Google's Grid Meter Looks to Save Homeowners Some Green

This is an example screenshot of Google's power meter software in action. The service, once it receives more partner support should eventually help reduce the stress on the grid and save users power bills by monitoring their usage and comparing it with grid demand for live information feeds. (Source: Google.org)

Nautilus Science & Technology News
February 12, 2009
By: Marco A. Ayllon

Google distinguishes itself from the pack by offering its green grid meter service for free.

DailyTech previously covered IBM's efforts to release a "green meter" which monitored the amount of electricity that small businesses use and equating it to green house gas emissions. Now Google has joined IBM and others by releasing its own entry into the burgeoning grid meter market.

The new service from Google is called PowerMeter and it's free to both home and commercial users. While this sounds great, there's one significant catch -- PowerMeter relies on others to provide the information it needs. Google is hoping that makers of home electronics and appliances will add hardware which will feed the service information wirelessly. It also needs utilities to provide it with grid metrics.

Kirsten Olsen Cahill, a program manager at Google.org, the company’s corporate philanthropy arm which developed the service, states, "We can’t build this product all by ourselves. We depend on a whole ecosystem of utilities, device makers and policies that would allow consumers to have detailed access to their home energy use and make smarter energy decisions."

The new service, if it gains a hardware foothold, will offer homeowners their first chance to participate in a smarter grid. Google is among the firms leading such efforts which seek to use existing resources more efficiently.

The service and others in the future may interface with the chips inside devices such as washing machines, dryers, and dishwashers to give users an ever-changing visual display of how much money it will cost to use the device at that particular time of the day. Electricity charges are tied to demand, something most consumers never pay much attention to when it comes to power usage. By using devices at times when demand is lower, users could potentially save a great deal of money, depending on their utility's policies.

Describes Rick Sergel, chief executive of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, an industry group that sets operating standards for the grid in an interview with the New York Times, "They’ve been putting a chip in your dishwasher for a long time that would allow you to run it any time you want. (These services) provide an opportunity to create dancing partners that will help the system balance itself."

The new meter could also be very useful for plug-in electric vehicles. With GM and others preparing to unleash a fleet of electric plug-ins on the streets, advanced grid meters could allow for billing, at local recharging stations and could also help users and utilities work together to figure out the optimal time for daily recharges. If the user leaves the car plugged in, the smart meter would help the power companies figure out the lowest demand time of the day and recharge the car then. This would save the user money, while helping the utility by reducing the stress on its networks.

The new stimulus package which has almost passed through Congress should help further finance efforts such as Google's. It includes $4.4B USD for "smart" power technologies, with money earmarked specifically for 4 million meters. James Hoecker, a former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which has some jurisdiction over transmission lines says the efforts will not only improve the grid, but will also create jobs. He states, "You can hire a lot of people to install smart meters."

ConnectU’s ‘Secret’ $65 Million Settlement With Facebook

Nautilus Science & Technology News
February 12, 2009
By: Marco A. Ayllon

One of the sideshows in the quest to peg a valuation on the rapidly growing social network Facebook has been its continuing legal battle with the founders of a rival Harvard site, ConnectU.

I’ve chronicled the continuing skirmish, most recently here and here. The case was settled last year, but then the ConnectU founders, who include the Olympian brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, contested that settlement, claiming that part of it was in Facebook stock, whose value had been misrepresented to them. They also sued one of the law firms that brokered the deal on their behalf, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges, claiming the firm had failed to do proper due diligence on Facebook’s internal stock price.

Curiously, the value of Facebook’s contested legal settlement with ConnectU was guarded almost religiously by all parties -– until now. The Recorder, a legal newspaper in San Francisco, reported Tuesday that Quinn Emanuel had published the amount -– $65 million -– in some of the firm’s own promotional literature.

“WON $65 million settlement against Facebook” appears in the firm’s most recent newsletter, along with dozens of other settlements reached by Quinn during 2008, according to The Recorder.

The Recorder also said that John Quinn, the firm’s chairman, asked the paper not to print the amount and declined to comment further.

It’s unclear why the firm would trumpet a “settlement” that represents less a triumph than a continuing legal morass, a disputed valuation and a furious client. The $65 million number is somewhat misleading anyway, since part of that amount is based on Facebook stock that was once valued at $15 billion, by the famous Microsoft investment, but has since fallen drastically.

What is certain is that this latest twist is not likely to help Quinn Emanuel assuage the anger of its former clients, whose dispute with the firm is currently in arbitration.

