Facebook Home phone plans canned in the UK
Support for new devices put on ice as well
The HTC First "Facebook phone" is not coming to the UK after its frigid reception in the US, and the social networking company is going back to work on the app after mass user apathy.
Neither EE or Orange plan to offer the HTC First, Mobile News reported on Thursday (and El Reg subsequentially confirmed), which begs the question …
Internet2 superfast-boffinry network peers with Azure cloud
Microsoft waives data egress rates for researchers
Ultra-fast US academic network Internet2 is going to peer with Microsoft's cloud to give researchers from over 200 institutions high-speed reliable access to Azure at a discounted rate.
The peering arrangement with Microsoft was announced on Thursday and will initially see Internet2's 220 plus member institutions gain "enhanced …
Kim Dotcom claims invention of two-factor authentication
Mega-patent from Megaupload baron
Kim Dotcom has claimed the invention of two-factor authentication, and says he has the patent to prove it.
The loquacious baron of internet cloud locker Mega announced in a tweet on Wednesday that he is the inventor of two-factor authentication, just hours after Twitter announced support for the security measure.
Dotcom pointed …
Microsoft floats Azure cloud into China
Redmond meets Red Dragon via 21Vianet
Microsoft is bringing its Azure cloud to China, although the management of the data center will be done by a local firm.
Azure will become available in a public beta within a month, Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer said at a speech in Beijing on Monday, according to Bloomberg. As a condition of bringing Azure into China, Microsoft …
Big Brother security tech gets $20m
Skyhigh Networks takes VC cash to patrol corporate networks
Skyhigh Networks has trousered $20m from VC firms keen on the security company's tech for snooping on corporate networks and locking down banned apps.
The $20 megabuck Series E investment round was led by Sequoia Capital along with pre-existing investors Greylock Partners, the company announced on Tuesday.
By scanning …
Soylent Corporation prepares to DEFEAT FOOD
Geeks order over $100,000 of startup's 'default meal' powder
Credulous geeks have poured over $130,000 into a fantastic food replacement named "Soylent," a substance whose creators aim to "free your body" from the need to eat solids ever again.
The ludicrously ambitious and suspiciously under-skilled Soylent Corporation announced its crowdfunding campaign on Tuesday and within hours had …
AWS cloud gains critical federal security certification
Beats off Rackspace, Microsoft, Google, for government jobs
The more people you have to go through to get approval for an IT project, the less likely it is to happen, so when Amazon announces another security certification it's not just about compliance, it's about releasing pent-up cloud demand.
With the company's announcement on Tuesday that both its US West and East data center hubs, …
Machine learning climbs atop Hadoop
Pattern hoists machine-learning models onto HDFS
Hadoop whisperer Concurrent has released a free tool for porting machine-learning models over to Hadoop.
The Pattern tool lets you run machine-learning models on top of the Hadoop compute and storage framework via either exported Predictive Model Markup Language (PMML) files or a Pattern Java API.
Designing machine-learning …
Alteryx grabs cash to simplify analytics
Lets pointy-haired bosses think they're 'data artisans'
Analytics startup Alteryx has grabbed another round of funding to help it get its big-data analysis tools in front of more non-techies at more enterprises with tangled data.
The $12m in cash will be used to add sales and marketing roles, fund international expansion, and make further investments into its Strategic Analytics …
Amazon cloud soars far above Google and Microsoft
Analysis Bezos & Co's feature-rich cloud casts long shadow
With last week's gale of Google cloud announcements, it'd be easy to think that the Chocolate Factory has a competitive offering compared with Amazon Web Services. But when you look at the number of services Google fields versus Amazon, that is simply not the case.
For all the announcements last week – and there were several – …
Dell JUNKS public cloud in favor of partner tech
'Freedom from lock-in' through product cancellation
Dell is discontinuing its infrastructure-as-a-service cloud and instead dealing tech to partners as it looks to make some money in the cut-throat world of cloud computing.
The Round Rock, Texas, company announced on Monday that it was discontinuing sales of its multi-tenant public cloud IaaS "in favor of best-in-class partner …
Adobe's Creative Cloud fails at being a cloud
Sync feature suspended by Adobe FOR TWO WEEKS
The file-syncing part of Adobe's new Creative Cloud family of technologies has been intermittently broken for a week, taking the "cloud" part out of Adobe's "Creative Cloud" redesign of its products. Now Adobe is suspending it "for the next couple of weeks" to make updates.
The sync feature, which means files being fiddled with …
Google research chief: 'Emergent artificial intelligence? Hogwash!'
Google I/O 'We have to make it happen'
If there's any company in the world that can bring true artificial intelligence into being, it's Google.
