Davemichels

One month after San Jose State University (SJSU) suspended an online learning program with Udacity because of disappointing student results, the online education startup reports that things are starting to look up.

On Wednesday, the two organizations shared results from their summer pilot program indicating that students’ pass rates had improved. While the percentage of students who received a C or better in classes during the spring pilot program ranged from 23.8 percent to 50.5 percent, the percentage of summer students with similar scores in the same classes ranged from 29.8 percent to 83 percent. For comparison, the percentage of students who received a C or better in the school’s in-person classes ranged from 45.5 percent to 76.3 percent.

According to Udacity and SJSU, this massive open online course (MOOC) program differed from the spring pilot in a couple of key ways that likely affected student results: the program was more flexible with students who wanted to drop out, so retention dropped to 60 percent from 83 percent; and, instead of actively recruiting inner-city high school students, it opened up enrollment to anyone. (The company said it still reached more than 2,000 students, most of whom would not ordinarily attend college.)

The startup also said it changed a number of course elements, including:

• Adding more support staff,
• Changing the pacing methodology (so students had earlier warnings about poor performance); and
• Increasing professors’ time with students.

The new results aren’t exactly a home run: results from the online program still significantly trail in-person outcomes in a couple of courses. But they do show that the company is learning from its data and improving.

In a briefing ahead of the announcement, Clarissa Shen, Udacity’s VP of business development and marketing, told me that instead of launching its planned for-credit experience with SJSU in the fall, it will wait until the Spring 2014 semester. That’s because the company wants additional time to improve the program and help the school enable asynchronous online learning that lets a student progress through a course at his own pace, she said.

Over the past few months, MOOCs in general, and Udacity specifically, have weathered a fair amount of criticism. In a blog post, Udacity co-founder and CEO Sebastian Thrun offered an update on the company’s progress and a few choice words for detractors:

“To all those people who declared our experiment a failure, you have to understand how innovation works. Few ideas work on the first try. Iteration is key to innovation. …We are entering uncharted territory. I have been fortunate to work with some of the very best innovators in the world. I have learned that innovation requires a clear vision, many iterations, and a willingness to learn and improve. I believe we are on a path where we can fundamentally rewrite the law of access in higher education.  But this is just the beginning of this path.”

Image by Stuart Miles via Shutterstock.

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The use of the cloud within the enterprise is still growing at a healthy pace, but in a much more disciplined manner than in recent years. New data suggests that cloud computing is becoming less of an experimental tool but a production workhorse in the enterprise.

The data comes from just-released 2013 State of the Enterprise Cloud Report, an eight-page whitepaper from Verizon to positively portray its Verizon Terremark unit within the cloud market. Even taken with that grain of salt, the data within was interesting, such as:

[Since January 2012 to June 2013], the use of cloud-based memory increased by 100 percent, and cloud storage by 90 percent.

That's pretty high growth, and doesn't initially smack of discipline, but rather a willy-nilly charge into the promised glory of the land of cloud hype-o-mania. But another piece of information in the report cools down the hype quite a bit.

The number of [virtual machines]—software applications that run programs like a traditional computer—deployed by enterprise customers has increased 35 percent since the start of 2012.

A 35% jump in VMs versus much higher rates of cloud memory and storage use would suggest that IT managers are finally starting to get their cloud management act together and aren't just deploying into the cloud on whim and are actively managing away from cloud sprawl.

If this is the case, then a very important step is happening in the evolution of the cloud computing cycle: IT departments are starting to take cloud computing seriously. They are managing what they have not by adding more VMs to their clouds or virtual data centers, but rather optimizing the VMs they have with more memory and storage capacity.

The results would seem to be clear in the report itself, which adds that that nearly 60% of respondents had applications on the cloud that were mission-critical, web-facing production applications. It's not just development environments where DevOps teams are playing in their virtual sandboxes. Even though we are still in the early days of cloud adoption, the report stated, "forward-thinking organizations are looking for closer integration of cloud services with their own infrastructures and applications by leveraging a hybrid model to create differentiation and competitive advantage."

In non-marketing speak: IT is done playing around with cloud.

One thing about the report that may prove useful in retrospect, albeit in not the way the authors imagined. Since the data was gathered up until June 2013, prior to the revelations from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden of alleged active collection of cloud-based data by U.S. intelligence agencies, this report may represent the apex of enterprise optimism about the cloud.

Wait until next year.

If you’re not a hardcore DVD/Blu-ray enthusiast, you may not be aware of an interesting kerfuffle that’s just arisen. But while it might only seem to affect your more devoted variety of Star Trek fans on the surface, it serves as a case study of what’s going wrong with the physical media world at this moment.

This summer, the Paramount film Star Trek Into Darkness managed an impressive thing for a major blockbuster released in 2013 — not only was it critically popular for the most part, but it actually managed to make some money at the box office, as well.

