Dropbox users can now open up their large files and have the first part of it appear while the rest of it fills in, similar to how Netflix users can stream and watch videos before they are finished downloading.

The company claimed that with streaming, sync times can potentially be twice as fast as before.

Dropbox graph detailing speed of sync

With Amazon’s Zocalo document collaboration tool taking the spotlight from both Dropbox and Box’s own collaboration tools, it seems as if both Dropbox and Box will have to release some new capabilities to their products in order to distinguish themselves in this competitive market.

It was only last June when Dropbox competitor Box bought out the startup Streem in an effort to bolster its own streaming capabilities. Bitcasa, a cloud storage competitor to both Dropbox and Box, operates solely on streaming.

Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Shutterstock user cybrain.

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For comparison’s sake 1 GW is about enough electricity to power around 700,000 American homes. The Hoover Dam has about 2 GW of capacity. (My bad that’s not a fair comparison) So pushing half a Hoover Dam of capacity through Tesla chargers into the batteries of Model S cars is no small potatoes.

Tesla chargers, image courtesy of Tesla.

Tesla plans to ship 35,000 Model S cars by the end of 2014, and it delivered 22,477 in 2013. So by the end of 2014 there will be well north of 50,000 Model S cars charging and discharging energy into millions of lithium ion batteries throughout the day and night.

Tesla is somewhat unique in the electric car charging market in that the chargers were launched specifically as a benefit — free electricity — for Model S drivers. Most other electric car infrastructure companies don’t also sell cars, so networks like Chargepoint are building businesses just off of installing electric car chargers and then selling subscriptions or doing other deals to recoup the investment. Nissan has taken a cue from Tesla in that it’s offering free charging for new LEAF drivers.

Navigant Research forecasts that global revenue from the sales of electric vehicle supply equipment will grow from $567 million in 2013 to $5.8 billion in 2022.

Updated to clarify its 1 GW hour per month.

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I think Amazon has its eyes firmly set on Google and Microsoft, its two biggest rivals in the fight to own cloud computing. They won’t say it publicly, but I think all three of these companies view each individual customer as a zero-sum game, and AWS has realized that its huge lead in the cloud infrastructure business doesn’t apply across the board. The cloud is about platforms, and AWS’s platform is incomplete.

Servers? Check. Storage? Check. Databases? Check. File-sharing? Uh, …

But it’s not just collaboration where AWS is playing catchup. That’s why it announced new mobile-development services on Wednesday, as well, and why it recently released the virtual desktop service it announced last November. Microsoft and Google have been working for years toward integrated cloud platforms that touch everything from mobile apps to machine learning, from business users to CTOs. Amazon, until recently, was pretty much targeting application developers, engineers and IT types.

And it still has a long way to go and some big challenges to overcome. The competition to win mobile developers seems like a tricky one for AWS to navigate. Amazon has its own Kindle Fire mobile OS and device businesses to prop up, but their market share is so small it can’t ignore iOS or Android. Google, on the other hand, pretty much builds Android tools. Even Microsoft, which has its own mobile-development service that supports iOs, Windows and Android, ignores Kindle Fire OS.

And although Zocalo might be a great product, how many people within any given organization has, or want, an AWS account? If a company is running Office 365 or Google Apps, the same login gets them email, collaboration and productivity software. Video meetings, too. CIOs might like AWS’s control and security features (for now), but for users — who increasingly win these battles today — there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of benefit in throwing another service into the mix.

Amazon CTO Werner Vogels (left) has been the face of cloud computing for nearly a decade. (c) Jakub Mosur

Don’t get me wrong, though: AWS still has a huge lead in the infrastructure-as-a-service space, and that counts for something. A lot, in fact. Infrastructure is the foundation of the platforms these companies are pushing — the stuff running the applications and storing the data that makes them money — and I doubt many users are going to rip out their foundations because Google Drive has some new features, or even because someone’s prices are now a sliver lower.

But the Microsoft and Google armies are on the march there, too. While Microsoft can probably skirt a direct confrontation by relying its connection to legacy workloads and installed software, Google seems particularly determined to confront AWS head on. It seems to believe very strongly that it can win.

If I were Aaron Levie or Drew Houston, or the CEO of any cloud-service startup for that matter, I wouldn’t be too concerned that Amazon Zocalo or Office 365 or Google Drive will be the great undoing of my company. I’d be more concerned about the enormous organizations behind them fighting for control of a market they see as being about much, much more than who can collaborate on documents with whom. File-sharing and collaboration are just checks in a box, like McDonald’s adding Angus beef to its menu.

Amazon, Google and Microsoft are betting that IT departments will want to buy it all. The fewer stops, the better.

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“We believe Yahoo will be a perfect fit for our people and capabilities, as Video and Mobile offerings are a central part of Yahoo’s vision. Yahoo’s global scale and broad content base, combined with its amazing leadership and appetite for success, creates an ideal environment for our team to thrive and be pushed to the next level.”

Financial details of the acquisition haven’t been released.

