Category: Tech news

Photo by Alex Washburn/Wired

After being unceremoniously abandoned by key hardware partner Logitech last fall, the Google TV platform seems to have found a worthy replacement in Vizio.

The Co-Star is Vizio’s first venture into the set-top box space. It offers the full Google-curated complement of streaming options, plus live TV integration, the ability to install apps from Google Play, and compatibility with Bluetooth accessories and other peripherals. The little $100 box packs enough might to handle 1080p HD streams and files, but content options in Google TV are lacking, and the Co-Star can’t compete with more full-grown streaming set-ups like those from Apple and Roku. If you’re sold on Google TV, however, Vizio’s device is half the price of the other Google box on the market, the $200 Sony NSZ-GS7, and it’s a great cost-saving alternative.

The 4.2-inch square black case looks like a cross between a hockey puck and a coaster. On the back are HDMI ports (in and out), Ethernet, and a USB port. Inside are radios for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity.

Photo by Alex Washburn/Wired

Initial set-up took me around half an hour. After connecting everything, pairing the remote, and optimizing its display area for your television, you can then integrate the Co-Star with the rest of your living room: a cable or satellite box, a DVD or Blu-ray player, another internet device, and your sound system. There’s no dedicated audio output, so unless your audio system has a way to accept HDMI input, you’re stuck using your TV’s speakers, or otherwise relying on your TV’s optical-out (if you have one) to feed the audio signal to your speakers.

Vizio’s skinned Google TV interface takes a completely different approach than competitors like Boxee, Roku, or Apple. Rather than filling up the entire screen with large app icons (or even just the bottom portion of the screen, as in the standard Google TV interface), the Co-Star’s main app menu is a quarter-screen-sized pane that slides out from the left-hand side of the TV. This menu is pre-stocked with over a dozen apps and services, and has a customizable “Favorite Apps” section at the top. You can slide it out onto the screen at any time with the click of a button, without needing to exit the current app first.

Speaking of buttons, the Co-Star remote has them in spades. There’s a traditional remote control on one side (plus a touch-based trackpad), and a QWERTY keyboard on the other. A directional navigation pad is repeated on both sides, and gaming buttons adorn the rear. At first, it feels like button overload. But after using it for a while, I found it to be a welcome change over less useful, super-minimalist remotes like the Apple TV’s. Unfortunately, because of the length of the remote, the QWERTY keyboard on the back can be an uncomfortable stretch for your thumbs. But I’d still rather have it than not.

Lookit that QWERTY, Ma. Photo by Alex Washburn/Wired

Another win: The Co-Star has a built-in web browser. And it being an Android device, that browser is naturally Chrome. Derping around the web on a TV is still plenty awkward, but the touch-sensitive trackpad on the remote control makes navigating a passable experience.

The quality of streaming content largely depends on the source, of course. Standard-quality YouTube videos look pretty horrid blown out on a big screen, but the Co-Star has the chops to serve up smooth, artifact-free 1080p content, and even 3-D content, when available.

Availability, however, is still a major sticking point. There are limited streaming options in the Google Play store right now. There’s Netflix, but no Hulu. Amazon Instant video works, but it just loads the website in the browser, and too many of the streaming options simply go to the web versions. There are no options to watch videos from sources like ABC, CBS, or Comedy Central, as those networks block streaming access through the Google TV’s browser.

For those networks, you’re asked to rely on your existing television source, be it basic cable or a DVR. The Co-Star comes with the promise of seamlessly integrating with your regular TV service, but that integration is still so-so at best. On the Co-Star, you have the option to browse and search the listings for both live and streaming content. But if you want to record live programming, for example, you will get thrown out of the Co-Star’s interface and into your cable or satellite box’s UI. (Dish subscribers are exempt from this jarring transition.)

One thing that helps fill this gaping hole is the ability to play local content. Vizio’s box supports H.264, MP4 and MKV formats, and it plays them in full 1080p without a hitch.

The Co-Star also has OnLive gaming built-in, so you can play titles like Batman: Arkham City or Civilization V on-demand over your internet connection. Playback over Wi-Fi tended to be slow and stuttery, and without an OnLive wireless gaming controller, gameplay was difficult and unintuitive. So, hook up the Ethernet cable and attach a controller if you’re going to go there.

Vizio’s streamer is a great, lower-cost (by half!) alternative to Sony’s Google TV box. But it doesn’t have the AirPlay mirroring and cross-device streaming capability of the similarly priced Apple TV, nor does it have the wealth of content found on the $80 Roku 2 XD.

