Rebtel made a smart decision early on to bring its communication service to multiple mobile and desktop platforms. The company has apps for iOS, Android, BlackBerry and Microsoft Windows. Similar to Skype, calls can be placed to other Rebtel users for free, while calls or messages to landlines and mobiles around the world are priced as low as $0.01.

Building up an audience of 15 million users with such products shows that consumers are looking for less-expensive ways to stay in touch with one another by leveraging the Internet as a conduit. Obviously, calling a mobile or landline with Rebtel isn’t a full VoIP solution, as the call is routed on a carrier voice network or an old telephone line.

But support for Wi-Fi and 3G calling lessens the need to use traditional cellular voice minutes. Sadly, there are few ways to have a data-only service plan on a phone in the U.S. I am doing just that with VoIP and SIP support on my Galaxy Nexus with a data-only SIM, but I am certainly in the minority.

Most people will still pay for a voice service these days, but with services such as Rebtel, folks can cut back to the lowest voice plan with their carrier, using Rebtel as a cheaper substitute. That is apparently happening, as Rebtel has now delivered 500 million connected calls and 2 billion minutes of international calls while boosting revenues in 2011 by 55 percent.

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• The future of mobile: a segment analysis by GigaOM Pro
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Mobile now accounts for 15 percent of all visits to LinkedIn, CEO Jeff Weiner told investors and analysts on the fourth-quarter earnings call. That is up from 9 percent of traffic that mobile accounted for about halfway through 2011. Growth is coming in part from improved mobile applications and more customer adoption from those products.

One thing that isn’t growing tremendously in mobile is revenue, however. That could change in the future, as the company looks to add monetization through advertising on mobile devices. “We were very focused on getting the product right and the user experience right,” Weiner said. “Now that that’s in place, we’re going to start to run some tests with ads within the mobile environment.”

Of course, LinkedIn isn’t the only social network that has yet to monetize its mobile apps. Facebook, for instance, has much higher engagement on its mobile apps, with about half of its unique visitors coming from mobile devices. It too doesn’t place ads on those apps yet, something that Facebook highlighted as one of its risk factors in its recent S-1 filing.

The good news for LinkedIn is that to date, mobile isn’t cannibalizing engagement on the company’s website, which it does place ads against. In fact, LinkedIn is seeing an increase in the connection density it gets from mobile users and the number of connections on the network.

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Six of the top 10 apps use the Foursquare API to augment their features, providing a location layer for the services. The winner so far is Scene Near Me, a mobile web app that pushes notifications to users based on their Foursquare check-in about famous movie scenes shot nearby. Another top app called Work+ taps Foursquare to help find good working locations for remote employees. Phoundit is an online service for lost-and-found items, providing users who check in to a location with information on items that have been lost or discovered at that location.

Foursquare has been used by developers in previous BigApps competitions, and this is the second year it has been featured as an API. But this year, the competition opened up a new category for apps that also utilize an API from a local New York company. That has provided a new boost for Foursquare along with other local companies such as Tumblr, Etsy, bit.ly and others.

The BigApps competition is the largest open government initiative of its kind and provides access to more than 700 city data sets. This year’s competition awards $50,000 to winners in 13 categories of apps. The city has 95 submissions in the competition this year, up from 58 last year. Voting and judging continues through March 8, with the winner announced on March 29. In the past the competition has produced some notable startups, including NYC Way, a popular choice award winner in 2010, which I previously profiled.

The strong showing of Foursquare highlights some of the work the company has done to raise its profile in the developer community. Last year it announced it had hit 10,000 developers using its API, which now gets thousands of requests per second. The company also hosted two hackathons last year and has worked with the city to promote the local tech community, said Erin Gleason, a spokesperson for the company.

“We’re in touch with the NYCEDC [New York City Economic Development Corp.] regularly about how they can continue to support the growing startup community in NYC and bring more engineering talent to the city. And, since a lot of the public data utilized in the competition is tied to physical places, the Foursquare API is a natural fit,” she said.

I agree it makes sense for Foursquare to be a popular API in New York, which is a city that is perfect for location-based services. Even without the new category, I think Foursquare would have been a favorite choice of developers, who are realizing how location can be utilized in a lot of creative ways.

But more than that, it is cool to see all the different apps inspired by this competition. There are some obvious parking and taxi apps, but there are also some other creative takes that are enabled through the release of so much city data. There are apps that let you know how your local political representative voted and where to find green markets or volunteering opportunities. Hopefully, other cities will take note and see that their municipality can become a platform for developers, who can use open data to do some pretty awesome things that governments can’t do themselves. That ultimately benefits residents, who end up being the real winners in these types of competitions.

