Jeetu's shared memory

Well, the rumors were true. Not only is Amazon entering the “music locker” space, they’re doing it before both Google and Apple — as their “Cloud Drive” and “Cloud Player” have just gone live on their site tonight.

Cloud Drive is the name Amazon is giving to its media storage space on their servers. They give you 5 GB of storage for free and allow you to access the media from any computer. Cloud Player is the name of yes, the actual player. And it comes in two flavors: a player for the web, and one for Android devices. You’ll note an absence of an iOS player…

A bit more:

• Any album bought through Amazon MP3 is stored for free in your Cloud Drive — a very nice perk.
• If you buy one album from Amazon MP3, they’ll upgrade your Cloud Drive storage to 20 GB for free for a year — another nice perk.
• Normally, 20 GB of Drive storage will cost $20 for a year. 50 GB is $50. 100 GB is $100. And so on. All the way up to 1 TB for $1,000.
• The Cloud Drive storage isn’t just for music — Amazon notes that 1 TB will hold 70 hours of HD video.
• Other files can be uploaded — this includes music, movies, photos, and even documents.
• The MP3 uploader accepts MP3 or AAC files, but they must be DRM-free (.wma, .wav, .ogg and others are not supported)
• Old Amazon MP3 purchases aren’t put in your Cloud Drive, only new purchases going forward (though you can manually upload).
• The Android Cloud Player is built into the Amazon MP3 app — it’s in both the Android Market and Amazon’s new Appstore.
• This is for U.S. customers only for the time being.
• Cloud Player for the web works on IE 8 and above, Firefox 3.5 and above, Chrome, and Safari. There is no Opera support. And Flash is required (but for uploads only).
• There’s also a stand-alone uploader app for Mac and PC.
• You can’t upload music from your mobile device “at this time”.

So there you go, Amazon has won the race of the big three to deliver a fully cloud-supported music option. Current whispers have Google launching something very similar at their I/O conference in May. And Apple is working on a similar concept as well — but it may not launch until this fall. At least that was the original plan, Amazon’s move may alter things, obviously.

More: Amazon Cloud Player Doesn’t Work On iOS — But It’s Not A Flash Issue

When I first wrote about Swoopo back in 2008 I found it abhorrent. It was, in short, a form of gambling masquerading as an auction site. You paid for bids – the more bids you bought the better the chance that you’d be able to pay a reduced price for a certain item. The real money came from the suckers who ran up the price. All those previous bids, at $1, were junked in the process.

They called it entertainment shopping. Now, however, I call it dead.

The company filed for bankruptcy in Germany on the 23rd and although the site appears to be down due to “technical difficulties,” I think the difficulties are more financial. Technologizer has found that the company is finding a liquidator to divest its assets and all bidders with current balances with the company are SOLwoopo.

Some of Swoopo’s competitors are still around (I feel I must refrain from linking to them except in excoriation and so I’ll avoid that here) but hopefully they will suffer the same fate. Fools and their money, as they say, are soon parted. It becomes immoral when the ones doing the parting have stacked the deck in their absolute favor.

2011 has proven to be a monumental year so far for professional social network LinkedIn. The company filed its S-1 for a public offering, released a number of data-focused products and unveiled a social news reader for professionals. And today, the professional social network has hit an important milestone: 100 million users.

LinkedIn, which launched in 2003, says that it is now being used in over 200 countries, with more than half of its users originating from outside the U.S. To be exact, the U.S. has 44 million LinkedIn members, and there are 56 million members outside of the U.S. Brazil is seeing the highest growth rate, with new user adoption rising 428 percent year-over-year. Mexico is also seeing major growth, with membership growing by 178 percent year-over-year.

Currently 17.8 million LinkedIn users a members of the network’s Groups and 1.2 million post comments to Groups weekly. There are now over 2 million company pages, with eBay, Amazon, Apple, Cisco, EMC and Campbells as the most represented companies on the network based on the number of employees that are on LinkedIn. There are now 1.3+ billion connections between LinkedIn’s members and 79+ million job transitions/changes tracked on the network.

For LinkedIn, 100 million users comes with a caveat. As the company wrote in its S-1 filing, “The number of our registered members is higher than the number of actual members, and a substantial majority of our page views are generated by a minority of our members… If the number of our actual members does not meet our expectations or we are unable to increase the breadth and frequency of our visiting members, then our business may not grow as fast as we expect, which will harm our operating and financial results and may cause our stock price to decline.”

