HP Unveils 3D Plan

Hewlett-Packard Co will unveil plans to enter the commercial 3D-printing arena in June, saying it has resolved a number of technical issues that have hindered broader adoption of the high-tech manufacturing process.

Chief Executive Meg Whitman told shareholders the company will make a “big technology announcement” that month around how it will approach a market that has excited the imagination of investors and consumers.

Critics have accused the sci-fi-like technology of being over-hyped and still too immature for widespread consumer adoption.

Industry observers have long expected HP, the largest of several printer-making companies from Canon to Xerox, to eventually get into the business. Whitman said HP’s inhouse researchers have resolved limitations involved with the quality of substrates used in the process, which affects the durability of finished products.

“We actually think we’ve solved these problems,” Whitman told an annual shareholders meeting. “The bigger market is going to be in the enterprise space,” manufacturing parts and prototypes in ways that were not possible before.

“We’re on the case,” she said without elaborating.

HP executives have estimated that worldwide sales of 3D printers and related software and services will grow to almost $11 billion by 2021 from a mere $2.2 billion in 2012.

The nascent 3D-printing market is now dominated by a number of smaller players like MakerBot, a unit of Stratasys that is concentrating on selling more affordable devices to consumers.

Contract manufacturers like Flextronics however already use the technology to help craft prototype parts or devices for corporate clients.

“HP is currently exploring the many possibilities of 3D printing and the company will play an important role in its development,” CTO and HP Labs director Martin Fink said in a February blogpost on HP’s website.

“The fact is that 3D printing is really still an immature technology, but it has a magical aura. The sci-fi movie idea that you can magically create things on command makes the idea of 3D printing really compelling for people.”

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Will GoDaddy Do An IPO?

Web hosting company The GoDaddy Group Inc is gearing up for a second attempt at an initial public offering, according to two people familiar with the matter, as the 2014 tech IPO pipeline continues to grow.

GoDaddy, the Internet domain registrar and web host known for its racy ads, would join a number of high-profile tech names expected to go public this year in the wake of Twitter Inc’s successful debut. They include “Candy Crush” developer King Digital and cloud services providers Box and Dropbox.

The company is in the process of selecting underwriters for its IPO, one of the two sources said on condition of anonymity.

GoDaddy was not immediately available for comment.

GoDaddy had filed to go public in 2006 but was told at the time that it would be required to take a 50 percent haircut — a percentage that is subtracted from the par value of assets that are being used as collateral — on its initial public offering.

The company instead decided to pull its filing, citing unfavorable market conditions.

The company, founded in 1997, was eventually acquired by a private equity consortium led by KKR & Co and Silver Lake in 2011 for $2.25 billion. Silver Lake declined to comment while KKR did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Other private equity buyers included Technology Crossover Ventures.

GoDaddy, which provides website domain names, is famous for airing bawdy commercials with scantily clad women for the past decade during the Super Bowl.

The Wall Street Journal first reported on the plans.

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Can BB Benefit From The WhatsApp Deal?

Facebook Inc’s awe-inspiring $19 billion bid for fast-growing mobile-messaging startup WhatsApp sent shares of BlackBerry Ltd surging after the closing bell as early as Wednesday, as investors were cheered by the lofty valuation for the messaging platform.

The deal sent shares in BlackBerry up as much as 9 percent in trading after the bell because it put a rough valuation metric around the smartphone maker’s own BlackBerry Messaging service.

BlackBerry Messaging, or BBM as it is more commonly known, was a pioneering mobile-messaging service, but its user base has failed to keep pace with that of WhatsApp, in part because BlackBerry had long refused to open the service to users on other platforms.

WhatsApp, with a user base of some 450 million, has grown rapidly. Its service works on Apple Inc’s iOS platform, Google Inc’s market-dominating Android operating system, along with devices powered by both the Windows and BlackBerry operating systems.

BBM remains popular, even though BlackBerry devices have waned in popularity. Late last year, the Waterloo, Ontario-based smartphone maker finally opened the messaging platform to users of iPhones and Android devices, and the service currently has over 80 million active users.

However, investors have attributed little value to the asset within the company. On Tuesday, Raymond James analyst Steven Li, in a note to clients, broke out a sum-of-parts valuation of the company and pegged the value of BBM at merely $240 million, or $3 per user.

Facebook’s valuation of WhatsApp translates into roughly $42 per user, and that could lead investors and analysts to rethink their valuation of the asset within BlackBerry.

BlackBerry has given no indication it is keen to sell the asset. While there has been some speculation that BlackBerry may seek to carve out the unit, or even sell it, the company’s new Chief Executive John Chen has so far said that BBM remains a core asset for the company.

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Twitter Makes A Deal With IBM

Twitter Inc has purchased 900 patents and inked a cross-licensing agreement with IBM, making peace with Big Blue and bulking up on its intellectual property portfolio as it takes on larger rivals Google and Facebook.

