However, even with comparable pricing, public cloud providers are competing fiercely for market share, and price is an important aspect of their marketing efforts. Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is the back-alley street fight for web giants.

Here are a couple examples: Windows Azure has promised to match Amazon AWS on future price reductions, and while both bill by the hour, GCE will bill as low as 10-minute increments. All of the web giants are using pricing as a marketing tactic to attract new clients. The price of the technology platform is far in front of the technology itself in its attempts to gain market share. There are three who are particularly active in the pricing wars: Amazon Web Services, Rackspace, and now GCE.

Amazon Web Services entered the fray, luring users with basic infrastructure at lower costs. AWS has been able to keep pace with Rackspace’s own pricing, matching much of the product line up as well, and now they’re moving into the enterprise space to dominate even more of the market. Now along comes Google, which has a famous infrastructure that’s powering its massive search engines — and its commercializing its infrastructure experience with GCE.  Helping to get in front of new users, Google is also able to compete with Amazon on pricing.

In an effort to keep up with the ongoing pricing wars, Rackspace slashed its cloud storage costs by 30 percent back in February. Its open source initiative, OpenStack (now spun off into its own entity), was a hail mary against Amazon Web Services, but the OpenStack effort and its supporters have another web giant to fend off, as Google Compute Engine is here.

So who are the web giants targeting with low prices? Developers and small businesses. AWS and Rackspace are firm leaders in the Infrastructure-as-a-Service market, but Google’s hoping to differentiate with lowered prices, added features and a platform that’s been opened up to additional users. Will Google’s tactics work?

Google will charge $0.132 an hour for an n1-standard virtual server. That’s roughly equivalent to Amazon’s M-1 medium server. Both come with 3.75 GB of memory, one virtual core CPU and similar disk storage: 410 GB for Amazon and 420 GB for Google. But Amazon is charging only $0.12 an hour, or $.012 less. GCE falls short of Amazon Web Services’ aggressive pricing.

If Google was going after the enterprise space, then why don’t they price-match AWS? Google has deep enough pockets that if it was in the public cloud market to win enterprise customers, it could match AWS. But at that price, they are banking on other differentiating factors other than price to lure away enterprise customers. And furthermore, large enterprises are going to need more than cheap pricing to make them happy.

But wait – is that what Google is banking on? Is Google stacking its deck to compete close enough to AWS, but offer more bells and whistles and a better infrastructure? Is Google basically saying, we’ve built the best and we’ll help you build yours at a reasonable price, even if it’s not the cheapest price? Is Google betting that large enterprise clients will trust Google’s ability to build an infrastructure and scale it more than Amazon?

So what we have is a David (Rackspace) vs. Goliath (Amazon Web Services) vs. Goliah (Google Compute Engine). These three active providers in the public cloud pricing war seem to be in a race to rock-bottom prices. Can Rackspace keep up with the pocketbooks of Amazon Web Services and Google Compute Engine? Stu Miniman from Wikibon said it best:

“In many ways, Amazon AWS sees Google as its primary competitor, as demonstrated by the pricing war being waged between them. The market is not a two horse race, but OpenStack proponents, Microsoft Azure, Rackspace, and others now must compete with two fast-moving Internet giants.”

GCE only shakes up the pricing war of the public cloud even more. And with all of the fighting going on for market share, there is a clear winner: you, the user. By price being such a marketing buy or sell, it means that the option to get the best service for the best price is something that will continue to be in your favor.

Beyond price

We are definitely at the cusp of a big change in infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), and pricing isn’t the only factor to consider when weighing the pros and cons of a public cloud provider. Service-Level Agreements (SLAs) is another area you should take notice of. The differentiating factors between service providers is not something to overlook. While not as glamorous as price, SLAs (the fine print), are something you should understand fully before making your choice.

An estimated 8 billion to 10 billion devices are connected to the Internet today, and more are being added every day. He counts at least 12 connected devices in his own house including personal computers (laptops and desktops), gaming consoles, portable electronics, smartphones and a Nest thermostat. A Boeing 787 generates half a Tbyte of data on each flight. Cars, trains, busses, bridges, factory machinery, IT systems such as HP Gen 8 servers and Nimble hybrid storage arrays, and a huge amount of other devices, are already churning out tremendous amounts of data.

This is opportunity knocking at the door of every business, Lowe writes. HP and Nimble, for instance, analyze the data coming back from their systems in customer IT shops to identify and react to problems at their inception, before they become system failures. Boeing and the airlines that fly its planes can use the data from them to similarly identify problems at their inception and have spare parts and technicians waiting at the plane’s next destination to make the repair in minimum time, saving time and money while increasing safety. On the personal level, Nest sends him a monthly report on his heating and air conditioning use that he can use to make decisions to save money, and he expects that to grow over time to include electrical use as well. That is the service that Nest sells, and it justifies the cost of its thermostats on the basis of what the homeowner will save over time.

