Thanks to the amazing viral powers of Twitter, I found a series that CNN is running on cloud computing, complete with stories (I liked the one on server huggers) and fun video about an oddly named dog. The goal clearly is to explain cloud computing to the masses, but when you show someone hosting a photo at Picasa or Flickr and say, “You’ve just started cloud computing,” you’ve just messed up. Storing data in the cloud is the same as storing it online. In fact, if they remade the video (embedded below) and replaced the word “cloud” with “web” or “online,” it all would still make sense — but that’s not cloud computing. Cloud computing is providing processing power on demand and charging for it on a per instance basis. Yeah, that’s far geekier, but it helps someone sift through all the hype around the cloud and cloud computing, something the CNN video and story doesn’t really do.

Not that many of the vendors who provide either web-based services like Google’s Gmail or actual cloud computing like Amazon really helped the poor writer out. Google refused to let him tour their data centers (no surprise) and Amazon’s Adam Selipsky, VP of Amazon Web Services, told him, “From a customer’s perspective, it is a cloud, and it can be magic.”

Wow, can we all try a little less hard to make this stuff easy to understand?

There are no longer any doubts that T-Mobile has hitched its smartphone bandwagon to Google’s Android operating system. The company today said that it will be selling four Android-powered handsets to its (current and potential) customers during the vital holiday season. It is clear they are hoping to sell a lot of smart phones. As part of its push, the company is making some plans regarding applications and application discovery. Here are some excerpts from their email pitch sent earlier today:

With the introduction of the T-Mobile myTouch 3G, T-Mobile created T-Mobile AppPack on Android Market, which features select 3rd party and T-Mobile made apps. T-Mobile recently refreshed AppPack with new, suggested applications – 34 apps in all, including a mix of free and paid apps. Later this month, the company will take this a step further by introducing a T-Mobile Channel on Android Market (that will be live by Thanksgiving), and Android Market (including the T-Mobile Channel) will soon feature carrier billing making it easier and more streamlined for customers with T-Mobile Android devices to purchase their favorite applications.

When I read that pitch, the first thing that came to my mind: hey isn’t that what the carrier decks of the yore really used to be?

Carriers playing godfather to the fortunes of small companies in exchange for some baksheesh. Apps placed by them on the deck was how start-ups fortunes were decided. Carrier decks also were a way to sell premium applications and services. So how are T-Mobile channel and T-Mobile App Pack any different than the carrier deck? My inner skeptic says: not much!

Any thoughts folks?

Find Android apps easier and pay later (GigaOm) — Cole Brodman, CTO of T-Mo, offered up some deets on how the carrier will make it easier to find apps in the Android Market. Look for a T-Mobile Channel in the Market and integrated carrier billing to pay for app purchases via your phone bill. This kind of differentiation and customization could help T-Mobile, and even Android in general. I still think it can be a challenge to wade through 100,000 apps.

WinMo 6.5 upgrade for the Samsung Jack (PhoneScoop) — Another handset gets the upgrade treatment. Jack owners can grab the free upgrad, which will wipe personal data, directly from Samsung. Aside from the base operating system, the update includes an AT&T Wi-Fi app and Vlingo for voice commands.

webOS about to get faster? (EverythingPre) — Expectations are rising that the next webOS update will bring a bit more speed to the Pre, and presumably the Pixi, which is due out soon. I’d agree with some assessments — with similar hardware to the iPhone, the Pre seems slower by comparison in some respects. I wouldn’t call my Pre slow, but there are functions that are far quicker on my iPhone 3GS. I suspect we’ll see an update in the next few weeks, so we’ll see if performance is improved.

I missed the first episode of the V last night and forgot to DVR it. “No big deal,” I thought, “I’ll catch it on Hulu tomorrow.”

Unh-unh. No such luck, my friend. V is not available on either Hulu or ABC.com today. The pilot is, however, available for free on electronic sell-through sites Amazon VOD and iTunes (hat tip to TV by the Numbers).

Instead of the full episode, ABC.com greeted me with a survey that asked a bunch of questions relating to online video and release windows for content. Screengrabs below but a good example is: “Given a choice, would you rather watch future V episodes online or on TV?”

It looks like episodes of V won’t be available online until four days after they air on TV (but, they will have fancy social TV functionality). Overall, ABC is obviously trying to gauge the viewing behavior of its audience, which, for a show like V is probably a tech-savvy one.

All the networks are coping with changing TV viewing habits, so it’s no surprise ABC is is asking some straightforward questions. We’re just wondering what took them so long. Here are some questions from the survey:

I can’t play poker, but I do enjoy watching it on TV. We’re in the middle of the 2009 World Series of Poker, an event that draws thousands of professional and amateur players to Las Vegas every year. The grand finale is the Main Event, a massive Texas Hold ’Em tournament with thousands of players and millions of dollars for the winner.

Tournament poker used to be the province of professionals. But starting a few years ago, a huge wave of amateurs has invaded the game. As a result, of the thousands of entrants into the Main Event, only a few hundred are real pros.

To my surprise, I’ve actually learned a lot about entrepreneurship from watching the World Series of Poker. But it shouldn’t be too surprising. Both rely on acting strategically under conditions of extreme uncertainty. And, in both, small changes in your odds of winning can have a big impact on the final outcome. In fact, I now routinely use the Main Event to help entrepreneurs cope with a frustrating paradox.

Why are some terrible entrepreneurs so successful?

Because the structural barriers to creating a high-tech startup have been lowered dramatically in the past few years, we’re experiencing a huge influx of entrepreneurs. This is a great thing. But it’s meant that there are an awful lot of startup stories floating around. When those stories take on the status of myths, they create tremendous confusion. Naturally, we want to emulate those that have been successful. But that’s not always a good idea.

In the World Series of Poker, no professional has won the Main Event in seven years. When you think about it, this is very surprising. Professional players are so much better than amateurs that they can make a living – in many cases, becoming very very rich – by exploiting the difference between their level of skill and the level of the people they play with. The best of the best win many tournaments each year. By any objective measure, they are much better players than the amateurs. Yet the Main Event has been won year in and year out by a complete unknown player. Some of those amateurs go on to become semi-pro players. But most have never won another tournament after their big win. Why?

The reason is that being a professional player shifts the odds of winning a given poker hand in the professional’s favor, just a little bit. Over the course of a year, a given pro will play thousands of poker hands, and so this shift in probabilities adds up to dramatic winnings. But on any given hand, they still have a significant probability of losing — even if their play is perfect.

Similarly, given enough amateurs in the field, the law of large numbers means that at least some of them will get lucky enough times to outperform even the best pros. That’s why I can say with some certainty that an amateur will win the Main Event this year, even though I have absolutely no idea which of the six thousand entrants it will be.

