If you know Java, R or SAS, doing machine learning on Hadoop data just got a lot easier. Concurrent (see disclosure), the company behind the popular Cascading framework for writing big data jobs, has developed a new open source tool called Pattern that lets users export their models from statistical analysis applications and run THEM? at scale on Hadoop data with little to no code change. The reason for creating Pattern is pretty simple, according to Concurrent Founder and CEO Chris Wensel: “Hadoop is never used alone.” It’s always part of a data environment that also includes databases, visualization tools, analytics software and/or statistical analysis tools that arguably do the really valuable work. Hadoop’s real value is an integration platform that can feed data into these other systems and, ideally, put their outputs to work across much larger datasets. Developers can use the Pattern Java API to create machine learning jobs, but they can also simply export a Predictive Model Markup Language (PMML) file from software like R, SAS and MicroStrategy that Pattern will read and run them as a Cascading workflow. Models are useless unless you can run them in production, Wensel said, and Pattern lets them run across more data, stored in Hadoop, than you can use to build them with those other tools. However, Wensel noted, “The real takeaway isn’t Pattern itself.” From his perspective, the real story is Pattern plus Cascading plus Lingual, the open source SQL-to-Hadoop tool that Concurrent recently developed and released. Lingual is the tie that binds everything together, creating a sort of assembly line for data as it works its way from generation to delivering some value. For example, someone might create a Cascading job that adds structure to incoming data, and then pull some of the data into R using Lingual. Once a model is created in R and exported to the Hadoop cluster using Pattern, Lingual can feed the MapReduce output file back to R so a data scientist can test the model’s accuracy. And actually, Wensel said, Lingual could have a positive effect on companies’ bottom lines. Airbnb recently replaced a departed engineer with Lingual for monthly migrations of data from Hadoop and into SQL environments. Climate Corporation, a massive Hadoop and Cascading user, could use Lingual to let its crop-and-weather insurance customers access their data from the company’s Hadoop store. Lingual and Pattern should help Concurrent finally make some money, too. Both of them, as well as the Cascading framework that underpins them, will always be open source, Wensel said, but it plans to create “a suite of products that will make your life much better if … you standardize on Cascading.” For example, the company has the ability to monitor jobs at the application level rather than the cluster level, meaning it can tell you the details of that job that’s locking up all the resources and whether you really want to kill it (it might be an important report for the CFO …). “We can do some really interesting things,” Wensel said. Disclosure: Concurrent is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, the founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True. Feature image courtesy of Shutterstock user PENGYOU91. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.The importance of putting the U and I in visualizationInfrastructure Q1: Cloud and big data woo enterprisesA near-term outlook for big data    
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Netflix wants to take on HBO and Showtime with the production of original stand-up comedy, the company’s chief content officer Ted Sarandos revealed in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter this week. Sarandos pointed to Bill Burr as one example of a stand-up comedian who has seen huge success on Netflix, to the point where he can now tour in countries where Netflix is operating its streaming service. Producing stand-up comedy is “also a great way to cultivate talent for future scripted projects,” Sarandos added. Asked about his plans for the next phase of original shows on Netflix, Sarandos said that he wants to target audiences that the company has so far overlooked, including tweens, Sci-fi fans and sitcom viewers. Altogether, Netflix could debut as many as 16 originals in 2013, according to Sarandos. In 2013, Netflix is going to launch a total of 8 originals, including the much-anticipated return of Arrested Development, which will premier on Netflix this coming Sunday. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.    
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Well, this is good news. The state of Vermont has decided to join private companies like Twitter in taking the fight to patent trolls — shell companies that don’t do anything except use old patents to extort businesses into paying licenses for common technology. In a complaint filed in Vermont’s Supreme Court, the state accuses MPHJ Technology — which operates 40 shell companies through a UPS store in Delaware  – of violating consumer protection law by demanding small businesses buy a license or face a patent lawsuit. “Hopefully would-be patent trolls will see this and realize that if you want to prey on Vermont businesses large and small they’re going to have a fight on their hands,” Attorney General, William Sorrell, said by phone on Wednesday. The patents in question date from the year 2001 and involve technology for scanning documents and attaching them to an email. Despite being around for more than a decade, no one tried to enforce the patents until 2012 when an attorney from Texas — a notorious troll forum — named Jay Mac Rust began brandishing them. The Vermont complaint explains that Mr. Rust and his friends have been sending letters to hundreds of businesses in Vermont, including non-profit groups that help the disabled, and telling them to pay $900-$1200 or face a federal lawsuit. Patent trials are one of the most expensive forms of litigation and are an ordeal for even big companies — let alone a small shop in the Green Mountains. Worse, the defendants are out of luck even if they win since the shells that sue them don’t have any assets. According to Sorrell, “patent trolling is a national problem” and the trolls have been harassing Vermont’s tech sector, as well as small business and non-profits, for years. Vermont’s lawsuit, which demands the troll pay $10,000 for each letter it sent out, is based on consumer protection laws that forbid deceitful communications. The state’s governor this week also signed a new anti-troll law that Sorrell describes as “another arrow in the quiver.” The site will almost surely raise constitutional issues concerning state power and patents but, for now, businesses will welcome a big new ally in the fight against patent trolls; others include Google and patent scholars like Mark Lemley and Brian Love. It will be interesting to see if states with big tech centers, like California and Massachusetts, ask to intervene or file suits of their own. You can read the complaint yourself here: Vermont v MPHJ Technologies Complaint Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.What the Google-Motorola deal means for Android, Microsoft and the mobile industryGigaOM Research highs and lows from CES 2013How HR can make the case for workforce analytics    
