Category / Technology

Motorola Droid Announced on Verizon, Engadget has a Hands-On

28 Oct 09 / by Mark Bao / Mobile, Technology / / Comments

Verizon (VZ) announced the Motorola Droid (MOT) operating on its network today, a very powerful and elegant Android-powered mobile cellphone. As rumored, it arrives on November 6. With a viral marketing campaign executed earlier this month at DroidDoes.com, directly targeted at the Apple (AAPL) iPhone and exposing its shortcomings, the mobile industry prepared for the launch of the already-leaked phone.

The leaked specs presented it as probably the best consumer Android device available, with the same processor as the iPhone 3GS and Palm Pre, a large and extremely pixel-dense screen (at about 840px wide), and the Android 2.0 Eclair operating system.

Engadget has shots of the really slick hardware and software on the Droid.

The Mark Bao Journal reported on the effects of the Motorola Droid and Android 2.0 on the state of the Android platform itself. I speculate that Android will beat out Palm (PALM) Pre, Research in Motion (RIM) BlackBerry, and Nokia (NOK) Symbian as the #2 smartphone platform under the iPhone.

Verizon Communications stock went up 2.57% to 29.95 today.

New Android 2.0 SDK and rumored Droid launch Nov. 6: What Android 2.0 and the new Motorola Droid mean for Android

27 Oct 09 / by Mark Bao / Analysis, Business, Mobile, Technology / / Comments

Gist: Android 2.0 SDK released, Motorola Droid and HTC Droid Eris to launch on Verizon on Nov 6, as rumored by Boy Genius Report. Hardware has always been the bottleneck on Android, among other problems. The marketing by Verizon making Droid a serious mobile device for the alternative iPhone market as well as the excellent hardware on the Motorola Droid, and the polished Android 2.0 Eclair OS, will allow Android to become more mainstream.

Google (GOOG) has made official the new Android 2.0 SDK, which allows the new 2.0 “Eclair” APIs to be used in Android applications, including improved bluetooth, multitouch, sync, account management, and, of course, support for new Android 2.0 devices such as the Motorola Droid. The new SDK update is downloadable immediately. Android 2.0 official video is at the bottom of this article.

Leading mobile industry news and insider source Boy Genius Report reports that the Motorola Droid (MOT) and HTC Droid Eris (2498.TW), two new Android 2.0 Eclair devices, will hit the stores on November 6 on the Verizon Wireless (VZ) network.

The Droid devices, highly hyped by Verizon as the iPhone killer, has been the subject of quite a bit viral marketing and noise in the mobile industry. Earlier this month, Verizon launched a mysterious marketing page for the Motorola Droid at DroidDoes.com, a direct attack against the Apple (AAPL) iPhone device’s shortcomings.

I’ve recently moved from bearish to bullish on the Android platform. The first T-Mobile Android G1 device wasn’t polished and didn’t at the time seem like a viable competitor to the iPhone.

However, the Motorola Droid could be a huge development in the Android environment. Droid represents a serious advance in promoting Android as a serious device, built and supported by two serious mobile companies. The specs of the device (the same processor as the iPhone 3GS and the Palm Pre, large screen, full of memory, ready for backgrounding applications, and more delicious specs) will hold its claim to fame as the premier Android hardware.

The bottleneck to the proliferation of Android has partly been the hardware that it runs on. The G1’s hardware didn’t cut it, especially since Android and all Android applications operate on Java, which is a notoriously slow platform. (EDIT: No, it isn’t, I’m wrong; I had neglected to mention that the Android platform has a custom build of Java called Dalvik.) The other bottleneck is the App Store, which, although it will improve over time, the derivative of available applications needs to start getting better. And with the new SDK and excellent new Android 2.0 Eclair, we may be seeing real changes soon.

Amazon Web Services releases new Relational Database Service for MySQL in the Cloud

26 Oct 09 / by Mark Bao / Business, Technology / / Comments

Very recently, Amazon (AMZN) subsidiary Amazon Web Services released the Relational Database Service (RDS), serving MySQL databases through their cloud system.

This is AWS’s second database service, the first being the schema-less SimpleDB service, a key-value data storage system. This new service mimics MySQL-like characteristics, and acts just like MySQL, allowing applications to move seamlessly between their current MySQL system to Amazon RDS. The valueadd of the service includes rock-solid reliability (as AWS is known for), high scalability to allow for extremely large datasets, patching of database software to keep up to date, and database backup.

