Now that the fog of hype is starting to lift from the Moscone Center  where Google rolled out its promised Amazon cloud killer, don’t expect the folks up in Seattle to stand still. As Amazon Web Services has made clear over the past 7 years, inaction is not an option. Amazon CTO Werner Vogels and CEO Jeff Bezos on stage at AWS: Reinvent Here are a few things AWS (which after all, remains the cloud to beat) could do to shore up its defenses as GCE, Windows Azure and soon VMware’s AWS competitor (to be re-announced May 21) come online. 1: Get more granular in pricing One headline item Wednesday was Google’s decision to rent cloud instances by the minute instead of by the hour (well, you have to buy a minimum of 10 minutes with incremental charges for each additional minute.) AWS rents by the hour, which is something it could well change. Both companies are late to this particular feature however: Both Cloud Sigma and Profitbricks have offered sub-hour models for some time. 2: Keep pounding on enterprise support … And management options like Trusted Advisor, which instructs AWS users on how to deploy their workloads more efficiently and more securely.  The knock on Google remains that it (let alone its cloud) doesn’t “get” the enterprise — millions of  Google Apps and Gmail business users notwithstanding. A CIO might ask herself: “Gee, do I want to trust my workloads to a search and advertising company? I still can’t believe I’m trusting some of them to a book seller! “ If enterprise is a key business, you have to keep earning it. 3: Prove that AWS is an Amazon corporate priority The perception that Amazon.com, Jeff Bezos and corporate don’t care that much about AWS continues to dog the cloud services arm. It was a big deal that Bezos showed up at AWS: Reinvent last year, but he really doesn’t talk about the cloud business all that much. What might help there? BREAKING OUT AWS REVENUE! If AWS is a $2 billion-a-year-plus business, get transparent about it. And talk profitability, not just revenue. Come on guys, it’s time. 4: Keep the services coming Much was made of Google’s brand new NoSQL database service, which, as my colleague Derrick Harris pointed out, is “eerily similar” to Amazon’s DynamoDB. Google SVP Urs Hölzle noted that Google, 11 months after announcing GCE, rolled out 10TB persistent disk, something that an “unnamed competitor” hadn’t done in its 7 years. That may be, but AWS has lots of other services and perks and maturity counts — especially among corporate buyers. So, Amazon. It’s your move. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.Infrastructure Q1: Cloud and big data woo enterprisesAWS Storage Gateway jolts cloud-storage ecosystemAmazon’s DynamoDB: rattling the cloud market    
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Samsung has agreed to let customers on Telefónica’s network charge their apps and content to their phone bill or take the payment out of prepaid credit, rather than having to use a credit card. The agreement covers apps, services and content bought through Samsung’s own app store, which runs on the Android and Bada platforms. This is a big win for Spain-based Telefónica, which is trying to get as many partners as possible to plug into its BlueVia billing API. It’s previously managed to get Google, Facebook, Microsoft and BlackBerry to agree to play along, but Samsung is the first major phone manufacturer to sign up. It also happens to be the world’s top phone manufacturer, having shipped 70 million smartphones in the first quarter of this year. Carrier billing makes it easier to sell smartphones to people, particularly in emerging markets, who lack a bank card. Telefónica has 315 million mobile customers around the world, and is particularly strong in Latin America. The fact that Google Play is already plugged into Telefónica’s billing API means that, without this deal, Samsung was risking its cardless Android customers finding it easier to buy through Google’s storefront than Samsung’s. As Lee Epting, vice president of Samsung’s Media Solutions Centre Europe, said in a statement: “Samsung is committed to ensuring that our customers have choice and convenience when purchasing content on our devices. Our partnership with Telefónica Digital allows us to deliver yet another easy and convenient purchasing experience to our Samsung Hub and Samsung Apps customers.” The “direct-to-bill” option will roll out first to Telefónica’s O2 business in Germany first, during the coming months, then to its other operating businesses in a phased deployment. We’re going to be seeing more of these carrier billing arrangements in the future, and that’s a good thing for all concerned. Not only does it mean more apps and content will be sold, benefiting their producers, but it also means the telcos themselves aren’t shut out of the value chain. And, if the carriers manage to be involved beyond the provision of basic data services, it may stop them complaining about returns on their network investments and trying to do heinous, net-neutrality-shredding things like charging content providers for their traffic. Everyone’s a winner. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.The future of mobile: a segment analysis by GigaOM ProUpdated: Forecast: global mobile subscribers, 2010-20152012: the year of confusion for NFC payments    
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True innovators are a little nuts. So when Davide Vigano starts talking about the need to reinvent the fashion industry via technology, anyone who has seen a person wearing Google Glass or the ubiquitous plastic wrist bands that track fitness goals might be forgiven for rolling their eyes: Both are decidely unfashionable outside the geek community. Yet Vigano, who is the CEO of Heapsylon, a startup based out of Redmond, Wash. and wears Armani shirts (casual Armani, but still Armani), thinks he has a solution to wearable computing that people will find, well … wearable. At first glance Heapslylon makes a pair of smart socks that mimic many of the data gathering functions of any other fitness tracker on the market. Except that they are socks. And it’s tough to imagine one wearing the same pair of sensor-packed socks each day or even wearing socks every day. How is this a good idea? How is this the future of fashion and technology? The Sensoria smart sock and anklet. But just as the Kindle Fire is merely a vehicle for Amazon’s real ambitions, as opposed to the sum of them, Heapsylon isn’t really in the sock business. The socks are made of a special material that the company developed — it is reportedly comfortable, washable and packed with sensors. And that material is the crux of what Heapslyson has developed. The socks are both an effort to put the new material through its paces with the hardest-working piece of clothing in a person’s wardrobe, as well as an application to showcase what the material can do. Heapsylon was started in October 2010 by three former Microsoft employees: Davide Vigano, Mario Esposito, who is the CTO at Heapsylon, and Maurizio Macagno, the VP of development at the company. Both Macagno and Esposito worked on the Kinect, but all three left Microsoft to pursue this vision of combining technology and fashion in a way that could advance both industries. “The outfit is the computer,” said Vigano of their vision. But after they quit, and started playing around with tiny sensors and conductive fabrics they realized that there was a gap between what they wanted and what technology could provide. So they set about researching materials. The result of that is the fabric that they have since turned into socks. “Quite frankly we thought it would easier,” said Vigano. “The materials research has been challenging to say the least.” The anklet for the Sensoria smart sock. The sock and they accompanying hardware that tracks the data from the sock’s sensors are called the Sensoria Fitness smart socks. There will be two or maybe three pressure sensors in the sock that will share exact data on how many steps a person takes, their stride, whether they tend to turn in or out when they run, and maybe even weight change. The socks come with an ankle bracelet that gathers the data from the sick and transmits it (see above.) It will eventually be possible to use the socks as a scale to track your weight once Heaspylon gets the algorithms down. Vigano said the company plans to launch the package of the socks and the hardware via a crowd-funding platform like Kickstarter or Indiegogo within the next month or two. While at first it will be targeted at the hard-core running market, the socks might find a home in other sports such as golf, where tracking the weight on the ball or heel of the foot can help improve performance. The price for the package is yet to be determined. And he declined to share the cost of the sensor-rich fabric. But perhaps most important for the future of Heapsylon, and the future of fashion-forward wearables, is that Vigano aims to license the fabric technology and the data it gathers from its socks for other uses. For example, the material could be used in football helmets to measure the incidence of concussions, or the exact footfall data from the sock might supplant the general data provided by a pedometer for a person’s run. And other companies might use the socks to develop data profiles around other sports, like the golf example above. The Heapsylon employees and founders. There’s also no reason to stick only with pressure sensors. Other sensors could be embedded into the Heapsylon fabric, although the company hasn’t focused on that as a small startup with a a relatively small and undisclosed amount of angel funding. Vigano hopes to seek a formal venture round after the crowd-funding campaign proves (or disproves) the market opportunity. For now, the five-person startup is heading toward a production version of the Sensoria Sock hoping that it will be the launch of a revolution in wearable computing that goes far beyond the smart watches and accessories available today. If Heapsylon’s vision of making technology disappear into fabric gains ground, then perhaps Vigano’s future Armani shirts might not just look good, but they could do good by sharing relevant data that monitors his health or his whereabouts for loved ones. Of course, such data could also be used for less-then-noble causes, or the market may never buy into the idea of smart socks. But as someone who looks at the intersection between technology and fashion, I welcome anyone who wants to develop a product that emphasizes the form, the function and the feel of the wearable tech as opposed to just the tech. Not everyone wants to look like they just got off the Caltrain at Mountain View. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.Analyzing the wearable computing marketPodcast: Mobile winners and losers in 2012 and what to expect in 2013How emerging technologies will influence collaboration    
