Larry couldn’t, but we can: Upstart Waratek touts cloudy Java love
A startup has pledged to deliver for Java what the brains of Larry Ellison’s mighty Oracle and the entire Java community cannot: cloud scalability - now.
It also hopes to spread the love to Java-hating sysadmins.
Waratek is planning the general release of its Cloud VM for Java at JavaOne next week. The Cloud VM product is a virtualisation engine built by Waratek to deliver multi-tenancy and elasticity for Java apps. It will also release APIs that let you build for Cloud VM for Java at the event.
Cloud VM introduces Waratek’s substrate layer into the Java container that controls the memory and CPU allocation given to each and every Java app. The idea is to make Java less of a resource hog and easier to manage. Read more...
Money can’t buy open-source love… only code can
Money can't buy you happiness, but Meteor, a web-apps startup focused on enterprise app development, seems to think it can buy it an open-source community.
Instead of the standard startup funding announcement, proclaiming that the company will use its funding for product development, marketing and so on, Meteor says it "will use the money to build the open source community around its offerings."
Is that so? Who knew all you needed for an open-source community was $11.2m in venture funding?
This may be a bit harsh. After all, Meteor's board is filled with people who understand that money can't buy a community. David Skok invested in and helped to build JBoss's commercial business. Rod Johnson built up a massive, two-million strong Spring community. Peter Levine also has an open-source pedigree, having run XenSource until its acquisition by Citrix.
But guess what? In exactly zero of those cases did venture money buy a community. The opposite, in fact, happened. Read more...
Tripomatic launches iOS app to let holidaymakers plot and plan their daily travel itinerary
Tripomatic was one of the startups demoing their wares at The Next Web’s conference last month [see all our coverage here], and the travel-planner startup has just rolled out its new iOS app.
The Czech Republic-based company launched in 2011 as a Web-based platform, and the introduction of a native app for iOS devices will go a long way towards procuring new users who want to have their travel plans with them on the road.
The premise thus far has been simple – you enter your destination, how long you plan to stay and Tripomatic plots out attractions and things to do on a map. It can then be printed out, saved as a PDF or shared with friends on Facebook and Twitter. With the introduction of a mobile app, however, this lets users carry their map of attractions with them on their pocket rocket.
The mobile app works much in the same way as its Web counterpart, except here you have to create an account first before you can test it out. Read more...
Federal body concludes LightSquared can’t work with GPS
A key federal agency involved in testing the proposed LightSquared LTE 4G network has concluded that there is no practical way to solve interference between that network and GPS, possibly dealing a crippling blow to the startup carrier's hopes for a terrestrial mobile network.
In a memo released late today, the National Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Executive Committee (PNT ExComm) said the nine federal agencies that make up the body had concluded unanimously that none of LightSquared's proposals would overcome significant interference with GPS (Global Positioning System).
LightSquared last year received a waiver from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) allowing it to operate a terrestrial LTE (Long-Term Evolution) 4G network on frequencies that have until now been devoted to much weaker satellite signals. But the FCC demanded that concerns over interference with GPS be resolved before the network could be launched.
Tests early last year found devastating interference to many GPS devices, so LightSquared modified its proposal. Further testing took place in November, and other tests had been expected to take place soon.
The PNT ExComm has been involved in testing and results analysis at the request of the FCC and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). The body is headed by deputy secretaries of Defense and Transportation and represents other federal agencies and departments. It is charged with coordinating federal GPS activities. Read more...
Startup pushes software-defined networking
Software-defined networking startup Embrane this week came out of stealth mode to unveil its product and strategy for virtualizing network services.
Embrane was founded in 2009 by former Cisco executives Dante Malagrinò and Marco Di Benedetto, Embrane's CTO. Malagrinò and Di Benedetto were early members of the Andiamo Systems team, a storage networking company funded and acquired by Cisco, as well as Nuova Systems, the company that provided Cisco with its unified computing technology.
At Cisco, Malagrinò helped develop and market Cisco's Data Center 3.0 strategy, which stressed virtualization and a unified fabric. Di Benedetto architected the core elements of Cisco's NX-OS data center operating system.
Other Embrane executives are from 3Com, HP, Juniper, Oracle, Alactel-Lucent, Array Networks, and Palo Alto Networks. Embrane has raised $27 million since its founding. Read more...
Startup Agari debuts security services to stop fake email, phishing attacks
Startup Agari debuts today with cloud-based email security services aimed at allowing enterprises and e-commerce companies to identify and block fake and spoofed email exploiting their legitimate business domain names to conduct scams and phishing attacks.
Facebook and YouSendIt are among the early adopters of the Agari technology, according to Patrick Peterson, founder and CEO of the company, which is based in Palo Alto.
"They understood how email identity is being abused," says Peterson, who adds the Agari service allows Facebook, for example, to set policy controls and automatically block fake email attempting to exploit Facebook's legitimate domain names used for email. Read more...
Skype acquiring startup GroupMe for group text messaging
Internet calling company Skype said Sunday that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire GroupMe, a startup that offers a free group text messaging and conference call service on mobile phones.
Skype did not disclose how much it is paying for GroupMe in New York.
Set up in 2010, GroupMe offers its application on Apple's iPhone, Research In Motion's BlackBerry, and phones running the Android operating system. It also launched in July a version of its application for Microsoft's Windows Phone 7. A short message service (SMS) version for users without smartphones is also available in the U.S. Read more...
Sound-based system promises chipless NFC now
While NFC (near-field communication) gradually emerges to turn mobile phones into payment devices, Silicon Valley startup Naratte is introducing a system it claims can do roughly the same thing without adding a chip to the handset.
On Monday, Naratte introduced Zoosh, a technology that lets phones exchange transaction information via inaudible sound waves. As with NFC, the phone user would just put the phone near to a point-of-sale terminal to redeem a coupon or make a purchase.
Naratte's approach might allow for faster deployment, but some observers raised questions about its technical and market potential. Read more...
Lady Gaga, Eric Schmidt and others will invest ~$1M in Backplane internet starup.
What do Lady Gaga and Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt have in common?
Schmidt’s Tomorrow Ventures and Gaga have partnered up to finance Cartier’s still in stealth startup, with Gaga being a 20% shareholder. Tomorrow Ventures is leading the angel round, which is currently at over $1 million. It is not clear yet as to whether the round has closed. Read more...