Amazon has reportedly submitted plans for a new futuristic headquarters in Seattle that combines a skyscraper and a tri-sphere, bio-dome-like structure. According to the plans, the structure will be able to hold various forms of plant life and become a place where employees can “work and socialize in a more natural, park-like setting.”

Because, God forbid, employees walk to the park that’s three blocks away.

Here’s an excerpt from the plans (also, hat tip to GeekWire for the find):

While the form of the building will be visually reminiscent of a greenhouse or conservatory, plant material will be selected for its ability to co-exist in a microclimate that also suits people. To encourage growth and maintain the health of the plants, the building’s interior will include high bay spaces on five floors totaling approximately 65,000 SF and capable of accommodating mature trees. The exterior enclosure will be highly transparent and be composed primarily of multiple layers of glass supported by a metal framework. In addition to a variety of workplace environments, the facility will incorporate dining, meeting and lounge spaces, as well as a variety of botanical zonesmodeled on montane ecologies found around the globe. The building will be anchored at either end by publically accessible retail spaces entered from 6th and 7th Avenues.

Generally, it all sounds very cool and very futuristic and very trendy (read: Apple did the whole “plans for a spaceship” thing ages ago). However, it’s interesting to see how the biggest companies in tech are tackling the issue of working in an office or with a more loose structure.

Remember, everyone made a pretty big deal out of Marissa Mayer’s recent policy change that requires all Yahoo employees to work in an office. And just recently she announced that Yahoo would be taking up space in the Times building in New York’s Times Square, which is capable of housing up to 700 employees.

As it stands now, all of the big four tech companies — Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon — favor keeping employees in the office.

Google has one of the best campuses you could dream of, both in Mountain View and in New York, feeding employees free lunch from world-renowned chefs. Apple is working to build out one of Steve Jobs’ final projects, a new spaceship office. Facebook has the same diversions: chess boards, and video games, and basketball courts, and free lunch.

So of course, the fourth horseman in the race, Amazon is devising its own tricks to keep employees at the office as long as possible. It’s a win-win: Employees do more and better work due to a pleasing and comfortable work environment, and employers get more, and better work, out of their employees.

Also, there’s a perfectly good park just three blocks from the new campus.

Here’s the full set of plans:

Amazon’s new HQ design by John Cook

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Google is ramping up to deliver a streaming music service, which could debut as early as tomorrow at the I/O keynote, sources have told The Verge. The report has since been picked up by other publications, including The New York Times, which confirms that this is indeed the case according to its own unnamed sources, “people briefed on the plans.”

That Google would be working on a streaming, Spotify-style music service should surprise exactly no one. It’s been the elephant in the room among the major purveyors of digital music, including Apple, Amazon and Google ever since Spotify and competitors like Rdio emerged and started picking up steam and adding users.

Neither Spotify nor Rdio have come anywhere close to unseating the big guys in terms of users or music revenues, but that doesn’t mean that Apple and Google haven’t noticed the growing trend towards streaming. Juniper Research said recently that streamed music revenues will grow by more than 40 percent in 2013, rising to $1.7 billion by the end of the year. That’s still peanuts compared to the revenue Apple alone drives from iTunes music sales each year (it paid out $3.4 billion to record labels in 2012, which is after it takes its own cut).

The Google streaming service has been in development for a while now, according to rumors, but negotiations have now progressed to the point where it’s ready to launch, with all three major record labels signed up. There won’t be a free option, says the NYT, but instead there will be a paid subscription available at or around the going rate at competing services, or roughly $10 per month.

If true, this means Google’s negotiations with streaming services have progressed far faster and further than Apple’s, which reportedly hit a snag earlier this week. Both Apple and Google had previously raced to introduce cloud-based digital locker services for Google music, which allowed people to access tracks they’d previously purchased remotely from a variety of devices rather than stream tracks Spotify-style. That seemed like a sure precursor to a true streaming service, but labels were reportedly reluctant to go all-in on that model originally.

