angelsandeggs.com

(Credit:
Yahoo)

What’s more interesting is extrapolating from the trend. Certainly the iPhone’s image quality doesn’t hold a candle to even old point-and-shoots, much less new SLRs, but the phone taps straight into the social features of Flickr–the ability to photographically share with friends and family what’s going on in your life, for example. There are innumerable expert photographers at Flickr, but it looks like the yet larger herd of ordinary snapshooters are going to leave them in the dust once liberated with the ability to post pictures at will.

Right now the iPhone is in a virtual tie with Canon’s Rebel XT and Nikon’s D80, two SLRs whose popularity is waning with the arrival of newer models from the dominant makers of such cameras. Only Canon’s newer Rebel XTi outranks the iPhone.

The total number of photos uploaded from the Rebel XTi is about 51 million, compared with 5.8 million for the iPhone. However, there are nearly 3,000 people uploading daily from their iPhone compared with about 6,500 for the XTi.

My guess is the iPhone’s better-than-average network abilities are responsible for the prominence. For the same reason, iPhone users also use Google Maps and other online services more than most mobile device users. The BlackBerry is good at e-mail, but the Internet has other attractions.

The Flickr Camera Finder, Yahoo’s statistical counter of camera use among its members, shows that since the arrival of the
iPhone 3G model earlier this year, the phone has vaulted not only over all other camera phones, trouncing the Nokia N95 in second place, but also almost all ordinary cameras.

With the debut of the 3G model, Apple's iPhone surged to a commanding lead among camera phones used at Flickr. These statistics from Yahoo cover the last 12 months.

Though the trajectory is clear, there are caveats. First, Flickr measures popularity on the basis of the number of users who’ve uploaded a photo on a given day. In other words, the camera used by a person who uploads one photo a day will fare better than one who uploads 100 pictures one day a month. Second, many camera phones don’t identify themselves to Flickr, so their use isn’t logged. Last, these statistics fluctuate daily, and who knows what kind of anomalous behavior is going on during the holidays.

That’s a notable accomplishment. I’ve been watching the Flickr Camera Finder for two years, and that’s the first time I recall a camera phone placing so highly. The top ranks have been dominated by SLRs, the camera of choice for many of Flickr’s heaviest users.

(Credit:
Yahoo)

I sent my iPhone photos to Flickr using the site’s upload-by-e-mail service (see Yahoo’s instructions), but there are several iPhone applications that will do it for you if you prefer. Apple’s photo e-mailing software scales photos to 640×480, but I don’t mind, given feeble image quality and the unlikelihood that these shots will ever make their way beyond a computer screen.

The iPhone has risen to prominence on Flickr, rivaling most SLRs in popularity. These statistics from Yahoo cover the last 12 months.

The iPhone is the mobile device of choice these days for doing most things that need a network. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that the phone has carved out a prominent place on Yahoo’s photo-sharing site, Flickr.

Surpassing expectations: State of the U.S. wind power market –Renewable Energy Access
A data download from the Department of Engery on the booming wind industry.
Solar panels becoming target for thieves–CBS5.com
Hot commodities: a school in Pleasanton, Calif., has its solar panels stolen.

A sampling of
green-tech news with quick commentary.