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“We’re not ready to discuss our future product roadmap . . . but it was a useful tool to demonstrate to the FCC where innovation is headed in the TV space for both over the top and over the air/QAM,” we were told by Boxee VP of Marketing Andrew Kippen. The filing itself also states that “both the Boxee Box with Live TV and the products under development provide consumers with competitive alternatives to traditional pay cable delivered via rented set top boxes.” Of course, one could argue that any over-the-top offering with access to online sources like Netflix can be an alternative to your cable box — but that is already true for the existing Boxee Box. The need to black out two entire paragraphs in the filing leads me to believe that Boxee is instead working on additional ways to access and consume over-the-air broadcast and cable TV.

So what does it have in store for us? Here are some possibilities:

• DVR functionality. This has been the most-requested feature ever since the Boxee Live TV tuner came out earlier this year. The tuner currently only displays what’s airing at any given time, but a software update and an attached hard disc could turn the combination of Boxee Box and Live TV tuner into a full-fledged DVR.
• A Boxee TV. Viewsonic was supposed to release a TV set powered by Boxee last year, but it scrapped its plan when consumer demand for smart TVs didn’t materialize. Of course, that doesn’t mean that another TV manufacturer couldn’t fill the gap. A TV with a built-in tuner would obviously also have access to Boxee Live TV and as such be impacted by any attempt to encrypt basic cable.
• A revamped Boxee Box with internal storage. This would go well with any DVR offering, in part because not every consumer wants to have an external hard drive and a USB dongle dangling from their Boxee Box. Of course, it would also be possible to directly add the TV tuner to the Box. But this could bring costs up even further, so I would expect this to be sold separately for the foreseeable future. Iomega is already selling a Boxee device with a hard drive in Europe, but the company told us it doesn’t have any plans to bring the device to the U.S.
• A cable set-top box. Yes, you read that correctly. Boxee has been big on cord cutting rhetoric lately, but the company is reportedly also talking to smaller cable operators about using Boxee’s platform as an alternative to the traditional cable box. This could be done with the existing Boxee Box and a Live TV tuner, but one could also imagine slightly revamped hardware that could offer subscribers online video, basic cable channels and a DVR for a small monthly fee, much like Sezmi used to offer. But instead of selling it directly to consumers, Boxee would offer the device through a regional cable company.

We will likely have to wait a while until we know what the company has up its sleeve. However, the success of the Live TV tuner — the device is currently sold out and on back order — shows that the company is clearly on to something here. And while the list of possible products above is admittedly pure speculation, it goes to show that there is a lot of potential for Boxee to innovate in this space.

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Cocoafish, founded in 2010 in San Francisco by Michael Goff and Wei Kong, is part of an emerging class of mobile backend providers that includes Stackmob, Parse, Kinvey and others that are helping developers add cloud-based features to their apps. Cocoafish services such as push notifications, social integration, sharing, location and others will be integrated into the Titanium Platform by early in the second quarter. Appcelerator said it will also offer iOS, Android, JavaScript and REST SDKs so that these services can be accessed by all mobile app developers, regardless of what technologies they use, such as Objective-C, Java, PhoneGap, Sencha and HTML5.

Why the acquisition makes sense

Appcelerator’s acquisition of Cocoafish is logical, as it looks to become the go-to resource for developers and companies building cross-platform apps. In its latest developer survey, Appcelerator found that 84 percent of its developers connected to cloud-based services. But almost all of them were manually adding these services themselves. That can double the time it takes to launch an app.

Now Appcelerator can offer a full suite of front-end and backend solutions for developers with Cocoafish integrated into Appcelerator’s Titanium Studio. And by opening iOS, Android, JavaScript and REST SDKs, it means that Appcelerator could also appeal to developers who don’t use its Titanium Platform. That can drum up even more business, though it pits Appcelerator against a number of competitors in the mobile development services market. But it looks like there is still a lot of business to be had. Kinvey did a survey of apps on iOS and Android in September and found that 73 percent didn’t connect to a backend.

Connecting apps to cloud services can still be tough, but it usually provides more engaging features. That is increasingly important for app developers, who need to create more-dynamic apps that keep users involved. User engagement and attention is the name of the game in the mobile app world, in which users are quick to try then discard apps. The purchase of Cocoafish also raises the question of whether we will see more consolidation in this nascent market as potentially other Platform-as-a-Service offerings or other companies look to add mobile support. For Appcelerator, which raised $15 million in November, it is another sign of momentum as it capitalizes on the boom in mobile apps.

Curious about how the backend-as-a-service market fits into the larger mobile market? Take a look at this helpful chart worked up by Kinvey.

