In an effort to curtail my disastrous gadget spending habits, I’ve decided to take a look at devices I’ve purchased with the stated intent of increasing my productivity, to see if intentions and reality reflect each other at all. Today, I’m turning my critical gaze on my netbook, which I picked up just over half a year ago.

My particular netbook is the Asus Eee PC 1000HE, but the model doesn’t really matter. It’s a light device with a 10-inch screen, a small keyboard and an all-day eight hour battery. When I bought it, it was freshly released, and was generating quite a bit of buzz among the mobile computing crowd. One of the first things I did with the Eee PC was to install the Windows 7 beta, and it’s still running the release candidate today.

Dream: The Road Warrior

Now that we’ve established what it is I’m working with, we can move on to how it’s working out. At the time of purchase, I wanted a netbook so that I could travel lightly and work from virtually anywhere without requiring a power source or, when I used my 3G USB dongle, a Wi-Fi connection. I also wanted something I could just throw in a bag, without much concern for either the device itself or for the additional space it would take up. I envisioned a future of road-warrior remote working, where the only limit to my mobile productivity was what time the trains stop running.

As many of you probably already guessed, my vision of the future didn’t exactly turn into reality. But just how far off was I? The truth is, very far off.

It didn’t help that Apple released the new 13-inch MacBook Pro with a built-in six hour battery shortly after I purchased the Eee PC. That aluminum beauty quickly replaced my black plastic MacBook, and it would’ve been a shame to hide it away, so more often then not, if I was stepping out, I’d pick the Apple notebook over the Asus. Sure, the Eee PC would’ve saved me some space, but if I really wanted to travel light, I could always just leave all bags at home and depend on my fully capable iPhone.

Looks weren’t my only concern in choosing the MacBook Pro over the netbook for on-the-go work. I also couldn’t get over the cramped keyboard on the smaller device. The Eee PC is widely touted as being among the best in its class in terms of keyboard space and quality, but that doesn’t make it enjoyable to use. It still requires adaptation, which means that when you go back to a full-size keyboard, it can be hard to regain your bearings.

The only real advantage that my Eee PC has over my MacBook Pro is that I don’t really care that much what happens to it, so I’m more likely to use it in high risk situations, or when I think I might get caught outside in inclement weather. The netbook was a great deal less expensive than the full-size laptop, obviously, so its safety weighs less on my mind.

Reality: Couch Potato

Truth is, though, in most cases where I feel more comfortable taking the Eee PC along in my bag, I won’t actually ever have cause to take it out until I get home again. Which leads me to the actual use my netbook now has: Coffee table resident and visitor’s notebook.

It now remains in the living room, on the storage shelf underneath the main surface of my coffee table, just waiting for some much-needed attention. When my girlfriend or anyone else is over, it gets thrown into use as an idle Facebook browser while I use my MacBook Pro and we simultaneously watch TV (who consumes only one kind of media at a time anymore?). Occasionally, when I want to check out a Windows program and write about it in Mac OS X at the same time, I’ll use the Eee PC to run software while working on my iMac.

Was it a worthwhile investment? Probably not. Do I appreciate having it around? Yes, enough not to sell it, by way of which I could probably actually recoup some of the cost of the machine. As productivity boosters go, though, it doesn’t pass the test, and I’ll think twice about buying into whatever the next new subcategory of computer happens to be. Unless it’s the Apple tablet (GigaOM Pro subscription required), which I will (of course) buy in a second regardless of any and all lessons learned.

What gear have you purchased that subsequently hasn’t lived up to the intended use you had for it?

Editor’s note: For more information on netbooks and where they’re headed, check out the report, “The Future of Netbooks,” over on GigaOM Pro (subscription required).

Boxee will be showing off a prototype of its widely anticipated standalone set-top box at next year’s Consumer Electronics Show, according to a source close to the company who asked not to be named, with commercial deployment slated for sometime in the first half of 2010.

Despite announcing just last week at NewTeeVee Live that it was still working with a consumer electronics partner on creating the so-called Boxee Box, our source says that the company will have it ready for demos at the industry trade show in early January.

The onus isn’t exactly on Boxee to deliver it — it’ll be up to an unnamed CE partner to build and manufacture the set-top box, for which Boxee is just providing the software. Even so, the kind of turnaround with which Boxee is expected to go to market is practically unheard of in the CE industry, and suggests that the company has been working on this project for an especially long time.

Boxee wouldn’t comment for this article, but promised more details and a timeline for deployment at its Dec. 7 event in New York. There, the company is expected to have mockups of the device, as well as more info about its features and maybe even final pricing details. CEO Avner Ronen told NewTeeVee that he hopes to price the box for less than $200, but given the cost of hardware involved, Boxee probably won’t be able to reach the $100 price point that Roku has for its IP video set-top box.

Also at the event, the company will be showing off the beta version of its media center, giving users a preview of the software before it’s officially released in January.

According to ECOtality’s first report of financial information since the grant award, released yesterday afternoon, the company saw revenue drop to $1.9 million during the three months ending September 30, down from $2.9 million in the same period last year — a change that ECOtality attributes largely to “the effect of the slowing economy and the focusing of resources on securing the DOE contract.” Meanwhile, operating expenses for the quarter jumped to $11.4 million, up from just $1.9 million a year earlier — an increase the company attributes primarily to bonuses paid to three executives after eTec snagged the DOE award.

The DOE grant this summer, allocated under the battery funding program created as part of the stimulus package, came toward the end of a somewhat grim period for ECOtality. The company describes some hard hits as a result of the economic downturn in 2008. ECOtality’s plans for growth “did not adequately capture the magnitude nor the speed of the economic down turn and its subsequent impact in even the alternative energy field,” the company writes. “These external forces restricting growth and access to capital simultaneously resulted in our financing options being very limited and expensive.”

For the first three quarters of this year, as in the second half of 2008, ECOtality has missed its growth targets and seen lower-than-expected revenue from manufacturing and sales of consulting services. Still keeping its eye on expansion — and the initial requirements of the DOE project — the company has recently filled its coffers with the DOE grant, $8 million from the California Energy Commission for the stimulus-funded infrastructure project and $15.5 million in equity financing, in addition to a conversion of $9.1 million in corporate bonds to equity. ECOtality also announced in September that it has formed two joint ventures with China’s Shenzhen Goch Investment in order to manufacture, assemble and sell EV charging equipment in China (SGI is slated to contribute $15 million for the effort).

During the next year, ECOtality expects to add “significant numbers” of employees to carry out the stimulus-funded project, although it also plans to outsource some research, development and production activities.

ECOtality and eTec (other subsidiaries have maintained a lower profile) are riding high these days, serving as a poster child of sorts for the Obama Administration’s commitment to electric vehicles (ECOtality CEO Jonathan Read joined the 40-person delegation accompanying Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke for a clean energy roundtable organized as part of President Obama’s visit to the country). We’ll be interested to see how the company evolves over the course of the three-year, government-supported project, and what type of competitor will emerge at the end of the stimulus tunnel.

You’ve gotta hand it to Google: The company is never shy about throwing the proverbial spaghetti against the wall to see if it will stick. Over the years, it’s introduced countless projects that have gone through long beta cycles only to fail miserably — or achieve a degree of success far below what was expected. Google Docs, for example, was supposed to topple Microsoft Office, and is still predicted to do so, but if that ever happened, I missed it.

Next year, Google will introduce one of its most ambitious projects yet: Chrome OS. There are quite a few misconceptions going around about the new operating system, among them that it’s aimed squarely at Microsoft’s operating system hegemony. It’s not. Chrome OS is targeting netbooks, not desktop and server systems. Still, the operating system includes some bold gambles from Google. Here are four of them.

Return of the thin client. Take a look at this CNet news story, which reports that “Oracle’s Larry Ellison today resurrected the company that designs a scaled-down desktop system — known generically as the network computer — and announced plans to ship new models in the first quarter of next year.” But note the date: 1999, not 2009. Indeed, Ellison was championing thin clients — computers with few local hardware resources that would get applications and data out on a network — back in the late 1990s.

It was an idea that was subsequently tried many times, and failed. Yet fast-forward to today, and Google’s Chrome OS is placing the very same bet. As company officials noted yesterday: “In Chrome OS, every application is a web application. Users don’t have to install applications. All data in Chrome OS is in the cloud.” Chrome OS netbooks will be thin clients.