Entrepreneurship is similar. So much of what makes a startup successful is totally out of our control: the timing of the market, the behavior of competitors, the IPO or M&A window, underlying technology trends and, of course, the human factors of investors, co-founders and employees. Truly successful startup methodologies like customer development or the lean startup can only hope to increase our odds of success — they can’t guarantee it. The converse is also true: even entrepreneurs who do everything wrong sometimes get lucky and make a lot of money anyway. Some even do it repeatedly.

That’s why, for any tactic or strategy — no matter how hare-brained — you can find some “proof” that it works in some company somewhere. That’s what makes processing startup advice so hard. Just because someone has had a success doesn’t necessarily mean they understand why they were successful at all.

Which brings me to the second thing I’ve learned from the WSOP. It’s called a disciplined laydown. In poker, winning requires that your hand beats your opponents hand. The problem is that you don’t know what your opponent has. Amateur players often believe that their success depends on the quality of the cards they are dealt. Consequently, they fold their bad cards and wait for that one big hand to get their chips in with. Unfortunately, having a big hand doesn’t mean you’ll win — your opponent could have an even bigger hand. That’s why the most important skill in poker is not bluffing, counting cards, or computing the odds. It’s figuring out when you need to fold a big, big hand. Watching the pros do this on TV is amazing. Over time, they develop an uncanny instinct for knowing when they are beat, and not throwing more money after bad.

In fact, once you realize that this is the most important skill in poker, it becomes clear that when professional players bet, they are really probing for information. Everything is calculated to help them figure out if their opponent has one of those big hands that might beat them. Folding in those situations saves chips that can be used more profitably later in the tournament.

I think there’s some wisdom here for entrepreneurs, too. We get attached to our big ideas, but it’s those big visions that get us into trouble. Just because we’ve sunk a lot of time and energy into an idea doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good one. In fact, the main reason we need to get out of the building and validate our ideas is so that we can realize we’re beat before it’s too late and pivot. Once you have that insight, you realize that all of the work we’re doing in building an initial idea — from minimum viable product to split-testing to customer validation — is all designed, like the bets of a poker pro, to promote learning about where we stand.

And that provides another possibility for dealing with startup advice. Instead of making an exhaustive search for all the smartest, most successful people and copying them — learn to place small bets. Take any advice (including mine), and think it through for yourself. Do you understand the underlying principles? Can you see how it applies to your specific context? Can you tease apart the impact of luck? And, once you think you have some advice you might like to follow, try it out. Find a way to pilot it without betting your whole company. And then be prepared to fold if it’s not working. Each time, make sure you do a root cause analysis, and figure out what you learned.

And, if you find advice that seems to work, be ready to go all-in.

Eric Ries is a serial entrepreneur and author of the blog Startup Lessons Learned.

Image courtesy Flickr user banspy

This is all part of a little ergonomic redesign of my workspace, because I’ve been having neck, back and arm pain lately. Just today I took delivery of an ergonomic chair, which should help. And I’m looking into a new desk that’s fully adjustable as well. The problem is: I hate to give up the multitouch gestures on my MacBook, and for that reason alone, I wanted to see how much “magic” that Apple’s new mouse can give me.

In no particular order, here are my thoughts after spending an hour with the new mouse.

• It’s far flatter than I anticipated.
• I’m not liking the two plastic rails on the bottom of it. That could be due to my work surface, which is laminated wood — moving the mouse makes a subtle scraping sound.
• Pairing was a non-issue. I simply turned the mouse on and it was in discovery mode. Once paired, I checked for a software update because I only had basic mouse functionality. One small update later, followed by a reboot, gave me full functionality.
• From an ergonomic perspective, it actually feels nicer than the old Mighty Mouse, provided you have a desk with the right height. My hand simply rests on it as it would a half-bar of Dove soap. It feels very natural to me because a relaxed hand isn’t flat — it’s curved. This feels like I was using a thinner Palm Pre under my hand, if that makes any sense.
• The multitouch scrolling and swiping works really well and gives me some of what I’m missing from my MacBook trackpad. There’s a minimal learning curve. I wish — hope, even — that Apple can add support for three fingers, but I don’t know if that’s possible.
• Occasionally, my palm has caused a little bit of unintended scrolling. It hasn’t happened often and it could be a training thing. A scroll motion near the bottom of the mouse — near the Apple logo — will still cause a scroll. Perhaps Apple should have made the actual touch portion limited to the upper half of the mouse.
• It’s not too bad for me losing the side buttons of the old mouse — my Apple Bluetooth keyboard shortcuts are fine, but again, it’s a training thing. I do miss the ability to swipe four fingers up or down, but I’ll get over it.
• The mouse is really light — almost, but not quite like a smaller travel mouse.
• The edges are a bit sharp. It could just be my small hands, but the left and right edges aren’t as tapered as I think they can be.
• By default, the Magic Mouse is set up for kinetic scrolling but is not set up for a secondary button. That’s easy to fix, of course.
• I really like the kinetic scrolling.
• From an ergo standpoint, my hand and fingers aren’t doing anything radically different from what they did with the MacBook trackpad.

I’ll be using the new Magic Mouse with my MacBook going forward, so if there’s any show-stopper kind of updates, I’ll report back in. For now, I’d recommend it but probably not sight unseen. That is: I spent a few minutes trying it in the Apple store first and I suggest the same to you. It’s not so much for the features — after all, if you’ve used a multitouch trackpad on an Apple laptop, then you pretty much understand the features. It’s the feel of using it for swiping and scrolling is what I’d be looking for. It felt relatively comfortable to me in the Apple store, so I made the purchase. If I didn’t feel that way, I’d probably still be out shopping for a mouse.

By the way: I also resurrected the ol’ Apple Bluetooth keyboard for my set up. I’ll probably look to replace that because it’s not really that ergonomic at all. For now, it will have to do. But it was sitting around for nearly a year and didn’t turn on at first, even after changing the batteries. Later today or tomorrow, I’ll have to tell you how I fixed it. You’re not going to believe this one — trust me!

The electric grid is not antiquated but it needs connectivity: There is a rumor that the electric grid is antiquated that is “spreading from Silicon Valley” by people who don’t really understand the industry. The grid is made up of many intelligent devices that are widely dispersed. The challenge, generally speaking, is not to improve the devices that are already deployed but to cost-effectively network them together.

Don’t put too much smarts into the meter: If you do, five years down the line you’ll regret it as technology advances. Then your meter will be obsolete. Instead, the intelligence around services like home area networks should be “in a box” that you place in the home and that can easily be swapped like a home computer as technology advances. In a related comment, Ibrahim said meters aren’t the only route for the smart grid to extend into the home. Other options could evolve, though he didn’t offer any examples.

Grid security requires comprehensive security, not just a big wall: Utilities can’t just build a big wall and expect to keep everyone out. A comprehensive approach to security will include technological advancement but also personnel training, process control and open digital security standards.