These, he writes, are only examples of how companies can use Big Data, Internet-of-Things, and fast analytics to empower and in some cases reinvent their businesses. Each industry, and each business, is different, and CIOs, as Chief Innovation Officers, should step up to the challenge of imagining how their business can create value for itself and its customers using Big Data and then build business strategy around the most promising of those scenarios. What he does not say is that those companies that fail to grasp those opportunities will be left behind, playing catchup, and in many cases losing their markets to more agile competitors.

Like all Wikibon research, this Alert is available in full without charge on the Wikibon Web site. IT professionals are invited to register to join the Wikibon community. Membership allows them to post their own questions, tips, and research, as well as comment on published research on the site. Members also receive invitations to the periodic Peer Incite Meetings at which their peers present on how they are using advanced technologies to solve business and technical challenges.

In the past three months Jason Gordon, HTC’s vice president of global communications, Rebecca Rowland, global retail marketing manager, John Starkweather, director of digital marketing and Eric Lin, product strategy manager, have all left the company.  And now we have a new casualty – HTC’s Chief Product Officer Kouji Kodera, responsible for the company’s overall product strategy, who bailed out last week.

Why are people leaving HTC?  Are the working conditions as bad as how Lin portrayed them in his tweet at the time:

“To all my friends still at @HTC – just quit. leave now. it’s tough to do, but you’ll be so much happier, I swear.”

Or is it because of CMO Ben Ho’s plans to uproot the Seattle team back to its Taipei headquarters?

Others are pointing the finger at Peter Chou, HTC’s co-founder and longtime CEO, who made some snap decisions that affected the company’s future.  According to sources, production staff have notified the CEO of  issues such as not having enough supplies, and manufacturing delays, only to be ordered to push ahead with the HTC One’s release anyway.  Though many were interested in purchasing its flagship device, consumers were left disappointed with shipment delays and out of stock units.  Now, HTC employees are banking on Chou’s previous declaration of stepping down if the HTC One is not a hit, since he’s to blame for the supply issues.

Then again, could it be that the issue is bigger than HTC and involves a certain social networking giant?

According to some, the HTC First – the so-called Facebook phone that was announced back in April – is doing pretty badly in the market, since it was not given ample time to bask in the Facebook Home limelight.  Facebook allegedly agreed to delay the launch of the downloadable version of Facebook Home to give the First a head start, only to go back on its word and release Home on Google Play the same week HTC launched First.  If Facebook delayed the release of its Android launcher then clearly HTC would have benefited, as anyone who wanted to try Home would have bought an HTC First.

The only good thing to come of the early Home release is that people didn’t have to buy a phone to determine how bad the Android launcher is.  While a large number of users download the app, it received tons of bad reviews.

Another nail in HTC’s coffin is that Samsung Galaxy SIV if off to a great start and even worse, Samsung seems to have an abundant supply of them for its takers.  Though the One is getting traction, it’s looking a lot less likely it’ll be able to catch up…

As one source puts it, “They’re in utter freefall.”

Now before we go reaching for our pitchforks and torches and set off on a witch hunt, lets take a look at exactly what Microsoft has said about it:

“We know there is some confusion around used games on Xbox One and wanted to provide a bit of clarification on exactly what we’ve confirmed today. While there have been many potential scenarios discussed, today we have only confirmed that we designed Xbox One to enable our customers to trade in and resell games at retail.”

“Beyond that, we have not confirmed any specific scenarios. Another piece of clarification around playing games at a friend’s house – should you choose to play your game at your friend’s house, there is no fee to play that game while you are signed in to your profile.”

So Microsoft knows there’s some “confusion” and its just gone and added to it.

The issue with pre-owned games is that the Xbox One will require games to be installed onto its 500GB hard drive before they can be played. This makes sense because of the way the console is built – it uses a Blu-ray drive that has much slower read times that regular DVD drives. The advantage of this method is that once installed, games can then be played without the physical disc running in the drive, unlike the PS3 for example.

Given this set up, Microsoft obviously needs some kind of system to tie specific copies of each game to each console, otherwise we’d just have a mad free-for-all with gamers swapping games all the time and never paying a cent for them. Hence the need to login with your Xbox Live account and register each game you buy.

