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Google finally merged its Chrome browser with the Android mobile operating system today and I’m thrilled to see it. Not only is the new Chrome beta about 15 percent faster than the stock Android browser, it brings a cleaner interface that makes it easier to browse. And if you’re a Chrome user on the desktop, Chrome for Android can open whatever web page you’re browsing on the PC.

Watch this video for free on GigaOM

In this short video overview, you can get a sense for the new browser. I’ve already made it the default browser on my Galaxy Nexus because it renders text much better and also because of the web page syncronization feature. Note that Chrome for Android is in beta for Android 4.0 devices only; this won’t work on smartphones or tablets without Ice Cream Sandwich.

Note: In the video I said that the Galaxy Nexus stock browser has benchmarked faster. That was an inadvertent mistake as I confused the Nexus results with my Galaxy Tab 7.7 here.

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Robin Kwong / FT Tech Hub:
Acer sues former chief exec Lanci  —  Acer and its former chief executive Gianfranco Lanci may have parted ways for almost a year now, but it is apparently not quite water under the bridge between the two sides.  The Taiwanese company said on Tuesday that it has initiated legal action …

Consumer applications have driven the rapid take up of faster broadband services in the U.S. in the last decade as people downloaded iTunes songs and apps and watched streaming movies via Netflix. But as Google and others build gigabit networks to see what can be done with them, maybe it’s time to bring businesses back into the innovation cycle.

In Chattanooga, Tenn. the creation of a gigabit network has led to the formation of an incubator that wants to attract startups to the city this summer to play around with the nation’s first gigabit network. I spoke with Jack Studer, the managing partner at Lamp Post Group, which is the incubator hosting the contest, on what kinds of applications might drive people to get a gig.

Studer explained that while consumer applications were fun, the lack of other gigabit networks around the country made it a bit difficult to justify building a startup or business that needs a gigabit connection. Even if Studer has the bandwidth to receive a massively fat 3-D holographic image of me for a video conference, I couldn’t reciprocate on my 60 Mbps cable connection (that really delivers 30 Mbps) so building a consumer 3-D holographic web conferencing business is probably a long shot. Other similarly bandwidth-intensive ideas are also out … for now.

“Startups that require a gig — well, that business plan would suck. It’s like building up a business based on teleportation. It doesn’t exist yet,” said Studer.

Where the gigabit network really shines is business productivity says Studer. He points out that he can do things between his offices in Chattanooga that are truly business-changing such as real-time and continual data backups and replication. And that’s just the beginning. Studer has ideas around connecting distributed compute nodes around the city that could essentially turn Chattanooga into a giant supercomputer.

Gigabit speed, and the fact that no applications today require such speeds, mean a variety of services that now run on the computer might run in the network instead without it affecting the end-user. That has implications for data processing and the creation of new services based on an intelligent network. Such services might even become necessary as we connect more devices to the network.

For example, if we have a smart home where our computers, CE devices and even our lighting or appliances are connected to the network, we have to think about securing all of those endpoints. The current model of having antivirus software sitting on a PC no longer makes sense, but what about putting it on the network? A fast network means one could run services such as antivirus on the network without the user noticing.

But to bring the future to life, Studer needs students, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs to come to Chattanooga to play around with the network. Who’s up for the challenge?

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Mat Honan / Gizmodo:
Inside Instagram: How Slowing Its Roll Put the Little Startup in the Fast Lane  —  The must-have app on the iPhone is not iMessage.  It's not iTunes or Safari or even Find My iPhone.  It's Instagram, the photo-sharing app that once described itself as “quirky.”  Cultish would be more appropriate these days.

WibiData, a Hadoop-based startup focused on making it easier to analyze user behavior, has raised $5 million from New Enterprise Associates. The company, formerly known as Odiago, launched in late 2011 already claiming Wikipedia and Atlassian among its early customers.

Details about how, exactly, WibiData goes about letting users do web analytics have been sparse, but co-founder Aaron Kimball, who’ll also be presenting at our Structure: Data conference next month, explained some of it in a blog post on Monday afternoon. The post is fairly technical, but the gist is that WibiData leverages Apache Hadoop, HBase and Avro, as well as ample proprietary code, to enable both real-time and batch processing of user data. This lets users model customer profiles based on historical data, but also adjust those models in reaction to real-time activity on the site.