The strangest thing about this is that Google is reportedly still doing the YouTube-based streaming music service that had previously made the rounds, in addition to this new one, which will apparently operate alongside it. How these work, especially in terms of what they give users access to and for what cost, should provide an interesting look at how Google is looking at dividing its media business efforts.

We’ll likely find out tomorrow if this Google streaming thing is for real, live at the I/O keynote right here on TechCrunch.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo has announced it plans to invest around $50 million into Japanese digital entertainment company Pioneer Corporation, which makes in-car electronics, to acquire approximately seven per cent of the company. The pair described the investment as “a business and capital alliance” in a press release today. The news was spotted earlier by ZDNet.

Specifically, DoCoMo said it intends to “integrate Pioneer’s in-car navigation telematics technologies and related peripheral development capabilities with [its own] mobile cloud expertise to make a full-scale entry into the field of intelligent transport systems (ITS)”. The pair have previously partnered for the integration of car electronics and information services, including the “Docomo Drive NetTM” navigation service, which incorporates DoCoMo’s smartphones placed in dashboard-mounted cradles, but this latest move pushes DoCoMo deeper into the transport systems space.

The pair said they will jointly develop an ITS, for launch later this year, which will comprise of a platform plus services for consumers and businesses, and also in-car hardware.

Here’s how they describe the plans:

The envisioned in-car ITS system will use probe data gathered from Pioneer’s car-mounted navigation system and DOCOMO smartphones in moving vehicles to process detailed traffic information in Pioneer’s ITS cloud platform. ITS services that integrate this information with various other services will be jointly developed and launched for individual and corporate customers this year.

In addition to developing such services and constructing ITS-related cloud infrastructure, the two companies will develop and sell compatible car-mounted communication devices.

DoCoMo said it will make the investment of about five billion yen (approx. $50 million) through a third-party allocation of new shares to acquire approx. 7% stake in Pioneer this coming June 28.

Matt Sanchez, co-founder and CEO of Say Media (which owns sites like xoJane, ReadWrite, and Dogster), just told me that the company has laid off about 10 percent of its 400-person staff.

Sanchez described this as part of Say’s transformation from an ad network to “a digital media company.” The company isn’t getting out of the ad network business completely, but that part of Say is relatively mature and that the company’s focus should be on the content side. The layoffs, Sanchez said, were really about looking “at all parts of the business except for sales and our content organization” and bringing them in line with that vision.

As for why the layoffs are happening now, he said there’s more pressure on digital media companies to become profitable. For example, he pointed to TechCrunch-owner Aol’s recent earnings report (the company is still facing a lot of questions about whether its content business can ever be a moneymaker, and CEO Tim Armstrong tried to allay those concerns by saying that Patch will be profitable in the fourth quarter).

Sanchez told me that with the layoffs, Say should be profitable in the second half of 2013. Looking ahead, he said he plans to stay focused on the content verticals that Say has already established (style, tech, and living), but that doesn’t preclude launching or acquiring new sites in the future — he just wants to do that using the company’s profits, rather than raising more venture capital.

“Regardless of whether it’s an IPO, an acquisition, whatever you think about our long-term prospects from an exit perspective, nothing’s changed,” Sanchez said. “We want to build an enduring media company. … We just think the best way to get there is to get profitable and grow from strength.”

Here’s the memo that Sanchez sent to Say staff:

Sayers,

This morning we had to say goodbye to some really talented Say Media employees and it was tough. It’s been a difficult day for all of us, and I know that many of you are feeling the absence of our colleagues and friends. We did not make these decisions lightly; each person that left today has contributed to our mission and will be missed.

Two and a half years ago, we set out on a course to build the media company of the future. We knew it wouldn’t be easy, and along the way the media landscape has continued to shift. We’ve navigated from ad network to media company while the transactional display market has commoditized on exchanges as predicted. We’ve invested heavily in this transformation, and are coming out the other side with a solid foundation for the future.

