Microsoft takes aim at Google with Nokia's mapping apps

IDG News Service - Microsoft wants to build a better mobile phone through its acquisition of Nokia's mobile phone business. One way it hopes to do that? By improving its maps apps to better compete against Google's.

"An effective alternative to Google," and "more than one digital map of the world" is needed, Microsoft said in a presentation on the strategic rationale for the deal, which was posted to the company's website.

Microsoft will acquire several new mapping and location services as part of its acquisition of Nokia's Devices & Services business, announced Tuesday.

Chief among them are Nokia's HERE Drive, HERE Maps and HERE Transit. All three were designed to help people travel more efficiently and reduce carbon emissions in the process.

HERE Transport was geared toward public transportation, offering public transportation route planning in hundreds of cities around the world, according to the Nokia Apps & Services landing page.

HERE Maps and HERE Drive, meanwhile, were designed to help people in cars "plot the most optimal route to their destination," Nokia said.

The three mapping apps were made available for all Windows 8 smartphones in July.

Microsoft's Bing search engine already offers mapping services such as public transportation routes. And last year, Bing grew the number of indoor places indexed by its Venue Map product in the U.S. and internationally, through a partnership with Nokia.

Through the Nokia acquisition announced Tuesday, Microsoft "gets [the] flexibility to integrate HERE with other experiences," the company said. Microsoft declined to comment on how exactly Nokia's mapping services might be integrated into other Microsoft products, or which products.

The acquisition gives Microsoft rights equivalent to ownership for the HERE mapping apps, Microsoft said on its website, noting that Nokia will continue to improve the apps for other platforms.

"Geospatial" imagery and location services, and mapping, are "essential to integrate for mobile," Microsoft said.

Google is a dominant player in mapping and location services. It is continually improving its Maps app too -- most recently through adding real-time traffic reports. Those features and others came following the company's acquisition of the crowdsourced mapping app developer Waze.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission launched a probe in June into possible antitrust issues related to the Waze acquisition.

Google could not be immediately reached to comment on Microsoft's mapping plans.

Apple is also looking to become a stronger competitor in mapping services. The company reportedly acquired app developer Embark late last month. Embark makes a mobile mapping app to help people navigate mass transit systems, similar to how Nokia's HERE products work.

Zach Miners covers social networking, search and general technology news for IDG News Service. Follow Zach on Twitter at @zachminers. Zach's e-mail address is zach_miners@idg.com

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2012 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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Microsoft takes aim at Google with Nokia's mapping products

Microsoft wants to build a better mobile phone through its acquisition of Nokia’s mobile phone business. One way it hopes to do that? By improving its maps applications to better compete against Google’s.

“An effective alternative to Google,” and “more than one digital map of the world” is needed, Microsoft said in a presentation on the strategic rationale for the deal, which was posted to the company’s website.

Microsoft will acquire several new mapping and location services as part of its acquisition of Nokia’s Devices & Services business, announced Monday.

Chief among them are Nokia’s HERE Drive, HERE Maps (shown above) and HERE Transit. All three were designed to help people travel more efficiently and reduce carbon emissions in the process.

HERE Transport was geared toward public transportation, offering public transportation route planning in hundreds of cities around the world, according to the Nokia Apps & Services landing page.

HERE Maps and HERE Drive, meanwhile, were designed to help people in cars “plot the most optimal route to their destination,” Nokia said.

The three mapping apps were made available for all Windows 8 smartphones in July.

Microsoft’s Bing search engine already offers mapping services such as public transportation routes. And last year, Bing grew the number of indoor places indexed by its Venue Map product in the U.S. and internationally, through a partnership with Nokia.

Through the Nokia acquisition announced Monday, Microsoft “gets [the] flexibility to integrate HERE with other experiences,” the company said. Microsoft declined to comment on how exactly Nokia’s mapping services might be integrated into other Microsoft products, or which products.

The acquisition gives Microsoft rights equivalent to ownership for the HERE mapping apps, Microsoft said on its website, noting that Nokia will continue to improve the apps for other platforms.

“Geospatial” imagery and location services, and mapping, are “essential to integrate for mobile,” Microsoft said.