But the site Trekcore.com last week ran an extraordinarily thorough review of the upcoming Blu-ray release of Star Trek Into Darkness — one that rated the Blu-ray transfer quality at five stars, but the special features at 0.5 stars.

Why such a dramatic difference in the ratings? Because, as Trekcore lays out:

There’s no denying that the high definition presentation of this film looks absolutely beautiful — but this is the most confusing, exploitative release ever to bear the Star Trek name.

The primary issue is that of “retailer exclusives” — different versions of the film being packaged with different sets of special features, depending on where you buy the film once it’s available September 10th on Blu-ray.

This means getting an entirely different set of behind-the-scenes featurettes if you buy the film from Target versus Best Buy, and that’s only within the United States — other international releases feature additional features and visual options (including a German edition which may include IMAX-formatted footage).

Plus, the only way to acquire any version of the film that includes an audio commentary is to either buy the film on iTunes or use the accompanying digital download code on the Apple service.

That gets you access to the “visual commentary track” — which is not tied to the original download, but is instead a five GB download of the film described by TrekCore as follows:

The iTunes commentary is more than just an audio track — it’s an entirely separate encoding of the film, with on-screen picture-in-picture annotations and behind-the-scenes footage. There’s no additional scenes in this version of the film, but because the commentators often pause and rewind footage to highlight specific elements of production, the thing runs nearly thirty minutes longer than the standard film.

And while director J.J. Abrams and cast members have mentioned the existence of at least two deleted scenes, the only sign TrekCore could find of those scenes being available on Blu-ray was an upcoming Australian release — a release that may also be tied to another retailer exclusive in that country.

One of those two known deleted scenes, just for the record, is a shower scene featuring fangirl icon/breakout star Benedict Cumberbatch, which Abrams teased earlier this year on Conan. That seems like something that would sell a few box sets.

Amazon rankings, at time of writing, did have pre-orders for Into Darkness at #17 in the Movies & TV category, and the film is also at #4 on the iTunes best-sellers chart. But according to TorrentFreak, a torrent of Into Darkness is already the second-most downloaded movie of last week.

Special features don’t seem to have popped up on BitTorrent yet, but that’s not hard to imagine changing in the next few weeks. Because that’s going to be the only real way to get a complete set — Paramount has no track record for creating “complete” editions of its past Blu-ray releases.

So what does this ultimately mean for the film’s release? It’s not necessarily something the casual viewer will notice — the casual viewer will probably be content with the iTunes edition, or waiting for it to be available on VOD or other streaming options.

But that’s because the casual viewer probably isn’t interested in spending $102.98 without shipping costs (according to math done by a TrekCore commenter) to get the majority of the special features.

And that’s undoubtedly math that Paramount is counting on — has, in fact, counted on in the past.

But trying to keep an entire industry alive on the backs of devoted fans craving limited edition features isn’t the most solid business model. It’s a solution that speaks of short-term thinking, at a time when the rise of HD-quality video coincides with ever-shrinking data caps.

The physical media world has enough problems — why alienate the consumers who are still shelling out cash?

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The whole VMware-Cisco-EMC triumvirate — formally embodied in the VCE virtual computing environment effort — has been stressed by competitive pressures between the partners pretty much from the get-go a few years ago. But things got more tense this week with VMware’s launch of its NSX network virtualization lineup at VMworld 2013. Cisco, a huge networking hardware vendor, was conspicuously absent from the list of partners supporting NSX.

On Thursday, Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior took to her blog to explain why software alone won’t cut the mustard when it comes to state-of-the-art networking. After dutifully reiterating how important a partner VMware is, she got down to business:

“…a software-only approach to network virtualization places significant constraints on customers. It doesn’t scale, and it fails to provide full real-time visibility of both physical and virtual infrastructure.  In addition this approach does not provide key capabilities such as multi-hypervisor support, integrated security, systems point-of-view or end-to-end telemetry for application placement and troubleshooting. “

The emphasis is hers. Warrior goes on but you get the gist. As GigaOM reported earlier Thursday, VMware’s push into network and storage virtualization already irked some smaller partners. But the list is getting longer. Stay tuned for more frayed nerves as these legacy IT behemoths start competing more with each other as they build out their respective cloud strategies. It’s hard to be a partner with someone when you’re on a collision course with them.

As one VMworld attendee described it: “When NSX was brought up in a slide in the keynote, Cisco was notably absent. Everyone noticed. Now Cisco is retaliating with Padma’s blog. The gloves are coming off.”

One thing is certain: it won’t be pretty. On the plus side, as the vendors bash each others brains in, big customers will be in a position to cut really attractive deals on their IT deals. Just saying.

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RingCentral, the cloud-based phone service for businesses, just filed for an initial public offering with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. It has proposed using the ticker symbol RNG.

