Comcast’s Wi-Fi network has pulled up stakes and is heading west to make its fortune in San Francisco and other California cities. The cable operators said it has deployed a “few thousand” hotspots around the state though the greatest concentration is in the Bay Area. Read more »
The glass screens of the iPhone 4 reportedly shatter at a rate 82% higher than earlier versions of the phone. This led consumers to bring a lawsuit claiming that Apple ads boasting about the glass were deceptive. The consumers are for now out of luck. Read more »
At its annual shareholder meeting today in Cupertino, Calif., Apple did not reveal much of anything new. While it was CEO Tim Cook’s first such meeting since taking over as CEO, the biggest news was what didn’t happen: there was no dividend for shareholders announced. Read more »
Mobile privacy will still be a murky issue despite a new agreement between the state of California and six leading mobile companies over how best to help app developers comply with a California law requiring them to post a privacy policy. Read more »
If you didn’t think that Amazon was the king of cloud, just look at what other cloud companies announced Monday. Even paragons of the private cloud world are trying to cloak themselves in the glow cast by Amazon, which is squarely in public cloud realm. Read more »
It’s clear that Pinterest is really hot, but a new study shows just how powerful the virtual pinboard company has become. Pinterest is now driving more referral traffic on the web than Google+, YouTube, Reddit, and LinkedIn combined, according to Shareaholic’s January 2012 Referral Traffic Report. Read more »
Nanosolar, which has struggled for years to fulfill its promise as the next major thin-film solar manufacturer, announced Thursday it has a new CEO. Eugenia Corrales, who has been the startup’s head of engineering and operations, is taking over the chief executive post effective immediately. Read more »
Although we live in an AC-dominated world, DC seems poised for a comeback, particularly in data centers. Facebook adopted a DC architecture in its Prineville, Ore., data center. SAP spent $128,000 retrofitting a datacenter at its offices in Palo Alto, Calif., to rely on DC power. Read more »
I spent some time playing with Google Insights to find out what parts of the country are most interested in technology and when that interest hit its peak. It wasn’t surprising to see Silicon Valley rank highly, but did you know Utah was into next-generation programming? Read more »
Piazza, the social network that lets college students and instructors discuss material online, has closed on $6 million in a new Series A funding round. Piazza’s service is meant to counteract study group snobbery and eliminate students’ fear of asking “dumb” questions. Read more »
A hearing Thursday in California in front of U.S. District Court Judge Lucy Koh addressed a request from Apple to ban the sale of Samsung products, including Galaxy Tab 10.1, in the U.S. Samsung infringes on the patents, Koh said, but they may not be “valid.” Read more »
The California Energy Commission on Wednesday filed a complaint against a wind turbine maker, contending that the company has exaggerated the performance of its equipment and caused the commission to overpay in rebates. Read more »
It is important to understand that our work takes place in a system. To be an effective web worker, it is vital that you think about the whole system that you work in, not just the critical dimension of the moment. Read more »
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was not bluffing. On Wednesday evening, Amazon followed through with its threat to terminate its associates program in California after Governor Jerry Brown signed into law a bill that will impose state sales taxes on online purchases made by California residents. Read more »
Cloud computing has grown from a pie-in-the-sky vision to a major IT movement over the past few years. As its promise has grown, though, so too has its scope. This report covers six key sectors in cloud computing: commodity Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), enterprise IaaS, Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), cloud storage and private clouds. We highlight the current state of each and provide informed insights into where they — and cloud computing in general — are headed. Much like any market in a still-evolving state, the infrastructure of the cloud-computing transition is still being built by startups, practitioners and even a big-name company or two. Companies mentioned in this report include VMware, Amazon, Nasuni, Terremark and Heroku. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Here’s a phrase PayPal might want to keep in mind as it wages a civil battle against two former executives who defected to Google. Location, location, location. When it comes to employment breach of contract and trade-secret cases, California is a hard state to win in. Read more »
The California Public Utility Commission is the first major regulator to issue such sweeping guidance on how data privacy should shape the smart grid. Here is how the ruling will affect the three big California utilities, as well as tech companies, startups and telcos. Read more »
Imagine what the police could find out about you if they had the ability to search your phone and all it contains, from your browser and photo history to your Foursquare check-ins. Police in California now have the right to do this — without a warrant. Read more »
California’s new Renewable Auction Mechanism (RAM) represents an important new move for the state into a feed-in tariff model for solar, wind and other renewable power — but with some critical twists. What are the advantages, and the potential drawbacks, of this reverse auction FiT model? ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
