Stories for Jun. 20, 2013
German researchers make progress on a long-lasting battery for electric cars
A German research center claims to have produced a high-power battery for electric cars with an unprecedented 27-year lifetime. Read more »
Stories for Jun. 19, 2013
Caregivers love the web but developers could do more to engage them
Data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project suggests that caregivers in the U.S. are the most connected healthcare consumers, but the industry could still do a lot more to reach them. Read more »
Picking the cloud’s winners and losers: From SaaS to SDN
At Structure, a panel of IT execs and investors discussed the enterprise IT winners and losers of the past few years. Here’s what they had to say. Read more »
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Open Compute is bringing the maker movement to the enterprise
photo: Facebook
Building boards and designing circuits are all the rage in the consumer gadget world, but Facebook and the Open Compute Project are trying to bring that spirit to the enterprise. Read more »
How streaming can fit into the big data toolbox
While Hadoop and relational databases have their purposes, SQLstream thinks companies can also benefit from analyzing data as it comes in. Read more »
Vogels: Everyone wants Amazon cloud everywhere
More gated Amazon Web Services mini-clouds could pop up outside the U.S. going forward. Read more »
Fidelity Investments joins the OpenStack crowd
Rackspace’s OpenCloud has been getting some backing from technology companies, but the company also announced a major financial services company as a customer. Read more »
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Software is important to networking, and Juniper is on it
As more data centers become virtualized, networks aren’t keeping up with compute and storage, preventing easy scalability. Juniper wants to help solve the problem with software, while keeping its hardware relevant. Read more »
Server Density adds management to cloud monitoring tool
At Structure 2013, Server Density CEO launched version 2.0 of its cloud monitoring product. Read more »
How lipstick maker Revlon turned around its business with IT
Five years ago, cosmetics giant Revlon’s balance sheet wasn’t looking too good. But after its IT overhaul, the company is one of the most successful in its category, said the company’s CIO. Read more »
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Google’s legal counsel swears on a stack of bibles: “We are not in cahoots with the NSA”
Although reports continue to emerge about Google setting up systems to co-operate with the NSA’s surveillance and data-collection programs, the company’s chief lawyer repeatedly denied on Wednesday that it has done so. Read more »
Workday CEO Bhusri on why the company’s next big bet is finance
Workday feels good about its position in the HR industry and is expanding to financial companies next, co-CEO Aneel Bhusri said at the GigaOM Structure conference Wednesday. Why? It’s a $30 billion industry. Read more »
The tussle over animated GIFs
Facebook has begun rolling out their latest feature, photo commments. But no GIFs allowed. Read more »
Ford partners with Sirius XM again – this time for internet radio
photo: GigaOM
Ford cars with Sync AppLink can now get two Sirius XM feeds, a live one from a satellite and its on-demand internet radio service channeled through a smartphone. Read more »
How Twitter is using ThousandEyes to monitor operations
Twitter talked Wednesday about how it’s using ThousandEye, a new startup that launched at Structure, to identify problems where they happen. Read more »
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When it comes to a new networking OS, Linux is the Linux of networking
Networking is about to enter the modern era, where vendors no longer control the ecosystem says JR Rivers, the CEO and founder of Cumulus Networks. Read more »
Report: Microsoft, Nokia started talking acquisition but stopped
Microsoft was in talks with smartphone partner Nokia about buying up its mobile devices business, according to the Wall Street Journal. Read more »
iTunes users spend a lot on apps and music, not so much on ebooks (chart)
Besides the future of iOS and OS X, we’ve recently learned a lot from Apple about the state of iTunes. We can also know how much users are spending on apps and music, and how little they’re spending on video and books. Read more »
What do Beyonce and Kate Middleton have in common? Twitter for their baby news
photo: Getty Images
Will and Kate’s baby is expected in mid July, and the news will be delivered both in the traditional way — posted on an easel in front of Buckingham Palace–and on Twitter. Read more »
Why VMware isn’t flinching as Amazon’s cloud keeps growing
While VMware just revealed the specifics on its shared-infrastructure play and has to play catch-up with Amazon Web Services, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger can think of a few advantages of its own. Read more »
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Top jobs of the week in tech
photo: Shutterstock / Tom Mc Nemar
Looking for a job in tech? Each week we highlight some of the most interesting positions posted to GigaOM’s job board. Check out the latest tech gigs at leading companies across the country. Read more »
Stratasys acquires MakerBot for $403 million in stock
photo: Rani Molla
3D printing is hot and there is no better proof than Startasys’ decision to acquire MakerBot in a deal worth upto $604 million. MakerBot will continue to independently produce products, such as its popular Replicator 2. The deal creates a 3D printing powerhouse. Read more »
Did Facebook finally let its server count slip?