Microsoft’s Power Play – Bad News For Resellers & Gamers Alike

Unfortunately, this is where we get a bit worried at Microsoft’s intentions. Speaking to Wired.com, a Microsoft representative revealed that the company will be charging a fee for Xbox One owners to install pre-owned games on their machines, although he didn’t say how much that fee would be. In a separate interview with the Kotaku gaming website, Microsoft’s corporate vice president Phil Harrison said that the company would announce its plans for pre-owned games very soon:

“We will have a solution – we’re not talking about it today – for you to be able to trade previously played games online.”

No question about it then – this looks like a clear attempt by Microsoft to muscle in on what is a massively profitable pre-owned games market. After all, it doesn’t HAVE to charge a fee – it could just as easily set up a system in which games are invalidated once installed on a second machine, unless the owner contacts them to say its sold, for example.

Possible business models that Microsoft might adopt include allowing gamers to ‘trade in’ their games for discounts on titles bought in its Xbox Live Store, something that might appeal to fans of sports games at least – such titles are often updated on an annual basis, and gamers often trade in their older versions when that happens in order to get the new version at a discount.

In this scenario, it’ll be the retailers who lose out most. Gamestop, one of the biggest resellers of pre-owned games in the US, lost 5% of its share value overnight due to worries that Microsoft will get into the business, and there’s every reason to think this panic will increase when Redmond confirms its plans.

The other big worry is that gamers will also lose out – if Microsoft is demanding a cut from every transaction, even ones between friends, it’s basically taking that money from the sellers themselves. If second-hand game buyers can’t avoid paying Microsoft’s fee, then they’re going to insist that the sellers give them a discount, otherwise they’d be better off just buying a new copy themselves.

Sony’s Advantage?

With Microsoft’s plans in mind, all eyes will be on Sony when it launches the PlayStation 4 at next month’s E3 event in Los Angeles. So far, the Japanese company has played its cards close to its chest. A representative told Eurogamer that it didn’t plan to block used games, but it didn’t specify whether or not any fees would be involved.

It would seem that there are two possibilities in this case – the first one is that Sony might collude with Microsoft to carve up the pre-owned games market all for themselves, or the second is that it might try to take advantage of the situation by maintaining the status quo.

The first option will infuriate gamers but there’s very little they could do about it. However the second one could well prove disastrous for Microsoft – if it happened, then surely legions of gamers would flock en mass to the PS4 if it meant having the freedom to do what they want with the games they buy.

Of course, there’s also the argument that all of this could soon become irrelevant anyway. The games industry seems to be rapidly moving towards a point where all sales will eventually become digital, something that would spell the end of physical media that can be swapped or traded for money.

First off, the feature is not yet available for everyone with the Chrome browser.  It seems the Conversations update has been quietly released in the US first, and will eventually make its way across the globe.

How to use the new Conversations features

To use conversational search, you just need to click on the “microphone” icon on the search bar and say what you want Google to search for you.  Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan did a voice search inquiring President Barack Obama’s age.  That feature is nothing new, but now it talks back to you and provides an information card with everything  you need at a glance.  So it’s like you’re having a conversation with your computer.

And because of Google’s Knowledge Graph, Search is now more like a person who can keep up with the conversation.  By just saying, “how tall is he,” Search was able to determine that Sullivan’s question was still pertaining to Obama, and returned results about the President’s height.  Sullivan was able to ask other questions related to Obama, like who his wife is and her age, but be informed that this query was not flawlessly executed.  Sullivan has to try it a couple of times to get the results he wanted.  Still, the feature and its early capabilities are pretty impressive.

Also, not all the results will be read out loud, some queries such as “places to eat in San Francisco” wherein Google responded with “There are several listings for restaurants near San Francisco,”  followed by a list of local restaurants with reviews.

There are still some wrinkles to be ironed out and people are still waiting for voice activated search, where you say a hot word, such as “OK Google” to activate voice search.

Also, conversation search is not available when typing your queries, but some believe that it may be a future feature.

In other Search news, Google Trends has been updated with Top Charts that depict the most-searched people, places and things in more than 40 categories, from movies to sports teams to tourist attractions.  Top Charts is built on Knowledge Graph so it shows you “real-world things” and not just based on keywords that people searched for.

Another addition is the Hot Searches visualization which when clicked, delivers a full screen, colorful visualization of trending topics in real-time.

“With the recent increase of security releases we have been skipping numbers and have already had to renumber releases1. To avoid confusion caused by renumbering releases, we are adopting a new numbering scheme,” Oracle said.

