Microsoft held a meeting for financial analysts today to present the company’s strategy for its consumer, enterprise and small and medium business markets. A clear theme ran throughout the presentations: Microsoft’s continued emphasis on the industry transformation taking place around cloud computing.
During the past year, Microsoft’s message focused on providing customers choice. It was the customer’s decision as to whether they preferred cloud computing solutions or traditional “on-premise” solutions. Nevertheless, Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner admitted that sending this message to customers was a mistake. From now on, Microsoft would be “leading with the cloud.”
Although Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, took the stage today to present the company’s consumer market strategy, he has been promoting the company’s commitment to the cloud. During a recent speech at the University of Washington, he affirmed that Microsoft is “all in” when it comes to cloud computing.
Turner touted the company’s experience and strength in enterprise computing when comparing itself to competitors such as Google and VMware. He spoke of a number of cloud computing wins with companies such as Coke Enterprises, McDonald’s and others. And he highlighted that 70% of the company’s cloud computing wins during the latest quarter were new customers. (The company reported a 22% increase in revenue in the fourth quarter over the same period last year.)
Many analysts, investors and entrepreneurs believe that the move to cloud computing is momentous and on a par with previous industry transitions such as the move from mainframe computing to desktop computing. Also, most agree that the transition is still in the early stages. According to research firm Gartner, worldwide cloud services revenues should grow from $56 billion in 2009 to $150 billion in 2013.
Although most IT providers such as Salesforce, Rackspace and Google have their own cloud initiatives, a recent report named Amazon’s cloud computing division, Amazon Web Services, and IBM as “cloud champions” with other vendors (including Microsoft) relatively close behind. Judging from Microsoft’s rhetoric during today’s meeting, cloud computing will be a consistent theme for the company in the future.
[Full disclosure: I recently did some work as a contract lecturer on technology trends for Microsoft.]
Be prepared to be scared about your cell phone privacy. Two security researchers showed today how they can track down cell phone numbers, identify the person who owns the phone, and then track the whereabouts of that person. And they can do it with technology available to ordinary civilians.
That last part is the shocking part. Government investigators and police can do this. But Don Bailey and Nick DePetrillo (pictured) showed they were able to do it by collecting bits of information and then amassing them into a powerful tool that can invade your privacy. They showed off working code and other proof from Project Carmen Sandiego (named after a computer game where you tracked somebody down as part of a geography lesson) at the Black Hat security conference today in Las Vegas.
“This is intelligence gathering for civilians,” said Bailey, speaking to a roomful of security researchers and hackers. “We can find out where you are, who you talk to, where you are most vulnerable.”
Bailey and DePetrillo joked that they could get actress Megan Fox’s cell phone number and sell it to the highest bidder. But they said the point of doing this isn’t to get the cell phone numbers of celebrities or executives like Apple’s Steve Jobs. They wanted to show how security should be stepped up for cell phones and how shockingly easy it is to do. If they could do it, they reasoned, then the bad guys with evil intent have probably already figured out how to do it. In effect, Bailey and DePetrillo said that they have enough information to put together a White Pages for cell phones, with home numbers for everybody’s cell phone.
Governments can pretty much afford the technology to do this now. But ordinary civilians can’t. One of the tools they exploit is a central database called a Home Location Register, which records the phone number of every SIM (subscriber identity module) authorized to use the cell phone network based on the GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) standard, which is the standard used in about 80 percent of the world’s phones. You can access HLR data through various third-party resources, Bailey said. You can cross reference that with Mobile Switching Center information that determines where you are, generally.
That data tells the researchers what city the user is in. They reverse engineered this data to get more information. In other countries, the MSC data has zip code data embedded in it, making it much easier to find someone’s location. U.S. data isn’t that easy to figure out. But the researchers say that can take a given MSC number and find out its location and its cell phone provider.
“That information should be privileged, but it isn’t,” Bailey said. “I shouldn’t know that you switched from AT&T to T-Mobile.”
You can buy CallerID information from companies such as Targus, which gets data from Verizon and other carriers. They add your name to the CallerID database with phone number data. If you buy a cell phone in the U.S., your name will wind up in a CallerID database. With this data, the researchers were able to reverse engineer the data to create a White Pages for mobile phones, which means they can put a name to a cell phone number. With the name and phone number together, the researchers can assemble other information.
