March, 2011 — Tech News and Analysis

Archive for March 2011

Just over than a month after discontinuing its Hadoop distribution to focus on the flagship Apache Hadoop project, Yahoo is proposing some changes to the Hadoop MapReduce component that could significantly improve processing performance. The proposal illustrates just how beneficial Yahoo’s renewed focus could be. Read More »

Solar Water Heating Draws New Money

Solar water heater market may not be brand new, but it’s attracting a lot of new comers in recent years as more state and local incentives crop up. Sunnovations, which launched its first water heating system last year has raised an A round funding. Read More »

 
 

Virgin Media, a U.K.-based cable company, has introduced a 100 Mbps broadband connection at reasonable prices. It might not be as cheap as broadband in Japan, but at least it’s better than what we’ve got in the U.S. Read More »

It’s interesting to talk with brick-and-mortar business owners who haven’t yet considered the possibilities of working remotely. The conversation quickly moves to ways to streamline work, increase the talent pool available to the company, and unique and exciting ways to promote the business online. Read More »

A mobile app with millions of downloads is noteworthy, but what I want to hear is how many users are still around in a week, a month, six months later and how often are they engaging? I want more information than a download number can give. Read More »

IPTV has become a growing force in the pay TV business, capturing more than 45 million subscribers worldwide. The accelerating growth in the IPTV market, while bad news for cable and satellite providers, shows the power of competition as new services enter the market. Read More »

For Gamers, a Way to Check in With Your Friends

The trend to add Foursquare-like features has turned into a bandwagon. But is HeyZap’s new Android app, which lets you check in to mobile games, one idea that’s more than just a copycat? The company thinks the app discovery system is shifting, just like gaming. Read More »

The New York Times delivered details regarding its new paywall today, with a tiered pricing plan that begs the question: Considering how well the Times iPhone and iPad apps have done, has the Gray Lady thought hard enough about the app user’s perspective? Read More »

The culture clash between American and European privacy cultures has been bubbling away for some time, but now European lawmakers have given the clearest signal yet to America’s Internet companies that they will be forced to abide by new, stricter privacy regulations. Read More »

Apple introduced three new ads for the iPhone that focus on key competitive advantages the iOS platform provides. Or, two of them focus on competitive advantages, and the last talks about iBooks and the iBookstore, which may be a sign of trouble to come. Read More »

Skype users, particularly small and medium-sized businesses, are getting a new powerful desktop tool that brings a lot of Google Voice management features to Skype. MySkypeOffice offers a host of in-bound call management tools for businesses that rely on Skype as their phone system. Read More »

Envision this: A few minutes before a scheduled meeting time, you get an SMS that shows photos of the participants, together with data from their LinkedIn profiles, their last few tweets, and links to your most recent emails with them. That’s the idea behind Noteleaf. Read More »

More Must Reads

Apple share value dropped by 2.3 percent on Tuesday, and 4.5 percent on Wednesday, marking the largest decline for the company in nine months. All while the iPad 2 sold out in stores and online across the U.S.. So why is Apple taking the hit? Read More »

Zong has been a major player in mobile payments, best known for allowing people to bill Facebook Credits purchases to their phone. But the provider sees a bigger audience in payments and is expanding support to Flash, Unity, the mobile web and to interactive TV platforms.… Read More »

The first speedtests for Verizon’s new 4G phone, the HTC ThunderBolt, are in and the device is a mobile broadband screamer. Such speeds eliminate on of the key reasons the mobile web has moved to lighter pages. Could 4G spur a change back to website complexity? Read More »

China is either the greatest opportunity or the greatest threat the U.S. green technology industry has ever faced — or, according to Chinese greentech experts at Wednesday’s Cleantech Forum in San Francisco, somewhere in between. Read More »

Next-generation nuclear technology could come to a screeching halt in the short term due to the backlash against nuclear in the wake of the Japanese nuclear incident, predicts Ray Rothrock, a partner at venture firm Venrock and a former nuclear engineer. Read More »

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