Joyent, which is an internet cloud service provider, has reportedly raised an unspecified amount of funding from the largest computer chip maker in the world, Intel Corporation. Joyent was funded in the fast by Intel for a joint venture with Intel and Qinhuangdao Economic and Technology Development Zone that enabled the cloud computing firm to expand its reaches to China.

The extra funding from Intel will allow Joyent to expand its infrastructure and put wheels to its product development along with its sales and marketing portfolio. However, as per the filing carried out by Intel to the U.S Securities & Exchange Commission, it seems that Intel has invested  $8.5 million and as per the sources close to the deal, even Dell Inc. has also invested an unspecified amount of money in Joyent.

According to Arvind Sodhani (Executive V.P, Intel),

“Innovation does not stop during economic slowdowns. New technologies are the drivers of growth that help lead economies back to prosperity, and Intel Capital continues to be a leading investor in companies pioneering such advancement. These new and follow-on investments in companies at various stages of development and geographies demonstrate Intel Capital’s unwavering commitment to invest in technology innovation globally.”

Joyent has been in the business of offering private cloud computing services to interested companies and is already in a deal with Dell Inc. where the cloud computing expert’s software comes pre loaded on Dell computers. According to David Young (CEO, Joyent),

“Cloud computing technologies play a crucial role in allowing companies to scale their data center infrastructure to meet performance and TCO requirements. Joyent’s approach to flexible and cost-effective cloud control and cloud development sets it apart and provides measureable performance advantages versus the competition in this fast growing sector.”

Via Gigaom & Joyent.

After months of speculations and rumors, Dell Inc., one of the biggest manufacturers of portable notebooks and desktop computers, has finally entered into the mainstream smart phone market with the launch of its own smart phone, named Mini 3.

Dell Mini 3 is designed and developed on a revised Google Android mobile operating system is expecting to have varying functionality based on the region of its sales. The Mini 3 that is going to be launched in China is said to be only EDGE network capable. However, Dell plans to offer 3G network capabilities along with wifi and other services for the device in other countries and regions. The Mini 3 is known to sport a 640×360 display resolution and also comes with a 3 mega pixel camera.

Dell has already slated the delivery of Mini 3 smart phones to China this month and the handsets will be available via China Mobile network. Also, the Mini 3  shipments for Brazil are expected to be completed by the end of this year and it will be available in the region on Claro network. However, Dell has entered into contracts with AT&T and Verizon network carriers in the United States to market the Mini 3 in the year 2010. In other regions, Dell has partnered with other regional carriers such as Vodafone (Australia, Europe, New Zealand) to launch the Mini 3 with all fanfare.

Via Electronista & Mac Daily News.

Billionaires are obviously ambitious, smart, and very, very, very lucky. There are, however, some surprisingly common traits among them. Here are the trends that presented themselves.

The most common professions among the parents of American billionaires were engineer, accountant, and small-business owner – all math-related careers. They have passed on the mathematical prowess to their offspring, as such prowess is often hereditary. Math and becoming a billionaire are intertwined.

Learning the ropes of investment banking, trading, or asset management at Goldman Sachs seems to have been a de rigueur training for 10 percent of all billionaire tycoons whose fortunes are in finance.

Another common trait is M.B.A. from a top school, especially ‘from Harvard, as did 19 of the self-made entrepreneurs on the Forbes 400. Another 19 took home M.B.A.s from Stanford, Columbia or the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.’

Failure seems to be the biggest commonality among billionaires. Their business acumen and attention to detail are results of tremendous failure they experienced early in their careers.

Now, for more whimsical common ground: more than 10 percent ‘of the 380 self-made American tycoons who have appeared on the Forbes list of the World’s Billionaires in the past three years, 42 were born in September–more than in any other month.’ What’s uncanny, ‘close to 15% of the self-made American moguls on the Forbes 400 never finished college. Many of the list’s drop-outs made their fortunes in tech, including Bill Gates (Microsoft), Steve Jobs (Apple), Michael Dell (Dell), Larry Ellison (Oracle) and Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook).’

Via Forbes-Yahoo

The results are awe-inspiring. From cool sporty reds and funky base-ball oriented designs, to ethnic chic with the splashy silk colours of nail polish and garments, they mark an important target audience, men and women. Specialist help has sure helped the notebook PC major in this shift.

One of those really bizarre designs that the artists have come up with is that of a python etched out on a silver-steel finish notebook PC. The even more stranger thing is that it is made of Swarovski crystals. Can you beat that?
Dell Design Studio has made the effort to help deck up laptops with original art, logos from baseball teams and fluid designs of nail polish.

An official from OPI actually remarked that you could match nails with emails! Call it Dell’s design heavy push or sheer market expansion strategy.

Via: Dvice

This weekend saw an interesting piece of news, where sources inside Dell Inc. had stated that Dell was in the process of announcing, cell phone made by Dell and exclusively for the users in the  People’s Republic of China. Now, one of the leading wireless network operators in China, China Mobile has confirmed the reports that, Dell is indeed in the process of launching a mobile handset, based on the increasingly popular Google Android operating system, this week itself.  The new cell phone is named ‘Ophone mini3i’.

This latest launch is perceived as one the biggest in the thriving mobile industry of China. Thus, keeping in mind the magnitude of the launch, China Mobile has decided to launch the device on its own network, in the next few days. The Ophone is expected to be established as a leading brand name umbrella, under which other handsets of the same genre will be marketed and distributed. Devices from some of the most renowned firms as Lenovo and HTC (known as Dopod in China) are expected to be launched in the coming weeks under the Ophone banner.

