Category Archives: Business

AMD Licenses ARM Technology: AMD Leans on ARM for Security

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Last year after that particular AFDS, there was much speculation that AMD and ARM would get a whole lot closer. Today we have confirmed that in two ways. The first is that AMD and ARM are founding members of the HSA Foundation. This endeavor is a rather ambitious project that looks to make it much easier for programmers to access the full computer power of a CPU/GPU combo, or as AMD likes to call them, the APU. The second confirmation is one that has been theorized for quite some time, but few people have actually hit upon the actual implementation. This second confirmation is that AMD is licensing ARM cores and actually integrating them into their x86 based APUs.

via AMD Licenses ARM Technology: AMD Leans on ARM for Security | PC Perspective.

The Future Fruits Of Apple + Facebook

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And while Facebook is struggling to make money on small mobile screens, Facebook TV could be a more natural place for display ads. Advertisers have been demanding a bigger, flashier ad formats that Facebook TV could host. We’re so used to watching commercials on TV that a glossy still ad every 10 minutes or 10 photos, or the occasional fifteen-second pre-roll might not seem out of place.

Apple would gain a good showcase for how existing mobile and web apps could be reformatted for the television. The special Facebook app could also be a selling point for Apple’s new TV hardware. Facebook needs to be on televisions and Apple needs Facebook on its televisions, so this collaboration seems inevitable if not imminent.

via The Future Fruits Of Apple + Facebook | TechCrunch.

What goes around comes around.  The first computer to use the TV as a monitor was the VIC-20 or Commodore 64.  Then there was WebTV.  Now Apple wants to pipe Facebook to TV? Not having a TV or a Facebook account I have no basis for an opinion on this.

Which carcass is worth more for Microsoft’s vultures, RIM or Nokia?

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Nokia and RIM, the two former leaders in the early smartphone market, are now basically at the end stage of their downward spirals. This is an opportunity for Microsoft, which wants to make some inroads in the smartphone market, assuming Microsoft it can play its cards right.

via Microsoft Explorer : Which carcass is worth more for Microsoft’s vultures, RIM or Nokia?.

Google and Netflix Make Land Grab On Edge Of Internet

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Many of these deals are secret, but Deepfield Networks knows of about 40 companies that are setting up their own content delivery networks with service providers, according to Craig Labovitz. But he’s bound by non-disclosure agreements, and can’t name names.

via Google and Netflix Make Land Grab On Edge Of Internet | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com.

Andy Ellis, a chief security officer with Akamai, agrees. Yes, companies have been moving to cache their content locally with ISPs, but there are still plenty of services — security and analytics, for example — that Akami can sell them. “I don’t think we’re yet seeing a land rush into the ISPs,” he says. “I think you have to be really really big to be interesting enough to the ISPs.”

Of course, five years ago, did anyone really think that Netflix would be responsible for 20 percent of U.S. Internet traffic? Back then, they were just the guys who mailed you CDs.

Pre to postmortem: the inside story of the death of Palm and webOS

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Understanding exactly how Palm could drive itself into irrelevance in such a short period of time will forever be a subject of Valley lore. There are parts of the story that are simply lost, viewpoints and perspectives that have been rendered extinct either through entrenched politicking or an employee base that has long since given up hope and dispersed for greener pastures. What we do know, though, is enough to tell a tale of warring factions, questionable decisions, and strategic churn, interspersed by flashes of brilliance and a core team that fought very hard at times to keep the dream alive.

via Pre to postmortem: the inside story of the death of Palm and webOS | The Verge.

It’s easy to look back at Palm’s story arc from 1992 to 2012 and feel a sense of loss and sadness — this was a company that pioneered PDAs, popularized smartphones, and developed a revolutionary new platform on limited resources with an extraordinary concentration of industry talent before meeting its demise at the hands of HP. Staffers we spoke to took a more positive view, though, and one summed it up particularly well: “You ever see 24 Hour Party People? You know the scene at the end where they’re playing Happy Mondays’ Hallelujah and Tony Wilson is standing over The Hacienda and he’s like, ‘well, it’s all over — we have to shut down. Take the turntables, take the barstools, let a thousand Haciendas bloom’? Well, that’s what this is like. It’s that there are still people there, but a lot of people left, and they’re bringing the spirit with them. A thousand webOSes will bloom, I hope.“

That’s all we need — a thousand new operating systems.  Excellent article.  I recall well over a decade ago having a discussion about baseball at the local pub, someone takes out their Palm and looked up the pertinent statistic.  Wow thought I.  It amazes me how Palm lost  the mobile market.

