The free version of Jaspersoft’s analytics will be offered as part of Red Hat’s evolving OpenShift platform-as-a-service (PaaS).

As Red Hat, Microsoft, Salesforce.com’s Heroku, and VMware’s Cloud Foundry PaaSes compete, they’ll add more services and capabilities to the mix just as they’ve raced to add support for all the major programming languages. Jaspersoft will bring an important piece of the puzzle — business intelligence — to OpenShift. Since the deal is not exclusive, look for Jaspersoft to add other PaaSes over time — and for OpenShift to shop around as well.

There’s a lot of potential upside here for these analytics vendors. New Gartner research says that by the end of 2013, just 3 percent of business intelligence (BI) revenue will come from cloud-based offerings although nearly every analytics vendor has one.  Adoption is just not there yet and deals like this could help in that regard.

Developers wanting to build BI into their applications can try out the free community edition of Jaspersoft on OpenShift and move up to the higher end professional or enterprise versions as their needs dictate, said Karl Van den Bergh, VP of product and alliances for Jaspersoft.

The endgame for Jaspersoft — and its rivals — is to get their services in front of as many developers as possible. OpenShift, which targets Java and PHP developers in particular but supports other languages as well, will help do that do that. “There is no barrier to entry. It’s free for developers that want to build BI into their applications to get started,” he said.

Jaspersoft does not offer a hosted BI PaaS on its own, although it does have JaspersoftLive, a hosted version of its software, on its web site for developers to try out, but not buy, Van den Bergh said.

It’s still early in the PaaS race — OpenShift and CloudFoundry for example, are still in beta — but as the companies that back these efforts seek credibility among developers watch for more services and applications to be added to their platforms in what looks to be the next arms race in cloud services.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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Apple’s iPhone 4 can serve as a great little camcorder when you’re in a bind, but it’s never been our go-to cam for video shoots. Not only is its small sensor not best suited for high-quality HD shooting, but the smartphone form factor can be awkward to hold, resulting in shakier than normal footage. A new app called DollyCam, which also supports iPad 2, helps soften the blow of the latter, letting you successfully stabilize videos — with a few drawbacks.

We took our iPhone 4 out to test a watermarked free version of the app in New York City, shooting a scene first with the phone’s native app, and then with DollyCam. It won’t replace a hardware solution like the Steadicam Smoothee, but it’s significantly cheaper and more convenient. The only major issues we noticed were related to softened sound capture of all things (pay close attention in the video past the break), and the fact that the app can’t process in real-time, so a minute-long video clip will need about five minutes to process. The app does crop your footage slightly, as can be expected. You’ll also need to remain in the app as it’s processing, though you can also stabilize videos later, after completing your shoot. Overall, it’s an acceptable solution, especially considering the .99 price tag. Jump past the break to see original and stabilized clips, and browse through the gallery below for a quick look at the interface.

[Thanks, Jon]

Continue reading DollyCam app lets you stabilize iPhone 4 videos, we go hands-on (video)

DollyCam app lets you stabilize iPhone 4 videos, we go hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Aug 2011 16:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A couple of interesting messages just appeared from the Hulu Support Twitter account. In several recent responses to subscribers complaining about ads that Hulu plays as part of its premium subscription service, the account tweeted:

“We’re currently an ad-supported service but looking into the option of a higher price ad-free version.”

Hulu has never entirely ruled out an ad-free model, but the tweets come as a bit of a surprise, since Hulu has long maintained its reliance on ads, even for its Hulu Plus service. Rather than going ad-free, like Netflix has done, Hulu Plus has a slightly lighter ad load but also gives subscribers access to a wider library of content.

In an February blog post, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar talked up the value that Hulu provides to content owners in terms of ad revenues, comparing Hulu’s effective ad rates versus those from broadcast DVR and cable DVR. In a more recent blog post, however, Kilar was more bullish on the company’s Hulu Plus subscription service, saying that the company would soon have a million paying subscribers.

The consideration of an ad-free service comes as Hulu has been put up for sale by its owners, which include Fox, Disney and NBC Universal. The message was also tweeted after Fox announced plans to put up a pay wall which would restrict access to shows for eight days unless a viewer has proven he or she is a cable subscriber.