We have built out a world-class publishing platform, transformed our sales team, evolved our offering to content-led marketing programs and filled out our brand portfolio with talent and brands we are all very proud of. Our focus on Point-of-View content is working. Our brands are deeply engaging, growing communities of readers. The publishing platform on which these brands sit boasts a pipeline of new products that are poised to change the media landscape. And our advertising solutions are impressive and working hard for our marketing partners.

That said, the time is right for us to transition aggressively to continued growth with profitability. To that end, we’ve made a set of hard decisions aimed at right-sizing our business with a greater focus on supporting our strong content brands, growing sales and building innovative publishing and advertising products — while at the same time achieving profitability in the second half of this year.

Each and every one of you is incredibly important to what we are building at Say. Your passion, intelligence, energy and loyalty are what make this company and our culture so special. Today’s actions were painful but necessary for us to move forward, and I am confident we are on the right path to creating the media company of the future.

We’ll get together tomorrow for an All Hands, and I’ll share more detail about this action and our plans for the year. As always, please reach out to me if you have any questions.

Thanks,
Matt

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Makerbot has released an inspiring video about how a group of hackers built 3D-printed hands for children and adults who are missing fingers or entire hands. The project aims to take the cost and complexity associated with hand prosthesis out of the process. It is working.

The blog post is here but, in short, the Robohand project is an effort to release the plans for a completely open-source, 3D-printable hand. The fingers close when the user bends his or her wrist and the parts can be printed on any 3D printer. It’s perfect for kids because, as they grow, caregivers can simply upgrade the hand with a few mouse clicks.

“We scale it up and print him another one,” said Richard Van As, a carpenter who lost four fingers in an on-the-job accident. Van As, who lives in Johannesburg, learned of the Makerbot when he teamed up with prop designer Ivan Owen. Owen and Van As collaborated on the project over the past year and have helped folks with amputated or missing digits get the proper prostheses.

You can donate to the project here or just enjoy the video. I would equate this project to the effort to give out glasses to children in the developing world. The fact that two Internet buddies solved the problem of hand prosthetics in their spare time, however, is amazing and inspiring.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Kickstarter-funded Bitponics was showing off its finished product at TechCrunch Disrupt NY’s Hardware Alley today in New York, which is shipping out to backers in the next few weeks according to company cofounder Michael Zick Doherty. The Bitponics system is a cloud-based hydroponic garden manager, complete with a web-based dashboard that’s accessible anywhere and can control every aspect crucial to the process, like the pH of the soil, temperature, light and moisture level.

The Kickstarter project from the Brooklyn-based company managed to pass its $20,000 goal back in June of last year, as people seemed drawn to the idea of a platform that takes a lot of the guesswork out of setting up and managing a hydroponic garden. It’s designed to be dead-simple, with guides for how much sun, water and nutrition your plants need. It collects data via sensors that plug into a base, which connects to your local Wi-Fi network, and then logs data in a dashboard and can send you notices when things aren’t going exactly as they should. The base has two power outlets built in which feature timers that allow you to set schedules for components like lights and pumps.

“I was working for a company called Windows Farms doing the hydroponic systems, who do the growing and the plumbing and all those aspects of it,” Doherty said of how Bitponics came up with the idea. “My issue with hydroponics is that there are a lot of things that you have to know well to be able to grow well, and there’s a lot of time put into monitoring the conditions of the plans.”

As a hardware and software platform startup, I asked what the biggest challenges Bitponics has faced in terms of actually delivering a product. Doherty said that there were challenges with manufacturing and getting that right, but that the biggest challenge was making sure the entire process was engineered correctly in terms of user experience, so that literally anyone could pick it up and use it, and grow things well.

“Probably the biggest challenge was figuring out a user flow that was something that anyone could do,” he said. “Building something that someone who had never tried hydroponics, or someone who had never touched a computer would be able to just follow these instructions and get running in a reasonable amount of time, that was a huge challenge.”

