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As organizations of all sizes make their move to the cloud, they are looking for ways to gain control over the chaos of ad hoc, unplanned and unmanaged adoption of cloud services. No single path is right for every company, and thus a growing assortment of services is emerging to suit every use case. These range from direct peering to one-stop shops that offer it all (which is great as long as you like their flavor) to cloud services brokerages offering migration to specific cloud apps to colo and hosting providers creating cloud exchanges or marketplaces where users can connect directly to best-of-breed cloud services all within the same data center.

Join GigaOM Research and our sponsor CoreSite for “What’s your best route to the cloud,” a free analyst roundtable webinar on Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013.

Key topics of discussion:

• Understanding your requirements and matching these to the different routes to cloud
• Trade-offs among the different approaches
• Building a cloud strategy for the long term
• Economic considerations

Speakers include:

• Paul Miller, founder, The Cloud of Data

• David Linthicum, CTO and founder, Blue Mountain Labs

• Gerry Fassig, VP of Sales, CoreSite

Don’t miss out, register here.

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• The fourth quarter of 2012 in cloud
• How direct-access solutions can speed up cloud adoption
• The role of converged infrastructure in the data center

On February 15, tomorrow, an asteroid named 2012 DA14 will fly within several thousand miles of the surface of the Earth. At its closest approach the asteroid will come within 17,200 miles of the Earth’s surface – a harrowingly close miss that comes well within the ring of man-made geosynchronous satellites that orbit the Earth. The flyby will set a record for closest approach by an object of DA14′s size.

Though researchers have determined there is no danger posed by the object, the event will be a spectacle for astronomers around the world. Though the asteroid won’t be bright enough to see with the naked eye, those with a telescope or even a good pair of binoculars will be able to spot it.

For those who can’t observe the asteroid on their own, NASA announced this week that it will be live-streaming coverage of the object’s approach. The broadcast will provide commentary from scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and real-time animation to demonstrate exactly where the asteroid is. A Live view of the asteroid itself will also be featured, assuming the weather over observatories isn’t cloudy.

The half-hour live-stream will begin tomorrow at 2 pm EST, and can be seen on NASA TV or on the JPL Ustream page. The JPL Ustream will also begin showing footage of the asteroid from Australian and European observatories starting at 12 pm EST. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center will stream footage of the asteroid from one of its telescopes starting at 9 pm EST, and researchers there will be taking questions via Twitter.

(Image courtesy LCOGT/Faulkes)

Two Energy Revolutions in The State of the Union

It was no surprise that energy and climate change featured prominently in Tuesday’s State of the Union speech. The President devoted an entire section of his address to these topics, leading into it in a very upbeat way: “Now is the time to reach a level of research and development not seen since the height of the Space Race. And today, no area holds more promise than our investments in American energy.” You’d never guess from that introduction that this president faces a strikingly different energy challenge than his seven most recent predecessors. There are two energy revolutions underway in the US, and the unplanned one is racing ahead of the one to which he devoted most of his remarks–and most of his efforts on energy for the last four years.

Let’s start with the positives. Even more than in last year’s speech, President Obama presented energy as more of an opportunity than a problem. He described our impressive recent progress in oil and natural gas production, renewable energy generation, and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. As fact-checkers have pointed out, he stepped into aspiration when he claimed credit for doubling automobile fuel economy–a goal that might or might not be attained by 2025–but even this fits within a broad set of energy trends that are all finally moving in the right direction.

The President also endorsed a very good idea that has been floating around for a long time, but has never been seized upon. He suggested funding R&D for electric and natural gas vehicles and biofuels with the revenue from federal oil and gas lease bid premiums and royalties. This “Energy Security Trust” would yoke the success of future energy technology to the enormous cash cow represented by the vast oil and gas resources beneath public lands and waters. He’ll have to sort out the allocation of revenues with the states, who surely won’t want the new set-aside to come from their share. If he can work that out, the government will have an even bigger vested interest in ensuring that responsible oil and gas development on these lands proceeds, in order to advance energy innovation.