RayV was founded 8 years ago in Israel, but eventually relocated its corporate leadership to Los Angeles, with R&D still being conducted in Tel Aviv. The company has been developing technology to facilitate live and on-demand video streaming, including a proprietary player and a cloud-based video platform. Some of the company’s clients and partners included the NBA, DirecTV and Blizzard Entertainment, according to a Google-cached part of its website.

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As reported in The Hill, Senators Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) and Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) introduced the bill, which would allow companies to skip etching the FCC logo onto smartphones, tablets, and laptops, and instead present the certification as a “digital stamp.” A digital stamp could take the form of a splash screen when the device boots up, or as a menu item alongside other device information.

This could be a boon for companies figuring out how to include legally required regulatory information on devices and device categories that continue to shrink, like smartwatches. But while it could save money on etching costs, it also presents problems for devices without screens. Lots of internet of things products require FCC approval and labeling, but might not offer a logical way to display a “digital stamp.”

Also note that the FCC certification isn’t the only indecipherable symbol on the back of gadgets; the European Union uses a CE logo, China has its own certification stamp and there are also often symbols from nonprofits like the Underwriters Laboratory to certify that the product is reliable. Even if this bill passes and eventually becomes law — and it’s still in its early stages — gadget makers would still have to meet international labeling requirements, so you’ll still be buying phones with inscrutable symbols on the back.

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E-Rate has helped bring broadband internet access to classrooms and library stacks across the country. But because of the way the rules are written it proved difficult for applicants to build Wi-Fi networks, even as the tools of online education increasingly become wireless. The FCC’s updated rules, however will earmark $1 billion in funds for Wi-Fi networking in 2015 and another $1 billion in 2016.

Though school Wi-Fi may seem like a innocuous topic, the issue proved surprisingly controversial and the vote was split down party lines. Republican lawmakers and Commissioner Ajit Pai said the new rules would favor big urban schools over rural ones. Meanwhile, teachers unions and education groups think the FCC hasn’t gone far enough. They pointed out that the overall funding levels and the structure for E-Rate have remained unchanged since nearly its inception, despite the growing importance of internet access to education.

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And now we’ll see how much those names still mean as the Domain Investing blog noted that Heritage Auctions is auctioning off DEC.com and Digital.com  domain names. Heritage is the same outfit that is auctioning off the bitcoins.com domain name.

DEC.com is the fifth oldest internet domain name, initially registered in 1985. It predates other brands including Xerox.com, IBM.com, Sun.com, Intel.com, AT&T.com and GE.com, according to Aaron Meystedt, founder and director of Heritage Auctions Intellectual Property Division, which is conducting the auction.

Hewlett-Packard owns both domain names by virtue of its $19 billion or so acquisition of Compaq in 2002. That was three years after Compaq bought DEC for $9.5 billion. And it’s tried to sell the domains before; maybe the price wasn’t right. As I type this, the bidding for Digital.com stands at $60,000; for DEC.com at $25,000.

A VAX-ll/780 minicomputer from Digital. The VAX, or virtual address extension, series of 32-bit minicomputers was one of the most popular and versatile minis in the world. Photo via creative commons license from Harvard.

DEC founder Ken Olsen in 1981.

DEC was founded in Maynard, Mass in 1957 — its HQ was in an old textile mill building on the Assabet River. Bread-and-butter products included the PDP-8, credited as the world’s first minicomputer. That machine was followed by the PDP-11 and VAX minicomputers (and VMS operating system), and Alpha chips. DEC was hugely profitable throughout the 1960s and 1970s and blazed the trail for many other minicomputer makers including Computervision, Prime, Data General. But these companies all missed the PC revolution, and faded from view.

While DEC/Digital is long gone as a corporate entity its reputation lives on among geeks. And some alums have done great for themselves including Microsoft Senior Technical Fellow Dave Cutler. Jim Gray, another top Microsoft researcher who went missing in his sailboat in 2007, was also a DEC veteran. Chris Lynch, former CEO of Vertica and now partner Atlas Ventures is another DEC alum.

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In a Facebook post, Schumer invoked “Title II,” which has been a third rail in discussions on telecom policy, because it would require companies like Comcast to behave more like public utilities. His post reads in part:

“Like a highway, the internet must remain free and open for all; not determined by the highest bidders … Title II reclassification is the best way to for us to preserve the internet as an unfettered tool for communication and the sharing of ideas.”

In response to the post, prominent figures from the tech world, including Reddit’s Alexis Ohanain and lawyer Marvin Ammori, left comments hailing Schumer’s plan as an important step for startups. (This being the internet, the post was also greeted by a faction of trolls and loudmouths). Here’s a screenshot:

Schumer’s post comes as the FCC closes its first round of comments next week on a policy that raised the idea of letting companies pay for “fast lanes” that would let them deliver their content ahead of other sites.

The current rules on what internet providers can and can’t do are in disarray after an appeals court struck down the FCC’s previous “net neutrality” policies, but left the door open for the FCC to impose the Title II classification. FCC chair Tom Wheeler has said he will consider invoking the Title II rules, a position the internet companies vehemently oppose.

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