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The iPhone 5 was the first major change to Apple’s iconic mobile device since the iPhone 4. The move to a 4-inch display was the most noticeable change, but there was a number of small adjustments that made it another hit for the Cupertino-based company. The same, however, could not be said for the iPad as its fourth iteration featured no discernable aesthetic difference. That all may change this year.

In a report from iLounge, Editor-in-Chief Jeremy Horwitz claims to have seen a “supposedly accurate” physical model of the iPad 5. In his report, he claims that the iPad 5 will be noticeably smaller than its predecessors. In fact, the next-generation iPad will be taking a cue from the iPad Mini by removing the left and right bezels and reducing the size of the top and bottom bezels to only include enough room for the home button and camera.

So, when we will see this supposedly redesigned next-generation iPad? Horwitz says that Apple is targeting an October release after its previously planned March launch slipped through its fingers. The delay is welcome, however, as it gives Apple ample time to perfect the newest iPad into something that may just wow critics after the disappointing fourth-generation iPad.

The iPad 5 may be the star of this report, but Horwitz adds more credence to the rumors of two iPhones launching this year. He says that the iPhone 5S will look much like the iPhone 5, but feature a larger flash. The other iPhone model coming this year is the same rumored cheaper iPhone that features a plastic body. It will be sold to emerging markets like China where most of the population can’t afford the regular iPhone.

As for that rumored bigger iPhone, Horwitz says that it’s in the planning stages. He says that it will feature a 4.7-inch display. You shouldn’t get too excited though as he says it may never come to market. It’s only experimental for now, and it may just remain that way.

The crowd-sourced mapping project OpenStreetMap has amassed a million contributors since its inception in 2005 and, according to navigation app maker Skobbler, boasts greater accuracy in England, Russia and Germany than rivals such as Google Maps.

Berlin-based Skobbler has a tool called GeOS to help developers more easily incorporate OpenStreetMap (OSM) maps into their services. Given that, and since its own apps such as GPS Navigation 2 also use OSM, it is not surprising to see the company talking up the platform. That said, it has some good points to make about the OSM model’s success.

The key point is that traditional mapping services such as Navteq come out of the automotive GPS market. Google also collects most of its data by driving around. OSM, by way of contrast, is generally better at collecting details that are to be found off-road or by pedestrians.

However, for a service that’s often compared with Wikipedia, contributing to OSM is still a specialist business, limiting the number of active contributors to those with the technical know-how. Indeed, while the million milestone is notable, the number of active monthly contributors is less than 20,000. (This is not that surprising – a very small proportion of Wikipedia’s 18.3 million registered users make regular edits.)

“While reaching one million [contributors] is a major milestone for OSM, it’s still early days in terms of fulfilling its potential,” Skobbler co-founder Marcus Thielking said in a statement. “With 90 percent of the population still realistically unable to participate, we’re expecting easier OSM access to allow everyone and anyone to help increase the success of this amazing modern alternative to conventional mapping.”

The question is, where is that easier access going to come from? Unsurprisingly, Thielking reckons the solution lies in more commercial products using OSM, a shift that would spur demand for more – and more standardized – contributions.

That would benefit Skobbler but it would also be good news for those that already use OSM data. The biggest name there is Apple – the maps in iOS 6 use OSM data for some parts of the world – but others include Foursquare, Craigslist and, of course, Wikipedia.

It seems that one of many recipes for viral success these days is to play off of an already viral phenomenon. Of course, it helps if you have the broadcasting power that comes with that of Saturday Night Live. This past weekend’s show was hosted by Adam Levine, who participated in one of the classic-to-some digital shorts.

The video would be YOLO, and features, in addition to Levine, comedy troupe The Lonely Island (which includes SNL vet Andy Samberg) and rapper Kendrick Lamar:

The video has the web abuzz here on Monday morning, and people all over Twitter are talking about how hilarious it is.

Yolo is now my ringtone! #snl

— Ciara Mc Donnell (@ciaramcdonn) January 28, 2013

yolo with kendrick lamar n adam levine LOOOOOOL #snl

— suzie (@suzanaodzala) January 28, 2013

Can’t get the chorus to “Yolo” out of my head.Also, cook your meat until it’s done. #TheLonelyIsland #SNL #AdamLevine #KendrickLamar

— Beth (@bethalicious83) January 28, 2013

Loved YOLO on #SNL and even better was @adamlevine as the Neil Diamond impersonator.