Those competing devices are clearly better for full-on cord-cutters. But for Android diehards, the Google TV-curious, and those looking to supplement (rather than replace) their live TV experience, the Co-Star is a satisfying, low-cost option.

WIRED Handles 1080p streams, and several video formats for local files. Button-filled remote control is like a Swiss Army knife of input. Straightforward setup. Chrome browser surprisingly doesn’t want to make you gouge your eyes out in frustration.

TIRED Limited streaming options — updates are expected, but for now, no Hulu. And no ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, or Comedy Central through the browser. Vizio’s UI doesn’t take advantage of the big screen, and app names are awkwardly truncated in the main menu. No dedicated audio outputs, so you’re limited to sound systems that can accept HDMI.

Photo by Alex Washburn/Wired

Update, Oct 2: This review was updated to clarify the availability of streaming content options, and to provide further detail about available audio-out options.

Razer’s new edition of its gaming laptop, the Blade. Photo by Alex Washburn/Wired

The notion of “gaming laptops” has been a quixotic — and expensive — one for at least a decade. But computer manufacturers remain convinced that mobile PC gaming is a viable market, as the extreme price tags gaming PCs command are a proven path to higher sales margins.

Razer, a company known primarily for making gaming-specific mice and keyboards, released its first Blade laptop — in fact, its first computer — in early 2012. The conceit: Pack massive graphics capabilities into a slim, Mac-like chassis, and do something completely unexpected and innovative by relocating the touchpad from the palmrest to the right side of the machine, where a numeric keypad would normally go.

The original Blade received mixed reviews, and the company wasted no time in hustling out an update. The original model is actually still being sold (originally $2,800, it’s now $2,300), but Razer is clearly hoping you will jump for this update, which confusingly has the same name as the original model, for “just” $2,500.

The goal with this hasty update is two-fold: Update performance for the third- generation Intel Core era, and answer the criticism of the first-generation Blade with some tweaks to the machine’s finer points.

Let’s start with the upgrades. Razer has given both the CPU and graphics subsystems quite a jolt. The processor has moved from a dual-core i7 to a quad-core model, the 2.2GHz Core i7-3632QM (which was officially unveiled only this past weekend). Graphics move up to Nvidia’s GTX 660M card, about as high-end as it gets on a mobile platform. The machine retains its 8GB of RAM, but the SSD has been jettisoned for a larger hybrid drive with 500GB of hard drive space, backed up with 64GB of solid-state storage.

Performance is clearly tuned for gaming, and while general benchmarks are short of record-breaking, gaming scores were at the top of our charts across the board. (For what it’s worth, Razer says its tests show 50 to 100 percent better framerates versus the original Blade on most titles.) I didn’t find any game that wasn’t playable on higher-end settings — and remember, this is all packed into a machine that weighs 6.7 pounds and measures 27mm thick (with the feet).

Other changes to the Blade design are less noticeable. In fact, putting the original and revamped Blade side by side, you’d be hard-pressed to pick out which was which. The 17.3-inch screen is big (1920 x 1080 pixels) and bright, the keyboard backlit (a touch brighter than before, but still Kryptonite green), and the touchpad still mounted atop the secondary “Switchblade” LCD, topped with 10 customizable buttons.

The Switchblade: the trackpad is actually a tiny LCD touchscreen. Photo by Alex Washburn/Wired

If you’re unfamiliar with the Switchblade, it will take some explaining. Here goes. Underneath the 4-inch touchpad is a tiny LCD. You can put a pretty picture here, or actually use it as a secondary display. The iconic use case as presented by Razer: You’re in-game on the primary LCD but are stuck on a level, so you can use the secondary display to find a walkthrough on YouTube without quitting the game. How do you get to YouTube? By tapping one of the programmable buttons atop the mini-display. These buttons also have programmable mini LCDs behind them, so the YouTube button actually looks like a YouTube icon. For certain games (a total of 20 are now supported), these turn into a set of bonus buttons for in-game commands, while the Switchblade LCD turns into a HUD, status updater, or mini-map.

All of this is quite exhausting (and still far more tedious to customize with the Synapse programming software than it should be), but it’s the kind of thing die-hard gamers dream about. After a bit of trial and error, you’ll figure it out, too.

Photo by Alex Washburn/Wired

So what’s new in the Blade? All USB ports are 3.0 (of which there are three), the hinge has been recalibrated to allow for one-handed opening, the feet have been lengthened for stability, and the speakers have been upgraded. Additional ports include only an Ethernet jack and an HDMI output.