While the valuation and offering price haven’t yet been determined, the company’s filing has a detailed look at its finances and who owns what. Its biggest shareholder is Vladimir Shmunis, who owns a little bit less than 20 percent of the outstanding equity. Venture Capital firms Sequoia Capital and Khosla Ventures each have stakes worth about 17 percent (slightly north in Sequoia’s case, slightly south in Khosla’s). DAG Ventures has a little less than eight percent.

Other investors include Cisco Systems, Scale Venture Partners, RTP Ventures and Hermes Growth Partners.

The filing also shows that RingCentral had sales of about $106 million in 2012, and about $67 million for the first six months of 2013, which would put it on track to break $130 million in sales this year. Its net loss last year was about $34 million.

The IPO buzz has been simmering about this company for more than a year. In early 2012, it hired Robert J. Lawson as its CFO. His prior gig was as CFO of Codexis, a biotech company that went public in 2010.

It’s the second tech IPO filing this month. On Aug. 14, Chegg, a digital hub for students, filed for an IPO in which it aims to raise $150 million.

Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Securities LLC ,and BofA Merrill Lynch will act as joint book-running managers for the offering. Allen & Company and Raymond James will be co-managers.

The most common, almost universally accepted reason for company failure is “the stupid manager theory”. It’s the corollary to “the smart manager theory” which is used to describe almost all company successes. The only problem with this theory is that it is usually the same managers who run the company while it’s successful as when it’s not. Therefore for the theory to be valid then the smart manager must have turned stupid at a specific moment in time, and as most companies in an industry fail in unison, then the stupidity bit must have been flipped in more than one individual at the same time in some massive conspiracy to fail simultaneously.

So the failures of Microsoft to move beyond the rapidly evaporating Windows business model are attributed to the personal failings of its CEO. The calls for his head have been getting loud and rancorous for years. Taking this theory further, now that he’s leaving, the prosperity of the company depends entirely on the choice of a new (smarter) CEO.

It’s all nonsense of course.

Microsoft is composed of people, processes and priorities. And nothing else. The CEO is but one person, admittedly one with a high degree of authority. However, that authority is not unlimited. A change of leadership in a company may have some impact on a larger set of people, at least in the short term, but the bulk of existing resources, institutionalized processes, and priorities set by customers and cash flows limit what any one person can do.

What really causes a company to fail is disruption. The business model around which all products, customers and priorities are built; the culture, the skills and “DNA” of the company; is vulnerable. This vulnerability is why companies have considerably shorter lifespans than the people who work there. They are one of the most fragile of organisms: high infant mortality, with short, unpredictable lives.

Microsoft ascended because it disrupted an incumbent (or two) and is descending because it’s being disrupted by an entrant (or two). The Innovator’s Dilemma is very clear on the causes of failure: To succeed with a new business model, Microsoft would have had to destroy (by competition) its core business. Doing that would, of course, have gotten Ballmer fired even faster.

Steve Ballmer’s only failing was delivering sustaining growth (from $20 to over $70 billion in sales.) He did exactly what all managers are incentivized to do and avoided all the wasteful cannibalization for which they are punished.

If anything, Steve Ballmer avoided The Innovator’s Curse. Being successful with new market innovations would probably have led to an even shorter tenure. Destroying prematurely the pipeline of Windows in favor for a profit-free mobile future would have been a fireable offense. Where established large companies are concerned, markets punish disruptors and reward sustainers.

Steve Ballmer will not be remembered as favorably as the man who created Microsoft. But at least he won’t be remembered as the fool who killed it. That epitaph is reserved for his successor.

California loves Tesla Motors and its Model S luxury electric sports sedan. According to the latest car sales figures reported by the California New Car Dealers Association, Tesla captured 12 percent of the luxury sports car category in the state during the first half of 2013 — enough to surpass the Audi A6 and Lexus GS. Granted the company sold 4,714 Model S’s during the first half of the year, 1,097 of them in June. But that was enough to outsell Porsche, Volvo, Cadillac, Jaguar, Buick and Land Rover during that first month of summer. Impressive. Remember, Tesla is selling only one model of car.

The NSA successfully cracked the encryption guarding the United Nations’ internal videoconferencing system, according to documents seen by Germany’s Der Spiegel.

The publication  reported on Sunday that the encryption’s bypassing took place in the summer of 2012, and that within three weeks the NSA had boosted the number of such decrypted communications from 12 to 458.

According to the documents leaked by Edward Snowden, on one occasion when the Americans were breaking into UN communications, they discovered the Chinese had tried to do the same. The UN headquarters are sited in New York. Spying on the United Nations is illegal under international law.

Der Spiegel‘s report also followed on from earlier revelations about the NSA bugging EU institutions, explaining that the U.S. agency gained access to the virtual private network (VPN) used by the EU’s embassies in America.

It also claimed that the U.S. maintains a monitoring program called the “Special Collection Service” in over 80 embassies and consulates around the world, often without the knowledge of the host country.

