• Fuze Meeting: HD Meetings – From Fuze Meeting
• Best in Cell Phones: The Best Cell Phone Deals are Here!

To celebrate this week’s launch of the superb Firefox 3.5, we’ve put together a collection of the WebWorkerDaily team’s favorite Firefox extensions. You can subscribe to our collection here; as we discover useful new add-ons, we’ll add to it over time. The great thing about add-on collections is that you can pick and choose which add-ons to install, so if you don’t agree with all of our choices, you can just pick the ones that you like.

Here are the add-ons that made our collection (they’re all compatible with Firefox 3.5):

• FaviconizeTab
• Long URL Please
• Better Gmail 2
• Adblock Plus
• Tiny Menu
• Download Statusbar
• Gmail Manager
• LastPass Password Manager
• Greasemonkey
• ScribeFire Blog Editor
• Read It Later
• Xmarks (formerly Foxmarks)
• Shareaholic for Firefox
  

These are our favorites, but if we’re missing any, please let us know in the comments.

We’d like to thank this week’s NewTeeVee sponsors:

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I think I may have achieved a grasp of Gameloft’s concept design strategy for their iPhone catalog. It seems to have something to do with being “inspired” by titles and franchises that are already wildly successful. You can’t help but see the similarity between Hero of Sparta and God of War (even syntactically). Likewise, with Rise of Lost Empires ($4.99, iTunes link), their new real-time strategy game for the platform, which resembles a certain other title in which humans and orcs do battle strategically.

Don’t get me wrong, Gameloft’s “inspiration” strategy is not something I’m against. It has resulted in some very fun games to date, and Rise of Lost Empires is, hopefully, just one more opportunity for them to get iPhone gaming right with yet another lovely homage. If the original dev studios aren’t bringing the platform any love, I’d rather Gameloft did than no one at all.

RTS On a Phone?

Once upon a time, I was a devout real-time strategy fan; Warcraft, Starcraft, Command & Conquer, Age of Empires, and so on. I like that they’re generally easy to grasp, but become very challenging very quickly. I also like building and resource management, which is something very few other types of games offer.

But on a phone? A touchscreen phone, no less? I used to play Warfare, Inc. on my Palm pilot back in the day, and the iPhone port was fairly successful, but in general, good RTS games require a depth which doesn’t seem to fit with the iPhone’s casual vibe.

Surprisingly, I found Rise of Lost Empire’s controls to be very intuitive and easy to use. Whether or not depth of play is sacrificed on the portable platform is another story.

Graphics & Audio

Rise of Lost Empire doesn’t look bad, but it doesn’t look amazing, either. The isometric perspective works very well for buildings and structures, but characters and sprites look a little generic and lazy, in my opinion. It all adds up to give the game sort of a retro/RTS traditionalist vibe, which is not a bad thing.

Audio is pretty good. Characters even have recorded vocal snippets for when you click on them, order them to do things, etc. I really appreciate that opposing factions have different death cries so that I can keep track of what’s going on, even if I’m not watching the action at the moment.

What surprised me about the game’s graphics was that even though I’m playing this on a 3GS, occasionally there is actual lag when the action gets intense. It only happens when there’s an inordinately large number of sprites sharing the screen at the same time, but considering how fast the game boots and loads, it still came as quite a shock.

Gameplay

Gameplay is where Rise really falls for me, and unfortunately it’s the most important category of all. I give credit to Gameloft for trying to find the right balance between gameplay depth and ease-of-use, given the platform, but I find that they don’t quite find the right mix. In fact, they may miss the mark on both counts.

The game takes resource gathering out of the equation, having revenue come in automatically from your home castle, and any farms you build. It takes the problem of commanding grunts or peons off your hands, but that’s an integral part of the RTS experience, and as a result Rise feels more like a shallow RPG (thanks to Hero leveling).

Finally, the difficulty seems manageable enough, but level design leads to massive gaps in how achievable a particular goal is. Castle defense against waves of enemies seems unmanageable, while simple attack-and-destroy missions require little more than a quick trigger on your hero’s “Heal” ability and a small group of tightly clustered soldiers.

Verdict

Lag issues and questionable difficulty scaling mar an otherwise nicely put-together iPhone RTS in Rise of Lost Empires. In other words, unless you have a really bad RTS itch, and you need to scratch it with an iPhone offering while you wait for Starcraft II to come out, you might want to skip this particular Gameloft offering. Try out the free version (iTunes link) before you go coughing up any cash, at least.

Just in case you missed any of them, here are the five most popular posts on WebWorkerDaily this week:

• How to Eliminate Compulsive Internet Fiddling

Are you an Internet fiddler? Celine shares some strategies for avoiding compulsive web surfing.

• 10 Useful Firefox Add-ons for Almost Everybody

Meryl links ten exceedingly useful Firefox extensions.

• A Six-Pack of Gmail Hacks

Amber shows you six ways to supercharge your Gmail.

• Must-Have iPhone Apps for Surviving Air Travel

Taking a trip? Nancy shares some iPhone apps that will make the journey smoother.

• 4 Reasons It Pays to Track Your Time

Although tracking time can seem like a chore, it can pay dividends; Amber explains why.

We’d like to say thanks to this month’s WebWorkerDaily sponsors:

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Windows 7 pricing was made official not long ago, and the general consensus is that, despite a slight drop in Home Premium pricing compared to Vista, it’s too expensive.

Still, there are some in the Microsoft community that try to justify it by comparing it to Apple’s pricing for Mac OS X. Microsoft can never win this game. Heck, Microsoft never even gets in this game. And yet, you have folks like Ed Bott at ZDNet giving it a shot. Here’s his latest salvo:

In two recent posts… I took a closer look at the differences between Windows 7 editions and their counterparts from Apple.

That’s from the first sentence, and already the article is off to a misguided start. There are no “counterparts from Apple” to Windows’ OS Editions. Every Mac OS X sold is — to use Microsoft’s terminology — Ultimate. Let’s keep that point in mind.

In previous posts, Bott had taken some criticism because Apple offered a Family Pack, something Microsoft would not talk about for Windows 7. But now he thinks Microsoft has beat (or is at least competitive with) Apple there. He supplies a partial screenshot of the license agreement for Windows 7, and then clarifies it with this:

If you can’t read the screen shot, here’s the relevant section: “If you are a ‘Qualified Family Pack User’, you may install one copy of the software marked as ‘Family Pack’ on three computers in your household for use by people who reside there.”

Bott seems pretty excited about this. To his credit, I appreciate that he understands a Family Pack is not a particular luxury any more. There are simply too many households with multiple PCs. Microsoft is still silent on the issue, so Bott has to speculate:

I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that Microsoft prices the Family Pack at $189, which is $10 less than Apple’s Family Pack (although Apple’s license is good for five Macs in a single household).

I appreciate that Bott points out five licenses are greater than three. However, to do so parenthetically minimizes that five licenses is a lot more than three. It’s 66 percent more, to be precise. Based on Bott’s price guess, it means you’re getting two additional licenses for ten bucks! I’d say italics and bold were called for more than parenthesis.

