Google receives 'more than 1,100 community responses' for New gigabit fiber network

Ever wondered what it looks like when the entire nation wants a piece of Google? Well, we've already seen some crazy action in a few cities, but here's a bigger picture -- a map showing the vast lot of locations that have signed up for Google's experimental 1Gbps fiber network service. What's more, the number of community submissions almost doubled between 10am and the 5pm deadline, resulting "more than 1,100 community responses and more than 194,000 responses from individuals." Yep, that sure is a lot of paperwork to go through, but Google reckons it'll have a location or two picked "by the end of the year." Meanwhile, let's hope that these Googletown-wannabes will churn out enough nutso videos to keep us entertained.

Dell launches new Intel Nehalem EX servers And AMD Opteron New addition

Dell on Tuesday launched four new servers—three powered by Intel’s Nehalem EX processor and one by AMD’s latest Opteron.

The server processor and system updates have been fast and furious in recent days. Dell’s latest updates to its PowerEdge lineup are designed for intense computing environments. Meanwhile, Dell is trying to poach a few customers in “proprietary Unix deployments.” Hmm. Sun Microsystems? Dell’s rolled out four PowerEdge servers. The lineup includes: PowerEdge M910 is a four-socket Intel Nehalem-EX blade server. The blade can hit 512GB of RAM across 32 DIMM slots. PowerEdge R910 is aimed at Unix migrations, large databases and virtualization shops. It’s a 4U Nehalem-E based server with up to 64 DIMMs of memory. PowerEdge R810 (above) is 2U and designed for data center consolidations. It can manage four socket workloads and handle 32 memory DIMMs on two processors. Also Nehalem-EX based. PowerEdge R815 is powered by AMD Opteron and can scale memory to 32 DIMMs and deploy up to 48 cores. All of the servers have fail-safe virtualization, designed to save power and better access memory. Dell also recently upgraded its servers for Intel’s latest Xeons too.

According to Dell’s statement, the company is heavily focused on beating up Sun. Dell touted migration services from RISC/Unix data centers. That turf used to be Sun’s, but customers are increasingly migrating to Linux from Unix.

Dell New Precision M4500 mobile workstation delivers Core i5 CPU, Nvidia Quadro FX 880M graphics starting at $1,549

Whether you don’t need the quad-core power of the Dell Precision M6500 mobile workstation (or the competing HP EliteBook 8740w) or just can’t afford it, Dell is offering a far more affordable, if still powerful option in the Precision M4500.

For $1,549, the M4500 comes with an Intel Core i5-520M dual-core processor, 15.6-inch LED-backlit display, and a 1GB Nvidia Quadro FX 880M graphics card, though the other specs for the base configuration are more meager: just 2GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive, and not even built-in Wi-Fi. Dell will have no qualms if you want to upgrade the rig, which you can with up to 8GB of RAM, a pair of 500GB hard drives, and a Blu-ray burner (the latter only a $546 extra). You can also choose one of those quad-core processors or even an i7-920XM Extreme Edition for a mere $850 addition to the price tag.

If you’re doing heavy graphics work, you’re more likely to splurge on a Quadro FX 1800M video card for $265 and maybe a 1,920×1,080 display for $129. As for the wireless card that Dell didn’t bother to include on a $1,500 system, you can tack on an extra $15 for a 802.11a/b/g/n connectivity.

Amazon patents packaging surveillance, Packing & preparation of your goods

So here's the sales pitch: Amazon wants to film the packaging and preparation of your goods as they get ready to ship out in order to make sure your order is properly fulfilled and addressed. Stills or the whole video are then forwarded along to you, so you can check 'em out. Granted yesterday, the patent for this oh-so-complex monitoring system is actually quite specific -- it's only operative if your order includes "at least one book, food item, bottle of wine, flowers, or jewelry," so it's not like Amazon can keep everyone else from doing this -- but hey, it also references verification of "collateral items," which is a fancy way of saying it'll be used to make sure third party fliers and advertisements make it into the box along with the stuff you actually want, so it's not all roses and sunshine.

