Microsoft Kin: Fast Product Life Cycle

Product cycles are quite fast these days, sometimes not by design. Engadget reports that Microsoft's "Kin" is being killed, essentially, after a couple of weeks on the market.

Apparently the Kin development team has been rolled into the Windows Phone 7 team and Microsoft does not plan to launch the device in Europe this year.

Microsoft Kin is dead -- Engadget

Coding for Android Device Battery Life

Most of us have to pay attention to battery life these days. And as a dumb end user there is only so much I can do to regulate battery life. Turning devices off, dimming screens, shutting down wireless connections and, in general, just not using my devices are the sorts of things end users can control.

Of course, that sort of defeats the purpose of having always-on devices, doesn't it? Application developers can do some things to help when they create apps, and hardware engineers can do some things when they design devices.

Ironically, we are so "digital" these days that radio frequency engineering is almost a lost art, as you might infer from the antenna issues the iPhone 4 has been having.

But Android developers can do some things when they develop code that has a direct bearing on power consumption.

Where Touchscreen Mobile Users Visit

On a global basis, shopping and other services sites are the top destinations for users of touch screen smartphones and feature phones, according to Taptu.

Can Telx Outshine Industry Leader Equinix?

http://seekingalpha.com/article/212589-can-telx-outshine-industry-leader-equinix?source=feed

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What in Media is Growing; What is Not

Just about anything touching the Internet grew in 2009, as did professionally-produced video, Internet advertising and video games, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Just about everything else shrunk in 2009.

Consumers Use the Web, Companies Should Do the Same

If consumers are using video, social applications, wikis and other web applications to get and share information about companies and products, shouldn't companies be doing the same?

Consumers, App Providers and Service Providers All Lose from Net Neutrality, Stratecast Argues

Some network neutrality proponents say users will benefit if all forms of packet priority are prohibited. In this view, more innovation and value will be produced if no applications can be given  favored use of the access pipe.

That would include streaming video, voice or any other real-time service.

Analysts at Stratecast do not believe the argument. Their analysis suggests application providers themselves, as well as end users and service providers, will be harmed if such policies are adopted.
In truth, nobody knows what might happen if all ability to prioritize bits were prohibited. The key thing, says Stratecast, is that there would be so much uncertainty that service providers would likely behave as though the downside were quite large in magnitude.

Higher prices for end users, less movement towards higher-speed access and ultimately even application experience degradation would occur, long term. The main reasons are the higher costs to "over-provision" physical networks, lower returns for such investment and less robust development of new services and revenue streams, Stratecast argues.

read the full position paper here

Ancotel Buys LIDARC to Boost Trans-Atlantic Business

Frankfurt-based ancotel GmbH, operators of the largest and most important telecommunications and data network hub in Europe,  has acquired the Long Island Data and Recovery Center, a Long Island-based collocation and interconnection facility located at 1025 Old Country Road (‘1025 OCR’), Westbury, NY.

This acquisition marks ancotel’s first foray into the United States’ data center and colocation market.  The company will leverage the asset to compete for trans-Atlantic traffic

Long Island serves as a key landing point for submarine cables that connect North America to Europe.

Allied Fiber Talks about Need for More Dark Fiber

If you have the time, this audio of Hunter Newby, Allied Fiber CEO, lays out the argument for why additional dark fiber capacity is needed in the U.S. market.

You might think there is plenty of fiber in the ground, and there is. The problem is that much of it is on routes, and in cables, that do not provide as much resiliency as you would think. Many fibers are in the same cable, and many cables are laid along the same rights of way.

In addition, it is tougher than you might think to buy dark fiber, as opposed to lit services, on diverse routes.

listen to the interview

Half of Internet Users Watch Online Video

About 50 percent of all online uses now report they watch online video at least weekly, up from 43 percent  in 2009, according to Frank N. Magid Associates.

About 85 percent of males 18-24 watch online video weekly or more and 67 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 34. That should grow about five percent more over the next year. Short form content continues to represent about 80 percent of content viewed.

