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New Boundary App For Splunk Predicts Root Cause Of App Brownouts
Apr 25, 11:24PM
Boundary‘s application performance monitoring technology is now integrated into Splunk‘s enterprise platform, providing a window into apps that increasingly are distributed across cloud and on-premise virtualized environments. Boundary provides a snapshot every second of the app’s topology. That data now appears in Splunk Enterprise, which collects and indexes machine data such as logs, events and performance metrics from all tiers of the technology stack. By combining the two apps, IT personnel can determine the health of the app and how it is behaving across a distributed environment, which increasingly common in today’s market. The app can be viewed in a virtualized or cloud environment, reflecting the need to monitor apps as data flows on and off premise. The new integration is available through Splunk's community website Splunkbase. Here’s how it works. Splunk real-time alerts are tagged as annotations in Boundary's time-series graphs. Customers can then correlate alerts against application flow and performance data. Gary Read, CEO at Boundary, said in an interview that it is becoming increasingly complex to determine the root cause for why an app is not performing well. “Brownouts” are increasingly becoming an issue. Apps are so distributed that they never actually go down. But they can get sluggish. The challenge is finding out why they are not performing well. To do that IT has to get a holistic view of the app. That means knowing how the app is doing on a contextual basis. It’s this problem that is leading to a new breed of performance stacks that is managed virtually through providers such as Splunk, Boundary or New Relic, which looks at an app’s code. These are different from the stacks that IT would once build on-premise to manage client/server applications with software from companies such as CA or HP.Classic Note For iOS Is Bringing Blocky Back
Apr 25, 10:52PM
In case you can't wait for Jony Ive to give iOS a complete revamp, there's Classic Note, an app that will bring back a bit of the Woz-Jobs magic in fully 128K glory. The app includes a note taker and calculator into a package that harkens back to the days of the original Macintosh.Twitter Settles With PeopleBrowsr, Gives The Company Firehose Access Until The End Of The Year
Apr 25, 10:44PM
The saga of PeopleBrowsr vs. Twitter appears to have come to a close, AllThingsD reports. Last November, PeopleBrowsr took Twitter to court after the company had informed them that they’d be losing access to its full firehose of data. This was a move happening with nearly all third-party developers, but PeopleBrowsr contested that its four-year long relationship with Twitter could not be cut off that easily. After a somewhat astonishing public back and forth between the two companies, it sounds like the terms of the out of court settlement will be that PeopleBrowsr keeps firehose data until the end of the year, at which time it will shift over to one of Twitter’s approved data partners, Gnip, Topsy or DataSift. A Twitter spokesperson issued the following statement to us: We're pleased to have this matter dismissed with prejudice, and look forward to PeopleBrowsr's transition by the end of the year off of the Firehose to join the ecosystem of developers utilizing Twitter data via our reseller partnerships. While it’s not a win, it is the close of a case that kicked up dust from developers, some seeing PeopleBrowsr as fighting for the “little guys” who were slowly losing the access to Twitter’s data that they once enjoyed. This was not the case though, as PeopleBrowsr’s products, namely Kred, relies on this data to function. Basically, it had been paying Twitter $1M a year to keep their business going. That’s not little. There’s no word on what it will have to eventually pay someone like Gnip for the same access. A spokesperson from PeopleBrowsr says that it’s “business as usual” now. Good, because it got really ugly there for a while. [Photo credit: Flickr]Here's EA's Internal Memo On The Layoffs Today
Apr 25, 10:12PM