Amazon RDS lists five instance classes available at this time, reproduced below:

  • Small DB Instance: 1.7 GB memory, 1 ECU (1 virtual core with 1 ECU), 64-bit platform.
  • Large DB Instance: 7.5 GB memory, 4 ECUs (2 virtual cores with 2 ECUs each), 64-bit platform
  • Extra Large DB Instance: 15 GB of memory, 8 ECUs (4 virtual cores with 2 ECUs each), 64-bit platform
  • Double Extra Large DB Instance: 34 GB of memory, 13 ECUs (4 virtual cores with 3,25 ECUs each), 64-bit platform
  • Quadruple Extra Large DB Instance: 68 GB of memory, 26 ECUs (8 virtual cores with 3.25 ECUs each), 64-bit platform

Like most Amazon Web Services offerings, it is on a pay-by-usage model, the lowest being $0.11 per hour of compute instances, plus $0.10/GB/mo of storage and $0.10/million I/O transfer requests.

Amazon Web Services’ current cloud service offerings include Simple Storage System (S3), a scalable cloud file storage system; Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), scalable computational resources, among other services.

On the AWS RDS marketing page, there is a guide to convert from using one’s own hosted MySQL instance to using an RDS instance. The valueadd of AWS RDS over SimpleDB is clearly defined structured data (versus a schema-less key-value store), and with that comes RDBMS features such as JOIN. However, the rigid schema with RDBMS and RDS makes it less flexible to change.

This could be very disruptive. Hosting databases in the cloud wasn’t an extremely simple thing to do earlier, as the main players in moving a database in the cloud essentially was SimpleDB. Converting an application from using a relational store to using a schema-less system like SimpleDB isn’t a trivial task, especially when JOINs are associated.

Now, however, MySQL databases can now be stored reliably in the cloud, and they scale up in both compute power, storage size, and transfer volume. The bottlenecks surrounding scaling a database to be larger or to crunch more data, fenced in by pre-defined CPU, RAM, or disk limits, is now gone. (Though, of course, you’ll have to upgrade instance classes if you hit that limit.)

The market is very big for such a service: MySQL (now owned by Sun Microsystems, JAVA) powers industry-leading sites such as Google, Nokia, YouTube, Zappos, Yahoo!, among others, and is the database portion of the popular open-source web stack LAMP. It is the most popular open-source database, and holds a market share of 49% in database environments (source: Gartner, Enterprise Databases in an Open Source World). Amazon Web Services could repeat their disruption of files to the cloud with S3, or computing power in the cloud with EC2, again by taking databases into the cloud.

However, RDS opens an important question while on the topic of database speed optimization: it scales up well, great: but how is the performance between webservers and the new RDS storage location? In many cases, webservers access the database on a local or nearby network, which improves performance; however, where is RDS located? Is it mirrored in multiple areas? It’ll work great for EC2, but who knows how well it’ll be for migrating MySQL users.

It’s an open question and we’ll see how it plays out when people mess around with it.

Google’s Brilliant Cloud Conversion Plan

18 Jul 09 / by Mark Bao / Startups, Technology / / Comments

google_appsGist: Google gives campuses free, branded, ad-free usage of Google Apps, their cloud offering, familiarizing the students with the product, which will result in workplace purchases (which do generate revenue for Google.) They hold almost a 60% market share in campuses that recently migrated to cloud email and services options. Google’s smart in targeting campuses: they are also the perfect adoption point for Google Chrome OS.

Advertising Age recently profiled Google’s brilliant Cloud conversion plan targeting college campuses. It’s a fantastic article documenting how Google is going for wide adoption of their OS.

For more than two years, Google has approached colleges and universities with a near-unbeatable offer: provide unlimited hosted e-mail and other applications, all branded by the institution and delivered free of charge.

The colleges take the hook of using Google (GOOG) for replacing their IT infrastructure, and it gives an immense cost-benefit. AdAge says that Google signs up 70 to 75 campuses per quarter (!), an astounding rate, given how large of a market they have. With a total United States number of two-year and four-year colleges of approximately 4,000, Google’s cloud offering is gaining 2% market share each quarter (not to mention word-of-mouth marketing for a perhaps increasing derivative of market share gain.)