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Newvem made its name monitoring your Amazon Web Services workloads and recommending where you can extract savings with another instance type or where you need to close security gaps. Now it’s adding analagous services for Microsoft Window Azure as well. The theory behind tools like these is basically this: sure, public cloud computing is billed as cheap, but too often it turns into a wasteland of dormant instances and other fallow resources. So as inexpensive as it can be, it’s not necessarily efficient or as cheap as it could be. Companies like Newvem, Cloudability, Cloudyn, CloudVertical et al say they can help you optimize all that and save more. Newvem for Windows Azure covers many of the same core usage and cost metrics as the AWS version. A “heat map” helps users visualize their workloads as they move from on-premise implementations to the cloud, according to Newvem VP of marketing Cameron Peron. The free beta is available now to all Azure users. Newvem’s AWS version started out free as well, and a base level of capabilities remain free, but as of late last year, the company started charging for higher-level services. Newvem said it sees Azure — which launched its AWS-like Infrastructure-as-a-Service  capabilities last month — gaining traction. “The size of the Azure installed base is probably one of [Microsoft's] best-kept secrets,” Perron noted. Well, not that secret since Microsoft recently said Azure is a $1 billion-a-year business – a claim that some find difficult to swallow. Newvem would not comment when asked if Microsoft helped fund its Azure tool, but given that Microsoft wants to build the Azure ecosystem and compete better with AWS (as well as the spanking new Google Compute Engine), I’d say it’s a safe bet. It’s also true that companies like Newvem, which built services around AWS, have been perplexed to see AWS adding richer and deeper monitoring and management services like Trusted Advisor. Given that, it makes sense that these companies offer multi-cloud capabilities. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.Cloud computing infrastructure: 2012 and beyondInfrastructure Q1: Cloud and big data woo enterprisesForecasting the future cloud computing market    
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Ringadoc, a San Francisco startup that helps doctors manage patient phone calls, has raised an additional $700,000 in seed funding. The round, which included Siemer Ventures, Telegraph Hill Group and Dr. Lyle Dennis, a neurologist and founder of HealthKeep, brings the startup’s total amount raised to $1.9 million. Previous investors include FF Angel, Practice Fusion CEO and founder Ryan Howard and former president of One Medical Group Sharon Knight. The startup launched in 2010 as a service for providing on-demand telephone and video chat access to physicians. For $40, consumers could use Ringadoc to connect with doctors anytime, day or night. But earlier this year, in a bid to bring more doctors on to its network, it pivoted to its current product, which targets physicians with an after-hours messaging and phone service. Typical after-hours messaging services require patients with after-hours questions to leave messages with a non-medically trained operator, who then looks up an on-call doctor and passes the message along. When the doctor calls back, the patient needs to recount her symptoms all over again. With Ringadoc, patients leave a secure message with a cloud-based answering service that automatically finds the appropriate physician – patients only need to explain their issues once and the cost, Ringadoc says, is cheaper than most existing systems. To date, the company said it has handled more than 100,000 phone calls for physicians. With the new funding, CEO and founder Jordan Michaels said the company plans to increase sales and marketing, as well as enhance the product so that it integrates with other tools used by doctors’ offices. Since Ringadoc is capturing valuable patient engagement data through its telephone calls, Michaels said, they want to enable doctors to make the most of that functionality. “We’re tracking a lot of two-way conversations and that’s an important piece of the health care conversation,” Michaels said. “Our vision is to be on the frontline of virtual care for patients.” For now, the company is focusing on its physician-focused product. But, later this year, he said, they could start expanding to patients and restore the startup’s initial mission of providing on-demand physician access to patients. Recognizing the need to address the shortage of doctors in the U.S., other companies are similarly focused on streamlining physician-patient communication and promoting virtual health care. For example, PingMD targets physicians with a mobile app for more efficiently communicating with patients and peers, HealthTap offers consumers a mobile- and web-based service for messaging and querying doctors and Sherpaa works with employers to help patients and doctors connect via video chats and phone calls. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.GigaOM Research highs and lows from CES 2013The quantified self: hacking the body for better healthA near-term outlook for big data    
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Plenty of people watch movies on their iPads, but Neal Edelstein, producer of hit films The Ring and Mulholland Drive, wanted to go farther. His new movie, Haunting Melissa, is a ghost story told directly through an iOS app. Not that Edelstein would exactly describe Haunting Melissa  — the story of a teenage girl who believes her dead mother is haunting her, and then suddenly disappears — as a movie. “I didn’t want to take a movie and stuff it in an app,” he told me. Rather, the goal was to use technology “to push a story out to people in bits and pieces.” Edelstein’s production company, Hooked Digital Media — which includes investor Jason Washington as cofounder and MySpace cofounder Aber Whitcomb as advisor — built an iOS platform that pushes content out to viewers over time. Haunting Melissa doesn’t have a predetermined length: Edelstein shot thousands of hours of video, and it will be pushed out to viewers in “chapters,” or segments, on a timeline that can be tweaked on the back end. For example, if a user hasn’t entered the app for a while, he or she might receive a push notification that a new chapter is available. In addition, the actual video content can be adjusted through the app’s content management system, so new content can be inserted into a chapter after a user has already watched it. The idea is to keep users coming back to the app, checking for new content and seeing what has changed. The Haunting Melissa iOS app, available in the iTunes Store today, is free, as is the first chapter. If a user shares that chapter on Facebook, he or she gets the second chapter for free. Users can buy a “season pass” for $6.99 (standard definition or $14.99 (HD); if purchased individually, chapters are $0.99 for standard definition and $1.99 for HD. “We are gambling on the notion that this is going to fit in the diet of people who watch and consume a lot of stuff,” Edelstein said. “This isn’t sitting down to watch X hours of House of Cards. It’s one piece of what you’re going to consume over the course of time.” He imagines that users will dip in and out of the app as new content becomes available — but he isn’t sure, because Hooked Digital Media hasn’t tested how viewers use the app. “We just have to go for it and see how people watch and react,” Edelstein said. “My experience in testing movies is that it’s a total clusterf*ck. Unless you have a sample size that’s over thousands of people, you can’t get an accurate measure of content consumption.” So the company is waiting to see what viewers do and how they share Haunting Melissa on social media. Edelstein describes the creation of Haunting Melissa as “low-budget independent film making.” He tapped industry connections who wanted to work on a different kind of project and got to test new skills — like iPad color correction — for Haunting Melissa. “Because of that excitement level,” Edelstein said, “I was able to work with people I’d worked with before.” He is now working on a sequel. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.    
