Tech Today w/ Ken May

On Monday, the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles approved Google’s license application to test autonomous vehicles on the state’s roads. The state had approved such laws back in February , and has now begun issuing licenses based on those regulations . The state previously outlined that companies that want to test such vehicles will need an insurance bond of $1 million and must provide detailed outlines of where they plan to test it and under what conditions. Further, the car must have two people in it at all times, with one behind the wheel who can take control of the vehicle if needed. The Autonomous Review Committee of the Nevada DMV is supervising the first licensing procedure and has now approved corresponding plates to go with it, complete with a red background and infinity symbol. “I felt using the infinity symbol was the best way to represent the ‘car of the future,’” Nevada DMV Director Bruce Breslow said in a statement. “The unique red plate will be easily recognized by the public and law enforcement and will be used only for licensed autonomous test vehicles. When there comes a time that vehicle manufacturers market autonomous vehicles to the public, that infinity symbol will appear on a green license plate.” Eagle-eyed Ars readers: if you spot this car in Nevada, snap a pic and let us know! Read the comments on this post

Editor’s note:  This guest column is from Raj De Datta, the CEO and co-founder of BloomReach. Follow @ BloomReachInc on Twitter. With the influx of information flooding the web – 90% of the web having been created in the last two years alone – web businesses are looking for ways to understand and use big data to drive their business. Just as SaaS and the cloud completely revolutionized the way businesses operate, so will Big Data applications (BDAs). BDAs are web-based applications that interpret and use massive amounts of enterprise and web-scale data to deliver more intelligent results for their subscribers. BDAs leverage the best of the cloud; they’re web-hosted, multi-tenant and use Hadoop, noSQL and a range of recommendation and machine learning technologies. But the real question is – so what? So what if the underlying data structures use Hadoop or noSQL? No CEO of a major business gets excited about a value proposition around more scalable data structures. That’s where BDAs come in. BDAs don’t just repackage your data in a cool interface or offer productivity improvements in data scalability, they harness the world’s data to deliver you a better outcome – like more revenue. SaaS was a different delivery model for enterprise software: available for immediate sign-up, it dramatically reduced integration costs, enabling try-before-buy, scalability and shared tenancy with meter-driven pricing. Salesforce.com started the cloud revolution by transforming the CRM industry and was quickly followed by the SaaS-ification of every category of enterprise software (Taleo/Successfactors for HR, Netsuite for ERP, Omniture for web analytics). SaaS both increased the market size for business software (by enabling mid-size companies to buy at a lower cost of entry) and delivering a better ROI for bigger businesses. But it did not do one important thing–it didn’t change the functional capabilities of the core application.  Salesforce didn’t add CRM features for businesses vis-a-vis Siebel – it simply made it easier to adopt and cheaper to maintain. Big data on the consumer side of software is well-understood – Google, Amazon.com, Facebook. In a recent keynote speech at Cebit , Amazon CTO Werner Vogels noted that when mistakes have been made, it’s because there isn’t enough data to back up a recommendation. All of these are applications that get stickier, smarter and more valuable as more users and data pour into their core engines. Now, we are seeing the beginning of enterprise BDAs, and they are the future: Linkedin (NASDAQ: LNKD) is a BDA for the recruiting/talent acquisition software market. LinkedIn doesn’t ask you to add your contacts in an isolated contact list, it networks those contacts, connecting users with users and recruiters with key competencies. Every user that joins LinkedIn adds a signal to the LinkedIn BDA stack, enabling