All data in the cloud? Many of the smartest people predicting the future of cloud computing are noting that companies want to deploy hybrid public and private cloud applications, namely because they don’t want to have all of their data on a remote network, with little control over it and the potential for lock-in and losses. However, Google’s Chrome OS is a bet that consumer and business netbook buyers will be perfectly happy to trust everything to the cloud. There won’t even be hard disks on Chrome OS netbooks — only solid-state drives. Will users accept such an absolutist model?

Poof goes the OS. Chrome OS is architecturally very different from other operating systems, bypassing many types of boot processes and others in order to optimize performance. Additionally, however, the OS will actually reimage itself if malware is detected. If Google pulls this off, Chrome OS systems may be free of the guaranteed performance decay that Windows systems tend to have over time. Still, users may be wary about an operating system that’s ready to exit stage left at any given moment.

Drivers? Support? Fuhgeddaboudit. Have you ever called Google for Google Docs support? I haven’t either, even though I use the applications. When you release an operating system, though, if it reaches a large audience, that audience is going to want support. Just ask Microsoft, which spent years trying to effectively support and patch Windows Vista.

In addition to excellent support, which I don’t think of as Google’s specialty, users of Chrome OS are going to want their netbooks to work seamlessly and instantly with their printers, digital cameras, smartphones and more. Chrome OS isn’t being built from scratch. It’s Linux-based (the Ubuntu team at Canonical has been helping it take shape), so Google can get a headstart by incorporating existing driver libraries and the like. But Microsoft spent years trying to catch up to Apple in terms of automatic hardware detection and installation with its Plug-and-Play initiative, and Apple users will tell you that it never quite succeeded. Is Google about to find out what a huge headache it can be to support an operating system? History argues that will be the case.

Don’t get me wrong. I think Chrome OS will be one of the most interesting tech stories to watch next year. In many ways, though, it’s a Hail Mary.

While it won’t move the needle much on its content library, IFC Entertainment announced yesterday that it will offer 53 films through Netflix’s Watch Instantly streaming service, reports Variety.

True, that’s not a very large number, but it marks the first time IFC is providing its content to a subscription streaming service. Up until now, the company has placed films from its 300-title library on EST destinations like Amazon, iTunes and Blockbuster.

IFC titles heading to Netflix’s streaming service include Errol Morris’ The Thin Blue Line and John Sayles’ Return of the Secaucus Seven.

As we’ve written before, Netflix’s Achilles’ heel is its streaming content library. Though it has over 17,000 titles, it needs to make sure that service is robust enough so that the number of subscribers using the service keeps growing. Check out Om’s recent talk with Netflix CEO Reed Hastings at our recent NewTeeVee Live Conference for more on his company’s streaming efforts.

Separately, though we didn’t see anything official announced, it looks like Netflix also just got a whole boatload of Saturday Night Live content in this week, including seasons 1 – 5.

To learn more about streaming directly to TVs, check out the report on The Evolution of Over-the-Top Video over at our subscription research service, GigaOM Pro.

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Air Canada is testing an in-flight Wi-Fi service from Aircell on its flights between Toronto and Los Angeles and Montreal and L.A. From now until Jan. 29, passengers can plunk down $9.95 per flight to surf on a laptop and $7.95 to access the Internet on smaller devices such as a smartphone or WiFi-enabled media players like the iPod touch. AirCell also provides its GoGo in-air Wi-Fi service on Delta and American Airlines flights in the U.S.

And because Aircell currently only has regulatory approval and the antenna coverage that enables airlines to offer Wi-Fi in the U.S., Air Canada passengers can only get their Wi-Fi fix when flying over U.S. soil. Perhaps that accounts for the slight discount on Air Canada’s prices for Wi-Fi when compared to American’s charge of $12.95 for in-flight access.

Even though I had fun running OS X on a both a netbook and a touchscreen UMPC, a couple of weeks with the operating system turned semi-frustrating. Ironically, it was for the same reasons that Windows was a hassle on UMPCs when they first hit: the desktop operating system isn’t designed to fit in a space under 1280 x 800 or so. Does it fit? Yup. Does it work well? Sometimes yes and sometimes no, depending on the dialog boxes you see. It simply required too much tweaking to use on a full time basis for me — not to mention that pesky licensing issue.

WebWorkerDaily readers are a diverse bunch. Every week, I profile a different reader and ask them to share what they do, how they do it, and some of their favorite hints and tips.

Who are you and what do you do?

For my main job, I am a dentist. No kidding! But in 2001, I got a Palm m100 as a gift. I knew nothing about tech stuff or the web. However, I fell in love with that device, because it helped me a lot in my work. Now, nine years later, here I am: mobile tech-savvy, with the largest blog about mobility in Brazil, a podcast, writing in some magazines, talking on the radio and reviewing gadgets on a TV show. That was completely unexpected, because I started blogging in 2002 as a hobby. But mobile tech changed my life and gave me an opportunity to expand my original business. Today, I give dental home care to elderly and handicapped people, at their homes, hospitals or retirement institutions.

This year, I had to make the most difficult decision of my life: to take my hobby seriously. I don’t have a dental office any more — I just provide home care. I made this change so that I would have more freedom to travel for lectures and consulting. I talk about using mobile tech to improve productivity and social media as a marketing tool for non-IT professionals. I also spend a lot of time writing and reviewing smartphones and software.

What’s a typical day like for you?

While I don’t have a dental office anymore, I needed to improve my organizing and working tools. The weekly review (from David Allen’s GTD) is very important to keep so many activities under control. It’s done every Friday or Saturday, depending on my schedule. Running two businesses (www.odontopalm.com.br and www.garotasemfio.com.br) demands a lot of planning.

Once or twice a week I visit my patients around the city. The other days I am at my mobile office, or at a TV/radio studio, or in meetings with my mobile consulting clients and some press events. So as a mobile enthusiast, the world is my office.

On a typical non-dental day, I wake up, grab some coffee, feed my cats and write my web and magazine articles in my home office. I try not to check email before 11 a.m., as it always delays my writing plans. Even if I don’t answer them, thinking about the still-upcoming tasks spoils my focus. So no checking the inbox until the writing tasks are done! The rest of the day is spent testing new gadgets and software, reading the news and doing chores. I am also a housewife, and like to prepare our meals. Some days I also have a press event, radio or TV appointments or meeting to go.

On a dental day, I don’t have a set time to visit my patients. It depends on their health and needs, but visits are usually in early mornings or late afternoons. A single visit may take three or four hours. I arrive home very tired! The rest of these days, I usually spend reading a book and doing chores. I like to listen to podcasts while doing laundry or cooking as it helps me to relax.

My husband is an engineer; he is out all day and some nights teaching at the university. When he is not working, I try not to be working, too. So I plan my week with my husband’s schedule in mind as well. We subscribe to each other’s calendars.

What gear and software do you use, and why?

My smartphone is my main daily working tool. I am not tied to a specific one — I am always testing and reviewing new ones — but as an Omnifocus user (for Mac and mobile), the iPhone is always with me.

I live in two cities. In one, I keep my MacBook. In the other, the iMac. I subscribe to MobileMe in order to keep the two Macs and the iPhone in sync, like magic. MobileMe (for calendar, contacts and iDisk), Evernote and Dropbox are the tools I cannot live without. I also have a Nokia Symbian phone to type longer texts, with a Nokia bluetooth keyboard. This setup means I can keep my luggage very light while commuting — I even dumped the netbook as my smartphones fill all my mobile needs!

My digital daily tasks are mostly done with my smartphone: managing the patients’ database with Bento; reading RSS in NetNewsWire; saving interesting articles in Instapaper Pro; working with Office documents with Quickoffice; chatting with Nimbuzz; and tweeting (at twitter.com/garotasemfio) with Echofon Pro. I also carry tons of ebooks and dental reference material in iSilo, Stanza, Skyscape and Medscape.

Sometimes I’m away from any kind of computer for one or two whole days. These are very overwhelming days, so it’s important to get things done through my smartphone. Most of my email is managed on the go. I would hate to come home and have to spend the evening working in front of a computer!

What’s your favorite web working tip?

Be organized. Always. Plan your week, schedule all your activities, but be careful: Keep some gaps in your calendar. You will always have to deal with urgent tasks and unpredictable issues along the week, and these gaps will help keep you sane. I love the freedom mobile tech gives me. It would be impossible to do all the (many) things I love without it.

If you would like to be profiled on WWD, get in touch with me at simon (at) gigaom (dot) com.