LinkSys Wireless-N shocker! Cisco announces E-Series line of home routers

If we know you, you're about ready to bathe your place of residence in some of those 802.11n waves you've been hearing so much about. Well, you're in luck -- the cats at Cisco have announces the Linksys E-Series line of routers for your home, flat, or small business. All of these bad boys feature the all new Cisco Connect software (with exhaustive parental control and a separate password-protected guest network). Priced between $80 and $180, select models include Gigabit Ethernet, UPnP AV Media Server, external storage via USB, Linux, and more. Available now at Amazon, Staples, and Linksys. For the whole sordid tale, peep the PR after the break.

Kleiner Perkins iFund doubles upto $200m, investing in iPad apps from Shazam, ngmoco and many more

Apple said it expects the iPad to be a "second gold rush" of app development as consumers rush to add content to their new devices, and it looks like Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers agrees: the venture capital firm just announced that it's expanding the iFund to $200 million to invest in iPad app development. If you'll recall, the iFund was originally announced alongside the iPhone OS 2.0 SDK, and provided $100 million in total investments to 14 iPhone app developers like Shazam, ngmoco, and Shopkick -- companies responsible for 18 apps that have hit the App Store Top 10. Keep in mind that this money was promised before the iPhone App Store was even launched -- so given how that bet paid off, it's not surprising that KPCB's decided to double down on the iPad, which looks like it'll have even higher app prices. Along with the announcement, some iFund devs announced the following iPad apps: Pinger: Doodle Buddy and Starsmash, Booyah: MyTown, a popular location-based game, Shazam: Shazam, optimized for the new screen size, ngmoco: Flick Fishing, a new MMO called CastleCraft, Charadium (described as "massively multiplayer Pictionary"), God Finger, We Rule, WarpGate, and one more we missed -- anyone catch it? GOGII: TextPlus
Nothing too surprising here, but it looks like the heavy hitters are going to be on the iPad bandwagon from day one -- and pushing hard for this thing to be a success.

Battalion Touch CZ-11 a multitouch gaming laptop gets Core i7 processor ATI Radeon HD5650 Graphics

iBuyPower's back with a refresh to its simple, yet understated 15-inch touchscreen gaming notebook. The Battalion Touch CZ-11, newly announced today, features a Intel Core i7 processor, ATI Radeon HD 5650 graphics, a 15.6-inch Full HD (1920 x 1080) multitouch display, 4GB memory, 500GB storage, WiFi b/g/n, and optional Blu-ray -- not too shabby, right? Prices start at $1,100 and climbs skyward fast -- hit the source link to see for yourself. And don't worry -- the flames are optional. PR after the break.

Google Chrome brings Adobe Flash Player into the fold, trains it to kill Apple iPads?

If Apple had its way, we expect that the iPad would go down in history as the device that nearly single-handedly destroyed Adobe's empire of Flash. While HTML5 has been in development for years, content providers like the Wall Street Journal, NPR, CBS and more have only begun transitioning video services to the new standard (and subsequently, away from Flash) now that it's time for Cupertino's big release. But this week, Adobe has found an ally in Google, which has just announced that the Chrome browser -- and more importantly, Chrome OS -- will not merely support but natively integrate the technology. In the short run, what this means is that the Chrome browser won't require you to download Adobe Flash Player or spend time updating it before back-to-back YouTube viewings and marathon Newgrounds sessions. In the long run, Google explains that it intends Flash to become an integral, seamless part of web design up there with HTML and Javascript -- and if we extrapolate, an integral part of its new Chrome OS as well. Pardon us for thinking out loud, but it sounds like Google's found an exclusive feature to highly tout, when it inevitably brings a Chrome OS tablet to market.

AMD launches new Opteron 6000 series Powerful Server platform

AMD has launched its new Opteron 6000 series server platform. The Opteron 6000 series CPUs addresses three key data center trends: Virtualization - Support up to 48 cores in a 4P configuration as well as virtualization acceleration technology Power management - Incorporates AMD-P suite of power management features, which minimize the usage of the whole CPU, of individual cores and even specific logic within each core based on current workload Value - Twice the performance of the previous generation platform, double the cores, all at the same price point