Go slow with the adoption of interoperability standards: Smart grid communication standards should be based on best practices. So the industry should develop the science first and then put the standard in place, not the other way around (Pacific Gas & Electric’s Kevin Dasso, while speaking on the same panel, appeared to disagree, however, when he said that you can either let the standards control you or you can work to control the standards) . Ibrahim also said the smart grid industry shouldn’t think it can take Internet Protocol and quickly shift it over to the electric grid. There are several reasons, one of them being that the electric grid must be more secure than IP currently enables.

Home energy management systems need to impress the neighbors: Many Americans won’t pay a dollar for a soda out of a machine, but put them at a bar next to someone they want to impress and they’ll easily spend three. So home energy management solutions that just show you how much energy you use and when won’t get much market penetration. The solution has to have some bells and whistles that will allow customers to impress their neighbors, say by linking it in some way with the family flat screen TV or by controlling appliances automatically. In a related comment, Ibrahim said he expects the private sector demand-response players, such as EnerNOC or Tendril, to increasingly offer customer-centric solutions for lowering their power usage. These solutions may be tied to home energy management systems.

Liquid Computing, a startup going head-to-head with giants, today launched its own version of unified computing gear that stands in almost direct contrast to the announcements made yesterday by Cisco, EMC and VMware about Vblocks and the new Acadia services arm. Also today, HP laid out its vision and new software for a converged computing infrastructure, the heir to its adaptive infrastructure products of the last four years. These two announcements are the latest in a web of partnerships that are taking place in the data center infrastructure space as folks try to combine computer, storage and networking into some kind of monolithic compute fabric (GigaOM Pro subscription required). The end result of such efforts will be to make the data center function like a giant computer, and the fight is on to provide the component parts plus the OS.

Liquid unveiled its Liquid Elements software that will work with Intel-based servers and NetApp storage gear. The software and Liquid’s switch can be combined to deliver the same sort of unified fabric computing that Cisco has been selling. Liquid differs from the Vblocks on offer through Cisco/EMC/VMware in that the software can run on any Intel-based server, either virtualized or in a bare metal implementation, said Vikram Desai, CEO of Liquid Computing. Cisco’s servers use Intel chips, but they are all about running virtual machines.

HP’s announcements focus on its version of the data center OS that it calls the Infrastructure Operating Environment, its FlexFabric Virtual I/O, and what it calls Virtual Resource Pools, which is a not-that-fancy-way of saying virtualized clusters of server and storage hardware based on existing storage gear and operating systems. There’s also a piece that optimizes data center operations.

However, on the server side, HP has a big limitation right now in that its Flex Fabric virtual I/O software only works with HP’s blade servers. So to really get the benefits of a converged network fabric, you’re gonna have to have HP blade for now. Doug Oathout, VP of Green IT at HP, says the company plans to make Flex Fabric work on other hardware, but offered no time line.

What’s in Store for Storage

That’s the server+networking side, so what’s happening in storage? HP’s Virtual resource pools are pretty compelling in that they can work with any hypervisor and can accommodate applications that are running on bare metal servers without virtualization and a variety of storage gear. HP today also announced its HP X9000 boxes which contain software from its IBRIX acquisition. They offer enterprises the ability to create up to 16 petabytes of virtualized storage. It’s like having the ability to open a door in any room in your home and find an empty walk-in closet when needed.

On the storage side, Cisco’s servers can see it, but they can’t control or talk to the storage infrastructure. That’s why it needs EMC and VMware working with it to make a truly unified platform. Liquid Element can talk to any Ethernet-based storage gear, although it works best with storage from NetApp.

When it comes to services, HP will help you figure out how to build out this converged infrastructure and Liquid will rely on selling though channels. The creation of Acadia may signal that Cisco was having a hard time selling its equipment into organizations through a channel that couldn’t figure out how to make its gear work, Liquid’s Desai pointed out. It also may show how deals whereby large IT vendors have snapped up systems integrators (Dell buying Perot Systems or HP buying EDS) have forced Cisco to offer its own services arm in order to push its gear where those others may not.

As cloud computing and delivering IT on demand get taken over by the larger vendors, and are made palatable for enterprise customers, companies from small to large are cobbling together their vision for this highly virtualized data center infrastructure that basically acts and thinks like one big computer. Given how different the products are when it comes to openness and working with other equipment, it looks like we’re heading for a Mac vs. PC fight in the data center.

Chinese P2P startup Xunlei has sued its competitor Sohu for copyright infringement, according to the Shenzen Daily. Xunlei is alleging that Sohu’s search engine, Sogou, is infringing on copyrights related to Xunlei’s P2P software as well as its own search engine, Gougou.com. Sohu had previously filed its own copyright infringement lawsuits against Xunlei and other Chinese P2P vendors.

China has long been a P2P video wunderkind of sorts. Efforts to establish P2P-based consumer video platforms like Joost and Babelgum have largely failed in the U.S. and Europe, but similar offerings attract millions of users in China. However, the Chinese market is saturated with literally dozens of video vendors, and efforts to grow their business beyond the PC have stalled due to strict government licensing requirements.

Xunlei is a popular Chinese P2P client that combines BitTorrent with web-based downloads. The company’s Gougou.com search engine links to TV shows and movies hosted on various ftp servers and web sites. Users can download these files and automatically accelerate their downloads through Xunlei’s P2P functionality. Gougou obfuscates these links in order to get users to access the content with its own client and sign up for its premium services, which include remote downloading to Xunlei’s servers.

However, that didn’t stop Sohu from allegedly crawling these sites as well and publishing the direct download links without any Xunlei-specific code. Xunlei wasn’t too happy about that and decided to sue last week. Some reports suggest the lawsuits include complaints about cracked versions of Xunlei appearing in Sohu search results. Sohu previously sued Xunlei for broadcasting a TV series that the company had exclusive online rights for, and it recently announced further lawsuits against Xunlei and other competitors under the helm of a newly formed “Online Video Copyright Union.”

You know the fight for market share is getting ugly when online video companies do the dirty work for rights holders and sue each other for copyright infringement. The irony of these lawsuits is that much of the content indexed by both search engines clearly isn’t licensed to begin with. We asked both companies for their side of the story, but haven’t heard back from Xunlei, and just got a brief “no comment” from Sohu.

The lawsuits shouldn’t really surprise anyone who has been following the Chinese online video industry. The country is home to a number of large P2P video platforms as well as YouTube-like sites. P2P streaming service PPLive, for example, touts up to 30 million active viewers per month, and YouTube-like Youku boasts 140 million visitors per month. Both compete with at least a handful of similar services, many of which also have an impressive user base. There isn’t one clear market leader like YouTube in the U.S., and Chinese online video business models still seem to be in a flux.

At the same time, it’s been getting harder for Chinese video ventures to grow their market beyond the PC audience. PPStream and Xunlei have tried to get their platforms on set-top boxes and connected TV sets, but those efforts have stalled because of the Chinese State Administration of Radio, Film and Television. The government agency views set-top box offerings as equal to over-the-air or cable television programming, which means that online video startups would need to get a special Internet TV license. That hurdle seems to be so high that a Chinese TV set manufacturer actually canceled plans to include PPStream in one of its connected TV sets in September.