Bitponics is going to start shipping to the general public once it gets all of its backer systems out to Kickstarter supporters, when it’ll be available for $499 for the base station, with service available on a recurring subscription basis. If you’re looking for a way to manage your in-home herb or cannabis farm even when you’re away on business, this could be one to check out.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The Tech City high tech cluster in London’s East End is getting an extra helping of high speed mobile connectivity from June. Carrier EE, which owns and operates the U.K.’s first and still only LTE/4G network, has announced it is partnering with the area’s quango, the Tech City Investment Organisation, to install a network of 4G hotspots in “key locations” for businesses in the area to use.

It’s unclear exactly where these hotspots will be, or whether they will be open to non-EE customers to use (albeit, you’d still need a 4G-enable device running on the correct frequency to benefit from EE’s 4G speeds). Update: According to a person familiar with the plans MiFis will be provided so that non-EE customers can get 4G speeds.

We’ve reached out to EE for more information and will update this story with any response.  Update: An EE spokeswoman said: “We’ll be sharing more details in the coming weeks.” Tech City confirmed to TechCrunch it is involved in the partnership but was not in a position to provide further details.

Here’s EE’s initial statement about the 4G Tech City hotspots:

EE will next month unveil a partnership with Tech City to provide businesses in the East London area with early access to some of the fastest mobile broadband connectivity in the world.

The plans will both provide businesses with the connectivity that they need to thrive, as well allow them to test and create new ideas and applications, that will rely on the fast networks and infrastructure of tomorrow.

EE’s partnership with Tech City will commence in June, with the introduction of 4G mobile Wi-Fi hotspots in key locations.

EE also plans to introduce superfast double-speed 4G to Tech City, ahead of a wider national roll out.
More news will be announced regarding EE and Tech City’s partnership in the coming weeks.

According to EE’s 4G coverage checker tool, East London is already blanketed in the good stuff — so presumably the additional hotspots are aimed at increasing network density in areas where high-tech businesses are located to serve demand for extra bandwidth. Either that or EE’s 4G map is painting a misleading picture of 4G coverage in the area:

Crowdsourced mobile signal tracker OpenSignal paints a rather different picture of 4G connectivity across London (see map below) — with only a few spots in a few locations and nothing cropping up in East London. This is likely to be, at least in part, a result of OpenSignal having limited 4G data to work with. The number of 4G users in the U.K. remains small (numbered in the low hundreds of thousands — not all of whom are likely to be living in London or using OpenSignal’s data gathering app). EE’s 4G network only launched at the end of October last year.

Whatever the reality of 4G connectivity in East London, more high speed connectivity and connectivity options is good news for the area’s startups. Well positioned 4G hotspots could provide a useful stop-gap for businesses waiting to get fibre broadband installed, for example. Or offer an alternative if fibre is not an option. EE’s current headline 4G download speed is around 80Mbps, with average speeds pegged at around 20Mbps.

Earlier this month the carrier announced plans to double its headline speeds to 130Mbps in the U.K.’s 10 biggest cities by this summer, which obviously includes London. According to EE’s Tech City statement today, London’s Tech City will get these doubled speeds before any other U.K. regions — so presumably that speed bump will also take place around June.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

A dramatic turn of events in the ongoing story of U.S. carrier consolidation: Dish Network is launching a $25.5 billion bid for number-three carrier Sprint, amounting to $17.3 billion in cash and $8.2 billion in stock. If successful, the deal would effectively snatch Sprint out of the hands of Japanese carrier Softbank, which in October announced that it would pay $20.5 billion for a 70% stake in Sprint.

The deal would see pay-TV giant Dish pay $4.76 per share for Sprint; the carrier closed trading at $6.22 on Friday, April 12, but the news is sending Sprint stock up. In pre-market trading it’s up by over 15% after slumping last week.

The deal, as Dish notes in an SEC filing made this morning, will give Dish a much larger user base and revenue profile (if more burden in the form of a capital-intensive network). Sprint currently has 47.5 million subscribers, compared to 14.2 million for Dish. The idea will be that Dish will cross-market its pay-TV services to Sprint’s wireless subscribers, and market wireless services to its pay-TV subscribers. Quad-play is alive and well!

