I met with a cool startup called DueDil, which is trying to provide a Lexis-Nexis-meets-Google service that aggregates public data on public and private companies from a variety of databases and uses that to create new financial metrics to determine success. Read more »
Broadband caps have become a reality at many large ISPs. Protecting the pay TV business is a rationale for caps, but as connected devices proliferate and bandwidth needs skyrocket, consumers may find those caps harder to live with and operators may find them more profitable. Read more »
As the needs for performance and power efficiency become more important, figuring out how to get the best hardware on the job without having to rewrite all your code becomes a problem computer science must solve. Is abstraction the answer? Read more »
The next generation of navigation chips for mobile phones may take advantage of Russia’s answer to GPS. Qualcomm, Broadcom and ST-Ericsson are reporteadly building GPS chips with support for Russia’s Glasnoss satellite system, which could improve location tracking inside devices, especially in urban areas. Read more »
In a quest to make faster chips and deliver low-power computing, scientists have creating good-enough chips that instead of performing every calculation to its exact decimal point, are allowed to make mistakes. This field of computing could improve big data analysis, networking and even hearing aids. Read more »
As we build technology into everything, creating entertainment, recommendation services and applications that can deliver whatever we need at the moment we ask, a new breed of application is being born, and the currency of this new breed of application is the application programming interface. Read more »
Intel isn’t letting ARM, VIA, or a bunch of startups run away with its server business. Today it outlined its plans for the micro server category and said it would create server chips with power consumptions as low as 10 watts per processor by 2012. Read more »
The world the added 196 million mobile subscribers during the fourth quarter of last year, a record amount. The growth is positive for operators, but they are already looking ahead to ensure that when everyone has a cell phone their sales keep trending up. Read more »
AT&T is planning to send out letters next week to notify subscribers about a coming broadband cap of 150 GB per month for DSL subscribers and 250 GB per month for U-Verse subscribers, says company spokesman Seth Bloom in an interview at SXSW. Read more »
What the CES or the Mobile World Congress is to gadgets, SXSW is to apps. I’m amazed by not only the number of apps that are launching, but by how prepared attendees are to try new apps out. Mobile-focused development has reached a tipping point. Read more »
Calxeda, the company building servers out of clusters of cell phone chips, to optimize power efficiency, has briefed analysts about its upcoming products. The results look compelling according to Forrester analyst Richard Fichera, who recommends that IT pros consider ARM servers in their strategic technology plans. Read more »
Japan is a hub for trans-Pacific undersea cables that provide Internet access between many regions of the world. About 20 submarine cables land in Japan, giving Friday’s 8.9-magnitude earthquake the potential to disrupt communications around the globe. Luckily reports of cable damage have been low. Read more »
The move toward cloud computing and webscale computing has helped Intel drive its earnings higher, while, a number of startups clearly see an opportunity to redesign servers and try new chip archiectures to deliver more power efficient performance for different workloads. But where is AMD? Read more »
Infinera has demonstrated that it can built an optic transmitter capable of delivering multi-terabit speeds, paving the way for growth of the next generation of the Internet. The world is moving toward 100 Gbps in the coming years, but this enables growth for decades to come. Read more »
SXSW has become cluttered with startups, and is a celebration of startups in general. But celebration has turned into a fetish — placing the act of creating a startup on a pedestal without casting any sort of critical eye on the likelihood of that startup succeeding. Read more »
Mobile operators are looking for dollars from the content producers. This time, it appears they want over-the-top providers to help fund the cost of building out their networks. But are Wi-Fi offload, congestion pricing and high-margin, machine-to-machine services enough to maintain healthy margins? Read more »
Chinese telecommunications equipment vendor Huawei has plans to invade the enterprise IT market. A Deutsche Bank analyst expects the company to introduce a line of servers, low-end switches, security, VoIP and storage products designed for the enterprise before the end of this year. Read more »
Fusion-io, which makes enterprise class solid state hard drives, filed to raise up to $150 million through an IPO. It rides three big trends: real-time data delivery, storing big data and greener data centers. The threat of an IPO also boosts the cost to acquire it. Read more »
The FCC may soon have a new chairman according to Washington blog, The Hill. The site reports that FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is ready to leave his role as head of the agency and says his name has been floated as the next Secretary of Commerce. Read more »
The heyday of the Sony Watchman, a portable TV with a crappy screen and even crappier battery life, may have never actually have dawned, but that’s not stopping the folks from the Open Mobile Video Coalition from pushing their hopes for mobile broadcast TV. Read more »