In separate revelations on the weekend, the NSA admitted some agents had used the agency’s facilities to spy on their love interests. This allegedly only happened on a handful of occasions, but often enough to inspire the term “LOVEINT”. The Guardian reported that, in one case, an analyst had spied on his former spouse.

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The battle to control how people heat and cool their homes is heating up in a way that is reminiscent of the fight over which company gets to lord over the home’s media and entertainment systems.

Honeywell recently launched a fancy $249 Wi-Fi thermostat and an online energy savings calculator that aim to re-invent the company’s long-standing product line, and compete with younger, nimble upstarts like Nest and Radio Thermostat Company of America. Some of these startups are moving aggressively — despite only launching the learning thermostat in 2011, Nest has gotten it into big retail chains such as Lowe’s and Apple’s online store.

But temperature control isn’t what makes the technology development of these so-called smart thermostats interesting to watch. With more built-in sensors, software and wireless communications, these devices could become the brains of home energy networks, which will include not only the heating and cooling systems but also appliances and other energy consuming gizmos.

The assumption here is that consumers will want greater control and automation of their energy use in order to keep utility bills in check. But how much time they are willing to spend tinkering with various settings and monitoring their energy use is still a big question.

We know that high-end energy dashboards were essentially flops. Doling out the same advice when consumers are paying their utility bills, on the other hand, seems to work better because you are getting their attention when they are about to fork over part of their earnings to keep their homes lit and comfortable.

But thermostats are no longer the only devices that are vying for control. With the emergence of rooftop solar panels and batteries to store home-grown energy, we are seeing control systems emerge that are designed to manage all of the energy created and consumed for the home.

The space for home energy control could be a tremendous market and has no dominant players so far. It’s like the early days when consumer electronics makers were trying to figure out whether it’d be the game console, TV, set-top box, computer or some other stand-alone devices that will the hub to connect the living room and deliver entertainment and other content throughout the house. After all these years, that fight remains unsettled.

Honeywell’s Wi-Fi thermostat play

Honeywell introduced the Wi-Fi Smart Thermostat just over a year after suing Nest over patent infringement in February 2011. The lawsuit remains in place, though it’s on hold at Nest’s request.

Honeywell is using technology it previously engineered for industrial-grade thermostats for the new model, said Mike Hoppe, senior product marketing manager. The Wi-Fi thermostat lets homeowners key in daily temperature preferences and program their heating and cooling settings remotely by smart phones.

The device shows indoor and outdoor temperatures and alerts its owner when the home becomes too hot or cold and a new temperature setting might be needed. It also notifies the homeowner when the thermostat’s Wi-Fi connection is broken or when the home loses power.

The core technology that Honeywell is proud of lies in the sensors and software that accurately reads the room temperature and communicates it promptly to the heater or air conditioning system, Hoppe said. The company says the accuracy margin is plus or minus 1 degree, unlike competing thermostats that could err as much as 4 degrees.

The company is sticking with the traditional rectangular look rather than the round shape that has defined Nest’s thermostat even if Nest wasn’t the first to make it round. But since style is now an important feature, Honeywell’s take on that is to build in a palette of background colors for the thermostat’s touch screen — you can change it to match the color of the wall or your mood.

The thermostat comes with a “utility mode” in which a homeowner would key in utility rates and other data. The device crunches those numbers to display a range of temperature choices, which let the homeowner decide whether to stick with the temperature she wants or to forego comfort in varying degrees in order to save money.

There is a fair amount of data input in the initial set up. The thermostat asks you when you get up in the morning, when you go to sleep, what time you leave and return to your home and what temperatures would you want for all these blocks of time each day. There is also a vacation mode.

Honeywell makes it clear that its new offering is not a “learning thermostat” like Nest’s, which has a motion sensor and algorithms that are supposed to figure out a homeowner’s heating and cooling patterns and recommend changes to save energy.

Honeywell contracted with GreenOhm to create the online energy savings calculator as a sales tool. With your zip code, information about your heating and cooling systems and your daily temperature preferences, the calculator can spit out an estimated annual monetary savings for using the new thermostat. You can also find out local utility rebates and other incentives for installing more intelligent thermostats.

The Wi-Fi thermostat is designed to provide a much finer control of your home’s comfort. But it also requires more work to get it set up and put it to work. While it’s interesting to see manufacturers put some thought and fashion into the long-neglected device, the thermostat may just remain as a tool to create a comfortable home. People may not care much more about it beyond that.

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Benedict Evans:

The practical effect of this is that Microsoft’s share of connected devices sales (in effect, PCs plus iOS and Android) has collapsed from over 90% in 2009 to under a quarter today.

It’s been a busy six years.

They’re swinging the axe again over at BlackBerry. The struggling smartphone pioneer, which last year cut thousands of jobs, cut a few hundred more earlier this week.