BitTorrent after The Pirate Bay: Do you still need trackers? (NewTeeVee)
3 next-gen applications for Smart Grid 2.0 (Earth2Tech)
Microsoft’s bad image should be a warning to Apple (TheAppleBlog)
4 open-source file shredders that delete data forever (OStatic)
How to get a Magic Mouse to touch-scroll in Windows (jkOnTheRun)
Finding web worker gear deals on Black Friday (WebWorkerDaily)

Twitter COO Dick Costolo, speaking today on a panel at TechCrunch’s Real-Time CrunchUp event in San Francisco, shed some light into the micromessaging service’s revenue plans, promising that it will begin taking a cut of its partners’ advertising revenues “early next year.” Meanwhile, it will “foster mechanisms that allow partners to do more sophisticated things” with its APIs. Twitter also plans to offer commercial accounts that contain premium features like analytics dashboards and multiple authors, according to Costolo.

Achieving the seemingly impossible task of building up more hype about Twitter’s business model, Costolo promised Twitter’s advertising will be “fascinating,” “non-traditional” and “really cool.” Some partners already pay Twitter to use certain parts of its APIs, he added, though Seesmic CEO Loic Le Meur noted from the audience that his company does not.

Costolo emphasized that Twitter will continue to offer free access to users and partners, and that small startups who start building on Twitter’s APIs won’t be expected to pay up front.

The Windows 7 trumpets are blasting with gusto, with Steve Felice, president of the small and medium-sized business (SMB) division of Dell, claiming that Microsoft’s new operating system is fueling a surge in demand for PCs, according to Computerworld. “As soon as Oct. 22 hit, both our consumer business and our SMB business had a very healthy increase in demand,” Felice is quoted as saying. Meanwhile, David Coursey reports that with Vista on the sidelines and a well-reviewed new OS, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer “has a new ‘f’ word” to describe Windows: ‘Fantastic.’”

These comments fall in line with recent lofty predictions from Dell founder Michael Dell about Windows 7 driving the PC market forward. But is that, in fact, true? Moreover, is it not still too early to measure the operating system’s success?

At a Churchill Club event that I attended in Silicon Valley in October, Michael Dell said that many businesses were running Windows XP, which is eight years old, and that Windows 7 would usher in a major upgrade cycle. The fact that Dell just missed profit estimates amidst declining market share has nothing to do with Windows 7, of course, but there are some signs that a truly major upgrade cycle toward the OS hasn’t yet happened.

While research shows that Vista users are upgrading to Windows 7, keep in mind that Vista has only 30 percent market share after several years in the wild. Windows 7 is not replacing the huge installed base of Windows XP at anywhere near the rate that it’s replacing Vista.

The Wall Street Journal estimates that some 30-40 million copies of Windows 7 have sold since its October release, and most estimates put the operating system’s market share at about 4 percent. These numbers are nothing to shake a stick at, and I agree with Michael Dell that Windows 7 will spark a major upgrade cycle — eventually.

In the meantime, however, we are in a period of relative limbo in the PC buying cycle. Holiday shopping hasn’t taken off yet, and, for safety reasons, businesses tend to wait and watch whenever a brand-new version of Windows is released before implementing widespread adoption. Hardware incompatibilities, driver issues and many more things get resolved in an operating system’s first months, prompting many businesses to sit on the sidelines.

Historically, January has a much higher PC-buying profile than October and November do, and by that point holiday shopping numbers for Windows 7 will have started to roll in. Indeed, it will take a few months before we have truly accurate numbers for Windows 7 adoption, but I don’t doubt that it will eventually spark an upgrade cycle that — love or hate Microsoft — will benefit the tech industry.

In the same way (albeit on a smaller scale) that the South Korean government pumped money into developing broadband infrastructure, the government plans to invest 37 billion won (about $32 million) initially into building out the smart grid test-bed. The companies that will start building the smart grid infrastructure include a who’s-who of South Korean IT companies including mobile leaders SK Telecom and KT, consumer electronics and cell phone heavyweight LG, power companies KEPCO and GS Caltex, and Hyundai Heavy Industries. Taking the same approach as the island nation of Malta — isolating the buildout to a geographical area — the South Korean government plans to build the smart grid test bed on the island of Jeju, which is south of Seoul (see map above).

While the investment from the South Korean government isn’t huge at this point, I wouldn’t discount its goal to acquire a 30 percent share of the global market as unreachable. KT, SK Telecom, and LG have long histories of mobile and broadband innovation, and they tend to spend a lot of money on R&D, taking risks and rolling out products and services that are at the bleeding edge. That means some of the companies’ risky products can be duds — see SK Telecom’s failed mobile joint venture Helio, which was sold off to Virgin Mobile. But the approach seems to be working for many of them: LG is the third largest cell phone maker in terms of marketshare, solidly beating out American phone maker Motorola.

I haven’t researched the ins and outs of what types of smart grid products South Korean firms are working on, but the country’s leadership in the battery space could also give it a leg up in energy storage for the smart grid. Very few American firms have so far been able to compete with both South Korean and Japanese companies when it comes to battery technology.

Given the smart grid industry is just being developed, recently getting a boost from the $3.4 billion in U.S. stimulus funding, it’s not strictly about competition at this point. There’s some cooperative learning going on as well: Earlier this year the U.S. smart grid trade group the GridWise Alliance and the Korea Smart Grid Association (KGSA) teamed up to share intelligence about building out smart grid technology.

UPDATED: Babelgum is closing down its Dublin headquarters and an office in Nice, according to a report in paidContent, moves that could signal the end is near for the online video site.

Babelgum says the cuts will allow it to streamline its business to “ensure continued growth.” The company told paidContent that it will continue to develop applications from other locations, spreading the operations from its shuttered offices across those in London, Milan and New York. But there are questions as to whether Babelgum will continue to develop technology or keep focusing on content investment.

Babelgum is backed by deep-pocketed billionaire investor Silvio Scaglia; he invested €50 million ($73 milllion) in the company in 2008, and has said he plans to spend €40- €60 million annually on the company over the next 2-3 years. But the recent cuts could mean he’s losing patience while waiting for a return on that initial investment.

The office closures come not long after a Babelgum executive detailed plans for an extensive — and expensive — plan to spend many millions of dollars obtaining and developing exclusive, original content. Then-executive vice president and chief revenue officer Michael Rosen told NewTeeVee in October that Babelgum had ramped up operations in the U.S. and that it had a “mandate to launch 10-15 content initiatives per month.” Rosen has reportedly since left the company, according to paidContent.

Babelgum isn’t the only web video aggregator trying to differentiate itself in a market dominated by YouTube, which still delivers about 40 percent of all online video streams in the U.S. Veoh, which was founded around the same time as Babelgum, laid off a number of employees earlier this year as it shifted its focus to developing its video compass technology from that of content. In the meantime others, like Dailymotion and Metacafe, have been trying to cash in on the growing consumption of online video.

Babelgum has also suffered from a lack of strategic focus. On the technology side, the company began as a P2P-based streaming provider, but shifted to browser-based Adobe Flash streaming earlier this year. Like Joost, which also launched as a P2P-based video provider, the slowness with which it moved from proprietary technology to streaming based on a widely adopted video platform may have also held it back from attracting wider user adoption.

Update: Babelgum issued the following statement after our story ran.

This week Babelgum announced to its staff that it would be consolidating its operations into its London, Milan and New York locations. This decision is a natural response to the company’s growing focus on content and viewers, following Babelgum’s commercial launch earlier this year. Despite the current economic climate, Babelgum remains one of the very few aggressive players in the new media arena. In the past two months, Babelgum has: 1) pioneered the release of Sally Potter’s “Rage” – the first time a narrative feature film with A-list talent premiered on a mobile video application; 2) launched the innovative Babelgum Metropolis Art Prize (chaired by Isabella Rossellini) to seek out the world’s best and edgiest video artists; 3) launched numerous new series – including Hayden Black’s “The Occulterers” – originally created, and exclusively produced, for its mobile and online platforms; 4) premiered the latest Weezer video “(If You’re Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To” as an exclusive; and 5) entered into a partnership agreement with RingTales to exclusively premiere the new Dilbert and New Yorker animated series. The company continues to streamline its approach and improve its cost effectiveness to ensure its continued growth in future years. Other major content and partnership deals will be announced before the close of 2009.

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For once, everyone getting on board with an online video trend is a good thing. Following on the heels of Google’s announcement yesterday that it will add automatic captioning to YouTube videos, PLYmedia today said that it will be providing live captioning to video platforms Ooyala, Ustream, Livestream, Brightcove, Kaltura, KIT digital and Kyte.

Unlike Google’s captioning system, which automatically creates captions using speech recognition technology, PLYmedia’s SubPLY offering does live captioning with national court reporter-certified transcribers. Using this human approach, PLYmedia says it can deliver more accurate results (Google even admitted that its system can make mistakes and is rolling the service out slowly.)