Further, Bott again ignores that Mac OS X licenses are Ultimate, not two notches below that in the form of Home Premium. (Bott’s tack regarding the whole Professional and Ultimate thing is to simply claim you don’t need them, doing so with a cheesy marketing checklist of cherry-picked OS “features”.)

The biggest fact Bott ignores — and I played along, because Apple wins anyway — is that Snow Leopard will be $29, and the Family Pack $49, for users of Apple’s current OS. Even if you’re using an older Mac OS, Apple offers a sweet deal via a boxed set containing Snow Leopard, iLife, and iWork for just $169. Throwing in the latest iLife and iWork is a major plus since Leopard and Snow Leopard have features the latest “i” versions can take advantage of.

Finally, the above great pricing is not “special,” or “pre-order,” or “limited time,” or “mail-in rebate,” it’s simply The Pricing.

I think it’s time to get Lauren and have a series of “OS Hunter” ads. “Hmm, this OS is $29 and contains all these great features, this one is $120 and is two steps down…”

Let there be light. The Obama administration unlocked $346 million in stimulus funds for energy efficiency earlier this week, including $50 million for advancing solid state lighting, or SSL, technology. The Department of Energy designed the program as “a coordinated development of advanced manufacturing techniques” and an effort to “reduce the first cost of high-performance lighting products.” So it doesn’t exactly have semiconductors written all over it.

But according to a recent report on GigaOM Pro (subscription only) from analyst Katherine Austin, President of KDA Consulting, SSL represents a big opportunity for chip makers as the technology gains a foothold in everyday applications beyond consumer electronics and displays.

The connection here lies in light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, which at this point are incorporated in most SSL technologies. As Austin explains, “LEDs are called ’solid state’ because their light is emitted from a solid source — a wafer or semiconductor — as opposed to filaments.” So silicon chips are a key component of the technology that’s seeing double-digit growth rates and could reach an estimated $10 billion per year by 2012, according to a Bridgelux forecast cited in Austin’s report.

The DOE program will focus on reducing costs to make SSL more competitive with other types of lighting, which has been a major hurdle for the technology so far on the road to mass-market adoption on par with today’s incandescents. The DOE’s efforts to help build up that market with an injection of tax dollars comes at a time when the semiconductor market could use some new opportunities — as InformationWeek reports, it continues to face slumping demand for PCs and servers as a result of the global economic recession.

Earlier this year, we wondered if solar could save chip companies, as the semiconductor industry started eying opportunities in the solar industry. After all, chip companies have years of experience of building low-cost manufacturing processes to shape and slice silicon — the key ingredient in conventional solar modules.

There’s also an overlap of expertise for chip makers and LEDs, since all LED lighting fixtures require drivers that incorporate silicon chips. “Thus,” writes Austin, “solid state lighting represents an under-appreciated opportunity for silicon chipmakers.”

Photo courtesy Flickr user OiMax

I’m in the midst of moving, so I’m stuck in between mountains of cardboard boxes and molehills of bubble wrap this holiday weekend. That means I have little access to the Internet and television and, by extension, the Wimbledon semi-finals. Evidently, NBC forgot the “live” part of its online live-streaming and is delaying the televised and online coverage, a tactic NBC CEO Jeff Zucker is fond of (tape-delayed Olympics, anyone?).

East coast bloggers are particularly perturbed:

Staci D. Kramer (the “D” is for “Damn you, Jeff Zucker!”) at paidContent writes:

I’m sitting outside on a lovely Friday morning, sipping a cup of tea and catching up on the news. What’s wrong with this picture? It’s the final Friday of Wimbledon and I’m reduced to either watching a pirated feed from a place where the broadcasters value live sports or following the Andy Roddick-Andy Murray match vicariously through Twitters and live blogs. That’s because NBC Universal (NYSE: GE) values the Today Show more than live sports and, or at least, more than this live sport and its fans, and NBC Sports has the right to “save” a match for its exclusive window.

And Henry Blodget, who seems ready to bludgeon Zucker, writes over at Silicon Alley Insider:

Following on its disastrous “coverage” of the Wimbledon quarterfinals, NBC is now wrecking the Wimbledon semifinals.

Andy Murray and Andy Roddick are a tight first set (Roddick’s up 4-3). ESPN, which owns the rights for this hour, can’t show the match on TV because NBC won’t let them.

NBC, meanwhile, refuses to show the match online, because that might dilute its TV audience when it finally bothers to put Wimbledon on the air.

If NBC’s coverage was a tennis match, this would be a double fault.

We’d like to say thanks to this month’s sponsor of TheAppleBlog:

• HD Meetings – From Fuze Meeting: Wunder Radio provides access to thousands of streaming Internet radio stations and on your iPhone or Windows Mobile Phone.
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At this point we probably shouldn’t need to start a jailbreaking post off with a disclaimer about how doing it with your iPhone is not condoned with Apple, and may void your warranty, so you should approach doing so at your own risk, but a friendly reminder never hurts. Now, on to the reason behind the disclaimer: The iPhone 3GS, after only three weeks on the market, has been successfully jailbroken, and the software that allows it is now available online. Happy Independence Day.

The iPhone Dev Team, who are behind this and almost every previous iPhone jailbreak, actually hadn’t planned on releasing this particular jailbreak yet. George Hotz (aka Geohot), a member of the Dev Team and the first to unlock the original iPhone, seems to have gone behind the team’s back and leaked the software early. The Dev Team was holding out for iPhone OS 3.1 to drop, in order to hopefully avoid Apple patching the vulnerability that allows jailbreaking with that update.

For now, the hack, called purplera1n, is Windows-only (and doesn’t work with the Windows 7 Release Candidate), and obviously you need an iPhone 3GS to use it. People hoping to unlock their 3GS for use on other carriers will also have to wait, since unlocking is not yet available for Apple’s newest phone. It will, however, allow you to install unofficial third-party apps, like Backgrounder, which might prove far more useful given the iPhone’s new, more muscular hardware specs.

Geohot explains his decision to leak the release early on his personal blog:

Normally I don’t make tools for the general public, and rather wait for the dev team to do it. But guys, whats up with waiting until 3.1? That isn’t how the game is played. We release, Apple fixes, we find new holes. It isn’t worth waiting because you might have the “last” hole in the iPhone. What last hole…this isn’t golf. I’ll find a new one next week.

In the same blog post, Geohot also goes into detail about how to find and install the purplera1n tool, and steps you can take in case anything goes wrong. Check it out if you’re a Windows user and you’ve been eagerly awaiting a 3GS jailbreak.

Searching is easy: enter an area code or zip code and then any combination of numbers or letters you want in a phone number. If Google has any that match, you can grab them for the one-time fee. I searched around for at least 20 minutes in the four area codes local to me, thinking I might get a more personal number than what I have. Then I realized: you can leave the area code blank to widen the scope of your search. That’s how I ended up with a number that spells my name, but the area code and exchange are in Hartland, Wisconsin. Since I live in southeastern Pennsylvania, I felt immediate disappointment. But then I reconsidered.