— Shannon Fitzgerald (@safitz2) January 28, 2013

Honestly, that #YOLO song the lonely island is really amazing. #teamadam #SNL #YouOughtaLookOut

— Craig Chavez (@ListDeCraig) January 28, 2013

Adam Levine Hosted SNL this week…this “YOLO” music video was a highlight of the show!!A must see! fb.me/InkyZJpG

— Bill & Shelly (@Lite98WakeUpSho) January 28, 2013

Can someone just pay me to sleep until noon and then watch the #YOLO digital short about a billion times? #SNL

— Jennifer Ballard (@itsjentastic) January 28, 2013

DVR’d#SNL. Heard there was a Digital Short. Yep, I went straight to it. #YOLO

— Ronnie (@texmexinjersey) January 28, 2013

THE LONELY ISLAND AND ADAM LEVINE!!! OMG!! SO HAPPY!!! lol #YOLO (only time I will ever use that) #SNL

— Sandra Porter (@Miss_SLP) January 28, 2013

Stanley Karnow, a journalist most famous for covering the entirety of the Vietnam War, has died at the age of 87.

According to an Associated Press report, Karnow died in his sleep on January 27 at his home in Potomac, Maryland. Karnow died of congestive heart failure.

Karnow served in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II before beginning his career as a reporter. He soon after began reporting for Time, and briefly served as the magazine’s North African Bureau chief. Starting in 1959, Karnow became Time‘s Asia correspondent. He was present during the first American deaths in Vietnam that year.

Karnow covered the war until its end in 1974. His reports were eventually used to write his most famous book, Vietnam: A History. In addition to that definitive take on the Vietnam conflict, Karnow authored several other books such as In Our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines and Mao and China: From Revolution to Revolution.

As recently as the year 2000, Karnow wrote a piece on the Vietnam War for Salon, calling the war ” a tragedy of epic dimensions for the United States as well as for Vietnam, where at least 3 million people, both soldiers and civilians, lost their lives.” Karnow was writing against modern arguments that sought to portray the Vietnam conflict as just and winnable.

Ever since the death of Aaron Swartz, hacktivist collective Anonymous has been on the warpath against those it blames for his death. MIT’s Web site was immediately taken offline and defaced in the wake of his death, but now Anonymous is going after a much bigger entity – the U.S. government.

Over the weekend, Anonymous hacked and defaced ussc.gov – the U.S. Sentencing Commission Web site. ZDNet reports that the hack left the Web site unavailable for a number of hours. The Web site has been intermittently down since then. Anonymous also obtained a wealth of classified information that it’s now holding ransom.

The ransom is the central part of #OpLastResort. Nobody knows what the 900 MB encrypted file contains, but Anonymous says that it holds particularly sensitive information. In fact, the group has taken to calling it a warhead, and says it will release the decryption keys if its demands for legal reform are not met.

Here’s the statement that comes with the “Anonymous Warhead:”

Citizens of the world,

Anonymous has observed for some time now the trajectory of justice in the United States with growing concern. We have marked the departure of this system from the noble ideals in which it was born and enshrined. We have seen the erosion of due process, the dilution of constitutional rights, the usurpation of the rightful authority of courts by the “discretion” of prosecutors. We have seen how the law is wielded less and less to uphold justice, and more and more to exercise control, authority and power in the interests of oppression or personal gain.

Since the release of the encryption information, Anonymous has been attacking the Sentencing Commission Web site non-stop. ZDNet reports that Anonymous defaced the Web site a second time, but this time turned it into a game of Asteroids that visitors to the site would play to reveal a message from Anonymous. There was no new information in regards to #OpLastResort as Anonymous is still focused on spreading its “warhead” to the corners of the net.

All of this is still a little unreal. It’s hard to believe that Anonymous was able to obtain any kind of classified information since the group has threatened similar information releases in the past, but never came through in the end. That being said, Anonymous was responsible for the Stratfor dump on Wikileaks so the group has proven that it can grab sensitive information when it really wants to. It seems that Swartz’ death has proven to be quite the potent catalyst for extreme action on the part of Anonymous – extreme action that we’ve not see in quite some time.

We’ll continue to follow this story, and let you know if Anonymous does anything else. The ussc.gov Web site is still down, and it looks like Anonymous isn’t quite finished with it just yet. There’s also reports that Anonymous may be targeting other U.S. government Web sites as well. It seems that #OpLastResort is going to get far more interesting before all of this is over.

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Winston Saunders has worked at Intel for nearly two decades and currently leads server and data center efficiency initiatives. Winston is a graduate of UC Berkeley and the University of Washington. You can find him online at “Winston on Energy” on Twitter.

This is the third post in a series on Exascalar. See Part II.

The Exascalar plot of the recent Green500 data shows a triangular shape (as shown in Part I) reproduced below with a triangle added for emphasis. The shape is so persistent I decided to spend a little time thinking about what the shape means and thought I’d share some insights. Of course, this being social media, comments and corrections are always welcome.