The catch? Well, it’s that upgrading to the Opteron 6000 series will mean whole-scale server replacements because directly upgrades of the servers isn’t possible because the Opteron 6000 series use a G34 socket as opposed to the Socket F used on older Opteron processors. The G34 platform provides support for four DDR3 channels and up to four processor sockets. Target: Enterprise Class 2-way and 4-way Servers Twelve-core and Eight–core, L2 – 512K/core, L3 - 12MB of shared L3 Cache, AMD CoolCore™ technology, AMD PowerNow!™ technology, Enhanced C1 state, AMD CoolSpeed technology, APML (in APML enabled platforms), Quad-Channel LV & U/RDDR3, ECC, support for on-line spare memory, Supports up to 3 DIMMs/channel, up to 12 DIMMS per CPU, Planned platforms 2P/2U, 2P Tower, 4P rack, 4P Blade

Single Series for performance DP and MP platforms 2P economics for 4P servers, Compelling price/performance for volume market

G34 Socket Infrastructure Balanced performance with power/thermals, Quad 16-bit HyperTransport™ 3 technology (HT3) links, up to 6.4 GT/s per link, AMD SR56×0 chipset with I/O Virtualization and PCIe® 2.0

NVIDIA Fermi New GF100 GPUs Are Too little, too late, too hot and too expensive

Hardware enthusiasts have been eagerly awaiting NVIDIA’s latest Fermi GF100 GPUs. But early benchmarks suggest that NVIDIA’s newest architecture is too little, too late, too hot, and too expensive.

NVIDIA officially unveiled the Fermi line back in September of last year, and this got hardcore hardware fanatics excited. Why? Because it’s the first major architecture shift we’ve seen from NVIDIA since the G92 cores of 8000 series GeForce GPUs of 2006. This G92 core later became the cornerstone of the GeForce 9000 series, and then later the GTX 200 and GTX 300 series cards.

So, why is the Fermi GF100 GPU a disappointment? Well, I haven’t had time to conduct a full benchmark of this latest GPU, but my early findings match those of the guys from PC Pro - yes, Fermi is the fastest GPU that you probably won’t be able to buy for a few weeks, but that its lead over ATI’s HD 5870 and HD 5850, cards which are cooler, quieter, and significantly cheaper: We ran benchmarks in a variety of current titles and, on the whole, the Fermi cards narrowly outperformed their ATI equivalents. In Crysis at 1,920 x 1,200 and Very High settings, the GTX 480 averaged 40fps to the HD 5870’s 38fps; the GTX 470 scored 33fps to the HD 5850’s 32fps. Higher settings saw similar margins. World in Conflict had the two Nvidia cards consistently ahead by just under 20%, and in Stalker: Call of Pripyat that margin was around 5%. Other games had ATI’s cards ahead by a whisker, and if we average all the results, Nvidia’s edge looks to be between 5% and 10%. And that’s not all. First, these Fermi cards suck at the teat of your PSU ferociously, with a GXT 480-based test rig sucking upwards of 400W when stressed, compared to around 270W for ATI’s fastest single-GPU card. All this power causes a secondary problem - heat. The reports that the GF100 GPU can hit 98°C/208°F. I seriously have concerns as to how long a GPU pushed to this sort of level can last. And while the GPU is working this hard, you have to put up with annoying racket of the fan going flat out.

While being the proud owner of the “world’s fastest GPU” is always a short-lived thrill, I feel that it’ll be a shorter than usual thrill for Fermi owners. That 10% edge that the GPU has over ATI isn’t going to last long.

Dell Launches Precision M4500 now shipping with $1,549 as starting price

With specs and prices easily reaching into the stratosphere, we weren't quite sure where Dell's new 15-inch Precision M4500 workstation would land -- the 17-inch M6500 has a starting price of $1,799, but that's only after $310 of "instant savings." Well, it looks like we're getting off (relatively) easy with the M4500, with a Core i5-520M 2.5GHz model running for $1,549 and still managing to pack in those NVIDIA Quadro FX 880M Graphics. Of course, we imagine you'll quickly be running up that bill -- 2GB of slow RAM, a 1366 x 768 LCD, and no WiFi just aren't going to cut it -- but with tempting options like a secondary 64GB SSD minicard drive and the ever-frivilous Precision ON, it's not like we were sticking near that base price anyway. Expect to spec out something truly delicious in the $2,500+ range. Our biggest disappointment? Backlit keyboard is optional, something that's standard even on the Vostro linethese days.