The 2013 Renewable Fuel Standard: A 10-Minute Guide

In Washington, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued its proposed 2013 Renewable Fuel Standards (RFS2).??The proposal will be open for a 45-day public comment period and EPA will consider feedback from a range of stakeholders before the proposal is finalized.

For 2013, the program is proposing to implement EISA’s requirement to blend more than 1.35 billion gallons of renewable fuels over the amount mandated for 2012.

The Proposed Standard

Here, we have given you the proposed 2013 RFS2 volumes, and the original 2013 targets set under the 2007 EISA legislation. We’ve also provided the final 2012 and 2011 numbers, so that you can evaluate the growth rate in each pool and in the overall Standard.

Note: RFS2 is nested, so the figures for Cellulosic biofuels and Biomass-based diesel are nested inside the overall Advanced Biofuels number — and in turn the Advanced biofuels pool is nested (alongside the corn ethanol target) within the overall Renewable Fuel Standard.

It may sound complex, but it is designed that way so that shortfalls in one pool can be made up by expanding the targets in another pool. That’s why you have to be wary of people who flag a shortfall in one nested pool, for example, cellulosic biofuels. Any shortfalls are easily made up by sourcing qualifying advanced biofuels elsewhere.

Norway to support the renewable energy sector in Angola

The governments of Angola and Norway Friday in Luanda signed a cooperation protocol in the area of renewable energy, for the 2013-2015 period, Angolan news agency Angop reported.

Under the terms of the protocol, Norway will provide technical assistance, organise training for Angolan Energy and Water Ministry staff and support Angola to promote activities for more efficient electricity use in the country.

At the end of the ceremony, the secretary of state for Water, Luís Filipe da Silva, said that Norway was a highly developed country in terms of hydroelectricity and that Angola hoped to benefit from that experience further to improve its energy sector.

“The protocol includes drawing up a proposed strategy and plan of action for rural electrification through use of renewable energy, drawing up proposals for the legal framework of renewable energy development and its uses,” noted the secretary of state.

Norway, according to Silva, will support Angola in improving its technological development, through several activities such as assistance in execution of the investment programme for pre-paid electricity meters, campaigns to raise awareness of more efficient use of electricity, amongst other activities.

Photo via Flickr. 

Bump announced an update to its web version, which makes it possible for users to bump any files that they could from iOS and Android to and from any computer.

“Photos, videos, contacts, files…everything,” Bump says in a blog post. “There’s no setup at all — just go to http://bu.mp on your computer, open Bump on your phone, and bump the spacebar key! Bump is now your unlimited USB flash drive that is always with you!”

“No one ever says ‘I sure look forward to syncing my phone with my computer!’,” the company adds. “We want to change that. Because really, it’s the year 2013 — we have self-driving cars, private space exploration, 3d printers — but most folks have a hard time getting a video taken on their phone over to their laptop. And who doesn’t have a slight twinge of anxiety each time they press ‘sync’ that the contacts on their phone will be overwritten with outdated contacts on their computer? It should be congnitively simpler.”

Back in May, Bump launched the ability to transfer photos from your phone to the desktop. That was the only kind of file it worked with, and you could only do it from the phone to the computer, and not from the computer to the phone. Today’s announcement is a significant extension of what was available in the past.

According to the company, the number of users of the web version of Bump has grown 50% in the last two months. This should go along way toward growing that number by a lot more.

On Tuesday, President Obama laid out his agenda for the coming year. Citing the importance of a strong middle class, he provided the framework necessary to move America forward.

The White House Photo Office followed the President throughout the day, and they've put together a collection of images from the State of the Union, which include the President greeting Members of Congress, reactions of his speech from the audience and a few special behind the scene looks. Check out the gallery below and visit our State of the Union page to share your own reactions from the State of the Union.

This afternoon, President Obama will sit down for a discussion about the State of the Union and his plan to create jobs and strengthen the middle class. Be sure to check it out. 

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Ronald Dworkin, a scholar and law expert who taught at New York University and University College London, has died of leukemia. He was 81 years old.