In a statement to AllThingsD, a BlackBerry spokesman confirmed that the company sacked 250 employees working at a Waterloo, Ontario, product-testing facility this past Tuesday.

“These employees were part of the New Product Testing Facility, a department that supports BlackBerry’s manufacturing and R&D efforts,” spokesman Alex Kinsella said. “This is part of the next stage of our turnaround plan to increase efficiencies and scale our company correctly for new opportunities in mobile computing.”

News of the layoffs follows a dismal first-quarter earnings report from BlackBerry, whose new BlackBerry 10 smartphones aren’t gaining nearly the traction needed to pull the company out of the mud. BlackBerry employed about 12,000 workers as of March, following job cuts of about 5,000 last year.

Belkin’s WeMo connected home products are no longer iOS only. On Monday, the company released an Android app for its WeMo suite of devices that can control lights and appliances through a home Wi-Fi network. The free software is for Android 4.0 or better smartphones and tablets.

Belkin initially made a smart decision when designing the WeMo modules by choosing Wi-Fi as the supported network method. Having put together my own home automation system, I know that the various network options — Insteon, ZigBee, Z-Wave and X10 to name a few — can make for a challenging project. Some devices work with one protocol while others don’t.

Wi-Fi is more far universal and is something that most consumers already have experience with. It’s very likely they also have a home Wi-Fi network so the WeMo products work with existing infrastructure.

But I never understood why Belkin originally limited the product’s software to Apple’s iOS platform. Yes, iOS is certainly popular and has widespread usage. To ignore a large part of the smartphone carrying market, however, never made sense to me. Belkin actually announced an Android version of the WeMo software in January and released a beta version specifically for Samsung Galaxy S 3 devices earlier this year.

With the new mobile app, expected to hit the Google Play store at 1pm PT today, Android owners can remotely control their WeMo switches remotely over mobile broadband, create WeMo device rules and even build automation actions though IFTTT (If This Then That) integration.

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Just a regular lawnmower? Think again.

As the video above explains, Honda's newest lawnmower sports a 1000cc motorcycle engine, which means this machine has the capacity to reach 130 mph, and can go from 0-60 in just four seconds.

Capable of roaring at an ear-splitting 130 decibels, Honda has decided to aptly christen this beast the Mean Mower.

However, the powerful engine isn't the only thing that's new. The tractor’s suspension is taken from an ATV.

Nonetheless, Honda has put an emphasis on retaining as much of the lawnmower's original look as possible, with the grass bag concealing a fuel-tank, high-capacity oil cooler and a secondary radiator. Read more...

Nexmo may not have quite the reputation as its larger and older rival Twilio, but the company has been quietly building a name for itself among a key group of developers, messaging apps and e-commerce businesses.

Like Twilio, Nexmo bridges the new world of IP communications with the old world of telecom carriers. While Twilio focuses on voice and SMS, Nexmo has keyed itself into the texting world. It powers the SMS services for Viber, Korea’s Kakao Talk, Japan’s Line and ICQ. And it ships the SMS confirmations, alerts and booking communications for Airbnb. This month Nexmo handled 250 million app-to-person messages, CEO Tony Jamous told me in a recent interview.

Nexmo’s current run rate is 2 billion SMS transactions annually, but since its traffic is growing 20 percent each month, it will far exceed that number this year, Jamous said. Couple that with a developer base of 35,000 subscribers, and Nexmo looks to be carving a small but growing chunk out of one of Twilio’s core businesses.

If you’re still a little confused by what companies like Nexmo and Twilio do, don’t worry, it’s not an easy business model to grasp. There’s a fundamental disconnect between the networks built by telecom operators, which traffic in old-school signaling protocols like SS7 and SIP, and the IP-and web-centric world of app developers. Twilio and Nexmo develop the APIs that act as universal translators between those different languages. With a few lines of code, an app can suddenly make phone calls or send and receive text messages.

Twilio is unquestionably the leader in the field. It’s recruited more than 200,000 developers to its side and on track to become of Silicon Valley’s big success stories in cloud communications. Last year at its developer event, Twilio revealed it had processed half a billion phone calls from its cloud-based communications platform. At the time it was handling 1.5 million API calls to Twilio Voice a day. When Twilio updates its numbers at its next dev conference in September they’re sure to be far larger.

Twilio started with voice and then moved to SMS, but it so far hasn’t revealed any SMS numbers. Meanwhile Nexmo has taken the opposite approach. It started with SMS and — at least for now — it’s sticking with SMS. Nexmo runs a text-to-speech API that lets developers convert messages into phone calls, but Jamous is still cagey about when and if Nexmo will release a full-fledged voice API. “I’d prefer to not answer that question right now,” Jamous said.