Examining the Elements

To describe something, it’s best to give it a name. So I decided to give each element of the triangle a name. The upper vertex of the triangle, for instance, has the highest performance and very high (perhaps even the highest) efficiency. This corner represents “Super Computing Leadership.” The vertex at the lower right, we have seen previously, is where new architectures with higher efficiency tend to appear. This was the case with the BlueGene Architecture in June 2011, as is the case with the Xeon Phi architecture in November 2012. This corner is appropriately named the “Technology Doorway.”

The corner to the left I call the “Corner of Inefficiency.” Why? As I noted in my previous blog post my previous blog post, the systems here produce no more work output that systems in the “Technology Doorway” but at this time may consume up to one hundred times more energy, representing a huge opportunity for cost-of-ownership optimization.

Each leg of the triangle can also be associated with a specific attribute. The base of the triangle is the lower performance cut-off of the Top500 list and is governed by performance and the population of supercomputers. The hypotenuse is constrained by system power. The associated economics push against a “Wall of Power.” We expect this edge of the triangle to be largely immobile. The right leg of the triangle is by far the most interesting as systems along this edge represent are pushing forefront of technology and efficiency innovation. This leg will push to the right as time advances.

An encouraging evolution would be to see the triangle, which indicates systems are primarily retired for performance reasons, turn into more of a trapezoidal shape, where there is an equally pronounced cut-off at the “corner of inefficiency.” Given large energy budgets required for multi-MegaWatt systems. This seems like an opportunity.

Future releases of Exascalar will either validate this viewpoint or provide greater insight into the development of computing technology. Until that time, as always, comments are encouraged and appreciated.

Industry Perspectives is a content channel at Data Center Knowledge highlighting thought leadership in the data center arena. See our guidelines and submission process for information on participating. View previously published Industry Perspectives in our Knowledge Library.

An entire campus for modular data centers? That’s the concept for a new project coming together in Barcelona, where the government of Catalonia is teaming with AST Modular on the Barcelona Data Center Cluster, a 320,000 square foot development dedicated to modular deployments.

The campus will allow companies to lease lots on which they can gradually deploy data center capacity in phases by adding additional modules, which can either be housed on a slab or inside a “container colo” structure, based on customer preferences. The initiative is one of the first proposals to develop a large-scale campus around modular data centers, pre-fabricated structures built in factories that require less on-site infrastructure than a traditional data center. A number of colocation and wholesale data center specialists have offered space for container modules, most notable i/o Data Centers, which operates huge modular facilities in Phoenix and New Jersey.

The project will be located within Parc de l’Alba in Cerdanyola des Valles, a business park focused on attracting leading technology companies. The park is anchored by the ALBA Synchotron, a cluster of research laboratories built around a synchotron – a huge circular-shaped machine that uses arrays of magnets to generate bright beams of synchrotron light. The ALBA Synchotron opened last year.

“The BCN Data Center Cluster is an initiative part of the ongoing commitment of Government of Catalonia towards the promotion of Parc de l’Alba as one of Europe’s most advanced technology parks,” said Pere Solà, Parc de l’Alba’s General Director.

The data center project will commence this week with a launch event this week. The campus will feature 30 megawatts of power with dual A and B feeds, a natural gas ring which feeds the cluster, district cooling produced by co-generation power plants and access to the widest range of connectivity provider. The space devoted to data centers has been divided into modular lots for customers.

AST Modular is based in Barcelona and specializes in providing modular data centers to global customers including IBM and Opera. It has deployed modules that support IT gear in environments ranging from the cool climates of Iceland and the summer heat of the Iraqi desert. AST Modular will act as Barcelona Data Center Cluster’s technology advisor.

“In today’s Capex constrained environment, the BCN Data Center Cluster offer enterprise businesses in Europe the answer to their raising data center needs,” said Henry Daunert, CEO at AST Modular. “It is according to such speficic market conditions that we are suggesting for BCN DC Cluster a data center ‘build as you need’ model which is very agile and intends to align IT to business and reduce data center energy consumption. We are indeed thrilled to be driving the initiative from a technology standpoint.”

With today being Data Privacy Day, Google took to several of its blogs to outline three initiatives it says it is focused on, related to privacy as it pertains to protection of consumers’ information and government requests. The company will continue to advocate for the updating of privacy laws, it will continue its curent process for handling government rquests, and it will continue to provide consumers with the info about government requests as it has been doing, but expanding upon what is actually available.

“First, for several years we have advocated for updating laws like the U.S. Electronic Communications Privacy Act, so the same protections that apply to your personal documents that you keep in your home also apply to your email and online documents. We’ll continue this effort strongly in 2013 through our membership in the Digital Due Process coalition and other initiatives,” says Google SVP and Chief Legal Officer, David Drummond. “Second, we’ll continue our long-standing strict process for handling these kinds of requests. When government agencies ask for our users’ personal information—like what you provide when you sign up for a Google Account, or the contents of an email—our team does several things.”