It’s an aggressive move by the pay-TV provider to get its hand deeper into the wireless game as smartphones and tablets become ever-more popular, and mobile data becomes many users’ default channel for browsing online, accessing apps, watching video and more.

“The DISH proposal clearly represents superior value to Sprint shareholders, including greater ownership in a combined company that is better positioned for the future with more spectrum, products, subscribers, financial scale and new opportunities,” chairman Charles Ergen said in a statement.

The Softbank bid has had the mark of approval from Sprint. The announcement in October was made with significant pomp and circumstance with an event in Japan at which Softbank’s CEO Masayoshi Son extolled the virtues of synergies and economies of scale between the two companies, specifically around LTE and the fact that both are developing services on the same frequency. At the same event, Dan Hesse, Sprint’s CEO, was also very supportive:

“This is pro-competitive and pro-consumer,” he said at the time, because it helps fight the “AT&T and Verizon duopoly.” There is also strength in being number-three together: “When we look at what Softbank has accomplished as the number-three carrier in Japan, we can learn something from that,” he added.

In contrast, Dish’s offer has a decidedly more unsolicited look about it:

“We would be pleased to discuss our plans for the combined company and we are available at any time to meet with the Sprint Board, management and advisors to answer any questions about our proposed merger,” Charles Ergen writes. “We are confident that the Sprint Board will share our view that this proposed merger offers an excellent opportunity for the equity holders of Sprint to realize a superior value for their shares that is unavailable to them under the SoftBank proposal.”

Sprint would need to pay a $600 break fee if it backed out of the Softbank merger. Ergen told the WSJ, whih first reported the news today, that Dish would cover that cost in its offer.

Dish has been circling around different wireless assets for some time now. Just last week, it was reported that Dish wanted to merge with T-Mobile USA, which itself is merging with MetroPCS. Dish is also eyeing up Clearwire, the wireless carrier in which Sprint has also been an investor.

But in the WSJ, Ergen noted that the Sprint deal appeared more likely than the Clearwire bid. Speaking in the past tense (an implication that the door is now closed on Clearwire?) he said that the “deck was stacked against us” when it came to Clearwire because of what WSJ refers to as “contractual obligations.” This has partly to do with Clearwire shareholders that are trying to force Sprint to increase its own buyout offer of Clearwire, which is tied up with debt financing. All the same, Dish notes in one of its SEC filings today that were both deals to go through, it would create a business that generated in 2012 (on a pro-forma basis) some $50 billion in revenues and $9.4 billion in EBITDA.

It’s important for Dish to make a move one way or the other: it owns wireless spectrum — 40 MHz in the 2 GHz band — but no network on which to run services.

On the other hand, if all of these attempts fall through, it remains a takeover candidate itself, partly because of the spectrum shortage among bigger carriers looking for more airwaves for their own fast-growing mobile data services. AT&T earlier this year was mentioned as one possible Dish acquirer.

Full announcement below.

DISH Network Proposes Merger with Sprint Nextel Corporation for $25.5 Billion

U.S. technology leader with track record of disrupting entrenched incumbents presents superior alternative to pending SoftBank proposal – DISH offers more cash and a greater ownership stake
Sprint shareholders would receive $7.00 per share, consisting of $4.76 in cash and stock representing approximately 32% in a company with a significantly enhanced strategic position
Creates an industry-leading spectrum portfolio and the only company that can offer customers a fully-integrated, nationwide bundle of in- and out-of-home video, broadband and voice services
Delivers substantial synergies and growth opportunities estimated at $37 billion in net present value, including an estimated $11 billion in cost savings

ENGLEWOOD, Colo.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–DISH Network Corporation (NASDAQ: DISH) today announced that it has submitted a merger proposal to the Board of Directors of Sprint Nextel Corporation (NYSE: S) for a total cash and stock consideration of $25.5 billion. The DISH proposal clearly represents superior value to Sprint shareholders, including greater ownership in a combined company that is better positioned for the future with more spectrum, products, subscribers, financial scale and new opportunities.

