Comcast, the Philadelphia-based cable giant has finally announced that the it is buying Plaxo, a Mountain View, Calif.-based social networking & connected address book company, for an undisclosed amount of money. Plaxo, whose co-founders include Sean Parker raised $23 million since 2002 from VC firms including Sequoia Capital, Globespan Capital Partners, and DAG Ventures.

This has been the worst kept secret, with people speculating about the price of this acquisition. Plaxo and Comcast officials declined to comment on the price when I had a conference call with them earlier today. Even today the price range is being pegged between $100 million to $170 million. I have on authority that the price is $170 million including earn outs. This is yet another mega-million dollar bet by the cable company in its ongoing transformation into a web-based company with an eye on advertising dollars.

Plaxo Pulse is one of the most attractive aspects of Plaxo, Sam Schwartz, executive vice president of Comcast Interactive Media said. He pointed out that this type of news feed could end up in the set-top box, and be utilized for adding social features to many Comcast services including Fandango and Fancast. Comcast has a project called Tru2Way that allows developers to write applications for the set-top box.

While I understand that Comcast wants to socialize its various offerings, I have reservations about their ability to extend what is a more professional focused address-book based tool into the consumer, non-techie market place. That said, Plaxo could be useful for Comcast in its small business market where the cable giant has had some success.

Schwartz hinted that Comcast triple play subscribers might be able to make calls to each other using the VoIP technology via Click2Call technology. Free calls in regions where Comcast is available from with Plaxo makes a lot of sense and has potential.
 
Recommended Reading: Dan Farber on Comcast-Plaxo.

Not many of you know Gopal Raju, a man who has played a big role in my journalist life. He passed away this week and his passing brought back some bittersweet memories.

I can still remember the first time I met Gopal Raju. Joe Aranha, a NY-based freelance photographer introduced us. I was terrified to meet the man who had started and built India Abroad, one of the largest Indian American weekly newspapers. He did nothing to put me at ease but he gave an opportunity to write for his paper where I met some people who became lifelong friends. He sent me on assignments that made me appreciate the virtue of traditional, pound the pavement reporting, that has stuck with me.

There were many times when we didn’t see eye-to-eye, but that didn’t diminish my respect for the man and his ability to put out a fine paper. As they say, we are all a sum of many parts. Mr. Raju (as I used to call him) played a big part in my life. Good bye … front page will be ready Sunday at 6 pm!

Like me, Jawbone got a little skinner and lighter. And like me it has a whole new wardrobe. About 50% lighter and smaller than the dorkier original Bluetooth version, Jawbone has same useful noise elimination features as the predecessor as well. It is being co-sold with AT&T for now and will cost about $130 a pop.

After struggling for much of its early life, thanks to bad product decisions, Aliph, the maker of Jawbone seems to has turned around. Its noise-elimation headset has sold enough units for Plantronics to label them a competitor in recent conference call with Wall Street analysts. The company has raised VC funding from Sequoia Capital and Khosla Ventures.

I asked him if he is doing a music headphone using his technology, considering how hot the music phones have become. No plans, he said, because of some issues with the A2DP technology. Jawbone 2.0 works nicely with the iPhone and Blackberry, two devices I tried it with, with minimal of set-up required. If you have one of those two, it might be worth taking a look. But before you do that, read Walt Mossberg’s big review over on AllthingsD.

Earth2Tech has learned that Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Beyers has chosen Joel Serface, the director of the Austin Clean Energy Incubator, to be an entrepreneur-in-residence. Serface will pull technology out of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory under a Department of Energy-sponsored program aimed at commercializing federal clean energy research. Prior to his job in Austin, Serface worked at several venture firms, including as a partner at Eastman Ventures, the venture arm of the Eastman Kodak company; as a director at Sierra Ventures; and as a principal at Alliant Partners. To read the full story, go here.

RailsConf, the largest gathering of Rails developers, is fast approaching. The conference provides examples of business models, development paradigms, and design strategies; this year’s session, which will be held in Portland, Ore., from May 29-June 1, will also feature advanced-level topics and sessions, notably those centered around design or coding techniques, testing tools, and deployment techniques. As a media partner, GigaOM readers can get a 15 percent discount off registration; click here and enter discount code “rc08ggo.”