EA, the game maker in the midst of a big transition from the console era of gaming to the free-to-play world, confirmed widespread reports of layoffs today. The company did not disclose the size of the layoffs, but several other outlets are reporting either hundreds of layoffs or figures that are as high as 10 percent. The downsizing, which comes on the heels of other layoffs in Montreal and Los Angeles earlier this year, is happening as EA is expected to have a weak earnings report on May 7. EA CEO John Riccitiello recently stepped down over “shortcomings” in the company’s financial performance for the most recent quarter after a six-year stint at the helm of the company. We have an internal memo from executive chairman Larry Probst, which sheds light on some of the changes. Core marketing functions, which were spread out between EA’s five different labels, are getting consolidated under COO Peter Moore. Origin, EA’s online distribution platform, is moving under EA’s President of Labels, Frank Gibeau, who is considered one of the few plausible internal candidates for taking EA’s helm once the CEO search is over. Here’s Probst: As we begin the new fiscal year, I want to provide you with a brief update on some important changes to our organization. As Executive Chairman, my focus is to ensure EA is delivering high quality games and services to our consumers, while helping the executive team develop a FY14 operating plan that drives growth, rationalizes headcount and controls costs. In recent weeks, the executive team has been tasked with evaluating every area of our business to establish a clear set of priorities, and a more efficient organizational structure. This process has led to some difficult decisions about the number of people and locations needed to achieve our goals. The workforce reductions which we communicated in the last two weeks represent the majority of our planned personnel actions. We are extremely grateful for the contributions made by each of these individuals – they will be missed by their colleagues and friends at EA. We are also taking action to streamline our organization, including changes in two key areas: · Core marketing functions have been consolidated under our COO, Peter Moore. The combined group will bring together our Label marketing teams, Global Acquisition Marketing and Marketing Analytics into one multi-talented team under Todd Sitrin's leadership. The development and marketing teams willThe New York Times Releases Its Headline-Reading Google Glass App
Apr 25, 10:02PM
Google's ambitious Glass display is still a ways off from its public release, but it looks like those newly-minted Glass Explorers now have something else to do besides taking first-person photos. The New York Times just pulled back the curtain on its own Glass-friendly app today, which makes it the first installable third-party app available for the ambitious headset (Path was technically the first third-party app, but it's preloaded on early versions of the device).Digg Owner Betaworks Buys Instapaper To Go Big On Social Reading And Discovery
Apr 25, 10:00PM
Last summer, New York-based hybrid investor/incubator/holding company thing Betaworks acquired social news site Digg and relaunched it soon after, hoping to bring back some of its mojo in the process. Nine months later, Betaworks has acquired news-oriented company, this time bringing Marco Arment's popular story-saving app Instapaper into the fold.Pinterest Tweaks Its New Look, Improves Search And Brings Features Like Pinned From And Mentions Back
Apr 25, 9:32PM
While Pinterest is still rolling out its brand new look to users, it decided to listen to some feedback along the way and make some tweaks. Since the site relies heavily, or completely, on its users pinning things to boards like crazy, some features that were dropped from the new design were re-added due to popular demand. One of the features that caused the community to clammer the most was “Pinned By,” which let people see who originally pinned an item. This was a way to discover new people to follow and Pinterest has brought it back: Additionally, the mentioning friends feature using an @ symbol has returned, yet another way to discover new people to follow. Notice a trend here? It seems like the new design was limiting users on how they could find new friends and boards to interact with. The company says that finding friends from Twitter and Facebook that are on Pinterest is back, too. Other than the features that were reintroduced, Pinterest has improved its search functionality by adding auto-suggest, something that helps people out when looking for things. This has been a popular feature on Google’s search product, making the experience way less aggravating than looking at an empty white box for minutes: Along with search, Pinterest has moved your recent activity notifications, including older ones, to the top right corner, another move that could increase engagement. Things that the company are thinking on and might roll out soon are rearranging pins and creating a board within a board. Let’s call that feature “Boardception.” Still, it’s clear that remaining true to the original experience tops all new bells and whistles. Other social sites like Twitter and Facebook tend to roll out features slowly, getting instant feedback from people along the way before things are released to the masses. By letting users opt-in to trying out the new look, Pinterest gets beta testers who are ready, willing and able to voice their complaints, since that’s what people end up voicing anyways. If you’re still rocking the old design on Pinterest, just click “Get it now” after you log in:This Hublot LaFerrari Watch Looks Perfect For Cobra Commander