These include: scrutinizing requests to make sure they satisfy the law and Google’s policies, evaluating the scope of the request, notifying users about legal demands “when appropriate,” and requiring government agencies conducting criminal investigations to use a search warrant before Google will provide a user’s search query info and private content from Google accounts.

Drummond elaborates on each of these things here.

As part of the third initiative, Google has added a new section to its transparency report which answers a variety of questions users might have about the legal process.

Last week, Google released the latest update to its Transparency Report, as it does every six months. More on what was included in that here. Hint: government requests for user data have been increasing in the U.S. and around the world.

Feeling a little cramped by the 64 GB of storage in your iPad? You may soon be able to stretch out and relax a little more on your tablet: The latest iOS 6.1 beta software hints at iPads with 128 GB of storage capacity. 9to5 Mac’s sources say that such a device would be identical to the current models, so the only difference would be the amount of flash memory.

Buried in the Apple’s iOS 6 beta code are references to the 128 GB of storage and was found by Twitter user @iNeal this past Saturday:

We should be seeing 128GB iDevices soon. iOS 6.1 beta 5 has 128G system partition key in BuildManifest.—
Neal (@iNeal) January 27, 2013

Assuming Apple does introduce a 128 GB iPad model, I’d expect the price jump to be $100 over the current 64 GB versions; Apple typically adds $100 for each step up to higher memory for its iOS devices. That would put this model at $799 for a Wi-Fi tablet, likely to appeal more to those who use their iPad as a primary device in place of a laptop. Or those that want to carry every MadMen episode in high-definition with them on their iPad.

Prior to mid-December of last year, Facebook ran a program that asked users to vote on any prospective changes to the site’s policies, mainly the Statement of Right and Responsibilities and the Data Use policy. It was called the Site Governance vote, and allowed any users to vote on whether they thought Facebook should adopt the new privacy policies that they were proposing, or if they should just leave things as is.

Facebook required a 30% turnout on each Site Governance vote in order to act on the will of the user base. Anything short of that, Facebook logged the user base’s decision as “advisory” and simply went about their business. No Site Governance vote saw even 1% turnout.

With the last site Governance Vote, Facebook allowed users to vote on whether or not they wanted to retain the ability to vote. Only about 700K users voted through the app out of a required 30 million (give or take). So, as of December of 2012, Facebook users no longer get to vote on any changes to Facebook policy.

When Facebook eliminated the vote, they announced that instead, users would be able to participate in a new program designed to bring privacy concerns to the table and make Facebook policy more transparent.

It’s called “Ask Our Chief Privacy Officer” and Facebook just launched it.

“Ask Our CPO” lets users submit privacy-related questions to Facebook’s Chief Privacy Officer, Erin Egan. Then every so often, Egan will publish her responses to some of the questions.

You can access the Ask Our CPO app here. You’ll be required to submit your name, email, and country along with your privacy question.

And don’t bother submitting any privacy queries specific to your personal account – that’s not what this is for.

At Facebook, we work hard to build and maintain your trust. We understand that you’ll want to share on Facebook only if you trust us to protect the privacy and security of your information. We also understand that issues about privacy can be complex given the fast-moving nature of technology and that you have questions about privacy…

To help continue this conversation, we created this Ask Our CPO feature, which will enable you to send us your questions, concerns, and feedback about privacy — and give us the opportunity to share with you how we think about privacy. We hope this feature will serve as a regular forum where we can have a direct conversation about privacy.

In the first Ask Our CPO note, Egan talks about some common privacy-related questions that she receives on a daily basis (in lieu of any actual questions from users yet).

It’s good to see Facebook launch a new privacy resource, although it’s unclear how many users will take the time to further the dialogue. If you said “Facebook and Privacy” in a crowded room, everyone would most likely have their opinion on the issue. But as the failed Site Governance voting program proves, there’s not a ton of interest in utilizing the Facebook-sponsored channels to address privacy on the network.

Companies that wish to take full advantage of their data must build strong, new, and different organizational capabilities. There is a lot to do, and data scientists are front and center. Good ones are rare. And critically, the difference between a great one and a good one is like the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.

A good one can help you find relationships in vast quantities of disparate data — often important insights that you would not have gotten in any other way. Great data scientists, on the other hand, develop new insights about the larger world. They certainly use data to develop those insights, but that is not the point.

Over the years I’ve had the privilege of working with dozens, maybe hundreds, of good statisticians, analysts, and data scientists. And a few great ones. Great data scientists bring four mutually reinforcing traits to bear that even the good ones can’t.