But the advertising giant admits a SkyNet-like electronic overlord is unlikely to create itself even within the Google network without some help from clever humans.
Though many science fiction writers and even some academics …
Google may chuck Spanner into Datastore
Google I/O Needs to pretty it up or 'people would freak out'
Google may make its globally-distributed Spanner database available as a cloud service as the company tries to let developers fiddle with its innards.
The Spanner database* is the successor to the BigTable/Megastore architecture on which Google's just-announced Cloud Datastore is built, and has some more-advanced features, such …
Amazon slashes DynamoDB cost to counter Google Datastore
'Datastore? Cute. Here's a 4X price reduction on big reads.'
Amazon has overhauled its DynamoDB NoSQL datastore following Google's unveiling of a price-competitive service.
The changes to the row-based DynamoDB were announced on Wednesday, hours after Google launched its Cloud Datastore – a standalone version of App Engine's columnar storage underlay.
The Amazon changes let users scan …
Google forges BigTable-based NoSQL datastore
Google I/O Takes out BigTable, thwacks Amazon DynamoDB over the head
If you're Google, building cloud services for the public must be frustrating – after spending a decade crafting and stitching together software systems for use internally, when you try and sell them to the outside world you need to unpick them from one another.
It seems more like butchery than creation, but that's the name of …
Google platform cloud now takes PHP apps
Google I/O Google closes gap with cloud competitors
Google is adding PHP to Google App Engine as the company tries to appeal to developers of the widely-used language.
The addition was announced on Wednesday at Google's developer jamboree Google I/O. It means GAE now supports three widely used web languages – Python, Java, and PHP – and Go, a Google-sponsored language designed …
Biological chips go analog to boost efficiency
Analog chips run rings around digital ones at tiny scale
MIT boffins have figured out how to create synthetic analog organic circuits that can perform useful tasks without needing the sophistication that digital methods demand, which could lead to more efficient gloopy circuits and even more precise drug manufacture.
The advance, which could create technology for carefully managing …
Video services chug half of US net capacity
Amazon cloud serves up biggest, Google second biggest, Microsoft...?
Video services Netflix and YouTube consume nearly half of US internet capacity at peak times, demonstrating the massive scale of Amazon and Google's infrastructure clouds, but causing us to ask 'whither Microsoft?'
As of the first half of 2013, Netflix accounted for almost a third (32.5 per cent) of downstream traffic on US …
Engine Yard plugs PHP into its platform-as-a-service
Halves weakling instance prices, intros Riak support
Oracle-backed Engine Yard has added support for PHP apps to its platform cloud as the company tries to maintain feature parity against bigger companies with better infrastructure.
The PHP support was announced on Tuesday and takes EngineYard's roster of supported languages to three, including Ruby on Rails and Node.js. It sees …
CIA ups stake in database-as-a-service firm
Cloudant trousers $12m, opens San Francisco office
The CIA has maintained its influence over Cloudant by upping its investment in the database-as-a-service firm.
The $12m funding round sees Cloudant's existing investors In-Q-Tel*, Avalon Ventures, and Samsung Venture Investment Corporation up their shares in the company, and new investors Fidelity Investments, Rackspace Hosting …
Inside EMC's software-defined ViPR storage tech
ViPRware or the real deal?
EMC spent much of this year's EMC World talking up ViPR, its new system for managing, automating, and controlling storage infrastructure.
Tucci and the gang were scolded for the premature nature of the announcement – ViPR won't launch until late 2013, and it'll be late 2014 when it gets the features that truly differentiate it …
Facebook plans globe-spanning hardware deployment
Social network gets edgy with its infrastructure
Facebook plans to deploy sophisticated gear at the very edge of its network to cut the time it takes for denizens of the social network to interact with the site.
The plans – which are still in a very early stage – were revealed to The Register by Facebook at a briefing at Interop in Las Vegas this week. They will see the social …
Rackspace shares crater in drab results aftermath
Failure to lassoo public cloud pushes Texans off cliff
Rackspace's shares have fallen off a cliff after the Texas cloud company reported less than glowing revenues.
In a sign of the fractious affections of the financial market, the company's shares were down almost 25 per cent in trading on Thursday, following Wednesday's lackluster results.
Though Rackspace grew revenue 20.2 per …
Google's cloud dumps custom Linux, switches to Debian
Updated Debian 7.0 wheezes in as GCEL hobbles out
Google is moving the default software for its rentable cloud servers from a custom version of Linux to Debian.