Facebook has never been direct about the number of servers it has, but today at the GigaOM Structure conference, one of its executives let slip that it runs “hundreds of thousands of machines.” Read more »
Europe to send rover to Mars
photo: ESA
The robot, which is capable of working autonomously, will search for signs of life in soil samples. A complementary satellite will monitor the planet’s atmosphere for unusual gases. Read more »
Google’s Jeff Dean talks about infrastructure, focus and recognizing cats
Jeff Dean, a Google Fellow who helped develop some of the web giant’s most innovative infrastructure projects, says focusing on one problem at a time is crucial for success Read more »
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New augmented reality glasses let teachers know when their students are falling behind
photo: Flickr/eventosuc3m
Researchers in Madrid develop a system that helps professors and students exchange feedback on class lectures in real time– and this could point the way toward an interesting use case Google Glass. Read more »
The best ways to edit and view Microsoft Office docs on your iPad
Microsoft finally made a native iOS Office app, but it’s for the iPhone. Here’s a roundup of your best options when it comes to accessing and editing your Office documents on an iPad. Read more »
Must read
Meet Facebook’s new network architecture: it’s a fabric
photo: JULIADEBOER PHOTOGRAPHY
Facebook experiences 1,000 times more traffic inside its data centers than it sends to and receives from outside users. That traffic growth has prompted the social network to design a fabric networking architecture. Read more »
Joyent CTO: The convergence of data and compute will disrupt global profits
The convergence of data and compute is so important that every profit pool will be up for grabs over next 30 years, says Joyent CTO Jason Hoffman. Read more »
With Dish (mostly) out of the way, the path is clear for Sprint-SoftBank deal
To close the deal, Sprint just needs a shareholder okay and the FCC to complete its review. The question, though, is whether SoftBank’s interest in Sprint is waning now that Dish has successfully courted Clearwire. Read more »
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Twitter takes another step toward television with Viacom deal
photo: GigaOM
Twitter and Viacom have announced a partnership that demonstrates the social media site’s growing reach. Read more »
Must read
Black Pearl Systems: Check out the secret startup of ex-Apple hardware guru Tim Bucher
Former Apple executive Tim Bucher has hired away some key technical leaders from Netflix, Apple, YouTube, Amazon and Intel for a new stealth hardware startup. Read more »
Building the cloud enterprise: Surviving an industry shift
The enterprise software industry of today could learn a lot from the consumer desktop software industry of the 1990s. Back then, the advent of the web sent out a wave of disruption, knocking some desktop developers completely out of business and driving the rest of us […] Read more »
Public Enemy teams up with BitTorrent to promote sharing and remixing
Always wanted to get a chance to remix a Public Enemy track? Now you can, thanks to a cooperation between the hip hop pioneers and BitTorrent. Read more »
Why CMOs and CIOs are sharing the IT load
According to Clorox CIO Ralph Loura, companies can no longer function by walling off their marketing from IT departments. IT is an everything, requiring much closer collaboration between the CIO and CMO. Read more »
Microsoft sees itself as one of the public-cloud horsemen, but time will tell
Microsoft sees itself as one of the horsemen of the public cloud, executive Satya Nadella said at GigaOM’s Structure conference on Wednesday. The thing is, the game has just begun. Read more »
Tipbit helps you run your life better on your iPhone
Exclusive: Startup by Microsoft/Citrix alum emerges from stealth to help you make sense of all the information flowing to your iPhone. Read more »
Rewire and experiment: why complex IT is better
IT departments have historically feared complexity because it implied creating systems they couldn’t afford. Now, in the age of cloud compute, it’s not just possible to make complex IT — it’s essential in order to ensure products and services are delivered ahead of competitors. Read more »
AMD executive: The data center is changing and ARM will be the compute
AMD is betting big on ARM chips in the data center because the demands of client computing have changed the way computing and data centers are built and designed. Read more »
Wary of private ed tech efforts, Big 10 schools weigh their own online learning network
A consortium of schools including the Big 10 universities is reportedly questioning partnerships with private ed tech companies and considering creating their own online education network. Read more »