California’s grand experiment with power market deregulation ended with a bang in 2001, when Enron-engineered rolling blackouts. But in Texas, power market deregulation — or competition, as folks down here prefer to name it — is in full swing. Read more »
OpenADR may be the open demand response technology of the future, but right now one vendor — Honeywell — has a lock on the market. That may be about to change, ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Here are some interesting posts from around the ‘Net to catch up with over the weekend: Seth Godin: “16 questions for free agents” WorkAwesome: “The Benefits of Working from Home” WorkAwesome: “How to Ask Your Boss to Work From Home” A List Apart: “Habit Fields” jkOnTheRun: […] Read more »
It’s taken a full year and upward of $700 million in acquisitions, but CA Technologies (yes, it’s a new moniker) finally delivered on its cloud-computing strategy with several major product announcements. The Cloud-Connected Management Suite — the centerpiece of CA’s announcements — leverages pieces of technology ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Every 15 years or so, the IT world undergoes a tectonic shift. Technological forces collide and grind against one another, creating an upheaval that leaves the landscape irrevocably changed. The latest such shift is currently underway: the transition to computing as a service, also known as ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
With the growing recognition that global warming demands a business response, many companies are budgeting for climate-change plans. These plans aim to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions across a wide range of activities, including procurement, manufacturing, warehousing, distribution, retailing, IT, waste disposal, and regulatory compliance. In drawing up and implementing these plans, though, businesses have made an unexpected discovery: The shift to greener operations creates competitive advantages by cutting costs, preparing for regulation of carbon emissions and presenting an attractively green ethos to the market. Sustainable business, it turns out, is good business.
To help implement their plans, companies can choose from a variety of enterprise sustainability software, also known as carbon management software, delivered via a Web browser in the form of Software as a Service. These systems collect resource-consumption data distributed geographically and functionally across the enterprise including electricity metering, transportation fuel costs and emissions from manufacturing and production facilities. The objective is to bring this data into one place where it can be examined and analyzed comprehensively.
Sustainability software covers three broad areas. One category is aimed at IT and helps manage energy consumption in data centers. A second category monitors and analyzes the flow of electricity in smart-grid installations. The third helps enterprises manage resources, emissions and waste. It collects data and offers visualization tools. The most advanced systems offer sophisticated modeling capabilities, which can aid greatly in formulating and implementing strategies for reducing an enterprise’s environmental footprint.
This third category is the subject of this report. While the green IT and smart-grid categories are relatively mature, the enterprise market is still taking shape. Moreover, this area has potential to become the largest by far. While the traditional market for sustainability software consists of Fortune 500 companies, smaller operations are beginning to recognize the benefits. Sustainability software will become attractive to businesses of all sizes and sectors as industries develop standards for tracking, evaluating, and reporting greenhouse gas emissions and as government regulations spur trade in carbon credits and environmental labeling of consumer products.
This report surveys the history of enterprise sustainability software systems, their capabilities, and how they’re being used in a variety of industries. It also offers recommendations for companies interested in using these tools. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
In California, an effort to reduce carbon emissions came into conflict with the function of certain electronic devices — and the state’s Air Resources Board (ARB) has come down in favor of the electronics. ARB announced Thursday that the so-called Cool Cars rulemaking will now “cease.” Read more »
Rooftop solar companies are breathing a sigh of relief – and are getting ready to install more projects in New York and California. That’s because legislatures in the two states have passed new rules that boost net metering, an arrangement that allows customers with small-scale solar […] Read more »
I clearly remember the moment I knew I would never buy another physical CD and would buy all my music online. Since then, I’ve been waiting for the moment when I would know that I could buy all my movies online. In November, Apple announced that […] Read more »
Watch out methane producers, California has just hired Picarro. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based startup announced Wednesday that it has been selected to provide its greenhouse gas-detecting sensor boxes to measure changes in methane emissions across the Golden State. CEO Michael Woelk told us last November that his […] Read more »
Although it was expected that Motorola Droid would see an update around December 11, there’s a new mandatory software update available today. Information from the Verizon support site for Droid breaks out the following fixes and enhancements in software version AP:ESD56/BP:C_01.3E.01P — which just rolls off the […] Read more »