The decision to make Debian the default image type for Google Compute Engine was announced by the company on Thursday. As a consequence, Google's stripped down Linux OS GCEL (Google Compute Engine Linux) is being …
MadeiraCloud trousers $1.5 million to explain AWS to bosses
There's money in ignorance
Amazon cloud manager MadeiraCloud has slurped $1.5 million from VCs who are betting that its visualization technology will make it easier for organizations to consume cloud infrastructure.
The investment by reputable VC firm Sequoia Capital highlights both AWS's dominant role within the market for rentable cloud infrastructure …
Amazon cloud floats into Microsoft data centers
AWS condenses inside System Center management software
Admins can now manage Amazon Web Services infrastructure resources through Microsoft's System Center management tool – an incremental update that belies Bezos & Co's increasingly flamboyant seduction of Redmond data centers.
The AWS management Pack for System Center 2012 - Operations Manager, and System Center Operations Manager …
Facebook crashes into networking with open switch
Puckering ensues at Cisco, Juniper, Brocade
Not content with shaking up storage and servers, Facebook is creating an open source switch to help it save money on networking equipment and stop it being dependent on technologies pioneered by any single company.
The switch was announced by Facebook's infrastructure czar Frank Frankovsky in a keynote speech at Interop on …
NuoDB gets .NET plugin
NewSQL pirates hijack SQL on Azure
The ambitious NuoDB database has received an update that lets it deal with .NET as the company looks to tempt Windows aficionados away from SQL Server.
The 1.1 "Starling" release of NuoDB brings with it a set of Microsoft-specific updates, along with more general product and user experience improvements, the company announced on …
Isilon OneFS snorts dedupe magic
EMC World 2013 Mavericks successor embraces OpenStack
EMC is preparing the next version of its Isilon OneFS NAS operating system, and is giving the technology a deduplication capability and support for object storage.
The next version of Isilon will integrate with EMC's ambitious software-defined storage ViPR technology, along with support for APIs from Amazon S3 and Atmos, Hadoop …
EMC: 'Hardware? We stopped doing that YEARS ago'
EMC World 2013 500 box fiddlers versus thousands of software coders
Storage titan EMC doesn't really believe in hardware any more – the value is in the software.
The company has been on a shift for the past decade to wean itself off of a dependency on proprietary gear, and has instead been pouring resources into developing clever software, EMC head honcho Joe Tucci told The Register at EMC World …
The real reason why Dell wants to go private: To fondle big Boomis
Cloud integrator waggles its new API tool
Dell has added an API management tool to its Boomi platform, which connects up clouds and in-house applications.
The new component - which monitors and controls software interfaces used to hook together various services within an enterprise - is included in an upgrade that also adds new integration and process management …
Boundary app monitor becomes a fortune teller
One Dashboard to rule them all
How do you solve a problem like poor performance in distributed IT stacks? If you're application performance manager Boundary, you do it by teaching your tech to not only analyse traffic on the network layer, but also listen to app-specific alerts from typical management systems, and use this to predict where bottlenecks are …
EMC throws ViPR into software-defined party
Software-defined storage snake slithers into service providers
If you can't beat it, eat it - that seems to be EMC's idea with the launch of ViPR, a scheme by the storage provider to gain a foothold in data centers infected with low-cost IT gear.
ViPR can work as a storage controller for traditional and newer infrastructures, and also talk to older systems, EMC announced on Monday at its …
Amazon releases cloud Support API
Who needs a phone call when you can make an API call?
Amazon Web Services now lets customers file support requests via an API, and has deepened the links between its performance-management software and the rest of its cloud.
The release of the AWS Support API for Business or Enterprise support customers on Thursday lets cloud punters open cases, check on their status, and resolve …
Rackspace fluffs .NET cloud support
'We were here first, Microsoft!'
Rackspace is making overtures to Microsoft users by broadening .NET support for its cloud and managed hosting, though these devs may be increasingly swayed by Azure.
The company announced a Cloud SDK for Microsoft.NET, and a PowerShell-based API client "PowerClient" for Rackspace public cloud services on Wednesday. The two tools …
Gaming app ENSLAVES punter PCs in Bitcoin mining ring
Some secret software to go with your deathmatch, sir?
A competitive gaming company has admitted that for two weeks in April its software client was hijacking league members' PCs to mine Bitcoins.
In an eyebrow-raising turn of events, the company, ESEA Gaming, admitted on Wednesday that its software client had been running Bitcoin-mining algorithms on customer PCs since April 14, …
VMware sells WaveMaker to Pramati
That didn't last long
VMware has got rid of WaveMaker, an open source tool that helps casual developers build Java apps, after spending two years trying to develop the technology
The deal sees Java-specialist Pramati acquire "certain assets" of WaveMaker, according to a statement issued by the company. These assets include WaveMaker's core …
Is it me or did cloud marketing suddenly get really weird?