“It’s extremely easy to build your own database,” DePetrillo said.
The databases are more expensive if you want to get the most current data, but older data is cheaper, costing only 0.0024 cents per name looked up. One of the things they can do with names is piece together who your co-workers are, because they will be using company-purchased phones with similar phone numbers.
Some of the techniques they use to glean information include backspoofing. But if you don’t want to do that, you can buy databases from Bulkcname.com for around $100 per 1,000 name lookups. The researchers say they can get 10,000 names identified for just $30. You can verify the data by cross referencing it with HLR data, which tells which carrier is associated with certain phone numbers.
During the talk, the researchers showed slides of text that showed phone numbers, names, locations and company affiliations. They can even make educated guesses about which banks of phone numbers are assigned to prepaid phones, which are phones bought at stores and can generally disguise their owners. The researchers say they can pinpoint people 99 percent of the time. With Google, Facebook and other tools, you can often then put a face to the name. You can find out if there are multiple phone numbers associated with one person.
“Our intent is to get people thinking about their actions and their vulnerabilities,” Bailey said. “You can target people. You can locate private individuals. You can locate groups of individuals. You can track where people are traveling. That’s a lot of information. It can be scary.”
Added DePetrillo, “This is simple stuff to understand. I have information I shouldn’t have. I didn’t do any crazy, insane hacker tricks. It requires very little intelligence.”
Even if not everyone will admit it, everyone likes taking pictures of themselves. I suspect it’s the not-so-secret reason why users are addicted to DailyBooth — the service which asks you to take pictures of yourself (or something you care about) to document your life. With that in mind, it’s almost as if the iPhone 4, with its front-facing camera, was built for such a service. And now the two can consummate that match made in heaven.
DailyBooth’s first iPhone app has just been approved by Apple and is now in the App Store. It’s pretty basic — but that’s all it needs to be. You load it up and take a picture of yourself. And the app is smart enough to load the front-facing camera by default (assuming you have the iPhone 4 — but it can work with any iPhone running iOS 4). Yeah, this is going to be huge for DailyBooth.
As you might expect, the app also offers you a stream of the pictures from all the people you follow on the service. From here you can picture comment or text comment with one click. You can also see all your replies.
The one caveat about the app is that you have to already have a DailyBooth account to use it. That’s not a huge deal, but it’s something they hope to fix soon with a future release. For now, simply head to DailyBooth’s website to sign up for an account, then sign-in with the app.
And do it soon, because everyone you know with an iPhone is probably going to be using this app shortly, I imagine. As we noted when we first covered the company a year ago, the DailyBooth community is very impressive. The picture I just published just a few minutes ago already has about 20 comments — and most of these users don’t actually follow me. It’s fun — and I think it’s exactly the type of app Apple had in mind for the iPhone 4′s front-facing camera.
Reuters is reporting that retail giant Best Buy has signed a partnership deal with WiMax network operator Clearwire. Beginning in 2011, Best Buy will be offering wireless 4G data plans, on Clearwire’s WiMax network, under their Best Buy Connect service offering. No details on pricing, availability, or hardware have been announced. Currently Clearwire’s 4G network covers 43 major cities around the U.S. More on this as it develops…
We’ll be honest, seeing a shiny new gadget get taken down to the screws puts a huge smile on our faces… and why shouldn’t it? Two days after the Magic Trackpad was released by Apple, the gang over at ifixit has done a proper teardown of the device. Spoiler Alert: there were no magical gnomes or elves hiding inside the trackpad. If you still want to know more hit up the read link to see the trackpad takedown.
Google today announced on its Mobile Ads blog that it has launched location-aware display advertisements for mobile phones. Through Google’s “location extension” feature, advertisers can now include their location and phone numbers to appear in display ads on iPhone and Android mobile websites.
The feature, previously available only on search ads, will appear as banner text advertising and will pinpoint business locations on a small map as well as a “click-to-call” phone number. Consumers will also have the option for generate directions if needed.
Giving consumers the option of viewing businesses in their area increases Google’s chance that the consumer will call the business or click to its website, which are the two ways Google makes money on the service. The move shows Google’s increased investment in mobile and display advertising, two areas that have traditionally played second-fiddle to regular search advertising.