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Thirteen years ago Adam Dunkels was trying to hook up a hockey team in Lulea, Sweden with sensors and cameras so coaches and fans could track helmet cams and players’ vital signs. It was an academic project but it was also an early example of the internet of things. The project was doomed to fail for a variety of reasons, but out of that experience came a lightweight code for connecting devices called Lightweight IP. A later version of that code became the base for LEGO Mindstorms and a variety of other connected projects. But Dunkels realized that to truly build a platform for connected devices he needed even lighter weight code. So he built Contiki, an operating system of sorts of the internet of things. And now he’s commercializing all that he’s learned in a startup called ThingSquare. In the podcast we discuss the history of the internet of things and when we reached the tipping point that made the internet of things inevitable. (Download this episode) The GigaOM Podcasts RSS feed iTunes Stitcher Radio Show notes: Host: Stacey Higginbotham Guest: Adam Dunkels, chairman, co-founder and chief architect of ThingSquare How connecting a hockey team in 2000 helped him learn what the internet of things needed. Why he build LWIP, microIP and later Contiki as an OS for the internet of things. The factors that led to a tipping point for the internet of things. Dunkels tells me to stop looking at the future and to pay attention to the present. Because the internet of things is here today. PREVIOUS IoT PODCASTS: IoT Podcast: Where self-milking cows graze fields of data gold Podcast: Power to the people — and all their connected devices What you really need to know before buying connected devices How the internet of things may make parents less worried but more neurotic Shark Week for the internet of things What the Internet of Things can learn from Minecraft and Lemmings Podcast: How IBM uses chaos theory, data and the internet of things to fix traffic Electric Imp aims to make the Internet of Things devilishly simple When devices can talk, will they conspire against you? Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.Analyzing the wearable computing marketSiri: Say hello to the coming “invisible interface”The connected planet: Smartphones aren’t the only player    
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As yesterday’s announcements made clear, there is no doubt that Google is working very actively on its Maps apps, both on the desktop and on mobile. Although the desktop version of the new Google Maps is currently invite-only and the mobile version a little further off still, we do now know that the service will be far more tightly integrated with the rest of Google’s portfolio and a range of other data sources, too. It remains to be seen whether Google really manages to pull this off in an uncluttered way, particularly on smartphones, but the changes do look promising. However, Google’s mobile maps do present one problem, particularly for those travelling in foreign climes, and that doesn’t look set to change anytime soon: they only offer limited offline functionality. Maps for specific places can be easily pre-cached for offline use, but you won’t get search or routing functionality without a data connection. Enter Skobbler with its new Android app, GPS Navigation & Maps. A couple of weeks ago, the Berlin-based startup heavily revamped its iOS ForeverMap app to bring it in line with the more advanced Android version of the same, and now it’s moved the Android app on significantly – so significantly that it’s even renamed it. All in one To be precise, Skobbler’s new Android app combines two previous apps, one of which was for maps (ForeverMap 2, whose users will get this upgrade for free) and the other (Skobbler Navigation, shut down a year back) for turn-by-turn navigation. The company claims, rightly I believe, that the result is the only Android app to combine both these functionalities for both online and offline use. What’s more, open-stuff fans can revel in the fact that GPS Navigation & Maps is based on the crowdsourced and highly accurate OpenStreetMap project. The fact that the app is priced at just £1 ($1.52) shouldn’t hurt either, although buyers should be aware that this comes with only one free downloadable country for offline use. Beyond that, cities will cost £0.77, states £1.11, countries £2.22, continents £4.44 and the whole world £7.77 – not only is this way cheaper than the likes of TomTom Navigation or CoPilot Live, but it also provides the opportunity to download specific areas rather than entire countries or continents: a useful option if you’re concerned about storage. A separate free version gives you full online maps for the world, along with a 14-day trial of the turn-by-turn, voice-aided navigation functionality. Skobbler’s iOS maps app allows you to download any country for offline use for free, but turn-by-turn functionality comes in a separate app on that platform. Like that app, though, GPS Navigation & Maps acts as a showcase for Skobbler’s zippy NGx map engine – the company is keen on selling its technology to partners, particularly those in the automotive industry. Anti-Google opportunity? Skobbler’s app has clear appeal for those travelling abroad – data roaming charges are still eye-bleedingly high in most cases – but what about customers who are just looking to use it locally? There, the company may find a willing audience in the shape of the anti-Google resistance. One peculiarity of Android is that, being Linux-based and ubiquitous, it’s the platform of choice for the open-source crowd while also providing a growing privacy threat, of the kind that horrifies the same people. The mapping updates that Google announced on Wednesday are clearly designed to make Google Maps more of a personalized interface for everyday movements. This should manifest itself in a particularly tightly integrated way on Android, as the lines blur between Maps and Now and everything else Google is baking into the same pie. A lot of people won’t like that. It’s unlikely that anyone will completely replace Google Maps for Android with a service such as Skobbler’s, as Google’s in-house location infrastructure is probably too baked-in these days to avoid. But, in terms of consciously firing up a mapping app to negotiate the world around them, some people may find value in choosing a non-Google option, so that their often highly personal location searches don’t get fed into the Great Google Data Stew. For those people, GPS Navigation & Maps could provide a tantalizing alternative. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.Google and the Ghost of Silicon Valley PastThe fourth quarter of 2012 in mobileA look back at mobile in the third quarter    
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The traditional approach to acquiring, managing and financing IT infrastructure is rapidly transforming through a combination of technology advancements and market structure shifts. Cloud computing set the technical underpinnings in motion, but the IaaS market options available to customers today present challenges that are holding the market back: Severe lack of clarity in pricing and consumption by providers Limited flexibility in configuration and management No way to hedge risk against changes in infrastructure demand However, open marketplaces for IT infrastructure are emerging that provide a neutral platform for infrastructure buyers, sellers and brokers to contract for immediate or future delivery of IaaS. These markets are introducing a true brokerage model that will focus on the business of compute rather than the technical organization of compute.  And the business of compute has nothing to do with cloud computing or the technology driving this revolution. The business of compute is about approaching compute, network and storage infrastructure as a fungible commodity traded on an open market exchange. You can expect to see major announcements on open IaaS marketplaces later this year. In the meantime, attend the webinar on this topic on May 23, 2013, at 10 a.m. PT. REGISTER HERE. Key topics of discussion will include: How are IaaS marketplaces addressing key market challenges today? What lessons can we learn from previous marketplace failures and successes? What is the role of IaaS brokers and what new products will they develop? How will IaaS marketplaces affect staffing, operations and cost?     