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The use of shadow IT — storing and sharing files on non-sanctioned clouds from Box, Dropbox and others, partly propelled by the bring-your-own-device trend — is not news, because it’s been going on for years despite the compliance and security problems it can pose. But IT leaders are fighting back, and new investment in security startup Skyhigh Networks suggests that they’re hungry for tools that reveal the use of cloud services and quantify the potential for data breaches and other risks. The company announced a $20 million Series B venture funding on Wednesday, bringing the total raised to more than $26 million. Sequoia Capital led the new round, which also contains a contribution from Greylock Partners. Along with highlighting problematic use across multiple cloud services, the Skyhigh software also lets IT administrators take steps to minimize impact of the rogue behavior by controlling access to certain clouds and encrypting data, which could make activity more secure. Cisco and Equinix use the Skyhigh product. Skyhigh wants to add more customers and also invest in marketing and engineering with the new funding. The news falls in line with an increase in investments in security recently. In addition to the Skyhigh investment, Blue Coat Systems has announced plans to acquire Solera Networks, and McAfee said it would buy Stonesoft. But shadow IT is just one challenge facing CIOs these days, along with the push to try cloud services and implement big data projects. My colleague Barb Darrow will discuss challenges like these with the CIOs of the Clorox Co. and the Pabst Brewing Co. at GigaOM’s Structure conference in San Francisco on June 19. Feature image courtesy of Shutterstock user alexmillos. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.New challenges for the IT organizationA near-term outlook for big dataDissecting the data: 5 issues for our digital future    
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A project called CoolEmAll has revealed prototype tools to aid the design of energy-efficient data centers. The European Commission-funded scheme wants data center designers and operators to test these tools ahead of a full release next year. CoolEmAll hopes to come up with a simulation, visualization and decision support (SVD) toolkit, which could be used to simulate data centers while taking various factors into account. These include the types of applications that are being run, different hardware configurations, the intensity of workloads and specific management policies, as well as airflow. This would be represented through dashboards and 3D visualizations. The project, which got funding as part of the Commission’s high-performance computing (HPC) drive, also aims to create a set of hardware and thermodynamic models that can be plugged into these simulations. These so-called Data Center Efficiency Building Blocks (DEBBs) will be made available in an open repository. The analyst house 451 Research is taking part in the project. According to 451 analyst Andrew Donoghue: “Factors such as rising fuel prices, stricter environmental legislation and constrained credit amid the financial crisis are contributing to higher capital and operational costs for data centre owners and operators. The tools and research that will result from the CoolEmAll project will help the data centre industry to meet some of these challenges, and develop more efficient and sustainable facilities.” The prototype tools can be downloaded now. CoolEmAll is looking for people to test them, and also to potentially work with the consortium if they have something to offer. In the meantime, here’s a video demonstrating the user interface for CoolEmAll’s under-construction Module Operation Platform: Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.How to Make Cloud Computing GreenerLocating data centers in an energy-constrained world9 Companies that Pushed the Infrastructure Discussion in 2010    
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Machines are giving us better and better suggestions for things to read, restaurants to eat at and people to date. Behind the curtains, some of the ways these services are being delivered are also being automated. An article out Wednesday from Data Center Knowledge envisions the next few steps for automating operations inside the data centers. Robots can move literally higher up the stack than humans and still be safe, which means data center builders can build vertically instead of horizontally. That could bring better use of data center floor space. If robots do all the work on the floor, lights might become unnecessary, and poof: just like that, a line item can be nixed from the budget. Deploying robots could also lead to less downtime, as they could act with more certainty than people when it comes to replacing a server or another hardware component. Using robots to grab equipment is “becoming quite feasible,” and Google does it to get backup storage tapes, according to the article. Most gear isn’t really made for machines to handle, though, so this area might be in need of tinkering before it can get widely adopted. The article also makes mention of unmanned data centers, including one operated by AOL. Apple revealed plans last year to build one of these facilities in Prineville, Ore., before saying it would expand the site to add data centers where some people would work. As more companies move in that direction, prices will drop, leading to further market penetration. Despite this, the article suggests that data centers will still need administrators, so not everyone working inside data centers will lose their jobs as this wave of automation carries through — for now. Meanwhile, data center admins can also optimize their facilities by changing out hardware and software to match use cases. Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware, will talk about his vision for the software-defined data center, and Andrew Feldman, general manager and corporate vice president of AMD, will talk about how companies can do these things at GigaOM’s Structure Conference in San Francisco on June 19. With these sorts of upgrades, while the initial capital expenditures might be high, they could bring operating expenses down for public, private and hybrid cloud providers, resulting in price drops for customers in time. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.Locating data centers in an energy-constrained worldThe fourth quarter of 2012 in cleantechThe economics of clean-data-center innovation    
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A few days ago when hanging out with a friend, I got a chance to play around with HTC One, the newest and shiniest Android phone on the market (of course until it wasn’t when Sony launched its Experia Z.) I was quite impressed by the build quality, the industrial design and the beauty of the device. Despite its supersize — I have normal people’s hands — it did feel like something I would want to buy, especially if I was picking amongst the ever increasing array of Android smartphones. Maybe, I thought to myself, HTC was going to make a comeback. I mean, these were the guys who jumpstarted the Android smartphone ecosystem in partnership with Google and T-Mobile USA. These were the guys who innovated fast and even came up with their own skin for Android. They pushed the design and speed envelope. They had edgy marketing. They were the first movers and their early sales were red-hot. And yet, when they spent $300 million on headphones maker Beats by Dre, it became obvious that this company was going to run into a some stormy weather. Of course, it was an idea that didn’t go down well with many of its fans and its investors — HTC eventually sold back half its stake. This (relatively) tiny Taiwanese company was going to get squeezed by cheaper Android phones on one end and Samsung on the other. In fact, as far back as 2010 we have argued that the real smartphone battle was going to be between Apple and Samsung. And when it comes to hardware, nothing really has changed. It is Apple vs Samsung. According to Strategy Analytics, Samsung now accounts for about 95 percent of the total operating profits of the global Android business. During the first quarter of 2013, Samsung had an operating profit of $5.1 billion, while LG made $100 million and all other vendors (HTC, ZTE, Huawei, Sony