Oracle Sues Lodsys!

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The constellations have shifted again. Oracle has just sued Lodsys, seeking to invalidate four of its patents. The complaint actually claims noninfringement and invalidity.

via Groklaw – Oracle Sues Lodsys! ~pj – Updated, Complaint as text.

It seems that Lodsys has been going after Oracle customers, and they in turn have been asking Oracle to indemnify them. Lodsys, methinks, has made a mistake. One doesn’t go after Oracle’s money. No. No. Never a good plan. I suspect Oracle will go for damages, tripled, and all their expenses, legal fees, etc. when this is over. That’s what that long list of prior art is saying to me, that it’s war. Also, note that DLA Piper US is also on the case. That’s another signal that Oracle intends to prevail, all other things being equal. When you have to add “US” to your law firm name, it’s because you are global. Here’s what DLA Piper says about itself:

A Brief History of Money

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Kublai Khan was ahead of his time: He recognized that what matters about money is not what it looks like, or even what it’s backed by, but whether people believe in it enough to use it. Today, that concept is the foundation of all modern monetary systems, which are built on nothing more than governments’ support of and people’s faith in them. Money is, in other words, a complete abstraction—one that we are all intimately familiar with but whose growing complexity defies our comprehension.

via A Brief History of Money – IEEE Spectrum.

There is, to be sure, something a bit eerie about all this, and periods like the recent housing bubble, when banks made an extraordinary number of bad loans, should remind us of the dangers of runaway credit. But it’s a mistake to yearn for a more “solid” foundation for the monetary system. Money is a social creation, just like language. It’s a tool that can be used well or poorly, and it’s preferable that we have more freedom to use that tool than less.

Facebook Might Have a Smartphone in Its Future

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This would be Facebook’s third effort at building a smartphone, said one person briefed on the plans and one who was recruited. In 2010, the blog TechCrunch reported that Facebook was working on a smartphone. The project crumbled after the company realized the difficulties involved, according to people who had worked on it. The Web site AllThingsD reported last year that Facebook and HTC had entered a partnership to create a smartphone, code-named “Buffy,” which is still in the works.

via Facebook Might Have a Smartphone in Its Future – NYTimes.com.

Facebook IPO Post Mortem

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4. Mobile is going to crush Facebook. The logic for Facebook’s price decline is that they have a problem in mobile. They can’t offer all the games they can in a browser. They can’t offer the same ads or branding opportunities. All true.

via Facebook IPO Post Mortem – Killer – but not for the reasons you think ! « blog maverick.

5. And in the interest of disclosure I bought 150k shares of FB. 50k shares at 33, 50k shares at 31.97 and 50k shares around 32.50. Its a trade, not an investment. Kind of like buying a Mickey Mantle, a Hank Aaron and a Barry Bonds Rookie Card knowing there is a card show in town next week

IBM Faces the Perils of “Bring Your Own Device”

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The trend toward employee-owned devices isn’t saving IBM any money, says Jeanette Horan, who is IBM’s chief information officer and oversees all the company’s internal use of IT. Instead, she says, it has created new challenges for her department of 5,000 people, because employees’ devices are full of software that IBM doesn’t control.

via IBM Faces the Perils of “Bring Your Own Device” – Technology Review.

Horan isn’t only trying to educate IBM workers about computer security. She’s also enforcing better security. Before an employee’s own device can be used to access IBM networks, the IT department configures it so that its memory can be erased remotely if it is lost or stolen. The IT crew also disables public file-transfer programs like Apple’s iCloud; instead, employees use an IBM-hosted version called MyMobileHub. IBM even turns off Siri, the voice-activated personal assistant, on employees’ iPhones. The company worries that the spoken queries, which are uploaded to Apple servers, could ultimately reveal sensitive information.