Today we’ve received an email and seen multiple tweets alerting us to the fact that Google’s App Engine software development platform is down. We’ve emailed the company for details, but in the meantime, a check of the App Engine status page won’t even load at 11:30 a.m. PDT, and updates on the site indicate that […]
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Several marketing associations supported by Google have banded together and released seven principles that they believe should govern online privacy. Are you ready for a journey to the Emerald City? Because the principles are the online advertisers’ attempts to stave off government regulation around protecting consumers’ online privacy by diverting attention to the Great and […]
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Alcatel-Lucent said today that it’s begun providing German carrier E-Plus with equipment that inserts advertisements onto mobile devices based on demographic information provided by a subsidiary of the carrier. Customers opt in to the service and in exchange get extra minutes or texts on their cell phone plans. Gettings, the E-Plus subsidiary collecting the information […]
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As folks increasingly store and access information online, the data centers powering cloud services need to be managed more like a single computing entity rather than a bunch of servers, according to a Google white paper (Google calls it a mini-book) released today.
The paper lays out the concept of warehouse-scale computers (which we have previously […]

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National security on the web will be the next topic tackled by Google at a meeting it holds regularly in Washington, D.C., to highlight web-related issues for regulators and staffers of congressmen. This latest topic is appropriate, given the Obama administration’s recent creation of a cybersecurity czar position. Google said today it would hold its […]

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Time Warner today continued unraveling perhaps its biggest corporate mistake by announcing that it would spin out AOL into a separate company by the end of this year. Earlier this year, it had amended its debt agreements and brought in a new CEO, setting off speculation that an AOL split was imminent. As part of […]

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Google and Salesforce.com said today at the Google I/O Developer Conference that their platforms as a service will talk with one another. Using the libraries provided by Force.com for Google App Engine, developers can now access the data stored in the Salesforce.com cloud from inside Google’s App Engine. This is a powerful vote of confidence […]

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Microsoft is going to spend $80 million on an advertising campaign to support its new search effort, rumored to be called Bing, as the company once again takes on deeply entrenched rivals Google and Yahoo. AdAge magazine reports that the campaign could eventually hit $100 million. There was some talk that Microsoft would rename […]

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Microsoft will stop issuing security updates and patches for Microsoft Office 2000 as of June. It’s Microsoft’s policy to support its business software products for up to 10 years after their release, according to ComputerWorld, and then users have to pony up for the latest upgrade if they want to keep their machines secure. For […]

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TerreStar expects to launch a satellite that costs some $500 million at the end of June, and with it, hopes to reinvent the failed satellite service model from the 90s. Even though TerreStar’s service will launch at the end of this year with normal-sized phones that also work on cellular networks, the likelihood of success […]

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This morning, Google somehow rerouted some of its vast hordes of web traffic through Asia, causing service delays, interruptions, and a bit of craziness on Twitter. But it also managed to slow down a few retail web sites, and cause a noticeable gap in the worldwide web traffic. Check out the charts below.
Arbor Networks, which […]

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UPDATED: Google appears to be having problems across its Gmail, search and even its Blogger platforms, judging by complaints on various social networks. A Google spokesman said, “We’re aware some users are having trouble accessing some Google services. We’re looking into it, and we’ll update everyone soon.” Update: “The issue affecting some Google services has […]

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Rich Miller over at Data Center Knowledge just blew my mind with his list of the number of servers various companies run. Spurred by the news that Rackspace has 50,000 of them, he pored over public filings and at least one analyst report to come up with both actual and guesstimated figures, including 48,000 (that’s […]

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The people running the world’s telecommunications carriers are facing a threat to their core businesses due to convergence and a perception of their networks as dumb pipes, according to a report from IBM. As a result, 70 percent of telecom CEOs are concentrating on defending their core business, compared with just 25 percent of […]

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Smartphones are becoming more like PCs in many ways, especially if you think of netbooks or mobile Internet devices as cheap computers. The underlying hardware is becoming more similar, connectivity is crucial, and the tasks people use them for are converging. But a key difference between a computer and a phone  remains: the operating system.
Software […]

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Google’s participation in the cloud relies less on offering raw computing power and more on offering applications such as email and a platform for coders to use. Depending on your point of view, Google has chosen to offer one of the simpler cloud experiences or is exercising draconian levels of control. But one way or another, […]

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Amazon said today it would offer grants to allow educators, academic researchers and students to access its Amazon Web Services such as its compute cloud and cloud storage. By bringing cloud computing down to the student level, Amazon is making sure that the next generation of computer programmers is comfortable using its standards for interacting […]