So while 100 million users is an impressive milestone, the company admits that its active users are below this number. How much below, however, is unclear. According to comScore, LinkedIn saw 71.5 million unique visitors worldwide in February.

And of course, it’s important to note that 100 million is one-sixth of Facebook’s 600 million userbase (Facebook saw 676.7 million unique visitors worldwide in February, reports comScore). But as the company prepares for a public offering, growth in terms of users will be an important selling point for potential investors. And LinkedIn’s revenue and profit is increasing steadily. It took LinkedIn 8 years to reach 100 million members; how long will it take the network to reach 200 million users?

This morning Amazon is officially launching its Android App Store — a storefront for apps that will compete directly with Google’s official Android Market. We first broke the news about the impending App Store back in September and had some thorough coverage on the details in January when it opened to developer submissions. But now the store is finally going live to consumers (it will be rolling out over the course of the day, so you may not be able to access yet). And while there were leaks abound about this morning’s launch, there are still a few details that Amazon managed to keep quiet.

The biggest one: Amazon will let you ‘Test Drive’ nearly any Android application in the App Store directly from your browser using some very interesting technology (Update: Amazon says it’s available for “many applications”) . Click the ‘Test Drive’ button, and Amazon will launch an emulated instance of Android on its EC2 cloud, which you’ll be able to control directly from your browser (it uses Flash). Some features won’t work right now (like functions that take advantage of the phone’s accelerometer) but you should be able to at least get the gist of what you’re buying. Amazon was unable to give me early access to this prior to today’s launch, but I’ll update with my impressions as soon as I get to try it out.

The other big revelation is Amazon’s free app-of-the-day. Every day, Amazon will be choosing a premium application and making it free to consumers, giving people a reason to check in on the store on a frequent basis. This is made possible by the fact that Amazon, not developers, sets the pricing of each application. Here’s how I described the pricing model in my previous post:

The biggest departure from the mobile app stores we’ve grown accustomed to involves pricing. Unlike Apple’s App Store and Android Market, where developers can set their price to whatever they’d like, Amazon retains full control over how it wants to price your application. The setup is a bit confusing: upon submitting your application, you can set a ‘List Price’, which is the price you’d normally sell it at. Amazon will use a variety of market factors to determine what price it wants to use, and you get a 70% cut of the proceeds of each sale (which is the industry standard). In the event that Amazon steeply discounts your application, or offers it for free, you’re guaranteed to get 20% of the List Price.

In other words, if your app gets picked for Amazon’s deal of the day, you’re entitled to 20% of the list price that you previously set. That may not sound like much, but these daily specials are probably going to see download counts that are far higher than normal.

To coincide with the launch, Amazon is also announcing (as has been previously reported) that it has exclusive rights to the Rio version of Angry Birds, which is a tie-in to an upcoming feature film. The game will normally sell for 99 cents, but will be available free for a limited time. This is a smart move on Amazon’s part, as it will give legions of Angry Birds fans a reason to check out the store in the first place (and will also likely prompt word-of-mouth exposure as friends show off their ‘special’ version of the game to each other).

The App Store is a bold move on Amazon’s part because it’s going head-to-head with Google’s official Android Marketplace — and it may actually provide some serious competition. Unlike Android Market, which has a very open submission process, Amazon will be screening every application to ensure that it meets a certain standard of quality (it isn’t a high bar, but at least you’ll be assured the app won’t crash at launch). Amazon will also be undercutting Google’s marketplace on pricing. And it’s going to be recommending applications to users — even when you’re browsing physical goods on Amazon (if you’re checking out a baseball bat, it might recommend a baseball game for your phone).

Of course, while you can access Amazon’s App Store from both its website and a mobile application, it isn’t coming pre-installed on most Android phones the way Market is, so it’s going to take a while to gain traction. But that will likely change. Expect Amazon to work out deals with carriers to come preloaded on phones. And my hunch is that the store will become very important for various splintered versions of Android that aren’t backed by Google, not the least of which could come from Facebook.

Oh, and just in time for the launch, Apple is suing Amazon over its use of the name ‘App Store’.