The browser war continues to rage unabated, with the end result being better products for us, the users. This past week has seen significant beta updates to my two favorite browsers: Chrome and Firefox. I’ve been playing with beta 1 of Mozilla’s Firefox 3.6. This new version of Firefox boasts improved performance, personas (the ability to easily switch between different skins for your browser), and updated support for web standards, including support for the Web Open Font Format (WOFF).

Firefox 3.6b1 seems quite stable and certainly feels a wee bit faster than 3.5, so to test it out I ran it through the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark on my test machine. This new version got a score of 1996 ms, which is quite an improvement over 3.5’s score of 2500 ms.

Meanwhile, as reported by Kevin over at jkOnTheRun, the new beta of Google Chrome 4 on Windows sports a fancy mechanism that syncs bookmarks across devices almost instantly — very handy if you work on a few different machines. The bookmark syncing mechanism uses XMPP (the same technology used by Google Talk) to share the bookmarks. As Kevin notes, surely secure sharing of passwords and cookies must be in the cards as well.

Running the Chrome 4 beta through the same SunSpider benchmark test, I got a score of 1122 ms, which beats Firefox by a considerable margin and is even faster than the last version of Chrome that I tested.

While in real life usage it doesn’t feel like there’s much difference between the two betas, as we come to rely more on JavaScript-heavy web apps, performance becomes increasingly important — so the great improvement in the benchmark scores shown by both of these new betas is encouraging.

If you’re trying out either of these betas, let us know what you think of them below.

Microsoft’s Courier booklet device looks quite slick indeed in a collection of leaked photos Gizmodo posted today. The images are clearly from a document that explains Courier’s interface. These aren’t the first pictures that have been leaked of the device, but they provide the most complete guide to what it will be capable of. It’s clear from the photos of the Courier that Microsoft intends it to serve multiple purposes, and that the device is not limited to being an e-book reader or standard tablet. If Apple’s rumored tablet comes to fruition, it could also face significant competition from the gadget.

Gizmodo supplies some interesting specs for the device:

The dual 7-inch (or so) screens are multitouch, and designed for writing, flicking and drawing with a stylus, in addition to fingers. They’re connected by a hinge that holds a single iPhone-esque home button. Statuses, like wireless signal and battery life, are displayed along the rim of one of the screens. On the back cover is a camera, and it might charge through an inductive pad, like the Palm Touchstone charging dock for Pre.

It’s worth taking a tour of the photo gallery and considering the possibilities that are evident from the user interface. Check the shots out here, and the leaked video here. Microsoft’s Professional Developer Conference (PDC) is coming up in mid-November, and there are supposed to be some big announcements. Could Courier be among them?

Word has surfaced that the current beta build (10C535) of 10.6.2 has regained support for Atom processors. Whether this is due to the reaction to its removal, or to fixing an accidental removal we will likely never know. Of course, until 10.6.2 is finalized, we’ll have to wait and see if the Atom support stays.

Verizon Wireless launches the Motorola Droid this Friday (as if you hadn’t heard), and the carrier is opening “many” of its 2,000 retail outlets early (7 a.m. or 8 a.m. local time) to accommodate what it hopes is a rush of new customers. Call your local store for hours if you’re interested in being among the first to get your hands on the gadget. Meanwhile, here are a few other things you should keep in mind if you’re considering going Droid:

• The phone will sell for $199 with a two-year agreement and a $100 mail-in rebate. Users who don’t want to wait until Friday or deal with the hassle of mailing in for a rebate can pre-order the device at Best Buy, where the rebate will be applied instantly.
• As our friends at BillShrink have illustrated, expect to pay $110 a month for a mid-range plan with 450 900 minutes of talk time for the Droid, or $150 for an unlimited plan. Both rates match AT&T’s offerings for iPhone service.
• The Droid comes with a 16GB SD card to help offset its meager 256 MB of on-board memory. For more memory you’ll need to pick up a 32GB SD card.
• Android Market’s inventory of 10,000+ apps pales compared to Apple’s (a aapl) 100,000-title-plus App Store, but it’s a solid start for the year-old storefront.
• Google apps such as Maps, Latitude, Voice Search, Gmail and Calendar are included, and Droid is the first phone to feature the impressive new Google Maps Navigation.
• The Droid is the first handset to run Android 2.0 (dubbed “Eclair”), which includes new features such as a combined inbox for multiple email accounts, a virtual keyboard with improved layout and word completion, and “Quick Contact,” which enables a user to call, email or send an SMS simply by clicking on a contact or photo.

Whether the Cupertino gang has anything to fear in the Droid is a matter of some debate. But Motorola’s handset clearly has the firepower to move the needle in the fast-moving smartphone world, and I expect the gadget to sell very well this holiday season in the wake of Verizon’s marketing blitz.

Here’s the blunt truth of it: Even a major prude could probably derive enjoyment from Blue Movies, a well-produced little comedy series about the behind-the-scenes world of pornography, and as I’ve mentioned in the past, I’m no puritan.

Blue Movies, which is well-produced, tightly written, and occasionally (though not always) hilarious, depicts the world of Pornamount Pictures, a studio that specializes in adult adaptations of films like Forrest Gump, The Shawshank Redemption and The Dark Knight (the porn version of that film being titled The Dark Night Full of Smokin’ Hot Orgies — “Let’s make Christopher Nolan proud!” shouts the director). The show, told from the point of view of new intern Tom (Beck Bennett), who bumbled onto the set believing that he was actually starting an internship at Paramount, is seemingly focused around these XXX-rated satires of Oscar winners (trailers for which are available separately), but is at its best during the behind-the-scenes sequences, which are just like any Hollywood satire, except with more naked people.

However, while dealing with mature subject matter, Blue Movies is surprisingly clean, and the more explicit material tends to be of a verbal, not visual, nature. And while the female characters could all too easily have fallen into awful stereotypes, they’re actually not that bad. One of them even keeps her clothes on! (That’d be Sascha Alexander as the tough and funny Anna, who plays an important role as mentor to Tom and assistant to Max.) The only weak link of the series is Jareb Dauplaise as Max, who’s a committed performer but simply isn’t that believable as a porn kingpin — mainly because he looks like he’s about 22 years old.

A personal disclaimer: I once spent a few hours on the set of an adult film shoot (which was a helluva education, let me tell you), and while I’m not going to demand any sort of accuracy from a comedy satire, it does seem important to me to point out that quite a bit of pornography isn’t shot in a studio, bur rather in so-called “porn houses,” which are either private residences or specially held properties owned by location companies and leased to productions. And the crew on a porn set covers a wide range of ages and experiences, many of whom, like bumbling intern Tom, aspire to work in mainstream entertainment and are using porn as a stepping stone to a legit career — a career arc that has precedent. Omitting that latter fact feels like a major oversight, though plays well with the series’ tongue-in-cheek celebration of pornography as an art form.