Apr 25, 9:18PM
While I'm not a big fan of ostentatious watches that cost too much and are aimed at buyers with more money than sense (in short, most of the Hublot line) I will give this odd-looking watch a moment of reflection. It is the MP-05 LaFerrari, a tourbillon watch with a 50-day power reserve, a number almost unheard of in the watch world, and a unique styling that is reminiscent of a certain Arashikage ninja.Take An Early Look At Routehappy, The Travel Site That Highlights The Flights You'll Actually Enjoy
Apr 25, 9:08PM
Routehappy is about to launch a new way for travelers to search for flights — and TechCrunch readers can actually take a look now. The idea, as explained to me by co-founder and CEO Robert Albert, is to move beyond the focus on price and schedule that you find every on other flight search site. Sure, those things are important, but as I noted when Routehappy raised seed funding last year, when you suddenly find yourself stuck in a cramped seat without WiFi, you realize that other factors matter too.Facebook Buys Parse To Offer Mobile Development Tools As Its First Paid B2B Service
Apr 25, 9:00PM
Facebook has just acquired Parse, marking its entry into a whole new business category: paid tools and services for developing mobile apps. The company is buying the mobile-backend-as-a-service startup (yes, the industry acronym is mBaaS) in a deal that we've heard is worth $85 million. Neither company is commenting on the size of the deal, except that Facebook said it's not "material."Group Led By Google Wants More Speed On The Web, Releases Nginx PageSpeed Module In Beta
Apr 25, 8:56PM
Google really cares about the web being faster. In 2010 it led a group of contributors in releasing a module for Apache web servers called PageSpeed. Today, the same group has released a version for Nginx, an alternative to Apache, which is also open source and used by massively trafficked sites like Netflix, Hulu, Pinterest, Airbnb, WordPress.com, Zynga, Zappos and GitHub. In alpha testing, content-delivery network provider, MaxCDN, reported a 1.57 second decrease in average page load times, with bounce rates dropping by 1 percent. While those seconds might not seem like a big deal, they are, especially when you have multiple visitors on your site performing multiple tasks. Think about how it feels when you use Hulu at a Starbucks; that almost 2 seconds could ease some of your frustrations in waiting for a page and video to load. The module is available for webmasters on GitHub, with open source participation coming from Google, Taobao, We-Amp and individual developers. In a post by Jeff Kaufman, who is an engineer on Google’s Make the Web Faster Team, (have to love Google’s team names), he explains how PageSpeed works: Running as a module inside Nginx, ngx_pagespeed rewrites your webpages to make them faster for your users. This includes compressing images, minifying CSS and JavaScript, extending cache lifetimes, and many other web performance best practices. All of mod_pagespeed’s optimization filters are now available to Nginx users. With Google pushing to bring faster Internet to everyone in the world, starting with a few cities in the United States, it makes sense that the company would participate in projects like this to help the rest of the web keep up. Naturally, Google is able to leverage the work of projects like this for its own sites, since speed is a huge concern of CEO Larry Page for its existing and future products.The Hero Eco A2B Metro Electric Bike Is A City Commuter's Dreamcycle
Apr 25, 8:54PM
As a man who spends most of his time in his attic, it's nice to hit the open roads, feel a little wind in your hair, and run over crack vials as you motor through downtown Manhattan. That's exactly what I did yesterday as when I tried to ride an Ultra Motors A2B Metro electric bike from Bay Ridge to our offices on Broadway, thereby cementing my love for electric bikes and this electric bike in particular.