Like the rotary dial, the keyboard’s role as a technological interface will soon come to an end as more information — especially visual information such as photos and videos — is stored on computers. And Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates hopes to help put the nail in the keyboard’s coffin, according to his presentation at the 12th Annual CEO Summit. In his keynote Gates focused heavily on natural user interfaces that combine touch, pens and speech to navigate computers and phones and that he expects to be available within the next decade. The keyboard, he made clear, is on notice.

He also briefly prophesied the formation of mega data centers built by “Microsoft and others” for cloud computing, but stayed mostly on the topic of Microsoft’s Sharepoint product and new forms of navigation. As part of the changing user interface he showed off an “intelligent whiteboard” from the R&D labs, which is essentially a Surface table standing up.

The demo unit, which had cameras located inside to track Gates’ hand movements, took a few tries before it noticed Gates. That’s never a great sign, but once it worked, the navigation was similar to what one would do on an iPhone writ large. It was less of a whiteboard than a giant, touch-controlled monitor. I can’t see myself dropping my keyboard for this, ever.

But with Microsoft pushing it, I will likely get the chance to try it. The computing giant may not be behind the sexiest Web 2.0 technologies or originating great user interfaces such as tabbed browsing, but it is very good at taking those technology successes, integrating them, and pushing them into a broad market over time.

It’s kind of like the Banana Republic of tech firms, taking different pieces of cool and edgy clothing (technologies), and assembling them into watered-down, business- and consumer-friendly outfits (products). Not everyone wants to wear Banana clothes, much like not everyone wants to use Windows, and Microsoft doesn’t always succeed, but so far Gates’ visions still count for something.

If this story interests you then you should definitely check out our upcoming conference, Structure 08.

IBM has taken the storied Cell processor and amped up both the processing capacity and production. IBM says it will produce the Cell processor at 65 nanometers and start popping it into servers to create a “supercomputing experience for the masses.” That is, if the masses can afford the $10,000 price tag for an adapter card and have a need to perform high-end analytical functions or lots of video transcoding.

What’s cool for consumers (and a real death knell for startups) comes from IBM’s Jim Comfort, a VP in IBM’s systems and technology group, who told EETimes, “IBM plans to continue to use videogame consoles as the vehicle for driving the first iterations of new high-end chips in large volumes that later become available to high-end computing systems in lower volume uses.”

Like software, chips are now sneaking from consumer’s living rooms into the enterprise. Funny what you can learn from Web 2.0. But it also raises the barriers to entry for anyone with a chip startup. Consumers won’t pay the margins enterprise gear makers will, so the way to make profits is on volume — hard for a startup to hit without a lot of cash upfront.

The thumbnail on the left depicts a service that, if it fully delivers as promised, has a decent chance to transform the web as profoundly as AdSense. Launching today, it’s the NeoEdge Game Channel, an ad-driven game widget from NeoEdge, the Mountain View startup we wrote about last November. Its Game Channel is a kind of videogame jukebox offering a selection of titles from several genres; when you click to play, NeoEdge’s advertising feed kicks in as the game loads.

Here’s the thing that excites me most: Pretty much any web owner (including bloggers) can install this plug-and-play widget on their site, and share advertising revenue with NeoEdge. (Hence the comparison to AdSense, only fun and interactive.) The social network PerfSpot is using the Channel, so you can go here to get a sense of what it’s like.

For site owners, NeoEdge Marketing VP Ty Levine told me, “This is a way of keeping people on your site.” It also gives them a new revenue stream; a site with 200,000 unique users, Levine estimated, could earn $1,000 to 5,000 a month, depending on the owner’s sponsorship deal and revenue share. With some 400 titles in the NeoEdge library, the channel can be customized with selections that fit a site’s demographics and branding.

As with AdSense, the Game Channel widget gives site owners far and wide an incentive to install it — and gives casual-game developers reason to keep creating content for it. Whether NeoEdge can capture and hold this market depends on its ability to deliver a diverse and compelling library of games — and to stay ahead of its competitors. With so many players rushing into the ad-driven casual game space, I wouldn’t be surprised to see similar services, purporting to offer better titles and/or revenue shares, launched by NeoEdge’s rivals. Let the casual game wars begin!

