Amazon glitch raises questions on cloud

As technical problems interrupted offsite data storage provided by Amazon for a second day yesterday, industry analysts said the troubles will prompt many companies to reconsider relying on remote computers beyond their control.

“This is a wake-up call for cloud computing,’’ said Matthew Eastwood, an analyst for the research firm IDC, who used the term for accessing services and information in big data centers remotely over the Internet from anywhere, as if the services were in a cloud. “It will force a conversation in the industry.’’

That discussion, he said, will likely center around what data and computer operations to send off to the cloud and what to keep inside the corporate walls...

follow link read the rest... the article does make an excellent point.

Cuban at MIT: Video revolution needs some work

The outspoken Mark Cuban told a crowd at MIT last night that the amount of video content on either the Internet or TV is going to explode and drive innovation.

“Our consumption and creation and utilization of video is going to grow faster than the Verizon’s or the Comcast’s and the rest can support,” he told a sold-out audience of more than 300 during the MIT Enterprise Forum’s event “IPTV, The Scrum for the Last 6 Feet.”

The evening started with a fireside chat between Prism VentureWorks partner Woody Benson and Cuban, the founder of Broadcast.com andHDNet, and the owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team. After the chat the evening moved on to a panel discussion with panelists Cuban; Avner Ronen, CEO and founder of Boxee; Paul Sagan, CEO of Akamai Technologies Inc., and Will Richmond of VideoNuze.

Cuban took a fairly contrary position to the other panelists when it came to behavioral changes happening because of the rapid growth in the amount of video content, mainly because parsing the huge amount of available content is beyond any current cable or IPTV interface, at least in any easy way. And easy is what TV watching is all about, Cuban said.

to read the rest follow the link:

http://www.masshightech.com/stories/2011/01/31/daily53-Cuban-at-MIT-Video-revolution-needs-some-work.html

Google Chrome ditches popular format for web video

WOW, check this out...

The jockeying to see which tech giant controls the future of video on the Internet has hit another flash point.

Google's decision to dump a widely-used video standard, called H.264, from its Chrome browser, in favor of a format it has created, called WebM, is drawinghowls of derision in the tech community.

The H.264 format is used on about 66% of the video on the Web. It is royalty free as long as the video is distributed for free; otherwise, companies have to pay a licensing fee to the patent owner, MPEG LA.

Google's WebM format at this point in time is free -- no licensing fees of any kind. It's supporters includes Adobe, Mozilla and Opera, among others.

Meanwhile, Apple and Microsoft are huge supporters of H.264, as is Abode, whose ubiquitous Flash video player works on H.264, but not yet on WebM.

Last October, Apple dumped support for Flash from its Mac OS X computer operating system, drawing criticism from cybersecurity experts. Users of OS X no longer get Flash player, or its security updates, by default.

IDC tech industry analyst Al Hilwa tells Technology Live that Goolge's move boils down to a dollars and cents calculation.

"Google made a business decision about licensing money that it had to pay for using what has become an industry standard video format, namely H.264," says Hilwa.

Google product manager Mike Jazayeri says the company's goal in dumping H.264 is to enable "open innovation." But that claim rings hollow, says Hilwa.

"It is hypocritical, but not untypical of either Google or other companies who use Open Source software for financial gain," observes Hilwa. "Google spent over $100 million a year ago onacquisition of On2, which owns the video technology they used to put into WebM."

Hilwa says the rate of adoption of Google's Chrome browser could actually decline. He says the search giant has "upset a lot of developers and web-content owners" by putting all of its chips on WebM.

Google is locked in a high stakes poker tournament against Microsoft, Apple, Mozilla and Opera. Each covets a dominant share of the browser market, going forward.

"No one knows how this will all turn out, but the tech giants are playing their hands," says Hilwa. "Whoever controls video on the Internet could be in the best position to dominate video on mobile devices."

By Byron Acohido

Raytheon BBN working on real Star Trek tech

Interesting...

If you thought inventing the Internet was a big enough accomplishment that you can rest on your laurels, you can’t work for Raytheon BBN Technologies – the actual inventors of said Internet. DARPA agrees and is now funding Raytheon BBN in a program to create super high-capacity broadband encrypted communications technology that is all but unbreakable, and super high-resolution long-distance imaging.

Oh, and as a side benefit, it could also give you your messages or images instantly, no matter how far apart the sender and receiver are – five feet or five light years.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is really living up to its name on this one, giving Raytheon BBN $2.1 million for some seriously advanced research. The Cambridge-based deep thinkers will put the funds into two projects, both of which will use a feature of quantum physics known as quantum entanglement and both applied to using quantum-entangled light.