Actian Buys Amazon-Funded ParAccel As April Buying Spree Continues
Apr 25, 8:30PM
Actian is on a buying spree. The big data management company announced today the acquisition of ParAccel, the data analytics company that has $64 million in funding from Amazon and other investors. Earlier this month, Actian acquired Pervasive Software, a data integration company based in Austin. Actian provides data integration and a a data analytics database called Vectorwise with a particular emphasis on Hadoop. Its Hadoop connectors hook into Hadoop, pull out relevant data in real time and integrate it accordingly. ParAccel also has a data analytics database. ParAccel has made a mark with its analytics database. It is used by Amazon Redshift, the service that acts as a data warehouse in the cloud. ParAccel, as of December, has more than 60 customers. Actian CTO Mike Hoskins said the company is profitable, giving it an opportunity to build a big data portfolio. “When you look at our combined capabilities, including Versant, Pervasive and now ParAccel, we have global reach in many fast-growing markets and annualized revenues north of $150 million,” said Hoskins in an email interview. Hoskins had before served as CTO at Pervasive. The "Internet of Things," with its volumes of data, both traditional and machine-generated, are growing exponentially, Hoskins said. Companies that can gain insights with data, across multiple sources, have a significant advantage. With the combined companies, Actian can scale a company’s data across commodity hardware, capturing data from different directions and running analytics on that data. Actian’s acquisitions show how data integration and analytics represent a potent combination. The question is can Actian actually integrate the technologies to become a top data analytics vendor.Mailbox Is Working On An iPad App, With Desktop And Android Clients "On The Roadmap"
Apr 25, 8:15PM
Given the fairly nutballs hype surrounding the launch of Mailbox for iPhone (and its crazy queues), you could probably assume that they'd bring the app to other devices and platforms — and you'd be right if you did. The company recently started letting users know of their upcoming projects: an iPad app is in the works, with Android and desktop clients "on the agenda".Amazon Just Beats Estimates As Q1 Sales Rise 22 Percent To $16B, While Net Income Drops 37 Percent To $82M
Apr 25, 8:11PM
Today, Amazon continued the trend, still finding itself in a bit of a hangover after missing expectations in Q4. The eCommerce giant reported earnings from Q1 after the market closed this afternoon, in which it saw cash flow increase 39 percent to $4.25 billion, compared to $3 billion for the prior year, while net sales increased 22 percent to $16.07 billion in Q1, compared to $13.18 billion in first quarter 2012.Leap Motion Controller Ship Date Delayed Until July 22, Due To A Need For A Larger, Longer Beta Test
Apr 25, 7:56PM
Leap Motion has just announced that its 3D gesture controller hardware ship date will be delayed, from May 13 for pre-orders and May 19 for general retail availability to July 27. The delay was caused by a need for more testing from the Leap Motion beta testing community, and an expansion of that group with additional members, according to Leap Motion CEO Michael Buckwald, who held a press conference today to discuss the missed dates. This is not good new for a company that has spent a lot of time promoting its product and securing high-level partnerships (with Asus, HP and Best Buy) up until now. The hype that Leap Motion has been able to build only means that users will be more disappointed by any delays in its launch window, and the effect on public perception is certainly one the hardware startup would like to have avoided. Still, some 12,000 developers have received units and already used them to do impressive things, so Leap Motion is hardly in danger of being branded ‘vaporware’ as of yet. Leap Motion says it wants to make sure that the product they deliver is the best they can offer, and says that there is “nothing catastrophically wrong” with the hardware as of yet. The company believes that it could have shipped by the original date if it had really pushed things, but wanted to make sure that things were ready for prime time. The new July 22 ship date is firmly set, according to Buckwald, and this is “the first and only delay there will be.” When asked if there was a specific cause, Buckwald said it’s more about beta testing everything in general, but that there will definitely be a focus on getting more input on how customers interact with the product. In general, it sounds like there’s some concern about making sure that user experience is pleasant among not only Leap Motion’s more technical users, but also the general public, too. Buckwald says it has addressed most of the technical issues around gesture tracking, and now the emphasis is squarely on usability testing, and those who are already seeded with early hardware will essentially act more as consumer testers. “If you’d asked me a year ago what was the biggest challenge, I’d have said it would be the hardware side,” Buckwald said, but went on to explain that the software aspect is nowToronto-Based Accelerator Extreme Startups Introduces Its Third Class