You could perhaps draw a parallel between Max’s efforts to elevate the medium to that of the web series world, struggling to be taken seriously on a creative level while also achieving financial success — except that Max has sex on his side. He has it much easier.

Here’s the blunt truth of it: Even a major prude could probably derive enjoyment from Blue Movies, a well-produced little comedy series about the behind-the-scenes world of pornography, and as I’ve mentioned in the past, I’m no puritan.

Blue Movies, which is well-produced, tightly written, and occasionally (though not always) hilarious, depicts the world of Pornamount Pictures, a studio that specializes in adult adaptations of films like Forrest Gump, The Shawshank Redemption and The Dark Knight (the porn version of that film being titled The Dark Night Full of Smokin’ Hot Orgies — “Let’s make Christopher Nolan proud!” shouts the director). The show, told from the point of view of new intern Tom (Beck Bennett), who bumbled onto the set believing that he was actually starting an internship at Paramount, is seemingly focused around these XXX-rated satires of Oscar winners (trailers for which are available separately), but is at its best during the behind-the-scenes sequences, which are just like any Hollywood satire, except with more naked people.

However, while dealing with mature subject matter, Blue Movies is surprisingly clean, and the more explicit material tends to be of a verbal, not visual, nature. And while the female characters could all too easily have fallen into awful stereotypes, they’re actually not that bad. One of them even keeps her clothes on! (That’d be Sascha Alexander as the tough and funny Anna, who plays an important role as mentor to Tom and assistant to Max.) The only weak link of the series is Jareb Dauplaise as Max, who’s a committed performer but simply isn’t that believable as a porn kingpin — mainly because he looks like he’s about 22 years old.

A personal disclaimer: I once spent a few hours on the set of an adult film shoot (which was a helluva education, let me tell you), and while I’m not going to demand any sort of accuracy from a comedy satire, it does seem important to me to point out that quite a bit of pornography isn’t shot in a studio, bur rather in so-called “porn houses,” which are either private residences or specially held properties owned by location companies and leased to productions. And the crew on a porn set covers a wide range of ages and experiences, many of whom, like bumbling intern Tom, aspire to work in mainstream entertainment and are using porn as a stepping stone to a legit career — a career arc that has precedent. Omitting that latter fact feels like a major oversight, though plays well with the series’ tongue-in-cheek celebration of pornography as an art form.

You could perhaps draw a parallel between Max’s efforts to elevate the medium to that of the web series world, struggling to be taken seriously on a creative level while also achieving financial success — except that Max has sex on his side. He has it much easier.

Ausra secured a power purchasing agreement with California utility PG&E two years ago to sell 177MW of solar power from the planned Carrizo plant (it was expected to come online at partial capacity in 2010), but according to a release from Ausra, that deal is now “withdrawn.” Today’s announcement comes just over seven months after First Solar acquired the crown jewels — the whole project pipeline, including the massive 550MW Topaz Solar Farms planned for agricultural land in San Luis Obispo — of OptiSolar, another startup with a PG&E deal.

For First Solar, the Carrizo project could help smooth the way for Topaz to move forward. Kathryn Arbeit, development director for the Topaz project, said Carrizo will allow First Solar to present a revised layout to San Luis Obispo County for the Topaz development that may appease concerns about farmland conservation and wildlife in the area.

Ausra’s deal with First Solar also reinforces part of why the utility wants to take ownership of solar power plants. At the beginning of this year, more than 1.5GW of the solar power PG&E had agreed to buy ahead of a state deadline to clean up its portfolio lay in the hands of three startups, all getting hammered by the economic downturn. Now two of those startups have sold off projects to First Solar, and one power purchasing agreement has been withdrawn.

A spokesperson for Ausra told us today that while the deal is off between Ausra and PG&E, the power purchasing arrangement is not necessarily over for Carrizo. Since the project is now owned by First Solar, Ausra declined to comment on whether the contract would have to be renegotiated (see update below), or what stage of development the project has reached. We’ve contacted First Solar and will update when we have more details.

Update: Ausra tells us, “With this sale of Carrizo, the 177MW PPA Ausra had with PG&E was withdrawn. So, there’s no renegotiation to be had.”

Carrizo project photo courtesy of the California Energy Commission

If you are confused as to exactly what you can do with the Cyberus, you’re not alone. The PR goes on to claim “the full complement of Wi-Fi applications for the device includes: Weather, News from Yahoo or Google, YouTube, Traffic: Driving Directions by Zip, IP Radio, Picasa, Stock, Gmail Alerts, Notepad, Calendar, Clock and Alarm.”

So basically, what you have is a an e-book reader that handles PDF and TXT files, a media player that handles AVI, MPEG4, DIVIX, XIVID, WMA, JPG, BMP, TIFF, PNG files, and a web computer without a browser or OS. All of this can be found on Amazon at the starting MSRP of $279.

Internet service providers may become legally responsible for scam web sites and spam that passes over their lines if a new piece of legislation, the Investor Protection Act, gets turned into law. The act, which passed through the House Financial Services Committee today, requires ISPs to filter fraudulent sites and emails that falsely claim to be from certain brokerage firms affiliated with the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) if the ISP is “aware of facts or circumstances from which it is apparent that the material contains a misrepresentation.” If the communications are not blocked, ISPs could be liable for damages.

The SIPC helps investors when funds go missing from their accounts — a sort of brokerage version of the FDIC which insures standard checking and savings accounts — and has been in the news most recently regarding efforts to recover funds lost in the Bernie Madoff scandal. Investors who have opened accounts with members of the SIPC are eligible for protection.

One particular problem regarding brokerage accounts is “look-alike” web sites and emails that seem at first glance to be from a legitimate bank, but are actually phishing emails that attempt to trick users into giving up their data. In fact, last month FBI Director Robert Mueller almost fell victim to such a scam, showing that anyone can be tricked. These scams are nothing new either: The SIPC has a press release from 2004 on its web site detailing a request it made to the FBI and SEC to investigate one particular look-alike site for further action.

Of course, ISPs don’t need to be forced to block fraudulent sites — many do it already, to the best of their ability. That’s just good business practice. We noted last month that Comcast was launching a new program called “Constant Guard” to combat botnets, which are a huge threat to networks of all kinds. A few months ago I had the opportunity to speak to Ed Amoroso, AT&T’s chief security officer, who called botnets “as lethal a problem as I’ve ever seen.” Botnets may be nothing new, but there is also much to be done, and there is going to continue to be pressure on ISPs to take more filtering responsibility.

ABC announced today it would offer online text commentary tracks for full episodes of some of its programs. The first commentary is for the new V sci-fi remake with participation from executive producers Scott Peters and Steve Pearlman. It’s due to hit ABC.com Saturday, a delayed release after the first episode of the show aired on TV last night. Further, ABC is enabling fans to create their own commentary tracks using the same tools.

The use of the term “commentary tracks” might be a little misleading given the audio overlay tracks we’ve all come to expect on DVDs, with inside info from actors, producers, directors and the like. ABC.com’s new feature consists of text comments only.