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If you look at trends in the future of work, then maybe not, argued Daniel Jelski, a professor of chemistry at SUNY New Paltz, on New Geography recently. Despite being a science guy himself, Jelski looks at the ways work is changing and comes to an iconoclastic conclusion. He begins by laying out the basic forces he sees shaping the career landscape in the next decades:

Let’s start with the three Laws of Future Employment. Law #1: People will get jobs doing things that computers can’t do.

Law #2: A global market place will result in lower pay and fewer opportunities for many careers. (But also in cheaper and better products and a higher standard of living for American consumers.)

Law #3: Professional people will more likely be freelancers and less likely to have a steady job.

But instead of looking at these laws and suggesting students study the math and science needed to be one of those running the machines many fear are taking our jobs, Jelski comes to a different conclusion. He acknowledges that the number of science and math grads in the U.S. has been flat over several decades, but he disagrees that this means more students should be encouraged into those fields. Pointing out that competition in these areas is increasingly global, he notes that the amount of American tech and science geeks isn’t relevant. But the global number is, and by this measure competition will be fierce, especially as many technical tasks are now done by computers:

Laws #1 & 2 predict that there will likely be fewer STEM jobs in the future – they are both easily computerized and tradable. People will always be employed in STEM disciplines, many of them highly paid, but they’ll be paid for smarts rather than education. The disciplines will be much more competitive, with older and less talented workers left on the sidelines. Tom Friedman and Alex Tabarrok, reflecting conventional wisdom, are mistaken in maintaining that increasing STEM education is a key to future economic competitiveness.

“So if computerized, tradable skills won’t create much new employment, if any, what will?” he asks. The answer is “non-tradable skills that can’t be computerized. . . . these jobs depend on human-human interaction — empathy.” Counseling, teaching and management are examples. So who is best prepared for them?

Jelski tells of a student he had in a chemistry class, an English major who was busy writing a novel about cowboys while learning about chemical reactions on the side. “Conventional wisdom says this guy is all wet,” writes Jelski, but he feels this kid’s odd combo of interests in cowboys and chemistry might actually be a career winner. Not because anyone needs many cowboys these days, obviously, but because

the skill set needed to write a novel, of which writing may be the least of it. He has to have something to write about, which means nurturing a general curiosity about the world — not just cowboys, but apparently also chemistry. He learns to be a keen observer of people: their appearance, what they wear, their character, mannerisms, and language. He develops the self-discipline and self-confidence to finish a project because it is intrinsically important, not because people say “Wow, that’s wonderful. You’re writing a novel!” Because of his novel my student becomes expert in many skills that can translate into a wonderful career.

The conclusion of the post (which is well worth a read in full) is that skills rather than education count, and writing and empathy are among the skills least likely to be mastered by computers. Counseling might beat computer science in the future of work, according to Jelski, but critics could point out that clinical psychology majors currently have the highest rate of unemployment of any college degree and that being an empathetic, sociable engineer might be the best bet of all.

Would you push your kid toward engineering or empathy for a more future-proof career?

Image courtesy of Flickr user UC Davis College of Engineering

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Netvibes, the San Francisco–based company that allows people and brands to create personalized RSS and social media feed dashboards, announced on Wednesday evening it has been acquired by French enterprise software firm Dassault Systèmes. Financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed.

Netvibes CEO Freddy Mini

The deal makes sense on a few levels, as Netvibes’ engineering team is based in France (CEO Freddy Mini splits his time between France and California.) The company has also been around for a while — since 2005 — and in that time has grown from being a personal RSS feed dashboard to a profitable enterprise web analytics service. Even though there have been a few management changes and strategy pivots along the way, Netvibes’ tenacity and very smart shift toward enterprise products surely helped position it as an attractive acquisition candidate.

As far as the near future goes, it seems that many things for Netvibes will remain the same. A rep for the company said in an email:

Our brand, business, products and team all stay. Our free product will remain free and available to our millions of users. What will change is that Netvibes can innovate even faster.

At the same time, Dassault, which is best known for making 3-D computer-aided design and project life cycle management software used by large corporations for industrial projects (Boeing uses Dassault tools to design its jets, for example), seems on the surface like a fairly unexpected match for a social web–focused company like Netvibes. It will be interesting to see how Netvibes’ tools are integrated into Dassault’s product lineup in the longer run.

Feature image of Netvibes CEO Freddy Mini courtesy of Flickr user snackfight

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Those five areas are switching and routing, the data center, collaboration, video, and architectures for business transformation. In the past year Cisco has done six acquisitions, with half of those occurring in the past three quarters while it was handling its restructuring. As we have documented, Cisco’s previous forays into M&A have helped the company spread its bets on emerging technology around, but they haven’t always helped it boost its bottom line. Cisco also had seemed to lose focus in previous years, letting other firms come into its market and take share.