Google continues to rev up its plans for Android, spending liberally on developers, but the other mobile Linux platform effort, LiMo, isn’t keeping quiet and is aggressively adding bulk to what is an unenviable line-up. Today, the foundation got eight new members, most notably carriers Verizon Wireless and SK Telecom, chip maker Infineon and Mozilla. No one should take LiMo lightly, despite the fact that it’s a crazy consortium of many vested parties. We have been following them closely for a while now. Here are some links from the recent past. #1, #2, and #3.

Today is one of those perfect San Francisco days — clear blue skies, hot but not humid. In other words, a perfect day to have back-to-back meetings — mostly in the morning. This afternoon, I am on CrankyGeeks, hanging with John Dvorak and the boys. But then I have a ton of tests scheduled at the hospital. In other words, no chance of blogging today. I know Stacey, Wagner & the rest of the gang are going to fill in admirably.

Nvidia has plans for a mobile chipset that will change the look and functionality of smartphones when it hits in mid-to-late 2009. While many of the big chip vendors are placing bets on the concept of a mobile Internet device that’s larger than a smartphone, but smaller than a laptop, Nvidia’s APX 2500 chips could enable devices that are so sexy, they might render the need for an MID obsolete.

However, I’m told the company will announce an expansion of the APX chips into MIDs soon, so I could be wrong on that last point. Nvidia launched the chips that will make a smartphone function like a PC (or an iPhone) at the Mobile World Congress in February, and I can’t believe I missed it.

This is Nvidia’s first move into making the “brains” of a mobile device, and it’s using its graphics expertise to turn the devices containing the chips into portable media players that can play 10 hours of HD video (on an external screen) and 100 hours of MP3s on a single charge. All while the 750 MHz processor consumes less than a watt of power.

In a demo at Nvidia headquarters two weeks ago, I saw a device slightly larger than an iPhone power an HD rendering of a Pixar short called “For the Birds” on a big-screen TV. It was connected via an HDMI cable and it looked good at 720p. I get that some people don’t mind watching movies or TV on their cell phone or iPod screens, but if I’m able to download that content and plug it into a TV, that’s an entirely new ballgame for travel and sharing. I want that device.

The demo I saw was powered by Nvidia’s chipset running on Windows Mobile, creating a chip/OS combo that mimics some of the visual pizazz of the iPhone, but on a more business-friendly operating system. Sure, as far as mobile operating systems go, Windows Mobile isn’t exactly tearing it up, but the integration of business and pleasure could make the current angst of choosing between a BlackBerry or an iPhone a thing of the past.

The chipset will first appear at the end of this year in personal navigation devices and personal media players, with a smartphone due out in the middle of 2009. Unfortunately, the APX 2500 contains an HSDPA RF chip, so it won’t be deployed on my network, but TMobile subscribers should keep their eyes open. Like the iPhone, the APX is modem agnostic, which means it’s not tied to any particular cellular network. There’s plenty of room for Nvidia to stumble, since it doesn’t have the experience designing for the mobile space, but I’m hoping it can succeed right about the time my current mobile contract is up.

• WebWorkerDaily — How reading RSS feeds for a week changed one woman’s life.
• OStatic – Five free apps to lock down your public Wi-Fi hotspot session.
• NewTeeVee — StumbleUpon’s video discovery service has added support for six different content sites.

Nimbuzz, a little-known mobile VoIP company out of the Netherlands, has released a mobile client that not only allows users to conduct VoIP calls, but to engage in IM conversations and share media such as photos, music and video. Nimbuzz, which claims to have received an undisclosed amount of funding from Skype’s original investors, Mangrove Capital Partners, seeks to utilize cellular data networks and provide users with an inclusive application for mobile IM and SMS communication.

With this service, Nimbuzz enters a market already dominated by established mobile VoIP clients Fring and TruPhone. Fring, like Nimbuzz, incorporates IM capability with multiple IM networks and VoIP calls. TruPhone allows you to make VoIP calls to TruPhone users and traditional phones, without the IM features of Fring and Nimbuzz. Back in January of 2007, we covered Nimbuzz and criticized the service for offering cumbersome (although cheap) VoIP-on-mobile minutes. With the addition of the desktop clients, social widgets and IM, however, Nimbuzz is a much more features-packed option.