Indeed, Google already holds incredible market share in the campus cloud market, as the article quotes: “On campus, Google is making inroads. In its annual study of the role of technology on campus, the Campus Computing Project found that two-fifths of participating campuses had either migrated to outsourced e-mail and services or planned to. Of those, 56.5% opted for Google, 38.4% for Microsoft (MSFT) and 4.8% for Zimbra, an open-source software maker owned by Yahoo (YHOO).”

Not only does the campus receive free, branded, and ad-free email, calendar, and various other services from Google through the cloud, Google also gains three things. One, familiarity of students to the service. Two, and connected to one, future use of the Google cloud offerings on their own after college. Three, knowledge of this cloud service, and with a positive experience, this may transfer into the workplace which will allow Google to convert more business (profit-making) customers for their Google Apps cloud offering. (Interestingly, this is similar to why the piracy of Photoshop is beneficial for the application: users of Photoshop make their workplace aware of the positives of the software package, and the workplace purchase the application, generating revenue for Adobe (ADBE).)

Furthermore, these campuses are the perfect place to target for the adoption of Google Chrome OS. The cloud-only, thin-client offering (discussed here in Google Chrome OS: Google’s Master Plan) to run on netbooks is a perfect offering for college students running on the cheap: cheap netbooks, open-source software, Google Apps cloud including Google Docs, Google Calendar, Gmail, and all other university-branded solutions that are already available to them, and Amazon one-click delivery of ramen. Google is undoubtedly aware of campuses as the perfect adopter of Google Chrome OS, and they’re smart to target the campus at first for a can’t-say-no adoption offer for Google Apps.

Startup Takeaway: Although Google presents itself as an immovable market leader (and offering these services for free, even), take away the power of other methods of marketing. Google’s marketing play here is brilliant: target users from the ground up, by offering an exceptional service for a price that can’t be argued against (free). Find other sources of marketing that can be used to bring, primarily, awareness, and let the product follow through for a positive experience.

Google Chrome OS: Google’s Master Plan

08 Jul 09 / by Mark Bao / Analysis, Technology, Web / / Comments

google_chrome_logoGist: Google is creating a thin client with their new netbook operating system Google Chrome OS, which will allow simple components to access Google’s services as applications. Google Chrome, as the base, is an already-advanced browser and web renderer. Google’s initiative may mean war with Microsoft: Google Chrome OS, developed enough, and with enough power to replace desktop applications, may replace the need for an OS as the powerhouse and instead put it in the cloud with Google services and clients being thin clients. Google may expand this to their Android handset system and then to many other interfaces.

Google Inc. (GOOG) announced their new initiative today, the Google Chrome OS. Based on the Google Chrome browser software, it is a light, mobile operating system for netbooks, due to be open-sourced Q4 2009, but due to release Q3-Q4 2010.

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we’re already talking to partners about the project, and we’ll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.

Yeah. We know exactly what Google wants to achieve: the thin client. A thin client provides a view and an input, and general processing and memory; however, the data storage, crunching, and application serving is done from a third party source, accessible through the internet. Netbooks represented a large surge in the thin client idea, building primarily upon inexpensive Intel (INTC) Atom processors, cheap memory, portability, and in some cases open-source Linux distributions such as Ubuntu.

However, Google Chrome OS may not just be “just another Linux distro” to power notebooks: its very premise makes it be based on the idea of a thin client, completely. GCOS, built upon the (relatively) advanced Google Chrome browser, powered by Webkit, offers many advanced application-like parallels. Not only does it allow for the use of the Canvas HTML element for advanced drawing capabilities inside the browser, but local data storage and more.

We’ve already seen web technologies as an OS in action. We’ve seen them starting with Google using XMLHttpRequest in Suggest and Maps, with Adaptive Path’s Jesse James Garrett’s coining of Ajax, then the replacement of desktop apps with web-based ones with Meebo and Google Docs, and recently with the release of Palm Inc.’s (PALM) Palm Pre device, based on WebOS.

There’s actually some interesting foreshadowing in Jesse James Garrett’s early speculations into the power of Ajax:

The same simplicity that enabled the Web’s rapid proliferation also creates a gap between the experiences we can provide and the experiences users can get from a desktop application. … That gap is closing. Take a look at Google Suggest… Now look at Google Maps. Google Suggest and Google Maps are two examples of a new approach to web applications that we at Adaptive Path have been calling Ajax.

Google will nearly eliminate the OS itself. Most of what people want in an OS can happen in a browser. Google has documents and collaboration down with Google Docs. Search down with Google itself, and Google Desktop for local search. Email and chat through Gmail. In the future, organization communications through Google Wave. Calendar and tasks through Google Calendar. Google has created the ultimate thin client system that allows for the browser to take over the OS.