and no-name brands) collectively made $100 million in operating (not net) profit. It is hardly surprising to see that HTC is in trouble. A report in The Verge suggested that HTC’s chief product officer, Kouji Kodera, has left the company. The report also implied that other senior executives are leaving the company. The most recent high-profile bet — the HTC First, which was launched in partnership with Facebook — has been a flop and one wonders if the company really has the wherewithal, both intellectual and financial, to undertake such experiments. I am not sure if people remember, but Motorola was another company that found itself on a Sysephian quest and eventually found a $12 billion bailout from Google. The trouble with the smaller Android players is that despite all the talk about a PC-like ecosystem of sourcing components and using others to assemble their products, it is fundamentally not true. Apple has used all the billions in the bank to lock up supplies for processors, memory chips, radios, displays and other such components at favorable prices. It has worked out long term manufacturing arrangements with the likes of Foxconn. It has its own retail outlets. While most of us try and focus on Apple’s hardware and software integration, we forget that it is software, hardware and supply chain integration that allows the company to sell 37.5 million phones in the most recent quarter. It allows the company to make phones that meet the needs of different carriers. Samsung too is an integration beast. It owns memory chip plants. It makes its own processors. It makes displays and it owns the factories. It has the unique ability to churn out new products faster than anyone else in the consumer electronics business and thus overwhelm the market with dozens of models. Just look at the many flavors on its latest Samsung S4 device and you start to see that this is a game only for big boys. The only other company with Apple and Samsung-like manufacturing oomph was Nokia. I say was, because they are losing a grip on the phone business. However, their supply chain and manufacturing was legendary. It still is. I have yet to see a badly made Nokia smartphone — I just see smartphones with an OS that makes no sense. I bet if they entered the market with their own flavor of Android — something we suggested in 2010 — they would instantly become number three in the smartphone market, behind Samsung and Apple. Sadly, smaller players like HTC can’t compete with the manufacturing and marketing capabilities of Samsung. The HTC One, which is an awesome looking device, was hit by manufacturing issues earlier this year. So it needs to rethink its strategies. HTC needs to become comfortable with the idea of being a one or two product company, and hope that it can keep comping up with winning products every single time. Even that is a long shot. The marketing budgets of Samsung and Apple are enough to finance some small nations. HTC’s story is all too familiar to those who have studied the first mover phenomenon. A story in Economist points out that innovators captured seven percent of their market over time. THey point to various examples like White Castle who invented the idea of fast food burger joint but McDonalds is the big daddy now. Apple and Samsung are going through some of that as well. The lesson here for everyone — even tiny startups — is as Scott Anthony once perfectly said (and I paraphrase him): no one remembers who was leading the race midway through, and everyone remembers who finished first. And in order to finish first, a lot has to go right. So where do companies like HTC go? And sad as it might be, perhaps nowhere. I am going to do my bit to give them some support — I will buy that HTC One, just because it is actually a great little device. It truly is. 5-year HTC stock chart, source: Yahoo Finance Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. 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At CTIA Wireless, I had a chance to sit down with Sprint vice president of product platforms and services Kevin McGinnis and talk about Boost Mobile’s new digital wallet. It quickly became apparent from our convesation that Sprint has some big ambitions for the new financial services app. McGinnis said that it will soon offer a similar wallet to customers of its other prepaid brand — Virgin Mobile — and it is considering bringing it to the main Sprint brand as well. Sprint also plans to build on Wallet’s initial batch of services, to create what McGinnis calls “a virtual bank” for its customers. Today, Boost’s Mobile Wallet can transfer funds between accounts, pay e-bills, wire money to physical locations and, with the help of prepaid Visa card, you can make purchases and withdraw money from ATMs anywhere Visa is accepted. Soon Boost’s wallet will let you scan physical checks, depositing funds directly into your wallet account. But McGinnis said there are other services in the works. He didn’t provide specific deals, but it’s not hard to imagine features like virtual checking accounts or peer-to-peer payments such as those offered by PayPal, Venmo and now Google and Square. Sprint doesn’t want to become bank itself — that would put it under the regulatory scrutiny of the U.S. Department of Treasury, which Sprint wants to avoid, McGinnis said. Instead, Sprint is working with Wipit, a mobile payments provider focusing on people without bank accounts and credit cards, to provide the financial services infrastructure. “From the customer’s point of view, it’s kind of a bank in the sky that is Boost backed,” McGinnis said. Sprint’s wallet is unique because it focuses on what the financial industry calls the unbanked – households that deal almost entirely in cash. Most other wallet and financial services apps are linked to bank accounts, credit and debit cards. This approach to financial services has had a huge impact in other parts of the world and has made Kenyan mobile operator Safaricom the biggest bank in East Africa. The U.S. isn’t Kenya, of course, but according to a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation study (pdf), 8.2 percent of U.S. households have no bank account whatsoever, while an additional 20.1 percent of U.S. households have a bank account but also make use of alternative financial services such as check cashing and payday loan companies. Of the major providers, Sprint is in an ideal position to serve those customers. People who rely primarily on cash naturally gravitate towards prepaid mobile phones, and Sprint is one of the most aggressive carriers when it comes to prepaid. It runs three prepaid brands (Boost, Virgin and Assurance Wireless) and offers pay-as-you-go options on its primary Sprint brand as well. At the end of the first quarter it had 16 million customers on prepaid plans. While Mobile Wallet’s initial focus will be on those unbanked customers, McGinnis said there is a lot of potential for the app for customers who have traditional bank accounts, especially as Sprint and Wipit add new features to the app. That’s one of the reasons McGinnis thinks Mobile Wallet will be a good fit for Sprint’s contract customers. Sprint already is working with Google on mobile payments, but McGinnis pointed out that Google Wallet is really a point-of-sale transaction technology linking to credit cards or bank accounts. Meanwhile, Sprint’s Wallet is intended to be a replacement for or a supplement to those accounts and payments cards — just without the actual bank. “There’s nothing broken with plastic in retail today,” McGinnis said. Sprint, he added, just wants to make that plastic available to more people. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.The future of mobile: a segment analysis by GigaOM ProMobile payments: forecasts, technologies and opportunitiesOpportunities and challenges for mobile deals    