Oracle will implement the new version numbering scheme for all Java update releases that include both Limited Update releases and Critical Patch Updates, with change in the frequency and way in which these releases are numbered. For example, Limited Update releases will be numbered in multiples of 20. On the other hand, Critical Patch Updates will continue to use odd numbers and will be calculated by adding multiples of five to the prior Limited Update and when needed adding one to keep the resulting number odd.

“There’s become something of a convention that security update releases are odd numbers and other releases are even numbers. I’m not sure how important that is to the outside world but if two security releases happen without a release in between you need to decide if you want to break that convention. We also had a lot of confusion arise from the need to do a few unplanned releases. Leaving gaps between planned security release numbers mean there’s already a place set aside in case any unplanned release has to happen. Keeping the odd numbering convention for security release uses up more numbers. So that’s how you end up with such inscrutable jumps in numbers,” said Oracle’s Phil Race on the OpenJDK mailing list.

Oracle has introduced the new version numbering scheme in order to create predictable release numbers for future Java releases. The new version scheme will be used for JDK 5.0, JDK 6 and JDK 7.

• Call of Duty: Ghosts
• Forza Motorsport 5
• NBA Live 14
• Madden NFL 25
• FIFA 14
• EA Sports UFC
• Quantum Break
• Destiny

Electronic Arts sports division revealed FIFA 14, Madden NFL 25, NBA Live 14, and UFC for the Xbox One. Apparently, EA is using a new graphics engine called Ignite, which is believed to bring in a new sense of realism.

“Today marks the beginning of a broad strategic partnership between EA and Microsoft,” EA Sports executive vice president Andrew Wilson said. “We share a common vision with Microsoft that games should be intelligent, dynamic, connected, rich with emotion, and — most importantly — fun.”

“Ignite was designed specifically to blur the line between real and virtual. Sports are just as much about your head as they are about your feet or hands. We built new technology that allows players to make decisions with four times more calculations per second,” Wilson added.

About the much loved game–Call of Duty, Xbox One will receive the downloadable content for Ghosts before any other console. Besides, map packs and other DLC for Call of Duty: Ghosts will come to the Xbox One first. The console will support more players in multiplayer matches. Call of Duty: Ghosts will release on November 5, 2013, so the Xbox One may release sometime before that. Maybe, the game could release on the same day as the new console.

Finally, Xbox One will not backwards compatibility with Xbox 360 games. It will support 450 original Xbox games through emulation. Here’s what Microsoft said in a Q&A about the Xbox One.

“We designed Xbox One to play an entirely new generation of games—games that are architected to take full advantage of state-of-the-art processors and the infinite power of the cloud. We care very much about the investment you have made in Xbox 360 and will continue to support it with a pipeline of new games and new apps well into the future.”

For the first year, Microsoft plans to release 15 exclusive titles, eight of which are new properties. Quantum Break is one of those. As of now, only these titles have been confirmed by Microsoft, but we certainly expect more games to come up during E3 Event in June.

With Solid Gaming Performance Xbox One Could be a Force for Change

Today on SiliconANGLE Newsdesk, contributing editor John Casaretto said, “Gaming in general isn’t just about the games anymore–and there’s some purists that are kind of rattled–now there’s cloud, game DVR captures–this Xbox LIVE experience is interconnected. There’s 300,000 servers that will power the Xbox LIVE service for Xbox One.

“The integration of the Xbox LIVE experience, the ability to pick up your game from one console to another to pick up your game where you left off and so on is really interesting.”

He also spoke to what games would appear on the Xbox One from Forza, Call of Duty: Ghosts, EA Sports, including Quantum Break and more–as we expect to see even more titles announced at E3.

Butterfly Labs Shipping ASIC Miners

It’s been a while now (about a 10 month delay) since people who invested in Butterfly Labs expected their mining rigs will now soon be actually seeing them. These miners are now finally being placed in the mail.

As for the delay, Butterfly Labs has made a series of terrible public relations blunders trying to assuage the concerns of those who sought to buy into the rigs. Including Josh Zerlan telling a customer they were “stupid” for asking about the delay. “You received no answer because your question was so incredibly stupid that it doesn’t deserve an answer.”

Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins, founding editor of SiliconANGLE, quipped that what largely what’s happened to Butterfly Labs is very similar to many startup company blunders and that the customer services issues have happened because Butterfly Labs is crewed by a menagerie of geeks and engineers (not high on the social graces scale.)

On the getting-the-gear-shipped scale, however, Hopkins says that Butterfly Labs is definitely making due on its promise adding that he knows people who have received their Bitcoin mining gear.

While BL may have over-promised and under-delivered so far and this is a very good reason for customers to become disgruntled. Upset customers and a company filled to the brim with very smart geeks set up the perfect storm for a PR kerfuffle.