PLYmedia’s SubPLY also offers automatic translation into “multiple” languages, transcript generation, real-time keyword tag generation as well as Twitter and Facebook integration. The social media hooks allow Twitter and Facebook users to follow a live event through text updates to their news feeds.

In addition to making live video more accessible to the deaf and hard of hearing, the addition of captions will help make video more searchable.

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“I’m just wondering why your marketing group can’t do something to try to rein in this next generation, because you’ve got a real bad image out there.”

So said a Microsoft shareholder to CEO Steve Ballmer at the company’s shareholder meeting yesterday. TechFlash reporter Todd Bishop notes that the same shareholder added that Apple’s TV commercials make Microsoft look “like a buffoon.”

I’m relieved to hear this. I often look at Microsoft and wonder if its shareholders are as out-of-touch as the company itself seems to be. In just the last few weeks here’s what’s getting the most enthusiastic coverage in the tech press at a time when it ought to be 100 percent about the newly launched Windows 7.

• A Microsoft manager claiming Windows 7 — Microsoft’s flagship product — is inspired by Mac OS X
• Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie’s bewildering assertion that “apps don’t matter” — despite everyone else on Earth knowing otherwise
• Further redundancies that include long-time evangelist Don Dodge, and his subsequent post that, now that he’s free from Microsoft, he can admit, yeah, he has iPhone envy
• And let’s not forget the bizarre PR misfire that saw the staff of Microsoft’s flagship retail store ignoring their customers for a full five minutes in favor of stomping their way, awkwardly and embarrassingly, through a dance routine

The take-home message? It ain’t just the Apple commercials making Microsoft look like buffoons.

How did CEO Steve Ballmer respond? Fear not, anxious shareholders, Ballmer has this to say to assuage your fears and calm your nerves:

You take any country, including this one, and you say, how are we doing? The truth of the matter is, we do quite well. Even among college students, we do quite well. Do we have an opportunity for improvement? We do. Some of that is marketing some of that is phase of life. It is important to remember that 96 times out of 100 worldwide, people choose a PC with Windows, that’s a good thing. Even in the toughest market, which would be the high end of the consumer market here in the U.S., 83 times out of 100 people choose a Windows PC over a Mac.

Hang on, back-up. “Some of that is phase of life.” Phase of life? Well, Ballmer sure knows his execu-speak. What galls me about this is how it illustrates perfectly that while Microsoft may be doomed to continue making embarrassing mistakes, it probably won’t suffer any actual harm as a result; it survives simply because of its mammoth install base. Nothing more than that. And that simple fact directly influences the attitude and reasoning of its CEO. Ballmer is tacitly admitting that, all things considered, yeah, Microsoft looks like a bunch of idiots but that doesn’t matter because they’ve got more customers than anyone else.

Turn this around, and imagine that Apple does monumentally silly things that make it the target of much derision and ridicule among the tech community and consumers. Imagine you’re a shareholder, and you see a drop in quarterly earnings. You see the company laying off staff (including highly visible and respected staff they should keep). You see its executives sending conflicting messages to the public. And when you take them to task for it, Steve Jobs replies “Yeah, we’ve been a bit crap. But most people own an iPod, right, so, no worries.” Would you be satisfied with that?

Ballmer added:

Frankly, the economy is good for us, because people do understand that Macintoshes are quite a bit more expensive for essentially the same computer … we have opportunities to improve among exactly the constituency that you identify.

Yep. Be happy there’s a recession, people, or else customers would be buying Macs!

This isn’t actually a Microsoft bashing exercise (clearly, it does that to itself and needs no help from me). Instead, I look at this and wonder (fear) that Apple might be headed in much the same direction. Recent unpredictable behavior around the application approval process has seen Apple severely criticised by some of its most staunch supporters. Developers aren’t just frustrated, they’re now quitting the platform altogether. And not because the platform is flawed, but because Apple is horribly (and very visibly) mismanaging it.

Apple needs to take a good long look at the Microsoft of today and ask if it isn’t starting to make the same mistake; stubbornly pushing ahead with flawed policies/strategies that are justified on the strength of product market share alone, despite the obvious (and loud!) protestations of the public, the press, and sooner or later, even its own shareholders.

Sure, Apple isn’t as bad as Microsoft yet. But this is how it starts, people. Google Voicegate. Joe Hewitt. Rogue Amoeba. It’s not exactly dancing in an Apple Store, but it’s still embarrassing and potentially damaging, and it’s definitely a trend that won’t go away unless Apple does something to fix it.

Updated: Infoaxe is revealing to the world today its alter ego: a search engine. Unlike other real-time search engines such as OneRiot, Infoaxe doesn’t depend on Twitter streams and the like (Update: OneRiot emailed to note that it also uses a panel in addition to social sharing streams). Instead, it anonymously harvests data from its millions (low millions, for now) of people who use its personal search history plug-in.

The idea is to observe every page an Infoaxe user visits, not just the ones they share on social web services. This aggregate attention data adds 7 million URLs per day to its index, as compared to some 300,000 URLs on Twitter and 10,000 on Digg. Of course, those other sites’ URLs are shared for a reason.

“Even though Twitter and Facebook have exposed the chink in Google’s armor, we don’t think they are the cure,” Infoaxe founder Jonathan Siddharth said in a recent interview. He and co-founder Vijay Krishnan met while doing their computer science masters’ degrees at Stanford a couple years ago.

Infoaxe’s results are fresh, but they don’t form an up-to-the-second real-time stream, which is a plus for relevancy. Rather Infoaxe puts an emphasis on pages where its users have stayed for a while or revisited often — so it’s good at discovering things like product deals and hosted web streams of TV and movies — the kinds of query for which another search engine might deliver an outdated pile of spammy SEO junk, or a more timeless link like an IMBD page, respectively.

As Infoaxe tries to secure deals to incorporate its results into larger search engines, it’ll be important that it has a good sample of users. And to some extent, that will never happen, because the people who contribute to Infoaxe will only be those who are motivated to save and parse their own search histories. However Siddharth and Krishnan brag that their 2.1 million registered users are starting to break out of the early adopter mold, with more total IE plug-in downloads than Firefox, and an even balance of men and women.

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Infoaxe has five employees; it raised $900,000 from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Labrador Ventures, Band of Angels and Amidzad Partners in 2008.

I’m one of those fanatics who goes out before dawn on the day after Thanksgiving, to wait in line for the doors of my favorite stores to open so I can snap up the best deals before they are gone. It sounds really crazy, until you see my receipts and calculate how much money I’m saving for my effort.

And I’m not just saving money on gifts. My first stop is usually an office supply store, because Black Friday can also be a great day to buy web worker gear for bargain prices. Here’s a look at what you might find in stores for your business needs this year.

Of course, when we think web work tools, most of us probably think computers first. But despite the ubiquitous ads for computer sales on Black Friday, a computer may actually be the most difficult tool to find a good deal on. Web workers need computing power, and most Black Friday sale computers at the major chain stores are vastly underpowered so they can be advertised for cheap prices. Unless you are looking for a basic netbook to make travel more convenient, I recommend going directly to the sites of computer manufacturers like Dell to shop their sales on more powerful machines suitable for work.

Unfortunately if you are shopping for a Mac, even on Black Friday there won’t be much of a deal to be had. Apple typically runs a small sale with discounts of around 10 percent. (The supposedly leaked ad that has been circulating online showing much bigger discounts from Apple on Black Friday this year is widely believed to be a fake). Other than that, a few retailers usually get creative and offer bonuses as a way of creating “sales” on Apple machines. Best Buy will be offering a $150 gift card with the purchase of a 13” MacBook for $999 on Black Friday this year, for instance.

If you are in need of computer peripherals, however, get your credit card ready to do some work! The sales on some of these items can save a web worker a lot of money on very necessary items.

(Please note that there are no OfficeMax deals in this article because that retailer has issued legal threats against all sites that published details of its Black Friday ads early, so that store’s information is not available for comparison in articles such as this one.)

Some of these deals will be available online starting on Thanksgiving Day, but not all of these items can be purchased online, so you’ll need to carefully check the ad for any item you select. Almost all Black Friday items are “limited quantity, no raincheck” sales, so you’ll want to prioritize your shopping and get out there (or log on) early.

External Storage: Portable and desktop hard drives are great deals on Black Friday. For desktop storage, 1TB and 1.5TB drives will be on sale at virtually all of the office and department chains for bargain prices. Portable drives can also be had for well under $100 for 500GB. WWD Pick: 1.5TB Western Digital My Book Home Edition desktop drive for $119.99 at Best Buy, or the 500GB Western Digital My Passport Essential portable drive for $69.99, a doorbuster at Staples.