Based on the financial results at the end of Cisco’s fiscal second quarter of 2012, the company has $46.7 billion available in cash and cash equivalents. It is profitable and is generating cash as well after completing its reorganization, which has cut $1 billion off its annual run rate. In response to questions about M&A strategy on the call, Chambers said that the acquisition strategy remains the same, buying companies with about 100 engineers and products close to coming to market that Cisco customers tell the company it should buy. He pointed to the acquisitions of Tandberg and Starent as good examples of deals and said that of all the large players out there making acquisitions only Oracle had a similar success rate as Cisco when it came to integrating deals.

If Cisco is back in the shopping mood, we have a few suggestions for places where it should start. It should go all-in on the cloud, which seems like where Cisco wants to focus anyhow.

Since software-defined networks and OpenFlow are clearly an emerging area in the networking space, Cisco should shell out money for a player in this space. Big Switch would be a good bet, as it is trying to create an ecosystem using open-source controllers and then focusing on building services and applications on top of that platform. The model is different for Cisco, but the focus on enterprise applications and services is one that would benefit Cisco and lead to higher margins.

As clouds are deployed, monitoring and tracking websites and application performance from within the network are important for Cisco and its enterprise clients, which is why New Relic could also be a good pick for the company. New Relic’s SaaS-based software monitors performance and tracks issues back to the data center to help enterprises or website owners pinpoint bottlenecks and problems.

If Cisco wants to go big, my colleague Derrick Harris suggests that NetApp might be a good buy, because it reduces Cisco’s reliance on EMC, a relationship that is rumored to be on the rocks. If it is not NetApp, any storage vendor with a strong virtualization story and promise in the enterprise would help bolster Cisco’s burgeoning server division as well as its storage networking lineup.

Given the array of startups bringing both intelligence and performance improvements to different areas of the network, there are plenty of opportunities for Cisco to pick up new customers, technology and market share by buying a startup or established company. Who do you think Cisco should snap up?

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At the core of the issue is whether cable companies should be allowed to encrypt their basic cable programming, something that existing regulation doesn’t allow. Unencrypted signals can be used by tuners built into most modern TV sets as well as equipment like Boxee’s live TV tuner to access these basic cable channels straight from the coax cable that comes out of your wall, without the need for any set-top box.

Cable companies have asked the FCC for waivers to these restrictions, arguing that encrypted channels would reduce piracy and that encrypted cable connections can be remotely serviced, eliminating the need for many service visits. The FCC is currently hearing all sides of the issue as it contemplates whether to do away with the restrictions and allow all cable companies to encrypt basic cable. Boxee has filed multiple letters with the commission and met with its staff last week.

On Wednesday, the startup wrote on its blog:

“[The cable companies’] real motivation is to prevent you from being able to connect the cable from the wall directly to your TV or Boxee Box. You will need to rent a set-top box from your cable provider, pay an extra $5–$15 per month and it will no longer work with your Boxee Box or similar devices. The cable companies are losing subscribers every quarter. If they want to reverse that trend they should look into building better products, reducing prices and improving customer service, not going to the government asking for rule changes to force consumers into spending more money and blocking start-ups from competing.”

Boxee’s position has been shared by Public Knowledge as well as the Consumer Electronics Association and consumer electronics manufacturers like Hauppauge, which makes the Boxee dongle. The cable companies, on the other hand, have been getting support from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) as well as some municipalities, including Miami.

Altogether, more than 80 documents have been filed with the FCC on the issue. Many of these filings from both sides make it clear that this is about not only what is going to happen to those basic cable channels but also the role that consumer electronics manufacturers, cable companies and startups like Boxee will play in the future of pay TV.

Consumer electronics makers have long favored a new standard called AllVid that would provide a new interface among traditional pay-TV services, online competition and connected devices. Cable companies opposed the standard; Boxee, on the other hand, came out in favor of AllVid in the presentation to the FCC last week, stating on one of its slides that “AllVid holds exciting potential for development of new consumer devices delivering integrated entertainment experiences.”

Check out our video review below to see how Boxee’s live TV tuner works:

Image courtesy of Flickr user familymwr

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Interestingly enough, I was discussing the possibility of Apple’s partnering with operators the other day at lunch, before the Bloomberg piece came out. That first piece might seem like a fluke, as it was written based on an analyst note. But with Tuesday’s Globe and Mail story, it seems more likely that the hardware giant is indeed considering some sort of partnership approach to tackling the TV market.

The move isn’t totally unprecedented: After all, Dish Network was one of Google TV’s launch partners, and Verizon has partnered with Microsoft to make its FiOS TV service accessible through the new Xbox Live user interface.