What’s missing? There’s still no easy way to turn the wireless radio on or off, the up/down arrow keys are hopelessly tiny, and I experienced some bizarre bugs, like Synapse crashing on boot and the battery gauge pegging itself at zero during the first day of testing. The touchpad buttons are still way too small, and the keyboard keys remain bizarrely contoured outward like little bubbles, not in, so touch typing remains difficult and slippery.

While the Blade remains a quirky and wholly unique computing — and gaming — computer, I’m hard-pressed to name a more enjoyable gaming laptop. Using the touchpad instead of a mouse for WASD games isn’t easy, but it’s doable in a pinch — and external mice are still cheap. And hey, Razer would probably love to sell you one of those, too.

WIRED Terrific gaming performance. Nearly three hours of battery life seems like plenty for a system like this. Can’t complain about the portability.

TIRED Still suffering from Windows/driver growing pains. Touchpad location takes lots of mental retraining; you’ll be stupidly stabbing at the palm rest for days. No optical drive. No SD reader.

The Kindle Paperwhite. Photo by Alex Washburn/Wired

The new Kindle Paperwhite isn’t the perfect character. Just like the literary creations that live and die on its screen, it has flaws. It’s wise, though it still suffers from memories of its past. But in the great e-reader saga, it’s clearly the protagonist, and one worth rooting for.

The Paperwhite’s screen is brilliant in the literal sense of the word, as it glows. The new Kindle isn’t the first e-reader with a screen that lights up: Barnes & Noble beat Amazon to the punch by five months with its Nook Simple Touch with Glowlight. But the light-up screen on the new Kindle surpasses the one on the Nook because it solves most (but not all) of the light uniformity issues evident on the earlier device.

Granted, illuminating an e-ink screen is difficult. The most common solution is to use a nano-printed “light guide” — the LEDs sit at the bottom of the device, and a thin plastic screen with tiny patterns etched into it carries the light toward the middle and top of the display. The scores gradually disperse the beams, allowing more light to permeate to the top as the nano guides get further form the light source. This creates an even distribution of soft light, and the whole screen gently glows. It’s much less fatiguing than a back-lit screen (like a tablet) and is more comfortable during late-night reading sessions.

But, like the Nook, the light source creates a problem: blossoms of LED light appear at the bottom of the screen. It’s fainter than the light-source bleed found on the Nook, but it’s still there. It’s only annoying at the bottom of the screen, but it breaks up the flow of an otherwise flawless screen.

Fortunately, the attention Amazon has paid to the rest of the screen makes up for these lighting hiccups. Text on the Kindle Paperwhite is darker and crisper than what I’ve seen on previous-generation Kindles. Also, the background color of the screen is lighter than previous Kindles. It’s less “cardboard” and more “coffee with too much milk.”

Amazon says the Paperwhite has 25 percent more contrast. Without busting out the contrast spectrometer to test Amazon’s claim, I’m going to go with what I can see, and when compared to my last-gen Kindle, it’s clear Amazon has indeed increased the contrast of the screen.

The new Kindle is shown here in an accessory case. Photo by Alex Washburn/Wired

But this isn’t just a screen you look at; it’s one you touch. Amazon has added a finish to the capacitive screen that feels like the paper stock used in high-end hardcover books. It’s a small detail, and if it were absent, it wouldn’t detract from the e-reader. But, it’s a nice touch (cough) that gives the screen a tactile feel not found on other e-readers.

One thing I would’ve liked to have seen on the Paperwhite: physical page-turn buttons. Touchscreens are great and all, but when you end up losing your place in a book, all the touchy-swipey technology in the world can’t sway my belief that sometimes, a physical button is better.

Even without buttons, the physical execution of the Paperwhite puts it ahead of the competition. It’s light, eminently pocketable, and presents the best electronic reading experience. So the fact that Amazon raised the bar with updates to the Kindle’s software feature set is just gravy on the cake.

Home automation in its current state can be costly and, more importantly, unintuitive. But platforms like iOS and Android have made the idea of automating one’s home easier, more accessible and significantly cheaper.

Today at DEMO, Austin-based Ube (“yoo-bee”) is showing off its “Internet of things” wares, including an app that can virtually control any IP-based smart device in your home. So far, the company has raised a $300,000 seed round to complete its first round of prototype hardware and first rev of the aforementioned mobile app (iOS, Android).

Routed through your home network or through Ube’s Cloud when remote, users will be able to control their Smart TV and set-top boxes using the Ube app right off the bat when it launches early next month. The company says its app will work with over 200 IP-based devices like AV receivers, thermostats (watch out, Nest!), garage doors, etc.