Comment PR bods are going ga-ga on cloudy fumes
As cloud computing shakes up the IT industry, marketing departments are going into overdrive attempting to somehow – no, anyhow – gain what they call "traction." And it's starting to get weird.
We here at Vulture West appreciate that companies need to get the message out there, but everyone is prone to cock-ups, and the …
Amazon goes legit with cloud certification plan
'Enterprisey enough for ya?' bellow Bezos & Co.
Watch out Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Dell, and HP. There's a new reassuringly dull certificate in town, and it's coming for your devs.
Amazon Web Services has launched a global certfication program so that technologists can get something to stick on their CV and use as a lever to extract more cash from current and future employers …
MongoDB gets incremental restores ... for a price
10Gen cranks monetization handle to lift MongoDB into the cloud
MongoDB steward 10Gen is trying to squeeze money out of heavy users of the open source NoSQL database, and has set aside almost a petabyte of raw storage to deal with initial demand for a new backup-and-restore service.
Like other companies that shepherd an open source product (Canonical – Ubuntu, Basho – Riak, et cetera), 10Gen …
SoftLayer hoists Riak NoSQL datastore onto its cloud
Basho hopes to mine rich seam of cloudy dev gold
Open source NoSQL datastore specialist Basho has teamed up with SoftLayer to hoist the free and paid-for versions of Riak into the cloud.
The availability of Riak and Riak Enterprise on SoftLayer's mid-tier infrastructure cloud sees Basho try and open up another shaft to let it tap the seam of cash that it, like other open- …
AppFog PaaS drops Rackspace IaaS
Low demand leads to shutdown as PaaS runs to private clouds
Platform-as-a-service provider AppFog is evaporating its cloudy bridge to Rackspace due to poor customer demand, in yet another case of the fluffy industry coming to terms with hard business realities.
AppFog provides an application infrastructure automation service – otherwise known as a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) – that lets …
If you spend THIS much on cloud, perhaps you need a rethink
Cloud makers reveal tipping point from public to private
There's only so much you should spend on commodity cloud services before you consider other options like getting a discount, moving back to your own servers, or to a private managed cloud, according to cloud providers and customers.
If you're spending more than $10,000 (£6,500) a month or so, then it's probably worth considering …
Amazon's cloud on track for $2bn in revenue in 2013
Analysis AWSome cloud swells with cash, objects
Bezos & Co's cloud looks likely to turn over at least $2bn in 2013 and potentially much more – a fact sure to put the frighteners on traditional IT suppliers scrabbling to come up with their own as-a-service infrastructure products.
Amazon recorded revenues of $750m within its "Other" category in the first quarter of 2013, up $ …
Actian grabs Amazon Redshift's secret sauce
ParAccel for analysing 20TB and above data stores
Actian has acquired database specialist ParAccel, whose technology formed the guts of Amazon's RedShift.
The acquisition, whose financial terms were not disclosed, was announced by Actian on Thursday. Amazon licensed ParAccel's tech for its major AWS Redshift data warehousing service, and led funding for its series E round in …
The Germans are coming - Software AG borgs LongJump
Code-free app design? Sehr gut
Software AG has acquired LongJump, an enterprise-focused company that develops a platform-as-a-service which lets folk build applications without knowing how to code.
The acquisition, whose terms were not dislosed, was announced on Thursday. It will see the MySQL-based technology be knitted into other components of Software AG's …
Rackspace plugs event monitoring into its servers
Expands cloud monitoring tech with 'Virgo' agent project
Rackspace has broadened the capabilities of its cloud monitoring technology by letting admins put an agent on their servers to get a clearer idea of how apps are using hardware resources.
The upgrades to Cloud Monitoring include server monitoring, a graphing feature for viewing old data, PagerDuty integration, and multi-data …
Heroku PaaS floats over to Europe
Geo-redundancy for the trendy Ruby cloud
Heroku's platform-as-a-service cloud has come to Europe, giving local developers a chance to reduce the latency of applications they've stuck on top of the application automation technology.
The Salesforce-owned company announced on Thursday that brave devs can try serving their apps from Ireland rather than America, if they …
Pivotal takes guts of Google, sells to enterprises
Small team aims to clone Google-stack for enterprises
Pivotal wants to build and sell the systems that run Google, but though its ambition may be bold, its claims are as yet more visions than statements of fact.
At a packed press event in San Francisco on Wednesday Pivotal executives unveiled their plans for the company, which aims to bring the sorts of technologies and techniques …