To load Nimbuzz, download their client from their mobile web site, create an account and sign in. Signing in to additional networks such as Google or Yahoo is as easy as entering your username and password for those respective services.

Nimbuzz is very responsive and easy to use, featuring a great native Symbian user interface. A VoIP call originating from my Facebook page to Nimbuzz over a Wi-Fi connection sounded good — just as good as any call over the GSM network. And the laundry list of IM networks supported by Nimbuzz includes Skype, Google Talk, AOL Instant Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo, MySpace, Facebook and Jabber.

Nimbuzz has a Java version of their mobile client to accompany the newly released Symbian version as well, and an iPhone version is in the works. Outside of their mobile offerings, the company has a Windows desktop application for conferring with your Nimbuzz contacts and social widgets that can be embedded onto your Facebook, Orkut and MySpace pages. By clicking on your Numbuzz widget, friends can call/chat you for free, leave you a voice message, send you a text message, and share photos, music, and videos with you. One word of caution, however: If you do elect to use Nimbuzz, you’ll want to have an unlimited data plan on your mobile device.

No one knows exactly how big the market for mobile Internet devices will be, but the major chip makers are betting it will be huge (it’s one of the reasons they’re making chips for mobile devices at 45 nanometers.) We’ve covered efforts by Intel, Qualcomm, and Via Technologies to get their chips into devices sized somewhere between a smartphone and a PC, but Texas Instruments wants to play, too.

TI formalized its MID effort, based on its own OMAP architecture, last month. It’s entering this market with its third generation of OMAP multimedia processors, which were designed four years ago specifically to fit into smartphones. The second-generation chips are currently in the Nokia 800 and 770; the third-generation chips that underlie the formal MID group will be in an undisclosed number of products by the end of the year.

TI’s chips will compete directly with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chipset and Intel’s Atom chips. Comparatively speaking, TI’s chips show a greater flexibility for the end products. The power-sipping (at 500 mW-750 mW) 800 GHz MHz processor is slower than both Qualcomm’s and Intel’s efforts and requires less power than Intel’s Atom processors, which can require up to 2.4 watts. Ramesh Iyer, a MID product strategy manager with TI, says the lower clock speed is a conscious decision to reduce the power consumption; combining several types of cores with TI software allows for a higher utilization of existing megahertz, he notes.

As products containing chips from competing vendors hit the market, my hunch is that TI’s might be the best when it comes to general purpose use and battery power, followed by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon, which will also be battery-friendly and perhaps perform better than TI’s in general purpose use. Device specs for MIDs based on Intel’s Atom processor are larger, but the x86 architecture might win converts because it’s familiar and plenty of applications are designed for it. And that raises the very legit question of what role the operating system will play in how MIDs are used. I’ll get back to that in a few posts.

Shai Agassi’s electric vehicle infrastructure startup, Project Better Place, may be aiming to work with San Francisco. Mayor Gavin Newsom has been talking with the company about potentially building the infrastructure for a fleet of plug-in cars for the city, including parking meter charging stations and battery replacement stations. Newsom last week traveled to Israel to check out the company’s operations there, and was said to be “very impressed” with its team. Earth2Tech got the full scoop from the mayor’s office — check out the story here.

For the past few days, I’ve been buried under a flurry of press releases coming out of O’Reilly’s Where 2.0 conference, currently under way just south of San Francisco. Many of the ideas/apps/startups are boring, a few are interesting, and a couple are, well, pretty good. I’ll write about them after I’ve had a chance to use them.

Meanwhile, one app that looks particularly interesting is the iPhone Plazer, from London-based social mapping startup Plazes, a company whose products I occasionally use. The app, which will be downloadable from the iPhone, will take coordinates from the “location library” and automatically “plaze” you, which is just a company-branded way of saying that it will geo-tag your location via the mobile device. So far, Plazer software has been available only on PCs and Mac.

Founder Felix Peterson has promised an early preview of the app once the iPhone opens up. I will update the post later; in the meantime, check out the screenshots.