Though I’ve only seen a screenshot, this looks to be a very cool variation on the concept of Social TV. Users log in to their Facebook accounts remotely and watch an episode. They make comments that are time-stamped and run alongside the ABC video player. Fans can do the same thing, starting a new and separate episode commentary track. Each track is released to the public but only the author’s Facebook friends can modify it with additional comments.

ABC said it expects to soon roll out commentary track functionality for other series that use its full episode player powered by Move Networks. Featured commenters will include writers, directors, costume designers and other experts from each show.

While ABC had in the past locked up its full episodes to viewers on its own site, this season it’s also hosting them on Hulu. However, this new feature is exactly the right way to entice people come to your destination: give them a social experience and extra content they can’t get anywhere else. The web offers an awesome opportunity to bring DVD extra-type content to life. It would be great to see ABC run these commentaries live, a la Fox’s “Tweet-peats,” in which that network overlaid comments from stars and fans on top of a rerun on TV. Text comments crowding out the screen may not have been quite right for the living room, but it could be fantastic on the PC.

Other similar projects include ClipSync, View2Gether, Vidrollr, tvChatter, Cliqset, MediaFriends and the many other implementations of Facebook (and now Twitter) alongside video and on TV screens. Today, implementations of Facebook Connect are leading the pack, but there’s a lot of work yet to be done to make social TV a great experience.

By the way, we’re talking about Social TV next week at NewTeeVee Live with execs from Facebook and CNN. Come join us in San Francisco!

Do you know how people feel about you on Twitter? Are the tweets about you or your product mostly positive, negative or neutral? While things like feelings and sentiment can seem fuzzy and “touchy-feely,” there are sentiment analysis tools available for Twitter that attempt to classify tweets into either positive, negative or neutral categories automatically using algorithms and lists of keywords. For example, using words like “sucks,” “sad” and “hate” would be classified as negative, while “awesome,” “great” and “love” would be positive, with a neutral rating given to anything not falling into one of the other two categories.

As you can probably guess, the results from sentiment analysis tools vary widely, with many tweets ending up in the wrong category. Each tool is only as good as the list of keywords and the algorithms it uses, and they are easily confused by imperfect human beings who send mixed signals into their algorithms. For example, this tweet from @PDXrox was classified by one tool as positive and negative by another, based on confusion over using both “dang” and “:(” while also using the word “love:”

“Dang! Both @backfencepdx and @igniteportland have scheduled their events for the same night – Nov 19th. I love them both – wah! :-(“

You have a few options for sentiment analysis. If you are doing work for a company with budget for analysis tools, you should seriously think about purchasing a tool like Techrigy’s SM2, Scout Labs or other social media monitoring packages with sentiment analysis, since they have more robust features than some of the free tools. For those of us doing personal monitoring or working at small companies with limited budgets, there are some free tools that you can use to get at least a rough idea of how people feel about you or your products and services.

twendz

twendz is certainly the best free tool that I used, which isn’t really surprising since it was created by Waggener Edstrom, a large public relations firm with a vested interest in having accurate sentiment analysis for its clients. It handled my complex search query with ease when other tools did not, and it constantly updates in the browser window with new tweets. It also has some really nice features, including sentiment summary per tag and the ability to see exactly which tweets are positive or negative overall or for each tag.

twitrratr

I have some fundamental issues with twitrratr: It doesn’t handle complex searches; it doesn’t pick up new tweets very quickly and it doesn’t have additional analysis by tag or other parameters. However, I like how you can easily see at a glance the tweets that are positive, negative and neutral with words highlighted to show you why the tweet was put in the positive or negative category.

As I mentioned before, these tools aren’t perfect. Any time you are dealing with human beings and our imprecise languages, there will be plenty of opportunities for putting tweets into the wrong categories. However, sentiment analysis does provide a starting point and a rough idea for assessing how you people feel about you or your product.

What have you experienced when using sentiment analysis tools?

“The nurses have embraced the technology and have given us great feedback,” said P.J. Floyd, Associate Chief Nursing Officer at Sarasota Memorial Hospital. “The Voalté One makes them better able to respond quickly to patient’s needs.”

The hospital has noted a 78 percent drop in overhead paging as a direct result of implementing the Voalté One program, and the patient wings are quieter as a result. This can play a big role in the healing process, as anyone who has required hospital care can attest.

Buffett’s Big Rail Bet: “Is Warren Buffett’s $26 billion purchase of Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad a bet on 19th-century industry or the 21st-century economy? Neither, it seems—it’s the perfect hedge.” — WSJ’s Environmental Capital

Al Gore Q&A: Elizabeth Kolbert talks with Al Gore about his new book, “Our Choice,” covering the rise of Chinese environmentalism, the ongoing Congressional debate over a cap-and-trade system, and what he learned in the course of his research. — The New Yorker

Fisker Lines Up Emil Frey Group for EU Distribution: Plug-in hybrid vehicle developer Fisker Automotive, which so far has announced 45 U.S. dealership agreements and two smaller European distributorships, said this morning that it has now signed the 100-plus dealership Emil Frey Group to handle much of its European sales and service. — Edmunds Green Car Advisor

Envisioning Car 2.0: The electric car will eventually “be a kind of ultimate mobile device, produced in expanding networks for expanding networks; a piece of hardware manufactured by a burgeoning supplier grid and nested in an information grid interlacing the electrical grid. Building out these three networks will be more profitable, and a greater engine of economic growth, than building the cars themselves.” — Inc.

I’ve always believed in the separation of church and state: My desktop computer stays in my home office, and my TV and entertainment gear stay in the living room. Sure, sometimes there’s crossover between the two — I like to view Web-based streaming video or shows I’ve downloaded on my big-screen TV, for example. But I’ve never been tempted to make my desktop PC my home entertainment center.

Until now. Now, I have a shiny, new Windows 7 PC, and it’s almost ready to make the move to the living room. Microsoft’s latest operating system is earning raves for its enhanced stability and productivity features, but the enhanced video features are what have impressed me.

One of the most notable improvements is the file format support in the latest version of Windows Media Player, 12. I’ve never been a huge fan of Windows Media Player — I prefer VLC’s excellent media player for video playback. But with its new ability to play H.264 video and AAC audio files, Windows Media Player can now play unprotected content purchased from the iTunes Store. Slowly, Windows Media Player is winning me over.

I especially like how Windows 7’s new Jump List feature works with the app; Jump Lists allow you to access the application’s features just by right clicking on the app’s icon in your Taskbar. When I right click on the Windows Media Player icon, for example, I can start playing music or a video without having to go in and launch the app first.

Microsoft’s Windows Media Player also gets some nifty updates in Windows 7 — though this is my first time using any version of Windows Media Center at all, so much of the experience is new to me. I opted not to purchase a system with a built-in TV tuner card, but after reading EngadgetHD’s review of the OS’ DVR features, I’m regretting that decision.

