August 16, 2010 Off

Putting the Cloud to Use for Video Encoding

By David
Grazed from GigaOM.  Author: Gary Orenstein.

In a world with millions of different mobile devices, televisions, screen sizes and video formats, something has to give. But instead of giving in, device proliferation combined with content producers’ desire to deliver clean video is giving rise to a new market for hosted video encoding, sometimes called transcoding. The goal is simple: provide the right format to the right screen at the right time without requiring content producers to invest in infrastructure. Done right, content producers should be able to dial up a video encoding service in the cloud.

August 16, 2010 Off

Murphy’s Law of Disaster Recovery Strikes Retailer

By David
Grazed from Internet Evolution.  Author: Sean Gallagher.

In July, American Eagle Outfitters — which has a market capitalization of $2.52 billion — had the sort of apocalyptic outage that many companies fear. Its e-commerce site was down for eight days. Both a primary and a secondary storage system failed, backups wouldn’t restore properly, and a disaster recovery site wasn’t provisioned properly.

These are the sorts of nightmare scenarios that drive many companies to turn to outsourcers, data center specialists that have the resources to protect against this sort of worst-case scenario.

August 16, 2010 Off

Google Buys Jambool to Rival Facebook Credits

By David
Grazed from eWeek.  Author: Clint Boulton.

Google confirmed that it acquired Jambool, whose Solid Gold platform provides a virtual currency service for providers of online games and others who want to put payment options in their applications.

TechCrunch broke the news Aug. 9, saying the deal was worth $70 million. Jambool and Google confirmed the deal Aug. 13.

Jambool’s Solid Gold virtual payment platform lets application developers insert payment options into online games and other applications.

August 14, 2010 Off

Facebook Fixes Privacy Bug

By David
Grazed from eWeek.  Author: Brian Prince.

Facebook has fixed a bug that could have been abused by someone looking to get their hands on the full names and photos of users.

Atul Agarwal of Secfence Technologies posted information about the issue to the Full Disclosure mailing list Aug. 11. If someone entered a user’s e-mail address and the wrong password in the log-in page, the site coughed up the user’s full name and profile picture in addition to an incorrect password message.

August 13, 2010 Off

3 (Easy) Keys to a Successful CRM Application

By David
Grazed from Destination CRM.  Author: Umberto Milletti.

Few would argue that CRM has been one of the most significant business trends and application categories to emerge over the past few decades. Wikipedia, reference of the masses, defines CRM as a "broadly recognized, widely implemented strategy for managing and nurturing a company’s interactions with customers, clients, and sales prospects, using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes."

August 13, 2010 Off

The Cloud Cozies Up to Healthcare

By David
Grazed from GigaOM.  Author: Ben Kepes.

The Obama administration has plans to release $44 billion in stimulus money aimed at getting doctors to adopt electronic health records (EHR), and the programs are helping fuel innovation in the cloud. I recently posted a story contending that cloud applications can create a statistical goldmine. This goldmine exists not only in commercial settings, but also in areas that could directly benefit all citizens, such as in electronic health records.

August 13, 2010 Off

Google’s Counsel Tapdances on Net Neutrality

By David
Grazed from Internet Revolution.  Author: Sean Gallagher.

Richard Whitt, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG)’s Washington telecom and media counsel, issued a “Myths vs. Facts” talking points post on the company’s public policy blog today, on the heels of outcry over Google’s agreement in principle with Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) on ground rules for the net neutrality debate.