After thinking it through, I bought the number. Ideally, I’m still hoping for number portability, so the local cell phone number I’ve had for nine years can become my Google Voice number. It’s the number that well over 1,000 people have for business and personal use. But while I’m waiting, I decided that a more personalized number goes with my branding and my identity. Earlier in the week, I talked about this at great length in a GigaOm Pro post (subscription required). I’m envisioning a “DNS for people” type of system where phone numbers simply don’t matter on the surface. Much like IP addresses: you don’t remember the IP address of every website. Instead, you type an easy to remember name and DNS translates that to the appropriate IP address for your destination.

Anyway, I decided that most people who call me really don’t care where they’re calling. PR folks and tech companies are generally national or global, so it shouldn’t matter to them. And very few of my friends and family call me from a landline these days. They all call from cell phones where long distance charges don’t exist on their modern plans. Minutes are minutes for the most part, unless you’re talking about international calls. Even if my family and friends run into a long-distance stumbling block, they have the local phone numbers tied to my handsets, so it’s essentially a non-issue for them. In fact, as consumers cut the landline cord and move to digital voice or mobile handsets, the term “long distance” loses more and more meaning. How long will it be before nobody pays a “long distance” charge when calling a area code far, far away?

So yes, I live in Pennsylvania and you can call me in Wisconsin. In a way, I think this was meant to be. My new number could have been in any city in the U.S., but my name was available in Hartland. That just happens to be where the central character grew up in Terry Goodkind’s “Sword of Truth” series: Hartland. It’s one of my favorite fantasy series. Must be magic that got me this number. Oh and if you own a Palm Pre and we’re Facebook friends, my new number should already be in your phone. I just cast a Synergy spell of my own.

Things may finally be turning around for troubled satellite radio venture Sirius XM. Following a long and costly merger, the company became desperate for new financing just as credit dried up, and managed to avert bankruptcy only by selling 40 percent of itself to John Malone in exchange for a loan paying 15 percent interest. Last week, Sirius secured another half-billion dollars in high-interest debt, and CEO Mel Karmazin got a 20 percent raise and the option to buy 120 million new shares to celebrate his success.

Success, that is, if you define the word as simply avoiding failure. Things may be turning around, but Sirius XM has a long way to go before it finds true success. It needs to create a lot of new revenue to pay off all that debt. It needs to reverse the deterioration in the number of net subscribers that took place last quarter, when they fell 2.1 percent to 18.6 million. It needs to expand its allure beyond the car market, which will remain in a slump for the foreseeable future.

With the launch of Sirius XM’s iPhone app, the hope has emerged that the mobile market will provide the answer. The Sirius XM App is the fifth most popular download in Apple’s App Store, although the drop from the No. 3 spot since last week suggests demand is waning fast as current Sirius subscribers download it. That may help deter more subscribers from canceling their Sirius accounts, but will it lure in new ones?

To answer that, you need to ask whether there is a home for subscription-based satellite radio on mobile devices. Sirius XM subscribers pay between $9.99 and $19.99 a month, although the two most popular plans are priced at $12.95 and $16.95 a month. But to listen to satellite radio on the web, whether on PCs or mobile devices, costs another $2.99 a month.

New subscribers enticed by the iPhone app will need to shell out $240 a year for the music, and that includes strings such as awkward integration with the iTunes music store and no access to popular programs like Howard Stern or MLB Play-by-Play (meanwhile, MLB.com is starting to stream videos of select games as well as highlights of other games to the iPhone).

The problem is, other companies are showing that you can stream radio content to the iPhone — minus satellites — for a whole lot cheaper. Pandora, ooTunes, Wunder Radio, Slacker Radio and others stream music without monthly fees. None are perfect, but they are free. The future of mobile music looks like Spotify, which many consider the ideal music app and which is finding a home on Google’s Android phones. That could prompt Apple into allowing Spotify apps into its store, and that in turn could pave the way for other on-demand music sites like Rhapsody to follow.

The real allure of streaming radio on mobile devices isn’t just that we can avoid the commercials, bland playlists and inane DJ banter that pollutes the FM band. It’s that they can stream music more cheaply than costly satellite networks and, more importantly, that can be interactive, allowing we listeners to discover new music at will, to personalize and share playlists and to listen to what we want, when we want.

It’s taking some time, but it’s the direction mobile music is heading. It’s not, however, a world in which satellite radio can thrive. So Sirius XM is likely to remain what it is today — a very fancy car radio. And right now, that’s not a strong enough foundation on which to build a true turnaround.

Join the most influential investors, mobile industry executives, entrepreneurs, press and analysts at MobileBeat 2009 for one day of in-depth discussion, debate and power networking, held on July 16 at the Parc 55 Hotel in San Francisco. MobileBeat will focus on apps: the people who use them, the people who make them, and the people who fund them. MobileBeat will also have a Top Startup competition and is actively soliciting submissions from startups younger than 3 years old and in two categories. These companies will get to pitch in front of a high-level audience: some 400 top mobile executives from startups and larger companies, venture capital firms, publishers, media, device makers and OS platforms. Startups can submit to be chosen for the competition here. Deadline for submission is July 1. Companies will be notified if they qualify on July 6.

Too Many Phones

Regular visitors to Mobile Tech Manor know I have too many phones. It’s strictly a result of the work I do here but it’s a constant challenge deciding what phone I will use on a given day. It’s also a bit of a hassle when I change from one phone to another although that hassle is not as bad since hooking up with Google Voice. Those of you who are waiting for GV to let you in should be getting your invite soon according to Google who are ramping up to go live. I’m sure it will be beta forever like everything Google, but at least they’ll let everyone in soon.

This past week I used the Palm Pre most of the time once again. It’s not unusual for me to use mostly the new phone in the Manor for a while to get familiar with it. I am largely impressed with the Pre and the good job that Palm has done with the initial software bundling. The way the Pre handles multi-tasking is the best I have seen on any phone and it has been a solid performer for me. I’ll be glad when more apps get written for the Pre although I must admit that it’s not failing to do anything I need with the current offering. It never fails to impress anyone who picks it up, especially those “regular people” who are not involved in the tech world. They immediately grasp how it works and how fluidly the whole interface is manipulated.

I attend a fair number of teleconferences each week. Some of these are internal GigaOM staff meetings but most are press briefings that major companies put together to talk about upcoming products. I have settled on using the Pre along with the Plantronics Pulsar 590E stereo Bluetooth headset. The Pre handles stereo Bluetooth very well and I can use the 590E for listening to music and still make calls when needed. The headset is so light and comfortable that I find them perfect for these teleconferences that can easily last over an hour. The headset of the 590E has a great microphone and no one can tell I am on a Bluetooth headset on these calls. The Pre/ Pulsar combo has become a constant fixture of my workday it works so well.

I still use the iPhone 3G for reading e-books every day. The Pre lacks a good reader so I am forced to look somewhere else for that task. I read a lot of books so this is a big deal to me. The iPhone is a great reader although I admit it feels pretty strange to only be using it for reading e-books. An iPod Touch would work for this but I already have the iPhone. Apple issued a heat warning for both the iPhone 3G and the spiffy new iPhone 3GS. Some owners of the new iPhone are reporting that the phone runs very, very hot, to the point of discoloring the white back of the phone. This is pretty scary given all the past stories about phones bursting into flames. Apple’s warning about the two iPhone models says that they should only be operated up to 95 degrees. We’ve been over 100 degrees here in Houston for days so I keep expecting my iPhone 3G to spontaneously combust but so far it hasn’t.