The agreement announced on Friday comes after International Business Machines Corp accused Twitter in November – on the eve of its high-profile initial public offering – of infringing three of its patents. At the time, it underscored how few patents the six-year-old social media company possessed in relation to more established rivals.

A cross-licensing agreement will help safeguard Twitter against similar claims in the future.

IBM is one of the industry’s largest research spenders and stockpilers of intellectual property, a consistent leader in U.S. patent filings and the owner of some 41,000 patents.

Twitter is following on the heels of Facebook, which itself faced similar claims before its own 2012 IPO. The world’s largest social network has since gone on a patent-buying spree, acquiring intellectual property from tech bellwethers, including Microsoft Corp and IBM.

“This acquisition of patents from IBM and licensing agreement provide us with greater intellectual property protection and give us freedom of action to innovate on behalf of all those who use our service,” Ben Lee, Twitter’s legal director, said in a joint statement with IBM on Friday.

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IBM To Become Cloud Broker

IBM is in the throes of developing software that will allow organizations to use multiple cloud storage services interchangeably, reducing dependence on any single cloud vendor and ensuring that data remains available even during service outages.

Although the software, called InterCloud Storage (ICStore), is still in development, IBM is inviting its customers to test it. Over time, the company will fold the software into its enterprise storage portfolio, where it can back up data to the cloud. The current test iteration requires an IBM Storewize storage system to operate.

ICStore was developed in response to customer inquiries, said Thomas Weigold, who leads the IBM storage systems research team in IBM’s Zurich, Switzerland, research facility, where the software was created. Customers are interested in cloud storage services but are worried about trusting data with third party providers, both in terms of security and the reliability of the service, he said.

The software provides a single interface that administrators can use to spread data across multiple cloud vendors. Administrators can specify which cloud providers to use through a point-and-click interface. Both file and block storage is supported, though not object storage. The software contains mechanisms for encrypting data so that it remains secure as it crosses the network and resides on the external storage services.

A number of software vendors offer similar cloud storage broker capabilities, all in various stages of completion, notably Red Hat’s DeltaCloud and Hewlett Packard’s Public Cloud.

ICStore is more “flexible,” than other approaches, said Alessandro Sorniotti, an IBM security and cloud system researcher who also worked on the project. “We give customers the ability to select what goes where, depending on the sensitivity and relevance of data,” he said. Customers can store one copy of their data on one provider and a backup copy on another provider.

ICStore supports a number of cloud storage providers, including IBM’s SoftLayer, Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service), Rackspace, Microsoft Windows Azure and private instances of the OpenStack Swift storage service. More storage providers will be added as the software goes into production mode.

“Say, you are using SoftLayer and Amazon, and if Amazon suffers an outage, then the backup cloud provider kicks in and allows you to retrieve data,” from SoftLayer, Sorniotti said.

ICStore will also allow multiple copies of the software to work together within an enterprise, using a set of IBM patent-pending algorithms developed for data sharing. This ensures that the organization will not run into any upper limits on how much data can be stored.

IBM has about 1,400 patents that relate to cloud computing, according to the company.

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Is The US & UK Lacking In Broadband?

The US and UK are stragglers when it comes to consumer broadband download speeds and appear far down in table rankings.

This puts the countries, swaggering authoritarian surveillance monsters that they are, rather low down on the satisfaction scale.

The ranking produced by Ookla is based on results from Speedtest servers, and is called the Net Index.

“Based on millions of recent test results from Speedtest.net, this index compares and ranks consumer download speeds around the globe,” is the explanation.

“The value is the rolling mean throughput in Mbps over the past 30 days where the mean distance between the client and the server is less than 300 miles.”

Hong Kong takes pole position and it is credited as having download speeds in the area of 71.03 Mbps. There is a big drop of around 20 Mbps down to Singapore in second place with 52.85 Mbps and third is Romania, where speeds are 50.82 Mbps.

You have to look a long way down the list before arriving at the UK, which is in 25th place. Here, or there depending on where you live, consumers get a rather meagre sounding 23.55 Mbps.

The United States weighs in at 31st place and has download speeds of 20.77 Mbps. This puts it below the UK, Germany, Estonia, Hungary, Greece and 25 others.

Closer to home the European Commission has published its report on Broadband Coverage in Europe (2012) and reveals progress on broadband coverage targets. It found that while broadband has improved, it could be faster.

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Banks Join Instant Chat

Goldman Sachs Group Inc, JPMorgan Chase & Co and six other financial institutions have agreed to join a new instant messaging network from Markit and Thomson Reuters Corp to connect disparate messaging systems.

The network, called Markit Collaboration Services, launched on Monday and allows members to chat with one another regardless of the proprietary messaging technology that each firm uses.

This open platform differs Bloomberg LP’s messaging system, which is a closed network only for users of Bloomberg terminals.