1. A sense of wonder. Recently, many have noted that curiosity is the number one trait of a data scientist. That should go without saying. Good data scientists must be curious, just like a scientist in any discipline must be.

But the great ones take this trait to an extreme. They have a sense of wonder about the world and are happiest when they discover how something works or why it works that way! They look for those explanations in data — and anything else that will help. For example, great data scientists are interested in many things and develop networks of people with different perspectives than their own. So much the better to explore the world, and a mass of disparate data, from many angles!

2. A certain quantitative knack. Great data scientists simply see things that others don’t. For example, I happened to chat with a summer intern (who now uses his analytical prowess as head of a media company) on his second day at an investment bank. His boss had given him a stack of things to read, and in scanning through, he spotted an error in a returns’ calculation. It took him about an hour to verify the error and determine the correction.

What’s important here is that thousands of others did not see the error. It was obvious to him, but not to anyone else. And this was a top-tier investment bank. Presumably, at least a few good analysts read the same material and did not spot it.

Mathematics has turned out to provide a convenient, amazingly-effective language (Einstein used the phrase “unreasonably effective”) for describing the real world. The great data scientist taps into that language intuitively and easily in ways that even good data scientists cannot.

3. Persistence. The great data scientists are persistent, and in many ways. The intern in the vignette above made his discovery at a glance and confirmed it in an hour. It rarely works out that way. I believe it was Jeff Hooper, then at the great Bell Labs, who noted that “Data do not give up their secrets easily. They must be tortured to confess.”

This is a really big deal. Even under the best of circumstances, too much data are poorly defined and simply wrong, and most turn out to be irrelevant to the problem at hand. Staring through this noisy data is arduous, frustrating work. Even good data scientists may move on to the next problem. Great data scientists stick with it.

Great data scientists also persist in making themselves heard. Dealing with a recalcitrant bureaucracy can be even more frustrating than dealing with noisy data. Continuing the vignette from above, I told the intern that he was in for a long summer. He would almost certainly spend it defending his discovery. Whichever group made the error would take great offense and may even attack him personally. Others would react with glee as they celebrated the ignorance of their peers. And he’d be caught in the middle.

4. Finally, technical skills. The abilities to access and analyze data using the newest methods are obviously important. But I’m less concerned about these than the ability to bring statistical rigor to bear. At the risk of oversimplifying, there are two kinds of analyses — descriptive and predictive. Descriptive analyses are tough enough. But the really profitable analyses involve prediction, which is inherently uncertain.

Great data scientists embrace uncertainty. They recognize when a prediction rests on solid foundations and when it is merely wishful thinking. They are simply outstanding in describing here’s what has to go right for the prediction to hold; here’s what will really foul it up; and here are the unknowns that will keep me awake at night. They can often quantify the uncertainty, and they are good at suggesting simple experiments to confirm or deny assumptions, reduce uncertainty, explore the next set of questions, etc.

To be clear, this ability is not “that certain quantitative knack.” It is trained, sophisticated, disciplined inferential horsepower, practiced and honed by both success and failure.

Great data scientists are truly special. They’re the Derek Jeters, the Michael Jordans, the Mikhail Barishnikovs, and the Julia Robertses of the data space. If you’re serious about big data and advanced analytics, you need to find one or two, build around him or her, and craft an environment that helps them do their thing.

The popular Spotify app Soundrop is expanding to Facebook, and it’s doing so with a bang: Soundrop announced the launch of interactive music video listening rooms on Facebook artist pages Monday.

The Norwegian company teamed up with Abba, Public Enemy, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Hot Chip and a few other popular artists for its launch, allowing Facebook users to enter social listening rooms on the artists’ pages, vote for their favorite tracks and tune into a collaborative mix consisting of a nonstop stream of music videos. “No one has done this before, not even Facebook,” said Soundrop CEO Inge Andre Sandvik during an interview Friday.

Soundrop has been successfully operating these kinds of rooms within the Spotify app: Music fans listened to more than 500 million tracks through the company’s Spotify app last year, according to Soundrop.

The new rooms on Facebook are joined by the hip with the Spotify app: Abba’s Facebook listening room will play the same songs as the band’s room within the Spotify app, and users can vote on a room’s playlist on both platforms. “We don’t want to build a separate universe,” I was told by Sandvik.

However, there is one big difference between the two offerings: The Spotify app relies on the music service’s catalog. Soundrop’s new Facebook rooms on the other hand play music videos from YouTube and Vevo, which means that users can tune in without the need to pay for a subscription.

The offering is also completely free for musicians, and everyone else who is looking to bring some music to his Facebook presence: Any user with a public Facebook page can add a Soundrop room to that page within minutes.