Dworkin was highly regarded in his field of study and was often quoted on legal matters, especially those pertaining to British law, which he was exceptionally well-versed in.

“He will be dearly missed by those of us who were lucky enough to know him and by the countless people who followed and admired his work,” NYU Law School dean Richard Revesz said.

Dworkin based his teachings on his belief that our laws should be rooted in integrity and moral clarity, which would make it easier for every member of society to be treated as equals. He argued that several sections of the Constitution were written in too abstract a way.

“These clauses must be understood in the way their language most naturally suggests: they refer to abstract moral principles and incorporate these by reference, as limits on the government’s power,” he said.

Despite all his successes and admirers, Dworkin never quite knew how to describe his own work, or judge it with any accuracy.

“I’ve tried to be responsible for my decisions and to make an authentic life,” he said. “When I was a Wall Street lawyer, I realized I didn’t want that life. So I went and did what I found most fulfilling, thinking about, arguing for the things that are hard, important and rewarding. I’ve tried to do it well. I can’t say if I’ve succeeded.”

After a little bit of a wait, the official video for the new Justin Timberlake single “Suit & Tie ft. JAY Z” is here. It’s black & white, stylish, and directed by The Social Network‘s David Fincher.

It’s not strange that Fincher would direct a Justin Timberlake music video – the two worked together on The Social Network, where Timberlake played Napster founder and Facebook investor Sean Parker. Fincher also has a background in music videos.

“Before Fincher directed his trademark edgy films like Seven, Fight Club, and Panic Room, he cut his teeth making iconic music videos, including Madonna’s “Express Yourself” and The Rolling Stones’ “Love Is Strong”, amongst others,” says Timberlake on his site.

(There was a lyric video that dropped before this, but this is the real deal)

Check it out:

Did you see the couple of iPad cameos? Clever. Another Fincher project with a fair amount of Apple product placement is the new Netflix original series House of Cards. Fincher directs House of Cards and a Justin Timberlake video – both haevily featuring Apple devices. To complete the circle, I call a Timberlake cameo in next season of House of Cards. What do you say?

Every year, as registration for the TED conference begins, a myth floats in the ether: many people think that you have to be invited to attend. Not true! To show your interest in attending TED, all you have to do is apply. It’s open to anyone — from inventors to directors, philanthropists to painters, chemists to computer scientists, the long-established to the up-and-comers, the people who’ve been a part of the community for years to newcomers filled with enthusiasm.

Don’t let the invitation myth deter you from applying for TEDGlobal 2013 in Edinburgh, TED2014 in Vancouver or TEDActive 2014 in Whistler. We want new voices in the audiences of each of these incredible events.

In the spirit of radical openness, here are some frequently asked questions about our conference application process.

Q: Why do you have to apply? Can’t you just let people register on a first come, first served basis?

We have a limited number of spaces, and people across the globe interested in attending — so we don’t just want to favor the first people to hear that registration is open. So we think of it like a dinner party. It’s about curating a well-balanced group — people who work in different disciplines, who live in different parts of the world and who are of different ages. TED events are all about the audience. If the audience is amazing, the experience becomes so much richer and more interactive — a loop of digging deeper into ideas, inspiring each other in new directions and teaming up for unexpected collaborations. As TED speaker Matt Ridley put it, every TED conference should be a place where ideas have sex.

Q: How long does it take to apply?

The application is six short essay questions that touch on your goals, accomplishments and how you’d like to be a part of the TED community, plus some basics like your address, email and references. How long the questions take to complete is up to you. We recommend taking around two hours to polish your application and make it really reflect who you are — both as a professional and as a person.

Q: Can you give me tips on how to apply to come to TED?