All the content, none of the fuss

By partnering with pay TV operators, Apple would immediately gain access to all the TV content that viewers have come to expect, without having to strike up carriage deals of its own. It is not alone in pursuing this strategy: Microsoft’s Xbox 360, for instance, can be used as a set-top box by AT&T U-Verse and Verizon FiOS subscribers.

In the FiOS case, the program data and channel lineup will be deeply integrated with the Xbox Live service and Bing search engine, which will let viewers discover live TV and video-on-demand content alongside streaming content from services like the Zune Marketplace, Netflix, Hulu Plus, Vudu and YouTube.

I could see Apple’s doing something similar by allowing operator partners to build integrated apps into the new device, which could be used to control channel lineups and program discovery. For Apple, such a move would give it the content it needs to be relevant but allow it to control the overall user experience of search, discovery and navigation.

But what would the operators get out of it? Well, for one thing, integration with the Apple iTV could potentially give them a competitive advantage over their peers. In the U.S., Apple already has relationships with AT&T and Verizon, both of whom could stand to benefit from having the best new iDevice available for customers as they pitch their IPTV services against the more traditional cable offerings. Those operators could be incentivized to push the iTV to their customers and could act as an additional distribution outlet, on top of Apple Stores and the company’s existing big box retail partnerships.

Could AT&T help you buy an iTV?

There is even the possibility that Apple could bring the same subsidy model that exists in the mobile space to TV operators. To a certain extent, carriers already subsidize TV hardware by making set-top boxes available to customers. Assuming an Apple TV product would enable those carriers to deliver cloud- and IP-based programming guides, it could act as a set-top box replacement. Whatever money was being put toward that hardware could be committed to reducing the cost of an Apple iTV purchased by subscribers.

A carrier subsidy could potentially boost adoption for an Apple device’s being launched in a market with traditionally long replacement cycles. Some believe that any introductory Apple TV product would be sold at a premium over existing smart TVs, and a recent Best Buy survey lends some credence to this belief, polling users if they would spend $1,499 for a 42-inch Apple TV device. I personally doubt that Apple would introduce a new product priced so far above existing products, but if there is any premium a subsidy could bring products within parity. And if there isn’t a premium, a subsidy could make the product all that more attractive.

ITV is not just for partners

I don’t believe that any operator partnerships Apple strikes would be exclusive. In the U.S., Apple would likely partner with multiple providers, since their services are only available in certain geographies. As noted above, AT&T and Verizon are the most likely partners in the U.S., but I don’t think Apple would shy away from the same type of deal with a company like Comcast.

Nor would the Apple TV be “broken” if purchased direct from a retailer or if a consumer doesn’t subscribe to an Apple partner. She will get all the same third-party apps and TV coming from her set-top box. There is even the possibility that non-partners could build their own apps for device search and navigation, in the same way that Comcast, Time Warner Cable and others have built iPad apps that can be used as remote controls. But it won’t have the same tight program guide integration. And if there are subsidies involved, it wouldn’t be as cheap as it would be from Apple’s partners.

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The idea is to give developers an unobtrusive way to talk back and forth with their app users, so they can share important information, promote their other apps and obtain feedback. This can be an important way to maintain engagement and retain users, who studies have shown are quick to discard apps.

Developers who integrate Appsfire’s App Booster SDK, which takes about 20 minutes and is built for iOS right now, can create an inbox that sits inside their app that uses a bubble icon to notify a user when they have a message. When they tap on the icon, users can see their list of messages from the developer. Tapping on a message can provide more information, a link to an app store or a website, or pull up a form so they can email back a message to the developer. Developers could use the inbox to welcome new users, notify them of updates, provide tips about the latest updates, warn users about app maintenance issues, cross-promote an app, or invite users to provide feedback, share online or rate an app.

Many apps currently use push notifications to engage users and notify them. But Ouriel Ohayon, the founder of Appsfire, said half the time users don’t agree to receive notifications. Some developers turn to ad networks to promote some of their other apps, ask for email addresses or use services such as Crittercism, which can create a support forum for users to help answer questions about crashes and other problems. Others rely on “i” or “more” buttons to offer more information. PlayHaven offers a marketing platform that can insert HTML5 windows inside an app that can be programmed with ads and messages.

But Ohayon said developers haven’t had a simple way to create an inbox inside an app that encourages communication between a user and a developer. He said that can be critical in guiding and engaging users.

“Think of it as the equivalent of a newsletter for applications; instead of being sent by email it’s sent inside the app by the developer. You will be able to reply to the developer. This communication loop is not happening,” said Ohayon. “We are enabling that situation which is really required and demanded by users but not expressed.”