Monitors: Black Friday is a great time to pick up a cheap monitor. Like with the computers being advertised, the advertised low prices often mean less-than-stellar performance, so shop carefully. WWD Pick: Dell 20” widescreen for $99 at Best Buy (regularly $159.99).

Flash Memory: Flash memory in the form of cards or USB drives is often sold at deep discounts as Black Friday doorbusters (items with extremely limited quantities and no rainchecks given) to get people to come out to a store and shop for more expensive items while they are there. Because of this, it can be one of the best deals of the whole shopping weekend. I stock up on SD cards at insane prices every year on Black Friday. WWD Pick: USB drive, CF, microSD, and SD card selection on sale at Staples. (Get there early — I can tell you from experience that they go fast!)

Digital Media: If you use CD/DVD media, Black Friday is the time to head to an office supply store to stock up. Both the media and cases for them will be on major sales at all the office supply chains. WWD Pick: Staples 100pk CD-R for $4.98 (doorbuster price) or Staples CD/DVD Jewel Cases 50pk for $4.99, both at Staples.

Keyboards/Mice: These computer accessories can be had for deep discounts on Black Friday. Going for the slightly higher-priced ones will get you a huge step up in quality, however. WWD Pick: Microsoft 4000 Wireless Laser Keyboard/Mouse Set for $29.99 doorbuster price at Staples (regularly $79.99).

Printers: If you need a printer but don’t need the latest and greatest high-end model, Black Friday is the time to get it. Older printer models are offered on deep discounts to holiday shoppers to secure their future business as ink cartridge customers. Depending on whether you want wireless, laser or inkjet, and intend to print photos or not, there are a variety of options available. But check prices versus online vendors such as Amazon, because not all the advertised prices are actually deals. WWD Pick: HP OfficeJet Pro 8500 for $149.98 at Staples and Office Depot (regularly $299.99).

Routers: Whether you are looking for a portable router to pack on the road for setting up impromptu networks, or an upgrade to your home office network, Staples is the place to head on Black Friday for solid router choices with good discounts. WWD Picks: Netgear WNR1000 RangeMax 150 Wireless Router for $34.99 (portable) and Linksys Dual Band Wireless-N Gigabit Router for $89.99 (office), both at Staples.

Battery Back-up: There’s nothing more annoying than having a power blink reboot your computer unexpectedly. Battery back-up units are some of the biggest Black Friday bargains, available for over 50 percent off at multiple stores. WWD Pick: APC 550VA Battery Backup Unit for $24.99 at Office Depot (regularly $59.99).

Shredders: A wide variety of these are on sale at office supply stores, but be sure to check the features. The biggest difference is in how long they can run before they need to cool off (for as long as an hour in some cases). Most sale models are good for only light home office shredding, typically under two minutes at a time. WWD Pick: Omnitech 15 sheet Cross-Cut Shredder for the $39.99 doorbuster price at Staples (regularly $129.99).

Labelers: If you have made a resolution to get organized, Black Friday is the time to pick up a basic electronic labeler for your office. I use my Brother PT-1290 for file folders, plastic storage containers and power cords. Brother sells that basic unit at 75 percent off on Black Friday to get new users captured as a market for the expensive labeler cartridges. WWD Pick: Brother PT-1290 for $9.99 at Office Depot & Staples (regularly $39.99).

Office Furniture: A few basic office furniture items are on sale, but desk chairs are an especially popular sale item at the office supply chains on Black Friday. 50 percent off is not an uncommon discount. You can pick up a low quality chair extremely cheaply, or get an affordable price on a high quality one. WWD Pick: Realspace Harrington High-back Bonded Leather Chair, $99.99 at Office Depot (regularly $199.99).

Phones: DECT 6.0 phones are great for avoiding interference with wireless routers in home offices and for adding extensions where there aren’t installed lines. Lots of options are available on Black Friday depending on whether you need an answering machine and how many extensions you need. WWD Pick: Panasonic KX-TG9333T DECT 6.0 Expandable Cordless Phone with Answering System for $49.99 at Staples (regularly $89.99).

Will you be deal hunting on Black Friday? What will you be looking for a deal on?

UNEASYsilence peeped a pair of modified bits from Apple’s latest Bluetooth Update and word is that they add touch scrolling to 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows. Although geared for using Windows in Bootcamp, folks are reporting success on non-Apple hardware as well. So far, it’s reported that vertical scrolling is working in a few apps like Firefox and Internet Explorer 8, but no multitouch mousing is here yet. If you’d rather not go the hacked route, Microsoft’s own Sidewinder X8 mouse driver could do the trick as well. I haven’t had time to try either method yet, since I don’t run Bootcamp. I have paired the Magic Mouse with the Windows 7 partition on my netbook though, so I expect a little hackery later today.

Announced Thursday afternoon, the web site allows users to compare vehicles based on Global Warming and Smog scores — snapshots of how a car’s fuel consumption, carbon-equivalent emissions and contribution to smog (through production of certain volatile organic compounds) compares to all other vehicles in that model year. By state law, these scores now appear on an Environmental Performance label displayed in the window of cars manufactured since January 2009 and brought to market in California. Now they’re also available online in a ranking system similar to the side-by-side comparison tools offered by the federal FuelEconomy.gov site and the Environmental Protection Agency’s Green Vehicle Guide, but with a couple key differences, including increased emphasis on vehicles’ contribution to climate change (relative to FuelEconomy.gov, at least), more integration of rebate an incentive info and a more slick interface.

California ARB Chairman Mary Nichols described her agency’s new site in a statement as signaling a major shift for consumers. “Until now, decisions about car buying were based solely on what functions the car needed to serve,” she said, as opposed to how “clean” a vehicle is and what rebates, tax breaks and other incentives are available for different models.

One could quibble with the idea that car buying decisions have ever been solely about function (it’s an elite group that can ignore the price tag, many consumers do factor in fuel efficiency, and it’s a rare driver who doesn’t give a hoot about the form of a car). But on my first perusal of the site, DriveClean does seem to provide a valuable service — one that will grow as more data becomes available. “Since this program is new,” DriveClean explains, some cars are still missing Global Warming scores, but that information will be added down the road.

In a nod to the point raised this week by consulting firm McKinsey & Co. — that driving habits affect the cost assessments for different vehicles — DriveClean provides an option to customize fuel consumption, emission and cost estimates according to your location and city vs. highway mileage. If you’ve ever shopped around for a greener vehicle, how did you research and compare your options?

BBC Gives Technical Details of Its New iPlayer On the Wii; the U.K. broadcaster has encoded streams using H.264 at a 700 kbps bit rate, compared to 1.5 Mbps for regular TV or even 3.2 Mbps for HD. (BBC) Speaking of British TV, the U.K. version of YouTube debuted its new site section that hosts roughly 4,000 full-length programs. (Variety)

Silverlight 4 Beta Launches for Developers; new features include out-of-browser capabilities, advanced business application development, and native multicast and offline DRM support for video. (Ars Technica)

Sony Announces Plans for Digital Media Store; new Sony Online Service will sell music, movies, books, and other downloadable applications for mobile devices. (BusinessWeek)

Disney Launches Its First Branded Entertainment Channel; “The Possibility Shop” will be exclusively sponsored by Clorox and promote Clorox products. (Ad Age)

Blu-ray, DVD Sales Expected to Stabilize in 2010; high-definition Blu-ray DVD sales have yet to make up for the decline in standard def DVD sales in 2009. (Video Business)

Digiboo Does Partnership with Movie Gallery; deal will put 100 Digiboo movie kiosks (see previous coverage) in retail locations. (Video Business)

Grey’s Anatomy Gets a Web Spin-Off; Seattle Grace: On Call will be a six episode run that’s on immediately after Grey’s is aired. (The Hollywood Reporter)

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The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office yesterday published a patent application Apple made way back in 2008 for “Pushing a User Interface to a Remote Device.” So, then…Smart Remotes. Cool!

MacRumor’s Eric Slivka reports that the patent’s lead inventor is William Bull, now Yahoo’s Senior Director of Mobile User Experience, but once upon a time Apple’s iPod User Interface Manager. The so-called “father of the iPod,” Tony Fadell, is also credited.

The idea is simple; portable media devices — such as iPods and iPhones, for example — have their own on-board Graphical User Interface (GUI) and, usually, a built-in screen. Thing is, we don’t always want to take our iPhone out of our pocket when we’re listening to music (or, if you’re me, catching up on podcasts while washing the dishes).