Netbooks Still Around

I have been using the HP Mini 1000 a lot this week and still find it a wonder. There is simply no way that HP could have made it any smaller yet kept the keyboard and screen big enough to make it as productive as it is to use. The new 5101 model from HP looks pretty nice and I hope to soon get my hands on one to try out. It seems like it’s a bit bigger than the 1000 though so we’ll have to see if the extra bulk is worth it.

I am still running Windows 7 on the Mini 1000 and am enjoying how well it works on the netbook. It is going to be interesting to see how many netbook models start shipping with Windows 7 once it’s released. It will be even more interesting to see how Windows 7 affects netbook pricing. No matter what some say about why people buy netbooks I am convinced it’s largely due to price.

Evernote- the Best Productivity App on the Planet

I was a long-time OneNote user, it was the most-used program on every computer I used due to my past work as a consultant. There is no better program for taking notes in ink on a Tablet PC and I must have inked tens of thousands of pages in OneNote. My work is different now and I find myself in more of an information collection mode than a note-taking mode. This change brought me back to Evernote for collecting information and it has evolved so far in recent years that it is simply an amazing tool.

One of the big strengths of Evernote is that it is cloud based which means my notes live up in the cloud. This is important as it means they are available no matter what device I am using in a given moment, they are just there. More importantly for me it also means that I can capture bits of information for future reference no matter what I am doing or what I am using at the time. The many ways to get information grabbed and saved is simply game-changing for my work.

Evernote web interface

Evernote has special versions for just about every device I use. There are versions for Windows, Macs, the iPhone, the BlackBerry and the Palm Pre. These versions make it easy to collect information and access it no matter what I am using. I also use the web-based interface a lot which is device independent and works seamlessly in my web browser. All of these versions make finding the particular nugget of information I need as simple as a search. Evernote instantly returns all notes that contain my search term no matter how they were collected or (more importantly) what kind of note they might be.

Getting information into Evernote is very powerful in its flexibility. I can type notes, write them in ink on a Tablet, clip info from the web, take photos of things, copy/ paste things and even snap photos from the Mac iSight web cam. The whole Evernote premise is that the user should be able to capture information, in any form, and get it into a note in the cloud-based notebook as simply as possible. I can’t stress how powerful this is for those who need to collect information from any source. You see something you need to grab, you use whatever method is at hand and the information is saved.

Evernote Pre version

What makes this so powerful is that Evernote handles all the different types of information with the notion that you must be able to search for things and easily find them later. All images, whether pasted from other programs, photos snapped with a phone camera or images emailed into Evernote, are searchable if they contain any text. One of the most powerful uses of Evernote in my work is to snap a photo of a sign, a computer screen, a piece of paper, anything that contains text. Once the image is uploaded into my notebook in the sky (which happens instantly and automatically) the Evernote gremlins scan the image looking for text. Any text is then recognized and indexed for searching just like any text notes.

Think about the power of that for a moment. I have many times taken a photo of a document page and Evernote has then been able to let me search for any term on that page. Is that beginning to sink in? This means that I am able to save just about any information I come across simply by snapping a photo of it with my phone. I can then find any term in the object I photographed later with a simple search. This is revolutionary for my work. Sure it’s not perfect, phone cameras aren’t the best in the world but I find I am able to get a decent enough photo of an object with a little care.

If it seems I am gushing about Evernote it’s because I am. A large part of my work is research and that means finding the information I need and then making sure it is accessible to me later when I need it. Evernote makes this a seamless part of my work and this is simply liberating. The amazing part is that Evernote is free until you start creating many notes per month and even then it’s pretty cheap. It staggers me to think how these folks make such a powerful solution at such a low price as they do.

Errata on the Web

This week I found this amazing video of a marriage proposal that you must see to believe. I suspect the groom-to-be works in the Disney World park in the video but even so it’s simply amazing. I hope this guy realizes that he’s now set the bar so high for everything else in the upcoming marriage. The look on the fiance’s face is priceless.

E-Book of the Week

This week I have been engrossed in From the Corner of His Eye by Dean Koontz. The story is typical Koontz with constant surprises and a vague sense of unease at what might happen next as it unfolds. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

Wrap-up

That’s it for another week at Mobile Tech Manor. I enjoyed sharing it with you as I always do and can’t wait until next week.

In this week’s enlightening installment of the App Developer Diary, I pitch my game concept to the coders, preach the gospel of the Game Bible and muse upon the possibility of the project imploding.

Straight after submitting last week’s App Developer Diary, I packed up my Macbook Pro and headed down to Nolla, a local bar and Scandinavian restaurant. I was to meet with Markus, one of the project’s coders, and pitch my game concept to him.

Hailing from Finland, Markus Piipari is one of the three coders who invited me on board to make the game. Together, with his brother Matias and Benjamin Schuster-Böckler, the trio formed Pear Computers, a dev studio specializing in mobile development.

When I arrived at Nolla, Markus was hunched over his MacBook (one of the old white models, which was sealed, I noted, in a scruffy faux-leather hard cover). He glanced up, headphones in ear, and although he acknowledged me with a quick nod, had that glazed look of somebody whose mind is elsewhere.

The pitch process is a fundamental component of having your idea become a reality. It’s the first hurdle as, not only should it be a clear and concise outline of your concept, it should also enthuse the rest of the team. As they say in the industry, you need your team’s buy in — if the team hasn’t bought in to the concept from the very start, then the project is almost certainly doomed to failure.

I was already nervous enough, pitching a concept that I believed in so firmly, and yet Markus seemed to want to make me sweat more than a chubby man in a Finnish sauna. Perhaps this was a Scandinavian tactic to pile on the pressure and make pitching an even more tense affair? Or maybe Markus was living up to the stereotype of a hardcore programmer: King of the Code, cold and focused.

Setting Up My Pitch

Markus uttered a few words in Finnish, clicked around on his Macbook, and the glazed look dissolved into a warm smile. He wasn’t cold or emotionless, he was just chatting to his brother, Matias, on Skype. And now he was back in the room, ushering me to sit down, already offering me a steaming glass of black coffee — a staple beverage for Finns throughout the year.

Awkwardness over, I booted up my MacBook Pro and opened Apple’s Keynote. Rather than bewilder Markus with the entire game design in one go, I’d prepared a short Steve Jobs-style presentation, explaining the multiplayer component of my game concept. The game was to be a multiplayer bat and ball game, featuring novel physics-based power-ups for an added twist.

The images that I’d prepared were mockups of the game screen, featuring arrows and captions pointing to the most important elements — describing the game-flow, control mechanic and graphical style. Markus loved the concept and insisted on immediately contacting Matias and Benjamin to enthusiastically pitch the idea to his team. The coders were on board, I had buy in. Boom!

The Gospel of Games

With the team bought in to the concept, the next step for me would be to produce what’s known as a GDD, a Game Design Document. This document is sometimes referred to as a Game Bible as, once written, it’s the point of reference for every single detail within the game.