Ohayon said developers can send out and manage messages using a simple dashboard, where they can compose notifications and target who receives them. In early tests with a few developers, Ohayon said App Booster has improved engagement by up to 50 percent and experienced click-through rates of at least 15 percent and up to 50 percent. He said the key is that it is not intrusive but still a personal and effective way to talk to users.
Ohayon built the system to solve Appsfire’s problems first and is hoping other developers can find value in the same solution. That could help turn them on to Appsfire’s paid app discovery tool, which is the company’s main product.

I think App Booster should be appealing for users. Some apps send too many push notifications or send out a lot of requests to rate apps. I would prefer something more subtle that allows me to pull messages when I want to see them. And for developers, it still allows them to open a two-way dialogue right inside the app. That’s helpful. Instead of relying on getting email addresses or using Facebook or Twitter, a developer can communicate from within the app itself. Developers should obviously avoid spamming users, but if they provide real, valuable messages, users will likely see this as an asset and something that improves their relationship with the developer.

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Screenshot of JetBlue's iPhone app (click to enlarge)

Well-designed websites and snazzy mobile apps aren’t just for travel search engines anymore. JetBlue Airways just debuted its own native app for the iPhone, an app that lets users search for and book flights from their mobile phones. The low-cost airline also unveiled newly redesigned web and mobile sites with clean user interfaces and new features such as personalized flight recommendations based on users’ travel history and geolocation data.

It goes to show just how much startups such as Hipmunk, HotelTonight, Room77 and others have spurred innovation for the travel industry’s more-established players. And more such developments are on the way: A recent Airline IT Trends survey found that 90 percent of airlines are increasing their investment in mobile capabilities, according to a report by CNN published this past fall. Another notable example of this larger trend is luxury hotel chain The Four Seasons, which last month gave its website a makeover that taps into social media and incorporates user-generated reviews and photos of its properties. In all, it is nice to see large corporations such as these tapping into newer technologies and investing in mobile app development, realizing that spending the money on making these tools can ultimately drive more business.

Of course, as these established travel companies step up their game in a bid to bring customers directly to their sites, aggregation engines will in turn have to bring even better user experiences to the table. It is a competitive cycle that should ultimately benefit us consumers more than anyone else, which is always a good thing.

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Martin Casado, the CTO and co-founder of Nicira

Nicira, the networking startup that is not so stealthy but seriously hot, is ready to tell the world what it offers and who is buying its software. The list of customers is impressive. Nicira’s Network Virtualization Platform is used at eBay, NTT, AT&T, Fidelity Investments and Rackspace, and I expect more companies to announce their use of the networking virtualization solution in the coming months.

Nicira, the brainchild of Martin Casado, who gained fame in networking circles after his Stanford dissertation became the basis for the OpenFlow protocol, is backed with more than $50 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Ventures and New Enterprise Associates. Diane Greene, the co-founder of VMware also contributed. Nicira’s founder, its funders and the technology space where it plays make it one of the hottest startups around.

The problem with virtualization

Nicira is one of several companies attempting to solve the problem that Greene helped create when she co-founded VMware to push hypervisors and virtualization. Once servers were virtualized, it created an easy way to separate computing from the physical infrastructure. The benefits of server virtualization were more-agile compute infrastructures — a developer would spin up a server in minutes as opposed to waiting days for approvals — as well as consolidating IT. Storage followed, but holding the whole virtualized infrastructure effort back was networking. Like a bird with its wings clipped, IT was tethered to the physical hardware by networking.

Server virtualization has made moving applications around on top of servers easy: Think of the transient nature of Amazon’s EC2 instances. But the challenges of maintaining the connection those servers must have to the underlying network has chained the cloud to physical infrastructures — to an IP address — and ensured that employees must manually reconfigure the network to make big changes or implement new networking policies associated with security or compliance. Solutions such as OpenFlow, a protocol that allows the suer to separate the intelligence inside switches from the packet routing and place that intelligence on commodity servers, has helped usher in the age of software-defined networks, which could help solve that problem.

Nicira’s secret sauce

Nicira’s products play into that, but they don’t require OpenFlow to work. Instead of requiring a special OpenFlow-enabled switch, its software works with a variety of protocols and hardware. The company starts by using the Open vSwitch network virtualization software inside the hypervisor. From its vantage point inside a VM thanks to Open vSwitch, Nicira understands data associated with that VM and communicates it to controllers running its software inside the data center.

These controllers are the data center equivalent of a post office box for each VM inside the data center. While the physical address of a virtual machine may change depending on demand, the Nicira controller knows where that VM is and can get messages to it. So, now, messages are sent to the controller, and, like mail sent to a P.O. box, the recipient gets it, no matter where she may physically live.