Aside from the app, Ube is also working on three distinct IP-enabled devices: smart dimmer, smart wall outlet and smart plug. Plug in any lighting or appliance and you’ll be able to control it remotely through your smartphone. The smart dimmer runs a 32-bit ARM processor running Android to handle all of its dimming needs. The smart plug will measure how much energy is being used by whichever device is plugged into it, in addition to dimming duties. The smart wall outlet can also measure energy consumption and is 110/120V compatible and can withstand loads up to 1000W.

The company is looking to ship all three devices by the first quarter of 2013 and will also be kicking off a Kickstarter campaign (we’ll update with a link once it’s live) to raise $250,000 in order to get the devices to market. The smart dimmer will retail for $60, while the smart plug and outlet will cost $55 each.

Social reading iPad app Readmill has been slowly increasing its footprint among publishers and today announces new support for Adobe DRM-protected ePub and PDF formats. While the startup has oft been associated with socialising books, its ability to make excerpts from PDFs sharable across its social network of users will substantially widen its appeal beyond books to reports and research and academic papers.

Readmill also hinted at new partnerships with bookstores and platforms. Key to Readmill’s strategy is not to sign publishers but retailers, thus putting heat on publishers since users will follow the utility of Readmill’s experience.

Prior to these moves Readmill had been an impressive and elegant reading app but it was locked into a complex method of getting books and documents in the ePub format into its application – which although limited its appeal to a niche audience interested in out of copyright classics or new fiction also gave it valuable feedback on the way the app was used. Of course the golden prize would be to work on books published in Kindle or Apple iBooks format, but so far both are closed systems. Indeed, the socialising of these books may incentivise more to be published in a Readmill-friendly format.

The app allows users to share excerpts and comments on books using a Twitter-like follow model where users can follow books, other users and, crucially, authors.

These author tools are pretty powerful, allowing readers to Tweet the Twitter handle of an author when they start reading. It means live feedback for the author, says co-founder and CEO Henrik Berggren, “opening a direct real-time channel between the reader and author.” He declined to comment on user numbers so far.

In fact some authors are using Readmill to annotate their own works, providing a richer experience for the reader. Think sleeve notes for books, instead of music.

Readmill’s staff of 10 is backed by Index Ventures, Passion Capital and Wellington Partners.

Lenovo is looking to set up shop in America but don’t expect your next ThinkPad computer to sport a Made In The USA sticker just yet.

IBM offloaded its computer business to China-based Lenovo in 2005. This brought harsh criticism upon IBM, a shining example of American success. But soon Lenovo will be able to advertise something long forgotten by American computer companies Dell and HP. Lenovo plans to open up an assembly facility in North Carolina, thus becoming the first major computer company to build computers on American soil for a generation.

The Chinese computer company intends to start manufacturing a small quantity of ThinkPad and ThinkCentre laptops, desktops and tablets in North Carolina. The Whitsett, N.C. facility will employ just over a 100 workers and cost the successful company a mere few million. The company tells the Wall Street Journal that it isn’t a one-time Made-in-America stunt, but rather the start of something larger.

This facility is intended to give the company more flexibility in terms of custom PCs. The plant, just miles away from its US headquarters, will cater to U.S. corporate clients. The majority of the firm’s computers will still be assembled in China and Mexico.

Since taking over IBM’s product line, Lenovo has seen tremendous success. With $30 billion in revenue in 2011, the company now ranks as the second largest PC manufacturer in the world trailing only HP. Gerry Smith, Lenovo’s head of global supply chain, stated to the WSJ that this move is part of an effort to localize product. “Now we are big enough in the U.S. to justify this move,” he said.

Lenovo is unique among computer brands as it makes, rather than outsources, more than half of the computers it sells. Many US computer companies including Apple relies on manufacturing companies such as Foxconn to build its products.

There was a time when it seemed manufacturing would never return to America. Factories were shuttered en masse. Jobs were sent elsewhere. It seems companies are testing the waters here as the financial and public relations cost of using Chinese labor increase. Google employed a California-based electronic builder for its ill-fated Q media streamer. Many Kickstarter products use American makers and the advent of 3D printing can turn a basement office into a legitimate manufacturing facility.

Come on, HP, Dell and Apple. If Lenovo can build computers here, you can too.