The Windows Media Center features I was able to try were pretty impressive on their own. For starters, I like the integrated Internet TV feature, which lets you browse through online shows that you can watch right in Windows Media Center. The interface is attractive, and the controls are easy to use. The selection is somewhat limited, though — I saw a lot of shows from CBS, but few from other networks. The content comes from a small group of providers, including CBS and MSNBC, and you also get access to the Zune podcast library.

I also like how you can browse available Internet TV titles from your desktop, using the desktop gadget. You just click on a show title, and you’re taken to Windows Media Center, where you can watch the entire show. Windows Media Center offers instant access to your Netflix Instant Watch queue, which makes it easy to browse and watch movies.

Also new in Windows 7 is Homegroup networking, a feature that has plenty of potential, but is, so far, limited. You can use the Homegroup option, which allows you to share files between computers. You could, for example, stream a video stored on your Windows 7 desktop to your laptop in another room. But — and it’s a big but — all computers in the Homegroup must be running Windows 7. The feature would be much more useful if it worked with computers running Windows Vista or XP, never mind Macs. Also odd: Windows 7 generates a Homegroup password for you — you can’t set your own.

Windows 7 isn’t perfect, of course — far from it. For one, fans of the free Windows Movie Maker app will be disappointed that it no longer comes bundled with Microsoft’s OS. (You can download it for free.) Overall, though, Windows 7 is by far the most multimedia-friendly version of Windows yet. It’s almost enough to convince me to move my PC into the family room. Almost.

One killer app is more like a feature that we in the U.S. can’t officially have on our iPhones — Internet tethering. I’m still running iPhone OS 3.0 because the tethering hack won’t work on higher OS versions. Or at least it didn’t. MobileCrunch reports that applying the hack after jailbreaking the current iPhone OS does get tethering back. I’m not too keen on the jailbreaking scene, but I’m seriously tempted — I’d hate to upgrade and then lose my backup 3G connection. And I’m running into more and more apps that require a higher version of the iPhone OS than I have.

Although we tend to focus on iPhones for this weekly update, I wanted to expand the scope slightly. Yup, I’m going there with the Apple Tablet again. I had a guest video spot on the TechVi show this week and we talked about the possibility of Apple offering iTunes TV content for $30 a month. I have no idea if Apple is doing that (or planning a slate tablet), but there’s an interesting opportunity when you combine the two mythical ideas. What would you get when you cross a portable 1280 x 720 slate running the iPhone OS with a monthly iTunes all-you-can-eat plan? I’d call it a reasonably compelling product. Not only would you have access to various television content in high-def, but you’d have your music and 100,000 apps for bite-sized functionality too. Hmmm….

Cole Brodman, chief technology and innovation officer at T-Mobile USA, provided details on the company’s continuing plans for the open-source Android operating system in a keynote address at Open Mobile Summit today in San Francisco. In the company’s fourth-quarter lineup – a period that promises to see lots of Android action — T-Mobile will feature four Android-based phones: the Motorola CLIQ (now available), the Samsung Behold II (coming soon), the T-Mobile G1 and the T-Mobile myTouch, according to a report provided to us on his keynote. Brodman also offered up specifics on myTouch and Android application usage trends. Here are the details.

Brodman reported that:

• About half of myTouch users visit the Android Market at least once per day.

• 80 percent of myTouch users browse the web at least once per day, and two-thirds several times per day.

• Nearly half of myTouch users say they have “completely customized” their myTouch.

• More than 40 percent of myTouch users access social-networking sites multiple times per day.

While Android does have substantial momentum right now, it doesn’t yet have the iPhone’s overflowing ecosystem of applications. As Om reported today, Apple says that there are now 100,000 applications for the iPhone in its App Store. Brodman said today that the number of Android apps in the Android Market has grown to 12,000, up from 50 when the G1 phone first launched.

He also confirmed that T-Mobile is focusing on application discoverability — an issue many iPhone users have struggled with — for Android. When the T-Mobile myTouch 3G appeared, the company created an “AppPack” on the Android Market which features hand-picked third-party apps and T-Mobile apps. Brodman said that later this month the company will follow up with a T-Mobile Channel on the Android Market, to make it easier for users to find and purchase applications. T-Mobile also now has a developer-focused site where application creators can pitch their apps for featured placement and marketing partnerships with T-Mobile. The company will also soon be offering carrier billing, so that users can get charges for applications they purchase on their phone bills.

For Android to compete as successfully as it can with the iPhone, good, easily discoverable applications are going to be critical. This month, Google will announce the winners of the second annual Android Developer Challenge, which offers large cash prizes for the best Android applications. Google, T-Mobile, Verizon, Motorola and the many other players betting on Android should be thinking carefully about further ways to offer incentives for outstanding Android applications, including financial ones.

In the meantime, internal combustion engine vehicles will dominate the lineup, with increased focus on fuel efficiency using start-stop systems and Fiat engine technology. And while Fiat boasts small platform vehicles that could make good candidates for electrification, Chrysler will be taking the lead in engineering for hybrid and electrification for both companies.

Today’s Chrysler meeting — the first peek at the automaker’s finances and future plans since it emerged from government-funded bankruptcy — comes just over a year after Chrysler first unveiled plans for at least four electric vehicle models, including an all-electric Dodge EV, a range-extended electric Jeep and minivan, and a city vehicle. Back then, Chrysler aimed to have at least one of them on the market by 2010.

If Fiat and Chrysler eventually roll out more plug-in vehicles, A123Systems could be a front-runner for the contract. But an expanded electric lineup could also spur the allies to seek additional battery suppliers in coming years.

It’s a game series that’s gotten much love over the years, despite, or perhaps because of, the cheesy live action cut scenes featuring actors like Tim Curry. Now, Command & Conquer comes to the iPhone with Command & Conquer: Red Alert ($9.99, iTunes link), named after its PC and console counterpart released in 1996.

How well does the beloved RTS translate to the iPhone platform? That depends on what you’re looking to get out of the game. EA Mobile has clearly tried to faithfully translate the experience, but as with any translation, no perfect one-to-one relationship can exist. What does come through, however, is definitely worth looking at.

Graphics & Audio

Perhaps just to make me sad, EA chose not to go with live action mission briefings for this installment of the series, opting instead to brief you with static cartoon images and scrollable text. It’s not nearly as pleasant as hammy acting, but it does get the job done and prepare you adequately for the in-game action.

In-game graphics look great, and are probably a bit of an improvement over their original counterparts in the PC version. Units are clearly distinguishable from one another, animations are smooth, and the visual special effects look good. My sole complaint for the in-game look of things is that units can tend to stack, which renders some of them invisible. It’s confusing and can hamper effective unit management.

Sound is good, with music from Red Alert 3, which is the latest game in the series for the PC and consoles. In-game voices are well-recorded and clear, as are most sound effects. Again, the lack of audio in briefings and other between-action components is a little disappointing, but not terribly so.