New Dell Latitude E6410 and E6510 emerge overseas With Core i5 / i7 and all

We spotted this suit-and-tie wearing pair sneaking through the FCC's lairs a few weeks ago, and now we know the whens and wheres of buying one... in the UK, anyway. The Dell Latitude E6410 is currently listed with a base price of £749 ($1,128) and features a 14.1-inch display (WXGA and WXGA+ options), a Core i5 or Core i7 processor, Windows Vista or 7, a pair of DDR3 RAM slots, NVIDIA's NVS 3100M (512MB) graphics, a variety of storage options, a Blu-ray or DVD drive, optional mobile broadband and all the expected ports around the edges. The E6510 steps up to a 15.6-inch panel (with a 1080p version selectable) and offers up a few extra CPU options, but otherwise it's identical. There's no word on when these kind fellows will make their way stateside, but if we were the betting type, we'd put our pounds and / or greenbacks on "real soon."

Intel vs. AMD: Does the Powerful CPU really matter?

With the knowledge in hand that AMD was announcing their Opteron 6000series of CPUs this week in response to last week’s release of Intel’s 5600 Xeon, I started talking to the folks responsible for actually making the purchasing decisions for a few large SMB customers as well as consultants to Fortune 500-size datacenter customers. I asked them one simple question; does the processor in the box affect the purchase decision?

The answer was a mixed bag, but boiled down to this; maybe.

Unsurprisingly, much of the interest in these two new CPU releases depended upon the point in the equipment replacement cycle of the IT guy I asked. A common thread was the sit back and watch attitude, though everyone was excited, if that is the right word, to move their 1P to 4P servers to these new, higher core count, higher performance, CPUs, when the opportunity presented itself. These folks have the luxury of watching the market and the media and making use of the information that appears about the performance and value of the two platforms over the next few months.

One IT guy I talked to put it very succinctly; “I don’t have a dog in this race. My job is to spend my budget as effectively as possible.” He didn’t care which processor was in the box; he only buys from top tier server vendors and for his area of responsibility, squeezing the last erg of performance out of a server wasn’t really the concern; stability, reliability, and meeting the less compute-intensive needs of his business unit were the driving factor “My job is to spend my budget as effectively as possible”

Contrast this with the director of a database server computing unit I spoke with. In his case he was a diehard Intel fan and his belief was that even with more cores, the AMD CPUs wouldn’t deliver the performance of the new Intel processors, but he was hedging his bets. He did plan to evaluate the offerings from his vendor of choice to determine if the larger number of cores would make a difference in his environment.

Given that AMD seems to have chosen to focus on value and energy efficiency, it is likely that his testing will still show that the Xeon 5600 series will hold an edge, in his application, over the Opteron 6000.

For really serious interest in the potential of the AMD 8 and 12 core processors I had to step out of the large datacenter space to the guys that buy only a few servers at a time. For IT folks supporting smaller server groups they expressed interest in seeing published performance numbers for these new CPUs and a willingness to purchase if they were a good value for their more tightly constrained budgets.

Bigger datacenter managers didn’t really focus on the buy-in cost of their new servers. They have far more interest in the ongoing expenses related to the servers, and as most of the ones I know tend to buy from a specific server vendor, they already have an excellent idea of the projected costs of their server platforms over the usable life of the hardware. When viewed from this perspective, the price delta between the Intel and AMD offerings isn’t really significant.

Energy utilization in this scenario has the potential to be a purchasing issue, but evaluating the actual energy consumption of the servers in real-world use is going to be a much more difficult metric to define. While the power consumption numbers of the processors are clear, the value of the power vs. workload metric, for any specific user scenario, is rarely easily seen, especially in short term testing.

One group I really haven’t been able to get feedback from yet are those that use software with per-core, as opposed to per CPU licensing. Doubling or tripling the number of cores in their servers could have a very deleterious effect on their budget numbers regardless of performance improvements. Users of Microsoft server OSes don’t need to worry; their license is per processor, not per core. VMware licenses currently allow up to 12 cores per processor, so for the moment, VMware users are also unaffected. Following up on this for software that is still licensed per core will need to wait for a later post.

