The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced two cloud computing projects worth a total of $20 million, in a news release Wednesday (http://1.usa.gov/1wa8ya9). The projects, named Chameleon and CloudLab, will let academics “develop and experiment with novel cloud architectures and pursue new, architecturally-enabled applications of cloud computing,” it said. The projects will fall under the NSFCloud program and are expected to “revolutionize the science and engineering for cloud computing,” said Suzi Iacono, acting head of NSF’s Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering. The foundation decided to fund the projects after a public proposal period, a spokesman said.

Consumers slightly favored federal government websites over private-sector websites in Q2, said the ForeSee Answers E-Government Satisfaction Index in a news release Thursday (http://bit.ly/1rogCSt). The index “collected more than 234,600 survey responses across 103 federal government websites” in Q2, rating agencies on a “100-point citizen satisfaction scale,” it said. A score of 80 or more is the “threshold for excellence at which a site meets and exceeds citizen expectations,” it said. The overall e-government score in Q2 was 74.8, versus 73.4 for private-sector sites, it said. The Social Security Administration sites “Extra Help with Medicare Prescription Drugs” and the “Retirement Estimator” both received a score of 90, the highest score in Q2, it said. Amazon and Mercedes-Benz scored 88; Apple 87; and FedEx 85, it said. Sixty percent of e-government users said they used a mobile phone or tablet to access the Internet in Q2, an increase from 57 percent during Q1, it said. Thirty-nine percent of visitors “reported having accessed a federal government website using a mobile device, up from 37 percent in Q1,” said ForeSee, part of Answers Corp.

Google Chrome is available in Cuba, said Google’s Pedro Less Andrade, Latin America director-government affairs and public policy, in a blog post Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1tl7hcw). Google has been working to make “more tools available in sanctioned countries,” it said, saying Syria and Iran already have access to Chrome.

Classifying the Internet as a common carrier is “a terrible mistake,” said NCTA in a blog post Thursday (http://bit.ly/1tlysE4). “The Internet has succeeded up until this point because it has been free to grow, innovate, and change largely free from government oversight.” Cable broadband providers believe “all legitimate Internet traffic should be treated equally when traveling over local networks, that ISPs should not pick favorites, and that consumers should have unfettered access to legal content of their choosing,” NCTA said. The best way to preserve those rules is to regulate the Internet through the Communications Act’s Section 706, the association said. It said that section doesn’t get in the way of innovation and “offers strong consumer protections that guarantee enforceable open Internet rules and promote competitive marketplaces."

Intellectual property advisory firm I/P Engine will petition the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit for a review of its patent infringement case before the court’s entire bench, said the I/P Engine’s parent company Vringo in a news release Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1vxzFpT). In a 2-1 decision, the court panel ruled in favor AOL, Google and other defendants in the patent case brought by I/P Engine, reversing an earlier ruling by the U.S. District Court for Eastern Virginia (http://1.usa.gov/1rdqu1j). I/P Engine accused the defendants of infringing U.S. Patent Nos. 6,314,420 and 6,775,664, which describe filters for Internet search results. “The fundamental flaw in I/P Engine’s argument is that using an individual user’s search query for filtering was a technique widely applied in the prior art,” said the court ruling. I/P Engine filed an unopposed motion seeking a 30-day extension to file its review, said the release. If granted, the company will have until Oct. 15 to file for the review, its said.

Consumers in the U.S. and Western Europe are expected to spend about $3 billion on music streaming services in 2014, said a Futuresource Consulting news release Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1rYtRVJ) about its report on the music streaming industry (http://bit.ly/1w8Ubmh). The estimate, which didn’t include personal radio services, is a 59 percent increase from 2013, said David Sidebottom, Futuresource senior market analyst. “Despite the strong growth in streaming services, in many markets it will not be enough in the short term to compensate for both the decline in packaged music and pay-per-download (PPD) market,” said the release. Streaming subscriptions have helped stabilize overall consumer spending in several countries, but has “stifled growth in PPD albums and singles from services such as iTunes,” it said. Juniper Research recently projected “slow growth” for the digital music industry over the next five years, with an estimated value of $13.9 billion in 2019 compared with $12.3 billion in 2014 (http://bit.ly/VD8sqB) (CD Aug 20 p11).