That kind of easy set-up, paired with a pretty solid Soundrop experience that allows thousands of listeners to tune into a collaborative mix and chat about the music at the same time apparently impressed representatives from major music labels that got to see the app before its official launch. “They were amazed that we gave this to them,” Sandvik recalled.

He added that the app will help bands and labels to drive the engagement of ad-supported videos, and also help with marketing by allowing artists to interact with thousands of fans in real-time through DJ sets other online events.

Adding Facebook as an additional platform also shows how Soundrop is maturing: The company launched a first Spotify app when Spotify added third-party apps to its desktop client in late 2011. After gaining good traction on Spotify, it completely revamped its architecture from the ground up late last year to add cross-platform capabilities. Sandvik told me that the Facebook roll-out is just a first step on that journey. The end goal was not to launch the same app with the same UI on a bunch of different sites, but to offer unique experiences that are joined in real time by the music people are listening to and voting for. “It’s much more exciting to tell different stories,” Sandvik said.

Image courtesy of Flickr user humbert15.

What happens if the local police, the FBI or any government agency asks Google for information about your Gmail or YouTube account? Good question and one Google is trying to address with a new FAQ posted to its corporate blog. It also added a new page to its “transparency report” on how it deals with user data.

The post, by Dave Drummond SVP and chief legal officer, is fairly straightforward. It says the company evaluates any request to make sure it complies with its own guidelines and is not overly broad. Typically requests must come in writing and notify customers when possible if such requests are made.

And, in criminal investigations, Google requires a search warrant before providing a user’s search history and any private information stored in his or her Google account — that includes Gmail messages, documents, photos and YouTube videos. (This requirement is remarkable because federal law lets authorities  get this information without a warrant in many situations; as Wired reports, the warrant request appears to be Google standing up to the government).

Google said it is also pushing the government to update information privacy laws for the internet age and is seen as a powerful lobbying force in Washington D.C.  Last year, Google helped lead the charge by many tech companies to derail the proposed Stop Online Piracy (SOPA) legislation that was ostensibly geared to stop online trafficking in copyrighted materials but was also seen as an attempt to put limits on the internet and curb free speech. Now it’ s reportedly working to overhaul the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act.

This statement by Google  is no small matter in an era of warrantless searches and data collection on private citizens for legal and commercial reasons. One legal expert said Google is being more upfront than many companies with its FAQ. Chris Hoofnagle, director of  Information Privacy Programs at Berkeley Center for Law & Technology told National Public Radio that most companies keep mum on civil and criminal requests for user information.

“Google’s going out on a limb, here. Because, by making these statements, they might be creating customer expectations, that certain process will be followed, when their data is revealed to law enforcement,” Hoofnagle told NPR.

 Feature photo courtesy Flickr user Affiliate

Moving to Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) should be a step up and not a step down, particularly for big data workloads. Achieving your goals means paying attention to some important criteria. First, there’s the real elasticity of the IaaS solution. Then you need to consider perfect provisioning for the exact resource amounts, that is, the unbundled RAM, CPU and storage needed for a specific workload. How do you store that data securely? And then you must consider data centers and data-protection jurisdictions.

In this analyst roundtable webinar, here are some key points we’ll be discussing:

• Key criteria when choosing an IaaS provider
• Service versus architecture
• Data versus big data
• How much customer control equals “full control”
• Trends: control, experience and understanding

Our panel of experts includes:

• Paul Miller, founder, The Cloud of Data
• Jo Maitland, research director, Cloud, GigaOM Research
• Dana Gardner, president, Interarbor Solutions, LLC
• Robert Jenkins, CTO, CloudSigma

For a detailed discussion that answers these questions, join GigaOM Research and our sponsor CloudSigma for “How to make big data work in the cloud — and protect it without going broke,” a free analyst roundtable webinar on Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2013, at 8 a.m. PT.

Register here.

Barnes & Noble plans to close about twenty retail stores a year over the next ten years, the company’s retail CEO Marshall Klipper told the Wall Street Journal. Today, there are 689 Barnes & Noble stores nationwide, plus 674 college stores.

The WSJ notes that “the chain shut an average of about 15 stores a year in the past decade, but until 2009 it also was opening 30 or more a year,” with a peak of 726 stores in 2008. Klipper may have chosen to talk to the WSJ to show investors that the company has a plan. He said that fewer than 20 of the chain’s retail stores are unprofitable, and “we’re going to be around a long time” because consumers read both print and ebooks (this is a point that the company has been pressing for awhile, based on its own research).

