Carriers are struggling to match the demand for data with pricing plans that keep their profits up. Over the top services like Viber and WhatsApp are causing even more pain, but 3 Hong Kong may have found a solution that would work for everyone. Read more »
The FCC chairman is concerned about data caps, but that may not mean he’s ready to take any action. At an event in Silicon Valley last night the chairman of the regulatory agency said he viewed anything that would depress broadband usage as a concern. Read more »
GoDaddy, the hosting and domain registrar has been down for more than four hours, possibly as a result of the group Anonymous. But the founder of ThingsWeStart, a Kickstarter data collection project just wishes it hadn’t happened in the middle of his site’s launch. hacktavist Read more »
Blue River Technology is a startup that raised $3.1 million to take machine learning from Silicon Valley to the farming-focused Salinas Valley. It has built a robot that identifies and then kills weeds and hopes to reduce the use of pesticides in agriculture. Read more »
Google has signed up 180 out of 202 neighborhoods in a pre-registration drive for its fiber-to-the-home service. That’s an amazing take-up rate, although it’s not clear what percentage of homes have signed up. But the incumbent ISPs, AT&T and Time Warner Cable, must be worried. Read more »
Google has convinced 10 percent of the people living in areas where it can deploy fiber to pre-register for the service with two days left before the Sept. 9 deadline. That’s a good start, but it might not be enough to get the service to profitability. Read more »
Intel warned that its sales and capital spending would be down for the coming quarter. It’s not alone and its worries aren’t just about the PC market. ARM, Cisco and others are signaling that another tech downturn may be in the cards. Read more »
The FCC is moving forward with a controversial plan to entice broadcasters to give up their airwaves so they can later be auctioned off to carriers who need more spectrum to deliver mobile broadband. FCC officials expect the auction in 2014. Read more »
Yandex, the Russian search engine, has taken its cloud storage product out of its invite-only beta. Like Box or Dropbox, Yandex.Disk offers users access to their files from any device, including their Apple and Android phones. Users will get 10 GB of storage for free. Read more »
In the last two years global internet capacity has roughly doubled to reach 77 terabits per second, but the rate of capacity growth is now slowing. That doesn’t mean investment in broadband networks will stop anytime soon, but maybe network operators can catch their breaths. Read more »
The effort to dig out the data in our genomes has led to a rash of discoveries announced Wednesday, but amid the scientific insights are cultural ones that speak to how companies will have to learn to collaborate around big data and manage it. Read more »
A survey of mobile and online manners by Intel found that most people think we are getting ruder and sharing too much information. Yet most of those same people agree that sharing makes them feel connected. Read more »
Better batteries are the holy grail of mobile technology, but in a connected, wireless world antennas deserve some love too. Many recent breakthroughs, such as a sesame-sized antenna that could deliver 20 Gbps Wi-Fi are just as important in driving innovation. Read more »
Google’s getting aggressive trying to get sign ups for its $70-a-month gigabit broadband service it’s building on top of a fiber-to-the-home network in Kansas City. It has adjusted the numbers of homes in certain areas to make it easier for those neighborhoods to get Google Fiber. Read more »
MightyText won Qualcomm’s QPrize event yesterday, but the IP texting app and the nine other finalists are also a microcosm of Qualcomm’s views about what mobility can bring to computing and how to design for mobiles. Read more »
Data is a hot topic among the startup community, which is why stealthy startup RelateIQ has a bunch of people excited about its product and plans. The startup has some big data street cred with executives from Palantir and LinkedIn’s former data scientist DJ Patil involved. Read more »
Asking your users to buy lifetime subscriptions to a service is an unconventional way to build a business. But in 2004 that’s what TextDrive did. But after those lifetime subscriptions were cut short, TextDrive’s co-founder has stepped out of retirement to keep them alive. Read more »
Zscaler is done saying no to venture capitalists and has managed to raise $38 million in its first round of outside investment from Lightspeed Ventures. The company is offering a new form of security software designed to accommodate today’s mobile workforce and delivered as a service. Read more »
Time Warner Cable is shelling out $25 million to lay fiber to select NYC buildings, but comparing the cable company’s network to Google’s fiber-to-the-home network in Kansas City is silly. The end customer, the money spent, the rationale for the investment and the scope are different. Read more »
Microsoft is joining several startups in trying to entice developers to use its cloud as a specialized backend for their mobile applications. Microsoft’s Windows Azure Mobile Services joins offerings from Parse, Kinvey and Apigee in trying to establish a new infrastructure for the growing mobile ecosystem. Read more »