Produced during the pre-production phase of a project, the GDD is a key asset during the game’s actual production. It provides guidelines for gameplay, user interface and menu flow, scoring and game rules. It will even include the game’s story, characters and location. Essentially, every detail of the game, no matter how seemingly inconsequential, is mapped out in this document before starting production.

The GDD defines the features and scope of the project, ideally, once production has begun, the GDD won’t change and will serve as a blueprint for the game’s development. Games being what they are — entire populated virtual worlds with their own distinct rules — they are particularly susceptible to feature creep. This project management issue occurs when new features creep in to the product design during the production phase — it drags out development, costing both time and money.

Feeling Doubtful

Over the past few days, since my meeting with Markus, my thoughts have been a flurry of game-related ideas, ready to throw in to the GDD before we begin production. It’s really happening and it’s so exciting to be part of the process. The team — Markus, Matias and Benjamin — are passionate about coding, so accomplished in their abilities, I feel lucky to be working with them.

However, my mind keeps returning to one question: Will this app really make it the App Store? It’s an exciting project indeed, but it’s such a massive undertaking and all the more intense because I’m documenting it in public, right here. It seems like an irrational doubt, but, we could be setting ourselves up for a big fall.

Gomi is a forthcoming iPhone game that blends Katamari Damacy with Mario Galaxy, rolling a recycling blob creature around tiny planets to clean up the trash. Based on the preview videos, the game looks fantastic, yet its release has been delayed for several months now.

My worry is that if one element goes awry (we lose a coder, the game mechanic isn’t fun, the scope is unrealistic, our project planning is off) we could end up delaying, or worse, shutting down the project. Everything seems to have run smoothly so far, but once we get in to the nitty gritty of pre-production, I wonder if that will still be the case.

Next time: Marvel at the visual delights as I unveil my conceptual character artwork, delve in to the details of gameplay mechanics and discover what happens when a hardcore coder disagrees with a journalist-cum-designer. It’s all in the next thrilling installment of TheAppleBlog’s App Developer Diary.

This weekend is the Independence Day 4th of July holiday here in the U.S., which for many people means a three-day weekend. I’ll even be taking tomorrow off, and I almost never get days off, since my boss is a complete workaholic who thinks days off are for the weak. Oh wait, that workaholic tyrant is me, since I get to set my own freelance schedule. Some of us aren’t good at taking days off, so I have a few tips for making it through the holiday.

Photo by Flickr user kcphotos used under Creative Commons

A traditional 4th of July holiday celebration includes picnics or barbecues with family and friends, which can mean that you will most likely be faced with the dreaded question: “So, what do you do?” from your less technical friends and family. I always struggle with how to answer this question, so I encourage you to go back to my December post and browse the comments to get a few innovative suggestions for dealing with this question.

This is mostly a low-tech holiday, so some of us may start going through tech withdrawal. You might need to find creative ways to work your technology into the day. The easiest way is to pull out your fancy digital camera and experiment with some of the less well known settings while making it look like you are snapping a few pictures. You can also use your phone to look something up, while sneaking a peak at email or your favorite social networking site.

For those of you who really aren’t good at taking time off, you can fake it. Pretend to take a day off while really planning for a day of quiet holiday productivity. Since everyone thinks that you are off work, you might be able to get some real work done.

Don’t take this post too seriously. Take some time off this weekend and enjoy yourself!

What are your tips for surviving the holiday?

In 1988, “Saturday Night Live” aired a parody commercial deriding clumsy business models. “At First CityWide Change Bank, our business is making change,” said actor Jim Downey, portraying a naive “service representative.” After listing various ways in which his company could break a five, he explained how money is made. “The answer is simple: volume.”

More than 20 years later, I wonder if some digital entrepreneurs think the same. “Simple: we’ll make money on volume of traffic, at some future date,” they promise, even if the math doesn’t add up right now. Despite a knee-deep recession, the idea of giving away something for free and charging for something else later is bigger than ever. But is “free” selling?

Free
Although not the inventor, the chief evangelist of the “free” world is author and Wired editor Chris Anderson. Last year, before the recession hit, Anderson outlined his upcoming book in a cover story titled “Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business.” A year and a half later, the final subtitle was changed to a less pretentious “The Future of a Radical Price,” “mostly because ‘why X is the future of business’ is now a cliche,” Anderson tells me.

The gist of his book: “People are making lots of money and charging nothing,” he writes (via the LA Times). In fairness, though, the idea of “Free” is a little misleading, since someone has to part with money so someone else can profit. “For most customers in the marketplace, the product is really free,” Anderson clarifies in an email. “The difference is who the paying customers are: advertisers or ‘premium’ users,” which effectively summarizes Anderson’s thesis.

The only problem? It’s difficult to cite thriving examples of either ad-sponsored or paid upgrades taking place online, at least when compared with the disproportionate amounts of money still being exchanged for offline goods and services. Google is the glaring exception, a web darling Anderson is quick to reference in his book. But even the search giant isn’t perfect — YouTube is a money pit, as part-time critic and full-time intellectual Malcom Gladwell notes in his dissenting review of “Free” for the New Yorker.

Obviously, Anderson is glamorizing a little with his endorsement of “Free.” His hardcover retails for $27. A subscription to Wired will still set you back $12 per year. And his Geek Dad blog, an admitted labor of love, is hardly capable of piquing investor interest (at least not yet), despite Anderson’s suggestion that the site is another successful example of the “Free” model.

But Anderson isn’t the only wordsmith endorsing a “Free” future. Well-read business author Seth Godin tells me, “There are 100 great companies that are using generosity as a scalable business.” He didn’t name names, but I’m sure success stories exist. Nevertheless, Godin isn’t as hasty to call “Free” the next big thing. “It is a future business model, not the future,” he emphasizes. “It’s so easy to misunderstand Anderson’s point.” Indeed.

Paid
So if “Free” is one way to skin a cat, does “paid” have an online future? For example, how about charging RSS subscribers, who enjoy instant delivery of trusted content to their “doorstep” without having to go out of their way to find it elsewhere? Anderson says no. “I doubt content companies can charge for RSS. Your content has to be incredibly unique and valuable, which may describe Bloomberg but not the average media site.”

Godin also balks at the idea, calling it shortsighted. “It’s like charging someone to go on a date. If your goal is to get married, why on Earth would you do that?”

I was unable to find working of examples of paid RSS subscriptions for this story. But there has been a cottage industry of paid newsletters since email was popularized in the ’90s. And the capitalist pig in me can’t help but think how much a 3 percent to 5 percent conversion of paid subscribers might yield. If only someone were willing to jeopardize their subscribers and try it.

Perhaps my suspicions of “Free” would have been obviated had that living, breathing economy decided not to exhale. But exhale it did, and here we are wondering what can be done to exploit the growing popularity of the Internet during times of uncertainty, amid a myriad of nascent, sometimes under-performing business models.

So until products like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube start operating on earned income instead of venture capital, the Internet might need to move to a paid system, especially if we hope to sustain intellectual property and original content produced by reporters, artists and entertainers. We might even be able to do it the old-fashioned way — you know, enticing a prospective customer into your “store” with an incredibly compelling product. Then selling it to them. Like cable TV.