Agility, cloudbursting and follow-the-sun data centers, oh my!

The infrastructure is worth explaining, but the real excitement is found in how Nicira’s customers are using the product. NTT, which operates data centers around the world, uses Nicira’s software to move its desktop-as-a-service offering from data center to data center within Tokyo ahead of rolling brownouts in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. That’s right, we are talking about cloudbursting — or moving workloads on the fly from one data center to another. Of course, many caveats still apply.

Both data centers need Nicira controllers, as well as the data the application needs to use in order to run. Casado notes those data centers also need to be connected by pretty fat pipes with low latency to deliver something like NTT’s desktop-as-a-service application. However, customers could use it for cloudbursting if they have already prepopulated a second data center with the information the application needed.

E-commerce giant eBay is using it to deploy applications in minutes as opposed to days, since network engineers no longer have to manually configure networks to meet the needs of a developer. Rackspace is using it to change the products it can offer as a hosting company as well as add agility to its Infrastructure-as-a-Service offerings.

While Nicira’s coming-out party is a big deal for the new age of networking, it is by no means the only player seeking to free cloud computing from the confines of the physical network. Startups such as ConteXtream, Embrane, Big Switch and others are seeking to play a role in the networks of tomorrow. With customers having tested and deployed its platform into production environments, five-year-old Nicira seems further along than some of its fellow startups, but this is a big opportunity and there is still plenty of room.

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These are just a few recent transplants, but they show how New York increasingly makes sense as a headquarters for certain startups, especially those with ties to finance, fashion, media, retail, advertising and increasingly big data and location-based services. ConsumerBell relocated to New York from the Bay Area in May, and Take The Interview, which started in Boston, is moving as well. The relocations fuel the continuing momentum behind New York, which has eclipsed Boston in the number of VC deals and is now becoming a destination for big companies like Facebook, which announced an engineering campus in New York, and eBay, which bought Hunch and plans to build out a New York office.

Close to brands and retailers

I talked with Snapette founder Sarah Paiji about why she chose New York after building a lot of connections in Silicon Valley and Boston. She said despite the presence of Facebook and Google in the Bay Area, it made more sense to be near brands and retailers, which are mostly based in New York. Snapette, which recently moved into Dogpatch Labs, is a kind of Pinterest for the real world, with users’ supplying images of products that can be found in nearby shops.

Snapette co-founder Sarah Paiji

“We are about fashion and shopping. We want to drive foot traffic into local stores. We also take a lot of meetings with brands and retailers and we have over 30 boutique partners in New York. In Palo Alto, it just doesn’t make as much sense to stay,” Paiji said.

PlaceIQ, a Boulder, Colo., location startup, also announced a move to New York in December, saying it wanted to be closer to partners and customers and the general ecosystem. PlaceIQ has built a vast database of locations down to the block level that can be used by advertisers to better target consumers without tracking them individually.

New York has changed

Duncan McCall, the CEO and co-founder of PlaceIQ, said he had no interest in ever relocating to New York. But over the past year, after making a lot of visits to see customers, partners and company investor IA Ventures, he realized the city had changed and was now a logical home for his startup. And he was tired of traveling so much and saw the value of more face-to-face meetings. He just moved into a new temporary space in the past few days and is hunting for more-permanent digs.

“I previously spent some time in New York and I thought the technology business isn’t big enough, there’s not enough talent and there wasn’t a business around data. But that’s changed dramatically in New York,” McCall said. “Over the last year, it’s grown on me. The people and the investment scene are great and with the customers and ecosystem, it became obvious that if we want to maximize our chances, we have to be in New York.”

Qwiki's new SoHo headquarters

Qwiki, which helps produce multimedia information videos, announced its move in December and relocated into a hip SoHo space. CEO Doug Imbruce said in blog post that despite being known as a Silicon Valley company, the company saw New York as the place to become a medium for people to tell stories and share opinions. Qwiki needs to be close to where the most content was produced, and that’s New York, he said.

Local strengths

Not every company will be tempted to make the move. But these recent transplants show there is plenty of incentive to do so. With so much media and advertising here, a company like Qwiki can tap a lot of media partners as it pursues more publishing tools for users. Snapette is closely aligned with the fashion industry and revolves around location, something New York is becoming good at with Foursquare, Hyperpublic and LocalResponse. New York’s big data scene has also risen to the fore, building on the experience of the finance industry, which has long been involved in data. Now with venture funds like IA Ventures, which looks primarily at big data opportunities, there is more momentum in building data startups.

Paiji and McCall said the move to New York comes with trade-offs. Paiji said it is harder to find talent, and for a startup mostly made up of women, they get less attention from men now that they are away from testosterone-heavy Silicon Valley. And McCall said he doesn’t have ready access to skiing like he did in Colorado.