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If you write anything on the internet — or for that matter, read anything on the internet — you’ve undoubtedly experienced comment trolls, flame-wars and plenty of other bad behavior. Some blogs and news sites have tried either handing over their comments to Facebook or not having comments altogether as a way of preventing this kind of activity, but one site called Climate Desk took a different approach: they tracked down and interviewed their most persistent troll, and in the process revealed him to be a fairly normal human being. As the Columbia Journalism Review describes in a post on the project, Climate Desk not only found and interviewed their comment troll — a 57-year-old insurance executive named Hoyt Connell — as part of a video series called “The Secret Life of Trolls,” but also profiled a scientist who spends much of her time engaging with trolls on the topic of climate change. In the final instalment, the scientist and the troll met each other via Google Hangout. The CJR post criticizes the Climate Desk series because “it doesn’t shine as much light under the bridge as it could have,” since it doesn’t go into detail about why Connell latched onto climate change as a topic, or what drives him to comment so aggressively (fittingly enough, Connell comments on the CJR post himself to try and clear some of this up). But what impressed me was how normal this mega-troll seemed once he was interviewed. Comment trolls are people too I found the same thing — and I think others did too — when Gawker Media outed a notorious Reddit troll named Violentacrez last year, after attention was drawn to several offensive sub-Reddits he created. Although clearly much of his behavior on the site crossed a line, the interview showed him to be a more-or-less normal, and in some ways even sympathetic (or possibly just pathetic) character. Not that this justified his conduct, but it helped to explain some of it. We’ve written before about how the value of comments transcends the occasional troll, and how the best way to maintain a civil dialogue is to engage with readers directly, a point blogging pioneer Anil Dash also made in a post a couple of years ago. And writers like Ta-Nehisi Coates of The Atlantic have shown that commenters can be much more than just a noisy distraction — in some cases, they can actually become collaborators. The Climate Desk series is a good reminder that trolls are people too. Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr / Jeremy King Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.    
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Personalized reading app Zite is updating its iOS app Wednesday with a few Google Reader-inspired features and some algorithm changes designed to surface more obscure content. Zite also announced seven new publishing partners — including GigaOM — bringing the total number of publishers it works with to 24. Zite outlined the changes in a blog post. CEO Mark Johnson has been pretty vocal about how he doesn’t think Zite should be like Google Reader, and told me the new features Zite has added to its iOS app are those that “enhance the user experience both for Google Reader users and the reading population in general.” Articles will now “gray out” after they’ve been read, users will be able to save sources as favorites and Zite’s algorithm will pay more attention to obscure content: “One of the biggest problems with Google Reader is that RSS feeds which publish many stories per day tend to dominate your feed, so the obscure blog you found a few years ago that publishes every three months can be drowned out in the noise. Zite’s algorithm will more aggressively highlight rare content, so feel free to ‘like’ publishers that you enjoy, no matter how popular or rare.” An Android update is coming soon. Zite’s also added seven new publishers to its publisher program, bringing the total number of publishers it works with to 24. The new publishers are GigaOM, Atlantic Media (with The Atlantic and Quartz), Business Insider, Fast Company, Salon, Say Media (Remodelista and ReadWrite) and Serious Eats, and they join existing publishers like CNN (Zite’s parent company), the Huffington Post, and the Chicago Tribune. Zite publisher partners share their “best-of” content in their own sections of Zite’s app, and can run their own ads against their content. “We are also starting to look at ways to monetize publisher content,” Johnson said. That’s something Zite’s competitors are already doing: The New York Times makes content available to paying subscribers through Flipboard, and the Wall Street Journal has a similar arrangement with Pulse. Here’s a video of Johnson speaking about the future of content personalization at paidContent 2013: Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.How do developers ride the Siri wave?Mobile Q2: Smartphone growth surges; iPad’s rule continuesWhat Google’s Honeycomb Means for Apple and Microsoft    
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Let me tell you a little secret about the way online journalism works: Most news sites, GigaOM included, have a repertoire of just a few types of stories. There’s the short news story, the long thought piece, and the hands-on review, complete with a video featuring lots of close-ups. Attempts to tell stories in new ways are rare – that’s why I was pretty excited when I first heard about Soo Meta, back when it was still in private alpha last October. Soo Meta is the latest product of the Budapest-based online video startup Dragontape, which has also developed a video curation app called Dragontape. After months of testing, the company is now ready to unveil Soo Meta as a new platform for online video storytelling. Here’s how Soo Meta works: The platform offers content producers and curators an easy way to mix videos with still images, text, links, music, polls and even RSS feeds. The results look like video slideshows, and can range from simple annotations to complex remixes. Take a look below for an example: There are a few things that I find especially intriguing about Soo Meta: Each story doesn’t just consist of a video, but also a Storify-like story line. Users can either click play to watch the video, or scroll down and browse through the quotes, photos and other elements that make up the story. The other interesting aspect about Soo Meta is how easy it is to gather media for your video stories. There is a bookmarklet that lets you grab images, videos and quotes from any website. Alternatively, users can manually add Urls to the content they want to use, or even upload their own images to the service. These different elements can then be organized on a timeline, mixed together and annotated. Playing with Soo Meta is definitely fun, but I also found it challenging to actually decide on the stories I wanted to tell. Thinking out of the box ain’t easy. Still, I could see this become a great tool for online journalists who want to use video in novel ways, or even just annotate third-party videos and put them into context. Even a Storify-like approach of curation of third-party quotes could work great. For example, why not mix highlights of Microsoft’s Xbox One reveal with quotes from journalists who covered the event? I could also see annotated and visualized podcasts being a big use case, but the makers of Soo Meta have another idea in mind: The company is betting that a combination of online video and polls will bring in whole new audiences. Dragontape co-founder and CEO Tamás Szakál told me that the inspiration for this feature came from teachers using the service. “For them its a really cool way to give more engaging assignments to students,” Szakál said. He added that it would also be great for bloggers to engage with their audience, and get measurable feedback through analytics. For this, Szakál argued, people will pay. Soo Meta’s freemium model offers advanced polling features and analytics for a monthly fee. Paying users will also get an option to edit stories collaboratively, and share them privately within groups or companies. So what’s next for Soo Meta? Szakál said that his team of three wants to improve the mobile experience, and strike partnerships to integrate the platform with tools and sites for educators and others. A WordPress plugin is already available, and a full-blown mobile editor is already in the pipeline as well. An integration into smart TVs is also a possibility. But for now, the company wants to concentrate on perfecting the tools for creators to get people to use it – and hopefully inspire new types of stories. “The goal is of course to make Soo Meta the platform for digital storytelling that makes it a lot easier and faster for teachers, bloggers and journalists to create more engaging experiences,” said Szakál. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.How consumer media will change in 2013OTT technologies and strategies for broadcastersWhat the shift to the cloud means for the future EPG    