The lowly text message, however, has proved a lucrative business for the startup. Nexmo raised a $3 million in its Series A round in February, but according to the company it’s already profitable and cash flow positive. Jamous wouldn’t reveal exact figures, though he said annual revenues were in the tens of millions of dollars and they’re growing in line with its traffic at a rate of 15 percent a month.

Nexmo, however, continues to seek VC funding because it ultimately has to invest big in infrastructure, a key point of difference between it and Twilio, Jamous said. Today the company has a physical “messaging hubs” in 90 countries, and it’s able to reach 5 billion phones, many of them on networks built on networks more than a decade old. It’s also built its infrastructure in anticipation of massive scale.

“We’re only at 10 percent capacity in usages,” Jamous said. “We have a lot of room to grow.”

Ultimately Nexmo wants to have a presence in nearly every country in the world, making it a kind of global virtual carrier that can link any application to any service providers network through the cloud, Jamous said. As it builds up that infrastructure, Nexmo’s developers can build truly global customer bases, he said. Considering Nexmo has just 27 employees divided between London and San Francisco, those are some pretty lofty ambitions.

Message photo courtesy of Shutterstock user Brian A Jackson

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As part of its disappointing earnings report on Thursday, Microsoft noted that it is making more money from mobile phones.

However, that doesn’t necessarily mean Windows Phone is raking in the bucks. The company chose to lump together its phone software revenue with the patent royalties it gets from makers of Android devices.

“Windows Phone revenue, reflecting patent licensing revenue and sales of Windows Phone licenses, increased $222 million for the quarter,” Microsoft said in commentary accompanying its earnings statement.

Indeed, it seems likely that Microsoft’s gains are coming largely on the back of Android, as the company has now signed per-unit royalty licenses with much of the industry, save for Motorola and Google itself.

Nokia, meanwhile, said it had its best-ever quarter for Windows Phones. But with total Lumia sales of 7.4 million units (along with a smaller number of phones sold by HTC, Samsung and others), the bulk of Microsoft’s phone revenue appears to still be coming from Android.

Microsoft declined to comment further or provide any additional breakdown on the figures to AllThingsD.

The smartphone market is slowing, and it spells opportunity for Microsoft.

Verizon is on the hook for roughly $23.5 billion in payments to Apple for iPhones it can't sell, suggesting that the talismanic smartphone is losing some of its allure. Meanwhile, AT&T and T-Mobile have rolled out new programs to incentivize customers to upgrade their phones early and often, as consumers trend toward a more leisurely pace of smartphone upgrades.

With more consumers trading in and out of phones more often, Microsoft's opportunity to hook new users increases. Given Windows Phone's still anemic market share, the window of opportunity—as it were—is slim. Rather than compete on equal terms, therefore, Microsoft should exercise an unfair advantage to leapfrog its competitors.

It's called Skype.

Improving Skype's Mobile Experience...

Skype already runs fine on Android and iOS, of course. But the experience is a bit disjointed. It remains very much an app that you run on your phone, rather than an integrated element of the phone itself. 

I felt this pain while traveling in London a year ago. I needed to do a conference call but didn't want to pay AT&T's punitive roaming charges. So I ran into St. Pancras Station, which offers free Wi-Fi, and dialed into the call using Skype. I paid exactly $0.00 for the call, and the call quality was surprisingly excellent, given the quality of the Wi-Fi.

Unfortunately, at the time Skype didn't support Bluetooth, so I found myself moving my iPhone to my ear and back to a position where I could check calendar, a presentation, etc. While Skype Mobile now supports Bluetooth, it continues to lag in other ways.

...Especially For Windows Phone

Particularly if you're using Windows Phone 8. Ironically, while Microsoft calls Windows Phone 8 and Skype "a match made in heaven," the Skype experience is actually better on iOS, Android and even Blackberry because Skype Video, among other things, is available on these platforms, but not Windows Phone.

Yes, you read that right. Microsoft's Skype is better on every platform other than the one it actually owns. That's sad.

It's also a missed opportunity. As much as Microsoft may pledge to deliver a "common set of experiences across multiple platforms and devices" for Skype, the reality is that it needs to provide an even better experience on its home turf. No, I'm not arguing for Microsoft to cripple Skype on rival platforms. That would be counterproductive as the Skype network becomes more valuable the bigger it becomes.

But imagine a Windows Phone experience with Skype completely integrated into the address book, dial screen, etc. Suddenly Skype isn't merely an app that runs on your phone, but actually becomes your phone.

Would The Carriers Go Along?

Microsoft has stated its intention to keep a consistent Skype experience across devices, but surely Microsoft could make that experience deeply integrated into the Windows Phone UI? Users would love this, as it would allow them to "make a call" and not worry about whether it were going out over Skype or a carrier's network. In areas rich with wifi but poor on cell phone reception, it would be a huge benefit, as Tom Barber notes.