Here’s how Kimball describes the problems WibiData addresses:

Data about users has challenges associated with it that you don’t necessarily see with other large-scale data.

• To analyze users, you need to digest large volumes of log-oriented transactional data as well as more concise profile data
• You need to serve recommendations and other derived data interactively
• There’s a mix of batch (offline) and on-the-fly calculations required to deliver recommendations at web speed

WibiData is designed to store this transactional data side-by-side with profile and other derived data attributes. Keeping data logically and physically close enables high-performance analysis of the entire data picture surrounding a user.

FoneDoktor, without Wibidata

In some cases, as FoneDoktor’s Alex Loddengaard explained in a December blog post, WibiData can replace the need to maintain a Hadoop cluster and a separate online transaction processing system (OLTP) because WibiData provides both capabilities. It does this by using HBase as the real-time data store for transactions, and by incorporating a programming framework that’s abstracted from MapReduce so users can perform either batch or real-time analyses.

Where Avro comes in is for adding fields to data records, or adjusting schema, without affecting existing processes that have to access that data. As Kimball explains, “Does your web site track a new cookie? This can be added as a new field. But even though you start collecting that new data, your existing analysis pipelines can treat records like they always did; programs that don’t yet know about the new cookie are still compatible with both the old records already collected, and the new records with the additional field.”

Its data-management methods and machine-learning libraries for capabilities such as content recommendation make WibiData ideal for web-user data, but Kimball points out it’s also a good fit for “mobile, online gaming, healthcare, finance, and several other industries.” However, WibiData is just one of many startups looking to parlay its founders’ Hadoop expertise into a higher-level analytics product that does things Hadoop alone without requiring deep Hadoop or analytics expertise on the customer end. Good thing there’s plenty of data to go around.

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AKQA's new Paris office has plans for a staff of 40 to 50. Why now?

Tom Warren / The Verge:
Exclusive: First Windows Store games for Windows 8 revealed  —  Microsoft is readying its Windows Store for a public preview and the “Consumer Preview” version of Windows 8 will provide access to a number of launch games for the company's latest operating system.

Klout, the San Francisco-based startup that measures people’s “influence” across a variety of social networks, has made its first acquisition with the purchase of Blockboard, a Twitter-like mobile app that functions as a community bulletin board letting users post messages viewable to other people in their immediate area.

Financial terms of the deal haven’t been disclosed, but it looks like an acqui-hire more than anything else. Blockboard, which was previously known as BlockChalk, raised $1 million in a seed funding round back in May 2010, and since then the service does not appear to have generated any revenue. The four-person Blockboard team will be joining Klout, and according to the companies the Blockboard product will live on post-deal.

Klout announced the deal in a blog post Tuesday, writing:

“Blockboard has built an amazing local-mobile app that connects neighbors to build stronger communities through technology… With their experience, Blockboard brings an awareness of how social media can be meaningfully woven into the fabric of a local community, as well as a killer mobile app development team.”

Klout kept a relatively low profile for a couple months after some privacy-related snafus last year, so the announcement of the Blockboard acquisition serves as a public relations re-entry of sorts. It looks like Klout is not giving up any time soon, and it will be interesting to see how the company develops on the mobile and local fronts going forward.

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Google’s Chrome browser and Android mobile operating system went public in the same year but they haven’t converged until now. Google is finally introducing Chrome for Android, a beta which is limited to Android 4.0 devices.

The fact that Chrome will be limited to just about 1 percent of Android devices is a disappointment, but we should see Chrome proliferate on more smartphones and handsets as devices are upgraded to Android 4.0 and consumers buy new Ice Cream Sandwich hardware. The Android version of Chrome features a re-imagined tab system, fast browsing using one finger flicks and auto complete for searches and URLs. Chrome will pre-load sites it thinks you may visit. And there’s also a new system of previewing links by zooming in, making it easier to click-through.

Because its connected to a Google sign-in, users can get their personalized browsing experience transferred to their phone. That means you can see open tabs and synced bookmarks from the desktop version transferred over to Android. There’s also support for incognito mode so cookies and other data are not saved during a session. Like the existing Android browser, Chrome will not handle plug-ins including support for Flash.

The plan all along was to bring Chrome and Android together but Google found it tough to pull off. It finally made a breakthrough with the combination of the improved software in Ice Cream Sandwich and better hardware. That makes it unclear how many older Android devices if any will be able to get the Chrome browser. Google made do with a stock Android browser, which got smarter over time but it was never appropriate to call it a Chrome browser because it wasn’t based on the open-source foundation of Chrome.