Google is a dominant player in mapping and location services. It is continually improving its Maps app too—most recently through adding real-time traffic reports. Those features and others came following the company’s acquisition of the crowdsourced mapping app developer Waze.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission launched a probe in June into possible antitrust issues related to the Waze acquisition.

Google could not be immediately reached to comment on Microsoft’s mapping plans.

Apple is also looking to become a stronger competitor in mapping services. The company reportedly acquired app developer Embark late last month. Embark makes a mobile mapping app to help people navigate mass transit systems, similar to how Nokia’s HERE products work.

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Gentlemen, start your solid-state engines: Intel takes overclocking to SSDs

If cash is tight, upgrading to a solid-state drive is easily one of the biggest PC bangs you can get for your bottom dollar. Seriously, these puppies are face-melting fast, and the cheapest SSD you can buy blows the spinning platters off the fastest traditional hard drives you can buy.

But what if that's still not fast enough? What if you've got a need—a need for truly blistering storage speed?

Intel just might have you covered, oh impatient one. At the company's annual Intel Developer Forum this September, Intel plans to demonstrate a way to overclock its self-branded SSDs, as part of a larger overclocking session that mostly looks devoted to Haswell and upcoming Ivy Bridge-E Extreme Edition processors.

While overclocking processors, graphics cards, and even RAM is all relatively commonplace, overclocking SSDs is virtually unheard of—but that doesn't mean it isn't theoretically possible. Solid-state drives rely on NAND flash memory, and like those other frequently tweaked PC components, NAND is regulated by clock speeds and other technical fineries, all of which are regulated by the firmware in your drive's SSD controller.

When the upcoming SATA Express spec rolls out with 2GBps speeds, though, overclocking SSDs should be a much more practical performance option for PC enthusiasts.

Myce.com claims to have found hints about SSD overclocking abilities while digging around in preliminary code for Intel's XTreme Tuning Utility, a tool used to overclock and monitor your system hardware. Myce's sleuthing revealed options to control both the clock speed and the NAND bus speed of SSDs. The site also discovered "limited," "typical," and "unrestrained" power-mode options.

The scarcity of solid-state overclocking tools isn't necessarily a bad thing, though. Any time you overclock a component, you run the risk of stability issues—and an unstable storage drive is no storage drive at all. You also have to wonder how overclocking will affect the longevity of solid-state drives, especially as the industry adopts SSDs using NAND flash with triple-level cell technology, which (theoretically) sport shorter life spans than SSDs that use one or two cells.

In other words, drive reliability could be a big concern when overclocking SSDs.

Assuming the overclocking abilities come via the Xtreme Tuning Utility, Intel presumably won't let you push hard enough to fry your drive. Even still, there's probably no real reason to overclock SSDs—yet.

X-bit Labs, which first noticed the IDF session details, points out that the storage speed bottleneck in enthusiast PCs isn't so much the speed of the SSD itself as much as the 0.6 gigabyte per second (GBps) cap on the SATA 3.0 interface. Overclocking an SSD that already saturates the SATA interface is pretty much pointless.

When the upcoming SATA Express spec rolls out with 2GBps speeds, though, overclocking SSDs should be a much more practical performance option for PC enthusiasts with a need for ludicrous speed. Stay tuned for all the details out of IDF, which will be held September 10 - 12 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco.

Brad Chacos spends the days jamming to Spotify, digging through desktop PCs and covering everything from BYOD tablets to DIY tesla coils.
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Toshiba takes step toward 3D flash memory chips

Toshiba kicked off a project Friday that is the first step toward a new type of memory chip that could provide vastly greater capacity at a lower cost for digital gadgets such as cameras, smartphones and tablets.

The company held a groundbreaking ceremony to begin expansion of its number-five chip fabrication building (fab 5) in Yokkaichi, a state-of-the-art chip production facility in central Japan operated by Toshiba and SanDisk under a joint venture.

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The construction, which is scheduled to last a year, will see the production line expanded to accommodate additional chip fabrication capacity for NAND flash memory, including more advanced conventional manufacturing processes and early generation 3D production techniques.

3D chips are tipped to be the next big thing in the memory market and provide greater data storage capacity by stacking memory cells in layers. Using this method, greatly higher storage capacity can be realized while keeping the chips small enough to fit inside flash memory cards and the cramped insides of modern gadgets.