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Solar company SunPower plans to roll out its first energy storage product, possibly lithium-ion batteries, in a bid to expand its share of the rooftop solar market, company executives said on Wednesday during the company’s analyst day. CEO Tom Werner told analysts that selling energy increasingly will require more comprehensive solutions, including energy storage technologies, and explained “this is a fundamental change in how solar companies compete.” Adding energy storage reflects the evolution of the company, which started off as a solar cell and panel maker before it entered the power plant development business. SunPower has carried out pilot energy storage projects in recent years and worked with different energy storage technologies, including advanced lead acid and zinc bromide batteries. But lithium-ion batteries “will likely be the first technology to have an impact,” said Jack Peurach, executive vice president of products. The emergence of electric cars plays a role in making lithium-ion battery the front runner for being paired with solar, he added. SunPower & Flextronics Factory in Milpitas, CA SunPower executives didn’t provide details, such as the timing and battery suppliers, for its energy storage plans. But the discussion puts SunPower on a growing roster of solar energy companies that are offering or plan to offer energy storage. SolarCity, for example,  has been bundling lithium-ion batteries from Tesla Motors with its solar energy systems and applying for a California program that subsidizes energy storage installations. One Roof Energy is working with battery maker Silent Power to roll out products. Korean conglomerate Hanwha Group, which runs a solar panel manufacturing subsidiary, is an investor in both OneRoof and Silent Power. SunEdison has done a pilot project with a battery system from startup Seeo. Energy storage will be part of SunPower’s plan to expand its reach in the commercial and residential market, where it sells power purchase agreements or leases via its dealers or its own project development business. The company designs the power purchase agreements for its commercial and government customers and leases for homeowners. Power purchase agreements and leases work in similar ways: business or home owners sign a long-term contract of up to 20 years and pay a monthly fee for the solar electricity from the SunPower solar energy systems on their rooftops. SunPower’s foray into the energy storage business will prompt more comparison with SolarCity, which started in 2006 as purely a solar installer. SolarCity is most active in the residential and commercial markets, but it scored the first utility project last year. As a result, the two companies have been competing more intensely in recent years. In fact, a lawsuit filed by SunPower against SolarCity and five people last year highlighted that rivalry. The lawsuit accused five former SunPower employees of stealing confidential data and brought the data with them when they went to work for SolarCity. The two companies settled on Dec. 31, 2012, and a judge dismissed the lawsuit in January, SolarCity said in its 2012 annual report. It didn’t disclose the amount of the settlement. SunPower executives didn’t say whether they will sell energy storage in the United States first or in other regions. Werner said that, for now, energy storage makes financial sense only in markets that offers government incentives. That would include California, Germany and Japan. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.After Solyndra: analyzing the solar industryA 2011 Green IT ForecastOpportunities for the future of batteries    
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With Google opening up its Google Compute Engine (GCE) for anyone and expanding the feature set of its Google Cloud Platform, the web giant appears to have its gaze fixed on easing Amazon Web Services’ lock on the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) market. But it won’t be easy, with many startups and enterprises already entrenched in AWS thanks to its early general availability and plethora of services. Some developers hanging out at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco on Wednesday thought Google could be a viable option for certain workloads going forward, but they don’t see it as the it cloud for today. And that might be all right, because adoption of IaaS clouds is still far from complete, and because Google is indicating that it has plenty of ideas for enhancing the Google Cloud Platform. “We’ll continue to add new services which lower the amount of tedious grunt work that developers have to do,” Greg DeMichillie, a director of product management for the Google Cloud Platform, told members of the press in a roundtable discussion following the Google cloud announcements. Better networking services could be one area for innovation, he suggested. Indeed, my colleague Barb Darrow has expressed on multiple occasions that Google’s position in the IaaS world is worth watching. The trouble is, the road ahead looks steep. The current cloud market A July-October 2012 survey of 100 IT professionals at medium and large enterprises from 451 Research showed that 19 percent that were running IaaS deployments were doing so on Amazon, considerably more than on other options. Verizon came in second with 8 percent, followed by Rackspace with 5 percent. Google apparently held 1 percent or less. Looking toward the future, respondents named the vendors they expected their companies to move to, with CenturyLink, Amazon and Verizon coming out on top. Google had 1 percent or less there, too. Why the lack of presence from Google in the standings? For one thing, “Amazon has been pushing this game along for a long period of time,” said Peter ffoulkes, research director at 451 Research. The other factor is that not many enterprises are ready to run on public clouds. ffoulkes fully expects Google to show up in the rankings in forthcoming surveys, but it’s too early for him to say when. To be fair, since the 2012 survey wrapped up, Google has added to the Google Cloud Platform, with moves such as adding capabilities to BigQuery. It’s also acquired Talaria for software that could make Google server use more efficient. And remember that Google Compute Engine launched less than a year ago and just became generally available today. Google has serious work to do in making the Google Compute Engine a top choice for enterprises. For one thing, Google has not (yet) opened a marketplace of services on par with AWS. Such a step could help Google in its efforts to drive more developers onto GCE. What developers think Google has a few opportunities to gain marketshare with GCE. One startup I spoke with has run workloads on Google App Engine (GAE) for a few years but still does data analysis and data mining on on-premise servers. Since GAE and GCE hook in well with each another, the startup is looking at moving the on-prem activities to GCE. Another area of opportunity is around using GCE for narrowly tailored high-performance workloads that scale out. Engineers at one major retailer in the United States said they were exploring public clouds for certain jobs, and Google Compute Engine is a possibility for exactly this sort of thing. Generally speaking, strong results could lead to larger deployments beyond tests and lower-priority applications. Developers praised Google for introducing granular pricing down to the minute instead of the hour after a 10-minute minimum and increasing the size of a persistent disk from 1 TB to 10 TB. But just as AWS has had notable service issues, Google App Engine, the Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) piece of the Google Cloud Platform, has had multiple service disruptions of its own, and that doesn’t help adoption. Plus, several developers noted that Amazon was the forerunner in the AWS market, which seems to be a major reason why Google faces a steep road. One developer said his hosted VoIP company just moved from on-premise servers to AWS. Translation: Too little, too late, Google. The lock-in question However long it takes for Google Compute Engine to get on the board in the IaaS conversation, the ease of migration from AWS and other IaaS providers to Google will eventually become a hot topic. What sort of lock-in issues could arise? That’s been a good question since cloud computing took off a few years ago and as options have proliferated. Amazon in particular has faced criticism on the lock-in point. Performance is a whole other matter. Will GCE be a kind of exotic car of public clouds? Different customers will have different answers to that question, as not all workloads were created equal. Benchmarks attempt to give some insight into this, but they have drawbacks. As developers try spinning up instances on GCE and do comparisons for themselves, the subject of price will come up. Google foresees more price cuts to its cloud services, as it’s in the company’s best interests to make its infrastructure as efficient as possible. That could entice more enterprises to join in. At the same time, AWS is likely to keep growing, slashing its prices and speedily bolting down enterprise customers. (To get a peek at what Amazon has in mind, check out GigaOM’s Structure conference in San Francisco on June 19, when Werner Vogels, Amazon’s chief technology officer, will take the stage.) However the game plans play out, Google is optimistic at the moment. “It’s obviously a hugely important use case for us, a hugely important customer set,” DeMichillie said of enterprise users. “It’s early days, but we think over the next 12 months, we expect to see a pretty big upswing in that.” Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.The fourth quarter of 2012 in cloudCloud computing 2013: how to navigate without a mapInfrastructure Q1: Cloud and big data woo enterprises    