the recruiter to harness all their millions of profiles, not just their individual silos. As a result, smaller, specialized recruiters are competing with the biggest executive search agencies with comparable reach. Bazaarvoice (NASDAQ: BV) is a BDA for social sharing. Bazaarvoice collects customer reviews from across the web, then powers multiple websites with that information. The traditional SaaS-based approach to this problem would simply have provided software to accept and publish reviews on individual sites. Instead, Bazaarvoice collects review data from across the web to make sure when you pull up a product on one of its customer websites, the right reviews are presented to you. Bazaarvoice gives all sellers comparable review databases to Amazon.com. Salesforce (NASDAQ: CRM) understands that BDAs are the future of SaaS. When it acquired social listening software company Radian6 and contacts company Jigsaw (now Data.com), Salesforce understood that the powerful application for brands would be aggregating social data points on brands from across the web and networked contact information to salespeople. Our business, BloomReach, is a BDA for marketing, the next $10bn category in software . We could have merely analyzed websites to identify missing relevant content that could drive revenue across search, social and advertising traffic and made workflow and content recommendations to site owners. Instead, we decided to analyze and interpret web-wide demand, build semantic models around web content for a given customer and then dynamically augment websites with the most relevant content for their users. Adobe’s Omniture packages your data in a cool SaaS application to make marketing recommendations for your business. BloomReach analyzes the web’s data and then acts on it to drive more traffic and revenue to our customers. BDAs are inherently better than their SaaS equivalents because they have all the delivery model benefits of SaaS, plus a network effect in the data being collected. Unique data, put to work for each customer, is an asset that creates network effects over time for both subscribers and for the application provider. These days, there is so much more data outside the enterprise than within it, that the notion of re-packaging an enterprise’s own data for analysis and workflow seems quaint. BDA companies create value differently than SaaS companies. BDA companies are built by teams of people with a strong background in large-scale systems and machine learning / data mining (like my co-founder Ashutosh Garg). They will also be valued differently than SaaS companies.  While both sell into enterprises, BDAs deliver much more value per dollar spent, because each acquired customer adds data to the engine, which in turn improves the service for all its customers. Markets typically value SaaS companies on three basic metrics: Customer Lifetime Value (higher LTV is better), Cost of Customer Acquisition (lower CCA is better) and Rate of Growth (higher is better). Certainly, most SaaS companies have a great growth rate. But BDAs will have higher LTVs (because value/customer is higher and churn will be lower) and lower CCA (because of network effects; consider the CCA for LinkedIn to acquire a new recruiter now, versus five years ago). The BDA revolution is just beginning. If we were building CRM again, we wouldn’t just track sales force productivity; we’d recommend how you’re doing versus your competitors based on data across the industry. If we were building marketing automation software (Marketo, Eloqua), we wouldn’t just capture and nurture leads generated by our clients, we’d find and attract more leads for them from across the web. If we were building a financial application, it wouldn’t just track the financials of your company, it would compare them to public filings in your category so you could benchmark yourself and act on best practices. Every category of software will have a BDA leader (some may be current SaaS companies that adapt or acquire). Like anything in technology, the next new thing doesn’t mean the old things go away. Oracle and SAP are still big companies but Salesforce.com is the newest $20 billion behemoth. The new kids on the block will be BDAs. Hello BDAs, Goodbye SaaS.