Find lots on this tips page. But here are some easy dos and don’t:

• Do take the application seriously. Give thoughtful, meaningful answers to the six questions that are, in general, longer than Tweets.
• Don’t simply paste your bio from your website.
• Do list websites that relate to your work, your side projects, your hobbies and your life. Your links should reflect the spaces where you are actively involved.
• Don’t just send us to Facebook, LinkedIn or Google Plus. Show us more about who you are.
• Do choose references who know you well. Bonus points if they’re a member of the TED community already or work in your field. However, if you don’t know a TEDster, don’t let that stop you.
• Don’t list your spouse or family members as references either. We know they’ll have glowing things to say about you.
• Do tell us a great anecdote about yourself. It helps to bring you alive. Surprising or funny are good, but not required.
• Don’t ask an assistant or intern to write these short questions for you. We want the real, awesome and authentic you.

Q: How do you evaluate applications and select attendees?

We read each and every application with an eye toward creating a great, diverse and balanced audience so that inspiration becomes a two-way street. The focus is on finding remarkable individuals who combine combine significant achievement and great character. Sound like you? Apply and tell us about yourself. Not sure if you’d qualify? Apply anyway. You might be surprised.

Q: $7500 is expensive! What about the people who can’t afford it?

TED has lots of options, from free to those who can donate $15,000.

1. Free. A large number of the talks from any TED conference will appear later in the year on TED.com. All videos on the site are absolutely free.
2. $1,000. A membership to TED Live gives you remote access to the live webstream of both TED and TEDGlobal. You also get an iPad mini — which becomes the centerpiece of your viewing experience — and become a member of the TED Live global community.
3. $3,750. TEDActive 2014 in Whistler, B.C., is the younger, hipper version of the TED conference with original speakers, a live simulcast of TED2014 and a fun social program which, of course, includes skiing. For Americans, $1,250 of the cost is tax-deductible.
4. $7,500. A regular pass at TED2014 in Vancouver. For Americans, $5,000 is tax-deductible.
5. $15,000. A VIP pass at TED2014 with early seating access and other benefits. For Americans, $12,500 is tax-deductible.

The tax-deductible portion of conference attendance goes towards supporting TED’s incredible philanthropic programs including the TED Prize, TED Fellows and TEDx.

Q: Are there any options for reduced price tickets?

Yes, we offer a reduced rate program for leaders of innovative small NGOs. And for young innovators, apply to the TED Fellows program, which funds 40 trailblazers in a wide range of disciplines from across the globe to attend one TED or TEDGlobal conference, all expenses paid.

Now that you know applying is the key, we hope you’ll join us for the upcoming conferences. Here are easy links to get you started on your application.

• Apply for TEDGlobal 2013, “Think Again” »
• Apply for TED2014, “The Next Chapter” »
• Apply for TEDActive 2014, “The Next Chapter” »
• Register for TED Live »
• Apply for TED Fellows class of 2014, opening late May 2013 »

I’ve been quietly watching the firestorm brewing around the New York Times’ negative review of a test drive a reporter took in Tesla’s Model S electric car along the East Coast. Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter and called the review “fake” earlier this week. But late Wednesday night, Tesla published data logs of the reporter’s trip that seem to contradict some of the New York Times’ reporting (almost a week after the New York Times’ piece was published last Friday), and now it’s time for me to weigh in.

In case you’re just joining us on this story, Tesla has installed Supercharger stations along the east and west coasts that will charge Tesla cars much more quickly then standard charging stations. Tesla did this to create an experience where Tesla drivers can drive beyond the range of the battery with a short stop at the fast charging station, and in effect enable the type of road trip a driver could take in a gas-powered car. New York Times reporter John Broder took one of these road trips and reported that he ended up running out of charge in the cold weather and had to have the Model S towed.

After Musk attacked the story, Broder responded with a follow up saying he followed the instructions that Tesla gave him and the New York Times issued a statement that they stood behind his story. Tesla’s data logs show that he drove above the speed limit (which taxes the battery more quickly than slower driving) for much of the trip, and he didn’t fully charge the battery during the stops. There’s also a hilarious graph that Tesla says shows Broder drove around in circles for 5 minutes in the parking lot trying to deplete the battery before he got to one of the Superchargers (I’ll leave analysis of that one to the lawyers). Broder tells New York Magazine that he was looking for an unlighted Supercharger in the dark.