DISH is offering Sprint shareholders a total consideration of $25.5 billion, consisting of $17.3 billion in cash and $8.2 billion in stock. Sprint shareholders would receive $7.00 per share, based upon DISH’s closing price on Friday, April 12, 2013. This consists of $4.76 per share in cash and 0.05953 DISH shares per Sprint share. The cash portion of DISH’s proposal represents an 18% premium over the $4.03 per share implied by the SoftBank proposal, and the equity portion represents approximately 32% ownership in the combined DISH/Sprint versus SoftBank’s proposal of a 30% interest in Sprint alone. Together this represents a 13% premium to the value of the existing SoftBank proposal.

“The DISH proposal clearly presents Sprint shareholders with a superior alternative to the pending SoftBank proposal,” said Charlie Ergen, Chairman of DISH Network. “Sprint shareholders will benefit from a higher price with more cash while also creating the opportunity to participate more meaningfully in a combined DISH/Sprint with a significantly-enhanced strategic position and substantial synergies that are not attainable through the pending SoftBank proposal.”

Mr. Ergen continued, “A transformative DISH/Sprint merger will create the only company that can offer customers a convenient, fully-integrated, nationwide bundle of in- and out-of-home video, broadband and voice services. Additionally, the combined national footprints and scale will allow DISH/Sprint to bring improved broadband services to millions of homes with inferior or no access to competitive broadband services. This unique, combined company will have a leadership position in video, data and voice and the necessary broadband spectrum to provide customers with rich content everywhere, all the time.”

The proposed combination will result in synergies and growth opportunities estimated at $37 billion in net present value, including an estimated $11 billion in cost savings.

DISH has provided additional information regarding the proposed merger via a dedicated transaction microsite that can be accessed at http://www.CompleteDishSolution.com.

Barclays is acting as financial advisor to DISH.

Following is text of the letter that DISH sent to Sprint Nextel Corp. Board of Directors on April 15, 2013.

Board of Directors
Sprint Nextel Corporation
6200 Sprint Parkway
Overland Park, KS 66251
Attn: James H. Hance, Jr., Chairman of the Board

Dear Jim:

On behalf of DISH Network Corporation (“DISH”), I am submitting this proposal for a merger between DISH and Sprint Nextel Corporation (“Sprint”). Our proposal provides Sprint shareholders with a superior alternative to the pending SoftBank Corporation (“SoftBank”) proposal. It provides more cash and affords your shareholders the opportunity to participate more meaningfully in a combined DISH/Sprint, which will benefit from a significantly enhanced strategic position and substantial synergies that are not attainable through the pending SoftBank proposal.

We are offering Sprint shareholders a total consideration of $25.5 billion, consisting of $17.3 billion in cash and $8.2 billion in stock. Sprint shareholders would receive $7.00 per share, based upon DISH’s closing price on Friday, April 12, 2013. This consists of $4.76 per share in cash and 0.05953 DISH shares per Sprint share. The cash portion of our proposal represents an 18% premium over the $4.03 per share implied by the SoftBank proposal, and the equity portion represents approximately 32% ownership in the combined DISH/Sprint versus SoftBank’s proposal of a 30% interest in Sprint alone. Together this represents a 13% premium to the value of the existing SoftBank proposal.

Our proposal provides a highly-compelling and unique opportunity for Sprint shareholders. We are offering an ownership interest in a combined company with a comprehensive product and services suite, a significantly enhanced subscriber base, considerable financial and operating scale, as well as a spectrum portfolio that would lead the industry. As a result, this merger creates sizable cost and CAPEX savings and promises extensive new revenue opportunities.

Leveraging both companies’ existing assets and expertise, we will be the only company able to offer a fully-integrated, nationwide bundle of in- and out-of-home video, broadband and voice services to meet rapidly evolving customer preferences. The new company’s assets will immediately establish national cross-platform leadership and will position the company to deliver innovative services while expanding our collective subscriber base.

