Archive for March 5th, 2010
It’s Back! Layar’s Mobile AR Browser Relaunches On iPhone
In December of last year, augmented reality (AR) browser makers Layar chose to pull its iPhone app from the App Store due to frequent crashes reported by users. They thought it was better for their brand to remove the application than to promote a faulty product. As we’ve mentioned in the past , Layar had hinted that a revamped iPhone app would be out near the end of February, and earlier this week they released just that. Sponsor With the relaunch of their iPhone app, Layar rejoins acrossair , Wikitude and others now vying for elbow room in the mobile AR space. Layar boasts one of the largest collections of points-of-interest (POI) data sets and now that library is available again on the iPhone. The usual suspects can be found on Layar, such as Flickr photos, Google search, YouTube videos and Wikipedia articles, but one of the more unique layers on the app is Foursquare integration. Users can use the Layar AR viewfinder to find nearby Foursquare locations and by linking the app to their account can check in without leaving Layar. There is also a feature in each layer to view entries on a map, or in list view. The map is especially handy for Foursquare integration because Foursquare’s own app disappointingly doesn’t support a map view. An equally interesting layer to investigate is the Recovery.org layer which shows you which U.S. organizations in your area received funding (and the amount they received) from the Recovery Act. “The new Layar Reality Browser has a re-engineered engine under the hood. This new engine makes the application light, stable and very quick,” the company said on its blog. “It is ready to handle all the current layers and it is a good base to realize all of our exciting future plans.” Layar’s return to the iPhone platform comes just in time for the company’s new layer marketplace which will allow developers to charge users for their content; in other words, an App Store for mobile AR. If Subway wants to create a layer with all of their locations and charge $.99 for it’s use, they or any other company will easily be able to do that. One could assume that Layar will make use of Apple’s in-app purchase functionality on the iPhone, but it would be sad to see Layar lose a percentage of their cut on the purchases to Apple. If anything, that could raise prices on the layers themselves, but that’s a whole other argument. This could be a huge step forward for the mobile AR space. As these applications become more useful, more refined and more popular, companies will be excited to participate in providing branded content in an AR experience. Expect an announcement from Layar in the next few weeks about the launch of this exciting new platform, but in the meantime, iPhone users (3GS only) can go snag Layar’s free app (iTunes link) in the App Store. Discuss
ActiveTrak: A Hybrid Service To Track Stolen or Lost Laptops
Portland has a fast emerging tech culture that is seeing a number of new technology startups. Today, $225,000 is on the table for one of the year’s biggest events: The Oregon Entrepreneur Network’s annual Angel Oregon . One of the major contenders is ActiveTrak, which tracks lost or stolen devices. The company is launching a SaaS service in the next three months for the enterprise. Sponsor You may know the company for its consumer service: GadgetTrak . The software is installed on laptops or mobile devices. It uses WiFi to track the device. For mobile devices, the service may use GPS. If that’s not available, it will triangulate using WiFi hotspots or cell towers. The software will also take a picture of the person who stole it. The software has been used to track stolen computers that has helped break up criminal rings. Recently, Portland schools had a number of laptops stolen that had the software installed.The software tracked the devices, leading to arrests and recovery of the laptops. CEO Ken Westin said the enterprise service will be available as SaaS or on-premise offering. One of its pilot accounts is with a major chemical company. People will install the software on the device, which syncs with the application in the cloud. Mobile devices will allow for over the air updates such as with iPhone or Android applications. Security is obviously a priority. ActiveTrak will store its databases on dedicated servers. The application layer will reside in the cloud. The on-premise service will reside entirely As demand increases, it will increase or decrease its number of application servers as demand peaks and ebbs. Westin said they are trying to avoid issues with propagating data across a number of servers. Data, in Westin’s view, is easier to secure in one place. Discuss
Gain a Job, Lose Two Jobs: Do Tech Companies Wield Too Much Power?