I love you, NewTeeVee Station readers, but sometimes I suspect that you aren’t listening to me when I tell you that a show is AWESOME. So, in honor of our humble Station’s 1-year anniversary (betcha didn’t realize it’d been a whole year, did you?) I went through our 4-star and 5-star reviews to put together a collection of some of my favorite shows that remain slightly obscure.

Sean and Jilly Move In
This fauxumentary about a dysfunctional couple forced to move in together is full of sly, Office-esque awkward comedy. Here’s the happy couple looking for a new place to live.

What I said then: They’re that couple who don’t really enjoy being together, but are never truly unhappy enough to break up, a caricature pushed to the extreme but easily recognizable nonetheless.

The District
Newsweek took a teenybopper approach to covering Barack Obama’s first 100 days in office; the series wrapped with nine episodes of pure Hills-esque pleasure. The season finale is below.

What I said then: Once you get past the fact that Newsweek decided to mock MTV (which is kind of like George F. Will starting a blog to mock Britney Spears), The District is pretty much pure pleasure.

Project: Rant
This crowd-sourced web series gives a voice to the petty frustrations of modern life, using quality production values and gifted actors to perform rants on problems like straight girls who go to gay clubs.

What I said then: When the audience identifies with the speaker, there’s a sort of second-hand catharsis that occurs. Just because it’s not our frustration or embarrassment, it doesn’t dull the vicarious thrill of finally getting to let it out.

Grass Roots
This indie series debuted in May with a fresh take on the tough world of political campaigns, and was picked up by Koldcast for distribution shortly thereafter.

What I said then: It’s not exactly a love song to politics, but serves instead as a reminder that political campaigns aren’t just scandals and grand speeches, but hard work and shoe leather, too.

You know the solar industry is hurting when a startup with a promising cell manufacturing technology turns to systems integration to stay afloat. That’s the recent story of Blue Square Energy, which was launched to develop and manufacture low-cost solar cells using upgraded metallurgical-grade (UMG) silicon but has now shifted into a “survival plan” focused on being a systems integrator. Chief Executive Joseph Babin tells us that the North East, Md.-based startup now is generating business by designing and selling small-scale solar arrays and energy-efficient lighting programs for residential and commercial customers.

The company has customers in Delaware and New Jersey, and Babin said he expects to generate revenue of between $3 million and $8 million this year. But why the systems integration business, even if it is temporary? Babin responded: “We have an established business network in this region that is driving inbound opportunity.”

In many ways, Blue Square is a victim of the times. The startup, which had raised about $5 million in funding from individual investors and had intellectual property to boot, was hunting for about $25 million in venture capital in late 2008 when markets for financing largely shut down and the weakening economy and other factors reduced demand for solar products. There were no takers, Babin said. Nor could he find strategic partners to merge with or buy his company. By January 2009, the company had shrunk from a high of 75 employees to just five including Babin, its current size today.

But it should be said that the company’s woes aren’t solely because of difficult economic times. As the Gunther Portfolio blog has well-documented, even in mid-2008, Blue Square failed to raise money largely as a result of concerns surrounding then-CEO Allen Barnett’s leadership abilities. During the summer of 2008, Barnett and his father, Dr. Allen Barnett, who was a consultant for the firm, were asked to tender their resignations.

Still, Babin, who refused to comment on the Barnetts’ ouster and who was a board member before taking the helm, believes that the company’s solar cell Bright Point technology has enormous promise and that the startup’s inability to raise money in late 2008 was a result of a “perfect storm” of market pressures. “We missed our timeline by eight months on a pilot production machine,” Babin said. “That put us behind, and then we ran into the wall of the economy.” Despite the setbacks, Babin hasn’t given up on the company’s initial vision of being a solar cell developer and manufacturer. Once financing becomes more available, he plans to look again for venture capital backing, and in the meantime, he’s talking to unnamed European equipment manufacturers for partnerships.

In November 2008, Blue Square announced that it had produced a solar cell with a 14.6 percent efficiency. The company said it was one of the highest-recorded efficiencies using UMG silicon, a less pure, lower-cost version of silicon than is typically used in solar cells. With further development, Blue Square believes it can produce a high-performance, low-cost solar cell for use in homes and businesses.

But even when venture capital starts flowing more readily to cleantech startups (the turnaround may already be occurring), Blue Square could have a hard sell. UMG-based solar cells were an attractive value proposition when purer silicon was trading for $400 per kilogram in mid-2008. Now it’s plummeted to below $50 per kilogram, and the cost of conventional solar cells has declined along with it. Any company — thin-film solar included — that is developing an alternative technology to conventional silicon cells now has a significantly harder market to penetrate.

The launch of Apple’s new iPhone 3GS was the best sales day ever for AT&T’s retail stores, while the number of orders taken at its online store also hit an all-time high, according to an internal memo obtained by MacDailyNews, a blog devoted to all things Apple. While the memo doesn’t outline the precise number of devices sold, it does reveal other details.

On this year’s launch day, iPhone sales exceeded sales recorded on 2008’s iPhone launch day, Black Friday 2008 and Dec. 26, 2008 — all heavy-volume sales days. In fact, this year we surpassed 2008’s launch day sales at about noon Central time, and sustained our previous peak hour record, also set in 2008, for 11 straight hours.

Apple sold a million iPhones the weekend of the 3GS launch. A survey by Piper Jaffrey shows that nearly 56 percent of iPhone 3GS buyers were upgrading from the old device and only 28 percent were switching to AT&T — but that’s still about 280,000 new subscribers that will be handing over a lot of money to the carrier. As I pointed out in a previous post, “[T]he average iPhone user gave AT&T about $94.74 a month vs. an average postpaid AT&T customer, who spends about $59.21 a month.”

Millions of people logged onto the web when the news of Michael Jackson’s sudden death broke last week, and they’re continuing to flock to eBay to get their hands on the pop king’s memorabilia. The online auction site said it’s since seen the percentages of daily searches, listings and sales of Michael Jackson memorabilia rise dramatically.

As of yesterday, eBay said the number of searches for Michael Jackson items had surged 235 percent over the week prior to his death. People are apparently looking to profit off their old Michael Jackson loot, too — new listings of such gear is up 57 percent.

Michael Jackson dolls have risen in value as much as 450 percent to sell for about $120, according to Vendio Research, which provides market research for eBay sellers. With the advent of iPods, however, a vinyl version of the iconic “Thriller” album is only going for about $70. But sales of single white gloves have gone through the roof, Vendio said, with 352 sold last week alone on eBay vs. the prior average of five a week.

• Smart Meters That Can Tweet, From a Utility That “Gets” Broadband- GigaOM
• Chu: For Green Building Design, We Need to Go Open Source- Earth2Tech
• Will Michael Jackson’s Funeral Be Live-Streamed- NewTeeVee
• Firefox 3.5, Portable Edition Arrives- OStatic
• Apple/NVIDIA Rift to Spark Major Component Changes?- TheAppleBlog
• 3 Options for Sharing Your Project Research- WebWorkerDaily
• Is Marketing Key to Mobile App Store Sales?- GigaOM Pro

We’d like to say thanks to this week’s GigaOM sponsors:

• PEER 1: Fully Scalable Hosting Solutions
• RackSpace: Experience fanatical support
• StrataScale: It’s your infrastructure – On Demand
• Fuze Meeting: HD Meetings – From Fuze Meeting
• Mozy: Back up your photos, music, and files with Mozy for as low as $4.34 per month.
• Juniper Networks: Demand more security and performance
• OSI Hardware: Quality, Affordability & Reliability

Dailymotion announced today that Cedric Tournay has been named its new CEO. Tournay replaces Ian Brotherston, who had only held the post since April. Brotherston will stay on with the company but will move over to become executive vice president of international strategy.