However, looks like the ice is breaking and the delay is breaking up, meaning ASIC miners are already in the field.

Canadian Bitcoin Traders Told Not to Worry in FINTRAC Leaked Document

A letter to a Canadian Bitcoin exchange from its government’s money regulatory agency Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) explained that exchanges need not fear what happened to MtGox in the U.S. as they are not “money transmitters” and need not register as one.

Two weeks ago, MtGox had its Dwolla account frozen by the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department over irregularities in how MtGox had registered as a business, claiming that MtGox was a “money transmitter” in the warrant that sized the account. This brought up fears and concerns with other Bitcoin exchanges (both inside and outside the U.S.)

I contacted LibertyBit, a Canadian Bitcoin exchange, about how the regulatory letter impacted their business and was told that it would not impact the exchange very much—as in fact the letter tells exchanges not to worry about regulations they knew they were in compliance with.

What happened to MtGox may have certainly chilled LibertyBit’s interest with the U.S. but only to make the exchange a little more wary.

“In regards to working with U.S. customers, the actions taken against Mt. Gox are certainly cause for careful consideration,” said a representative. “At this time we do not feel that there is sufficient legal basis to question our existing business model with U.S. customers. It may however impact whether we choose to pursue incorporation within the United States or the timeline for doing so.”

The EFF Resumes taking Bitcoin (After Eschewing it 2 Years Ago)

Almost two years ago, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) stopped accepting donations in bitcoins originally citing legal uncertainty. However, since that hiatus of two years the digital watchdog and legal group noted that many of these legal issues had evaporated and that it was once again safe to take BTC as donations again.

In a long and thoughtful blog post, the EFF cited reasons why it has chosen to return to accepting BTC donations. These include many of the fears that Bitcoin advocates cite about current monetary systems the world over including the ability to stifle, chill, and silence free speech via attacking monetary intermediaries.

“EFF has long tried to identify and fortify the weakest links for speech online, and payment processors remain a significant problem,” writes the EFF in their post. “We’ve seen payment processors with policies that ban speech that would be strongly protected under the First Amendment, that arbitrarily enforce those policies, and that offer no process at all for reinstating closed accounts, much less the sort of due process that the government would have to engage in to shut down speech.”

The blog post also cites recent FinCEN report that virtual currencies (including Bitcoin) are not subject to the same regulations as other money. Although that report is not binding, the EFF found it compelling enough to show that the climate against virtual currency in the US hasn’t been as harsh as expected. (Although, no doubt MtGox might disagree.)

The organization also added that EFF members keep politely asking for it.

Software scalability is a confusing topic so here are some comics to lighten your day, enjoy!

More comics can be found at NIH.

Comic compilation credit to: High Scalability and Martijn De Vrieze

For Amazon, it needs lots of plants.

On Tuesday, Amazon unveiled designs created by architectural firm NBBJ that feature three mirrored, biosphere-like domes and three 37-story office towers strategically placed around the globes.

The domes will come equipped with in-house dining, meeting, and lounge spaces, as well as “a variety of botanical zones modeled on… ecologies found around the globe.”

The design of the Amazon ecological buildings is based on similar architectures found around the globe, such as the Convention Center in Ottawa, Canada, the Mitchel Park Conservatory in Milwaukee, the Renzo Piano in Italy, the Royal Greenhouses of Laeken in Belgium, Gardens by the Bay in Singapore, Nabana-No-Sato in Japan, the National Botanic Garden in Wales, and the Zoo in Germany.

“The generative idea is that a plant-rich environment has many positive qualities that are not often found in a typical office setting,” the proposal stated. “While the form of the building will be visually reminiscent of a greenhouse or conservatory, plant material will be selected for its ability to co-exist in a microclimate that also suits people.”

Aside from the botanical domes, Amazon also plans on adding multi-generational open spaces that would facilitate various activities such as a Playfield, a dog park, water feature, gardens, art block, and awesome lights that would be amusing to look at during your leisurely night walk or night out with friends.

Amazon’s planning to ‘grow’ its new headquarters in Seattle’s Lake Union neighborhood where the e-comm giant purchased 11 office buildings last year in a $1.16 billion agreement with Paul Allen’s Vulcan Real Estate.

Speaking of big money, Amazon has just announced increased financial support for its employee education program, Amazon Career Choice, raising the maximum amount of tuition reimbursement it pre-pays to some of its employees from $2,000 to $3,000 a year for up to four years.

Amazon seems like a pretty decent company to work for. Not only is it helping its employees by supporting their education, it’s also determined to make sure that current and future employees will have an office space that is conducive for their productivity.