GigaOM

At GigaOM’s recent Structure 08 event, Meebo co-founder and engineering chief, Sandy Jen, joined a panel to talk about scaling your computing infrastructure for explosive growth. Jen also spoke with Found|READ, this time to offer founders tips on how to overcome what she calls the internal scaling challenge: hiring.

Meebo launched in September 2005, when it unveiled the first Ajax application that allowed users to access several instant messaging clients (AIM, Jabber, Google Talk, etc.) from its home page. Back then, Jen and co-founders Seth Sternberg and Elaine Wherry were bootstrapping, even using personal credit cards to lease the three servers they needed in order to launch. With no money left over for marketing, they went guerrilla. Continue Reading

GigaOM’s Structure 08 event offered a terrific opportunity to survey the changing landscape of computing infrastructure. But as with all technology shifts, innovation won’t just belong to the big established players like VMWare, Amazon, Google, Sun Microsystems, Salesforce.com and NetSuite. With that in mind, Found|READ asked a panel of conference participants to share their thoughts via email on some of the more compelling business opportunities for startups in the cloud computing space. Specifically, we asked them:

F|R: Let’s say you’re about to start, or fund, a new business. Considering the changing landscape for computing architecture, what emerging or ignored problem in cloud computing would you target? What business or service would you launch to try to address it? Continue Reading

AT&T, long before it merged with SBC had made a half-hearted attempt at getting into consumer VoIP by selling a service called, CallVantage. It was surprisingly good, especially its call quality. Unfortunately, the company never quite made the commitment to it. And when SBC merger happened, well it fell victim of save-your-mentality that comes with it. Today, there is word that AT&T has stopped pushing the service through its affiliate channels - a sure sign that the company is backing away even further and would shut it down soon enough. Some believe that shut down is going to come next year, though I thought it was already killed, since the former AT&T Callvantage boss is now running AT&T’s CDN business, and we have not heard a single pitch from the company in over a year. I guess this is one less thing Vonage has to worry about!

You just had to squeeze a little more work in on this Fourth of July holiday, didn’t you? Well, we’re glad you stopped by. But before your fire up the BBQ, take a minute to catch up on what you might have missed over at NewTeeVee.

A federal judge ordered YouTube to hand over its user data to Viacom. If it stands (the Electronic Frontier Foundation says the judge’s order violates federal law), that means Viacom will know all about your secret obsession with making Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend” the most-watched video of all time.

Two big-name Hollywood types (and fanboy faves), Seth MacFarlane and Joss Whedon, are experimenting with new content models online. MacFarlane (”Family Guy”) will create “Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy,” an animated series with a multimillion-dollar budget that will be distributed by Google AdSense to targeted sites. Whedon, on the other hand, will release his musical web series “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” in three parts for free, online, for a limited time, then yank them off the web and make the whole show available for purchase.

Speaking of innovative distribution, after being disappointed with the token theatrical release of his indie film “The Nines,” director John August said that “leaking” the film on P2P networks would have built better buzz for the film than playing Sundance. Take that, Robert Redford!

And finally, what better way to wash down those hot dogs than with a little vodka. Kanye West is the latest pitchman for Absolut and created a kooky (though unoriginal) infauxmercial to hawk the beverage.

Now be done with work. Go outside and enjoy the holiday!

Google has released a Google Talk client for the iPhone that allows instant messaging as long as the application is open. I’d like to think of this as a nifty way around rising texting costs, but that’s unlikely, given how much time my phone spends in my pocket. If this type of mobile app takes off, it will raise a usability question for the high-end phone and MID apps developers. So much of our PC lives revolve around multiple applications staying open — and around the user focusing on the machine — but that isn’t how people use their mobile devices. So how do you build a phone that allows for multiple programs to be open, and how do you alert users to changes in the app’s status without going through carriers?

For a while there, covering the chip industry was like covering a race run by a rabbit and a cheetah. AMD was the rabbit, while Intel — with its much larger market cap and greater profits — was the cheetah. Evey now and then the rabbit would fool you into thinking he was going to pull ahead, but we all knew who was going to win. In the past few years, however, two things have brought more runners and more diversity to the course: a challenge to the x86 architecture, and the iPhone.

I could probably find a way to credit the iPhone for changing the furniture industry if I tried hard enough (it could be the new Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game for tech journalists.) But in this case the iPhone pushed the real Internet — as opposed to a carrier-defined portal — out to mobile consumers and showed them how compelling such access could be. That made clear to carriers that data usage, which was already on the rise, could become a huge revenue booster if consumers were given the right type of devices. Which prompted chip makers to see gold in the form of the 33.2 million high-end handsets sold around the world. Continue Reading