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Spotify’s journey to the US has been highly anticipated almost since the on-demand music streaming service first launched in its native Europe in October 2008. And with good reason: Spotify is really cool. Now that the service is finally available here, American audiences are finally getting to see first-hand what all the hype has been about.

But with all the buzz about Spotify, let’s not forget about the great music services that were born in the USA. How do they measure up to the Sweden-bred Spotify, which has amassed more than 10 million users in Europe alone, more than 1 million of whom are paid subscribers?

Here’s a look at a few of the more popular ones:

• iLike
  Headquarters: Beverly Hills, CA
  Founded: 2002
  What it is: A service that allows users to share and play songs within social networking sites.
  How big is it? iLike says it has more than 60 million registered users. In 2009, the company was acquired by MySpace for a reported million.

• MOG
  Headquarters: Berkeley, CA
  Founded: June 2005
  What it is: An ad-free subscription on-demand music service, and an online radio service.
  How big is it? MOG does not provide user or subscription figures. What we do know is that MOG has raised million in venture capital and has 11 million songs in its library.

• Pandora
  Headquarters: Oakland, CA
  Founded: January 2000
  What it is: A personalized Internet radio service available in a free, ad-supported version and a subscription-based, ad-free version.
  How big is it? Pandora has more than 90 million registered users, according to recent regulatory filings. The company collected 7 million in revenue in its most recent fiscal year, and has a relatively limited library consisting of 800,000 songs. Pandorais publicly traded on the NYSE, and currently has a market cap of .8 billion.

• Rhapsody
  Headquarters: Seattle, Washington
  Founded: December 2001
  What it is: An on-demand subscription music service. Rhapsody started with a catalog consisting of mostly classical music, but now spans all genres.
  How big is it? Rhapsody has more than 800,000 paying subscribers and more than 12 million songs in its library, according to a recent PaidContent report. The company has not disclosed any revenue figures since it spun out of Real Networks in 2010 with an million initial investment, but it reportedly expects to become profitable this year.

• Slacker Radio
  Headquarters: San Diego, CA
  Founded: 2004; launched March 2007
  What it is: An interactive Internet radio service with social networking features; Slacker recently launched a paid on-demand music streaming feature as well.
  How big is it? Slacker has between 3 million to 5 million users, around 300,000 to 400,000 of whom are paying subscribers, according to a recent report by North County Times. The company has raised million in venture capital and has more than 8 million songs in its library.

This is by no means a comprehensive list, but rather a snapshot of a few music services that have been available in the US from day one. If you have any personal favorites, please chime in using the comments.

Image courtesy of Flickr user mrsdkrebs.

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Despite a lot of speculation lately about who’s winning the private-cloud race and what companies might be on the way out, it’s far too early to call the game in anyone’s favor. Private-cloud adoption is picking up, but it’s nowhere near ubiquitous yet, and there’s plenty of time for everyone still standing to make the moves they need to in order to keep competing.

Is Eucalyptus Dead in the Water?

There was a great debate last week on GigaOM Pro about the state of Eucalyptus Systems and whether its days as a purveyor of private-cloud software are numbered. Our Infrastructure curator, Paul Miller, suggested in his Weekly Update (sub req’d) that, after a few previous setbacks, Ubuntu’s decision to forgo further Eucalyptus support in favor of OpenStack in future versions of the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud Linux operating system might be the death knell for Eucalyptus Systems’ private-cloud software.

Eucalyptus CEO Marten Mickos responded, stating that his company has had more than 25,000 downloads clouds based on its free version, and that, from his perspective, it’s stronger than ever. He also mentioned a number of big-name customers presently running production clouds based on Eucalyptus.

So did Cloudera CEO Mike Olson, who noted that his company is a very happy Eucalyptus customer. This is in part because of its Amazon Web Services API compatibility, and in part because of the qualities of the product and support for paid enterprise version of the Eucalyptus software. Olson’s most poignant comment might have been that “it’s way too early to nominate a single winner among the cloud abstraction layers. We need more years of experience before that happens.”