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The most valuable use for the ever-increasing amount of information we put online through our Facebook pages, our Flickr accounts and even through our web searches may not be for targeted advertising (though that may be the most profitable use), but for public science and research. Inspired by an article today in the New Scientist […]

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The mobile Internet will be responsible for getting more of the world online, according to Internet co-founder Vint Cerf, who now works for Google, speaking at a conference in Madrid today. In an earlier post, Om made a similar point, saying that instead of a one-laptop-per-child initiative, we should be thinking along the lines of […]

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The European Commission has taken legal action against Phorm, a company using deep packet inspection to sell advertisements based on where people surf the web according to the BBC today. The EC alleges that Phorm has intercepted private data without clear consent from a user, a violation of EU privacy laws. The EC is getting […]

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As computing becomes cheaper, smaller and more mobile, our gadgets are morphing from desktops into notebooks and from netbooks into smartphones. But rather than focus on how small or cheap these devices can become, forward-thinking companies should focus on how their constant connection to the Internet changes what they can do with a pile of chips, […]

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Schooner Information Technology, a 2-year-old year old startup in Menlo Park, Calif., today came out of stealth mode with an appliance designed to speed up the transfer of information. As online data becomes more prevalent and the patience to wait for that data wanes, the company is offering a machine that’s purpose-built to speed up […]

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Schooner Information Technology, a 2-year-old year old startup in Menlo Park, Calif., today came out of stealth mode with an appliance designed to speed up the transfer of information. As online data becomes more prevalent and the patience to wait for that data wanes, the company is offering a machine that’s purpose-built to speed up […]

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Fusion-io said today it has raised $47.5 million in second round funding led by Lightspeed Venture, and formally announced David Bradford as CEO. The enterprise Flash drive startup also saw Series A investors, including New Enterprise Associates, Dell Ventures and Sumitomo Ventures, return for this round of funding. The company is one of several trying […]

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Last week the Washington Post published a big article in which it lists a variety of software-as-a-service applications trying to get government business, and notes how many federal agencies are leery of things like Google Docs and cloud storage because of perceived security concerns. I came away from it thinking what a shame it is […]

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Google may buy Twitter, or it may not, but one way or another, Twitter is hot. Why? Because it embodies three macro trends taking place on the web right now — in just 140 characters a tweet.

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Amazon today said it would bring web-scale computing power for use in workloads such as web indexing and data mining to just about anyone. The bookseller now offers MapReduce (a programming model created by Google to help deal with incredibly large data sets) using Hadoop on Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud and Simple Storage Service. This […]

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Now that GPS chips are becoming must-have hardware on cell phones, location-based services for mobile devices have finally arrived. They’re even infiltrating the desktop. So it’s time to start sifting through the location-aware company pitches, from newly launched apps to platforms (there’s always a few platforms). We’ve all heard about Google’s Latitude and Loopt, but […]

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Google late Monday unveiled Google Ventures, a venture fund that seeks to combine the search giant’s technical expertise with strategies pioneered by top-tier venture firms. By looking to invest in what it called “a broad range of industries, including consumer Internet, software, hardware, clean-tech, bio-tech and health care,” Google is either smartly casting its net […]

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Microsoft’s Steve Martin, senior director of developer platform management at the Redmond giant, posted an inflammatory blog post last night about the creation of open standards for the cloud. In it, he touts Microsoft’s openness, proposes a wiki for the creation of open standards in the cloud, and points to a shadowy cabal of tech companies that are developing […]

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The Federal Communications Commission yesterday released the agenda for its April 8 open meeting, and developing a national broadband plan topped the list. Another big item is a notice that the FCC will be soliciting data for its annual video competition report that discusses how people get their video. The FCC has not gathered this data […]

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Cloud computing and cloud services are real, but this is only the beginning. This was the message the guys who helped build Amazon Web Services, Google’s App Engine and Microsoft’s Azure clouds conveyed in Austin, Texas, this morning at South by Southwest’s only cloud computing panel. It was packed.
Given that between one-quarter and one-third of […]

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The next generation of highly successful software as a service (SaaS) companies will likely focus on delivering collaboration and IT management, according to a report out today from Forrester Research. The report takes a look at the SaaS infrastructure and lays out the case for continued SaaS adoption among certain groups of applications (see chart).
What […]

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I was thinking about reliability in the cloud when I saw this news item about the International Space System experiencing a close call with some space debris. The threat of the debris hitting the station forced the astronauts to hang out in their escape capsule to wait out the potential hit. Scary stuff, but then […]

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Google is good. Not necessarily as in “the opposite of evil,” but “smooth.” The company — facing some privacy backlash here and in Europe — said today that it would allow users to select the type of ads they see in web sites and provide an opt-out for folks who don’t want Google to track […]

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A provocative story from Reuters Monday ruminated on which companies are likely to replace Citigroup and General Motors in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Its conclusion: Google and Cisco are the most likely contenders, with Apple and Visa as less likely candidates. It’s a safe bet that those two troubled companies — trading below $2 a share — will get the boot, but does Google belong in the Dow? I think it does for a few reasons.

