Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Friday, June 06, 2008

On the Chopping Block: CcMixter

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/adage/homepage/~3/304837040/post.php

Hey marketers: Looking for a cheap way to engage music fans? Creative Commons remix site ccMixter may be for sale.

Grid Net: Intelâs Smart Grid Play

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/earth2tech/~3/304619055/

Intel Capital announced eight diverse investments yesterday at its annual CEO Summit in San Francisco. Amid the online video plays and Internet retail moves, there was a single cleantech investment. Intel, along with GE and Catamount Ventures, has invested an undisclosed sum into Grid Net, a smart-grid software developer.

The San Francisco-based startup was founded in 2006 and has built software for the power grid that is based on the telecom and networking worlds, using open standards and protocols. Like its peers and competitors in the industry, the company is working to create a power grid that is “self-healing,” “self-optimizing,” “open,” “resilient,” and “secure.” (Though, it’s worth noting that the company is not officially a member of the GridWise Alliance, one of the larger smart grid consortia.)

Grid Net announced a collaboration with GE and Intel earlier this year. Under that agreement, GE’s new WiMAX SmartMeter products integrate Grid Net's PolicyNet firmware and the Intel WiMAX Connection chipsets. One of Grid Net’s missteps could be that it is betting heavily on the continued expansion of WiMAX, a 4G wireless broadband standard. But WiMAX development has been anything but smooth, with Intel itself recently putting up a cool $1 billion to bail out a WiMAX carrier.

Intel is also not the only tech giant dabbling in smart grid plays. IBM recently formed a partnership with Australian utility Country Energy to deploy its Intelligent Utility Network Down Under. Meanwhile, Cisco and Oracle (and GE, for that matter) are working with Silver Spring Networks, a startup similar to Grid Net, as part of their Technology Alliance Program. As one of the biggest, dumbest networks in the country - our electrical grid - starts to smarten up, expect to see more big players looking to get a slice of the pie.

The Best Resorts to Watch Really Great Television [Roundup]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/305493446/the-best-resorts-to-watch-really-great-television

Sound & Vision has a nice roundup of vacation spots for those of us who'd rather stay in with an expensive media center than work on our burns by the pool. They take a look at some of the world's top hotels boasting the finest in A/V gear. But I'm not sure that I'd spend $100,000 a night just to watch TV at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, even with the pricey gear they're packing. Correction: That's actually the price of the gear in the room. Check it:

The Mandarin's top tier units feature Bang & Olufsen 65-inch plasma and 40-inch LCD televisions along with matching B&O 5-zone sound system, Creston TPMC-8X remote (ready to control your TV and air conditioning), LG Blu-ray/HD DVD combo player and an Xbox 360 to round it all out.

But to save some dough, we might "rough it" at the Elounda Peninsula in Crete, Greece. Starting at just $630 a night for a junior suite (and peaking at around $14,000 for the best rooms) they offer private beaches along with a 45-seat symmetrical shared theater with Barco IQ-G300 projector. Hit the link for all of Sound & Vision's top picks. [Sound & Vision]

Forbes: iPhone Could Kill the DS (Spore Shows Us Why They're Wrong) [IPhone]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/305549099/forbes-iphone-could-kill-the-ds-spore-shows-us-why-theyre-wrong

Forbes is running a frankly bizarre piece that the DS's greatest threat is the iPhone, because it has "the touch-sensitive screen of a Nintendo DS with the motion sensitivity of the Nintendo Wii" (the writer is absolutely hyped for this combo) and the upcoming App Store will in bring a flood of games. The primary goods he waves at is EA's Spore. Not only is he wrong on principle—the iPhone really isn't about games to start, and remember Apple's most recent gaming rennaissance?—but Spore actually just proves our point.

The DS version of Spore is already a very different, much smaller game than the truly galactic full-scale universe you're getting on the Mac and PC. It's like Spore Lite. And the iPhone version is even simpler than that—it's basically just the "spore" stage of Spore, totally top-down and 2D, extremely simple. In a way, it's just a glorified version of the cellphone games that people who'd pick up a DS or real portable gaming system would totally ignore. There's no crossover or competing audience with the DS version—it's basically just a distraction, and that's what most games on the iPhone will be.

Will games on the iPhone be better than most other cellphone games? Probably. It has the juice, the platform and the controls. But it won't knock a DS or PSP out of your bag by any means. It's just not the same space. [Forbes]

Origo Develops Recycling System that Turns Car Emissions Into Fuel [Gas Crisis]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/305580461/origo-develops-recycling-system-that-turns-car-emissions-into-fuel

The concept has been around for a while, but Origo Industries is planning on being the first company to release a CO2 recycling system that turns your car emissions into fuel. The unit captures CO2 from your car exhaust and stores it until it can be recycled in a home unit that uses algae to produce bio-oil. According to the company, the system could produce as much as 660 gallons of free fuel per year—which sounds too good to be true. We shall find out soon enough as Origo is scheduled to unveil the technology for the first time at this year's Green-Car-Guide Live! in the UK starting on June 12th. [Tradingcharts and Gizmag]