San & The Disquettes

SanDisk, the company best known for its portable USB storage devices, just increased its enterprise footprint with the acquisition of solid state memory developer, Smart Storage Systems.

According to the announcement, SanDisk will pay $307 Million for the company, plus certain equity-based incentive awards. The deal has already been approved by the boards of directors on both sides, but it still has to be given the nod by regulators. This is the fourth such investment, and SanDisk executives are clearly bullish on investments in the enterprise storage market.

Sumit Sadana, executive vice president & chief strategy officer of SanDisk explained the company’s continued interest in the enterprise storage market, saying, “This acquisition enables SanDisk to address a $1.6 Billion market opportunity in enterprise SATA products, and complements our strong enterprise SAS product portfolio. With this combination, SanDisk will have products qualified with six of the top seven storage OEMs worldwide.”

With the price of flash memory becoming more and more cost-effective, analysts are predicting that additional investment in flash will become increasingly common. Further investment from SanDisk, and their recently-launched SanDisk Ventures may be prevalent in the months and years to come.

Which 3 Words Were Those Again?

App makers in the UK have found a creative way to take the confusion out of giving directions. They’ve made it as simple as three little words.

By dividing the world into 57 trillion 3 meter long squares, What3Words allows users to tag any location using a three word phrase. From there, users can pass the phrase along to friends, who can get precise directions using their smartphones.

When discussing the usefulness of the app, company CEO Chris Sheldrick was quoted as saying, “With GPS and smartphones, we have at our fingertips the ability to pinpoint precise locations, however, until What3words we haven’t had simple, memorable universal system to easily describe locations with any degree of precision. We’ve devised a way to describe exact locations – anywhere in the world – in a simple and memorable way.”

What3Words is a freemium service, but early adopters who want to identify their locations using a single word can upgrade, and register any location for $1.50/year.

Sony’s Next Big Media Player

Sony is looking to take an early lead in the 4K market with the release of two new products, one of which is set to hit American stores as early as July 15th.

Named the FMP-X1, Sony’s Ultra HD media player will be one of the first of its kind, capable of downloading and delivering the super-high-resolution videos directly to customers. At launch, the device will come pre-loaded with ten films, including The Amazing Spiderman and Taxi Driver, but more content will be available as time goes on.

In order to deliver new content to users, Sony is also launching a video delivery service to go along with the media player. So far, the announced lineup is fairly limited, but more titles are expected once the service goes live later this year.

The Ultra HD media player will cost around $700, with a $200 discount going to those who already own one of Sony’s 4K TVs. Users can expect to pay about $8 to rent 4k videos for 24 hours, and $30 to buy the full movie.

Don’t Be A Geezer…

Foursquare is teaming up with Deezer, the music streaming service, to increase the number of check-ins at live concerts.

Frequent concert-goers stand to gain from the deal, with three free months of Deezer Premium being offered to those who check-in at seven different gigs. Once users complete their check-ins, all they have to do is like Deezer’s Foursquare page and they’re in the running for the free subscription.

The deal represents a win-win for both companies, and possibly a new revenue stream for Foursquare. They get a hefty boost in the key 18-34 year old demographic, and partner companies get extra exposure as well.

With over fifteen thousand venues supporting the new program, finding good concerts to check-into shouldn’t be difficult. So don’t be surprised if your social stream is flooded with concert check-ins all summer long.

.NYC – The Future Of Delivery Food

Businesses and residents of New York City will soon be able to register a new top level web domain: .nyc.

This means that New York will be the first metropolitan area in the country to have its own custom URL. The city posted eligibility requirements for the domain on their website, limiting it to businesses and organizations with a New York address, individuals with a primary residence in the city, and those who offer products or services to New Yorkers specifically. The process of registering will still be handled by traditional domain name registrars, like GoDaddy, but as for the price – the city is only saying rates will be competitive with the market prices for other top-level domains.

Registrations for the new extension are set to begin later this year.

Fake It Till You Make It

Another fake Twitter follower study has been released by Barracuda-Labs, and the surprising results show an amazing growth in the rate of abuse.

Over a thousand abusers were identified taking part in the purchasing of followers, averaging about 50,000 followers per account. Of those accounts, over half have a URL in the profile, suggesting they are merely advertisers taking advantage of Twitter.

During the study, Barracuda-Labs also discovered some interesting trends, including the copying of information from real users to mask fake accounts.

Despite these trends, Twitter has been fairly lax on the issue, instead focusing on malicious hacking as their main concern. Until Twitter decides to take the problem seriously, it’s unlikely this problem will see its end anytime soon.

Pebble Goes Retail

Pebble, one of the early vendors of wearable computers, will be selling their popular e-ink smartwatch in Best Buy stores starting this Sunday.

Retail availability for the device is a huge step for Pebble, who has handled orders entirely through their website up until now, after getting their start from a successful Kickstarter campaign last year. Initial retail availability will focus on the Jet Black edition, but more colors are to follow.

The smartwatch is currently priced at a reasonable $150, but don’t be surprised to see the price drop as more competition in the wearable computing space hits the market.

The Layman’s Cloud

Sharing files in the cloud is getting easier, thanks to a new service from EntourageBox.

Users can receive files from friends and family, even those who don’t have a cloud storage account themselves, with the new cloud based central repository. EntourageBox users who connect their various supported cloud services, including Dropbox, Google Drive, and Amazon S3, have the ability to create a cloud folder that’s immediately available to receive deposits. The system generates a dedicated link that the user can send to contacts. Recipients need only accept the terms and conditions, and are then free to upload files from their computer to the cloud folder.

The service emphasizes the convenience of allowing non-tech savvy users who may not need or want their own cloud storage account, to quickly and easily upload files.

The service is live, so users can begin sending out cloud folder invitations immediately.

For more in tech news, join us every weekday on NewsDesk with Kristin Feledy.

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