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As a serious smartphone addict who jumps at the sound of an iPhone buzz, I know that I really don’t need more internet in my life. So I haven’t had much interest in Google Glass so far, assuming it would just serve to put more apps in front of my face that my current attention span doesn’t need, and that my iPhone could easily handle. But this morning when I was walking through downtown San Francisco before Google’s I/O conference, I was crossing a street when I saw a particularly pretty scene of the sun rising between two buildings. Hoping I’d have enough time before the walk signal ended, I dug my iPhone out of my bag, swiped to open the camera, snapped a photo, and then jogged to the curb to avoid getting hit by cars. (Mom, I hope you’re not reading this.) So a few hours later, when I tried on Google Glass for the first time and said the command “take photo,” instantly capturing a photo of my colleague Kevin Tofel standing in front of me without moving either my head or my hands, I started to see the appeal of Glass. I’d read a decent amount about the technology since Sergey Brin dropped from a helicopter at last year’s Google I/O, and not only was I sort of confused by the specifics of how Glass works (A camera on your face? Facebook on top of everyday life? How do people see when they’re wearing them?), I was turned off by the severely dorky appearance and the idea of constantly monitoring the things around you. They seemed vaguely creepy and intrusive. I was not attracted to the idea of wearing them as a normal person walking around town. But even though I only got a short spin with the technology on Wednesday, it only took a few seconds for me to understand why people are so jazzed about Glass. I put them on my face and was immediately impressed with how lightweight they felt. Despite their futuristic, clunkly-on-one-side appearance, they didn’t feel very bulky or heavy on my face, and it was easy to see the room around me while wearing them. (Even though they weren’t fitted specifically for my face the way they would be if I purchased them.) The screen felt much smaller and unobtrusive than I’d imagined, and it wasn’t hard to swipe the side of the glasses to navigate the screen. But it was the voice commands, and the “take photo” command, that changed my perspective on the technology. Would I spend $1,500 on them right now? Definitely not. If you need prescription glasses of any kind, it would be hard to combine those with Glass. While Google has launched them in some jazzy new colors, you still look absurd wearing them (whether you’re in the shower or not). This probably makes me somewhat vain, but I’d want them to look cooler and less futuristic before I wore them in everyday life (seriously, embed them in some Warby Parker frames, and I’d be way more down with the idea.) And once apps start streaming into the glasses, I can’t imagine how seeing New York Times headlines and tweets wouldn’t be distracting while you’re doing things like walking or driving. Of course, none of this even gets into the new etiquette that would have to arise from the spread of Glass. But despite all the drawbacks, speaking the words for the “take photo” command made me realize that even if wearable computing has a pretty dorky image right now, the potential practical applications for real-life people who don’t consider themselves nerds are endless — once the technology gets a little more refined, and we figure out how to use them in public. I talked to one Google employee who said she sat in her sister’s graduation and streamed video through Glass to family members from afar, and another who said she uses it to take photos of her little kids when her hands are full. I would imagine it could be huge for people with disabilities, or people doing outdoor sports (Kevin mentioned you could take photos of mile markers while running a marathon.) “Every time we’ve tried to do something crazy we’ve made progress,” Larry Page said on stage today. So does Google Glass seem a little nuts right now? Sure. But if a few years from now I can snap a photo of a sunrise without having a near-miss with traffic, I’m open to the possibilities. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.Analyzing the wearable computing marketSocial media in Q1: commerce and discovery dominatedGoogle doesn’t like walled gardens — except its own    
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So much for my hardware predictions of what to expect at Google I/O. Instead of an updated Nexus 7 tablet or a new Chromebook model, Google spent three hours during Wednesday’s keynote to discuss services and feature upgrades for both Chrome and Android. I do think that in the coming months we’ll see improved Google devices, but that’s not what this year’s I/O event is all about. And even though I’m a gadget guy, I can appreciate the message Google is sending this week. Unification was the big theme As I tweeted during our live blog, there was a very common theme throughout the keynote and it had absolutely nothing to do with hardware: If I could describe #io13 in one word it would be "unification". Same features, services, UI and experiences on Chrome and Android.— Kevin C. Tofel (@KevinCTofel) May 15, 2013 Any thoughts of Chrome merging with Android in the traditional sense can be dismissed based on what I heard at the keynote. Instead, the two distinct platforms are sharing services, APIs, and design cues. What does that mean? Whatever Google services you use on an Android phone or tablet can be used on a desktop or laptop in Chrome, for example. For the first time, Chrome as a browser is good enough to be the glue that ties user experiences together between mobile devices and traditional computers. Where are the commonalities between web, tablet and phone now? How so? Take a look at the new Google+ stream. It appears more card-based — akin to Google Now — and looks the same whether you’re viewing it in Chrome on a Windows PC or on a Nexus 10 tablet. And although it’s a smaller screen, the same basic view appears in Google+ on an Android phone or an iPhone for that matter. The phones only show a single column of information and you can have the exact same Google+ view in Chrome, or you can set the browser to show two columns. (Hint: Click More in Google+ on Chrome, scroll to the bottom of the menu and you’ll see the Stream Layout option) Here’s another example (and one I’m very happy to see): not only can developers take advantage of Google Cloud Messaging for push notifications in apps or web, but Google is synchronizing notifications. So if you get a new Google+ comment notification on your Android device and read the comment, that same notification won’t appear in Chrome. Or vice versa, of course. Many of the the same services — including the new Google Play Games services — are supported Chrome, Android and even iOS, now so Google is unifying the experience, making it irrelevant whether you’re using the web, a phone or a tablet. Google definitely has a two platform approach Google has said in the past that we’ll see a merger of sorts between Chrome and Android. Now it has shown what it means: Iterate and mature the browser with new technologies that can provide the same experience as some native apps in Android and iOS. It won’t matter what you use in the future in Google’s world: Chrome is the realm of the desktop and laptop while Android (which also has a Chrome app) will power phones and tablets. The services and APIs that Google offers, however, will allow developers to extend their reach across both of these platforms. With the new Google+ single sign on service, for example, users can get access to a web app or its Android counterpart. In fact, I was most impressed when Google demonstrated a web app that, upon signing in, asked if it should remotely install the Android application on a phone. These services are the glue that will tie Google’s two platforms together. So what about the next version of Android and hardware? Frankly — and in hindsight — I’m not sure Google needed to introduce an Android update, a refreshed Nexus 7 tablet a new Nexus phone. The story today was about making the experience better and seamless on existing hardware. And we still have tens of millions of devices that haven’t been upgraded to the Jelly Bean version of Android: Iterating it again only exacerbates the Android update challenges. Instead, Google has provided developers new tools to further improve their web and Android apps at the same time. I can already see the benefits on my Chromebook Pixel: Google+ is already better, the new Hangouts messaging is improved and my preview of the updated Maps app is incredible. Using the touchscreen, I could zoom out to see the Earth with real-time cloud cover, see the stars where they’re supposed to be and then zoom back in to view panoramic virtual tours of historic locations. The new photo editing in Chrome is on my Pixel, as well, and Google’s cloud power is making my photos look better automatically. Do I wish there was new hardware? Perhaps, but that’s just the gadget geek in me speaking. Software and services are just as important as hardware and, so far, I like what I see there. As long as Google continues to unify the Chrome web and Android experience in a positive way, I can live with my old phone and tablet. 