Not ready to topple Silicon Valley

SA 500 job fair

New York has also lost some startups, including Think Near, which moved to Los Angeles, and BankSimple, which moved to Portland. And many companies still flock to Silicon Valley to make their big break. The Valley still has an edge in investment dollars and talent and has a culture built around entrepreneurship that has flourished for decades, thanks to companies like Apple, Google, eBay, Facebook and others.

New York has to continue to build its startup culture and fix its talent crunch problems, which could be alleviated by a new applied sciences university and programs like the HackNY, the Turing Fellowship and SA500. But with more investors, incubators and startup infrastructure and companies moving in, New York is increasingly an appealing place. Will it topple Silicon Valley anytime soon? No, but it is showing that it is becoming a competitive tech destination for startups convinced that if they can make it there . . .

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An image from the SodaHead poll results (click to enlarge)

Facebook is in the process of converting all user profiles to the new Timeline design. But according to a new poll, the majority of people aren’t so keen on the new look.

Seventy percent of respondents to a poll of 1,900 people held by online opinion site SodaHead.com said they did not like the Timeline design and that Facebook should get rid of it. Just 20 percent of respondents liked Timeline, and 10 percent said they did not have Facebook profiles.

And it turns out that the older people are, the less they like the new design: Only 10 percent of people over 65 liked Timeline, compared with 34 percent of people age 18 to 24.

That won’t come as a big surprise to the folks at Facebook, since it lines up with the research the company itself did before Timeline was announced this past fall. At a press Q&A during the f8 conference, in September, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that older users tended to respond more negatively to Timeline than younger ones. But, he said, that would not stop Facebook from making big changes: “The world is moving quickly, and we want to be innovative and try new things,” he said at the time.

Either way, it seems that Timeline is here to stay. With the Open Graph API, scores of third-party developers have invested significant time and money into building apps that work within the Timeline interface. So now it is not only Facebook that is tied to the new look but also an entire ecosystem of other companies. Besides, this is certainly not the first time Facebook users have reacted negatively to a change in the site’s look, and it seems that by now the people who run the social networking company have learned to ride out the initial jeers.

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Beck tells us he would like to line up $130–$150 million for a new CIGS manufacturing process, and he would like to take that technology to its first commercial shipments in about three years. While the investment isn’t all that exorbitant, considering how much money venture capitalists pumped into Solyndra (roughly $1 billion) and Nanosolar (more than $500 million by mid-2008), the proposal may not be so enticing these days — and Beck knows it.

“For venture capitalists it’s too much money. For large corporations, it’s viewed as too risky,” Beck said.

First Solar days

During Beck’s keynote talk and interview at the Photon Thin Film Conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, he said that his team at First Solar was working on a 96 MW CIGS pilot line that could produce a 10 percent efficient panel initially, which was higher than his first projections of a 7–8 percent efficient panel. The efficiency also went up to an average of 11 percent after five months of running the line, Beck said.

Then the infamous silicon solar panel price collapse occurred that forced makers of other types of solar panels to lower prices as well. First Solar made the difficult decision to shut its secretive CIGS workshop. Many startups and their venture capital investors have pumped billions of dollars into commercializing CIGS technology, but it has yet to fulfill its promise. First Solar “saw its profits go away, and it had a system business that needed cash,” Beck said. “I wanted a joint venture (to continue CIGS development), but that was not what First Solar wanted.” The CIGS development work was 80 percent from completion, he added.

Before First Solar, Beck spent a big chunk of his career working on CIGS solar technology, and he was the lead scientist at Solyndra for nearly three years, as well as at Global Solar Energy, another CIGS thin film maker, in Arizona.

Life after First Solar

Beck doesn’t want to give up working on CIGS technology, but he acknowledged that finding investors to support his work will be tough these days. Many CIGS companies are young players that have yet to produce solar panels at any big scale. Some, like Stion and SoloPower, have small 10 MW pilot lines at their headquarters and are now trying to build their first commercial-scale factories.

Nanosolar just got a new CEO earlier this month after having shipped 10 MW (even though it was supposed to have started commercial production in late 2007). MiaSole is really pushing up the efficiency of its solar panels and can now claim that 13.5 percent of its business is making solar panels — which is a higher figure than rivals such as Nanosolar and Stion — but it sorely needs a buyer or some other form of investor to survive.

Meanwhile, First Solar has told Dow Jones that it is still thinking about what to do with the intellectual property from its CIGS program. Beck doesn’t think First Solar will sell it, because it doesn’t want to let competitors get hold of a technology that could end up undercutting First Solar’s own in the future. “If they give it away, it’d be suicide,” Beck said.

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