MediaPost reports that Dailymotion always considered Brotherston’s appointment as CEO as an interim one, though that temporary status was not mentioned at the time. We dug up the April 21, 2009, press release announcing Brotherston as CEO, which didn’t say anything about his being interim:

Dailymotion names Ian Brotherston Chief Executive Officer

Paris – April 21st 2009 – Dailymotion’s Board of Directors has announced today that Ian Brotherston has been appointed to the role of Chief Executive Officer of Dailymotion…

“We are delighted to welcome Ian as new CEO. His strong management experience will help shape Dailymotion as we continue our growth and global expansion. Ian’s primary focus will be to lead Dailymotion in its next phase of development,” says Benoist Grossmann, partner at AGF Private Equity.

Brotherston joined Dailymotion from Red Bee Media, the privatized Broadcast Technology Division of the BBC, where he was commercial cirector. A Dailymotion rep told us that the company was originally not going to announce Brotherston’s appointment since it was interim, and much of the initial press was based on leaked and incomplete information. The rep said at the time he was unable to comment on the CEO search.

Brotherston was brought on to replace then-CEO Mark Zaleski, and at the time it was rumored that Dailymotion was looking to raise additional funding this year. Zaleski had been brought on from QXL in August 2007 as executive chairman.

Tournay was most recently the CEO of Doctissimo, one of the largest health and medical web sites in Europe, and managed its sale to Lagardere group.

As far as speed bumps for cellulosic ethanol ventures go, this one’s a doozy: Jurors in a federal court have ordered Cello Energy, a biofuel startup run by Alabama’s former ethics chairman, Jack Boykin, and backed by both Silicon Valley cleantech investors Khosla Ventures and pulp maker Parsons & Whittemore Enterprises, to pay more than $10.4 million in a fraud case. According to the Alabama Press-Register, back in 2007, Cello promised P&W that it would make $16-a-barrel fuel from cellulose derived from things like hay, switchgrass and wood chips — and it has gone downhill from there. The case suggests at least two lessons for investors getting giddy about a buzzy technology: do your homework, and get ready to wait.

Cello reportedly accepted a $2.5 million investment from P&W in 2007 to help finance its first plant. Several months later it received a $12.5 million investment and a pledge for up to $25 million for construction and operation of additional plants from Khosla. Cello agreed to use discounted wood waste from the company as feedstock, but “a string of witnesses testified that samples of the fuel allegedly produced at Cello’s facility…were derived entirely from fossil and not renewable sources,” the Alabama Press-Register reports. This week a jury in Mobile, Ala., decided that Boykin’s original claims (made with his partner and son Allen Boykin) were fraudulent.

Fraud, of course, is unacceptable. But it’s also hard to sympathize with investors that threw down millions of dollars without knowing what they were really funding. Reading the blow-by-blow coverage of testimony and heated arguments in the Cello Energy trial (P&W’s lawyer at one point compared Cello to an adulterous spouse), it becomes clear that in a time when VCs were tripping over themselves for biofuel plays, P&W and Khosla Ventures weren’t exactly diligent. The excuse? P&W CEO George Landegger said he trusted Boykin after he promised to invest his own money in the $25 million project. For Khosla Ventures, whose founder Vinod Khosla has called cellulosic biofuel his “real love” and invested in more than a dozen biofuel companies, due diligence was not necessarily a deal breaker, and according to emails revealed in court between Khosla and partner Saul Kaul, Boykin refused to give the investors enough time for due diligence. That made the deal “nerve-wracking” for Kaul, but Khosla wrote, “Great job on this one. Herculean effort. But my bet is it will pay off.”

A key difference between Khosla and P&W’s outlooks on Cello and the Boykins right now seems to be the time frame in which they might have expected to see results. P&W took a stake in the venture early on, and may have expected swift commercialization (the CEO reportedly described the startup’s facility as underwhelming). Khosla, meanwhile, with his love for cellulosic biofuel, knows well that commercialization of a new cellulosic biofuel technology will take longer than that. Kaul reportedly told jurors, “We didn’t expect it to work right out of the gate…We’ll stand by patiently and supportive.” If the technology does pan out, Khosla Ventures will get about half of Cello’s revenues. If it doesn’t, well, the firm has plenty of other bets.

P&W also sued Khosla Ventures, claiming that the venture firm committed what’s called “tortious interference” — basically meddling with its business relationship with Cello and reducing its value (a bit curious, considering P&W’s claims that Cello’s process doesn’t actually work). The gist of P&W’s complaint about Khosla’s investment — made without P&W’s knowledge — is that it diluted the value of P&W’s stake, the Press-Register reports. P&W’s agreement with Cello included an option to invest another $10 million for a one-third ownership share in the company.

The jury ruled in favor of Khosla, whose investments made it the second-most active cleantech venture fund last quarter, behind only Kleiner Perkins, according to the Cleantech Group and Deloitte. As part of the original investment agreement, the firm said it would help Cello raise more funds, but after this week’s ruling, that, too, will likely be a Herculean effort.

Web workers, especially those of us who are self-employed, will sometimes encounter people who, it seems, take us less seriously because we don’t have a corporate cube to work in. There are two ways to deal with this.

Some web workers go to great lengths to mask that our office and home are one and the same. We can use P.O. box or mailbox suite addresses, and install separate phone lines that we can always answer with a business salutation. We might keep rigidly to business hours and avoid any reference in conversation that would reveal our office/home marriage.

Of course, there is another option. We can let it all hang out, so to speak, and freely acknowledge our home office location and its attendant benefits (and disadvantages) to the people we do business with.

Which of these options is best to use is somewhat a function of the industry that each of us works in and our own personal comfort level. Personally, I have chosen the second option — complete openness. There are several reasons why:

It’s cheaper. All those additional services, like a mailbox suite and additional phone line, cost money that I would much rather spend on other things like a new computer gadget.

It’s too much work to pretend. Keeping up a pretense about where my office is just takes energy I’d rather put into my actual work. And besides, I know I’d eventually make a mistake anyway and let the secret out, so why make the effort to keep it a secret at all?

It tells me what people respect. If someone dismisses me because I work from a home office, I probably didn’t want to work with them anyway. People who respect me and the quality of my work will want to work with me, no matter where my office is located. Being upfront about where I work helps sort out who respects me, and not just the office they think I have.

It makes it easier for the next web worker. Having a good experience dealing with someone that they know is working from home will hopefully lay the groundwork with people to have a better attitude towards the next web worker they encounter.