SalesVu , the maker of a mobile payments service designed for business customers, is launching a major update with SalesVu 2.0, live now in the iTunes App Store . The company is somewhat similar to Square, in that it also includes a dongle that plugs into an iPhone or iPad and works alongside an accompanying mobile application. However, the company is focused on providing tools that address more complex business needs than simply taking credit cards via a mobile device. For example, SalesVu currently offers real-time analytics reporting and the ability for businesses to post offers directly to Facebook through social sharing mechanisms. With the release of SalesVu 2.0, a number of improvements have been added for business users, including things like receipt printing, barcode scanning, employee timekeeping, and online order processing, to name a just few. While competing in the same general space as Square, Austin-based SalesVu is different in that it has never gone after the market of individuals users who had always relied on cash-based transactions. Instead, its focus has been the business customer processing at least $1,500/month who was looking for a mobile payments solution with a specific emphasis on integration with other backend systems like order management, deals and discount management, and social marketing. With the release of SalesVu 2.0, the goal is to better improve on the feature set these customers need. For retailers, the company has now added receipt printing and barcode scanning functionality, which customers demanded. They also asked for the newly added employee clock-in/clock-out function, which is now tied to SalesVu’s online timekeeping solution. Plus, SalesVu 2.0 has improved the close-out process with new cash drawer functionality also new in this release. For restaurants, the company has added features like the ability to split checks, print orders to the kitchen, adjust tips at the end of shifts, and receive orders from the web. The online orders are also displayed in the SalesVu POS app for immediate processing, as opposed to being sent out as emails, as is typical with some online ordering integrations targeted towards the SMB market. This feature now also makes SalesVu a competitor to traditional POS systems, says SalesVu CEO Pascal Nicolas. “The online ordering feature is probably the most important one we’re adding in this release,” explains Nicolas, “because we’re going from a convenience app to a revenue-generating app. These are orders that they may not have received, if they had not received them online,” he says. The feature was heavily requested by restaurants, for obvious reasons, but the functionality is available to anyone, including retailers, Nicholas adds. Finally, for service businesses (think salons, spas, plumbers, etc.), SalesVu 2.0 has added the ability to route appointments from a business website to the app on the iPhone or iPad, and now supports the ability for the business to take a deposit at the time of reservation. Invoicing and recurring billing have been added, too. Despite these business-friendly features, SalesVu’s biggest challenge for now is brand recognition and awareness – even Square itself isn’t a household name yet. Plus, one of Square’s bigger draws is that free dongle it hands out to any who ask. SalesVu, meanwhile, only gives out the first dongle per location for free and then requires businesses to pay $99 for each additional one. However, it has now dropped the monthly subscription fee ($9.95/month) for use of its cloud system in order to be more competitive. SalesVu is also competing heavily on pricing, in terms of processing fees. To combat Square’s low 2.75%, SalesVu negotiated with its partner  Mercury Payment Systems  to take the risk and go even lower to a flat 2.7% in the U.S. In Canada, rates vary from 1.73% to 3.26% depending on card type, which means it’s (sometimes) lower than Intuit’s GoPayment . The company has a profit-sharing arrangement with Mercury which allows it to generate revenue from those fees. Currently, SalesVu’s mobile apps have been downloaded 15,000 times, and now nearly 6,000 businesses have signed up and are actively using the system. The company is iOS-only for now, but plans to release an Android version this summer.

Data published by comScore shows that Amazon’s Kindle Fire has emerged as the dominant Android-based tablet. At the end of February, the Kindle Fire accounted for 54 percent of all Android tablets. The next most popular Android tablet product line is Samsung’s Galaxy Tab family, which dropped from 23 percent of Android tablets in December to 15 percent in February. The success of the Fire is no surprise to those paying attention to the tablet market—as we wrote last year, there is healthy demand for a low-cost iPad alternative. Amazon can afford to offer the hardware at a lower price than its rivals because it can make up the difference in content sales. The key factors driving sales of the Fire are likely its low price point, the strength of the Kindle brand, and the breadth of the Amazon content ecosystem. Read the comments on this post