The project also indicates Toshiba's intention to remain a leader in the competitive flash memory market and also the company's belief that the market will continue to expand.

"After giving careful consideration to the balance of product supply and demand, and noting a recovery driven by growing demand for smartphones, tablets, SSD for enterprise servers, Toshiba now anticipates further medium- to long-term market expansion," the company said in a statement.

Martyn Williams covers mobile telecoms, Silicon Valley and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Martyn on Twitter at @martyn_williams. Martyn's e-mail address is martyn_williams@idg.com

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Toshiba takes step toward 3D flash memory chips

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Toshiba takes step toward 3D flash memory chips

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SAP takes fight to Salesforce.com, Oracle with social intelligence app

Many companies have begun using specialized software to analyze what people are saying about their products and services on social media, and now SAP says it can help them match up individuals’ social profiles with customer history data from CRM (customer relationship management) systems.

Dubbed Social Contact Intelligence, the application can help sales and marketing staff find better leads for sales as well as gain more knowledge about their actual customers’ likes and dislikes, according to SAP.

Social Contact Intelligence is built on top of and dependent on HANA, SAP’s in-memory database platform. It’s part of a broader suite, Customer Engagement Intelligence, that is now in “ramp-up,” SAP’s term for an initial release with a small set of customers. Currently it’s only offered on-premises, but SAP is considering cloud-based deployments for the future, according to a spokeswoman.

Core CRM software is “such a commodity it’s almost relegated to a system of record,” said Jamie Anderson, vice president of customer solution marketing. Thanks to the rise of social media and resulting changes to the way customers interact with companies and make buying decisions, “we’ve realized the CRM market is evolving faster than CRM products on their own.”

SAP had already been reselling software from Netbase for social media analytics, but now the Contact Intelligence product brings internal customer data to the equation, he said.

The three other elements of SAP’s Customer Intelligence Engagement suite include Audience Discovery and Targeting, for running segmented marketing campaigns; Customer Value Intelligence, which gives recommendations on ways to cross and up-sell products to clients; and Account Intelligence, a mobile application for sales representatives.

Tuesday’s announcement comes after SAP’s unveiling in November of yet another social CRM-themed product set called 360 Customer, which ties together HANA, CRM, social analytics from Netbase and the Jam social network.

Oracle, Salesforce.com and other vendors are also moving quickly to build out social software portfolios, seeing the market as a major opportunity to sell existing customers more software when they have little interest or need to expand their core CRM system.

The competitive climate can put customers at a disadvantage, according to a recent Forrester Research report.

“Decoding and navigating the crowded social technology vendor landscape isn’t easy,” wrote analysts Nate Elliott and Zach Hofer-Shall. “Most vendors offer a unique range of social technologies, but no single vendor covers the entire value chain. Meanwhile, buzzword-packed marketing materials make it difficult to differentiate the players and find the right fit.”

The level of emphasis and investment that companies should place on social software investments depends on their size, according to another recent Forrester report.

Immature companies should start small, analysts Allison Smith and Carlton Doty wrote: “Track down a high-impact use case, find a listening platform partner who can guide you, and experiment. This is an iterative, test-and-learn kind of process.”

Companies in a medium stage of growth should not “settle for ‘good enough’” from a vendor and must avoid signing more than a one-year deal, they added. “With limited exceptions, social listening platforms are easy to replace—and if yours is holding you back, get rid of it.”

When no single best platform is targeted after soliciting bids from vendors, “many companies opt to create a Frankenstein’s monster combination of multiple platforms,” they wrote. “This approach is cumbersome and pricey, but a necessary evil unless such firms are willing to simplify some business requirements.”

Meanwhile, mature companies should “prepare to listen on a larger scale,” according to Smith and Doty. “Developing into a fully integrated social intelligence practice will give you the skills to take your listening to the next level—outside of social,” they wrote. “Your customers engage with you across channels and in unstructured, nonlinear ways. They also provide feedback in traditional channels like surveys, in the call center, and in web-based self-service functions.”

Updated at 5:30 p.m. PT to correct erroneous details on product availability.

Chris Kanaracus covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for the IDG News Service.
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China Telecom's YiChat takes aim at Tencent's WeChat

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