I’m a big fan of maxims and technology. It should be no surprise, then, that Melvin Kranzbergs six laws of technology really speak to me. Perhaps my favorite is, “Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.” There have always been – and will always be – winners and losers. Lately I have been wondering if there have been too many of the latter and not enough of the former. Sponsor Guest author Phil Simon is an independent technology consultant and a dynamic public speaker for hire. He focuses on the intersection of business and technology. Phil is the author of two books: Why New Systems Fail and The Next Wave of Technologies . He maintains a blog, writes for a number of technology media outlets, and hosts the podcast Technology Today . What specifically am I talking about? I’m talking about how there are only a few companies and industries actually creating jobs these days – and how they’re certainly in the driver’s seat. In this post, I’ll take a realistic (as opposed to moralistic) look at the power that technology companies are wielding these days vis-à-vis job creation. Supply and Demand at Work Consider the recent announcement by Facebook to create 200 jobs in Austin, Texas . However, there’s a hitch. The company’s U.S. expansion is contingent upon Austin officials approving considerable tax breaks. Some might question why local governments would essentially bid for jobs. It’s really quite simple: supply and demand. In this case, the demand for jobs is quite high while the supply is not. What’s more, from Austin’s perspective, the costs of lost tax revenues need to be viewed against the self-explanatory benefits of newly created jobs. Google in North Carolina With that in mind, it’s hard to blame Facebook or Austin city officials for trying to make a deal. In fact, they are hardly the first parties to work out a sweetheart deal. I can cite a number of recent examples of organizations that have played would-be suitors against each other for the purposes of procuring the lowest corporate taxes. Perhaps the most publicized recent case involved Google and Research Park, North Carolina . In that very piece, Rick Smith writes about the complicated negotiations that Google executives held with public officials about job creation – and the subsequent public backlash. Smith rightly asks two questions: Should North Carolina government officials accede to Google’s demands? And what’s the alternative? Technology’s Role in Unemployment So there’s a fundamental imbalance between the supply and demand of jobs. Let’s not pretend that this has never happened before. However, let’s compare The Great Recession with previous economic crises. What’s different this time? Two things. First, technology has made jobs more portable, less tied to an individual community. It’s not as if Procter & Gamble in 1932 could make contemporary arguments in an attempt to bargain for tax concessions from local government. Employees had to work near other employees; they weren’t virtual. Now, my plumber still needs to be local but he is increasingly the exception to the rule. High-tech companies such as Facebook and Google can take their operations virtually anywhere around the globe. What’s more, without getting all political, U.S. tax laws are hardly as employer-friendly as that of other countries that are equally if not more desperate for job creation. Don’t think that tech companies are not acutely aware of these facts when they make local U.S. communities in essence bid for job, a trend that will continue. Second, technology seems to be destroying jobs much faster than it is creating others. German economist Joseph Schumpeter coined a term for this phenomenon in 1942: creative destruction . No doubt that has endured for both its relevance and its wonderful dichotomy. Technology has always been a disruptive force, but has it become a net negative with respect to job creation? Journalists certainly come to mind. Also, what about the downward pressure that technology exerts on wages? What about the emergence of ” The Disposable Worker “. As Peter Coy, Michelle Conlin and Moira Herbst argue in a recent BusinessWeek article, more and more people are forced to work as independent contractors, absent the benefits of W-2 – e.g., health benefits, sick time, etc. Business Realities and the Swinging Pendulum Let’s not kid ourselves here. No economic system is perfect. With capitalism, you have to take the fleas with the dog. Publicly traded corporations such as Google have a fiduciary obligation to their shareholders to maximize profits. As for privately held companies such as Facebook, VCs investing millions of dollars surely want to see a ROI sooner rather than later. Bottom line: We can’t blame any organization for minimizing expenses and seeking the lowest taxes, the biggest loopholes. Current economic conditions allow companies to be extremely picky with regard to hiring and establishing new offices. The pendulum has swung squarely to their side. The Downside of the Internet and Globalization The question becomes: Is the pendulum permanently stuck on the side of employers? In other words, have globalization, the widespread adoption of broadband, and collaborative tools collectively put too much power in the hands of employers? If so, then are employers unjustly wielding their power to extort onerous terms from communities desperate for job creation? I know enough about economics and history to rarely use the term “permanently.” To me, it’s the acme of foolishness. I’d also argue, however, that it’s equally foolish to take a Pollyannaish view of technology. Returning to Kranzberg for a moment, technology always creates winners and losers. For the foreseeable future at least, it appears as if employers will fall into the former group.
Do Open Protocols Bring Storage Costs Down?