The proposed combination will result in synergies and growth opportunities estimated at $37 billion in net present value. This includes an estimated $11 billion in cost savings, representing approximately $1.8 billion in annual run-rate cost synergies by the third year after closing.

Further, our combined national footprints and scale will allow us to efficiently develop our joint spectrum assets to provide advanced services to the millions of homes with inferior or no access to competitive broadband services.

I am proud of the company we have built and believe we will be an excellent partner to Sprint. Like Sprint, DISH possesses a strong tradition of innovation and industry leadership. We created the third largest pay-TV provider while competing with incumbent cable monopolies and other entrenched operators. DISH has consistently led our industry in service and technology delivery with award-winning innovations like Hopper® with Sling®. Our history of value creation is outstanding. Investors in our 1995 initial public offering have enjoyed a total return of 27 times their original investment, significantly outperforming the broader markets and our peers. We also have a proven track record of responsible capital management.

DISH has significant experience structuring and consummating strategic transactions and only needs to complete confirmatory due diligence, which we believe can be done quickly with your cooperation. We have examined your merger agreement with SoftBank and we would be prepared to execute a definitive merger agreement on substantially similar terms and conditions. Though not a condition of our proposal, we anticipate that the pending transaction with Clearwire would be completed. We are confident that we can obtain all necessary approvals within a reasonable timeframe.

We intend to fund the $17.3 billion cash portion of the transaction using $8.2 billion of our balance sheet cash and additional debt financing. We have a proven track record in raising capital to fund strategic initiatives and have received a Highly Confident Letter from our financial advisor, Barclays, confirming our ability to raise the required financing.

We would be pleased to discuss our plans for the combined company and we are available at any time to meet with the Sprint Board, management and advisors to answer any questions about our proposed merger. We are confident that the Sprint Board will share our view that this proposed merger offers an excellent opportunity for the equity holders of Sprint to realize a superior value for their shares that is unavailable to them under the SoftBank proposal.

While it would have been our preference to have confidential discussions regarding this proposed merger, your existing agreement with SoftBank and the impending deadlines associated with your shareholder vote, will compel us to confirm our intentions publicly. We look forward to hearing from you.

Very Truly Yours,

DISH Network Corporation

Charlie Ergen
Chairman

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Hey Marissa! Check this one out.

Sqwiggle is browser-based group video chat built with work-from-homers in mind. It’s got the office-like immediacy that Skype lacks, but without the noise of a Google Hangout. I’m kind of in love with it.

As someone who puts words on the Internet for a living, I’ve been lucky enough to spend most of the last 5 years working from my home. Awesome, right? Yeah, to a point. The first year is all about celebrating the fact that you’re still wearing pajamas at noon. By the second year, you’re talking to your dog on a regular basis. By the third year, you start getting mad that your dog isn’t talking back.

There are things that help, of course. You can use chat room services like Campfire or Hipchat with your team to maintain some degree of social sanity — but for actually, you know, seeing your team, and looking at their lovely faces, and talking like humans should, nothing really fits the bill.

You could Skype each other when needed, but the whole calling process feels archaic and slow. You could sit in a constant Google Hangout, but then you’ve got to deal with the endless roar of everyone’s background noise being mashed up into a symphony of barking dogs, lawn mowers, and coffee shop chatter.

Sqwiggle finds the comfy sweet spot somewhere between the two. It’s “always-on”, in a sense, but without the background noise or distractions.

Here, just check out the demo video:

For our friends at work who can’t be caught watchin’ YouTube videos right now (Hey! You should work from home!), here’s how it works:

Each company gets their own “Workroom”, with each member getting a spot in a Brady Bunch-esque grid of heads. When you’re not actively in a conversation with someone, you appear to them as a black-and-white still photo that gets updated a few times per minute.

To speak with any other person in the room, you just click their face — bam, you’re connected. No ringing, no answering, just an immediate conversation. It’s sort of like turning to speak with someone in the office, except you still get to wear your pajamas.