Gameplay

As with any real-time strategy port for the iPhone, the key to enjoyable gameplay lies in making sure the controls are well-designed and intuitive. This can be particularly challenging even when porting RTS games to consoles from the PC, so EA has its work cut out for it with Command & Conquer on the iPhone.

Selecting and commanding individual units on the iPhone is simple enough. You touch a unit to select it, and touch somewhere else to tell it where to go or what to attack. To select multiple units, you have to activate a selection tool by clicking an icon in the lower left-hand corner. At first it wasn’t clear (I hadn’t reached that part in the tutorial yet) and I tried tapping and dragging and two-finger pinch and zoom type gestures.

Once you have selected a group of units, though, you can assign them to a command group using another icon at the lower left of the screen. This assigns them to one of three slots on the left, and allows you to re-select that group at any time with a simple tap. It’s the saving grace of the game, control-wise, and I wish there were more than three spots available to assign unit groups to.

The campaigns are fun, and not too challenging. There is both a Soviet and an Allied campaign, each of which contains five chapters, and there’s a skirmish mode with customizable starting resources and different maps, which really adds to the replay value of the game.

All told, EA Mobile does a great job skirting the limitations of the iPhone’s controls, and provides ample gameplay while still retaining a fairly casual feel, so that you can pick it up and put it down as necessary between meetings or while commuting.

Verdict

For an iPhone game, Command & Conquer: Red Alert feels polished and professional, but it leaves me wanting something more. I can’t help but yearn for the easier controls and richer storyline and gameplay of the PC version, which may in fact be what EA was intending. Perhaps the iPhone game is meant as a sort of teaser demo to attract new customers to the PC/console line. Either way, despite solid gameplay, Red Alert left me underwhelmed. I’d wait for the inevitable price drop to $6.99 or less before picking this one up.

Conducting a thorough editorial, technical and content review of business and technical documents is challenging for many organizations, but a geographically dispersed workforce can make it even more difficult.

Here are some tips to help better manage document reviews at a distance:

Establish review guidelines. Truth be told, many organizations don’t know how to review and approve a document. As such, it is important to set out how you want your reviewers to check over each document. Your review guidelines should:

• Instruct the reviewers to follow procedures step-by-step. Tell them to point out incorrect steps and identify why the step is in error.
• Encourage the reviewers to look for better ways to present data, or identify if a different function or listing that would work better in the same situation.
• Instruct reviewers to check to see if the artwork (listings, figures, illustrations, tables) corresponds with the references in the text.
• Tell the reviewers to test each line of program code and describe any problems.

Designate document stakeholders. Have a designated document stakeholder check over the document(s) undergoing review to help set review priorities and free up resources to ensure the document review happens on deadline. The stakeholders can also tie the document review into the overall project plan, if needed.

Identify primary and backup reviewers. This is a commonsense first step when project teams span multiple time zones, and even continents. If the primary reviewer is unavailable to resolve a question, then the team can always go to the backup reviewer.

Set a realistic review schedule. It is rare that a stressed and harried project team can make a full document review in just one pass. So depending on your project schedule, take the initiative to manage expectations and set a review schedule that ensures reviewers are going to add value to the documents they are reviewing.

Use online collaboration and version control. WebWorkerDaily regularly covers the latest in collaboration tools. Using one of these tools can help you better manage the review process with your team.

Use electronic document review tools. With Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat you can mark up and comment on electronic documents just as you can with pen and ink on a hardcopy document — there’s no need to fax documents any more. If your team is reviewing an XML-based document, look towards a solution like LiveTechDocs (I reviewed it for WWD).

LiveTechDocs Application

How do you manage document reviews?

Image credit: svilen001 from sxc.hu.

China’s smartphone market is surging, according to figures from In-Stat released today. But sales of gray-market phones — which aren’t recognized or licensed by Chinese regulators — are rising right alongside legitimate handsets, according to separate numbers from iSuppli. Together, the reports highlight the vast potential for lucrative, high-end devices in the emerging Chinese market — and what may be a key reason behind the iPhone’s tepid launch last week.

Smartphone shipments in China saw a 30 percent increase in 2008 over the previous year, and the high-end handsets accounted for 15.3 percent of overall mobile phone shipments, up from 12 percent in 2007, In-Stat said. But its report followed yesterday’s estimate from iSuppli that gray-market shipments in China will grow to 145 million units this year, or nearly 13 percent of the size of the legitimate mobile phone business, and will increase to 176 million units by 2013.

Source: iSuppli

Those figures are particularly compelling in light of the lackluster debut of the iPhone in China. China Unicom, which launched the device last week, said yesterday it has signed up only 5,000 iPhone subscribers — a figure Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster called “disappointing.” Some analysts have cited a proliferation of iPhone knockoffs, which sell for substantially less than the $700 to $1,000 China Unicom is charging, and which were available long before the official Apple gadget came to market.

There are other reasons for the iPhone’s sluggish start, to be sure: The phone’s Wi-Fi was crippled to comply with governmental regulations, and its price is prohibitively high for many consumers. Plus, it’s possible Chinese demand for the iPhone simply isn’t very strong.

But in a nation where 150 million “missing” handsets seem to exist, the surging gray market has surely impacted sales of the iPhone as well. That’s a lesson other manufacturers need to remember as they try to tap the world’s largest mobile market.

Time Warner Sales Dropped 6% to $7.1B in Q3; company’s networks including Turner and HBO saw growth with revenue up 5 percent to $2.9 billion. (CNET)

Comcast Profits Up 22% to $944M in Q3; cable company wouldn’t talk about the NBC acquisition deal. (paidContent)

Google to Bulk Up Video Chat for Apps users; company looking to broaden it to more than just two participants. (SFGate; see our recent story on Vidyo, which helps power the feature and has multi-participant capabilities)

Adap.tv’s OneSource Gets IAB Certification; company says it’s the first dedicated video ad service platform to receive ad measurement certification. (emailed release)

Paramount Files Comments with the FCC Over Star Trek Piracy; studio’s letter came in response to the FCC’s request for feedback on its National Broadband Plan. (Ars Technica) (See our previous coverage)

Blockbusters Could Boost DVD Numbers This Quarter; 13 movies that made over $200 million globally at the box office are being released in Q4. (The Wrap)

Tom Green Talks Up His Web Show; says his is the long-running Internet talk show, and it’s profitable though it doesn’t have a sponsor now. (The Hollywood Reporter; we took a tour of his home studio last year)

The folks at Planon have been making pen scanners for a few years, and the newly announced X-series scanners are looking pretty solid. There are three models in the X-series line, all of them packing these features:

• 64MB Fast memory
• Bluetooth Connectivity
• OLED Screen
• Lithium-Polymer battery

If you are not familiar with the DocuPen scanners, they are pen-shaped devices that are handheld scanners used to capture documents on the go. The X-series scanners can capture at a full 600dpi, making them a complete scanning solution that will fit in your pocket. The X-series scanners start at $369.99 and are available now.