Google’s master plan extends into the integration of the browser into the OS. Google might wage a war of the OS: not with Windows vs. Linux, but Windows vs. the Web OS. Google notes that current “operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web.” Apparently—the current operating systems aren’t enough for the future. Supplementation of the web with the OS is not enough. The OS must be immersed with the web.

And Google wishes to spearhead that immersion. That immersion will primarily be in the form of a thin client, with everything handled on the cloud, the client acting as solely a view of information and an input point. Through this, Google can essentially build this thin client interface into multiple points in reality, not the least being their mobile operating system Android.

Google is going down to the hardware and integrating the user’s own system with Google. And in the future, their mobile phones, and soon, perhaps a huge portion of their technological experience.

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Disclosure: Mark Bao is the CEO of Avecora, an early-stage communications integration and consumer electronics firm.

Some Insights into Marc Andreessen’s New Venture Capital Firm, Andreessen Horowitz

06 Jul 09 / by Mark Bao / Analysis, Startups, Technology / / Comments

Marc AndreessenGist: Andreessen, founder of Netscape, and Horowitz start forward-thinking venture capital firm with a fund of $300 million, investing $50k to $50 million. They prefer technical founders, and like technical CEOs. They want to understand the technology and the product well, instead of viewing from a distance, and aren’t interested in areas they don’t have experience in (unlike many VC firms.) However, the firm is difficult to contact, but it’s a radical and forward-thinking firm.

Marc Andresseen, known for founding Netscape Communications (now part of AOL Time Warner (TWX)) and Ben Horowitz have started Andresseen Horowitz, a $300 million technology venture fund. Andressen notes on his blog the launch and the details of the fund. They are investing $50,000 to $50 million into technology startups. Andreessen and Horowitz have built a venture fund that is special in a few ways.

First, Andreessen Horowitz is a very focused venture capital firm. Their investments are only in technology, and not in other areas (whereas some other firms invest in whatever might sound good.)

“We are almost certainly not an appropriate investor for any of the following domains: “clean”, “green”, energy, transportation, life sciences (biotech, drug design, medical devices), nanotech, movie production companies, consumer retail, electric cars, rocket ships, space elevators. We do not have the first clue about any of these fields.”

As a result, Andreessen Horowitz make an effort to really understand the product itself, along with making sure the business’s financial models are sound. It’s obvious that Andreessen knows quite a bit about technology and startups as well, and has experienced the trenches of startups (at, I may add, an extremely exciting 90s boom company, Netscape.) Andreessen Horowitz is more focused on understanding the product itself, how it works, and the technology behind it, without losing sight of the financials as well. Most venture firms lose sight of having an intimate knowledge of the technology and product.

They demonstrate this as well by preferring technical founders. The notorious “business-side founder” that likes to do whistle-blowing and order-giving that doesn’t want to do any of the heavy lifting doesn’t seem to be an interest to Andreessen Horowitz. In addition, they are looking for founders that intend to become CEOs. Extrapolating from that, they’re looking for a technical CEO lead. (Andreessen also notes that the firm will assist them in development of CEO skills.)

It’s also quite small in makeup. Andreessen and Horowitz will be the only two General Partners in the firm, and they don’t expect to bring on more. Andreessen has an eye for good startups. Along with co-writing the Mosaic browser and founding Netscape Communications, he is Chairman of Ning and on the board of Facebook and eBay (EBAY).

Interestingly, it’s also hard to find. To get in contact with Andreessen Horowitz, most likely an introduction would be required. Andreessen Horowitz doesn’t have a website or a contact email. We’ll see how this scarcity and limiting of connections and in-lanes works out for Andreessen Horowitz.

Andreessen Horowitz presents itself as a flexible, radical, forward-thinking and entrepreneur-focused venture fund, which is exactly the kind of venture fund that there needs to be more of. I’m personally a big fan of Andreessen Horowitz, since the firm sets itself apart from others.

Although Andreessen Horowitz is also investing $50k–$1 million, and from its size is somewhat close to an angel firm, it may be interesting to see an angel firm modeled after the same ideas and mentality as Andreessen Horowitz to rise.

Can Yahoo! Recover?