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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It doesn’t have a cool name like Cassandra, Voldemort or MongoDB, but Google is offering up a non-relational database called Google Cloud Datastore. Like almost everything the company has done since announcing its Compute Engine service at last year’s IO conference — including the rest of the features it announced on Wednesday — Cloud Datastore looks like a direct shot at current cloud champion Amazon Web Services. AWS has a managed NoSQL database service called DynamoDB that’s replicated across three availability zones to ensure its stays up. Google’s Cloud Datastore sounds eerily similar, according to the product’s website (although Google calls its product “NoSQL-like). It’s fully managed, built for speed and scale and is replicated across data centers. For some queries, Google even promises that Cloud Datastore will support ACID transactions. You can get details on the service and how it works here. Pricing information is available here. If its goal is to compete with AWS, though, Google’s cloud platform still has a long way to go. Yes, it has most of the key services in place and even some seeming advantages in certain areas, but it’s lacking the incredible breadth of services AWS offers — everything from virtual server instances to a devops service to a hosted data warehouse. It’s also lacking a seven-year reputation for being an all-around reliable platform and an ever-growing list of large-enterprise users. Of course, there’s also an argument to be made that Google doesn’t really have to compete with AWS at all when it comes to cloud computing. AWS made a name for itself by  taking all the new workloads from startups and corporate developers who wanted to build new types of applications and didn’t want to deal with the IT department; Google has the same opportunity ahead of it. New programming languages like Go and the unique nature of the rest of Google’s services, Cloud Datastore included, could make it the go-to place for a class of developers that likes to push the envelope in terms of application design. Oh, and Google has a little ace up its sleeve called Android. If someone is so inclined to develop mobile applications for the most-popular mobile operating system on the planet, there are worse places to host them. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.Infrastructure Q1: Cloud and big data woo enterprisesAmazon’s DynamoDB: rattling the cloud marketEmerging trends in the non-relational database market    
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Wi-Fi is everywhere and more often than not it’s free for the taking. Pretty much everyone but airlines and fancy hotels are opening their networks to all comers. The only problem is that open networks are, well, wide open. They’re unencrypted and insecure, exposing users to a world of electronic eavesdroppers and attacks. Hotspot maker Ruckus Wireless, however, has developed a kind of ad-hoc security system for open hotspots, which it plans to release next week with the next version of its access point management software. Called Open Secure Hotspot, the technology automatically generates encryption keys for any user who logs into an open Ruckus hotspot, granting them a secure connection within moments, Ruckus VP of marketing David Callisch told GigaOM. Ruckus started out as a supplier of IPTV wireless streaming nodes and enterprise wireless LANs, over which security measures were much easier to enforce. But as Ruckus’s public access network business grew it found itself supplying more Wi-Fi gear that enterprises and service providers simply wanted open to the public, Callisch said. Those customers didn’t want their open networks turning into playgrounds for Firesheep, man-in-the-middle attackers and other internet nasties, Callisch said, so they pressed Ruckus to develop a secure form of open Wi-Fi. The rather confusing diagram above details how the security software works, but here’s what it boils down to: Anytime an unknown user connects to an upgraded Ruckus hotspot he or she will receive the option of establishing a secure connection to the network. If the user opts in, Ruckus’s network gateway will generate what Ruckus is calling a dynamic pre-shared key, randomly generated for each device. Users can either input the key by launching an executable file sent by the gateway, or they can manually enter the key into their Wi-Fi settings. It may not seem like the most elegant way of getting online in a hotel lobby or public square, but Callisch but it’s still a relatively simple process, and it beats the alternative – surfing the internet over a naked connection or installing virtual private network (VPN) software on the fly. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.New solutions for the evolving mobile networkCES 2012: a recap and analysisHow to deliver the next-generation web experience
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If you’ve ever tried to call your doctor with an impromptu medical question, you know that a single call can quickly turn into non-stop game of phone tag that may or may not have a productive ending. PingMD, a New York startup, initially launched a few years ago as an app to help digitally-savvy parents communicate with their kids’ pediatricians. But after analyzing how tens of thousands of patients and doctors were communicating during their pilot, they decided to expand their scope. This month, they relaunched their app for iOS and Android as a service that enables doctors to securely communicate with their patient, as well as peers. And on Wednesday, the company said it had raised $2.5 million from angel investors, including RT Investment Partners, Stonewater Captial and SNL Financial. The round follows $1.33 million raised last year. According to a 2010 New England Journal of Medicine study analyzing communication in a Philadelphia doctor’s practice, the average doctor in that practice took 24 phone calls a day and wrote 17 emails on top of seeing a full load of patients, processing their prescriptions, reviewing lab reports and completing all the other tasks that come with the territory. “There’s a lot of call volume going on,” said CEO Dr. Gopal Chopra, who co-founded PingMD with his wife Dr. Manju Chopra. “And the indirect cost is the time spent trying to get you [the patient] an answer.” Even though electronic medical records and digital practice management tools can enable doctors to look up patient information and history more efficiently, Chopra said the call volume can be difficult for doctors. And that’s especially true for those doctors who are open to emailing or messaging with patients through mobile phones or other more secure services. Through PingMD, doctors can enable patients to securely message them with text, as well as relevant pictures and video, and they can easily loop in other doctors and nurses in their practices as well as other specialists. For example, if you have a weird rash on your arm, you could send a note and picture to your doctor and then she could reply with her feedback, as well as add a dermatologist to the circle. While Chopra estimates that response times on email and other secure messaging systems tends to average 72 hours because the message is routed through an administrator and then the doctor, the average response time on PingMD is an hour (although it can take from a few seconds to several hours depending on the severity of the case). To make money, PingMD takes a software-as-a-service approach, billing itself to hospitals and physician networks as a way to gather data about how doctors are communicating and spending their time and how the hospital should allocate their resources. At the moment, Chopra said they’re piloting PingMD with several institutions and physician networks. The startup is one of several companies attempting to help doctors improve their productivity and prepare for an influx of new Obamacare patients. American Well and Sherpaa, for example, work with employers to help patients and doctors connect via video chats and phone calls. HealthTap targets consumers with a service for messaging and querying a network of doctors. And Ringadoc offers doctors a simple service for handling after-hours calls and streamlining patient communication. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.Health care and big data in 2012A near-term outlook for big dataThe future of mobile health, 2011–2016    
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The value of Bitcoin fell more than 10% overnight on Tuesday, apparently in response to Homeland Security’s decision to seize funds at a key exchange, Mt. Gox, where speculators trade the cyber-currency. The price has since returned to early-week levels, however, while new details came out about the nature of fed’s investigation. Here’s a look at the median price: In any case you missed it yesterday, the federal government took its most serious action to date against Bitcoin-related activity when it shut down money transfers between Mt. Gox and payment processing service, Dwolla. Dwolla is one of the few easy ways Americans can buy and sell Bitcoins at Mt. Gox. On Wednesday, Ars Technica unearthed the search warrant that Homeland Security used to seize a bank account that Mt. Gox used to obtain dollars from Dwolla. The account was registered to Mugillum Sigillum LLC, a Delaware subsidiary of Japan-based Mt. Gox. In an affidavit, a federal agent states that Mt. Gox owner, Mark Karpeles, lied when opening the bank account in 2011. Specifically, Karpeles said “no” to questions asking if he would be engaged in a currency business and money transmissions. This misrepresentation means Karpeles has apparently violated a law prohibiting unlicensed money transmission businesses. Breaking the law can result in a 5-year prison term and permits the feds, under another statute, to seize property and keep it. So what does all this mean for Bitcoin aficionados? In short, the investigation is more bad news for Mt. Gox and Karpeles than for the currency itself. The loss of Dwolla as a payment mechanism at Mt. Gox will crimp a popular source of liquidity for speculators but more options are appear poised to come along. These include Coinbase which recently received $5 million from Fred Wilson’s Union Square Ventures, and OpenCoin which just got backing from Google Ventures. To hear what all the Bitcoin fuss is about, come join us on Thursday in San Jose for a GigaOM meet-up from 6 to 9 where we’ll be talking with CEO who use it as well as engineers from Facebook and Google about the currency’s perils and possibilities. The event is free (and filling up fast!) thanks to our friends at Ribbit Capital. It includes cocktails too.   Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.GigaOM Research highs and lows from CES 2013How HR can make the case for workforce analyticsThe 2013 task management tools market