Barnes & Noble is threatened by the shift to online book shopping at Amazon. The company has rolled out a host of Nook e-readers and tablets that face stiff competition in a market dominated by Kindle e-readers and saturated with cheap tablets from Amazon, Google, Apple and others. Barnes & Noble just delivered a terrible holiday earnings report, showing Nook, BN.com and retail sales all down, with a particularly large decline in Nook device sales. The company plans to spin off the Nook and college stores into a separate unit called Nook Media, with Microsoft and Pearson both holding stakes.

When Borders, then the nation’s second-largest bookstore chain, went bankrupt and liquidated all its stores in 2011, it seemed as if it could be good news for Barnes & Noble, which would have a chance to grab former Borders customers. But it appears that former Borders customers largely switched their book buying over to Amazon.

To be frank, acronyms like “SAFE” and “BYOD” are not overly exciting, especially when combined with words like “business” or “enterprise”. There’s just something missing that makes related adverts unappealing and boring. Samsung, however, begs to differ and has meshed all those terms together with unicorns to create two rather cool video ads.

The two commercials are, at core, related to SAFE, which is short for Samsung for Enterprise, and the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) movement but with an emphasis on entertainment rather than bombarding the viewers with too many technical details. At the same time the South Korean corporation did not pass on mocking BlackBerry devices, once known as the business world’s top choice for at-work smartphones.

Dubbed “SAFE and the Unicorn Apocalypse”, the first video portrays Samsung’s Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note II as two devices suited for sensitive work environments, a scenario emphasized through the Unicorn Apocalypse game launch.

Samsung also portrays BlackBerry owners in the business environment as hard to let go and in-denial types. According to Samsung, the latter use antiquated smartphones that fall behind “modern business” and have to resort to using a “system” that involves owning two devices (one for work, one for home use) in order to adapt.

In “The Leak”, which is the second ad from the series, Samsung touts the Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note II as the norm when it comes to smartphone security in the work environment.

Just as with the previous ad, the South Korean corporation again mocks RIM’s BlackBerry smartphones, which are showcased as unable to play modern games, hinting at their limitations for use within a game development company.

Samsung’s Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note II are shown to be superior when competing against aging devices in the two advertisements, but it will be interesting to see how the mocking holds up once RIM launches its new range of BlackBerry 10 smartphones.

PRO’s: Outstanding build quality, wonderful performance, supermodel sexy.

CON’s: Big sticker price, doesn’t feel as fast as it actually is, a bit tight for taller drivers.

FINAL THOUGHTS: A kick-ass sports coupe that has no problem taking on the worlds best.

If you’re reading this then you’re probably wondering if the 2013 Audi S5 Coupe S tronic is worth the $67,370 price tag that comes on the sticker. I just spent the better part of a week with this thing and I can tell you that after about 500 miles on some of Northern California’s best roads, that the answer is just not as simple as YES or No. This is a jack-of-all-trades performance coupe. It produces great numbers, is all-weather capable and has some of the best styling in the business. However, does that justify this whopper of a price tag?

The first thing you notice about the S5 is of course, the styling. Handsome and elegant at the same time, the S5 projects an aura of success. There are no bulging hood scoops or rear mounted spoilers trying to project that this car is a bruiser to the general public. Instead there is simply a beautiful quad-exhaust that sings to the common-folk every time you push down on the throttle. Speaking of throttle, let’s talk engine.

Equipped with a 3.0-liter supercharged V6, the S5 will get to 60 miles per hour in under 5-seconds and onto a top speed of 155 mph. Power is rated at 333 hp/325 lb.ft. of torque and is transferred to all four wheels through a slick 7-speed S tronic transmission that can be shifted manually via paddles, or left in automatic mode if you’re not feeling sporty.

What’s amazing about the cars performance is that this is no lightweight automobile. In fact with a curb weight of over 3,800 lbs, some would consider the S5 to be a bit of a chubb-chubb. Audi, thanks to some glorious engineering, has done a remarkable job of masking the cars weight. Side to side transitions are seamless and thanks to the cars invisible Quattro all-wheel drive system, traction is never an issue. I pushed the S5 relatively hard through some very tight canyon roads and never once did it get out of shape. Quite the opposite actually as the harder I pushed the S5, the more composed it seemed to be.

As a driver you have the option of choosing between a host of different settings ranging from Comfort to Dynamic mode. These either soften or stiffen up the suspension depending on what the terrain is like and can be adjusted through a small dial that lies just below the center stack. That same dial also controls the S5′s center mounted display screen giving you access to everything from climate and audio controls to the cars interior and navigation settings. It takes a moment, but is actually one of the more intuitive units I’ve used as of late.

Everything about the S5 exudes quality and confidence, very important aspects when you’re trying to sell a performance based automobile. The interior is fitted with top notch materials that include a combination of carbon fiber, leather and aluminum and they’re put together in such a way that no synergy is lost throughout the cabin. The seats are high-back, fully adjustable leather buckets that offer great support with heat settings and lumbar support.