Verizon must believe in the Internet of Things because it has pre-certified LTE chips from Altair Semiconductor. The action means that companies can build sensors and devices containing Altair’s chip and then avoid the lengthy testing process in order to get their gadgets on Verizon’s network. Read more »
Sick of staring at the seat in front of you during your flight’s takeoff and landing because all you have is a book on an e-reader? Well, the FAA is asking whether or not portable electronic devices might be okay to use during the entire flight. Read more »
I was debating the purchase of a $130 broadband-connected scale versus to help me track my fitness and nutrition goals. As I weighed (HA!) the choice, I came up with three metrics that should help consumers figure out if paying more for connectivity is worth it. Read more »
As more people pick up connected pedometers, specialized exercise trackers and personal calorie-counting devices that connect back to the web, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group is trying to capitalize on the trend with new certifications for running and cycling. This is a win for consumers. Read more »
The FCC doesn’t seem to realize it’s summer. The regulatory agency has been issuing decisions like crazy. And this week it also released a series of questions that indicate the FCC is thinking about the need for faster broadband speeds and questioning caps. Read more »
Qualcomm has made another buy. This time in the emerging small cell market by purchasing Israeli chip company DesignArt. Qualcomm is clearly serious about expanding its chip prowess beyond devices — goring ever deeper into the cell network and the home. Read more »
The Internet of Things should be its own category on Kickstarter, since there’s yet another project on the site that hopes to connect your physical and digital worlds. But its real promise may be in providing context to computers that will evolve into new user interfaces. Read more »
The FCC halted the deregulation of special access charges, prices companies like Sprint and T-Mobile pay to connect their wireless networks to the Internet. Verizon and AT&T own those circuits, and the FCC wants to know if they charge their competitors a fair rate. Read more »
Looks like the crusade for agility and programability os moving from computing and networking into the realm of storage, as startup Convergent.io gets $10 million in Series A funding. This follows yesterday’s $33M round for Nutanix, which makes similar software defined storage claims. Read more »
In blocking Apple’s FaceTime application from its cellular network for certain customers, AT&T is trying to drive customers to new plans and change the debate when it comes to network neutrality. If Ma Bell succeeds it looks like consumers and maybe app developers could lose. Read more »
Investors continue throwing money at infrastructure companies, especially if they have a product that helps accomodate and mitigate the complexities of virtualization and scaled out computing infrastructures. Nutanix aims to solve problems in both areas, and investors are rewarding it with $33 million. Read more »
For the third time the FCC has failed the U.S. when it comes to bridging the digital divide. In it’s eighth broadband report the agency finds that broadband is not yet being deployed in a reasonable and timely fashion. So now what? Read more »
Founders Fund and Dustin Moskovitz’s Good Ventures have led a $15 million round in a company that is trying to replicate the intelligence of the human brain in software. Vicarious’ goal is to help humanity thrive by inventing the algorithm to create to intelligent machines. Read more »
Amazon has added a new cloud offering dubbed Glacier, where for less than a penny per gigabyte per month users can store files that aren’t accessed very often. The new product could put the hurt on backup and recovery offerings from other vendors. Read more »
In the wake of a $1 billion acquisition of Nicira, BigSwitch said that it has seen 6,000 downloads of its SDN controller software. Big Switch is the likely the next big buy for software defined networking, but who will be the suitor? Read more »
The growing number of handsets that have front-facing cameras may mean that another common device becomes less necessary — the mirror that many women carry around in their purses. After all, why pull out a compact when your smartphone can show you exactly what you look like. Read more »
Comparing the cost of on-demand computing to buying your own infrastructure is one way to look at IT costs in a cloud era, but it’s a shortsighted way to measure how cloud computing can affect your business. Amazon’s CTO Werner Vogels outlines another way. Read more »
Realtime’s technology lets developers insert code into their web sites that creates an open pathway direct to their servers. The net result is a user doesn’t have to refresh the browser for updates. Think of it as an IM connection for elements of a web server. Read more »
Aereo, the company that wants to deliver broadcast TV online and to any device, has a new pricing plan that puts it on par with a Hulu subscription. The plan aims to get folks to try it out and to challenge the broadcasters’ current revenue models. Read more »
Good news for anyone shipping a bunch of bits around the world. IP transit costs are down and are dropping more rapidly. But this doesn’t mean cheaper broadband for most consumers given the lack of competition in the middle and last mile access businesses. Read more »