The New York Times has yet to officially respond to Tesla’s blog post, but tells the San Jose Mercury News on Thursday morning that the story was still “fair and accurate.” There are a variety of lessons I think we can take from this interaction that shed more light on Tesla and Elon Musk, electric cars and the concept of an EV road trip, and reporting in the connected age in general.

1). Don’t f*ck with Elon Musk: A friend who’s spent a decade in the legal industry told me once that you shouldn’t start a fight unless you’re ready to take it to the mat; i.e. take it all the way. Elon Musk will always take it to the mat.

The guy has been involved in close to a half dozen lawsuits over the years at Tesla, some of them brutal and involving former employees of the company, and when it comes to journalists, he is no stranger to combat. Tesla sued U.K. car show Top Gear back in 2011 for libel and malicious falsehood. That case was ultimately dismissed — Musk doesn’t even need a winnable case to take you to court. Tesla points out an inaccuracy in the New York Times story graphic, and it seems like if the New York Times doesn’t do some sort of correction on this story, Tesla could very well take it to court. Now that the data is out, we’ll see if New York Times does any clarifications or even corrections.

2). At this early stage, an electric car road trip isn’t that great of an idea: Tesla installed these Superchargers so that its customers could feel like they can have the freedom of driving an electric car in the same way, and at the same distances, they would drive a gas-powered car. But at this early stage, driving an electric car — even an awesome car like the Model S — for hundreds of miles across multiple days just isn’t as easy as it is with a gas powered car. Supercharging can take 30 to 45 minutes, depending on how depleted the battery is, compared with the five or ten minutes it takes to fuel up with gas.

Also, the chargers are only in specific areas, so test drivers (see the Verge’s test drive along the West Coast) start to get nervous and experience “range anxiety.” As electric car advocate Chelsea Sexton wrote in Wired, “road trips are a dangerous myth for the EV industry to perpetuate at all.” It’s amazing that the Model S and Tesla are enabling these types of trips with new technology, but they are just not as easy as with a gas car, and that comparison is a tricky one for Tesla to make.

3). Data equals transparency: This type of rebuttal from Tesla to the test drive could only occur in our data-laden always-connected world. Broder drove above the speed limit most of the way of his trip, even though in his rebuttal he claimed he didn’t. Who knows if he knew he was being inaccurate? Tesla can tell his speed because there’s a cellular connection on the Model S and an onboard computer that logs all of the car’s stats. Tesla usually uses this type of data to better the driving experience for its customers, but in this case, it’s using that data to contest this review.

4). Driving an electric car requires education: Like with all new technology, electric car drivers need time to learn how to best drive their cars and how to make the battery last as long as possible. It takes some education to feel comfortable and to know how and when to charge it. That’s why some of the reporters that take the Model S Tesla road trip test drive have gotten nervous. For many of them this is some of the first times they’ve driven an electric car, and particularly driven one over long distances.

It’s unclear if Broder knew that he was supposed to charge the Model S for a longer period of time during his stops (so that it charged the battery fully), but his original piece suggested that he had followed Tesla’s instructions on how to charge it. If we give him the benefit of the doubt that he did this ethically (he very well could have not been ethical on this) then he needed a better education on how to drive it. The road trip is like an advanced application for a new technology — there’s a learning curve that can’t be accommodated on a single drive.

5). The narrative for electric cars to fail — again — is powerful: Tesla is on the brink of leading a charge to break the electric car into the mainstream, despite the fact that there have been fits and starts for electric cars for decades. Many people have lost money over the years trying to support an emergence of an electric car sector that has failed to materialize.

But this time around, I think it’s different: the electric car is here to stay. The Model S won Motor Trend’s car of the year award for 2012, which is the first time in history that this major award has been given to an electric car. GM’s Volt and Nissan’s LEAF are selling thousands of cars per month. But many people who have been burned in the past — traditional car industry folks, auto journalists, oil execs — are very skeptical and eager to believe that the EV will once again fail to materialize.