The location aware advertisements might be just what local businesses need as well. According to TechCrunch, “Google says that mobile ads that offer a location generally see an average 8 percent increase in click-through rates over plain-vanilla mobile ads, and click-to-call mobile ads see a 6 percent increase in clicks.”
Advertisers have to opt-in to the Google Ad Network and make sure they check the “Display Network” option. From there, the advertiser includes its number and address as well as the option to upload a logo. The last step is to check the box for iPhones and other mobile devices will full Internet browsers.
The biofuel market is turning into a diverse romp of venture-backed companies auditioning different microbes, catalysts and feedstocks, all with the same goal: to quickly, efficiently and cheaply transform renewable, non-food products (ranging from sugar cane to switch grass to carbon dioxide) into viable forms of fuel that can work in today’s gas tanks.
The problem is, almost all of these players hit the same ceiling: they can’t figure out a way to inexpensively scale with the technology they have. But biofuel startup LS9 may have just changed that.
The company’s scientists have published a paper, academically titled “Microbial Biosynthesis of Alkanes,” claiming that they can now implant genes into E. coli that allow the bacteria to directly churn out alkanes — otherwise known as the hydrocarbons in car and jet fuel — in one step. This is a major breakthrough for the field, one that has been chased for years.
The discovery could eliminate the need for other, pricier methods to derive alkanes. It could also jumpstart the green sector’s focus on biofuels as a viable business. Before now, many of the companies in the industry, including Codexis, Synthetic Genomics and others, were focusing on creating more lucrative, renewable chemicals to replace petroleum in plastics, pharmaceutical development and other processes.
LS9 itself has been pursuing the low-volume chemical market for a while, teaming with Proctor and Gamble last spring to jointly develop chemicals to be used in consumer goods.
Because the new LS9 process consists of only one step, it also requires less feedstock to begin with, lowering costs and increasing efficiencies across the board. Prior conversion technique entailed dangerous inorganic catalysts, hydrogen, high pressures and temperatures, and a lot of intermediate steps.
In addition to being renewable, biofuels also burn cleaner than traditional fossil-fuel sources. Because they can be used in standard, internal-combustion engines, biofuels seem to have a bigger market ahead of them than electric vehicles — the other strategy to achieve cleaner, greener transportation. It’s going to take a while for plug-in cars to catch on, and very little roadside infrastructure exists today to support them. If biofuel companies can successfully scale, they have the potential to slash emissions more significantly.
These advantages have attracted the attention of venture capitalists interested in incremental clean energy innovations, rather than radical changes. For example, Khosla Ventures, one of LS9’s backers that also invests in biofuel makers Coskata and Amyris Biotechnologies, is major proponent of this category of startups.
Based in South San Francisco, LS9’s investors include CTTV Investments, Flagship Ventures, and Lightspeed Venture Partners in addition to Khosla.
When SeatGeek launched its ticket search service last fall, it had a compelling hook — users don’t just see tickets from reselling sites like StubHub, they also see SeatGeek’s predictions (based on things like the weather and the team’s record) about whether the price will go up or down. Now the New York City startup is taking that approach a step further with new team pages.
Previously, SeatGeek focused on individual events, including sports games and concerts. But sports fans might want to make buying decisions for more than one game, say if you’re deciding which game you can get the best price for out for the next four or five. So the new team pages track ticket prices over time, across games. It’s almost like you’re tracking a stock for a company. The page shows data like average price, highest price and lowest price during the current season, and a list of the most expensive games. To see it for yourself, you can check out this page for the San Francisco Giants.
This should have the additional benefit for SeatGeek of increasing its rank on search engines. In fact, Compete’s data shows SeatGeek’s traffic increasingly steadily over the past month, and even overtaking its more-established and better-funded competitor FanSnap.
We chose SeatGeek as one of the most promising startups to launch at the TechCrunch50 conference last fall. It has raised $1.5 million in funding, most recently in a $1 million round led by the Founder Collective.
With the debut of Grouponpersonalization, I have little doubt that the daily deal site will double the number of deals (and double its revenue run rate) in just a few months.