Apple has been sued over Passbook, newly discovered court documents show. The suit was filed by Ameranth, a San Diego company that wears its patents proudly on its sleeve (or the front page of its website, in a literal sense). The suit claims that Apple infringed four patents that revolve around wireless synchronization tech to do with mobile payments, point-of-sale systems and other issues related to Passbook’s ability to digitize hotel bookings, airline tickets, reward cards, coupons and other items.

Ameranth has played this tune before. The company is currently engaged in suits against companies like Hilton, Marriott, Kayak, Expedia, Hotels.com, Ticketmaster, Stubhub, Fandango, Urbanspoon and many more. The company has managed to also engage around 14 firms in licensing agreements already, including SubtleData, whose founder Richard Bagdonas I spoke to in an interview. That interview proved troubling to me.

It’s hard not to see Ameranth as a patent troll (though it isn’t technically a non-practicing entity), given its past actions and website design choices. But Bagdonas says that in fact, the company’s technologies have actually improved its products since entering into a licensing agreement, and he points out that Ameranth does in fact sell product including payment processing modules and wireless ordering systems for restaurants. It’s also worth noting that Apple in fact does cite Ameranth’s patents as prior art in a patent related to the iPhone, so Bagdonas says they are aware of the existing intellectual property.

In addition to being trouble for Apple, however, Bagdonas notes that this suit could go well beyond the electronics giant and affect everyone on the fledgling Passbook platform. “This exposes every developer building Passbook applications to a lawsuit,” Bagdonas said, in no uncertain terms. Sound familiar? That’s what happened with Lodsys, which targeted individual developers using Apple’s in-app purchasing mechanism, claiming that existing licensing relationships it held with Apple didn’t extend to other parties working within its iOS software ecosystem.

Bagdonas’ warning comes with a caveat, with him essentially entreating independent developers to license Ameranth’s patents in favor of getting burned in a lawsuit that seems to show no signs of slowing its growth. But note that part of SubtleData’s deal with Ameranth include it being able to offer sub-licensing to companies: in other words, SubtleData stands to gain considerably if developers follow Bagdonas’ advice.

This is a dance I’ve seen before, wherein independent developers end up bullied by bigger companies with more money and resources to dedicate to legal proceedings, essentially forced to enter licensing agreements because the alternative is a drawn-out legal battle. Ameranth is also seeking triple damages in this case, owing to what it calls Apple’s “willful infringement,” which means it could target Passbook developers with similar severity.

Long story short, this is gross. I spoke with many developers back when Lodsys was playing the bully, and it caused a lot of unnecessary stress and frustration for people doing hard work trying to make a living on Apple’s software platform. I’m hoping Bagdonas is wrong, and that Ameranth will stick to targeting big fish, but where are the licensing fees in that?

comScore today released its latest U.S. mobile market rankings, covering usage by 30,000 consumers over a three-month period ending August 2012 — that is, in the period just before the launch of Apple’s newest iPhone, and during the time when Samsung was slapped with a $1 billion+ fine over a patent suit brought against it by Apple. In that time, Samsung retained its position as the country’s most popular handset maker, covering both smartphones and feature devices, but its share actually remained flat, at 25.7% of all users, while Apple’s share grew the most and other top players declined. Google’s Android OS, meanwhile, solidified its position as the most dominant smartphone platform, now being used on nearly 53% of all smartphones.

Among all mobile handset makers (covering both smartphones and feature devices) Apple stood out in the period for growing the most, with a rise of 2.1% to take a 17.1% share of all mobile users. That narrowed that gap between it and number-two LG, which declined by 0.9% to 18.2%.  Motorola, equally, saw a decline of nearly 0.8% to bring it down to 11.2%. That’s largely in line with how both of these performed in the quarter before. HTC, however, appears to be seeing a mini-turnaround. It’s market share increased by 0.2 percentage points, and is now at 6.3%. As with the previous survey, it’s telling that the top-five are dominated by Android and Apple.

As for Samsung’s flatlining, it may be that this is more about how it’s doing in its feature phone business rather than its smartphone business. Figures out today from Localytics show that in fact July and August were pretty strong months for sales of Samsung smartphones — in particular its new flagship Galaxy S3. (September looks to be a different story.) Indeed, growing sales in smartphones coupled with slowing sales in feature phones is a trend we’ve seen in previous quarters, too.

Among smartphone platforms, Google is once again gaining some ground and is now well into accounting for more than half of all smartphone users in the U.S. However, as in the previous quarter Apple is still growing at a faster rate, with Google now at 52.6% of all smartphones, growing by 1.7 percentage points; and Apple at 34.3%, growing by 2.4 percentage points. And it’s all about consolidation: RIM, Microsoft and Symbian, which all have less than 10% market share, all continued to decline.