Enter remote controls (referred to in this patent as “accessories”). Often they’re dumb little inline sticks with a few fiddly (not to mention tiny) buttons. They’re useful, but basic, offering perhaps only a half dozen simple controls. Some of the more elaborate remotes have their own little displays, which is all very well and good, except that they also employ their own little GUIs which not only fail to resemble the one on the device you’re trying to control, but often don’t provide full access to all the device’s functions. From the patent application:

…existing remote GUIs are defined and controlled by the remote control device, and consequently, they may bear little resemblance to a GUI supplied by the portable media device itself Certain functions available on the portable media device (such as browsing or searching a database, adjusting playback settings, etc.) may be unavailable or difficult to find.

Apple’s solution is to “push” the device’s GUI to a remote an accessory with a built-in display. Here’s the description from the patent application (I’ve shortened it to just the main points);

The portable media device can provide the accessory with an image to be displayed on the video screen… [and] include various user interface elements that can resemble or replicate a “native” GUI provided directly on the portable media device. The accessory can send information to the portable media device indicative of a user action […] for example, that a particular button was pressed or that a particular portion of a touch-sensitive display screen was touched by the user. The portable media device can process this input to identify the action requested by the user and take the appropriate action. The action may include providing to the accessory an updated GUI image to be displayed, where the updated GUI image reflects the user action.

Essentially this describes a touch-enabled screen, small enough (and dumb enough) to still be called an accessory, which effectively acts as a small auxiliary display/input panel for the device.

I can’t see this making its way into an inline remote (it’s just not Apple’s style to make a wearable remote that’s big) but I can see a future revision of Apple’s current Remote that entirely does away with the buttons, replacing them with a capacitive touch screen.

Future software updates would enable one to connect the remote to a nearby Mac mini, Apple TV, even an iPod touch, and switch between those devices the same way the iPhone Remote app does today. The GUI would change, depending on the selected device.

The only drawback I can see to such a device (and remember, I’m just extrapolating here and imagining a potential future gadget — Apple’s patent application only describes a possible method and not an actual product) is that a remote with a capacitive touch screen will chew through its battery in next to no time. Is it conceivable we’ll be buying a charging dock for a future Apple MultiRemote?

More compelling is the notion that Apple could build this technology into an entire ecosystem, licensing third-party developers to create compatible hardware; imagine a house where a smart display on the door of your refrigerator not only tells you when the milk needs replacing but also allows you to skip tracks on the album you’re playing over AirTunes…

But am I thinking too small? Is this yet another patent application that will, ultimately, come to nothing, or could this be an early clue to a new Apple-tastic revolution?

Nokia said today it’s slashing 330 research and development jobs in Europe as it looks to consolidate its handset lineup and focus on high-end smartphones. The move is a small one and long overdue, but it is a step toward getting Nokia back in the game.

The Finnish company’s success selling low- to mid-range smartphones in developing markets is well documented, but Nokia continues to lose ground in the U.S. and Europe as superphones from Apple and Research In Motion chip away at its market share. And Nokia is increasingly threatened by Android, which has gained sudden momentum in the wake of its Verizon Wireless Droid initiative.

Nokia may feel a pinch as it severs the R&D personnel, but the company will surely continue to innovate with its Maemo OS and S60 devices. And it’s not like innovation has ever been a problem for Nokia — its struggles since the emergence of the iPhone have stemmed from its aging Symbian platform, its unwillingness to bow to U.S. carriers and an utter lack of affordable, iconic devices. Shifting its focus toward higher-end handsets that produce better margins will be a step in the right direction.

Gotta love that Steve Jobs. He never was one to hold back, and even now, when he’s the CEO of the Universe (or something like that), he won’t be found spouting corporate speak.

CrunchGear tells the story of a small software development company called The Little App Factory. It made an app for the Mac called iPodRip, one of those tools for transferring music from an iPod to a computer. A law firm representing Apple sent The Little App Factory a letter, informing the company it had violated some of Apple’s trademarks, and instructed it to stop using the “iPod” bit in the app’s name.

iPodRip has been around for nearly seven years and CrunchGear’s Daniel Brusilovsky says it has been downloaded more than five million times. You’d think Apple’s legal sniffer hounds, Baker & McKenzie, might have acted a tad sooner…

Anyway, iPodRip developer and The Little App Factory CEO John Devor felt this was all rather unfair, so he wrote directly to El Jobso himself. Here’s a little excerpt from his impassioned plea for special treatment sanity (edited by me for brevity, but you can read the whole thing here);

Dear Mr. Jobs,

I doubt you’re aware but we recently received a letter from a law firm working on Apple’s behalf instructing us that we had violated several of Apple’s trademarks in our application iPodRip and asking us to cease using the name and Apple trademarks in our icons.

It is quite obvious that we mean Apple no harm with the use of the name iPodRip, or of the inclusion of trademarked items in our icons… …we are quite aware that Apple support and store staff have recommended our software on numerous occasions as far back as 2004 so we have felt that we were doing something right!

With this in mind, we are in desperate need of some assistance and we beseech you to help us to protect our product and our shareware company, I myself dropped out of school recently to pursue a path in the Mac software industry, and you yourself have been a consistent inspiration for me.

If there is anything at all you can do with regards to this matter, we would be most grateful.

Best,
John Devor

Poor fellow. Obviously he has poured his heart and soul into his company, and he has worked hard this last half-decade building a strong brand and large customer base. He wants to protect his investment, and why not? Apple has, it seems, been aware of the product, to some degree, for an awfully long time, so why slap him with a C&D letter now?

So Steve Jobs gets the email and thinks about this, right? He considers the years of service this guy and his company have provided for iTunes users around the world. He considers carefully the late-in-the-game complaint from Baker & McKenzie. He feels a swell of pride at the obvious passion of those in the Mac development community who so loyally support his products and strive to make the Mac ecosystem a bigger, brighter and more worthwhile place to be. Right?

Of course not. He’s Steve Jobs, people! This is his reply:

Change your apps name. Not that big of a deal.

Steve

Sent from my iPhone

I nearly fell off my chair in laughter when I saw that. I’m not sure I agree with him that’s it’s “not that big of a deal” (after all, this company has invested many years in their brand and built a considerable customer base) but I admire Steve’s no-nonsense attitude. He says exactly what’s on his mind, no PR-spin, and sends it straight from his iPhone, typos-and-all.

The Little App Factory acquiesced (what else could it do?) and renamed the app iRip. It also changed the app’s icon. Perhaps this whole affair was a thorn in the side, but I don’t feel too sorry for them, the tech press is giving them a lot of attention right now, and that’s gotta be good for business, right?

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The New York City Council is voting on a resolution this morning supporting the idea that Internet service providers cannot discriminate against web traffic on their networks. As gestures go, this resolution supporting net neutrality is more symbolic than it is useful, and to that end has already yielded a couple of photos of FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg shaking hands and looking concerned about the future of NYC broadband.

However, New York City is a nice case study for competitive broadband, so I hope Genachowski took notes while he was there. Verizon, Time Warner Cable and Cablevision all serve the city (although they don’t all compete head to head in every block), so some residents there have access to both fiber to the home and cable’s wideband service using DOCSIS 3.0. Our own Ryan Lawler, who lives in Harlem, is paying $33 a month for Internet service from Time Warner Cable, which currently has the monopoly in his building. However, he says he just got a note informing him that Verizon FiOS will also soon be available, so we’ll see what happens to his cable speeds (which are currently 9 Mbps down and 500 kilobits per second up) and service in the next few months.

The state’s CIOwants to collect real data on broadband penetration and speeds so that it can get a sense of customers’ level of satisfaction with their service as opposed to just knowing which areas have broadband and which don’t. A Congressman from the state is also attempting to pass legislation that would give the FCC the power to regulate certain aspects of net neutrality and broadband access. So given the competition, better data collection and consumer-friendly legislative efforts, I hope Genachowski is doing some learning, not just politicking for a symbolic victory on net neutrality.

A flowchart can be crucial for explaining certain tasks or ideas. SlickPlan’s goal is to make sure that you can put together a flowchart quickly, no matter where you are. The web-based application also enables you to put together site maps and interact with your existing designs. It was created with web designers in mind, but anyone can quickly learn to use SlickPlan’s flowcharts.