According to CEO Andrew Mason, the service is churning out 75,000 transactions per day. Through personalization, Groupon will be able to offer 20, 30 or more deals per city per day. Assuming the current growth rate in subscribers — in the last four months the site has more than doubled to 12 million registered users— 2x is likely a prudish estimate.
It’s hard to fault a company that is making money hand over fist; however, as a user, I do have one piece of advice: loosen that death grip on the daily deal mantra.
According to Mason, the personalization system will give a user one deal a day based on their preferences, their purchase history and their profile. Although there will be several, simultaneous deals in any given area, a user will only be able to access one main deal from his/her account. However, if the user finds a link to a different deal from a friend, a blog, or a daily deal aggregator, that link can be used by anyone. (In the early stage of the personalization program, Mason says, Groupon users may see multiple deals but eventually Groupon will turn that off.)
Thus, all the local deals are theoretically open to every subscriber but Groupon is playing air traffic controller in order to maximize the number of deals they can offer (aka cha-ching) and to ensure a nice distribution of users for their advertisers. It’s easy understand Mason’s rationale here, at just one deal a day their hands were somewhat tied, unable to fully absorb the number of interested advertisers. In turn, Groupon’s limited inventory has directly benefited the “army of clones,” who have swooped in and picked up impatient retailers.
“We believe in the deal a day model, but we were running into a problem where the demand for merchants to be featured has been absolutely overwhelming,” Mason says. “We have something like 35,000 businesses lined up that want to be featured, 97% of the businesses that we feature want to be featured again, so the problem is only getting worse. And what it means is for every business we’re featuring, we have to turn away 7.” (See video above.)
Understandably, Groupon is trying to optimize the bottom line and enhance the consumer experience with personalized deals, but this structure also potentially creates a frustrating user experience. Under this system, a user knows that there could be 20, 30 deals floating around but s/he can only automatically access one. Thus, if a user doesn’t want their preselected deal of the day, she will have to scour the web and ping friends in a cyber goose chase. Of course, this search will be eased by the plethora of daily deal aggregators— but that doesn’t seem like an ideal solution for Groupon either. Why encourage users to jump off your website and spend more time on independent aggregators, where their wallets will be exposed to competitors’ deals.
From the launch of Groupon, Mason has adamantly defended the model of one deal a day, a structure that has obviously served his company well (and its army of clones) and catapulted Groupon to a billion-dollar-plus valuation. However, I believe the massive demand in the market indicates that there’s some flexibility in the business model. The data suggests that consumers can stomach several deals a day— maybe not hundreds— but certainly more than one. From the vantage point of a user, I would like to see Groupon send just one personalized deal a day to my inbox because I think there is real value in that spotlight. However, on Groupon’s website, I also want the option to log-in and access all (or at least several) of my local deals in one simple repository, perhaps ranked according to my tastes and profile.
Groupon, consider this my 700-word comment card. However, regardless of how you tackle the challenge of personalization, I get the feeling you’ll probably do just fine.
Mason dropped by TechCrunch TV on Wednesday and we got a chance to discuss the new personalization campaign (above) and Groupon’s early days. In the second video (below), he discusses the key moment when Groupon kicked into second gear.
HTC posted their Q2 report card today, and it looks pretty darn good. The Taiwanese handset maker reported roughly $1.8 billion (USD) in revenues, which is up over 66% year-over-year. The company also sold 5.4 million handsets in Q2, up from 2.4 million in the year prior, beating their quarterly guidance. The company also had this in their Q2 corporate slides:
We have two production bases, one is located at Taoyuan, Taiwan, which current rate is up to 2mn unit per month in Taiwan and continue increasing; another factory is located at Shanghai, China, and we plan to increase our China capacity up to 1mn monthly run rate from 3Q10. Therefore, our total capacity can go up to more than 3mn per month from 4Q10.
Hopefully the increase in handset manufacturing will end the shortages we are seeing here in the U.S.Read
Microsoft held a meeting for financial analysts today to present the company’s strategy for its consumer, enterprise and small and medium business markets. A clear theme ran throughout the presentations: Microsoft’s continued emphasis on the industry transformation taking place around cloud computing.
Even if not everyone will admit it, everyone likes taking pictures of themselves. I suspect it’s the not-so-secret reason why users are addicted to 
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