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Apple announced Wednesday that the App Store has hit 50 billion app downloads, a singificant milestone for the company only a few months after it announced 40 billion downloads back in January. Apple’s App Store downloads and downloads from the Google Play store became roughly even last fall, as Erica Ogg wrote recently, and then in the first quarter of 2013, Google pulled ahead in sheer number of mobile app downloads worldwide. However, Apple got 74 cents for every dollar spent on apps during the that quarter, according to a report by Canalys published in April, and the 50 billion downloads now puts Apple back with a slight lead. The company announced the number of downloads on the first day of Google’s I/O conference, as Google announced that its Google Play store has seen 48 billion app downloads since launch in late 2008. However, it’s good to remember that app downloads only tell part of the story — someone could download an app and never use it again. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.How to Market Your iPhone App: A Developer’s GuideAn overview of the photo and video app marketOTT technologies and strategies for broadcasters    
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Mellanox, the company famous for its Infiniband chips but which is also branching out into Ethernet, says it intends to buy photonics startup Kotura in a cash deal valued at $82 million. The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2013. Koruta, which I profiled last November, makes a photonics chip that allows signals to pass between chips using light (photons) instead of electrons. This makes communications between chips faster, something becoming more important inside the data center as networks become flatter, faster and fatter. The Kotura chip is a fiber-based transceiver that can deliver 100 gigabits per second inside the data center. The transceiver could live on a board next to the CPU or inside a switch and could eventually expand to deliver a terabit per second (Tbps). Currently it’s used in high-performance compute clusters, which are also the most-popular home for Infiniband. From my post in November: While one 1 Tbps is crazy fast when you consider that many data centers are currently upgrading to 10 gigabit Ethernet between servers, it’s going to be necessary. Arlon Martin, VP of Marketing, Government Contracts & Industry Relations at Kotura, tells me that customers are building products for the high-performance computing sectors but also for real-time data processing. The goal is bringing a low-power and less expensive optical part into a rack of servers, able to scale up to terabit per second capacities. Kotura isn’t the only company trying to bring fiber optics into the data center. Plexxi is building fiber-based switches, while Facebook and the Open Compute Project in January announced their own plans to integrate photonics into their open hardware program. Intel, Cisco and IBM all have research or have acquired startups in this space as well. With its emphasis on fast networking, it makes sense for Mellanox to follow suit. The company plans to continue offering the Kotura transceiver and open a research center in Monterrey Park, Calif., where Kotura is headquartered. From the Mellanox release: “Operating networks at 100 Gigabit per second rates and higher requires careful integration between all parts of the network. We believe that silicon photonics is an important component in the development of 100 Gigabit InfiniBand and Ethernet solutions, and that owning and controlling the technology will allow us to develop the best, most reliable solution for our customers,” said Eyal Waldman, president, CEO and chairman of Mellanox Technologies. At the time of my profile, Kotura had raised undisclosed millions from ARCH Venture Partners, Fuse Capital, GF Private Equity and others. It has an established customer base in the telecommunications business where it has sold product since 2006. But last year it began targeting the data center, where it apparently attracted Mellanox’s eye. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.Infrastructure Q4: Big data gets bigger and SaaS startups shineInfrastructure Q2: Big data and PaaS gain more momentumBig Data, ARM and Legal Troubles Transformed Infrastructure in Q4
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Electric car maker Tesla announced on Wednesday that it could raise another $830 million in a combination of a new stock offering, and newly issued convertible senior notes. Tesla says it plans to sell another 2.70 million shares of common stock and $450 million worth of notes, in addition to an option for investors to purchase another 405,454 shares of stock and $67.5 million in notes. On top of that Tesla says CEO Elon Musk plans to buy $100 million worth of common stock, of which $45 million will be bought in the offering, and $55 million will be bought directly from Tesla. Tesla says it will use part of these funds — the notes specifically — to pay back the entirety of the loan to the Department of Energy early, and will also use some of the funds for other general corporate purposes. Tesla raised a $465 million loan from the DOE and has previously said it will pay that back in half the time it’s been allotted. So, that goal of half the time, has now been condensed even further. Tesla has talked about raising more money for awhile, and many have speculated that company would want more funds to grow. This will be Tesla’s fourth offering (an S-3!). Back in 2011, Tesla also used a follow-on offering combined with a private placement to raise funds, and did so again, raising $221 million, in late 2012. The company went public in the Summer of 2010. Tesla’s shares have been on a tear recently, and traded over $90 per share this week. On this news, Tesla stock was up 5.49 percent in after hours trading. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.Electric vehicle outlook: 2012–2017After Solyndra: analyzing the solar industryGreen IT Q1: Cleantech Breaking Out — and Bracing for Hard Times    
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Drum roll, please. Google Compute Engine is now available to everyone, not just those who pay $400 per month for Google Gold support. (Update: Actually, it turns out folks can sign up for GCE starting at 6 p.m. PDT on Wednesday.) Notably, Google will offer its resources in sub-hour increments — something that public cloud kingpin Amazon Web Services does not support (although other providers like Cloud Sigma and Profitbricks do). Users don’t have to buy a whole hour of an instance, but can buy instances by the minute with a 10-minute minimum, Google SVP Urs Hölzle, said in a Google I/O 2013 session Wednesday afternoon. Other perks, per Hölzle’s blog post: Shared-core instances provide smaller instance shapes for low-intensity workloads. Advanced Routing features help you create gateways and VPN servers that enable you to build applications spanning your local network and Google’s cloud Large persistent disks support up to 10 terabytes per volume, which translates to 10X the industry standard Hölzle also noted that Google will offer 10TB persistent disks, something an “unnamed cloud competitor” does not offer after seven years in business. As some expected, Google also announced PHP support for Google App Engine (GAE). Google announced GCE at last year’s event in June, and started opening up access to select users a few months later. Last month, it let Google Gold customers in. The ecosystem is getting ready too: MongoLab announced support for the Google cloud platform. This story was updated at 1:47 p.m. PDT to update availability information.  Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.Takeaways from the second quarter in cloud and dataA near-term outlook for big dataDissecting the data: 5 issues for our digital future
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Google will update its Google TV platform to Android 4.2.2, the company announced on Google+ Wednesday. The update will be rolled out to existing devices in the coming months, and it will bring all the major features of the latest version of Android and Chrome to TV screens. From the announcement post: “Today, Google TV is moving to the latest version of Android (Jelly Bean, 4.2.2), and we’ve refactored Google TV so that our TV OEM partners can update to future versions of Android in a matter of weeks rather than months. For developers, this means you can build TV experiences using the latest Android APIs, including the NDK. Today Google TV is also moving to the latest version of Chrome, and from now on Google TV benefits from Chrome updates on the same six week cycle that you’ve come to expect from Chrome. In Chrome on Google TV, we’ve added support for hardware-based content protection, enabling developers to provide premium TV content in HD within their web apps.” Some Google TV hardware partners have been working with the new version since February. This will be a big step for Google TV, which has been based on Android 3.2, or Honeycomb, since the last major OS update in late 2011. However, some Google TV owners won’t be able to take advantage of the update: A Google spokesperson confirmed Wednesday that it will only be available for ARM-based Google TV devices, and not on first-generation Intel-based Google TV set-top-boxes and TVs. Coming next to Google TV: video games? The update could bring a number of new features to Google TV that owners of newer Android handsets take for granted, including a better performance, a much-needed UI-update and an all likelihood some form of Google Now integration. It should also help developers by making it easier to port their Android 4.x-optimized apps to Google TV. But there’s another aspect that’s interesting about this step: Google also announced Google Play games services, a cloud gaming service that makes it possible to develop multi-player games and save game plays across devices, at I/O Wednesday. With Google TV switching to Android 4.2.2, it’s reasonable to assume that Google TV devices should have access to Google Play Games sooner or later as well. This could give the smart TV platform, which has so far only seen modest adoption, another leg to stand on, and potentially enable future Google TV devices to function as full-blown game consoles as well. This post was updated at 1:35pm with additional information about the devices that will receive the update. 