The move to virturalization leaves stone is being left unturned. It touched the public network via EC2 (and now a host of hosts) it formed the Cloud and fused a new generation of the Internet. Service orientated also hits the data centers and this means things like switches, servers, and disk. At the core of the movement of virtualization movement is freedom of the physical environment. Optimize hardware performance and set the workload free. In the process of doing this, a promise of cost savings has set a off a storm in re-factoring the data center. This is the first in a series of posts taking a look at areas of the data center and how an openness strategy become a driver for winning customers by bringing costs down. Sponsor We took a look at the storage landscape from the eyes of Hitachi Data Systems , “HDS”. We spoke with Hu Yoshida , CTO of HDS. He gave us a practical overview on how the needle of enterprise costs are being reduced focusing on reducing operational costs. One thing the he mentioned was that Hitachi’s HDS division was able to grow in the storage business in this tough climate, which is amazing considering it is an industry that follows economic spending as a whole. Yoshida attributes part of this to HDS decision to deliberately disrupt their own “closed” box solution where storage and management are sold together. This allows IT shops to have more choice, and decouple vendors. He said that this was a big decision for the company, as it opened up more competition to a core business. Protocol vs. API Yoshida said that the team at HDS decided it was inevitable for this protocol level standardization to exist. His team felt that HDS needed to be a leader in this opportunity. He cited a customer that uses an HDS head as a management function that had NetApp behind it as a pattern they supported that several years ago would have been done by partnership rather than protocol level support. Although in this scenario HDS didn’t win “all tiers” of this storage solution, it was able to be a fabric and join a customer that “loves NetApp” and loves HDS too. Mr. Yoshida said that his company decided to fully embrace the protocol level integration with the surrounding systems, instead of only releasing only APIs, as a means to allow more competition – and cooperation in the ecosystem through technology rather than selective partnerships. Considering the Tiers An area of storage that is ripe for cost savings is supporting different types of solutions, e.g. production vs. development and classes of storage based on the application. In his blog post, New Considerations for Tiered Storage , Hu examines reduction of costs. Looking under the covers we see that there is a lot of questions to ask in the details of these strategies, and marketing matters in how solutions are perceived and how different types of hardware (for example Seagate vs. HDS) make a difference for buyers, and that to be a leader, it is key to have answers across the industry ecosystem. When we look at the decision being on moving the cost needle down for operations management instead of hardware savings, it becomes clear that playing nicely pays. HDS is a company that plays on both sides of the storage spectrum (management layer and disk) and it’s partnerships include relationships with HP (as OEM) and companies like Cisco and Brocade as go-to-market partners. It is tempting to “hardwire” solutions together, but it is a bigger win when instead these are loosely coupled and partner-ready. Looking at it from the angle of cost reduction for open standards gives the pivot point to consider this natural tension offered by virtualization has a promise binding vendors together to optimize their solutions for the plug-and-play data center. Does an open protocol powered data center reduce total costs? IBM, HP, Cisco, NetApp, Oracle…Hitachi thinks so, do you? Discuss
Google Buys DocVerse: People as Important as the Technology
The news that Google is buying DocVerse is now official. The reasons why Google bought this small company can be learned by taking a look at the people who started this small company out of Seattle. Shan Sinha and Alex DeNeui worked at Microsoft before launching DocVerse in 2007. Sinha ran product strategy for Sharepoint and SQL, 1.6B and $3.0B products, respectively. DeNeui served as program manager on the SQL Server Strategy Team and the program manager for the WinFS ISV Team. Sponsor The two have built a strong company that will help Google in its battle with Microsoft. Sinha and DeNeui know Microsoft products. They know the Microsoft processes and its culture. DocVerse understands the challenges of working on deeply collaborative technologies. That’s a goal for Google as it continues to develop Google Apps. The DocVerse application installs a lightweight plug-in that is installed in the background of the user’s machine. The plug-in opens a widget in the document sidebar that includes a unique link. Any time a user makes an update to a Microsoft docment, the plug-in syncs the web page that is associated with the document. Every modification gets synced. When multiple people work on a document, the updates are made through the plug-in and versions are stored online. Syncing will become increasingly important for companies as more of the workforce uses smartphones. Google does a good job with email synchronization. But enterprise collaboration tools have a higher level of complexity. Co-editing, for instance, has to carry from the PC to the mobile device among mulitple users. Interestingly, Jive Software uses the DocVerse functionality for their product add-on: Jive Connects for Microsoft Office. The competition is getting fierce in the enterprise space. We wonder how this competition will affect the DocVerse relationship with Jive. Discuss