That’s in contrast to the international picture as painted by Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. The WPP-owned analysts chart smartphone purchases, and there it is noticing some gains being made by Windows Phone, particularly in Europe.

comScore also charts what people are using devices for, and while it looked like text messaging continues to be the most popular activity, with 75.6% of all users sending texts. The quarter before texting growth was flat; this time around it’s picked up a little steam once again, up by 0.8 percentage points. But it’s not growing as fast as app usage or using the mobile web, these both grew by more than 2 percentage points, with app downloading done by 53.4% of all users, and mobile web being used by 52%. Social networking, games and music rounded out the top 5.

What’s perhaps most notable about this list is that it covers both smartphone and feature phone owners. In other words, “advanced” services beyond basic voice and text are becoming mainstream and easy enough to access even on low-end devices that we are seeing an overall growth in a critical mass using them.

Photo Flickr

Live streaming startup Ustream has come a long way over the last several years, but one thing holding it back is its homepage, which is a hodgepodge of “featured” and recommended live stream feeds, some of which are active, some of which click through to archived, on-demand videos. It’s not entirely clear what’s going on, what’s new, what’s popular or what’s trending.

It’s looking to change all that with a redesign that goes live Wednesday, just in time for the first of the Presidential Debates. I got a preview of the app, as members of the Ustream team came all the way downstairs from their offices on the fourth floor of 410 Townsend to TechCrunch’s first floor suite. The new homepage is designed to highlight live videos across a number of different content categories, allowing users to click a thumbnail and have the video instantly appear. That means instant access to live video, without having to click through to another page for viewing.

The launch is meant to coincide with the first of the Presidential Debates, during which Ustream will have at least two live feeds from AP and CBS News. But it will also have a ton of other debate-related video feeds available, including commentary from a number of other Ustream partners, like the Debate Drinking Broadcast or RuPaul from Logo TV. It’ll also have featured videos across its major verticals like news, and will even feature eagle, donkey, and elephant cams.

The design that users will see on Wednesday is skinned and built all around the debates, which is something that Ustream will be doing more of, as it plans to highlight major live events and breaking news. It might not have a reskinned homepage every day, but it could program the site two or three times a week, depending on what’s happening, according to SVP of marketing David Thompson.

Partners are a big part of this release, as Ustream herds together a number of live video producers. In addition to RuPaul, Ustream’s got content from PBS NewsHour, WSJ Live, Occupy Denver, Occupy the Debates, Breitbart News with Larry O’Connor, League of Young Voters, PopSugar, comedian Scott Rogowsky, Crack.com, Show Interrupted, and comedians Al Del Bene and Rich Aronovitch. And powering the whole new Ustream homepage is a 12-person editorial team that will curate videos based upon topics and what’s popular or trending on the site, bringing more visibility to content that previously might have been difficult to find.

One surprising thing that will be missing at launch is ads. Throughout the demo, I was amazed! to find that not a single ad showed during the whole visit. No crappy banners sitting alongside the WSJ Live thumbnails. No crappy pre-rolls when videos were launched. No mid-rolls jumping into the middle of my streams, slowing my roll. Really dudes? How’re you gonna make the monies?

Thompson says the redesign is rolling out ad-free, part of Ustream’s attempt to bring the best viewing experience possible, which is awesome for now. The lack of ads on the new homepage follows the rollout of Ustream’s Broadcast for Friends (BFF) app, which hooks into Facebook and also streams video ad-free. Ads will eventually return, but Thompson said Ustream is devoted to balancing the optimum viewing experience for users while also monetizing via ads. What does that mean? Fewer ads? I think it sounds like fewer ads.

Ustream has famously raised a buttload of money, but seemed to be struggling for a while, trying to find itself with founder John Ham at the helm. He’s since stepped down and the company, now being run by CEO Brad Hunstable, seems to be more focused on product and introducing new applications for users, which is cool and aligns more with my interests, rather than just pitching me every time a celebrity does a 30-second live stream.

Today open source content management company MODX is launching a hosted cloud service to commercialize the product, much as Acquia and WordPress.com have done for Drupal and WordPress.

MODX started out as a volunteer open source project in 2004, but also became a company in 2010 after its first user conference. The service is focused mostly on attracting agencies that build websites for clients and emphasizes the ability to extensively customize the appearance and structure of a site.