I’ve been critical of Eucalyptus chances, too — even suggesting at one point (sub req’d) that an acquisition might be all that could save it — but I’m starting to come around to Mickos’s point of view. His statements about Eucalyptus’s prospects are, of course, self-serving, but there’s no denying the numbers. Even if a majority of those 25,000 downloads clouds never amounted to anything substantial, some certainly did and will in the future. Yesterday, it announced European social-gaming company Plinga as a customer. And having large, publicly referenceable customers puts Eucalyptus ahead of many other private-cloud startups. Further, the company has continued to add personnel and expand globally, which probably aren’t signs of impending doom.

It’s a Broad — and Young — Market

But this isn’t just a discussion about Eucalyptus, it’s a discussion about the expectations for private clouds, in general. OpenStack has a lot of believers — and for good reason — but with the exceptions of Rackspace and Internap, there are no service providers that are known to be using the software for customer-facing services, and most private-cloud use cases appear only experimental at this point. As Mickos pointed out in his response to Miller’s analysis, Eucalyptus most commonly runs into VMware, Cloud.com, Abiquo and CA (with its 3Tera product, I presume) during customer engagements.

What this tells us is that, as Olson suggested, it’s too early to tell who (aside from VMware) will win in the private-cloud contest, even if some projects or companies have greater name recognition than do others. VMware is a household name and OpenStack is approaching that status, but Cloud.com, Abiquo and 3Tera are not. Yet, 3Tera was an early innovator in provisioning private clouds before CA bought it, Cloud.com is killing it with several very large customers under NDA, and even the relatively unknown Abiquo has a growing list of customers. Still under the radar, but not to be ignored, are startups such as Cloupia and Nimbula (which just became generally available in April), and large vendors with new cloud strategies, such as Red Hat, HP and Microsoft.

In fact, Nimbula Co-Founder and CEO Chris Pinkham insightfully mentioned to me during a recent conversation that the whole discussion about public clouds versus private clouds is just a debate over who owns the hardware. What customers really care about — or what they ultimately will really care about — he explained, is which product can best deliver a company’s services, regardless where the servers reside.

What he’s describing is the oft-mentioned but as of yet rarely implemented hybrid cloud. And despite some noteworthy efforts by pretty much everyone pitching private-cloud software, no one has this mastered yet. However, if you’ve looked at any cloud-adoption surveys lately, such as this one from the Open Group, you’ll find that hybrid clouds are all the rage among CIOs.

Yes, OpenStack has all the momentum right now, but it doesn’t obviate the need for other products, nor is it even a completed project. It’s a worthwhile exercise to handicap the private-cloud field, but with adoption still relatively low and looking to remain that way until enterprise-ready hybrid clouds become a reality, all we really have right now are actual customer wins and product roadmaps to determine who has the best chances. At this very-early point, a lot of products look promising, but there’s plenty of time for private-cloud pushers to distinguish themselves.

Image courtesy of Flickr user superwebdeveloper.

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Perhaps you have decided to outsource the writing of articles. They deliver your new content to you in the time you specified. Soon you can put the content on your website using your website designer, but you have to make sure that what the writer hasn’t simply copied the content from elsewhere. So how do you go about doing this then?

One such service that can help you out is Copyscape, and for a small fee you can get a lot out of what they offer. While there are some free aspects to what is offered, that will only let you as far as checking a page that has previously been published has content that was indeed plagiarized.

Can you find a way of performing a plagiarism check before you hit publish?

Dustball is a popular choice.

It’s main use is in the assistance of checking if students have been plagiarizing their work for essays and such, but it is just as useful for checking any content that you have had written for you, as it refers to lots of major works.

Just copy the text from your article to the box on that web page and click the button to find out more. The next screen will show you text analyzed from your article, and on the right, you can get an idea of whether the content may in fact have been plagiarized. The whole process takes no more than a few seconds, so it is very quick and easy.

It’s a good idea to use this along with your website design software, and while it doesn’t go into so much detail, it does provide a general overview, which for a free service is not that bad.

You can upgrade to a premium version of the service for just $8 a month for a more in-depth view, but the free version should be enough in most cases anyway.

So, next time you wonder whether your new writer is doing the work themselves, or copying it from other sources, you have a way to do a quick check that can be completed in less than a minute.