Digital keepsake company Evergram said it launched BullyGram.com to publicize what it calls the “bullying” legal actions Facebook and its subsidiary Instagram have taken against Evergram. Facebook bought Instagram in 2012 and began taking legal action against companies with “Insta” and “Gram” in their names soon after, Evergram said in a Tuesday news release (http://bit.ly/1Bz7hcJ). Instagram is challenging Evergram’s name in the Patent and Trademark Office’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, claiming consumers are likely to confuse Evergram with Instagram (http://1.usa.gov/1lfEvsZ). Evergram co-founder Duncan Seay said in the release that Evergram is substantially different from Instagram, saying Evergram “was designed to deliver peoples’ [sic] special memories at special times, now or in the future” while Instagram is a photo-sharing website. Seay said BullyGram.com will be a public forum for consumers to voice their opinions. Instagram didn’t immediately comment.

"Slow growth” is expected from the digital music industry over the next five years, with a projected value of $13.9 billion in 2019 compared with $12.3 billion in 2014, said a Juniper Research news release Tuesday (http://bit.ly/VD8sqB), highlighting its report (http://bit.ly/VDPPDc) estimating future digital music sales. The “robust” music streaming industry will “largely be offset by [a] decline in revenues from legacy services such as ringtones and ringback tones,” said the release. Services like Pandora and Spotify will “increasingly find themselves competing with personalised services from the leading OTT (over-the-top) players, including Apple and Google,” it said. “The report cautioned that piracy was still responsible for major revenue leakage, particularly in emerging markets, such as China,” it said. Smartphones and tablets are expected to be the “main platforms of growth, although digital music revenues on the PC/laptop will remain robust over the forecast period,” it said.

A consortium of TV stations and daily newspapers is working with Yahoo on advertisements. Representing 50-plus media companies, the Local Media Consortium said ad agencies and others will get access to Yahoo’s display and native ad offerings and ad platforms including the Yahoo Ad Exchange. The effort will “help more local advertisers build integrated, cross-channel campaigns,” said Eric Aledort, Yahoo’s head of media, global partnerships, in a news release Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1pI6aT2). Consortium members include Cox Media Group, Digital First Media, Morris Communications, Scripps and Schurz Communications. Consortium members can sell Yahoo’s ads, but that company can’t sell members’ inventory, Executive Director Rusty Coats emailed us. “The purpose is to extend audience reach for local businesses online beyond” a paper’s or TV station’s website, he said. For consortium inventory other than locally sold ads, it’s forming a private exchange for members “to leverage our scale and brand-safe audience” for ad buyers, building that in Google’s AdX, said Coats.

Health and enterprise markets, wearables, and beacons enabled by Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology will help revive the GPS tracking device market, which is forecast to pass $3.5 billion in 2019, said ABI Research. While having “huge potential,” the GPS personal tracking market has been slowed by awareness, return on investment, product cost, subscription models and indoor location, which have blocked the economies of scale required to support marketing campaigns, ABI said. Over the last 12 months, the GPS market has seen growth from wearables and enterprise companies using tracking technology for workforce management, it said. The connected home market will offer opportunities for GPS tracking devices through personal protection products for children, pets, cars and seniors, it said. “Carriers eager to solve the problem of saturated markets have begun to reconsider this space” due to the emergence of wearables and the Internet of Things, said senior analyst Patrick Connolly. Low-cost GPS devices are being adopted worldwide for various applications, and Bluetooth Smart-enabled beacons will solve the issue of indoor location while helping to create a low-cost entry point for OEMs and consumers, he said. “With BLE beacons forecast to penetrate into all aspects of life over the next three years, consumer awareness and acceptance will quickly emerge,” Connolly said.