Tag: business news

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Google Fiber now explicitly allows home and home-based business servers

Google-Fiber1A nice little clarification for those folks lucky bastards  who get to use Google Fiber. There was a touch of confusion recently as Google has pushed the talking points surrounding the improvement of residential internet offerings, and there aren’t any publicly discussed plans to offer up business grade solutions.

This caused a bit of a ruffle as many indie and start up folks headed out to Kansas City to utilize these incredibly affordable (and stupid fast) internet plans. After making a transition like that, it would be understandably frustrating to find out that utilizing Google Fiber in a commercial building would be a violation of the TOS.

Of course many of us utilize home solutions for doing business on the internet, and now Google has clarified that running servers out of a home office is A-OK, so those looking to incorporate fiber can do so without fear of Goog pulling the plug.

Still no word on business solutions for commercial spaces. Who knows, maybe traditional ISP’s might be motivated to improve their corporate offerings. It could happen.

More info on the Google Fiber Blog.

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Activision Blizzard Completes $8.2 Billion Buyback from Vivendi

logo_activision blizzardConsidering their the world’s largest video game publisher it’s almost a steal…

After purchasing back $8.2 Billion worth of shares from Vivendi, Activision Blizzard is now a properly independent company. A majority of the company is now owned by public shareholders. From CEO Bobby Kotick:

“With the completion of this transaction we open a new chapter in the history of Activision Blizzard. We expect immediate shareholder benefits in the form of earnings-per-share accretion and strategic and operational independence. Our audiences and our incredibly talented employees around the world will benefit from a focused commitment to the creation of great games. Our shareholders and debt holders will have the benefit of an energized, invested, deeply committed management team focused on generating long-term, superior returns and effectively managing our capital structure.”

After trying (and failing) again this past May to offload Activision Blizzard, it would appear Vivendi finally found the perfect buyer. It never completely made sense to me why exactly Vivendi wanted to part with a profitable business, but now investors have less potential uncertainty to worry about now that A/B is a solo venture. With Skylanders: Swapforce, COD: Ghosts, and Destiny on the horizon I think shareholders will be in for a pretty decent year.

Full PR after the jump.

Continue reading “Activision Blizzard Completes $8.2 Billion Buyback from Vivendi”

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Will the Canadian Government Require Cable & Satellite Providers to Offer a la carte Options?

coax cablePretty much what we’ve all been asking for since the dawn of cable television.

While some Canadian providers are already offering some version of a la carte, the ability to subscribe to just the channels you want, it looks like the Canadian government will require cable and satellite providers to offer individual channels to customers. Said Industry Minister James Moore:

“We don’t think it’s right for Canadians to have to pay for bundled television channels that they don’t watch. We want to unbundle television channels and allow Canadians to pick and pay the specific television channels that they want.”

As someone who recently had to shop through my local cable company’s plans and options, the way we currently pay for TV can be incredibly frustrating. Following the realization that I only watch a handful of channels, the tier of cable I have to buy to get the channels I want means I end up overbuying hundreds of channels I’m never going to watch.

However, you lucky Canucks will hopefully get to skirt that soon. Know that I’ll be jealous.

(via Reuters)

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T-Mobile takes “UnCarrier” Smartphone Data worldwide for free

t-mobile worldwide dataI love watching companies actually compete.

T-Mobile is our little-engine-that-could fourth place carrier, and over the last year they almost got bought by AT&T. When that fell through we’ve seen a plucky little organization work to really shake up how we buy smartphones and service plans. It’s been fun, and their attempts at market disruption have actually forced the bigger players to adapt.

Now T-Mobile is unleashing an incredible upgrade to their data plans: free data in over 100 countries.

If you travel a lot, this has probably affected you. I’ve had several friends return from trips abroad with either huge cellphone bills or recounting frustrating stories of trying to use local carriers short term. T-Mo’s new offerings aim to end-run around that problem.

Without doing anything, without signing a new agreement or getting a new fee tacked on to your bill, T-Mo customers on a Simple Choice plan now have free unlimited data around the world. There’s a list of participating countries on the T-Mo site, so I’m not going to write it out here. If you were planning on backpacking across Europe though, chances are pretty good you’ll be covered.

Now what KIND of data you can expect is still somewhat up for grabs. I’d be surprised if T-Mo has worked out licensing agreements in each of these countries to provide super-fast 3G and 4G unlimited connections. In many areas you’ll probably be rocking EDGE, but that’s still plenty of bandwidth to get your email, look up map info, and check your socials.

Along side free data, free texting is included, and calls are 20 cents a minute, which isn’t too shabby. All in all, it’s a pretty nice value add.

Check out their bold announcement video below:

(via T-Mobile)

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Microsoft to release Remote Desktop apps for Android and iOS

Screenshot (91)This is how you poach users.

So obviously Microsoft can’t count on Windows Phone and Surface RT sales to reinforce their Remote Desktop service. Buried in a recent press release for their new enterprise cloud services:

Further, with Windows Server 2012 R2 Microsoft is introducing the Microsoft Remote Desktop app, available for download in application stores later this month, to provide easy access to PCs and virtual desktops on a variety of devices and platforms, including Windows, Windows RT, iOS, OSX and Android.