Hydrogen cars boosted by EU backing and home fuel station–SmartPlanet.com
A U.K. company says it has come up with a more cost-effective way to make hydrogen from water using a refrigerator-size appliance.
India’s Tata to launch electric car in Norway in 1 year–Reuters
A small, all-electric
car with a range of 110 miles on a two-battery pack will be on the market next year.
Assessing the value of small wind turbines–NYTimes.com
Roof-mounted wind turbines are cool from an eco-hip point of view, but the payback is not comparable to solar panels yet.
Codexis withdraws IPO–Cleantech Group
Biofuels catalyst company pulls plans to go public, following a few others in the biofuels area.
Presidential candidates compete for best plug-in policies–CalCars
Both candidates advocate tax credits for fuel-efficient vehicles, with Barack Obama having a more aggressive policy, according to CalCars. (Via Earth2Tech)
Microbes for off-the-grid electricity–Technology Review
Profile of a company that one researcher calls the first practical application of microbial fuel cells where electrodes in the Earth power small appliances like cell phones and LED lights.
First fuel-cell-powered commercial passenger boat inaugurated in Germany–Triple Pundit
Fuel-cell motors for boats are a great application, speaking as someone who would rather not listen to their motors or breath their exhaust.
Corporate VCs turn to clean-tech start-ups–Wealth Bulliten
More on interesting trend of large corporations investing in clean-tech start-ups to get access to technology. This works out for start-ups, too, as they can test their technology and have access to more capital than VCs can offer.
Seven funds known to have invested in Miasole’s latest round–Clean Edge
Stealthy CIGS solar start-up, which has hit some serious technical bumps, is said to have raised another large round of funding.
PC movement: How green is your computer?–WSJ.com
The latest in eco-friendly PCs is materials with fewer toxins and recycling programs.

Click on the image to watch video.

Via VentureBeat

Trion doesn’t yet have any products out the door yet so investors are clearly betting on the technology and the business relationships the company has already established with the Sci Fi Channel and others.

I’m a huge believer in the idea that you can have high-quality gaming experiences in the browser. Casual gaming has proven that people are willing to play browser-based games and the value chain just needs to catch up with more hard-core experiences. Add in subscription fees and other monetization efforts and all of the sudden you have real business.

Trion World Network just announced it has raised $70 million for its server-based online games. TWN creates massively multiplayer online games that run almost entirely on the Internet with little/no PC component download. This is different from games like World of Warcraft–or pretty much every other MMO that require you to download some component.

A longtime San Francisco Bay Area resident, Santana made a public appearance Thursday at a middle school in Marin county to accept a $100,000 check from Samsung and Best Buy for his Milagro Foundation, an organization that promotes the health, education, and pursuit of the arts for needy children around the world. After a handful of student performances, the presentation of the big, cardboard check and a lengthy speech by Santana, select members of the media got a chance for one-on-one interviews with him.

I was first curious to hear how technology has changed the way he makes music. After all, the man is 61 years old and a lot has changed over the five decades that he’s been recording music! In answering, he drew some comparisons between the equipment he used in the 1960s when he first got started to the way his musician son Salvador records tracks now. Without completely dumping on the modern music industry, he seemed to imply that technology has sucked the creativity from some artists, giving them ways to cheat through lip-syncing or by artificially creating sounds.

Before my time ran out, I was dying to hear what kind of gadget this self-described “computer geek” can’t live without. All I’m going to tell you is that it’s a phone; you have to watch my video to find out what kind and why he loves it so dearly. It’s too bad the media coordinator was rushing us along because I sure would have loved to hear his ringtone. Black Magic Woman? Smooth?

We then went on to discuss the ways the Internet has changed the methods of distributing music and whether or not an artist can afford to put it online for free. Santana said he agreed with the way Metallica has handled the copyright controversy and argued that until basic commodities like milk and eggs are free, music shouldn’t be either.

When a lot of us hear the name Carlos Santana, we instinctively begin humming the bars to “Oye Como Va,” or any one of a number of his well known songs. Associating the man with his music is natural, but as I’ve learned recently, he’s involved in so many more projects that range from food to shoe design to international philanthropy. After my interview with him on Thursday, add one more interest to the long list: technology.

Dressed in white, from his woven shoes (not from his own line since as of now, he only designs styles for women) to his white suit, Santana was outgoing, warm, and open to questions of any kind. When I finally got my five minutes with him, he made great eye contact, was engaged in the conversation and stayed primarily on topic. I’m sure that makes it sound like I set a low bar for my interviews, but after you’ve talked to enough celebrities, you come to appreciate the candor, focus, and sincerity of a true media professional.

It could also be the groundwork for a more advanced YouTube viewing experience. The curtains on the player make for a neat decoration, but could also be placeholders for a more advanced 16:9 player that takes advantage of the increasing number of clips uploaded from shiny new HD video cameras.