It’s my life. The bottom line is that I work from my home office because it allows me to blend my work and my personal life in a way that works for me. Pretending otherwise would defeat the purpose of that. It would remove some of the very flexibility that I have sought in being a web worker, such as the ability to be able to care after school for my autistic 6-year-old daughter while I work.

Everyone has to do what works for them, but I have chosen to be open with my web worker status. Yes, it can occasionally be awkward or get me dismissed by a few people who don’t understand the new world of web work. But I make no apologies and find that my candor serves me well in more situations than it hurts me.

How open are you with people you do business with about where your office is? Does this help or hinder you?

If you thought bankruptcy would keep the industrious folks at Psystar from making any more Mac clones, you were sorely mistaken. Like a zombie rising from the dead with an insatiable thirst for lawsuits, the little clone-maker that couldn’t is advertising a brand new model of its “Open” line of computers on its web site today.

Not only that, but it’s also claiming that its bankruptcy filing was an unfortunate, but necessary, step toward ensuring its continued viability as a company. Maybe so, but how many of you out there are eager to order a new computer of questionable build quality from a bankrupt company engaged in an ongoing legal battle with Apple, especially with notebook price drops in place, and similar desktop discounts rumored to be on the horizon?

If you’re willing to look past these minor superficial details, you can now order an Open(7) starting at $1,499. For as much as you’d spend on a real iMac, you’ll get a tower desktop PC with a 2.66GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon Nehalem processor, 6GB of DDR3 RAM, a 1TB 7,200RPM SATA2 HDD, and an NVIDIA 9500GT graphics card with 512MB of onboard memory. As is standard on Psystar computers, niceties like wireless Internet and Bluetooth will cost you extra. And they’re apparently in stock right now, if you’re feeling brave.

The company’s re-emergence comes hot on the heels of news that Apple has been given the “OK” to proceed with its legal action against Psystar, which was granted last week by a Florida bankruptcy court judge. In the interim, Psystar’s Chapter 11 filing means that it has probably been able to temporarily escape its previous debts and acquired new ones through a different funding source, whose identity remains a mystery. Many hardware manufacturers would obviously benefit were OS X to be made available for any platform, so there’s probably no shortage of people interested in having a stake in Psystar’s legal case, though none would likely be very comfortable with that position being made public.

News of the new Open(7) came via Pystar’s online mailing list, in a PDF newsletter (check it out at SlashGear) sent out to subscribers detailing it, its new DUBL (Darwin Universal Boot Loader), and, in a bright red box at the bottom of the document, a rather flippant take on its recent financial and legal turmoil. Also according to the newsletter, for a limited time only, you can get free shipping on the Open(7) within the continental U.S. using a special coupon code to “Celebrate Independence.” Cheeky, Psystar. Very cheeky.

Facebook expects to “very soon” release a new version of its iPhone app, and via TechCrunch we hear it will enable video uploads from the new iPhone 3GS.

Now, this is just one social network on one (very new) phone, and yes, it’s going to be a holiday weekend in a couple hours. But the news is worth paying attention to because of the volume and nature of video-sharing that Facebook enables, and the active mobile content habits of iPhone users. In the few days after the iPhone 3GS release, YouTube, the biggest user video site out there, said its mobile video uploads were up 400 percent, with iPhone 3GS video already accounting for more than half the mobile video sent to the site.

Meanwhile, Facebook told us it sees a very significant — nearly 40 percent — chunk of its video uploads come from webcams. And at last check, Facebook received six times as many video uploads per day as MySpace, showing its personal video-sharing offering is resonating with users. The simple, accessible video sharing enabled by webcams has a lot in common with mobile phone video uploads — except with the added value of on-the-go, on-the-scene connectivity. Let’s just hope AT&T doesn’t get pissy about the upstream bandwidth.

Put those rumors to rest because T-Mobile is indeed launching the myTouch 3G with Google handset on July 8. This morning I received an invite to the media event in New York City, although I’m on the fence about attending. It’s a solid 2.5-hour drive for what’s likely a one-hour event, followed by the long return trip home. I’m leaning towards going, though, because the myTouch looks spectacular so far, and I’d like to see it in person.

You can tell from the pic on the invite that the myTouch is thinner and has less of a chin than the original G1 handset running Android. Dropping that slide-out keyboard will do that every time. Remember that the myTouch has the “with Google” branding, so I don’t believe it will natively support Microsoft Exchange, although PC World’s early look says it will. I’m fairly certain, however, that it won’t  have the sensible HTC Sense UI that’s making the rounds.

The official T-Mobile myTouch 3G site offers a countdown clock for T-Mo customer pre-orders, which just happens to correspond with the day of the media event. Om received the handset earlier and says the phone is worth the wait. Luckily, you don’t have to wait much longer to see more of it, although even pre-orders won’t be arriving until August 3.

Greenpeace released the 12th edition of its Guide to Greener Electronics today (PDF), with Apple falling somewhere between tangerine and burnt orange. For those who take the rating seriously, Apple scored 4.7 out of 10, unchanged from last time, though the company slipped from 10th to 11th place in the ranking of 18 companies.

The guide is based on three “demands” (their word) by Greenpeace: eliminating toxic substances, e-waste recycling and energy usage. Those demands are then broken down into four sub-demands, which are ranked: bad, partially bad, partially good, and good. Overall, Apple scores mostly in the middle, but with several bad grades.

The single, wholly positive ranking Apple receives is for the timeline on phasing out nasty PVCs and BFRs from manufacturing. As Apple and the Environment notes, “Printed circuit boards, electrical components, mechanical parts, and internal cables are BFR-free and PVC-free.” However, Greenpeace even takes issue with that claim because Apple has “unreasonably high threshold limits for BFRs and PVC in products that are allegedly PVC-/BFR-free.”

Greenpeace criticizes Apple strongly on e-waste recycling, while at the same time noting the company has extended coverage of its recycling program to Asia, and that Apple has set a goal of a 50 percent recycling rate by 2010. The main problem, according to Greenpeace, is a matter of disclosure on the part of Apple. On the issue of energy, Apple again scores poorly. First, because the company does not report on GHG (greenhouse gasses) emissions, Apple fails. Second, because the company does not report on renewable energy usage, Apple fails.

If you don’t see a pattern here, what it comes down to is that Greenpeace grades companies on words as much as action. Apple is a secretive company by nature. Considering how confrontational Greenpeace has been with Apple in the past, it’s hardly a surprise that Apple makes no effort to meet the “demands” of Greenpeace.

The real question here is why Greenpeace focuses so much on Apple. Both Dell and HP sell far more computers than Apple. Both have dropped in ranking, according to the latest guide, and both now score lower than Apple. Does this mean we will see protestors at the headquarters of HP? Will there be advertising campaigns about a “yellow” Dell? If Greenpeace followed its own guide, that’s what should happen.

However, the difference between Apple and every company in the guide is brand. Apple is easily the most popular brand. By focusing on Apple negatively, Greenpeace can theoretically threaten Apple’s brand popularity. Further, any changes Apple makes because of pressure from Greenpeace could then be leveraged against companies that actually pollute more than Apple. Finally, attacking the most popular company raises awareness of Greenpeace itself, not that the environmental organization would ever be so self-serving.

Keep going green, Apple, but keep going without Greenpeace.