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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YouTube took another big step towards fully embracing live video Wednesday: The video site opened up live streaming to a much larger crowd of publishers, allowing anyone who has an account in good standing and at least 1,000 channel subscribers to stream live on the site. The changes were announced on the YouTube Creator blog Wednesday, and they come conjunction with Google I/O, the internet giant’s annual developer conference. YouTube first introduced live streaming two years ago with select partners, and has since gradually expanded the number of approved live streamers by opening up the service to nonprofits and other partners. The site has also been offering any Google+ user to live stream so-called Hangouts on Air, which are essentially Hangouts that can be watched by an unlimited number of users. YouTube has been working behind the scenes for some time to make live streaming on its service more robust and attractive. It added the ability for select publishers to charge for live streams a year ago, and rolled out a completely revamped live streaming platform earlier this year. YouTube’s announcement could put pressure on dedicated live streaming services like Ustream, Livestream or Justin.tv. All of these companies at some point directly competed with each other for the live streaming masses, but most have since tried to differentiate themselves with their own take on live video: Justin spun out Twitch.tv to double down on video game live streams, and Livestream has been moving away from pre-roll advertising towards native monetization. Image courtesy of Flickr user kevindooley Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.How consumer media will change in 2013What the shift to the cloud means for the future EPGConnected consumer third-quarter 2012    
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Google’s search capabilities are king, and they’re getting richer now with features including the use of more powerful voice recognition on mobile devices and desktops, At its Google I/O conference Wednesday, company execs introduced “conversational search” capabilities. As Google implements its “hotwords,” users will no longer need to click the microphone in the search bar to start using voice recognition. All users have to do is say, “OK, Google,” and then speak commands. Google relies on natural language processing to figure out what users want to do and then serves up results. Combine that with Google search’s ability to go beyond serving up graphs and other data in response to user questions and actually weave in additional information Google thinks users are looking for. For example, if you search for China, Google will not only show changes in population over the decades, but it will also graph the countries  China’s population is often compared to — India and the United States. This is possible as Google keeps expanding knowledge graph, which now has more than 570 million entities, such as people, places and things, said Amit Singhal, a senior vice president and Google Fellow. Coming soon: More knowledgeable searches The knowledge graph operates with searches in English and eight other languages. Starting today, Singhal said, it will be  available in simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, Polish and Turkish. Google is also integrating personal data into searches in Chrome on desktops and laptops, which makes loads of sense. Flight reservations, restaurant reservations, package deliveries, and other user-generated information can be rapidly pulled up in the familiar interface of Google search results. That could put an end to going through emails of paper for this sort of information, saving users time. Johanna Wright, vice president of search and assist for mobile at Google. Source: Janko Roettgers Google has provoked lots of buzz and some concerns with its Google Now feature on mobile devices. The application will soon allow users to set reminders — to call someone, buy something — and expect them to occur only at the right time. Parlaying personal and general data Johanna Wright, vice president of search and assist for mobile at Google, took some of these new and upcoming features for a spin. As an example, she said she wanted to plan a day trip to Santa Cruz, Calif. So she said “OK, Google” — bringing Google to attention — “show me pictures of the Santa Cruz boardwalk.” Up came multiple pictures in a horizontal bar at the top of search results. She wanted to know the length of the trip and said, “OK, Google, how far is it from here?” Google figured out that “here” was her current location, in San Francisco, and “there” was Santa Cruz and displayed a map and spoke back that the drive would take an hour and 21 minutes. She then asked seafood restaurants and got a list. Then she asked Google a tough question: “How tall do you have to be to ride the Giant Dipper?” Google came back with, “You must be at least 4 feet 3 inches tall to ride the Giant Dipper. “Nice,” she said. “Looks like my son can go on.” On a mobile device, Wright also directed Google Now to send a quick email based on her voice commands, which happened right away, and set a reminder for her to call a friend when she arrives in New York on a business trip. FInally, she was able to tell Google to show the pictures she made during a previous trip. And about 16 pictures came right up. The combination of personal data with more traditional search data is a logical next step for Google, which has no shortage of either. While Google Now has critics, it could become more popular with these new features. And how could people — investors included — question Google’s innovations in search, its core product. The voice recognition capabilities make searching still more intuitive and set the bar still higher for everyone else. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.Controversy, courtrooms and the cloud in Q1NewNet Q4: Platform mania and social commerce shakeoutNewNet Q3: Facebook remakes headlines in social media
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Data center hardware nerds, where are you going to be on June 18 at noon? You may not be sure right now, but keep reading, because Facebook and the Open Compute Project are holding a hardware hackathon at Facebook headquarters that Tuesday. The winners will get time onstage to present to the audience at GigaOM’s Structure conference on June 19 and up to $10,000 in seed funding and mentoring from the foundation to prepare their idea for a venture capital pitch. The social network started borrowing the concept of hackathons from the software world at its Open Compute Summit in January, and now plans to make them a bigger deal for participants and the industry. There are a few tricks to making hackathons a success however, from tools to setting expectations. On tools, the trick is bringing in software that makes the job of collaborating on hardware designs faster and cheaper. The Open Compute hackathons use Upverter, a company that allows people to build circuits in a web browser and share them easily, as well as GrabCAD, a company that provides libraries of CAD files, so each hacker isn’t starting from scratch when it comes to designing standard physical products. As for expectations, John Kenevey, the technical evangelist for Open Compute and a program manager at Facebook, is keeping them modest. Unlike a software hackathon where a finished product might result, the hardware ideas or prototypes are still pretty rough. Results are judged on the completeness of the design, its applicability to scaled-out computing and the probability of the hack attracting funding, says Kenevey. For this competition both VCs and angels will vote on the winner. This time around, Facebook and the Open Compute Project are offering not just pizza and breadboards, but access to future capital. If the participant is an entrepreneur, The OCP will give $10,000 toward the development of the idea; coaching from the OCP foundation; and set up pitches with SKTA Innopartners, other VC firms, and angels. If you are a weekend hacker and win, the OCP will pay to patent your idea. In addition to monetary awards, you get to present at GigaOM’s Structure conference on June 19 before an audience of venture capitalists, executives in the infrastructure business and fellow entrepreneurs. The hackathon will be limited to about 100 people and registration is open. Participants should have general experience in designing hardware and will need to submit their idea when registering to see if they make the cut. Given that participants will have 12 hours to perfect their inventions, they should start thinking about them once they are selected. The Open Compute Project is looking for ideas around scaled out computing and the internet of things for this event. There are lots of options in those categories, so good luck. 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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