Users can just sign up for an account and start building sites for their clients without ever worrying about what’s under the hood, but for those who want it, MODX is trying to add a much deeper layer of customization than I’m used to seeing from hosted web CMSes.

The service runs on SoftLayer‘s infrastructure. And much like PagodaBox (coverage), the MODX Cloud is attempting to blur the lines between different types of cloud computing. In MODX’s case, there are advanced features that enable users to manage the underlying cloud infrastructure and even install additional software if they so choose.

Some of the features include:

• The ability to take a “snapshot” of a configuration and save it to be used as a template for projects. Users will also be able to buy and sell these snapshots.
• Scheduled backups.
• A dashboard that lets users see the load on various servers and manage infrastructure.
• The ability to control version upgrades through a one-click process.

Not only is the service hosted by SoftLayer, but MODX also participated in SoftLayer’s Catalyst startup incubator.

Dyn, the Infrastructure-as-a-Service company that’s probably best known for DynDNS, just announced that it has raised a $38 million Series A round led by North Bridge. The New Hampshire-based company, which was bootstrapped in 2001, focuses on providing its clients with DNS and email infrastructure services. As part of this investment, Dyn is also establishing a formal board of directors. Besides Jeremy Hitchcock and Tom Daly, the Dyn co-founders, North Bridge general partners Ric Fulp and Russ Pyle will join the board, as well as Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis.

Its services, the company says, are currently being used by over 4 million users worldwide. In addition, Dyn has 2,000 enterprise and 450,000 e-commerce clients. These customers include the likes of Twitter, Zappos, Pandora, Zillow, Spotify, Zipcar, and CNBC. Dyn currently operates 20 data centers around the world and has offices in San Francisco, as well as in Brighton and Wrexham, UK.

Dyn started out at Worcester Polytechnic Institute and launched its DynDNS service in 2001. For the first nine years, the company’s focus was purely on DNS services. In 2010, however, Dyn launched its email delivery service, which now has 15,000 users according to the company’s own data.

According to a canned statement by Dyn CEO Jeremy Hitchcock, the company plans to “double down” its commitment “to being the world leader in Infrastructure as a Service and are delighted to partner with North Bridge, one of the leading technology and infrastructure investors in the country.” The investment, he also said, will allow Dyn to be in a better position to “cement” its “leadership position within a rapidly growing multibillion dollar IaaS opportunity.”

Mark Zuckerberg is really going whole hog on this Russia thing.

The Facebook CEO is currently on a visit to Russia as part of a campaign to expand his super-popular social network there. As part of his visit, he’s checked out Red Square and met with prime minister Dmitry Medvedev.

And, in a remarkable show of “being a good sport,” Zuckerberg also appeared as a guest on Evening Urgant, a late-night show that is comparable to the United States’ Late Show With David Letterman or The Tonight Show With Jay Leno. Actually, the host Ivan Urgant is on the young and hip side, so it might be more similar to Jimmy Fallon?

This is not Zuckerberg’s first time on late-night TV overall: He swung by Saturday Night Live last year when Jesse Eisenberg hosted. But it appears to be his first time sitting down for an interview in the typical late-night talk show format.

It’s kind of amazing to see Zuck having fun while hamming it up a bit in front of a studio audience — how far we’ve come from that Leslie Stahl interview, amirite? If you’re so inclined, you can watch it all in the video embedded below. Apologies for the lack of captions, but Zuck himself speaks in English throughout the interview.

Sharing a document online has never been easier, but maintaining control over that document once it’s left home, so to speak, is something different altogether. In the enterprise, that potential loss of control — who can view it, edit it or even print it — is a big deal. Therefore, making it easy for businesses to track and, if necessary, reign in those documents, especially once they enter the cloud, would seem like a startup opportunity too good to miss.

To that end, docTrackr, which does just that, opens its doors today, along with announcing a $2 million seed round, led by Fred Destin and Chris Lynch’s Atlas Venture, and Polaris Venture Partners.

A recent graduate of Boston TechStars class of 2012, the company has also managed to pull in a number of additional investors, including Common Angels, and other Boston-based angels, such as Joe Caruso, John Landry (former CTO of Lotus), as well as French angel investor Philippe Langlois (founding CTO of Qualys).

Prior to TechStars, docTrackr was one of the first batch of startups to take part in the French accelerator, LeCamping.

Founded in April, 2011 by Clement Cazalot and Alex Negrea, who both worked in the R&D Labs of leading European security company, Gemalto, and Alexander Gentea, docTrackr offers businesses a cloud-based service for managing and tracking the security of their documents. Sitting on top of the built in cryptography technology stack provided by Adobe though its PDF file format and Microsoft’s Office file formats (and OS-level support), it allows the document owner to control who can read and edit it, as well as things like printing privileges.