As anyone who has read a tech blog in the past few years will know, AT&T has been under attack for not being able to match the network capacity of larger rival Verizon. And when they won the majority of the bids for the open spectrum in 2008, Verizon also had a clear path to the future. Now AT&T is taking another path: buying T-Mobile.

Here’s the release with the details of the deal. AT&T will pay roughly $39 billion to Deutsche Telekom for T-Mobile USA. Deutsche Telekom will also get a roughly 8 percent ownership stake in AT&T as a result of the deal. And a Deutsche Telekom executive will join AT&T’s Board.

With the deal, AT&T will get access to T-Mobile’s roughly 35 million customers. If the two fully merge, this will push AT&T far past Verizon in terms of subscriber numbers. Currently, Verizon has about 100 million subscribers in the U.S., while AT&T has about 95 million. This deal will also leave Sprint as the lone large outsider, with about 50 million subscribers.

The agreement has already been approved by both Boards, but obviously will have to pass government scrutiny.

Here are AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson’s key quotes from the release:

“This transaction represents a major commitment to strengthen and expand critical infrastructure for our nation’s future. It will improve network quality, and it will bring advanced LTE capabilities to more than 294 million people. Mobile broadband networks drive economic opportunity everywhere, and they enable the expanding high-tech ecosystem that includes device makers, cloud and content providers, app developers, customers, and more. During the past few years, America’s high-tech industry has delivered innovation at unprecedented speed, and this combination will accelerate its continued growth.”

And:

“This transaction delivers significant customer, shareowner and public benefits that are available at this level only from the combination of these two companies with complementary network technologies, spectrum positions and operations. We are confident in our ability to execute a seamless integration, and with additional spectrum and network capabilities, we can better meet our customers’ current demands, build for the future and help achieve the President’s goals for a high-speed, wirelessly connected America.”

And here’s Deutsche Telekom CEO René Obermann:

“After evaluating strategic options for T-Mobile USA, I am confident that AT&T is the best partner for our customers, shareholders and the mobile broadband ecosystem. Our common network technology makes this a logical combination and provides an efficient path to gaining the spectrum and network assets needed to provide T-Mobile customers with 4G LTE and the best devices. Also, the transaction returns significant value to Deutsche Telekom shareholders and allows us to retain exposure to the U.S. market.”

Stephenson’s wording, and other wording in the release referencing President Obama seems to be a clear message that AT&T thinks this deal should get government approval. Here’s the key blurb in that regard:

With this transaction, AT&T commits to a significant expansion of robust 4G LTE (Long Term Evolution) deployment to 95 percent of the U.S. population to reach an additional 46.5 million Americans beyond current plans – including rural communities and small towns. This helps achieve the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and President Obama’s goals to connect “every part of America to the digital age.” T-Mobile USA does not have a clear path to delivering LTE.

The “rural communities” and “small towns” wording is a big part of both the net neutrality and spectrum debate. AT&T wants to make it clear that they’re doing this for the little guys. It’s a smart play, but whether or not it will work is another matter. Certainly, Verizon will have some things to say about this deal.

It also looks like T-Mobile customers may end up getting access to the iPhone after all… This commercial is certainly much more interesting now.

More: Fast Break: As Of Last Week, Many At Sprint Thought They Were Merging With T-Mobile

Social game maker Zynga has picked Seattle’s historic Pioneer Square to open its local office.

A social media genius at Bing decided the tsunami was a good way to boost their brand recognition on Twitter. This morning Bing tweeted: “How you can #SupportJapan -For every retweet, bing will give $1 to Japan quake victims, up to $100K.” More »

This is a rather disturbing turn of events. Federal Magistrate Joseph Spero has approved a request by Sony to subpoena the hacker GeoHot’s web host, as well as YouTube, Google, and Twitter, for identifying information on anyone who has accessed, commented, or viewed information relating to the hack. At best this is lazy on Sony’s part and irresponsible on Magistrate Spero’s, and at worst it is a deliberate and malicious wholesale violation of privacy.

The pretense for this wildly overreaching action is that Sony needs this information to prove the case should be tried in San Francisco, in federal court and close to Sony’s headquarters. And why do they feel it should be? Because that’s in Sony’s terms of service. This after another judge noted that by Sony’s standards, “the entire universe would be subject to [her] jurisdiction.”

Continue reading…