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How much is a truly great developer worth? A lot, according to Hubspot and it’s willing to pay a $30,000 bounty to anyone (anyone!) who refers a great developer that the marketing automation software maker ends up hiring. The company’s pitch: HubSpot loves developers. Like, heart-pounding, chest-thumping, breathless love. Care to play matchmaker? We’ll give you $30,000 if you refer us to a developer who makes us feel that way. The company has openings in its Cambridge and Dublin locations and has cash to spend. It netted $35 million in a financing round last November, bringing total funding to about $100 million. One of the priorities for that money was staffing up, CEO Brian Halligan said at the time. We know that great developers and engineers can write their own tickets, but $30,000 is a big number to give to a friend of a developer. It’s also a great way for any software developer to build a database of potential hires down the road. I’ve heard of smaller incentives before – Hubspot itself once offered $10,000 — but this is a lotta scratch. If you know of others please let me know in the comments section below. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.A near-term outlook for big dataDissecting the data: 5 issues for our digital futureWhat Amazon’s new Kindle line means for Apple, Netflix and online media    
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Even as Twitter has grown into a media and marketing giant, not everyone is persuaded that the social media site is useful for selling things. As one marketer recently lamented to me, the platform’s effectiveness is hard to measure — and justify to clients — because “no one’s going to buy a car off Twitter.” The perception, then, is that Twitter is useful for what the ad types call “top of the funnel” marketing — building brand awareness and so on — but that it has yet to deliver paying customers in the way that Google Adwords can. Today, though, it appears Twitter has responded with a new ad product that will make it easier for brands to assess what they get for their marketing bucks. The product, called a “Lead Generation Card,” lets marketers post expanded tweets that invite users to sign up for stuff right inside Twitter. The company showed what this might look in a blog post describing the product: According to a spokesman, the idea reduces friction in the marketing process because Twitter already has users’ email and other contact information — meaning that it takes just one click for a user to connect with the brand. The move comes as Twitter continues to expand its ad products, including its self-serve platform, ahead of a rumored IPO later this year.   Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.Social media in Q1: commerce and discovery dominatedNewNet Q4: Platform mania and social commerce shakeoutPlayers and Strategies for Real-Time In-Stream Advertising    
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The race for screen clarity continues. Apple started it with a 326 pixel per inch Retina display on its iPhone. Now the latest flagship phones from Samsung, HTC and LG have full high-definition displays: These devices cram a 1920 x 1080 resolution into their screens with around 400 pixels per inch. Too bad all of these just got spanked by the competition, even if it is just a prototype. At the SID Display Week event currently in progress, Qualcomm is showing off its latest smartphone screen tech that tops and eye-popping 577 pixels per inch. Engadget is on site at the show and captured some video of the 5.1-inch display and its 2560 x 1440 resolution: The screen uses Qualcomm’s Mirasol technology, which we’ve been covering for the past four years. Sadly, no major product hits have used a Mirasol panel in all that time and Qualcomm says that the smartphone screen is just a prototype; it could be another few years before such a pixel-packing screen is ready for mass production. Higher resolution isn’t the only benefit here, however. Mirasol uses reflective light and microscopic MEMS (Microelectromechanical systems) to create small airgaps in the display; as the airgap size changes, the light color passing through it is manipulated. As a result, the screens are very power efficient, up to six times more than today’s LCD and OLED screens. Aside from the time to market then, is there a downside? Because the displays primarily use reflective light — although they can be front-lit — colors often appear washed out as compared to traditional screens. I’m not sure if there’s a solution for that challenge, but my money is on Qualcomm to find one if it exists. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.Analyzing the wearable computing marketTablet market to hit over 377 million units by 2016CES 2012: a recap and analysis    
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Book publisher Penguin has agreed to a $75 million settlement with consumers and states in the ebook pricing lawsuit, several months after it settled with the Department of Justice. The other publishers in the case — HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette and Macmillan — had already settled with both the states and the DOJ. Penguin’s settlement is by far the largest that any of the publishers have reached. The news comes just a couple of weeks before Apple is set to face the DOJ in court. In the trial, beginning June 3, the DOJ will argue that Apple conspired with book publishers to fix ebook prices. Apple argues that it offers agency pricing to all retailers in iTunes and that the launch of iBookstore created competition in the marketplace. Under the proposed settlement, announced Wednesday morning, Penguin would pay $75 million to consumers represented by 33 states’ attorneys general and by Hagens Berman, the Seattle-based law firm that filed the class action suit against Apple and publishers in 2011. The settlement still has to be approved by the courts, in a hearing set to take place later this summer. Penguin’s settlement with the consumers and states is the largest that any publisher has agreed to. HarperCollins, Hachette and Simon & Schuster settled together for a combined $69 million, while Macmillan agreed to a $20 million payout. The settlement also clears the way for the Penguin-Random House merger to move forward in the second half of this year. Penguin’s parent company Pearson said in a statement, “In anticipation of reaching this agreement, Pearson had made a $40m provision for settlement in its 2012 accounts. An incremental charge will be expensed in Pearson’s 2013 statutory accounts as part of the accounting for the Penguin Random House joint-venture. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.    
