Monthly Archives: April 2011

Mozy is one of the most popular cloud backup services around, with more than one million users storing around 70 petabytes of data. Its popularity apparently put it on the acquisition radar of VMware — which has now made Mozy part of its virtualization empire.

VMware’s official blog post makes it clear that the company wasn’t so much interested in Mozy as a consumer offering. Rather, it’s the inner workings of Mozy which piqued VMware’s curiosity. CTO Steve Herrod says, “Over the past 5 years, Mozy has built one of the best examples of a globally distributed, large-scale cloud offering.” He adds that the move will allow VMware to “further ramp our own cloud-related learning and accelerate new IP, scale, and capabilities” of its existing offerings.

As we saw from retailer JC Penney’s recent downfall in search rankings, using ‘black hat’ SEO tactics and gaming search is considered deceptive and ‘tantamount to cheating’ by Google. J.C. Penney said that it had no idea that this was happening and fired its SEM agency right away. But the retailer’s search ranking had already been “adjusted” by Google, and the damage was done. These sort of situations are considered deceitful by many in the search industry (including Google) and generally cast a malevolent cloud over a company’s search tactics. So, it’s surprising to find that a Sequoia Capital -backed Chinese startup, called Milanoo, appears to be gaming Google search results with these same black hat links spam tactics. Milanoo, a China-based online retailer and wholesaler with a ?passion for fashion,? is an ecommerce company serves customers with fashion apparel and related products in over 180 countries around the world, in seven languages (including English, Spanish and French). Launched in 2008, the startup just raised “millions of dollars” from Sequoia. According Digital Due Diligence, a small agency that provides in-depth investment research into online assets of companies; Milanoo has been caught using similar tactics as J.C. Penney.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/GhiQCfH8o4U/

Amazon defied the record labels by launching an unlicensed personal cloud music service. (Disclosure: I’m CEO of competitor MP3tunes.) Music companies immediately expressed their dissatisfaction and Amazon public stated they would discuss licenses with labels. Since then considerable speculation has swirled about regarding licensing discussions Amazon, Google and Apple are having with the 4 major record labels. Dominating the discussions is the labels concern that personal cloud services will exacerbate piracy and erode their business even further. Consequently they want to impose substantial restrictions on any such service, but each labels has different concerns and demands. Below are examples of the startling limitations major labels wish to impose on such services. Universal Music Group is concerned that users will load pirated songs into lockers. Average MP3 players house more than a thousand songs and UMG believes that many were unpaid for. They do not want to see the billions of songs that came from P2P system laundered (think drug money) in a cloud service and become legitimate.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/XrnjqvgRJ4s/

Nokia Siemens has closed the acquisition of the wireless network infrastructure assets of Motorola Solutions today. The company reports that it paid $975 million in cash for the assets and approximately 6900 employees will transfer to Nokia Siemens Network from Motorola. The finalization of the deal come after China regulators approved the acquisition a last week. The full release is paste below. As of April 30 2011, the company says that responsibility for supporting customers of Motorola Solutions? GSM, CDMA, WCDMA, WiMAX and LTE products and services transfers to Nokia Siemens Networks. Part of the approval is due to the fact that Motorola reached an agreement with Chinese manufacturer Huawei over a pending patent lawsuit relating to the assets being acquired. In January, Huawei filed a lawsuit to prevent Motorola from giving Nokia Siemens Huawei’s IP information.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/QHpJosFdHvw/

They won’t be beaming GPS or radio signals back to Earth anytime soon, but these one-inch-square satellites could one day travel to distant planets — without fuel. Developed over a period of three years by a team of undergraduates at Cornell University, the Sprite chips could eventually be used for communication, flying in clusters like tiny space plankton. After hitching a ride on-board the final space shuttle Endeavour mission this afternoon, the three prototype satellites will be mounted outside the International Space Station, where they’ll sit for the next few years, exposed to conditions found only beyond our atmosphere. Perhaps someday we’ll even see some “Spprite” KIRFs by the time China’s own space station is ready to hit the launchpad in 2020.

Continue reading SIM-sized satellites to lift off with Endeavour this afternoon

With every passing day, more people are ditching their landlines in favor of using their cellular phones as a combination device. Smartphones are no doubt excellent means of contacting other humans and managing our lives, but some of us miss the simpler days — when a phone was just a phone. If you’re a proud owner of an iPhone but looking to head down the retro road, Kee Utility would like to point you in the right direction. When we first saw the Desk Phone Dock, we were pretty intrigued by its looks but had questions about its practicality. What you see here is the $150 answer. Keep reading to see how well we got on with it.

StolenCameraFinder is a clever webapp that can help locate your stolen camera by using a photo you’ve already taken with it. All you have to do is drag some photos on to the main page and it’ll do its just in a matter of seconds. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/4WP-MtxceG4/stolencamerafinder-locates-your-stolen-camera-by-using-your-existing-photos

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Motorola’s just finished giving the news and the numbers on its quarterly financial report, and there was one bit of badness that we just had to share: the Xoom LTE upgrade has been delayed. We won’t be seeing it until summer according to Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha, which is also when we’ll be seeing the Bionic, a delay that we were already sulking about. Jha was a little vague about what the “issue” was that is causing the delay, only that whatever quality concern there is applies to both devices, and it could simply be that the company is waiting for its LTE rollout to get a little further along. Net result: one less G for Xoom owners until the summer, and no Bionic at all until then. Bummer.

For every gadget you can use on land, there has to be one you can use at sea, right? Just in time for yachting season, Amped Wireless released the weatherproof UA600EX High Power Wireless-N 600mW Pro USB Adapter, which promises to extend your notebook’s WiFi range in areas where there are no hotspots to be mooched. That sounds ideal for boating, but thanks to some flexible mounting options and one heavy-duty 26.5-foot cable, it should also come in handy everywhere from offices to RVs. The single-band UA600EX runs on the 2.4GHz spectrum, and although the company stops short of saying just how many feet of leeway you can expect, it does claim to quadruple your computer’s range — whatever that happens to be. If you have a hankering to watch Deadliest Catch on your next fishing trip, you can nab one of these bad boys at the source link for a cool $110.

Continue reading Amped Wireless’ UA600EX adapter quadruples your laptop’s WiFi range when you’re on a boat