SlickPlan doesn’t really differentiate between creating a web site plan or a flowchart, which can be a little confusing at first. But once you realize that it uses the same tool for both, you can quickly start adding items to a chart. The tool is fairly simple: You click the “Add a New Page” to add a bubble (whether it represents a page on a web site or an item on your chart) and select the page or item under which it will be located.” You also have a side bar listing each element and allowing you to move, edit or delete individual pieces. There aren’t a lot of fancy bells and whistles — but you won’t miss them. Instead, SlickPlan does one thing particularly well, allowing you to create a chart in no time flat. Even better, any project you put together with SlickPlan is clean and attractive enough to send out to clients comfortably.

Once you’ve got a chart or site map put together, SlickPlan offers you a few different options on what you can do with it. Most importantly, you can save it and work on it later. You can also save multiple versions of a project. By opening up individual projects, you can access an HTML embed code that allows you to add your chart to other sites, export your project as a PDF and send a link to anyone you need to look at your chart. You can save an unlimited number of projects to your SlickPlan account at this point.

There are a few places where SlickPlan could use a little bit of polish. The application itself is easy enough to use, but the way certain buttons are labeled can make it seem like you can only create site plans, rather than use it for flowcharts and other options — uses that are specifically mentioned on the application’s web site. The application was developed by Atomic Interactive, a web development studio. SlickPlan was not created for a client, however; instead, it’s more of an internal tool meant to eliminate the frustration of trying to build site maps in Illustrator or InDesign. The resulting application makes knocking out a fast chart easy.

You may find that SlickPlan is not quite so useful if you want to add notes about individual elements or need to make more elaborate charts. In such scenarios, you may want to consider a more robust tool. Otherwise, it’s a useful tool at the right price. SlickPlan’s developers intend to keep it free, as well, relying on ads and donations to cover the site’s costs.

What tools do you use to create flowcharts?

• Automatically Synchronize Photos, Videos, Music and Other Selected Content – you can set Pogoplug to monitor drives for media so you don’t have to manually add the files. New content from iTunes, Windows Media Player and iPhoto is supported.
• Drag-and-Drop Music and Photo Slideshows – once you create a slide show with drag-and-drop, it’s easily sharable with anyone via the web, right through a browser.
• Easier Sharing with Pogoplug Address Book — after sharing your data with someone, Pogoplug remembers their contact information for future use, even if you remove the share.
• Global Search Across Multiple Drives and Pogoplugs — want to share data but you’re not sure which of your drives has it? Pogoplug can search all of them at one time. And if you have multiple Pogoplugs on the same account, it will even search across the devices.
• Organize Your Music, Photos and Videos — Music media is easier to browse with automatic displays sorted by album, artist and genre, complete with cover art. Video previews are shown live thumbnails.
• Play movies directly from my.pogoplug.com, or even to the iPhone — Video streaming from a Pogoplug is supported on most cameras, video cameras and mobile phones. You can also share movies for viewing over the web or with an iPhone.

All in all, this sounds like a solid step forward for the Pogoplug. Are there other options for these functions? Sure there are: Orb, Windows Home Server, various web storage and file synchronization services come to mind. But the ease of use and super-fast setup is what I found valuable in my testing of the original Pogoplug. It’s a product that doesn’t require any technical know-how of what’s going on — it simply works after the short setup. Pogoplug is now available for pre-order directly from Cloud Engines.

Considering that cooling IT systems is responsible for 40-60 percent of a typical data center’s yearly spending on electricity, the company is clearly betting that the energy savings alone will be enough to drum up business. Instead of supplying rack doors with chilled water to cool servers like IBM, or affixing “water blocks” to processors and other heat-generating components of a server to siphon off heat, Iceotope dunks entire server motherboards into modules that are filled with an “inert liquid” that doesn’t short out the delicate electronics.

The concept isn’t exactly new. For years, some hardcore computer enthusiasts called overclockers have been submerging their computer hardware in substances like mineral oil or 3M’s Fluorinert product to counteract the immense heat caused by their performance-enhancing tweaks. It works because liquids are much better at transferring heat than air.

Iceotope’s CEO Dan Chester told me today that despite debuting the technology at a supercomputing event, his company’s modular system is primarily aimed at bettering energy efficiency. Another of his company’s goals — and key to the product’s acceptance — “is to make it look and feel like a liquid-cooled rack.” So Iceotope is putting data center operators at ease with familiar form factors. Taking a cue from blade servers, the liquid-filled modules slot into a chassis, which in turn fits into a standard 19-inch server rack.

As you can see in the cross section (pictured above), each module has a metal heat transfer plate in its interior that makes contact with a motherboard’s heat-producing chips via heatsinks. Heat never builds up because non-chilled, low-pressure water is pumped along channels on the outer surface of the heat transfer plate and is eventually cooled by a heat exchanger somewhere on the premises. Non-chilled water and slow, high-efficiency pumps are key to achieving the company’s goal of “free cooling at much higher ambient temperatures,” says Chester. He adds that the modules are so “thermally neutral” that servers can be packed tighter and fill in the spaces that would otherwise be occupied by air.

There are trade offs, but they shouldn’t be deal-breakers according to Chester. Extra weight from the liquid is a concern, but his company is offsetting the added heft with light, but sturdy, plastics and other materials so that standard racks don’t buckle under the added weight. And depending on a data center’s construction, some additional plumbing might be required. However, reduced costs for energy, chillers and computer room air conditioners (CRACs) makes it worthwhile, says Chester. According to the company’s figures, the system can reduce the cost of cooling 1,000 servers for three years to just $52,560 from $788,400.

As for that “inert liquid,” Chester isn’t spilling the beans. But in keeping with the company’s green IT philosophy, he claims that the synthetic coolant is better for the environment than Fluorinert and that his company has taken toxicity and recyclability into account.

On the way out

I sent out (or am sending back today) a couple of gadgets that I’ve had fun working with. The Lenovo ThinkPad T400s played a useful role for me and the multitouch screen was a lot of fun. The T400s proved something to me that I’ve long believed, that using a multitouch screen on a standard laptop is uncomfortable and doesn’t provide much benefit.

Reaching to touch the screen on a laptop is unnatural. While Windows 7 has nice touch features incorporated into the OS, and I really like them, I didn’t like using them on a standard notebook. This is strictly a personal opinion, and as I often say mobile devices are intensely personal. I’m sure that many will find touch on a laptop to be a wonderful tool; I’m just not in that group.

I do find that Windows 7’s multitouch features are outstanding on a convertible notebook, but only when the notebook is in slate mode. It is so natural to work with touch on a slate, and I recommend that everyone try it out if possible. I can’t state strongly enough how much sense it makes to simply tap on the screen with the fingertip to make something happen.

I was sorry to see the ThinkPad go, as I found it to be a great laptop. That ThinkPad keyboard coupled with the large screen was a great way to work. It was very thin and light, which was icing on the cake.

Today the Motorola Droid goes back to Verizon, and I will definitely miss it. It’s not without its quirks, but it’s a good smartphone with a lot going for it. It will be even better when Verizon gets that odd time-stamp bug squashed so the auto-focus camera works as advertised.

While using the Droid I found myself depending quite heavily on Google Maps Navigation, it became my primary navigation tool. The ability to have the satellite view overlaid on the map was a powerful aid to turn-by-turn navigation. I was able to see major highway exchanges and overpasses before getting to that point in the route, and that was helpful. I can’t wait for Android 2.0 to get rolled out on other phones so this navigation is more widely available.

The giant arrives

The good folks at Acer were kind enough to let me take a look at the Aspire 8940G, and it arrived just a few days ago. The notebook is simply massive, with the 18.4-inch widescreen calling for a wide body. That big screen is simply gorgeous, bright and vivid as on any notebook.

I’ve made it clear in past columns how important keyboards are to my work, and the Acer keyboard is very good. Typing on the keyboard is comfortable and it is possible to type very fast. It’s also nice that the keyboard has the 10-key pad, something I didn’t realize I missed until I had one at my disposal again.

I will be continuing my evaluation of the 8940G and sharing that experience. My arms will get a good workout, if I carry it around much.

Getting ready for the onslaught of e-book readers

Whether you like dedicated e-book readers or not, a lot of them are about to hit the market. We’ve got the Kindle and multiple Sony Readers now, and by early next year we’ll have quite a few other readers on the market. These will have different size screens, so everyone should be able to find the right size for their needs.

I’m not a big fan of e-Ink screens, I have the original Kindle but I rarely use it. I don’t like the grayness of the page background, and the slow, flickering page turns detract from the joy of reading books. I find standard LCD screens give me a more pleasurable reading experience, as I can control the brightness, color of the page background and the font. I do a lot of reading in low lighting conditions, and LCDs do a better job.