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A provocative story from Reuters Monday ruminated on which companies are likely to replace Citigroup and General Motors in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Its conclusion: Google and Cisco are the most likely contenders, with Apple and Visa as less likely candidates. It’s a safe bet that those two troubled companies — trading below $2 a share — will get the boot, but does Google belong in the Dow? I think it does for a few reasons.

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A provocative story from Reuters Monday ruminated on which companies are likely to replace Citigroup and General Motors in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Its conclusion: Google and Cisco are the most likely contenders, with Apple and Visa as less likely candidates. It’s a safe bet that those two troubled companies — trading below $2 a share — will get the boot, but does Google belong in the Dow? I think it does for a few reasons.

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It emerged over the weekend that Verizon Wireless was trying to share your cell phone data with “affiliates, agents and parent companies.” David Weinberger read the fine print on a recent 45-page Verizon mailing to discover that tidbit, and posted a really clear set of instructions to opt out.
His worries and the subsequent media hysteria […]

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It emerged over the weekend that Verizon Wireless was trying to share your cell phone data with “affiliates, agents and parent companies.” David Weinberger read the fine print on a recent 45-page Verizon mailing to discover that tidbit, and posted a really clear set of instructions to opt out.
His worries and the subsequent media hysteria […]

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It emerged over the weekend that Verizon Wireless was trying to share your cell phone data with “affiliates, agents and parent companies.” David Weinberger read the fine print on a recent 45-page Verizon mailing to discover that tidbit, and posted a really clear set of instructions to opt out.
His worries and the subsequent media hysteria […]

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Clearwire announced a slightly scaled back rollout of its WiMAX network last Thursday, but analysts still believe the wireless operator will have to stretch itself to pay for its nationwide network. Chris King, a analyst at Stifel Nicolaus, thinks Clearwire will need $2 billion to $4 billion more than it has disclosed to build out […]

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Updated: Folks, if you were burned by last night’s Gmail outage and pay for your service, don’t despair, Google has a service-level agreement in place to atone for the loss of productivity. The downside is that atonement comes in the form of a 3-day credit for service that’s worth about 41 cents. Update: But don’t […]

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When Google first released App Engine as a “Preview Release” last April, developers had relatively little computing power. Only a few apps got Google’s permission to grow beyond the free computing quotas, including BuddyPoke, Lingospot, Mentalfloss and Giftag.com. Now, the company’s going to start charging for its App Engine cloud platform. That’s welcome news for […]

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Can technology users adapt to the relatively high failure rates of their favorite communications tools by skipping from service to service when one option fails? With Gmail down last night, Twitter traffic relating to the failure was all over the place. A quick (but obviously unscientific) peek at my Facebook page showed more messages than […]

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Behind popular web services such as Facebook, Google and Amazon’s AWS are racks and racks of computers serving up millions of pages or providing raw computing power. The use of thousands of servers to deliver one application or act as a pool of computing resources has changed the way that chipmakers and computer vendors are […]

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Comcast, the nation’s largest cable operator, beat earnings and sales expectations for the fourth quarter, but still managed to disappoint when it came to the number of new subscribers for television and broadband services.
Comcast this morning reported earnings of $412 million on sales of $8.77 billion for the fourth quarter. However, like its rival Time […]

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Next week, while most Americans are lounging about in honor of President’s Day, the people responsible for your mobile phones, netbooks and cellular networks will converge on Barcelona for the Mobile World Congress trade show. Check back on Monday for clues as to what type of devices you’ll be toting in your pockets and purses […]

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Symbian said today that 14 new companies, including Hewlett-Packard, MySpace, Qualcomm and SanDisk, have joined its foundation. This brings the number of companies that have signed up to use the mobile operating system’s platform to 78, putting it ahead of the 47 members of the Open Handset Alliance, which supports Google’s Android OS. More members […]

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OneSpot, the two-year-old Austin, Texas, startup that aims to automate content syndication online, has raised $4.2 million from Silverback Ventures in Dallas. I was mostly drawn to this news because founder and CEO Matt Cohen is a friend, and it’s exciting to see an Austin company get funding. For Texas startups, it’s also great to […]

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