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Posts Tagged ‘given-the-dual’

This is a big week for Microsoft when it comes to the cloud. First, the company debuted Office 2010, which made a move towards the browser with cloud-based versions of Word, PowerPoint and Excel. Today, Microsoft is announcing the business model and launch timing for Azure, the company’s much hyped cloud operating system. The platform also includes a Web-based relational database in Microsoft SQL Azure, and connectivity and interoperability with .NET Services.

Microsoft says that Azure will be offered for purchase through a consumption-based pricing model and will try to continue to offer promotional discounts to enterprise customers. Pricing for Azure’s OS is $0.12 cents an hour for computing and $0.15 cents per Gigabyte per month for storage. SQL Azure will offer a basic $9.99 per month plan and a $99.99 business edition, which has a database capacity of up to ten gigabytes.

Microsoft also announced that Azure will begin to be commercially available at its Professional Developers Conference, which takes place in mid-November. Azure was announced last fall, and developers have already been testing the cloud based OS via Microsoft’s Community Technology Preview.

Microsoft chief software architect Ray Ozzie has been saying that Azure will establish Microsoft’s place in the cloud, especially given the dual strength of Microsoft’s platforms and applications and because of its lengthy experience serving both the consumer and enterprise spaces.

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A few artists have released iPhone apps now that give fans access to their music. Some of the more advanced ones even allow you to edit tracks. But now Universal Music Group (specifically, Interscope Geffen A&M) is apparently going to start launching these for its artists on a regular basis.

It’s launching a new app platform called Romplr in conjunction with digital entertainment studio, Moderati. The first app built on the platform, released today, allows you to remix songs by hip hop artist Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em. Basically, you pick one of Soulja Boy’s tracks, and controls pop up that allow you to decide the various aspects of the song that you hear. And you can tweak things pretty easily.

Then, when you’re done, you can share the recording you just made via email, on the Romplr site or on Facebook with one click. Right now, you can only edit three tracks “Crank That”, “Hey You There” and “Turn My Swag On,” but you will be able to download more.

The UI is nothing to write home about, but for those millions of people who inexplicably download ringtones, apps like this should be right up their alley. And apps like this should be a good test of the in-app purchasing system that was implemented with the iPhone 3.0 software update. It’s not clear if you buy a song in the app, if you can also access it through iTunes, but I would assume not. Regardless, apps that use real music tracks, such as Tap Tap Revenge, are proving to be hugely popular.

Moderati has a history of success in the App Store as it was behind the popular Zippo app, which was downloaded over 4 million times, we’re told. But the plan for this project extends beyond just the iPhone, as Android, BlackBerry and Ovi are all being targeted as well.

You can find the Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em Romplr app in the App Store now for $4.99 [iTunes Link].

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Good news for P2P lending and trading platform Prosper as it concludes its 9-month hiatus during which it was not allowed to continue its loan operations in the United States.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is now greenlighting Prosper to facilitate peer-to-peer lending in 14 states with more on the way, borrowing nearly nationwide. Prosper is now the first and thus only Internet auction-based P2P loans platform to have its registration statement declared effective by the SEC, which is evidently good news for other players in the P2P lending industry, such as Lending Club.

SEC’s approval of Prosper’s secondary marketplace, which enables people to loan money directly to other individual and institutional investors, comes a couple of months after the startup had already reignited its lending platform in the State of California.

Chris Larsen, CEO and co-founder of Prosper, is happy the dry period is over:

“With the financial system in crisis, P2P lending – Americans investing in fellow Americans and small businesses – is needed now more than ever. It has been extremely frustrating to be on the sidelines in the teeth of a credit crunch.”

Starting today, Prosper is available to lenders in California, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New York, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. Borrowing is permitted in the District of Columbia and all states except Iowa, Kansas, Maine, and North Dakota.

Prosper has raised approx. $40 million in capital to date from Accel Partners, DAG Ventures, Fidelity Ventures and Benchmark Capital, among other investors. The company was the first to introduce the concept of people-to-people lending in the U.S. when it launched in 2006. From the time the startup officially launched up until the time it entered an SEC registration quiet period in October 2008, Prosper claims to have grown to more than 800,000 members, facilitating approximately $180 million in personal loans.

Prosper has now enhanced its auction model to include a so-called hard bid floor for each listing, which helps lenders appropriately price for risk while investing online. The bid floor for each listing is calculated by adding the national average certificate of deposit rate that matches the term of the borrower loan to the minimum estimated loss rate assigned to each listing. In addition, Prosper has lowered its minimum bid requirement to $25 (previously $50), which should make it easier for lenders to diversify, particularly smaller ones.

More details are available on the Prosper blog.

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