With Firefox 12 out the door , Mozilla is turning its efforts to polishing up Firefox 13 , due out six weeks from now. If you don’t want to wait that long, you can download Firefox 13 from the beta release channel today. Perhaps the best new feature in Firefox 13 is what’s known as “tabs on demand.” Tabs on demand refers to the way Firefox restarts when you have multiple tabs open. Firefox will now only restore the currently selected tab; background tabs are not loaded. Tabs on demand is a welcome relief for those of us who browse with dozens of tabs open all the time. You no longer need to fear restarting the browser since you won’t have to wait while every tab reloads. Instead, tabs will load only when you select them. Firefox 13 will bring a slightly new look to some parts of the browser. Both the New Tab and the Home Page have been redesigned. The New Tab page now has links to your most recently and frequently visited sites. It looks more or less just like Opera’s Speed Dial , which Chrome also mimics. There’s an option to pin your favorite sites, as well as a button for rejecting sites you don’t want to see. The default Home Page now has links to menu items like Bookmarks, History, Settings, Add-ons, Downloads and Sync Preferences. There’s nothing here that you can’t access from the menu bar, but it makes frequently used menu items easier for newcomers to find. Web developers will be glad to know that Firefox 13 introduces support for Google’s not-quite-yet-a-standard SPDY protocol (technically the last two Firefox releases have supported SPDY, but this is the first to have it enabled by default). The SPDY protocol improves on HTTP and in many cases can significantly reduce page load times. SPDY’s other main advantage over HTTP is that all traffic is encrypted. Once Firefox 13 and the Opera 12 preview arrive in their final forms  the majority of desktop browsers on the Web will support SPDY. The Firefox 13 beta also brings a number of improvements to the new Developer Tools. For example, the Page Inspector now allows you to lock in CSS pseudo-classes on inspected page elements—handy for checking out what’s happening in a :hover code block. For more details on everything that’s new in the developer tools and the rest of Firefox 13, check out Mozilla’s release notes . Read the comments on this post

Today, Tor Books, the largest science fiction publisher in the world, announced that henceforth all of its ebooks would be completely DRM-free. This comes six weeks after an antitrust action against Tor’s parent company, Macmillan USA , for price-fixing in relation to its arrangements with Apple and Amazon. Now that there is a major publisher that has gone completely DRM-free (with more to follow, I’m sure; I’ve had contact with very highly placed execs at two more of the big six publishers), there is suddenly a market for tools that automate the conversion and loading of ebooks from multiple formats and vendors. For example, I’d expect someone to make a browser plugin that draws a “Buy this book at BN.com” button on Amazon pages (and vice-versa), which then facilitates auto-conversion between the formats. I’d also expect BN.com to produce a “switch” toolkit for Kindle owners who want to go Nook (and vice-versa). I think that this might be the watershed for ebook DRM, the turning point that marks the moment at which all ebooks end up DRM-free. It’s a good day. Tom Doherty Associates, publishers of Tor, Forge, Orb, Starscape, and Tor Teen, today announced that by early July 2012, their entire list of e-books will be available DRM-free. “Our authors and readers have been asking for this for a long time,” said president and publisher Tom Doherty. “They’re a technically sophisticated bunch, and DRM is a constant annoyance to them. It prevents them from using legitimately-purchased e-books in perfectly legal ways, like moving them from one kind of e-reader to another.” DRM-free titles from Tom Doherty Associates will be available from the same range of retailers that currently sell their e-books. In addition, the company expects to begin selling titles through retailers that sell only DRM-free books. Tor/Forge E-book Titles to Go DRM-Free

There’s yet another Flashback variant making its way through unprotected Macs, though it still only takes advantage of the now-patched Java vulnerability that the previous few versions made use of. Security firm Intego posted about the latest version of the malware, Flashback.S, which mimics the behaviors of previous variants of the malware. Flashback.S doesn’t require an admin password to install itself into the machine’s home folder, and it deletes all files located within ~/Library/Caches/Java/cache “in order to delete the applet from the infected Mac, and avoid detection or sample recovery.” Those of us who have already updated our Macs with the latest version of Java won’t have to worry, as Flashback.S has yet to find a new vulnerability to exploit. But there are apparently still plenty of Mac users—-650,000, according to Russian antivirus firm Dr. Web last Friday—who are currently infected with some version of Flashback, meaning there are at least that many (and probably more) who have yet to update their machines. Meanwhile, Sophos claims in a new report that one in five Macs is “harbouring some kind of malware,” though Sophos’ limited sample size (those who have downloaded Sophos’ antivirus software) indicates we should take the numbers with a grain of salt until more researchers can corroborate the claims. Read the comments on this post