I have been using different gadgets around the Manor for reading e-books, the primary difference being screen size. I wanted to get a feel for what size device yields the best reading experience for my tastes. I have used a couple of phones with their small screens: the Droid and the iPhone 3G. I used eReader Pro on both phones and found both of them to work as expected. I preferred the iPhone with eReader, mainly because the Android version on the Droid doesn’t display pages with full justification. I found uneven lines to be a bit distracting on the Droid.

I also tried reading with several UMPCs, and even a larger Tablet PC. The Viliv S5 was a good reader due to the 5-inch screen, and it was small and light enough to be comfortable to hold for extended periods. I tried two 7-inch devices, the Viliv X70 and the S7. These two UMPCs are the same size, although one has a keyboard and the other none. The 7-inch screen was just about the perfect size to duplicate the reading experience I would get from a paperback book.

I was a bit surprised to find that overall, I preferred the S7 over the X70. The X70 is a pure slate device, so I thought it would be more comfortable to hold for longer periods. What I found was that the S7 in slate mode, even though it is a full convertible UMPC, was more comfortable to hold. The plastic case of the S7 was lighter than that of the X70, and the edges smoother on the S7. The S7 became my favorite device to serve as an e-book reader.

I also tried the ThinkPad x200 Tablet PC in slate mode, and while the 12-inch screen approximated the page size of a hardcover book, I found it too heavy to use for long sessions. I did like the big screen and the touch controls, but not for those long reading periods.

e-Books of the week

One of the brightest moments for voracious readers is discovering a new author whose novels turn out to be a joy. I had one of those moments this week as I discovered a couple of novels by John Philpin. The Murder Channel and Dreams in the Key of Blue were mystery stories I really liked. They feature forensic psychologist Lucas Frank, a sharp guy who unsuccessfully retired from the Boston legal scene but keeps getting dragged back in. Both books were exciting and well told by Philpin, and I’m looking forward to picking up his other work.

Wrap-up

That’s the week as it went down at Mobile Tech Manor. It was a fast moving week, and I hope you enjoyed sharing it with me. Until next week, take care.

Khosla, who has seemed a lot more bearish than many investors in terms of the smart grid (in contrast, Steve Westly, partner at the Westly Group welcomed GreenBeat attendees to bring him their business plans), predicted not many of the next-gen smart grid entrepreneurs in the room would be successful, but that there would be enough winners to make the sector “interesting.” Next-gen applications and services could sprout up in the middle of the grid or at the edge of the network. It’s at the edge where Duke Energy CTO David Mohler said earlier this week he aims to “let thousand flowers bloom.” Here’s 3 companies that have developed next-gen smart grid services that were at the GreenBeat show:

Locust Storage: Locust Storage tied for the innovation award at GreenBeat (with established player CPower), and the San Diego, Calif.-based startup has developed a data storage system that CEO Seth Georgion says can reduce power of data storage systems in data centers by 90 percent. The device, which the company plans to commercialize early next year, caches data partly with flash storage (more expensive but a next-gen storage tech) as well as traditional spinning discs. What makes the technology interesting for the grid is that the storage unit can power up and down quickly and potentially add power back onto the grid in the same way solar can. It’s an example of innovation at the edge of the grid with implications extending all the way to the data center.

Building IQ: Building IQ launched at GreenBeat and has created optimizing software for commercial buildings that is fully automated. The company sells its software via a subscription to building owners, and says its service can be used for a next generation demand response.

R2EV: R2EV says its on-demand energy storage solution, which is made of lithium ion and lithium polymer batteries, is a portable solution for the power grid. Based in Boise, Idaho, R2EV says it is working with the U.S. Army to commercialize the units dubbed Fuel 2.0. Again it’s innovation at the edge of the network.

The Pirate Bay made headlines earlier this week with yet another dramatic announcement, this time that the notorious BitTorrent site’s tracker has been officially shut down. But the move won’t impact downloading, site admins explained on a blog. Trackers are no longer needed to facilitate BitTorrent transfers, the blog entry explained, because decentralized extensions of the P2P protocol are mature enough to pick up the tab. “It’s the end of an era, but the era is no longer up2date,” the blog proclaimed.

As always with announcements from the folks at The Pirate Bay, there’s a lot of self-serving smoke and mirrors, mixed with a good amount of hubris. However, the announcement does bring up an interesting question: Is BitTorrent really ready for a world without trackers? We talked to some of the major players to find out.

First, a quick primer so we all know what we’re talking about: When you download a file via BitTorrent today, you start off with a .torrent file that contains some meta data, including the address of at least one torrent tracker. These trackers facilitate your download by letting you know who else is sharing the file. The Pirate Bay’s tracker has been one of the biggest and, thus, most important of these facilitators, tracking by some estimates around 50 percent of the world’s BitTorrent traffic.

That’s a pretty impressive number, considering that the whole setup costs not much more than $3,000 per month, but it’s also an Achilles heel. After all, users solely relying on a tracker wouldn’t be able to exchange any files if the tracker became unavailable. That’s precisely why BitTorrent developers came up with a couple of decentralized approaches. Most BitTorrent clients now support a so-called Distributed Hash Table, or DHT.

A DHT is essentially a decentralized P2P network that stores all the information a tracker traditionally offers in the P2P cloud, making it possible to find users to download from even if the tracker server is offline. Most clients also support a feature called Peer Exchange (PEX) that’s meant to let peers talk to each other directly to take the load off a tracker server. The question is: Can DHT and PEX do all the heavy lifting and facilitate downloads for some 20 million simultaneous users without any tracker involved?

The first BitTorrent client that ever incorporated DHT was Vuze back in 2005 when it was still called Azureus, so I figured folks there might have an opinion on this. Vuze co-founder and CTO Olivier Chalouhi seemed bullish. “DHT works well as a technology, and is actually more scalable than tracker sites,” he told me. He cautioned, however, that very new files as well as rare files with few seeders would be served better by a tracker as opposed to a DHT-only environment.

Simon Morris from BitTorrent Inc. seemed a little more cautious. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some impact on performance,” he told me. “In theory DHT and PEX should be sufficient,” Morris explained, adding that the initial discovery of users to download from might be more reliable and robust if you can leverage a tracker server.

I also talked to an admin involved in running one of the big tracker servers that currently functions as the backbone of the BitTorrent universe. He sounded skeptical and said that he didn’t believe DHT to be scalable enough to completely take over.

To be honest, those are all just well-informed musings. We don’t really know what would happen if all of the world’s trackers were to be turned off tomorrow. What we do know is that BitTorrent wouldn’t work quite as seamlessly as it does now, if only for one reason: Bittorrent Inc. and Vuze actually use two different, incompatible DHT networks. This doesn’t matter as much when both clients are connected to the same tracker. However, in a tracker-less world, Vuze users wouldn’t be able to find users of BitTorrent’s client, and vice versa. Chalouhi told me that Vuze is currently working on integrating both DHTs to bridge those two worlds.

The good news is that trackers aren’t disappearing anytime soon. The Pirate Bay may have announced the retirement of its tracker this week, but the site’s tracker has actually been offline since early August, and other trackers have been more than capable of filling the void. In fact, tracker admins are working on new technology that would make their servers part of a federated network to prevent any interruption.

For end users, all of this means that little is changing. You’ll still use a BitTorrent site to search for content, and your client will most likely still connect to a tracker to download it. DHT has been around for years, and it may become more important over time. Some trackers may exchange data among themselves. The overall experience, however, will be pretty much the same. Maybe that’s what The Pirate Bay folks meant when they ended their sensationalistic announcement by proclaiming: “This is the future. And the present.” And the past, one might add.

Gore highlighted three benefits that the smart grid will provide: a connection to link renewable assets to areas that need it, a way to empower consumers, and a way to drive technology innovation in much the same way the Internet has done. When comparing the Internet to the smart grid Gore said, “the analogy is almost exact.” The energy industry is moving toward a distributed model (solar rooftops and devices at endpoints), from a highly centralized one now. Eventually, Gore predicted the power grid will look more like the distributed model of the Internet.

Arguably, said Gore, the most important effects of the smart grid buildout will be the potential benefits for consumers, who will finally become aware of how much energy they are using and find new options for reducing energy consumption. “Most people are simply not aware of ways to reduce consumption,” he said. Andy Tang, senior director of PG&E Smart Energy Web expressed a similar sentiment on the panel prior to Gore’s speech concerning just how big the change in mentality about energy consumption will be. Tang said many even in the utility industry are just beginning to grasp the large effect that a digital grid will have on consumers.

Image courtesy of World Economic Forum flickr Creative Commons (not from GreenBeat)