It does this through a neat web-based interface, and because docTrackr handles the ‘keys’, access to documents can also be revoked or to put it more dramatically, files can be destroyed remotely. The Mission Impossible tagline — “this message will self-desruct in five seconds” — comes to mind.

In terms of competitors, there are lots of companies already operating in the general document security space, such as Covertix, FileOpen, or WatchDox (which recently raised $9m from Blackstone), though most of these tend to focus on security issues related to compliance.

Where docTrackr says it differentiates is by providing a self-service SaaS for document security and analytics, based on a per-user freemium model that targets SMBs in particular, as well offering bulk-licensing via its API. Related to this, the company, which operates out of Paris, Boston and Bucharest, is set to announce an integration with Box.com, next week.

A few days ago, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen quietly published an extensive review of Windows 8. In it, Allen – who resigned from the Microsoft board in 2000 but still consults for the company – calls Windows 8 “a significant evolutionary milestone in Windows development,” but his praise mostly focuses on the tablet experience. On the tablet, he says, Windows 8 is “bold and innovative” and unlike many reviewers, he is “impressed” with “the clever integration of a bimodal interface to simultaneously support both desktop and tablet use in the same operating system.” Despite all of this, though, he also calls some aspects of Windows 8 “puzzling.”

“I did encounter some puzzling aspects of Windows 8.”

One thing that especially seems to irk Allen is the fact that some apps, including Internet Explorer, come in both Metro and desktop mode versions. These different apps don’t necessarily talk to each other and are, as Allen notes, “different applications that share the same name and can be used for the same purpose.”

Another feature that puzzles Allen (and virtually everybody else outside of Microsoft) is that you can’t direct Windows 8 to set the desktop mode as your default view instead of the Metro-style Start menu. ”The goal must have been to encourage people to acclimatize to Windows 8 style immediately. Third-party workarounds will no doubt appear soon to bypass this step. “

Allen also notes that Windows 8 Charms, the additional options that appear when you swipe to the left from the right side of the screen on a tablet or move your mouse to the right hand corner, are hard to find “as there are no visual cues as to how you display it.”

Here are a few additional things Allen finds puzzling about Windows 8:

• Difficulties with multiple monitors (including the inability to persistently display the Start screen on one screen)
• Silo effect between Desktop and Windows 8 style
• Inadvertently switching modes
• Inability to build hierarchies on the Start screen
• Difficult to scroll in Desktop view on a tablet
• No clock on the Start screen
• On-screen keyboard doesn’t appear automatically in Desktop view

Despite all of this Allen believes desktop users will, “with only minor tweaks and adjustments,” be able to get a hang of things pretty quickly. He also thinks most of the issues he points out in his review will be fixed in the next release. Mostly, though, he seems excited about the future of Windows 8 on the tablet. He calls the tablet interface “elegant” and “responsive” – something he can’t get himself to say about the desktop experience.

Microsoft clearly also believes that touch is the way of the future and Windows 8 shows the company’s willingness to move in this direction, despite the fact that this means most business users won’t upgrade their Windows 7 machines anytime soon.

Earlier today I posted about the comparative merits of Apple’s iPhone 5 and Samsung’s Galaxy S III, and in doing so it turns out that no matter what my conclusion, I probably helped Samsung move a few Galaxy smartphones. That’s according to new info from analytics firm Localytics, which says that Samsung sees a GSIII sales spike whenever it gets compared with Apple’s phone.

There was a huge spike in GSIII sales when Apple won its case against Samsung in the U.S. over patent infringement and was awarded $1 billion in damages  and there was another when the iPhone 5 was announced and the internet lit up with comparison charts and articles. Device growth for Samsung’s handset slowed before and following both of these events.

Locatytics thinks this might be the start of general ambivalence among consumers when it comes to mobile OS choice. Comments on our articles suggest otherwise, but of course we’re speaking to a highly engaged, technical audience in a lot of cases.

OS agnosticism could indeed be a growing trend among smartphone consumers, who are comparing devices on other measures instead, but there’s also the old saying that any press is good press. Samsung’s name being out there more often in articles is good for the brand, especially when it’s being used as a measure for a brand with the reputation of Apple. That’s a far cry from a few years ago, when virtually every other hardware manufacturer was lumped into a general category of potential “iPhone killers,” most of which stood no chance of really standing up.