In the first project, given the tasty name of PIECOMM (Photon Information Efficient Communications), Raytheon BBN will try to use quantum physics to reach the limit of data density that can be packed into a stream of light. In a press release about the funding, Raytheon BBN says the applications for such communications could be in “free space optical communication links, including far-field links used in deep space.” Fire up the subspace radio, Lt. Uhura!

The second project hints at the kind of data that might be sent over that crazy-dense laser link. FINESSE (Fundamental Information Capacity of Electromagnetism with Squeezing and Spatial Entanglement) aims to create the ultimate imaging technology, using quantum states of light that don’t normally exist. And that gets to the real science fiction aspect of the projects – the potential uses of the quantum entanglement that will be at their hearts.

With quantum entangled light, each photon is connected at a quantum level to a photon in a second stream of light. If any change happens to the first particle, that change is reflected in the second particle. Because of that, any possible tampering – including simply looking at the first particle – will be known because it will happen to the second particle as well. That is a key to thesuper encryption, because any tampering could be made to change or destroy the data. But the real Star Trek item here is that the change in the light streams will occur in both at the same time, no matter how far apart they have become.

So, say you send a high-power laser pulse to a detected planet in another solar system some 10 light years away, using these systems being thought up by Raytheon BBN. Normally, you would have to wait for 20 years – 10 years out, 10 years back – to get any reflected light back, and the amount of coherent data left in the light stream would be essentially meaningless. No pictures. With a potential technology from these projects, the light stream would be able to carry huge amounts of redundant data, and it would only have to go through 10 years of possible quality degradation, because once it hits the planet in the other solar system, its twin, quantum-entangled light stream back here on Earth would change instantly to mirror what the other light stream detected. Instant Polaroids from deep space. Activate the long-range sensors, Mr. Chekov!

Of course, since the funding is coming from the Defense Department’s crazy ideas unit, and it is going to Raytheon BBN, not the old BBN Technologies that it was before defense giant Raytheon Co. bought it a little more than a year ago, one has to assume there are more terrestrial, military applications in mind for such technologies. How about instantaneous, HD-quality video imaging of any spot on the globe from a satellite, sent over an unbreakable encrypted optical stream? Or an encrypted unbreakable data stream so dense and so fast that it could be used for real-time, full-body virtual control of a combat robot from anywhere on the globe? Voltron powers, activate?

Now, how long do I have to wait for the inevitable commercial offshoots? I would be happy with a data stream fast and dense enough that my recorded TV shows on my cable DVR don’t stutter or artifact when I play them back. But Voltron sure would be cool.

Microsoft’s Push Into Gesture Technology

This is some cool stuff, Gesture Technology will bring gaming to a whole new level, no more controllers smashing flat screens!

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Prepare for Windows 8: Minority Report Edition.

Microsoft said on Friday that it was buying Canesta, a small Silicon Valley company that specializes in gesture-recognition technology.

Interest in this technology has surged because it lets people control computers and other devices through hand movements and other bodily gyrations, in similar fashion to the systems depicted in futuristic films like “Minority Report.”

Canesta makes chips that, when coupled with a digital camera, give all manner of devices a sense of depth perception for the world around them, letting them “see” in three dimensions.

Neither company disclosed the financial terms.

Next month, Microsoft will begin shipping Kinect, a $150 add-on for its Xbox gaming consoles, which uses gesture recognition to allow people to play games with body motions instead of controllers. Players flick through menus with waves of the hand and then move to make their on-screen avatars run, jump, duck, swing and dance. The 3-D technology in Kinect is from PrimeSense, a Canesta rival...

In a recent interview, Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, discussed the company’s plans to advance the gesture technology well beyond video games. “I’m excited to be way out in front and want to push the pedal on that,” Mr. Ballmer said.

Using Canesta’s technology, Microsoft and its partners could equip PCs, televisions, cars, cellphones and other devices with gesture recognition features.

Canesta has spent 11 years building chips that process images and information about distances to give devices some 3-D oomph.

Honda has invested in the company with the hopes of putting 3-D sensors into cars that could help them to detect obstacles. It could also use the technology to see the size and body shape of a person in a seat and adjust the way an air bag inflates.