So far the theater view option appears only on a small percentage on long-form content from specific providers, meaning the three-minute clip you shot of your dog on the trampoline will not have it. Going forward I’m thinking it could only be an option on educational segments, since it temporarily hides advertisements, which could mean a drop in ad clicks.

What do you think?

I couldn’t find any theater view-compatible content to try this theory out with, but the extra width on the player is a good sign. As is the huge mass of content that’s been uploaded in 16:9 HD, only to be squished into the service’s 4:3 player. Last week’s 1GB upload limit increase is a good sign, too.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

Google Blogoscoped has unearthed a new YouTube feature that’s pretty neat. Called “theater view,” when clicked it both darkens the screen and increases the size of the player, centering it on the page and adding red curtains. For a leaned back viewing experience it’s certainly not as useful as hitting the full-screen button, but I’d consider it a nice alternative–especially if you don’t want to watch larger version of a grainy video just to cut out distracting page elements.

Hulu launched with a similar feature called “lower lights,” which could be toggled on and off, something that YouTube has provided that simply darkens the rest of the screen.

The new theater view adds curtains to the side of your video and 'lowers the lights' to hide distracting page elements while you watch.

The second quarter was already slow in the U.S. market where sales were down 13 percent, according to the NPD Group. Nokia has relatively little market share in the U.S., but slowing sales in other developed regions such as Europe, Japan, and Asia will have a great impact on the company. Still, Nokia sees developing markets as its source of growth in the near future.

Nokia isn’t the only handset maker to feel the pinch of a slowdown. Samsung Electronics said during its second-quarter earnings call that it also sees the weakening economy affecting its sales in the second half of the year.

Executives blame the shift in expectations on a weakening global economy and a reluctance to engage in a price war with certain competitors. Even though the company expects to increase device sales volume by 10 percent or more this year, Nokia executives say that consumer confidence has been shaken and prices are falling. The company didn’t specifically point fingers at which competitor had cut prices.

The mobile handset market is going from bad to worse as Nokia, the world’s largest maker of cell phones, said Friday that it’s lowering its third-quarter market share outlook due to the weakening global economy.

The Finnish company has dominated the mobile handset market over the past few years. Last quarter, it reported it had grabbed 40 percent of the entire worldwide market. At the time, executives were confident that the company would maintain this level. But now, as the worldwide economy worsens, executives say they expect Nokia’s market share to slip slightly in the third quarter. That said, the company still expects to increase its market share for the year.

Nokia has several new handsets in the pipeline to be launched during the quarter, but sales of some of its midrange products have been slower than expected, the company said. Again, the company hasn’t specified which handsets have not been selling as well.

AOL said Tuesday it has opened the interface to AIM Call Out, a move that will let programmers more easily build products that tap into the service for making calls over the Internet to mobile or landline phones

It’s not the only company making the move from IM to voice over Internet Protocol. Yahoo Instant Messenger, a top rival, said Tuesday it’s moving off its in-house phone connection technology to that of start-up Jajah in the third quarter.

AOL charges fees for using the Call Out service, but the rates are compelling, the company argues. Calling within the United States costs 1.7 cents per minute; calling Beijing costs 1.5 cents per minute; and calling a mobile phone in the U.K. costs 20 to 25 cents per minute.

The Open Voice API (application programming interface) is freely available. Building it into a device, such as a phone with Internet access or with support for SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), can let people call using AOL’s network and bypass much of the ordinary telephone infrastructure.

“Our offering and our rates are competitive with traditional landline and mobile carriers, as well as other VoIP carriers in the space,” Brent Newsome, director of AOL’s voice services, said in a statement.

The move is part of the Time Warner division’s effort to expand its free AOL Instant Messaging network into revenue-generating areas. AOL has 62 million active AIM users, the company said.

During a Webcast Monday, executives from each of the six companies emphasized the openness of the alliance that was being created. And the companies said they hoped other companies would join the group.

Still, WiMax backers say that WiMax has at least a three-year time to market advantage since LTE hasn’t even been standardized yet. Intel, which plans to include WiMax in its Centrino platform, says it expects to seed the market quickly.