It’s been a long time since the CPU was the sole deciding choice for a server platform in major business. The package delivered from the server vendor; that combination of price, support, experience, and reliability, is usually much more important than the vendor name that appears on the CPU.

Microsoft extends 90-day free trial for Windows 7 enterprise until end of 2010

In September last year, Microsoft launched a “while supplies last” free 90-day trial of Windows 7 that was targeted specifically at enterprise customers. I guess those supplies are holding out. On March 30, the company extended that free 90-day enterprise promotion through the end of 2010.

In a post on the company’s Springboard Series blog, Microsoft officials said that “due to popular demand, the Windows Enterprise Trial program has been extended.” Interested parties now have until December 31, 2010 to download and evaluate the Windows 7 Enterprise trial version.

The trial copy is a full working version of Windows 7 Enterprise that does not require a product key (it’s embedded inside the download). Users have 10 days from the time they sign up to activate the product. If they don’t activate, the system will shut down once an hour until activated. After the 90-day period ends, the system will shut down once an hour until a user either purchases Windows 7 (and performs a clean install of it, including drivers and applications, or removes it from their system.

Windows 7 has impressed early adopters, according to a new study by Forrester Research issued this week. However, Forrester also noted in an accompanying report that Windows XP is still holding its own as a competitor to Windows 7 among U.S. consumers.

Here’s a slide from the latter report, based on research conducted between December 22 and December 28, 2009, when Forrester surveyed 4,559 US online consumers.

Nvidia Fermi desktops: More gaming PC builders announce systems with new Nvidia Fermi graphic cards

Seemingly minutes after I posted about CyberPower announcing gaming computers with the brand-new Nvidia GeForce GTX 470 and GTX 480 DirectX 11 cards—part of the so-called Fermi platform—a slew of other system builders announced their own Fermi desktops. Though these are pretty much existing lines that just have the new cards as upgrade options, in sum they represent a range of prices. Of course, that range starts at about $2,000 and can quickly escalate from there.

At that “low” end, you can get a Falcon Northwest Talon with a GTX 470 for as little as $1,851.77, a Maingear Shift with a GTX 470 for $2,099 or a Velocity Micro Edge Z55 with a GTX 470 for $2,114. You can tack on another couple hundred dollars to move up to the GTX 480. With deeper pockets comes the opportunity to added two or even three of the new boards in an SLI configuration. You can still stay under $3,000 with a Shift with two GTX 470s ($2,519) or a Falcon NW Mach V with a pair of GTX 470s ($2,900.71).

But what fun is just a dual-SLI setup? If price is no option, you can get three Fermi cards and choose the latest top-end processor, the six-core Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition, at the same time. For $5,864 Origin PC will overclock the i7-980X to 4.4GHz and liquid-cool a trio of GTX 480Xs.

One notable omission from the Fermi list is Alienware, though you know it’s just a matter of time before that gaming PC leader will make its own announcement.

T-Mobile USA staying single for the time being

We've heard various rumorsa over the past year or so that T-Mobile USA parent Deutsche Telekom was looking for someone to look over its fledgling American wireless provider, either in the form of a partnership or an outright buyout. Now, many moons later, the company has felt compelled to set those rumors to rest -- possibly because it couldn't find any interested parties. Rene Obermann, Chairman of the Management Board at Deutsche Telekom, believes there is room for four major wireless players in the US (T-Mo is number four, currently) and asks the question: "Why can't you have penetration rates of 500 percent or 1,000 percent?" The idea here is that, as more and more devices go wireless, people are going to need more and more wireless plans to cover them. But 10 separate wireless plans per person? That sounds 'spensive.

CyberPower first to announce New gaming PCs with new Nvidia's Fermi Based graphics

With Nvidia set to officially launch its new Fermi graphics card architecture tonight, CyberPower is making sure it’s first with its announcement of desktops that will come with the new cards. Not surprisingly, the company’s lines that will sport the latest Nvidia cards—Black Pearl, Black Mamba Fang Series and Gamer Xtreme 3D—are the same that are rocking the new Intel Core i7-980X six-core processor.

