Computers

It’s been over three years since I first got to know Yoni Bloch, a musician and something of a celebrity in Israel, and got acquainted with his interactive video technology startup Interlude. Interlude’s technology basically enables video creators and publishers to let viewers experience a multi-branch tree-structured video. Think of it as ‘choose your own adventure’ technology for online videos, where users can – to a degree, at least – determine what happens next in music videos, commercials, branded webisodes and other sorts of clips. In early 2011, Interlude was funded by Sequoia Capital and a number of angel investors. Yesterday, Israeli business daily Calcalist reported that the startup had secured another round of funding, to the tune of $15 million. The publication offered a detailed breakdown of which investor put in how much for the round (you can find it in English here), but we’ve been in touch with Bloch following the reports and can confirm that not all of the details are accurate. Bloch said that Interlude had indeed closed another round of funding, but the amount raised was in fact $16 million. The investors were Intel Capital, Sequoia Capital, the Eric Schmidt-backed Innovation Endeavors fund and Marker Capital. On a sidenote, Intel banked on Interlude’s technology for the commercials used in its international Ultrabook campaign last year. The musician / entrepreneur declined to comment on the specific breakdown for the financing round, but said the details as reported by Calcalist were not entirely correct. Interlude has now raised just south of $20 million in total. Image credit: Thinkstock

SK Telecom will soon start offering mobile and online services in Indonesia in a joint venture worth $18 million, as it seeks to make inroads into the Southeast Asian nation’s growing population of connected users, according to Global Post, which cited a Yonhap news agency report on Tuesday. SK Planet, a unit of South Korea’s telecommunications company SK Telecom, has agreed to set up a joint venture with Indonesian mobile operator XL Axiata to offer mobile and online services, the report cited industry sources as saying. The two firms will each invest $9.15 million in the venture. It isn’t yet clear what services the joint venture will offer, but sources in the report said it would likely push out navigation, as well as online shopping and auction services. This wouldn’t be SK Planet’s first venture into Indonesia. The South Korean firm had in 2011 set up a joint venture in Indonesia called MelOn Indonesia to provide music and video streaming services. SK Telecom has been pushing expansion plans to move out of the saturated domestic market in South Korea, and Indonesia, with a population of 240 million out of which more people are becoming increasingly tech-savvy, has been one of its targets. Image credit: Choi Jae-Ku for AFP/Getty Images

Xigmatek is releasing a new low-profile CPU cooler with two fans.

Thanks to PC sales slowdown coupled with increase in smartphone and tablet sales, AMD slipped to fourth in MPU sales for first time since 1990s. View the full article HERE.

Orange Business Services has expanded its Flexible Computing infrastructure-as-a-service product to North America and Asia, targeting multinationals with a presence across those continents and Europe and South America, where the platform is already available. As can be expected with that sort of customer base, France Telecom’s business services arm is highlighting global business continuity support as the main reason for choosing its IaaS over the likes of Amazon or Rackspace. As the company’s international cloud chief, Chris McKay, told me, configurability is also a selling point. “There are no small, medium or large instances. You pay for what you use, but you don’t have to pay for steps in instances,” McKay said. Regarding competition from other telcos, particularly others from Europe such as BT and Deutsche Telekom, he stressed the “industrialized” nature of Orange’s offering – “we provide a catalog for the customer which has granularity of managed services which the customer can choose, from the OS to middleware to applications” – and the fact that Orange manages its own cloud data centers around the world rather than turning to outsourcing in certain locations. Orange already has around 500 customers for Flexible Computing, which allows both self-managed and fully managed usage. The platform is based on in-house technology, but McKay said Orange was also looking at “other avenues”. “Right now we’re carrying out studies,” he said. “[We will try] possibly OpenStack and a few others for an internal cloud solution at France Telecom in the next four months, where we’re going to evaluate what the right direction is for the future.” According to an Orange Business Services statement on the North American and Asian expansion, the company is on track to rake in €500 million ($644 million) in cloud revenues in 2015. It managed €113 million in 2012, which was a third up on the year before. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.Cloud computing infrastructure: 2012 and beyondInfrastructure Q1: Cloud and big data woo enterprisesForecasting the future cloud computing market

The European Union may be trying to protect its telecom equipment industry with its recent threat to investigate China over networking equipment imports. But the move could end up hurting the chances of Western vendors intent on supplying technology to China's upcoming 4G services launch, according to analysts.Last week, the EU set off fears of a trade war with China after it said it could resort to probing the nation's sales of mobile networking gear for anti-competitive practices. In response, China has warned the EU against taking "protectionist" measures that would damage economic relations between the two governments."If the EU insists on starting the investigation, China will follow WTO [World Trade Organization] rules and Chinese law to take resolute measures to protect its rights and interests," said China's Ministry of Commerce spokesman Shen Danyang last Thursday. "The EU, which started the friction, will have to take full responsibility for the resulting consequences."The EU has yet to launch its investigation, and wants to first negotiate with China over a possible resolution. But the trade tensions risk affecting the tendering process to build China's 4G networks, said Matt Walker, an analyst with research firm Ovum.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Nvidia kommer inom kort lansera nya grafikkortsmodeller i sin GTX 700-serie. Förutom seriens toppmodell GTX 780 väntas även GTX 770 debutera inom kort, ett grafikkort byggt på liknande komponenter som GTX 680. De första riktiga testerna antyder att GTX 770 åtminstone ger drygt 10 procent högre prestanda.

Most of today's 2.5" notebook hard drives top out at an even terabyte. You can find higher-capacity offerings, but those conform to 12.5- and 15-mm versions of the 2.5" form ...Read more...

Opera’s WebKit-powered browser for Android has completed its beta period and is out in full today, the company has announced, with a few additional tweaks. The much-anticipated beta launch came in March, some two months ago. Now, in addition to the existing features – which include a new user interface and Discover — users of the browser can now choose to place their navigation bar at the top or bottom of the screen. Text wrap and full screen modes have also been added. The browser was one of the highlights of Mobile World Congress in February, where it was unveiled off the back of the Norwegian firm’s decision to ditch its Presto engine in favor of the open source WebKit. That explains the speed gains that users of the new browser will enjoy on their device. The browser runs native Web apps, but the headline feature is Discover, which recommends content for users — encouraging a “lean-back surfing experience”, as CEO Lars Boilesen puts it — based on a range of factors that include previous clicks, Web page history and their location. On the downside, Discover content is curated by Opera itself and is not automated. Off-Road is another notable addition that uses Opera’s network optimization expertise to lower the amount of traffic used per session, and get the most out of slow and unreliable connections. Other features — while regular on rival browsers — that mark a change for Opera include private browsing and a unified URL-search bar. If you still don’t have it yet, you can find the browser on the Google Play Store or m.opera.com. From Mobile World Congress: Opera CEO Lars Boilesen talks acquisition rumors, plans and Firefox OS [Video]

When the Metro 2033 was released in 2010 it contributed to raise the PC graphics bar making good use of the latest DirectX 11 rendering technologies. Metro: Last Light follows its predecessor roots by using a heavily customized and improved version of the 4A Engine.