WiMax is an IP-based wireless technology that offers high-speed Internet access similar to speeds delivered through Wi-Fi, a short-range wireless technology that uses unlicensed spectrum. So far the technology, which was standardized a couple of years ago, has been used mostly in the developing world to provide fixed wireless broadband.

“We haven’t seen a broad proliferation of cellular technology in anything other than handsets because the model is closely held and restrictive,” he said.

That said, WiMax faces many challenges. For one, Sprint Nextel and Clearwire are the only major carriers building a WiMax network in the U.S. The nation’s two largest cell phone operators, AT&T and Verizon Wireless, have already said they plan to use a competing technology known as LTE.

“As a founding member of the alliance, our role is to work with different vendors and evangelize the benefits of an open model,” said Sriram Viswanathan, general manager for WiMax at Intel Capital. “We will invite others to join and try to influence players who are whetted to other models to understand the benefits of openness.”

A similar open patent strategy was devised in the video industry for video compression technology.

Sprint Nextel and Clearwire announced earlier this year they are joining forces to complete the construction of a nationwide WiMax network in the U.S. And Intel already has plans to embed WiMax chips into its Centrino laptop chips. Samsung, Cisco, and Alcatel-Lucent have already been developing infrastructure equipment for WiMax networks.

But these companies all agree that for WiMax to be successful a more robust ecosystem is needed. The OPA is meant to encourage this ecosystem primarily by making WiMax-related patents inexpensive and accessible to anyone.

Six technology heavyweights came together Monday to announce an alliance to jointly license patents for the broadband wireless technology WiMax.

The group, which calls itself the Open Patent Alliance, includes Intel, Cisco Systems, Samsung Electronics, Sprint Nextel, Clearwire, and Alcatel-Lucent. The intent of the group is to gather rights to WiMax patents and license them to makers of consumer electronics devices, networking equipment, and computers.

This is different than the cellular model, in which companies such as Qualcomm, Nokia, and Ericsson have separately developed technology and charged patent royalties for 3G products.

Now companies such as Intel, Sprint Nextel, and Clearwire are pushing mobile WiMax to bring true broadband wireless to MP3 music players, gaming devices, smartphones, and a plethora of other consumer electronics devices.

Cell phone makers can spend more than 25 percent of developing a new product on licensing underlying wireless technologies, according to a Wall Street Journal article. Intel’s Viswanathan said these high royalties are to blame for stifling innovation. He said that cellular chips have not expanded to other devices such as cameras, music players, or gaming devices because of the high cost of licensing patents.

(Credit:
The Pirate Bay)

The music and film industries have alleged that The Pirate Bay was nothing more than a group of men who used technology to steal from artists and pocket the illegal proceeds for themselves.

In June, Global Gaming Factory said it intended to acquire The Pirate Bay. Last week, the company’s CEO said the Swedish company has managed to find the funding needed to complete the sale. The transaction is supposed to go through sometime after August 27.

Last spring, a Swedish court found the Web site’s founders: Sunde Kolmisoppi, Fredrik Neij, and Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, guilty of copyright violations. The three men were sentenced to a year in jail and ordered to pay $3.6 million in damages.

Sunde Kolmisoppi has maintained the three founders haven’t owned the site since 2006. They transferred ownership to Reservella. The Motion Picture Industry Association of America claimed recently that the founders control Reservella. Sunde Kolmisoppi denied the allegations.

Sunde Kolmisoppi suggested that he may return to the copyright/file-sharing debate one day. “It’s an important cause and I will not give the fight up.”

“I have decided to not be the spokesperson for The Pirate Bay anymore,” Sunde Kolmisoppi wrote in a blog post Monday. “The reasons are many, but most importantly it takes too much of my time. I want to build something new and I want to focus my energy in a different direction. I have projects waiting to be finished, a book is waiting to be finalized and many more books are waiting to be read.”

For the past several years, Sunde Kolmisoppi has become the voice of the controversial BitTorrent tracking service that enabled millions to find and eventually download unauthorized copies of movies and other content. His departure follows a series of crushing legal setbacks for The Pirate Bay.