The Fermi cards will finally see Nvidia catching up toATI with DirectX 11 support and also can power Nvidia’s 3D Vision Surround platform. CyberPower buyers can choose between the GeForce GTX 470 and GeForce GTX 480 cards, and will be able to configure systems with two or three boards in SLI configuration.

It’s interesting to note that on the Black Mamba Fang choosing either of the new Fermi cards is actually a less expensive option than the ATI Radeon HD 5870, though on the Black Pearl and Gaming Extreme, only the GTX 470 is cheaper. Hopefully we’ll find out more details about the Fermi boards after the launch announcement later tonight.

NVIDIA unleashes New GeForce GTX 480 and GTX 470 Fermi Based 'tessellation monsters' With Direct X 11

Let's get the hard data out of the way first: 480 CUDA cores, 700 MHz graphics and 1,401MHz processor clock speeds, plus 1.5GB of onboard GDDR5 memory running at 1,848MHz (for a 3.7GHz effective data rate). Those are the specs upon which Fermi is built, and those are the numbers that will seek to justify a $499 price tag and a spectacular 250W TDP. We attended a presentation by NVIDIA this afternoon, where the above GTX 480 and its lite version, the GTX 470, were detailed. The latter card will come with a humbler 1.2GB of memory plus 607MHz, 1,215MHz and 1,674MHz clocks, while dinging your wallet for $349 and straining your case's cooling with 215W of hotness.

NVIDIA's first DirectX 11 parts are betting big on tessellation becoming the way games are rendered in the future, with the entire architecture being geared toward taking duties off the CPU and freeing up its cycles to deliver performance improvements elsewhere. This is perhaps no better evidenced than by the fact that both GTX models scored fewer 3DMarks than the Radeon HD 5870 and HD 5850 that they're competing against, but managed to deliver higher frame rates than their respective competitors in in-game benchmarks from NVIDIA. The final bit of major news here relates to SLI scaling, which is frankly remarkable. NVIDIA claims a consistent 90 percent performance improvement (over a single card) when running GTX 480s in tandem, which is as efficient as any multi-GPU setup we've yet seen. After the break you'll find a pair of tech demos and a roundup of the most cogent reviews.

Origin PC stuffs New 4.4GHz Core i7-980X, Nvidia Fermi-based GTX 470 and 480 into Genesis desktop

Hope you didn't just pull the trigger on a new Origin PC Genesis, else you'll be forced to know that your rig was made obsolete in record time. Okay, maybe not obsolete, but there's precisely no doubt that you'd rather be rocking a new Fermi card than whatever you've got now. Right on cue, NVIDIA has launched its latest pair of powerhouse graphics cards, and as of right now, prospective Origin PC buyers can opt for either the GTX 470 or GTX 480 on the Genesis desktop. Better still, you can buy 'em in single, dual or triple SLI configurations, and in case you're down for paying the premium, a 4.4GHz overclocked Core i7-980X Extreme Edition CPU can sit alongside of it (or them).

Cisco sinks funding into WiMAX-supporting Grid Net, looks to ride the 'smart energy' New waves

Here's an interesting one. Just days after Cisco admitted that it was killing its own internal development of WiMAX kit, the networking mainstay has sunk an undisclosed amount of cheddar into a company that holds WiMAX in the highest regard: Grid Net. Said outfit has close ties to GE, Intel, Motorola and Clearwire, all of which have also voiced support (and invested real dollars) for the next-generation wireless protocol in years past. Last we heard, Cisco was doing its best to remain "radio-agnostic," and while some may view this as flip-flopping, we view it as brilliant; it's costly to develop internally, but buying stake in a company that's already well versed in a given technology allows Cisco to keep WiMAX at arm's reach without incurring the risk associated with building within. Beyond all that, we think that Cisco's just trying to get in early on the energy management biz, particularly after the US governmentannounced that it would be funding the distribution of loads of in-home energy monitors in the coming years. According to Grid Net, it intends to "use the proceeds from this investment to promote its real-time, all-IP, secure, reliable, extensible, end-to-end Smart Grid network infrastructure solutions," though specifics beyond that were few and far between. Verizon mentioned that it would soon be using its LTE network for all sorts of unorthodox things -- we suppose WiMAX backers are planning to allow the same.

Top Ten tips for creating profitable "freemium" Business

“Freemium” is a business model that relies on offering free services and converting some users to premium paid services.