Apr 25, 7:54PM
It's been more than a year since Toronto-based Extreme Startups raised funding and launched its Accelerator program. Now it's ready to introduce the third group of five companies to have gone through the program. The next five companies are a mix, from online craft marketplace BRIKA to business intelligence tool Polychart… With some vitamins and science research thrown in for good measure.Chartbeat's New Dashboard Plugs Publishers' Video Data Into Their Real-Time Analytics
Apr 25, 7:51PM
Chartbeat is launching what CEO Tony Haile told me has been the big "missing piece" from its real-time analytics product for publishers — a video dashboard. "And not just missing for us, but largely a missing piece for publishers, too," he said. By that, Haile means video data is usually stuck in a separate application, and therefore analyzed completely separately, by a separate team, from the rest of the site. Plus, because the analytics can be so expensive, publishers often cut the data that they receive.Vox Media's Jim Bankoff To Talk The Business Of High-Quality Media At Disrupt NY
Apr 25, 7:48PM
After a long decade of media destruction, no one in the industry was surprised to see “Reporter (Newspaper)” ranked as the worst job of 2013. But life is starting to look better for some online publications — like at Vox Media. Its SB Nation network of local sports sites has become a foundation for a national edition, tech-oriented news site The Verge, and most recently video gaming site Polygon. On the business side, it has begun cracking the display advertising market. The CEO who is behind its ongoing growth is Jim Bankoff, who you may also know as the guy who previously led Aol’s content businesses for many years. He’s going to have a couple of newsy things to say about Vox and the business of high-quality media today when I interview him Monday at Disrupt NY. If you’re interested in media, advertising, and startups trying to get into these industries, you’ll want to see this. Tickets are available here. He joins our list of Disrupt NY speakers that currently includes Nasty Gal’s Deborah Benton, investor Chamath Palihapitiya, and hardware creator Limor Fried, with more still to be announced. Our sponsors help make Disrupt happen. If you are interested in learning more about sponsorship opportunities, please contact our sponsorship team here sponsors@techcrunch.com. Jim Bankoff Chairman & CEO, Vox Media Jim runs all aspects of Vox Media, one of the fastest growing online publishers, focused on the sports, personal technology and gaming categories. Vox is solving the problem of developing high-value digital journalism, storytelling and brand advertising at scale. Its audiences are among the most engaged and affluent on the web. SB Nation, its sports brand, boasts over 30 million users per month across 300 individually branded, fan-centric sports communities, each covering a specific professional or college team, league or sport. In November 2011, Vox Media launched The Verge, which has quickly established itself as a category leader and the fastest growing site that covers technology. In October, Vox launched Polygon, a site dedicated to news and community for fans of gaming, anchored by an all-star roster of writers. All Vox Media sites are built upon, Chorus, its world-class proprietary publishing platform. The company enjoys support from leading investors including Accel Partners, Comcast Interactive Capital, Khosla Ventures and Allen & Company. A veteran of the online industry, Jim developed and led dozens of the most popular websites on the Internet including Aol, Mapquest,Buffer Scheduling Service Now Making Over $100K In Monthly Revenue, With 600K Users Sending 5M Updates Per Month
Apr 25, 7:31PM
Social network scheduling startup Buffer continues to grow, and is now on track to make over $1 million in annual revenue with over $100,000 coming in from clients per month. The company now has over 600,000 users, and over 10,000 paying users as of this month, signalling significant growth from December of 2012, when it had 400,000 total users, and a third of its current social shares per month.If at any time you'd like to stop receiving these messages, just send an email to feeds_feedburner_com_techcrunch+unsubscribe-hmdtechnology=gmail.com@mail.feed2email.net.
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