NEC has delivered a new type of experimental switch to European research institutions based on OpenFlow packet routing. The goal of OpenFlow is to fundamentally re-architect the Internet in a way that allows networks to be more flexible even as more data goes over them. Read more »
The giants of the web are taking on the giants in the telecommunications industry when it comes to optical networking. Google and Facebook are unhappy with the way the optical gear makers are building their wares, citing a slow time frame for products and uncessary features. Read more »
A Brazilian senator has pushed forth a bill that would declare access to broadband a social right in the country’s constitution. Other Brazilian social rights include access to education, health, food, work, housing, security, retirement, child protection and assistance to the homeless. Read more »
Finding a Wi-Fi hot spot may soon be as seamless as finding cellular coverage if carriers get together and agree to allow one another’s customers to roam onto their Wi-Fi networks. A Cisco executive says Wi-Fi roaming is needed and carriers are open to the idea. Read more »
All the cool data centers are deploying solid state drives that use Flash memory as opposed to janky old hard drives, so why is Western Digital shelling out $4.3 billion to acquire the old-fashioned hard disk drive business of Hitatchi ? Read more »
The fears that video will crush cell phone networks as people casually scan YouTube clips on the street or stream Netflix movies from their iPads is forcing mobile operators, entertainment companies and electronics companies to rethink their networks, but perhaps intelligent caching could help. Read more »
ISPs sometimes send out letters to subscribers whose broadband usage hits a certain threshold to educate them about their usage. But are these messages the beginning of an attempt to turn bandwidth into a precious resource that should be metered or is it a useful service? Read more »
For those planning to hit South by Southwest this year, I figured I’d share a few local area startups you should make it a point to meet while you’re down in lovely Austin, Texas. I polled locals and consulted my own notes to create this list. Read more »
Hot on the heels of Verizon talking about tiered data plans for the iPhone as well as new plans for its LTE roll out, AT&T is signaling more of its thoughts on pricing plan changes. AT&T also announced a new pricing plan for tablets today. Read more »
Data warehousing giant Teradata today agreed to acquire Aster Data, a data analytics provider, proving that it’s no longer enough to be able to store and access a lot of data quickly, one must also be able to analyze it quickly. But now, who’s left. Read more »
Apple’s iPad 2 contains the Apple-designed A5 application processor, which is running two cores. Onstage, Apple’s Steve Jobs indicated it was the first dual-core chip shipping at volume, but the folks at Nvidia might disagree, given its dual-core Tegra 2 is out in handsets and tablets. Read more »
Macheen, a company trying to provide retailers and device makers with mobile broadband service, launched today and could possibly fill a much-needed niche as more and more people buy connected devices but don’t want to sign up for more data plans. Read more »
AT&T has produced a coverage map indicating where it has 4G service, with cities such as Dallas, San Francisco and Boston showing faster wireless. But while the map is a step forward for transparency, it has the potential to mislead users about 4G down the road. Read more »
Infochimps is attempting to build a data market, and in doing so, the company is wading into some of the messiest and most unstructured data around, attempting to clean it up and put it up for sale. I talk to co-founder Flip Kromer about the challenges. Read more »
Hosting provider Peer1 the Map of the Internet. Unlike cute maps showing sites or personal viewpoints this map illustrates what ISP is connected to what Internet Exchange or university network across a vast array of networks stretching around the word. And it’s pretty. Read more »
Verizon iPhone users enjoy an unlimited $30 data plan today, but the carrier says these iPhone plans will change to a tiered model this summer. Smaller, cheaper plans could attract more customers to the carrier, but consumers won’t want to give up their current unlimited plans. Read more »
Mediacom, a regional cable provider and ISP that serves about 838,000 broadband subscribers, appears to be using a controversial technology known as deep packet inspection to insert advertisements on top of web sites its customers visit, according to a report from BroadbandReports. Read more »
Connected devices were the top source of revenue growth for mobile operators last year, but without new pricing plans, that growth could stall, according to data released today by Chetan Sharma. And so far AT&T is on a tear when it comes to M2M growth. Read more »
SeaMicro has introduced its second high-density server, and the biggest news about this server is that Intel has manufactured a chip to go inside the SeaMicro box –– perhaps the first time Intel has built a chip designed for a startup. Read more »
I went to an Austin cake show today, and amid several superhero cakes, wedding confections and some impressive feats of fondant I stumbled upon an ode to Angry Birds. I wonder if it tastes as good as it looks. Click through to see the whole thing. Read more »