Bloomberg messaging is the most popular form of chat on Wall Street, and often cited as one of the reasons banks are willing to pay around $20,000 a year for a subscription to a Bloomberg terminal.

Markit and Thomson Reuters said they hoped their open messaging network will attract banks that want to chat with their clients or other financial institutions but cannot currently do so because they are on different messaging systems.

The other banks that have joined the new network are Deutsche Bank, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays, Citigroup, Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley, according to a statement from Markit.

The banks collectively employ more than 1 million people worldwide, though it was not immediately clear how many individuals will use the new Markit service.

David Craig, president of Thomson Reuters’ Financial & Risk division, said one of the challenges facing banks is that their messaging systems do not always talk to one another. “That creates costs and complexity,” he said.

Markit and Thomson Reuters said the messages on the new network are encrypted, and the system does not store them.

Representatives from Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley were not immediately available to comment on the new messaging system. Representatives from Barclays, Citi, Credit Suisse and JPMorgan also declined to comment.

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Does Intel Need Help?

As time runs out for Intel to bring its Internet-based TV service by the end of the year, the outfit has approached Samsung and Amazon to ask them to lend a hand. Intel has asked about providing funding and distribution for the service. It looks like the set-top box project could be scrapped if a strategic partner isn’t found soon.

OnCue was supposed to allow users to watch live TV, on demand, and other offerings. Intel said it would provide the hardware and services directly to consumers and that the box would come with a camera that can detect who is in front of the TV. More than 300 engineers are working on the project under Erik Huggers, the head of Intel Media. A version of the service running on Intel hardware is testing with 3,000 Intel employees. Goodness knows what content they are running. Intel is having difficulty getting content deals.

Intel has yet to announce any TV programming partners, and Time Warner Cable and other cable TV providers have been pressuring channel owners to shun pacts with Intel and other Internet-based TV providers. Samsung, which ships millions of smart TVs, could distribute the service as a bundle, while Amazon could provide access to its growing library of movies and TV shows.

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HP To Support The iPad

Is your iPad out of warranty? Hewlett-Packard to the rescue.

HP updated its SmartFriend support service and will now troubleshoot problems with Windows, Android, Chrome OS, OS X and iOS products, according to a fact sheet describing the service.

“HP is expanding its HP SmartFriend service to provide 1:1 expert support for any brand of PC or tablet,” the company said. The plan previously supported PCs from HP and other vendors, as well as Macs.

Users can avail of the service to address general hardware, software and malware issues. HP says its agents can “remove viruses, improve PC performance, solve software errors, and connect devices to a wireless network with enhanced security.” The support is provided by phone or over the Internet, so don’t expect a technician to trot in and fix your iPad in person. But HP notes it can save you from driving to a store.

Unlike Best Buy’s Geek Squad service, HP’s service does not include hardware repairs. It can be tricky to change the battery or storage in tablets, so for iPads, the Genius Bars at Apple Stores may still be the best option for some repairs.

HP didn’t immediately comment on exactly what support it will provide for the iPad. HP printers offer wireless printing from iPads and iPhones. HP sells primarily Windows PCs and Android tablets, though on last Thursday it announced the Pavilion 14 laptop with Google’s Chrome OS.

While SmartFriend includes support for iOS devices, the service seems focused mainly on Windows products. Its technicians include “Microsoft Application Trainers, Microsoft Product Specialists, A+/MCP/MCSE Certified Professionals, Network Administrators and HTML Developers,” according to the fact sheet.

The service starts at US$9.99 per month and users can sign up for a pre-paid, monthly or yearly support plan. A “Complete Plan” supports two devices, while a “Family Plan” supports up to four devices.

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FCC To Auction Spectrum

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission will sell 10 megahertz of spectrum in the 1900MHz band for commercial mobile services in an auction set to start on Jan. 14, the agency announced.

The agency on last  Friday set a minimum price for licenses in the so-called H block of $1.56 billion, with some of the money funding the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet), a government board building a nationwide broadband network for public safety agencies.

The auction will help mobile providers address a predicted spectrum shortage, said Mignon Clyburn, the FCC’s acting chairwoman. The auction “will help close the spectrum gap as well as contributing to the goal of making mobile broadband available to our nation’s first responders,” she said in a statement.

Congress, in the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012, required the FCC to license 65 megahertz of spectrum, including the 10 megahertz in the H block, by February 2015.

The FCC has considered auctioning the 1915-1920MHz and 1995-2000MHz spectrum in the past, but concerns about interference with a nearby PCS block kept the commission from moving forward. An FCC order adopted in June created technical rules to keep the H block from interfering with PCS signals.

Commissioner Ajit Pai praised Clyburn for scheduling the auction. The spectrum “will help deliver bandwidth-intensive mobile services and applications” over mobile networks, he said in a statement.

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