Our issues have “been raised to another level and it’s time for biological dispersal,” Sunde Kolmisoppi wrote. “At the same time, I have a feeling of being sessile when I need to be the most motile creature ever. The regeneration will continue with me in another place.

Napster sowed the seeds of sharing unauthorized music files on the Web and The Pirate Bay harvested the hunger for free content by building a file-sharing community that extended across the globe, according to the founders. Among many young techies and hardcore Internet users, Sunde Kolmisoppi, Neij, and Warg are revered.

Should the sale go through, copyright owners say they will try to seize any of the proceeds from the sale.

(Credit:
Mats Lewan/CNET News)

Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi, one of the three founders of The Pirate Bay, has stepped down as the site’s spokesman and has said he is moving on to new projects.

Last week, the Netherlands banned The Pirate Bay in that country and issued a threat that unless the site discontinues operation there, the operators will be fined $42,227. Also, a group representing copyright owners in Italy filed a $1 million copyright lawsuit.

Peter Sunde

Peter Sunde holds up a pretend IOU after The Pirate Bay founders were sentenced to a year in jail and fined more than $3 million.

“Today marks the end of a small era for me, but I am simply leaving a role in order to be a person instead.”

“Today marks the end of a small era for me, but I am simply leaving a role in order to be a person instead.”

Last spring, a Swedish court found the Web site’s founders: Sunde Kolmisoppi, Fredrik Neij, and Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, guilty of copyright violations. The three men were sentenced to a year in jail and ordered to pay $3.6 million in damages.

Should the sale go through, copyright owners say they will try to seize any of the proceeds from the sale.

Sunde Kolmisoppi suggested that he may return to the copyright/file-sharing debate one day. “It’s an important cause and I will not give the fight up.”

Sunde Kolmisoppi has maintained the three founders haven’t owned the site since 2006. They transferred ownership to Reservella. The Motion Picture Industry Association of America claimed recently that the founders control Reservella. Sunde Kolmisoppi denied the allegations.

For the past several years, Sunde Kolmisoppi has become the voice of the controversial BitTorrent tracking service that enabled millions to find and eventually download unauthorized copies of movies and other content. His departure follows a series of crushing legal setbacks for The Pirate Bay.

Our issues have “been raised to another level and it’s time for biological dispersal,” Sunde Kolmisoppi wrote. “At the same time, I have a feeling of being sessile when I need to be the most motile creature ever. The regeneration will continue with me in another place.

Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi, one of the three founders of The Pirate Bay, has stepped down as the site’s spokesman and has said he is moving on to new projects.

Peter Sunde

(Credit:
The Pirate Bay)

Napster sowed the seeds of sharing unauthorized music files on the Web and The Pirate Bay harvested the hunger for free content by building a file-sharing community that extended across the globe, according to the founders. Among many young techies and hardcore Internet users, Sunde Kolmisoppi, Neij, and Warg are revered.

The music and film industries have alleged that The Pirate Bay was nothing more than a group of men who used technology to steal from artists and pocket the illegal proceeds for themselves.

“I have decided to not be the spokesperson for The Pirate Bay anymore,” Sunde Kolmisoppi wrote in a blog post Monday. “The reasons are many, but most importantly it takes too much of my time. I want to build something new and I want to focus my energy in a different direction. I have projects waiting to be finished, a book is waiting to be finalized and many more books are waiting to be read.”

In June, Global Gaming Factory said it intended to acquire The Pirate Bay. Last week, the company’s CEO said the Swedish company has managed to find the funding needed to complete the sale. The transaction is supposed to go through sometime after August 27.

(Credit:
Mats Lewan/CNET News)

Peter Sunde holds up a pretend IOU after The Pirate Bay founders were sentenced to a year in jail and fined more than $3 million.

Last week, the Netherlands banned The Pirate Bay in that country and issued a threat that unless the site discontinues operation there, the operators will be fined $42,227. Also, a group representing copyright owners in Italy filed a $1 million copyright lawsuit.