It’s been a successful strategy for some companies but it’s not as simple as it seems. Getting the right balance between what is offered for free, and what costs money, is essential.

And there is the risk that a competitor can shave-off your premium services because the cost of offering online services is often marginal.

Recently, I took part in a discussion between the general partners of Silicon Valley VC firm Emergence Capital and five of their top “freemium” startups:

David Sacks, CEO, Yammer

Ivan Koon, CEO, YouSendIt

Brent Chudoba, VP Business Strategy, Survey Monkey

Umberto Milletti, InsideView

Jason Lemkin, CEO, Echosign

I distilled ten points for a successful “freemium” business:

1- Don’t try and guess how your users interact with your service, and which features to offer, perform multiple tests of usability, features, and pricing. Intuition is the starting point but test it out against multiple variants.

2- Create a business service with business processes that act like a machine, so it is scalable and doesn’t need large numbers of people to grow.

3- Pay attention to all of your user data. It will reveal problems and opportunities for additional services, and it will give clues on how to convert more of your users to paying customers.

4- Make sure you are creating a service that has plenty of value, so that your users become your salespeople, they will evangelize your service without you needing a large marketing budget.

5- Don’t try to get rid of your “deadbeat” users with bait-and-switch strategy. Continue to think up new ways of enticing them to purchase a subscription.

6- You don’t need that many paying customers, for some businesses as few as 4 per cent of premium users can create a profitable business, you then have 96 per cent of upside — users that you can potentially convert.

7- If your premium service has a high enough cost, it’s best to have some human contact with the customer rather than have them interact with an automated sales system — this makes a big difference in retaining customers. It’s also an opportunity to up sell or cross-sell other services.

8- Avoid free trial periods, they are usually not long enough to convert users into advocates, and they establish an adversarial position where the company has the power to take away services.

9 - Be careful in setting price points, if they are too high it might attract competitors that can easily undercut your business. Having a lot of free users means it is difficult for a competitor to compete with “free.”

10- Make sure that you have a truly useful service in the first place otherwise “freemium” or otherwise, no business model is going to help you.

You can read more about the discussion here.

Supercomputers sell even in a recession IBM gains High Revenue

The high performance computing market took its lumps in 2009 with sales down 11.6 percent, but IBM came out with a slim market share lead when the duel with HP was done, according to research firm IDC. Why? Supercomputers—going for $500,000 and up—sell even when the economy stinks.

At a high level, factor revenue for high performance computing (HPC) technical server market—systems used for research and development and hard-core engineering—fell to $8.6 billion from $9.7 billion in 2008, said IDC. Unit shipments tanked 40 percent.

Here’s a look at the standings (statement) Above

As you can see, IBM’s share held steady even as the market fell. Turns out that the high-end HPC market held up nicely. Supercomputers, priced $500,000 and up, delivered revenue growth of 25 percent to hit $3.4 billion, reported IDC. HPC systems that run more than $3 million delivered revenue growth of 65 percent to $1 billion. Those high-end markets are IBM’s sweet spot. In fact, IDC reports that IBM had a 45 percent market share in the supercomputer market.

The lower-end of the market took the hit. HPC systems priced below $100,000 fell 33 percent to $1.7 billion as orders were canceled. HP rules the sub-$500,000 HPC market with 33 percent revenue share. Dell, which focuses on the lower end of the market, also took its lumps.

Simply put, the big research and development guns—the oil and gas industry and government—don’t count HPC as discretionary spending as much as the companies buying cheaper systems.

Looking ahead, IDC expects the HPC market to recover with annual revenue growth of 5 percent to 7 percent.

What's Inside And Where in the world are Microsoft's datacenters?

Microsoft is building out its datacenters and datacenter infrastructure at a rapid clip, as part of the company’s stated mission to introduce a cloud version and/or cloud components of all of its existing software products.

While Microsoft does share some information about what’s inside these datacenters, the company seldom provides an overview of its grand datacenter plan. That’s why I was happy to get from one of my sources this slide (from November 2009), which shows where Microsoft has built and is building its Microsoft Online datacenters across the globe. Microsoft’s plan is to pair up datacenters for each geographic region, with one datacenter being designated as primary and the other, secondary, for disaster-recovery purposes. Microsoft was evaluating whether to put a primary datacenter in Brazil for the South American market, backed up by a North American datacenter.