Finally, I want to say that I’m not claiming to know the motivation or ethics of the New York Times reporter, and the New York Times has yet to come out with an official response to Tesla’s data logs. But I’ll update this when they do.

Updated at 10:55AM with Broder’s explanation of why he was driving around in the parking lot before charging at the Supercharger.

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• The fourth quarter of 2012 in cleantech
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• Tesla’s Model X could make the electric SUV a hit

In November, it was discovered that Google’s Nexus 4 had a LTE chip in it. Some users were able to get the 3G-only phone onto 4G LTE networks in Canada, but it wasn’t exactly a widespread exploit. It apparently was enough of an issue, however, for Google to patch it out in the latest Android update.

Anandtech reports that the latest Android update hitting the Nexus 4 – Android 4.2.2 – has removed the ability for the Nexus 4 to access LTE networks on band 4. Before, users could simply access LTE by choosing band 4 under Phone Info. That method of connecting to LTE has now been removed, and it doesn’t look like there’s any other way to access it.

Here’s the guys from Anandtech showing how the Nexus 4 automatically kicks users off of LTE after the update:

It’s an unfortunate turn of events for those who were getting LTE speeds on such a cheap phone, but it really was only a matter of time before Google patched it out. If you still want to get access to LTE, Droid Life suggests users either wait on updating or hope an enterprising developer takes out the radio update from the latest Android update.

Either way, Nexus 4 owners will probably find a way around this latest update to keep getting their LTE speeds.

New Jersey officials confirmed this week that the Miss America Pageant will be returning to Atlantic City.

The pageant had been held in Atlantic City for its first 85 years, but was moved to Las Vegas in 2006.

“We are so very proud to bring Miss America back to her birthplace in Atlantic City,” said Sam Haskell, chairman of the Miss America Organization. “We are grateful to Governor Christie and his staff for helping make this possible. Throughout the decades, Miss America has evolved into an organization that enables over 12,000 young women to enter and participate in our scholarship program each and every year. Today, Miss America remains an iconic symbol, and our roots have always stayed connected to Atlantic City. Our proud heritage is rich in history, having been named by USA Today as one of the Top Ten pieces of Americana remaining in our great country today.”

Atlantic City is expected to sign a multi-year contract to hold the Miss America pageants in the city.

The official announcement of the pageant’s return was made by Kim Guadagno, lieutenant governor of New Jersey. A ceremony, today made it clear that New Jersey officials consider the pageant an opportunity to lure tourists to the state, and particularly to Atlantic City’s Boardwalk.

“For decades, the Miss America organization has awarded scholarships to thousands of young women to help further their goals of higher education and achieve their dreams,” said Guadagno. “New Jersey is proud to once again host the Miss America Pageant here in Atlantic City.”

(Image courtesy the Miss America Organization)

Idera announced the availability of three new free tools for SQL Server DBAs and IT administrators: Server Backup Free, SQL Backup Status Reporter and SQL Permissions Extractor Free.

Idera CEO Rick Pleczko says, “Idera has made a commitment to providing free tools and solutions that help both IT and database administrators better manage their servers. It’s our way of paying back the success that the community has helped us achieve.”

“Idera’s Server Backup Free delivers a free copy of their leading high performance server backup product,” the company says in an announcement. “Idera’s SQL backup status reporter and SQL permissions extractor allows DBAs to quickly and easily ensure that databases have been backed up and copy permissions across servers. All of these tools are designed to help administrators better manage the growing number of servers in the enterprise.”

Server Backup Free has all of the features of the Enterprise version, except it’s for a single server. Features include the abiliy to backup physical and virtual servers in just minutes (as opposed to hours), the ability to backup to any disk-based storage (second hard disk, NAS, SAN, etc.), the ability to restore files in seconds with Disk Safe technology, and “easy” installation.

Backup Status Reporter lets DBAs view a graphical representation of backups across their SQL Server environment. Features include: the ability to identify databases that haven’t had backups, the ability to view backup history (including backup date and type), a simplified grid view for easy sorting and navigation, and the ability to identify full and differential backups for one or many databases.

