MKTG

Hoping to stop Apple’s iPhone 4 momentum, the Android camp has ramped up the release of new smartphones, some of them powered with large, high-resolution 4-inch screens, super fast processors and other powerful features. Samsung and Motorola are leading the charge. Will they succeed?

Lew Tucker, Sun Microsystems’ CTO & Vice President of Cloud Computing joining Cisco Systems as the new CTO of Cisco’s fledgling cloud efforts. I am told that the news if going to be announced very soon. Tucker, who has been a regular at our conference for past two years is a well known and much respected figure in the cloud circles. A former executive with SalesForce.com (he worked on AppExchange), Lew is going to be joining a growing army of cloud experts at Cisco.

NorthScale, a Mountain View, Calif.-based web infrastructure start-up, along with social gaming giant Zynga and South Korean search and gaming portal are joining hands to launch Membase, a new open source database that joins a fast growing list of NoSQL databases that includes MongoDB and CouchDB

Earlier this evening we hosted a small pre-Structure 2010 cocktails for many of the attendees for our third annual web infrastructure and cloud computing conference. Here are a few photos from the event which attracted the likes of Amazon CTO Werner Vogels. Enjoy the picture show.

Makara, a Redwood City, Calif-based start-up, which has developed a cloud application platform for the Java world, is launching Makara Cloud for JBoss tomorrow at the JBoss World. And while it supports LAMP-based applications and public clouds, Makara sees its future inside the enterprise.

Google, nearly three years after it bought the service that is the underpinning of Google Voice, is finally opening it up to U.S. residents, though no such luck for international users. With Google Voice, the search giant can push phone companies into the background.

Unlike so many others in the media, we decided not to charge for what we’d already been giving away for free. Instead we developed GigaOM Pro, a subscription-only research service. That was only a year ago — look how far it’s already come.

Despite the threat of competing e-readers such as the Nook, an impending price war and the omnipresent threat of iPad, Amazon’s Kindle will be the winner of the e-book war. All Amazon has to do is stay true to its technology roots and focus on users.

The web-based telephony market is getting crowded, with QuickFuse joining the growing number of companies offering web-based platforms upon which developers can build voice applications (or bundle voice into web applications) using simple APIs. But it is late to the party — maybe too late.

The web-based telephony market is getting crowded, with QuickFuse joining the growing number of companies offering web-based platforms upon which developers can build voice applications (or bundle voice into web applications) using simple APIs. But it is late to the party — maybe too late.

The web-based telephony market is getting crowded, with QuickFuse joining the growing number of companies offering web-based platforms upon which developers can build voice applications (or bundle voice into web applications) using simple APIs. But it is late to the party — maybe too late.

The web-based telephony market is getting crowded, with QuickFuse joining the growing number of companies offering web-based platforms upon which developers can build voice applications (or bundle voice into web applications) using simple APIs. But it is late to the party — maybe too late.

The web-based telephony market is getting crowded, with QuickFuse joining the growing number of companies offering web-based platforms upon which developers can build voice applications (or bundle voice into web applications) using simple APIs. But it is late to the party — maybe too late.

The web-based telephony market is getting crowded, with QuickFuse joining the growing number of companies offering web-based platforms upon which developers can build voice applications (or bundle voice into web applications) using simple APIs. But it is late to the party — maybe too late.

The only thing keeping pace with the proliferation of angel investors is the size of their funding rounds. Keith Rabois, an active investor in companies like YouTube and Yelp, shared his thoughts with us on the growing number of angels.

An analyst report says that IPS LCD screen shortages (because of low yield) will impact the production volumes for iPhone 4, which in turn could upset the Apple’s mobile juggernaut. The big question is: Does Apple have a “too much of a good thing” problem?

VMware is among those companies duking it out with incumbents such as Microsoft and Oracle thanks to cloud computing. VMware CEO Paul Maritz will join me onstage at our upcoming Structure conference to talk about, among other things, his vision for the future of cloud computing.

StumbleUpon, the early web discovery engine, has reached a new milestone: 10 million Stumblers, all of whom have helped create a great little company building a structured database for the relevant web, something that Facebook is now trying to do with its Like button.

StumbleUpon, the early web discovery engine, has reached a new milestone: 10 million Stumblers, all of whom have helped create a great little company building a structured database for the relevant web, something that Facebook is now trying to do with its Like button.

StumbleUpon, the early web discovery engine, has reached a new milestone: 10 million Stumblers, all of whom have helped create a great little company building a structured database for the relevant web, something that Facebook is now trying to do with its Like button.

Silverlake Partners, a Silicon Valley-based private equity and buyout firm, says it’s bought Intel’s data center in Santa Clara, Calif., and made it part of Vantage Data Centers, a new company headed by Jim Trout, a veteran of both the telecom and data center business.

From the minute I heard that Time Warner bought Bebo for $850 million, I thought it was a bad idea which would hurt the company long term. At the very least, that money could now have been used to build a whole new AOL.

Skype, which is available on Apple’s iPhone and Nokia’s Symbian devices, today launched support for three Sony Ericsson phones that are based on the Symbian OS. Skype will be available on Satio, Vivaz and Vivaz Pro. Skype now supports “the latest version of the Symbian platform.”

Eucalyptus Systems has launch which support for Windows virtual machines (VMs), that allows Eucalyptus users to run Windows images and applications. Eucalyptus now supports all major hypervisors. The new software allows easy switching from Amazon’s EC2 to VMware-based cloud offerings.

Gogobot, a company started by Travis Katz, formerly Managing Director (International) at MySpace and Ori Zaltzman, former Chief Architect of Yahoo’s BOSS search offering said that it has raised $4 million in funding from Battery Ventures. The company will launch its service in a few months.

Twilio, a San Francisco-based startup that offers a platform and services to marry voice to the web world is launching OpenVBX, an open source web application that is in essence a roll-your-own Google Voice. With the app you can route calls to existing phones.

Twilio, a San Francisco-based startup that offers a platform and services to marry voice to the web world is launching OpenVBX, an open source web application that is in essence a roll-your-own Google Voice. With the app you can route calls to existing phones.