The all new Ophones will operate around the TD-SCDMA (Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access) network platform, a 3G network standard, that has been designed specifically for the Chinese region. Thereby rendering the device almost inoperable outside China.

Via China Mobile & Tech 163.

Competition in the world of computers has gotten to the point where your deal with a company might be snatched off from your oily fingers by the time you reveal the good news to everyone. Or at least, it seems to have happened to software developer Bsquare.

A couple days ago Bsquare announced it was the lucky one chosen to port Adobe Flash Lite to Dell’s Inspiron Mini 9 Netbook but communication between Dell and Bsquare seems to have gone awry at some point. It turns out Bsquare might have halluconated the deal with Dell because the company has not announced any Android Netbooks. The statement released by Bsquare is already being recalled after Dell feigned any knowledge of it.

Perhaps Dell is just not ready to talk about their new deals yet and wish to remain secretive about them. On the other hand, Bsquare is left embarrassed and customers are confused about what they must expect.

Via: SlashGear/CNet

Dell has unveiled Adamo what is being touted as the world’s thinnest notebook. However, it shall also come with one of the thickest or fattest price tags in the world. It is just 1.64 cm when closed and comes with a 13.4 inch display which will surely do well to anyone who likes a good sized screen and the utility of thinness.

The notebook is loaded with features such as 1.2 GHz Intel Core2Duo processor, 2GB of memory, a 128GB solid state drive, two USB ports and even a display port. If you were wondering if there aren’t any USB ports, there is too, and also there is a SATA port. The downside however is that it may be the thinnest but not world’s lightest laptop. Dell Adamo weighs 1.7kg which is definitely not the lightest.

The Dell Adamo will cost $2000 and will be available from the 26th of March for pre-ordering. I am sure most people would be excited to buy this laptop as it is the thinnest. In spite of being thin, it has a great set of features and utilities. However, it is not the world’s lightest so it must not mislead you into believing so.

Via: EliteChoice/PocketLint/NBR

Apple Inc is a very wealthy company — it sold 55 million iPods, 13 million iPhones and nearly 10 million Macs last year. Apple also is one of the most admired brands, both generally and among young people. In fact, Apple has done some good things. It has a good record on product power management. More recently it has improved on electronics recycling after being prodded by groups like As You Sow. The dean of climate change himself, Al Gore is one of Apple’s most prominent board members and fans.

So this fact really beats us. Of the big four IT companies — Apple, Dell, HP, IBM — Apple has disclosed the least information and is the only one that has not made a major commitment to carbon footprint reduction. A recent report by RiskMetrics and CERES focusing on corporate governance and climate change policies scored IBM at 79, Dell 77 and Apple 27. Unlike most companies, Apple does not disclose charitable contributions.

Apple’s iTunes store is the top music retailer in the U.S. Imagine the opportunity to use a tiny piece of that valuable real estate to educate consumers by offering free videos on how to reduce carbom foot-print. How about donating or earmarking 5 percent of its profits to mitigate the environmental impact of its products? Apple, you are one of the most popular and closely watched companies. And you have Al Gore on the board. Either you are doing very little or hurting yourself by not responding adequately about what you are doing on the green front. Whatever it is, buck up!

Via : As You Sow Foundation

Zuckerberg wears a tie now and says," 2009 is a serious year"

CEO of Facebook, 24 year old Mark Zuckerberg founded this site about five years ago, originally meant to merely serve as an online platform for cool college kids to check each other out. But recently President Obama used it to get elected. Dell will recruit new hires with it. Microsoft’s new operating system borrows from it. No question, Facebook has friends in high places. With a 175 million strong army of members, Facebook is growing at the astounding rate of about five million new users a week, making it a rare bright spot in a dismal economy.

 Facebook is hugely popular because it helps us present different faces to the different people in our lives, with varying degrees of information and privacy (in a digital form).But Zuckerberg’s ultimate goal is much more ambitious: to turn Facebook into the planet’s standardized communication (and marketing) platform, as ubiquitous and intuitive as the telephone but far more interactive, multidimensional – and indispensable.

But the Facebook juggernaut still could very easily go awry: Remember AOL’s Instant Messenger? Teenagers lived on it and companies started using it in lieu of e-mail. But AOL never figured out a way to make money on it. So that should be Zuckerberg’s prime concern – to also figure out a way of making profits from its popularity thru advertisers and marketers. At the same time, users will inevitably become uncomfortable about marketers eavesdropping in and tapping the information constantly from their online behavior, so the challenge is to make the marketing as unobtrusive as possible.

Via: Fortune

Printers are those dreadedly important inventions that never seem to be available when someone actually truly needs it. Carrying one on you person doesn’t seem to be something that can actually happen outside the sets of Mission:Impossible, or is it?

The era of super-small printers is here, after having waited for it for centuries and when you need it the most. The jazzy pink and chequered blue Inkless Photo Printers are pocket-sized so you can easily stuff them into your back pockets and carry them just about anywhere. What’s more, these mini-creations by Zink aren’t just extremely great and practical to have around, they also carry a design that one would find most cool to flaunt around.

Zink’s Inkless (say what?) Photo Printers by Dell are being sold at $100 right now although the price for these pretty little beauties is supposed to be $149, so hurry before you have to pay the extra money for these must-haves for all gadget freaks.

Via: Gizmodo