Now, Google has a much more robust browser that can compete against third-party browsers such as Dolphin. And Google has a better way to position Android against iOS and its Safari browser. This could also eventually provide a boost for the desktop version of Chrome, which is growing quickly but still trails behind Explorer. For Google users, this is a good reminder of why it’s helpful to stick with Android.

Android users with Ice Cream Sandwich can download the browser in Android Market. Google plans on baking the browser into the operating system for upcoming Android 4.0 devices in the coming months.

It’s nice to see Chrome finally make its way to Android, more than three years after the two debuted. It’s going to have limited effect initially because of the small footprint of Ice Cream Sandwich. But it shows that Google still has ways to keep improving Android and make it even more polished and usable, a big priority with Android 4.0. IOS users may not be swayed as much since iOS 5.0 provided some improvements to the Safari browser, including Reading List and tabbed browsing for the iPad. But overall, it’s a good sign for consumers that they’re getting more robust browsing experiences on mobile devices, which is important as consumers spend more and more time accessing online services from their smartphones and tablets.

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Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
Klout Acquires Local And Mobile Neighborhood App Blockboard  —  Flush with new capital, Klout, the startup that measures influence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Foursquare, Google+ and other social apps, is making its first acquisition.  Klout is purchasing mobile and local neighborhood app Blockboard.

Greg Sandoval / CNET:
Judge denies EMI's bid to halt resale of digital music  —  ReDigi, a music marketplace for used digital tracks, will have its day in court.  —  EMI's The Capitol Records building in Hollywood.  Capitol Records is the EMI label represented in EMI's copyright suit against ReDigi.

MG Siegler / parislemon:
Chrome For Android: The Browser For The 1%  —  My title is literal, figurative, and facetious all in one.  I just hope Google has a good sense of humor about it — because they have a good product on their hands.  —  First of all, yes, Chrome for Android is here.

Eriq Gardner / Hollywood Reporter:
Judge Denies Initial Effort To Shut Down ‘Used’ Digital Music Seller ReDigi  —  The recording industry's lawsuit over what it believes to be a “clearinghouse for copyright infringement” continues after the defendant wins the first round.  —  ReDigi, an upstart digital company that sells …

This latest Altimeter Report, by my colleague Industry Analyst Chris Silva, focuses on how companies must develop a mobile marketing strategy. It sources research from 26 ecosystem contributors including brands, agencies, and technology providers. To learn more about this report, please register for the webinar in which Chris will provide deeper knowledge from the report.

This report is powerful in a few ways, it indicates the growth the in space, referencing that 45% of all mobile phone users are carrying a smart phone, and the growth rate for tablets is 23% annually.

The report also indicates how some marketers are missing the market to reach to the connected consumer, citing examples how retailers and restaurant companies created apps that didn’t direct them to their stores, a missed opportunity.

Above Graphic: Mobile App Maturity in Three Phases

Yet beyond the mis-steps of retail marketers, this report provides a maturity framework segmented into three major steps, and a point based system that brands can use to self-assess their quality. Lastly, you’ll find a breakdown in roll out steps from plotting the impact of strategy, choose business impact, choose application type, add features, extend platform support, then finally globalize.

This is Open Research: Use it, share it, and we’ll publish more, the full report is embedded below, which you can download, use and share with attribution. I’ll be working closely with Chris in future research projects, so I recommend you follow Chris on Twitter, and contact him at chris at altimetergroup dot com if you’ve further questions on the mobile landscape.

Make An App For That: Mobile Strategies For Retail View more documents from Altimeter Group Network on SlideShare

Related Resources

• Chris Silva’s post on the Altimeter Blog.

Chris Ziegler / The Verge:
Chrome for Android beta launches with place shifting, faster rendering, and card view  —  Chrome for Android — the long-rumored, oft-requested grand unification of Google's mobile and desktop browsing technologies — has just been announced today, and it's being made available immediately …

Stu Woo / Digits:
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Danny Schreiber / Silicon Prairie News:
Dwolla raises $5m Series B round led by Union Square Ventures (Video)  —  Dwolla, now at around 20 employees, expects to double in size following its latest raise of funds.  Above, the Dwolla team at its meetup in December.  —  Dwolla, an online and mobile payments network based in Des Moines …