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Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk said a couple months ago that Tesla planned to pay off the rest of Department of Energy loan in five years, instead of the allotted ten. Now, according to a tweet from Musk, Tesla could pay off the entire loan today, nine years early. Musk tweeted: Given govt loan repayment this week (prob Wed), Supercharger update will be next week. Work continuing independent of announcement. In order to pay off the loan, Tesla is holding an equity and debt offering, and could raise a billion dollars (boosted from the initial $830 million) from selling shares and convertible senior notes. Musk says he’ll buy $100 million worth of common stock in the offering. If Tesla pays back the entire loan today — or sometime soon — it will be a remarkable feat. Tesla raised a $465 million loan from the Department of Energy’s controversial Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing program back in the Summer of 2009. The funds helped the company build its factory in Fremont and transition from a small scale manufacturer of its first-gen Roadster electric sports car into a larger scale manufacturer of its Model S electric sedan. Tesla was one of only five companies to receive the loans, and one of three startups. Two of the other startups that raised funds from that program, Fisker Automotive and The Vehicle Group, are struggling. Fisker, which makes the electric hybrid sports car the Karma, is near bankruptcy and The Vehicle Production Group, which makes a natural gas-powered van for disabled passengers, has shut down. Tesla can also afford to pay off the loan early because it’s just come off of its first profitable quarter in the company’s 10-year history. Tesla also generated a record amount of revenue ($561.8 million) in the quarter, and raised its annual guidance of the amount of cars shipped by 1,000 to 21,000 this year. Tesla stock has been on a tear this month, and is was trading at $89.24 this morning. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.Ups and downs for cleantech in Q1Waiting for the EV market to materializeThe fourth quarter of 2012 in cleantech    
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There are plenty of startups out there trying to revolutionize the job-seeking or hiring process, from TalentBin and Path.to to Silp, Somewhere and of course, in its own way, LinkedIn. But there may still be space for more. Splinter.me will certainly be hoping so. Currently in beta, the Egyptian-Romanian-Belgian startup (welcome to the EMEA region) is trying its own data-centric spin on the subject. Splinter.me essentially wants to replace the resume with information automatically pulled in from the job-seeker’s social networks and any other platforms where information about them may reside. So far, so Silp, but Splinter.me wants to then mix up this functionality with not only automated job matchmaking, but also career advice. “We can tell a recruiter, ‘This candidate might fit your job,’ but can also give career advice to the user. We can tell them, ‘Others score higher because they have this skill that you’re missing,’” co-founder Adelina Peltea told me. Splinter.me will only launch in full this coming September, but it added a raft of new features this week. One particularly handy feature called Common Connections does what it says on the tin: it tells two “splinters” (users) which connections they have in common. What’s interesting here is that it can find those common connections across third-party platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn, even if those people are not themselves, er, splinters (I can’t quite shake the memories of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles whenever I hear that term). What’s more, the company has also added a feature called Splinter Lookup that allows for natural language searching. Echoing Facebook Graph Search to a degree, this function allows users to search for, by way of example, “splinters who use PHP, live in Boston and know Bob Jones”. Another new feature, Hubs, provides a repository of information to help job-seekers brush up particular skills, such as web development and gamification. It is very early days for this company – it has just 1,200 beta users and so far it only has angel backing. But on the other hand, it does have certain things in its favor beyond the aforementioned features, in particular its (intended) lack of tech-industry exclusivity and the fact that it’s pushing hard in markets such as North Africa and Europe. Many of Splinter.me’s key rivals in this space, such as Path.to, are highly U.S.-focused and deal mostly if not entirely with programmers and the like. Which is fine – the U.S. tech scene is a big market – but it does leave other markets to conquer. After that September launch, let’s see if Splinter.me can fill some of those gaps. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.Social 2013: The enterprise strikes backIs LinkedIn trying to become WordPress for the business executive set?The quantified self: hacking the body for better health    
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Cloudscaling, a company that’s made its name actually building OpenStack clouds for real customers including Korea Telecom, just closed a $10 million Series B round including money from new backers Juniper Networks’ Junos Innovation Fund and Seagate. Trinity Ventures, an early investor, also participated. The San Francisco-based company targets new applications that run on its technology but can also run in Amazon and Google public clouds as needed. Juniper is already partnering with Cloudscaling which is using Juniper’s Virtual Network Control in a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) feature that maps to virtual private clouds in Amazon Web Services. The funding, “affirms that customers want more than OpenStack. They want an on-premise, OpenStack-based private or public cloud turnkey system solution that delivers architectural and behavioral fidelity with major public clouds like Amazon Web Services,” Cloudscaling CEO Michael Grant said in a statement.ing It’s been a sort of rocky week for OpenStack. On Monday, Dell surprised the ecosystem by deep-sixing plans to roll out an OpenStack-based public cloud. Cloudscaling closed a $4 million Series A round in September 2011. Company CTO Randy Bias, pictured above right, is an OpenStack Foundation board member, and will talk about issues and benefits of cloud adoption at GigaOM’s Structure Europe in September. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.Cloud computing infrastructure: 2012 and beyondCloud computing 2013: how to navigate without a mapAmazon Web Services, by the numbers    
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50 Shades of Grey, which started out as Twilight-inspired fan fiction, raised a few copyright questions that didn’t stop it from selling millions and millions of copies. But when a work is more directly based on another author’s creation — using the same characters and setting, for instance — the legal hurdles can be greater. That doesn’t stop readers from writing their own spinoffs anyway: The largest fan fiction site, FanFiction.net, hosts millions of free stories. And in works like these — and the passionate readers who create them — Amazon sees the potential for profit. On Tuesday, Amazon Publishing announced Kindle Worlds, “the first commercial publishing platform that will enable any writer to create fan fiction based on a range of original stories and characters and earn royalties for doing so.” The company is making this work by securing licenses from existing entertainment properties and by paying royalties to both the original author and the fan fiction author. So far, Kindle Worlds has licenses for three Alloy Entertainment properties: Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars and Vampire Diaries. Writers can publish “authorized stories” inspired by these properties and sell them in the Kindle Store; Amazon says it will add more licenses soon. The fan fiction authors get a royalty of 35 percent for works of at least 10,000 words, and a royalty of 20 percent on works between 5,000 and 10,000 words. Amazon is also paying royalties to the original authors of the properties, but would not disclose that royalty rate. Kindle Worlds is not a self-publishing platform like KDP. First of all, any works published through Kindle Worlds are published by Amazon Publishing — they’re not self-published, so the author doesn’t retain print or digital rights and doesn’t set the work’s price. The website notes that “Amazon Publishing will acquire all rights to your new stories, including global publication rights, for the term of copyright.” Second, Kindle Worlds won’t publish all of the works submitted to it; it will only accept some. Finally, “Amazon Publishing will set the price for Kindle Worlds stories. Most will be priced from $0.99 through $3.99.” Kindle Worlds will officially launch in June with “over 50 commissioned works” from authors like Barbara Freethy, John Everson and Colleen Thompson. At that time, readers can also start submitting works to Kindle Worlds. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.    