Acknowledging that even people who run Windows desktops, laptops, and servers are most likely using an Android or iOS phone or tablet is maybe the best thing to continue encouraging Windows adoption. With all these devices connected to the interwebs, it becomes less precious to develop native apps for consumer-grade tablets when we can use them like thin clients or dumb terminals for displaying proper programs.

Not a bad play Microsoft, especially as Google will be sneaking Chrome OS onto Windows 8 hardware soon too…

Full PR after the jump.

Continue reading “Microsoft to release Remote Desktop apps for Android and iOS”

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Romanian ISP to roll out $18 a Month Gigabit Fiber

1381245927--ofertaWell color me jealous… Again…

Not only are people in Kansas City lit up, folks in Austin will finally receive some actual competition, and Provo is about to flip the switch, but where else in the world will people get amazing fiber-optic-to-the-home internet connections?

Romania.

Romanian ISP RCS & RDS is rolling out new fiber and upgrading their backhaul. Not only will their customers have 500Mbps and 1Gbps tiers, the top service will only cost the equivalent of $18 a month. Yup. 1000Mbps data will cost less than one Andrew Jackson a month. Yikes… Kinda kicks that TWC “50 megs innernet” right in the junk…

(via Reddit)

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Stay Classy Internet: Instagram announces in-app advertising, Users respond…

instagram advertising ads announcement commentsCommunities like Tumblr and Instagram are made up of passionate individuals, so it’s pretty much going to be a short-term losing proposition whenever you announce changes to the service. No matter how small a change there will be SOME crying and gnashing of teeth. However, if the change you’re announcing is building advertising into your free-to-use service, well, there will be MUCH crying and gnashing of teeth.

Announced today via a photo post, the official Instagram account announced the policy change:

Over the past three years we’ve watched with amazement as Instagram has grown to a global community of more than 150 million people capturing and sharing the world’s moments. Instagram is a place where people come to connect and be inspired, and our focus with every product we build is keeping it this way. We have big ideas for the future, and part of making them happen is building Instagram into a sustainable business. In the next couple months, you may begin seeing an occasional ad in your Instagram feed if you’re in the United States. Seeing photos and videos from brands you don’t follow will be new, so we’ll start slow. We’ll focus on delivering a small number of beautiful, high-quality photos and videos from a handful of brands that are already great members of the Instagram community. Our aim is to make any advertisements you see feel as natural to Instagram as the photos and videos many of you already enjoy from your favorite brands. After all, our team doesn’t just build Instagram, we use it each and every day. We want these ads to be enjoyable and creative in much the same way you see engaging, high-quality ads when you flip through your favorite magazine. We’ll also make sure you have control. If you see an ad you don’t like, you’ll be able to hide it and provide feedback about what didn’t feel right. We’re relying on your input to help us continually improve the Instagram experience. As always, you own your own photos and videos. The introduction of advertising won’t change this. Thanks for listening, and stay tuned for more details. We’re excited to continue building Instagram alongside this inspiring community.

Seems pretty honest and straight forward. At least they aren’t springing this on us Facebook style. Being one of the largest photo sharing sites on the web comes with certain responsibilities, costs, and expectations. Not the least of which is that mystery of how to monetize a formerly free service. Building ads into your network is the probably the most direct route. Personally I think they might be missing an opportunity to partner with their members in offering some kind of stock photography service or revenue share, but I digress.

Surprisingly, the post has well over 100,000 likes, which would initially indicate a “We Cool” response from the IG population, but the comments on the post read slightly differently. Crying? Check. Gnashing of teeth? You bet. Many laying the blame at the feet of Facebook, who bought up IG last year.

Growing pains are rough, so hopefully Instagram can weather theirs and deliver on their promises of expanding their service. Hit the photo below to read all the carnage…

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Google Fiber Lights Up Provo This Month

googe fiber provo video broadband comparisonHow excited are people for faster internet access? They’re lit up enough to be producing their own commercials.

No seriously, we could be looking at the beginnings of some real groundswell awareness here. The numbers are so huge, they’re difficult to visualize. Throughout most of California, the fastest service we might have access to is 50Mbps download and 6Mbps uploading, but my sustained data rates are usually lower than that. Right now, people are sharing Google Fiber speed tests which crush the best I can get. It’s not even close. I’m seeing downloads more than 20 times faster, and uploads 180 times faster.

Think about it every time you upload a photo on social media, or a video to YouTube. Would you want a 5Mbps data rate or a 900Mbps data rate? Think about every time you fire up Netflix while everyone else in your house is using their own smartphone or tablet or game console. Would you want “50 megs innernet” or 900 megs to feed all those glowing rectangles?

See those numbers start to get big, so the people of Provo shot this handy little video to help you visualize the differences between the service you spend a lot of money on, and the service Google offers for pretty much the same price.

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