Quanta Computer, a Taiwanese company that manufactures laptops for many of the major brands, has also invested in Canesta and expects to build laptops this year with 3-D camera modules. Manufacturers use the technology to give robots on their assembly lines some visual smarts.

“We have a really broad mission to enable everyday devices with the ability to see, and enable natural user interfaces across all kinds of devices,” said James Spare, chief executive of Canesta, who is a former Microsoft executive. “There is no other company more committed to natural user interfaces than Microsoft,” Mr. Spare added.

Canesta’s investors have poured about $60 million into the company over the years.

Analysts have described PrimeSense’s technology as cheaper to put in place than that of Canesta. However, they have also said that Canesta should be able to build less expensive and more sophisticated products over time because it designs a very specialized type of chip geared toward the 3-D recognition jobs.

Last year, Microsoft acquired 3DV systems, a company with similar gesture recognition technology. That deal coupled with the Canesta purchase may prevent competitors from acquiring these 3-D abilities and cut off potential intellectual property squabbles. Canesta has secured 44 patents in this area and has more pending.

Historically, Microsoft has worked with chip partners like Intel and Nvidia rather than building its own products, so the Canesta purchase is something of a shift.

Apple has been scooping up chip makers as well so it can improve the engines that power devices like the iPhone and iPad.

Target to sell Facebook Credits gift cards

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook is coming to a Target (TGT) store near you.

The social-network giant is getting into the gift card business, starting Sunday, with Facebook Credits cards.

The new Facebook gift cards will be available in values of $15, $25 and $50 at all of Target's 1,750 retail stores and at Target.com. Two or three more national retailers will start selling the cards in coming months.

This will be the first time Facebook has had any presence in a retail store. Facebook already has an arrangement with online-payment services PayPal and MOL to purchase Facebook Credits.

Facebook is banking that a sizable chunk of its 500 million members will purchase the cards and use them on their favorite social games, applications and virtual goods.

The gift cards, which look and work like Apple's iTunes cards, were created by GMG Entertainment, which also produced iTunes cards. Target carries iTunes cards, too.

More than 200 million people play free social games on Facebook each month, according to Facebook. And many of them are beginning to spend money on premium goods and services associated with those games.

"We think (the cards) will be incredibly popular as a holiday gift," says Dan Rose, vice president of partnerships and platform marketing at Facebook.

The cards can initially be used on more than 150 social games and applications, including titles from gamemakers such as Zynga (FarmVille, FrontierVille), CrowdStar (Happy Aquarium, HelloCity) and PopCap Games (Bejeweled Blitz). Facebook gift cards do not replace Zynga's existing game cards.

Target — which already sells more than 30 gift cards for online games, such as FarmVille — expects the markets for online gaming and digital music to continue to grow, says Mark Schindele, senior vice president of merchandising at Target. He also noted that Target has more than 1.5 million fans on its Facebook page.

By year's end, Facebook expects to have gift card credits available for its thousands of games. At least 19 games on Facebook have more than 10 million active users a month.

Facebook is expected to rake in an estimated $1.3 billion in online advertising revenue worldwide this year, up 92% from 2009, eMarketer says.

Facebook's entry into the growing prepaid gift card market could prove lucrative. The domestic prepaid gift card market is expected to reach $86.2billion this year, compared with $80.6billion in 2009, according to Mercator Advisory Group.

/// Donna asks?

So, will you purchase facebook credits?

How Steve Jobs beats presentation panic

Editor’s Note: The following article is reprinted from CIO.com. Visit CIO’s Macs in the Enterprise page.

...What Jobs did next, according to Carmine Gallo, author of The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs, was vintage Jobs (and a model for how presenters should deal with stage crises): He did not panic. He did not look hot under the collar of his trademark turtleneck. Hishours of practice and intimate knowledge of every inch of every slide made him comfortable enough so that he could jump around to another part of the presentation (in this case, to look at photos). Jobs “trouble shooted” his problem by asking the audience (and, presumably, his back-stage engineers) for a little networking assistance. “You know, you could help me out. If you're on Wi-Fi, if you could just get off,” he pleaded, to roaring audience laughter. “I’d appreciate it. We're having a little problem here.”

And he sprinkled in several more bits of humor to diffuse any audience insecurity. “I’ve got time,” he joked, while waiting for the audience to “police each other.”

/// My comment:

Live demonstrations do NOT always go as well as rehearsed, so it's critical for the presenter to be prepared to work around these types of issues. They must be able to retain the audiences attention and get the message across. We all know technology isn't 100% perfect all the time.