According to this slide, Microsoft will be adding support for customers in Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Mexico, Poland, Puerto Rico, Romania, Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan in the coming months.

Microsoft Online — or MS Online, as it is labeled at the top of this slide — is the part of the company that develops and sells Microsoft-hosted offerings like the Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS); the individual BPOS services (SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, Office Communications Online and Live Meeting); Dynamics CRM Online; and forthcoming new services, like the BPOS-Lite product I wrote about earlier this year.

Microsoft Bing Together Maps to feature New content from geolocation app Foursquare

Microsoft has some new ammunition in its battle against rival Google: geolocation service Foursquare.

The Redmond, Wash.-based company’s Bing Maps tool will soon featuretips and comments from the burgeoning mobile service, which has taken off in popularity among smartphone-enabled urban users on the East Coast for its addictive mix of information and competition.

(For the uninitiated, you can “check-in” at locations around you and, over time, pick up badges and deals rewarding certain activity. The service broadcasts your location to an inner circle of friends, who do the same in return.)

The Bing integration won’t broadcast your location on Maps, but will surface the tips that Foursquare users attach to venues. (Example: I left the following tip for Letterman’s Diner in Kutztown, Pennsylvania: “Be advised: the big portions get bigger as the cook gets hungrier.”)

Basically, it’s much like Yelp integration with Google.

Naturally, the tool will use Silverlight to pull in Foursquare content to Bing Maps.

It will be launched in the spring.

New glasses-free 3D tech uses every pixel prisms for zero crosstalk, audience flexibility

Try as manufacturers might, attempts at autostereoscopic (glasses-free) TV have been subpar existing tech typically makes for messy images due to ghosting, only provides a 3D effect if you're standing in one of a very few predetermined spots (usually 8-10 viewing angles, though we've heard of 64), and reduces display resolution -- all because only some pixels can be seen from each spot. With theoccasional exception, it's not terribly impressive. Scientists at the National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan are looking to change that. Rather than block light with a parallax barrier, their screen uses a matrix of specially cut prisms to reflect it, reducing ghosting to nil and maintaining display resolution by sending the same image to each viewer. Though there are still a fixed number of viewing zones, the prisms are so tiny that manufacturers can simply add more prisms to each pixel to increase that number -- with 11 prisms per pixel, researchers say such a system could support 100 simultaneous 3D moviegoers. We've no word on whether the tech is affordable or when we'll see it, but we expect it to handily beat cyborg eyeballs to market.

Asus integrating USB 3.0 technology into New Eee PC, Eee Box and N Series

Asus appears to be determined to be a leader in providing machines equipped with USB 3.0 support, with the announcement that they are installing the speedier USB technology into a slew of their machines and motherboards.

The Taipei-based computer manufacturer argues that this move is “not a gimmick,” but rather just pushing technology to the next level. Whether it is a gimmick or not, more USB 3.0 availability out there is a good thing.

Asus is starting their USB 3.0 campaign on the N Series notebook line, plus on the Eee PC 1018/1015/1016 netbooks announced at CeBIT and the Eee Box 1510U/1210U PCs.

They’ll also be implementing USB 3.0 on a wide range of motherboards, listed below: P7P55/P7P55D/P7P55D-E Series (Intel P55 chipset), P7P55 WS SuperComputer (Intel P55 chipset), ROG Rampage II Series/Rampage III Extreme (Intel X58 chipset), ROG Maximus III Series (Intel P55 chipset), P6T/P6TD/P6X58 Series (Intel X58 chipset), P7F7-E WS SuperComputer (Intel 3450 chipset), P7H57/P7H55 Series (Intel H57/H55 chipset), P5G41T-M/USB3 (Intel G41 chipset), P5P43TD/USB3 (Intel P43 chipset), M4A89 Series (AMD 890GX/890FX chipset), M4A88/M4A87 Series (AMD 880/870 chipset), M4A77 Series (AMD 770 chipset), M4A785 Series (AMD 785G chipset), M4A78 Series (AMD 780 chipset), M4A79 Series (AMD 790FX chipset).