SQL Permissions Extractor lets DBAs copy and reassign permissions from one server to another without having to write any script. It can generate T-SQL scripts for copying of user permissions to other servers, and enables the editing, saving and execution of permissions scripts. It also lets users include object level permissions for selected databases.

Happy Valentine's Day to everybody, but most especially my wife Nita!  We got engaged a little over three years ago in one of our country's great National Parks, in our case the home of the world’s most famous Portuguese Water Dog (read our story here).  That made me a natural candidate to promote this great new video from the good folks at the Interior Department highlighting some of America's epic National Park engagements.  For those mulling locations for that most special and anxiety-filled popping of questions, I can't recommend them highly enough, and they hold up very well in subtle "who's engagement was better" contests.

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Intel may only have fessed up to building its own TV service this week, but the offering is already being tested by several hundred employees of the company. Intel Media boss Erik Huggers, whose unit is in charge of the service, told me on the sidelines of the Dive into Media conference in Dana Point, California this week that the friends and family test began in recent weeks, and that it was one of the reasons for breaking his silence on the project now.

Huggers said on stage at the conference Tuesday that his company is building a set-top box that will be fueled by a service that combines live TV, video on demand and a catch-up component  similar to the BBC’s iPlayer. U.K. viewers can use the iPlayer to watch anything that aired on the BBC within the last week, and Huggers was in charge of launching the project for the broadcaster. “American audiences have not yet experienced a proper catch-up service,” he told me.

Intel Media is preparing to launch the service in the U.S. before the end of the year through a mix of retail partnerships and direct sales to consumers. A lot of details are still under wraps, including the name of the service, the exact programming available, as well as its eventual price. However, Huggers said on Tuesday that his goal was neither complete unbundling nor undercutting cable. “We are not a value play,” he said, adding: “We are a quality play.”

There was some backlash Tuesday about Intel’s announcement, namely that the device would come with a camera that would be able to identify viewers and service personalized ads. In talking to me, Huggers tried to put it in perspective by comparing it to other consumer electronics products, asking: “How many millions of homes have a Kinect device?” Of course, one could argue that people might be much less accepting of the Kinect if it was being used to identify individual users and relay that information to Microsoft.

Intel Media is run as an independent unit within Intel, overseen by a separate board, and many folks within Intel didn’t even know what the unit was up to until this week. That separation also included a lot of outside hires, and even some cooperation with small, external companies, as we first reported in January. “We are not following the playbook of Intel,” acknowledged Huggers during our interview. “We are trying to do something that is rather left field for Intel.”

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After the Centers for Disease Control in the U.S. acknowledged and then issued a quick response guide for the possible zombie apocalypse, Canadian MPs knew that they had to get in line. As they say, zombies know no borders.

It’s assuring to hear Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird authoritatively declare that “Canada will never become a safe haven for zombies, ever.”

Watch the awesome House of Commons moment below:

Most of us know the iPhone to be Apple’s prized smartphone – the device that ushered in the current mobile era we’re experiencing. Unfortunately for Apple, a different company has the rights to the “IPHONE” name in Brazil.

That company is IGB Eletrônica SA (Gradiente), and it applied for the “IPHONE” trademark all the back in 2000. Apple released its first iPhone in 2007. The Wall Street Journal reports that the agency who oversees patents in Brazil said that it denied Apple’s trademark application because of IGB’s rights to the name. Matthew Cowley and Loretta Chao report:

Marcelo Chimento, spokesman for Brazil’s National Institute of Industrial Property, or INPI, said Apple is contesting the decision, charging that Gradiente failed to make use of the trademark within a five-year window, as required by Brazilian trademark law. An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.

Apple Defends Proxy in Response to Greenlight Suit Unlike in the U.S., Brazilian trademark regulations stipulate that registrations be rewarded on a first-come, first-served basis, regardless of which party used the trademark first, or which party brings more value and recognition to the brand.