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It’s easy to see how a motion-tracking, iPhone-compatible camera dock could appeal to any gadget hound or videography geek. But since the first Swivl launched in early 2012, its biggest fans haven’t been in the consumer or even corporate markets: they’ve been in education. To build on that base, the company on Wednesday said it had raised $500,000 from Grishin Robotics, an investment company focused on supporting personal robotics. Previously, Swivl raised about $175,000 from Indiegogo and Kickstarter campaigns and less than $1 million in angel funding. Since the device’s debut, Swivl co-founder and CEO Brian Lamb said the company has shipped about 10,000 units, with uses ranging from pet monitoring to corporate videoconferencing.  But he added that 75 to 80 percent of its customers are coming from education. “There’s a very powerful ongoing discussion about using video for [several] use cases [in education] that this plugged right into,” said Lamb. “It’s a tool to open the doors of the classroom and get people participating online.” For teachers aiming to “flip” their classrooms with videos students can watch online or get feedback on their teaching styles from peers, the Swivl provides an easy way to self-record lectures and classes. The $199 device, which the company likens to a robotic “personal cameraman,” includes a sensor that tracks the subject’s movements, panning and turning the camera as necessary. (For more details on how it works, you can check out my colleague Kevin Tofel’s review of the first-generation Swivl.) Already, it’s being used in 1,000 K-12 schools and 250 universities, Lamb said. With the new funding, the company plans to accelerate the production and distribution of the company’s second version of the Swivl, which includes more classroom-friendly features like iPad compatibility and a feature for attaching additional microphones to capture audio from students. Even though it may have been unintended, Swivl’s rise in education makes sense given the surging interest in using technology to enhance and extend the classroom. In addition to the “flipped classroom” trend and growing calls for better teacher feedback systems, teachers are increasingly turning to video technology to support distance education programs and capture lectures for students to review or watch later on. For example, companies like Torsh and Edthena provide tools for teacher observation and evaluation, while McGraw-Hill’s Tegrity and Echo360 are among those offering schools lecture-capture services.  But given its focus on developing hardware and eventually offering connected cloud services (although Lamb wouldn’t elaborate too much on that), Swivl is more of a complementary rather than competitive startup. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.Crowdfunding’s rapid growth and future opportunityGigaOM Research highs and lows from CES 2013Examining the rise of crowd labor platforms in 2012    
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For HTC, when it rains, it pours. Over the last 18 months, the company has watched its smartphone sales slow and profits wither. Now there reports that key personnel have left the company, the most recent being Chief Product Officer Kouji Kodera, according to The Verge. At a time when the HTC One flagship is on the market and the company should be looking ahead to the next big product line, that doesn’t bode well for the company’s future. Kodera isn’t the only recent departure, however, which makes the situation a little more bleak. Here are a few more joining the exodus, per The Verge: “It’s not just Kodera. In the past three-odd months, HTC has lost a number of employees in rapid succession — most recently Jason Gordon, the company’s vice president of global communications. Other fresh departures include global retail marketing manager Rebecca Rowland, director of digital marketing John Starkweather, and product strategy manager Eric Lin.” I knew that Lin had left: He moved recently to become a Product Marketing Manager for Skype after five years with HTC. The others are news to me, but in hindsight, perhaps not surprising given the company’s rough ride of late: delays for the HTC One flagship phone due to supply issues and the lack of buzz around the HTC First, a phone that highlights the Facebook experience. With HTC’s fall from prominence in the U.S., it’s possible — likely even — that the Tawian-based company consolidates operations back to its home country. With Apple and Samsung dominating U.S. phone sales, it may make sense for HTC to concentrate more effort on the bigger opportunities in Asia. To do so really doesn’t require much of a U.S. presence, sadly. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.What the Google-Motorola deal means for Android, Microsoft and the mobile industryMobile 2012 and beyondResearch In Motion: future scenarios for its fate    
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San Francisco-based PracticeFusion may bill itself as an electronic medical records company, but that’s definitely not all it is. Since launching in 2005, the company has attracted 150,000 physicians with its free, cloud-based software for managing patient health information, scheduling, billing and other tasks. But last month, it rolled out its first consumer-facing service, a ZocDoc-like doctor appointment booking site that positions it to manage additional data about patient conditions, medications and treatment outcomes. And on Wednesday, it plans to expand its footprint even further with consumer-oriented tools that help patients track and manage their health expenses. The electronic health record may have been its foot in the door — as founder and CEO Ryan Howard recently told VentureBeat, it’s “somewhat of a Trojan Horse.” But that’s enabling the company to build an enviable online community for physicians and patients, all with an eye on bringing some light and efficiency to the health system while amassing a valuable treasure trove of patient data. To date, the company says it manages health information for more than 62 million patients. “Every part of health care is obfuscated,” Howard told me in a recent interview. “But we’ve just opened it up – from the administration to scheduling to the clinical data to now health spending.” With its new health cost tracking tools, which are similar to products offered by startups like Simplee and CakeHealth, for example, PracticeFusion connects to patients’ healthcare accounts to help them better understand and manage their health finances. For example, it lets patients easily visualize their out-of-pocket expenses, costs covered by insurance and the remaining balance of their deductible. For now, the health tracking tools can only be used by patients whose doctors use PracticeFusion, but Howard said the service will expand to other patients in the next quarter. Considering that the average family spends more than $3,000 on out-of-pocket medical expenses and that medical debt has been cited as a leading cause of bankruptcy, it’s no wonder that PracticeFusion is zeroing in on health spending. For many patients, medical expenses are a big black hole and, as healthcare costs climb and employers continue to shift to