – the organization’s revenue-generating applications continue operating with no impact on customer service or revenue streams.
• Uninterrupted service levels ­– you continue to meet your SLAs.
• Mitigating risk associated with maintenance – you use incident to improve maintenance scheduling and minimize potential future risk to operations.

See Gary’s previous columns on Turning DCIM’s Big Data into Actionable Insight and Unlock Your Capacity By Unplugging Your Ghost Servers.

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