The company, according to the Journal, only utilized its “iphone” power a few weeks before the deadline for when it was required to actually use it to keep the trademark. They used it to put out a device running Android, called the “iphone neo one”. Here’s a look:

Apple released its iPhone 5 in Brazil in December.

Last month, Maxis teased The Sims 3: University Life with a trailer that showed off frat parties, bonfire keggers, and beer pong. Today, the developer of The Sims games has released a much longer preview that delves into the details of the upcoming expansion.

The new video is actually a walkthrough of some of the new features of University Life. A Maxis producer uses the example of several very different student sims

The new expansion will include social groups for sims to join, different majors that offer activities for sims, and smartphones that sims will use to keep track of their many responsibilities. Sims 3 players with the Seasons expansion installed will also be able to see the university town change with the weather.

There are two main things that can cause a real-time web service to be not-so-real-time: insufficient bandwidth and excessive latency. Bandwidth is an ISP issue, but latency — the time it takes for your computer to contact a server and/or get a response — is largely down to the way the internet is engineered.

So a team of researchers from around Europe, with some help from the European Commission, Alcatel-Lucent and BT, is aiming to revise a standard data-transport protocol to effectively re-engineer how the internet runs — without the need for pricey new equipment.

It’s a tall order, but they’re deadly serious. And from the vendor side, it’s not hard to see why: Alcatel-Lucent wants to slash latency for better videoconferencing, and BT wants to do the same in order to improve its Radianz Cloud platform, which serves the very time-sensitive financial services industry.

The project is called Reducing Internet Transport Latency (RITE). It quietly kicked off last November but the University of Aberdeen, where some of the researchers are based, has only just started making noise about it — largely because the researchers are about to set off for an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) meeting in Florida next month to show off what they’re up to.

In a statement, Professor Gorry Fairhurst said:

“It’s a problem we all notice when you’re using a program like Skype. If anyone else in the house is watching a video at the same time, your video connection becomes jerky and often crashes. This affects gamers who want to play online in real time and companies doing stock training – both end up buying special and expensive internet connections to make these work, but often it’s not more bandwidth that’s needed to go faster – it’s less delay.

We think we can reduce this delay by making a set of small but important changes to the way computers and the network process the internet data.”

So, what sorts of changes are we talking about? Fairhurst told me on Thursday that there are two main strands to the RITE project’s work: revising the core Transmission Control Protocol (TCP, a.k.a the flipside to the Internet Protocol) and changing how network routers handle buffering.

“We’re trying to change TCP so that it works better with thin applications — applications that don’t send a huge amount of data and aren’t really interactive, like media streaming and conference calls,” he said. “We would make a small change to the timer mechanism so that you can recover data when you send a burst and lose part of it — it can take quite a lot of time to recover one lost packet — and we also have to do something to the way the congestion window works.

On the other side, to make this work effectively you have to change the way the routers behave as well. People know routers have lots of memory in them, but TCP tends to fill up all the buffers inside. We’re going to make recommendations on how to avoid buffer blocks — this is more directed at operators than people building PC software, but these things have to be done at the same time.”

Fairhurst noted that the TCP revisions would be piloted in Linux. After those Linux patches have been rolled out over the next year, the RITE researchers will try to get the standards community to do its thing and then “hopefully convince Microsoft, Apple and everyone else” to incorporate the changes into their applications. Google, which has developed the SPDY (pronounced “speedy”) protocol for reducing load time, has already shown interest, he claimed.

Apart from better videoconferencing and faster trading platforms, Fairhurst also suggested that success could “make the internet available to a whole new raft of applications,” such as proper virtual reality.

“It’s a small fix that really came from the gaming community originally,” he added. “Gamers really hate delay.”

Apart from the University of Aberdeen (Scotland), other research facilities involved in RITE include Simula Research Labs (Norway), the University of Oslo (Norway), Karlstad University (Sweden) and the Institut Mines-Telecom (France). The consortium has received just over €3.5 million ($4.7 million) from the European Commission.

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