Some, however, worry that the telecom providers would never buy in: 

@mjasay The telecomms hate, hate, one more time with feeling, hate this kind of VoIP idea. They wouldn't sell phones with it.

— sjvn (@sjvn) July 17, 2013

It's a valid point, but it may be a few years too late. After all, carriers no longer look to voice to pay the bills, and instead seek to monetize data. Skype now powers a third of global voice traffic, and there's reason to believe carriers will happily offload more of that traffic to make way for more profitable data services.

Even if they were inclined to quibble with Microsoft building a Skype-centric Windows Phone experience, surely Microsoft is less of a threat than Apple and Samsung's mobile dominance has been, and potentially offers a hedge against these leading vendors. Microsoft, for all its problems, has shown a willingness to share success with its partners. 

Microsoft needs to place some big bets to take share in mobile. An integrated Skype experience for Windows Phone 8 feels like a smart move, and a bet worth making.

Hewlett-Packard’s board, the subject of much criticism over the past few years, just got three more members, including former Microsoft chief software strategist and software superstar Ray Ozzie.  The other new directors are Robert “Dob” Bennett, who was formerly president and CEO of Liberty Media, and James Skinner, former vice chairman and CEO of McDonald’s and now chairman of Walgreen.

The appointments are effective as of Monday. Ozzie left Microsoft in 2010 after four years ago helping drive (with much resistance) that company’s move to the cloud. He has since founded Talko, a mysterious company working on “something mobile.”

According to HP’s statement:

Over the coming months, the board will continue to search for additional world-class directors as well as a permanent non-executive chairman. Ralph V. Whitworth will continue to serve as chairman of the board on an interim basis.

HP is no stranger to Microsoft or its execs. Bill Veghte, a long-time Microsoft exec, is COO and last year HP CEO Meg Whitman tapped former Microsoft hand Robert Youngjohns to lead the problematic Autonomy software division.

HP is also navigating a tricky course vis-a-vis long-time PC-and-server partner Microsoft. Microsoft has started to make its own tablet hardware, a move that angered hardware OEMs like HP. And HP has launched its own OpenStack-based public cloud that competes with MIcrosoft Windows Azure. This “coopetition” is bound to heat up going forward. HP has also struggled with its mobile plan of action, wavering on whether or not to offer smartphones. Ozzie might be able to help with that quandary.

HP’s board, which has been changing piecemeal, is a focal point. The fact that an older iteration approved the troubled $10-billion-plus acquisition of Autonomy in 2011, raised many eyebrows. Even at the time, most observers felt the price was way too high, something that subsequently became apparent to everyone.

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If you are waiting for Yahoo to apologize for its anti-telecommuting policy, you might not want to hold your breath.

Jorinde Gersina/Hubert Burda Media Yahoo chief development officer Jackie Reses (right) with German minister Ursula von der Leyen

Several months into the mandate, the company is more committed than ever to making its workers come to the office.

“I think, within Yahoo, our employee base understands what the mission is,” Yahoo chief development officer Jackie Reses said, speaking on Monday at the DLDwomen conference in Munich, Germany. “We are on a mission to turn the company around.”

The move was not without its bumps. But most of the criticism was from those outside Yahoo, Reses said.

Now some months in, Reses said, even some of the former telecommuters forced back into the office are starting to see the benefits.

Reses’ approach came in stark contrast to the tone of other presenters, including oDesk’s Jaleh Bisharat.

Bisharat told her own story of leaving her job at Amazon because she found she wasn’t able to be in the office enough to match her colleagues, or at home enough to support her children in the way she wanted to.

Now, though, she said the tools are in place to allow workers to contribute at any time and place they choose.

“Work is no longer a place,” Bisharat said.

Except, of course, for those who work at Yahoo.

Skype, the Microsoft-owned internet telephony service, is planning to kill its Desktop API (application programming interface), according to an email sent to developers by Chris Andrews, Head of Skype Developer Program. Skype wants folks to use Skype URIs as its believes that will allow the developers to access Skype via various platforms — mobile, web and desktop.

Skype is deeply enmeshed into the new Windows. Skype URIs need the Skype client for all communications, as Skype explains on its developer website. The action is to some extent driven by the growth of Skype on mobile, which has actually helped the company grow its usage.

The Desktop API enabled third party applications to communicate with the Skype network and is going to stop working sometime by the end of 2013. “Although we will continue to support the Desktop API for the rest of 2013, in September the App Directory will close,” Andrews wrote. (Full text of his email is below) I have reached out to a few third party app developers and will update the story with their reactions.

The Desktop API is the descendant of the Skype Public API that was first introduced in 2004. In November 2011, Microsoft introduced the Desktop API with much fanfare. Developer chief Andrews at the time told software industry trade publication, the SD Times:

“Skype released its first public API in 2004,” he said. “The biggest request was for a so-called ‘headless version’ of Skype that was all the functionality of the application without the user interface. That was available through SkypeKit in June 2010. Now, we’ve added a video API so developers can embed Skype video into their Mac, Windows and Linux desktop applications.”