Technically the S5 seats four, but unless you’re less than 5-feet tall, I wouldn’t even attempt to get back there. One thing that taller folks should note is the lack of headroom in the S5. I’m 6’4″ and even with the seat fully lowered, I still only had about an inch of clearance to the roof. Thankfully though it wasn’t terrible and I was able to find a comfortable position thanks in part to the manually tilting and telescoping flat-bottomed steering wheel.

Time and time again I found this car to be a very deceiving automobile. Not in a bad way mind you, but in such a way that triple digits come up very rapidly. Now normally I would never mind this, however with the S5 a sense of speed is rarely conveyed to the driver unless you’re looking down at the speedometer. The other thing is that this car just doesn’t feel fast, even though it goes like stink when you push it.

It’s got some amazing sound insulation, a smooth as silk 7-speed transmission, and when the booming Bang and Olufsen sound system is jamming, hell, you might as well just write yourself a ticket and go directly to jail.

This is a good car, a really good car. It’s got an interior that’s one the best in any class of automobile, and engine that pulls hard, true all-weather capabilities and supermodel good looks. However it’s expensive and that’s my one fault with this machine.

Now granted, if you were to price it out, a base model S5 would set you back around $51,000, a price that is totally 100% acceptable for this car. However if you go that route you lose things like the Prestige Package, a $6,600 option that gives you everything from that kickin’ Bang and Olufsen stereo to your navigation. You’d then also have to ditch the $3,250 Driver Assist Package that gives you adaptive cruise control, drive select controls and Audi’s dynamic steering. Then to top it off, you need to dump the $1,250 Fine Nappa leather interior.

My advice, DO IT. Meaning ditch all the comfy and foofy stuff and get this car in a base model because at under $55k, you’ll be getting a car that’s not only elegant and stylish, but one that offers you wonderful performance and road manners, for thousands less than its rivals.

Or… you can tell me to go to hell, get all the options and still have a KICK-ASS German sports coupe. The choice is yours.

I’m not a regular reader of the Huffington Post but when I go there, I’m astounded how many people leave comments on a given story. Last week, for instance, more than 20,000 readers offered their two cents on HuffPo’s account of Hillary Clinton and Benghazi — and this was just in the first two hours. Such numbers are impressive but it’s never been clear how a reader can navigate this teeming mob of voices nor how all this chatter helps the HuffPo make money.

Now, though, the Huffington Post’s comment strategy suddenly makes a lot more sense in light of “Conversations,” a new tool that surfaces discrete discussions within the comment stream and then lets readers read those discussions on a separate webpage. In the case of the Hillary story, for instance, the first comments that appear at the bottom of the story will now be “conversations” sparked by popular members of the existing HuffPo community.

The new set-up should make it easier to jump in on a given debate about the story that’s of interest. In the Benghazi story, for example, groups of people can find each other to discuss specific facets of the story — whether the US should be in Libya; whether the incident was Hillary’s fault; whether Hillary is actually a Muslim agent sent from Mars to destroy America and so on.

The fact that the “Conversations” will now have their own URL also makes it easier for people to share them and invite others into the discussion. The feature in some ways resembles the buzzy start-up Branch which lets people grab existing conversations and continue them in new places (though, unlike Branch, HuffPo’s system is not invite-only). To get a better idea of what HuffPo is doing, here are two screenshots from a recent story. The first is an existing conversation (I’ve circled the button that takes it elsewhere) and the other is what the conversation looks like on the new URL:

Huffington Post CTO, John Pavley, explained in a phone interview that the site relies mostly on algorithms to parse comments and to identify worthy conversation leaders but that it uses human moderators too. HuffPo’s inspiration for its comment system comes in part from Reddit, the popular group-reading site, he added. (The move also comes that at a time that publishers led by Gawker’s Nick Denton are re-evaluating the philosophy of comments in general).

The share-a-conversation feature serves to make order out of the comment chaos, but could also turn into a serious money maker for the Huffington Post. According to Pavley, the company will use parent company AOL’s ad platform to serve up relevant ads next to the conversations. This is significant because the HuffPo will not only have more pages to monetize; it will also be able to offer advertisers the promise of “hyper-engaged readers.” This type of audience is being touted by companies like Disqus as extra valuable because readers are more likely to engage an ad if it’s next to a subject they’re passionate about — the idea is that, if they’re taking the time to comment, they presumably are engaged.

HuffPo is rolling out Conversations slowly and, for now, the feature is only appearing on the site’s World and Gay Voices sections. It will appear across the whole site soon.

(Image by siSSen via Shutterstock)