high-deductible health plans, the need for more transparency and guidance around price is becoming even more needed. Offering more tools to consumers gives PracticeFusion more opportunities to build its growing advertising business (the company, which advertises to doctors, doesn’t yet market to patients, but has indicated that it will). But, over time, the health-tracking tools could also give the company an interesting and comprehensive window on to the varying prices consumers pay for different providers and treatments. Companies like Castlight Health and ClearCostHealth already work through employers to help patients get health care pricing information and encourage “healthcare consumerism.” But in the context of PracticeFusion’s community and appointment booking platform, pricing information could play an even bigger role in helping patients choose doctors. Recognizing the potential sensitivity for physicians, the company doesn’t have immediate plans to display pricing information for patients. But given the need to bring more price transparency to patients, it seems to be something the company is carefully weighing. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.GigaOM Research highs and lows from CES 2013What’s driving the next phase of the e-commerce evolutionHow HR can make the case for workforce analytics    
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CloudCheckr, one of several vendors that monitor Amazon Web Services usage for customers, says it is the only one of those rivals that can do that job for  Amazon’s restricted GovCloud. GovCloud is a separate U.S. region set up for state, local and federal agencies that must meet special requirements for cloud use. Tools like CloudCheckr’s service can help in the government procurement process — a big deal given the U.S. government’s cloud-first mandate, which requires agencies not only to deploy a different sort of technology, but to readjust how they think about buying and paying for services. “They have a hard time dealing with cloud costs because they’re so used to fixed-cost contracts,” said James Hirmas, COO of JHC Technology, an AWS consultancy specializing in government work and a prime contractor for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). JHC worked with CloudCheckr to integrate its service with GovCloud. With that integration, a customer can see if it’s underutilizing compute instances for a certain task and, if so, advise that the work be moved to a smaller, cheaper instance, for example. CloudCheckr performs compliance checks and best practice analysis for GovCloud environments. Aaron Klein, COO of Rochester, N.Y.-based CloudCheckr, said the GovCloud service does 90 percent of what it does on the commercial side. “GovCloud is architected differently from other AWS regions,” he said. “First you need access, then you need to delve in and adapt what you have to work best in that environment.” He also pointed out that not all of AWS’s own services are running on GovCloud so far. Since GovCloud is compliant  with the International Traffic in Arms Regulations  (ITAR) – only U.S.-born personnel can work there or access it. Its help desk is U.S.-only. Background checks are also required. Amazon itself is clearly gearing up for more government work, having received its FedRAMP certification early this week. That accreditation  should make it easier for more government entities to use GovCloud (or other U.S. regions depending on the workload) without having to go through a lot of redundant testing and paperwork. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.Microsoft Azure: What It Is, What It Costs and Who Should CareThe fourth quarter of 2012 in cloudHow direct-access solutions can speed up cloud adoption    
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Google I/O has come and gone without any new Chrome OS hardware. Was it a bust for Chromies? Not at all, but most of the news were behind the scenes services and provided context for Chrome’s cross-platform future vision. You can see some of that future in Chromium for the Mac, which is getting the Chrome App launcher. Our extension of the week dovetails with Google’s new Play Music All Access subscription service. And while Kevin still loves the Chromebook Pixel, he pleads with Google to add one important function to Chromebooks: Support for Google Play movie and TV downloads. Show notes Hosts: Chris Albrecht and Kevin C. Tofel So what was Google I/O like, what’s new for Chrome and what new services did Google add? More Intel-powered hardware builds are being tested Chromium for Mac getting the App launcher What’s Google’s vision for Chrome? To take over the world, of course! Extension of week: Better Music for Google Play Music When will Google add movie and TV downloads for Chromebooks? Got questions, tips or tricks for an upcoming GigaOM Chrome Show? Find Kevin on Google+, Twitter (@kevinctofel) or via e-mail (kevin@gigaom.com) (download this episode) Subscribe to RSS iTunes Stitcher Radio Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.Analyzing the wearable computing marketCarrier IQ and the continued erosion of operator trustSiri: Say hello to the coming “invisible interface”    
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Remember Truecaller, the Swedish phone directory service we reported on earlier this year? It’s a service for combatting phone scams – the user gets to see who’s calling them, with Truecaller identifying the caller by their phone number. It’s big in India, apparently. Anyway, Truecaller now has 600 million partly crowdsourced names and phone numbers in its database, which is quite a lot, and it’s decided to open up this information to third parties that can make good use of it. “Great,” you might think, “what a boon to telemarketers.” But no, Truecaller is rather sensibly hand-picking those developers who get to tap into its newly-launched, 3scale-managed API, and telemarketers are not welcome at all. As for potential uses for this reverse lookup service, that’s up to the developer’s imagination. Here’s what Truecaller CEO Alan Mamedi suggests: “Among many other scenarios, the Truecaller API could be used to save time in call centres. Each call centre minute is connected to a cost. By using our API, both local and global, call centres can identify who is calling even before starting the call. Win-win.” Truecaller’s database is populated by two main sources: traditional phone directory services and users who are willing to upload their address books. This latter source means it can contain numbers that are unlisted, including pay-as-you-go phone numbers. Numbers in the database come with two types of scores: a “spam score” to rate how likely it is that they are associated with telesales or robocalls, and a “true score” to denote importance. Importantly, name search will not be a function associated with the API – it will only be available on the mobile app, meaning the API can only be used for reverse lookup purposes. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.Podcast: Mobile winners and losers in 2012 and what to expect in 2013Analyzing the wearable computing marketHyperlocal: opportunities for publishers and developers    
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