About 76 percent of online video consumers report they watch professionally produced clips on a regular basis.

About 38 percent say they are interested in watching PC-delivered content on a TV screen.

link

Zayo Group Buys American Fiber Systems

Zayo Group, based in Colorado, is acquiring Rochester, N.Y. based American Fiber Systems.

Terms of the deal were not publicly disclosed, but a knowledgeable source said AFS fetched between $185 million and $190 million.

Founded in 2000 by David Rusin, a former president of Frontier Communications Inc., the privately held AFS provides dark and lit fiber to businesses.

Zayo Group has grown fast by acquisition, and now operates fiber networks in 23 states, serving 141 markets, including 55 metropolitan markets in the Northeast, Pacific Northwest, Minnesota and Iowa.

Along the way, it has opportunistically gotten into the business voice business, collocation and enterprise communications. There's sometimes a fine line between filling out an adjacency and losing focus, but Zayo has proven to be adept, both at managing its acquisition activities, and taking advantage of business adjacencies.

Though as a general rule consolidation is occurring virtually everywhere in the U.S. communications business, there has been a noticeable pickup in regional fiber network mergers recently.

KDL Inc., of Evansville, Ind., a provider of fiber networks in 26 states; Houston-based Alpheus Communications (News - Alert), which builds and manages the fiber backbone that links major cities in Texas; and Fibertech Networks LLC, which leases fiber networks to banks, colleges and hospitals in the eastern U.S., have hired investment bankers and hope to sell themselves, the Wall Street Journal reports.

American Fiber Systems reaches deal for sale to Zayo Group | Rochester Business Journal New York business news and information

Hulu Plus Not a Danger to Netflix

Barclays analyst Doug Anmuth does not believe Hulu's new subscription service "Plus" will harm Netflix subscriber growth, though it is the "first credible competitive subscription offering," especially for viewers who watch serials and other popular TV fare.

Netflix still is heavy on movie content.

link

Small Business Hiring up 4% for the Year, Pay is Down

Small business hiring continued to increase slightly in June ( 0.2 percent over May) while the average paycheck took a larger month-over-month dip (-0.6 percent over May) than we’ve seen since pay leveled off in March. That brings us to a year-to-date increase in small business hiring of 3.9 percent and a year-to-date pay decrease of -0.4 percent, says SurePayroll.

June 2010 Small Business Scorecard | SurePayroll

Is Bit Prioritization Necessary?

Network neutrality proponents, especially those supporting the "strong" forms such as an outright ban on any bit priorities, believe that next generation networks will have ample bandwidth to support all real-time services without the need for prioritizing mechanisms.

Users of enterprise networks might react in shock to such notions, as shared networks often encounter latency and bandwidth constraints that are overcome precisely by policy control. And despite increasing bandwidth on mobile networks, users and network service operators already know that congestion is a major problem.

And the evidence does not seem to support the notion that applications are not affected by congestion, or that use of two or more applications does not create externalities that impair real-time application performance.

"I measured my jitter while using Netflix (Jitter occurs when an application monopolizes a router’s transmit queue and demands that hundreds of its own packets are serviced before any other application gets a single packet transmitted) and found an average jitter of 44 milliseconds and a worse case that exceeds 1000 ms," says Ou.

http://www.digitalsociety.org/2010/06/how-video-streaming-can-ruin-voip-and-gaming/

The Death of Another Bogus Anti-Net Neutrality Argument: Gaming Works on Neutral Networks Too | Public Knowledge

HTC Evo Update System Working Again

Sprint and HTC had to suspend the over-the-air update for the Evo 4G earlier today, but whatever the problem was, it is now fixed, and users can download the patches and upgrade. Apparently something about the upgrade was "bricking" user devices.

I escaped the problem downloading and installing the update, which is among other things, supposed to improve signal reception, access speed and battery life.

I'm not so sure I notice any particular signal reception or speed differences, but the battery life improvement seems to be there.

HTC Evo OTA back in action | Android Central