04 Jul 09 / by Mark Bao / Analysis, Business, Technology, Web / / Comments

Can Yahoo! Recover?
TechMeme reported today that Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO)’s celebrity content site Omg! is receiving excellent reception from the public [link]. Yahoo! Inc., who after its snafu with Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) due to a buyout offer (which was declined by then-CEO >>name<<), saw their stock price plummet to below-offer valuation.
Now that Yahoo! Inc. is under

Gist: Yahoo! has a facet of itself that differs it from its competitors, and this gives them somewhat of an upper hand, despite their search business being not up to par with Google. Consumers will still flock to Yahoo! for its content and unique (but obvious) offerings.

TechMeme reported today that Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO)’s celebrity content site Omg! is receiving excellent reception from the public. Yahoo! Inc., who after its snafu with Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) due to a buyout offer (which was declined by then-CEO Jerry Yang, saw their stock price plummet to below-offer valuation.

Now that Yahoo! is under new management under ex-Autodesk (ADSK) CEO Carol Bartz, it’s interesting to see the new direction that Yahoo! may go into. Their search, at 9% market share, still isn’t beating Google (GOOG) at 80% (source). However, they remain the #2 trafficked site on the internet (Alexa ratings) behind Google. Yahoo! has three facets: it provides 1) consumer services, 2) business services, and 3) content.

Google, as well as other monoliths in the web space, provide both 1) and 2), in many areas such as (what Yahoo! currently dominates in, and has done so for years) mail, news, search, and finance. However, Yahoo! has the upper hand on the content area. Their content generation that they employ gives them a different consumer perspective: while Google provides services, Yahoo! provides services, and content. Google, on the other hand, doesn’t do content, for the most part.

The content generation present at Yahoo! include the omg! celebrity news site, Yahoo! Astrology, and Yahoo! Shine, Yahoo!’s lifestyle information site. What else separates Yahoo! from its competitors? Yahoo! Personals, Fantasy Football, HotJobs, and Upcoming.

The main idea is that Yahoo! provides information services for consumers. Their various services are so multi-faceted that consumers have much to pick from, from their selection. They provide more than news; real estate, job search, health, games, and directory.

Yahoo! services

On the other hand, Google is a data-oriented company. Google’s offerings, such as Docs/Spreadsheets, search, calendar, Gmail, and Reader, are targeted to deal with data, not information. The difference is in the nature of the content: is it generated by you, or is it generated by someone else?

There’s obviously overlap, but the idea is: Yahoo! is a lifestyle company. Their offerings are targeted toward more of a lifestyle approach, such as with omg!, Astrology, Shine, or games, tickets, sports, and the like. Yahoo! is about media. Yahoo!’s competitors, such as Google, are more about getting work done.

The slice of the market that is interested in lifestyle content is not miniscule. There will always be a large market for lifestyle content, and Yahoo! has a multitude of services that make it a monolith of content and services. Yahoo!’s greater flexbility in what exactly they want to offer sets them apart from the rest of the competition.

Yahoo! is a different animal than, say, Google: while search is an important part, it’s not the most important part. Yahoo!’s services allow it to target ordinary people on the web with content, information, and general services. So can it recover? Maybe. They need to focus on what sets them apart, not what makes them the same. And maybe—at some point—they might make a comeback.

Apple Anti-Jailbreak Efforts Evaded Again as iPhone 3GS Jailbroken

03 Jul 09 / by Mark Bao / Technology / / Comments

Gist: iPhone 3GS jailbroken despite Apple Inc.’s efforts to thwart jailbreak. Jailbreak, known as Purplera1n, done by 19-year-old George Hotz, an early iPhone modifier.

Despite Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s constant anti-jailbreaking efforts resulting in delays with every new device or upgrade, the community again has succeeded in jailbreaking the new iPhone 3GS, resulting in full access to the filesystem and ability to run unsigned software.

The new exploit, installable in Windows platforms to iPhone 3GS devices, is available immediately and is known as Purplera1n. The creator of the exploit is 19-year-old George Hotz, who was also the first to hardware-unlock the iPhone.

Interestingly, this comes before the full unlock by the main iPhone community software organization known as the iPhone Dev Team. They have a temporary solution, but only for those who do not wish to unlock their iPhone 3GS in the future.

Apple is continually patching the known methods of jailbreaking, unlocking, and other exploits that utilize the device for unauthorized purposes, and while they succeed in stagnating the time-to-delivery for jailbreaks and unlocks, the device eventually becomes exploited.

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