Here is Chris Andrews’ complete note.

I am writing to inform you that due to some changes we are making to improve the overall Skype Experience, the Desktop API will cease to function correctly from September 2013 and we have made the decision to de-commission it.

As you may know, Skype has been investing in technology improvements, which will significantly benefit Skype users across all platforms, especially Mobile devices (see “Skype’s Mobile Future”). These changes will significantly improve the speed of delivery of calls and messages, whilst retaining excellent battery life. In addition, as more people are using Skype on more devices, we are also working hard to create a more familiar and consistent Skype experience across all of the major platforms (see “Skype passes 100M Android Installs and Launches Redesigned 4.0″).

As a consequence of this, we have decided to retire our Desktop APIs. These APIs were originally created in 2004 and do not support mobile application development. Going forward, developers will be able to write applications, which use features of Skype across all the major platforms, through the use of Skype URIs. We believe this will allow developers to create innovative mobile, web and desktop solutions, while retaining a familiar and consistent Skype experience across devices.

Although we will continue to support the Desktop API for the rest of 2013, in September the App Directory will close, chat functionality through the API will stop working and we will begin notifying users with messaging in Skype for Desktop. As a result, we wanted to give you notice now so you have the opportunity to modify your application in response to these changes.

I want to personally thank you for your investment in Skype throughout the years. This decision was not made lightly. Going forward, we hope you will consider the use of URIs as a way of developing innovative Skype powered solutions. If you have any questions or comments about the changes, please contact us at skypedev@microsoft.com . We’ll do our best to address them in a timely fashion.

If you are interested in our previous Skype coverage, you can access the archives here.

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Intel’s TV service, which the company’s Intel Media unit plans to launch before the end of the year, is going to be called OnCue, GigaOM has learned. The company has applied for trademarks for OnCue around the globe and tasked ad agency OMD to prepare the official introduction of the brand.

Intel is planning to launch a TV service before the end of the year that is meant to compete with traditional cable TV services by offering live TV feeds as well as a catch-up service and on-demand programming. The service will be available through a dedicated device, which the company is going to sell online as well as through traditional retailers. Intel hasn’t revealed the name of the offering yet, but the company has been quietly preparing to launch it under the OnCue brand.

OnCue’s logo looks a bit like a play button mixed with a circle – if you squint.

In May, a shell company called Sest Inc. registered three trademarks related to OnCue with the US Patent and Trademark office. These registrations include mentions of subscription services for TV channels and TV programs and movies delivered to set-top boxes and handheld computers.

Remarkable about the registrations is that they’re almost identical to trademarks filed earlier this year by Intel for the word mark “Intel Inside & Out.” In fact, some parts are copied word-by-word, like the part about OnCue “providing text, data, image, audio, video, gaming and multimedia content for a fee or pre-paid subscription.”

But those aren’t the only similarities. Sest Inc. has also been busy filing a number of trademark applications outside of the U.S., including in Canada, Mexico and Europe. At least in Europe, the company relied on the same attorney for the filing that has also filed numerous other Intel trademarks in the past, including the original Intel Inside filing.

The final connection between Intel and Sest comes from OMD, a branding and ad agency that has been working with Intel for some time. OMD’s Intel account director recently added the following line to his resume:

“Developed and lead the launch of Intel Media’s groundbreaking new consumer device, OnCue; an “over-the-top” TV service joining streaming-video players and a full array of Network and Cable TV channels.”

Intel executives have said in the past that the TV service will feature its own brand, but that it will be tied to Intel’s legacy brand, so it’s likely that the service will launch as OnCue, powered by Intel Inside & Out, or something like that.

OnCue does actually make a lot of sense as a brand for the offering, which is going to feature a BBC iPlayer-like catch-up service, allowing consumers to queue up anything they missed within the last seven or so days.

Sest’s trademark applications also reveal a logo, as well as a possible tag line: “TV has come to its senses.” The latter could possibly relate to the use of sensors to facilitate input and automate content recommendations. Intel Media boss Erik Huggers revealed in February that the company’s set-top box will come with a camera that will be used to recognize who’s watching and recommend content accordingly.

An Intel spokesperson declined to comment when contacted for this story.

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AT&T Inc. agreed to acquire prepaid-wireless company Leap Wireless International Inc., the company behind the Cricket brand, for about $1.19 billion in cash.

The deal is intended to kick-start the carrier’s expansion into the low-cost market and values Leap shares at $15 a piece, a roughly 88% premium to the company’s closing price Friday.

Leap’s stock was up 93% after-hours at $15.40. Through the close, the stock had risen 36% in the past three months.

AT&T said the deal will include Leap’s licenses, network assets, retail stores and around five million subscribers.

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