Want to talk with two or three people? Just click each of their photos, and you’ll be in a group chat. Others can tell who is already talking to who based on matching colored icons that appear next to your name. If you click on someone who’s already in a conversation, you’ll join that conversation — again, it’s like walking up and joining a conversation in the office.

While Sqwiggle hopes that people will primarily use the video side of their product for conversations, some things just don’t work over video. How do you share images, or links? What if you want to send a quick text broadcast to everyone in the room?

For these, Sqwiggle has a slide-out “Stream” drawer, which functions as an auxiliary chat room of sorts. Images, videos, and links are displayed in-line, and it can be used for sending quick blurps of text when a video chat isn’t necessary or practical. The Stream drawer shrinks and grows with the scroll of your mouse wheel, with the grid of talking heads scaling alongside appropriately.

There’s no hard-cap on the number of people that can be in each room, though the team says things work best with 2-12 people in the current build.

Of course, there are all sorts of privacy matters to be considered with a set up like this; fortunately, this is something Sqwiggle is focusing on. They’re building a privacy mode that turns your timelapsed still shot into an anonymized outline, suggesting to your team that now is probably not a good time. They’re also considering implementing some sort of face detection, which would automatically enable privacy mode when you’re not right in front of your computer. Remembering not to bring your laptop into the bathroom, however, is on you.

While Sqwiggle is built to be run in the browser (it’s webRTC based, so it’ll only work with Chrome and recent nightly builds of Firefox for now), they’ve also got a super solid stand-alone client for OS X. Windows and Linux clients are in their plans, but those folks will need to use the browser offering for now.

Sqwiggle is free for the first month of use, but costs $9 per month per user thereafter. If you sign up for their Beta, however, they’ll knock the price down to $5 per month per user indefinitely. They’ve just begun to let teams into the Beta last night, with plans to get everyone in within the next week or two.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Asana, the high-profile productivity startup that’s trying to redesign the workplace around tasks (instead of email), is announcing a major update today, adding more powerful search functionality, bug tracking capabilities, and manager reporting.

Search is the biggest update in this launch, with the addition of full text search, structured search, and custom saveable search views. Co-founder Justin Rosenstein explains people spend a lot time finding information within an organization. But with the new search feature, Asana users should never face this problem again.

Essentially the default view in Asana to-date has been “Project View.” Now, with the launch of the advanced search functionality, Asana offers a “search view” of work. The new search views let you see the results of any search, from a simple keyword search to a rich structured search, in the Asana center pane. These views can be sorted by the task due date, creation time, or modification time. You can also navigate between tasks to see their details, or select multiple tasks to change them all at once. And you can save these views to create custom reports that update each time you switch to them.

Here’s how it works. For a simple full text search, you can type into the search box and choose “Search Tasks”. For a structured search, click the arrow at the right of the search box. You can then specify Assignee, Projects, Tags, Attachments, Completion Status, Due Dates and more. You can then narrow down to incomplete tasks, those with attachments, or the ones not assigned to you. Once you’ve created a search you want to use again, you can click the star next to the Search title to save it.

Additionally, Asana is debuting new manager reporting features to help managers keep track of their team and projects. You simply add your teammates to the “Assigned To” field, then filter by project or tag to drill down to the information you need. For example, Rosenstein says, a manager could pull up a comprehensive view of all the tasks their team is working on at the moment, their status and correspondence associated with these tasks.

Lastly, as Asana is fairly popular amongst the developer community, the startup is doubling down on bug tracking. Rosenstein says that Asana talked to a number of developers to determine what their needs are for bug tracking, and heard over and over that current bug tracking tools are not up to par.

So search has been updated to work well for bug tracking. For example, you can used the saved search function to allow the QA team watch for completed bugs that haven’t been QAed yet, or let the customer service team watching the bugs they opened to see as they become assigned and then completed.

Rosenstein says this update is a big step forward for Asana as a productivity application. “This is only the beginning of our plans,” he says. “Search is one of the core pillars of our product and we’re a company that is querying collective memory.”

Article courtesy of TechCrunch