Free Educational AP and AR Seminar Coming to Dallas

Nautilus Science and Technology News
By: Marco Ayllon
Dallas October 7,2008

AnyDoc Software, an award-winning developer of document and data capture solutions, along with Kodak, will be sponsoring a free educational live seminar entitled "Eliminate Your Processing Pains and Lower Costs: Automated Invoice, Remittance and Check Processing" to be held Thursday, October 23, 2008, from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m. at the Hilton Anatole in Dallas, TX.
Discussions will focus on how to automate the capture of AP invoices, AR remittances and check data for entry into financial and ERP systems. Other items to be explored include automatic balancing of invoice line items, auto- verification, database lookup capabilities, automatic check deposits, and Check 21 compliance. Attendees will also learn why top companies are selecting AnyDoc(R)INVOICE(TM) and AnyDoc(R)REMIT(TM) -- solutions that fit any company's business rules.
The "lunch and learn" will also feature details on how the typical manual accounting processes impact bottom line revenues and how automation can save time and money. Registration is free, and the agenda includes a complimentary lunch. There will also be an interactive session to address any attendee questions.
And, Kodak will host a raffle for an i1220 scanner -- a retail value of $1,199. The award-winning Kodak i1220 duplex scanner delivers on workgroup scanning needs with unprecedented image quality and 30 ppm performance. All end user attendees are eligible to win.
Suggested attendees include: AP and AR Managers, Disbursement Managers, Controllers, CFOs and COOs, or anyone interested in improving his or her accounting processes.
Based on industry-leading technologies, AnyDoc Software's complete line of solutions for accounting enables users to process more invoices, remittances, or checks per hour, eliminate the need for overtime, take advantage of early payment discounts, accelerate cash flow, and deposit checks without leaving their desks.
The Hilton Anatole is located on I-35E just north of the downtown Dallas Business District. To register for this event, visit www.anydocsoftware.com/accounting or call 1-800-775-3222 to speak with Client Services.
(Kodak is a trademark of Eastman Kodak Company.)
About AnyDoc Software
AnyDoc Software develops innovative document, data capture and classification solutions that have been the industry standard since 1991. Thousands of companies worldwide rely on AnyDoc solutions to eliminate millions of hours of manual data entry while improving their productivity and data accuracy. Any paper form or document including invoices, remittances, and checks can be automatically processed with full data extraction without the need for manual keying. Clients include: Sony Pictures Entertainment, Circuit City, BlueCross BlueShield, the U.S. Census, LeasePlan, Coop, and more. For additional information, please visit www.AnyDocSoftware.com
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:
Judy Mann, marketing communications manager, AnyDoc Software Inc.
(813) 222-0414, jmann@anydocsoftware.com
SOURCE AnyDoc Software
http://www.anydocsoftware.com

Market, Partners Positive On 'Fabless' AMD

Nautilus Science & Technology News
By: Marco Ayllon
Dallas October 7, 2008

Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE:AMD) finally pulled the trigger on a company-changing move that the technology industry had been expecting for months, announcing Tuesday that it will spin off its manufacturing operations in a multi-billion dollar joint venture with a newly formed high-tech investment company created by the government of Abu Dhabi.
Analysts and AMD partners reacted positively to news of the deal that will split Sunnyvale, Calif.-based AMD into two entities, a designer and marketer of AMD and ATI-branded computer products, and a new venture dubbed the Foundry Company, which will own and operate AMD's current semiconductor manufacturing assets.

Advanced Technology Investment Co. (ATIC), a government instrument formed in the United Arab Emirates capital of Abu Dhabi, will own 55.6 percent of the Foundry Co., with AMD retaining 44.4 percent ownership, according to a statement by the chip maker. Voting rights in the joint venture will be split 50-50, AMD said.

ATIC is to pay AMD $700 million for its stake and the new Foundry Co. would assume $1.2 billion of AMD's debt. Another Abu Dhabi party, UAE-owned Mubadala Development Co., will acquire 58 million, newly issued AMD shares for $314 million plus warrants to buy another 30 million, increasing Mubadala's stake in AMD from 8.1 percent to 19.3 percent.

Industry analysts on Tuesday praised the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based chip maker for simultaneously shedding a massive debt burden from its shaky books and positioning both its design side and the new foundry business for solid runs at future competitiveness.

"It takes [AMD] off the death watch list, and makes them a real player," said Enderle Group principal Rob Enderle. The San Jose, Calif.-based industry analyst also predicted that the move would "initially level the playing field substantially" between AMD and its much larger rival, microprocessor market share leader Intel of Santa Clara, Calif.

"What this does is make the AMD side a lot more agile. It allows them to focus on the future. The fab investments are necessarily done on a five-year strategic basis even as you also have to perform on a quarterly basis," Enderle said.

"This changes AMD from a company that was going out of business in the next couple of years to one that's in it for the long term."

Investors, too, were bullish at the outset of the deal's announcement, with large volumes of NYSE-traded AMD stock being shifted Tuesday on an opening of $5.27 per share. That price hit a high of $5.56 in the very early going before settling in to close at $4.59, an 8.51 percent gain for AMD on a day which saw competitors like Intel drop 5.38 percent and Santa Clara, Calif.-based Nvidia fall 7.77 percent.

Bullishness on AMD could be attributed to the chip maker's seemingly magical escape from the weight of seven straight quarters in the red, made even bleaker by the wider economic downturn, said Roger Kay of Endpoint Technology Associates

"It's a great move for AMD. I'm kind of thinking of it as a kind of Harry Houdini move. You couldn't imagine them getting out of where they were," said the Wayland, Mass.-based analyst.

American, Japanese Win Nobel Physics Prize

Nautilus Science & Technology News
By:Marco Ayllon
Dallas October 7,2008
The discovery of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics could be developed even further by research done at the Large Hadron Collider.

An American and two Japanese scientists will share the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2008.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded one-half of the prize to Yoichiro Nambu, of the Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago, for discovering spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics.

The other half goes jointly to Makoto Kobayashi, with High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK), in Tsukuba, Japan, and Toshihide Maskawa, with the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics (YITP) at Kyoto University, for discovering the origin of the broken symmetry that predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature.

Nambu formulated a mathematical description of spontaneous broken symmetry in elementary particle physics in 1960. Spontaneous broken symmetry explains how nature's order hides beneath a surface that appears jumbled. Nambu's theories permeate the Standard Model of elementary particle physics. The Model blankets the smallest building blocks of all matter and three of nature's four forces to cover them under one theory.

Kobayashi and Maskawa describe different spontaneous broken symmetries, which scientists believe existed when the universe began. They came as a surprise when they first appeared in particle experiments in 1964. In 1972, Kobayashi and Maskawa explained broken symmetry within the framework of the Standard Model but they extended the Model to include three families of quarks.

Recent physics experiments have demonstrated their hypothesis surrounding the new quarks. In 2001, two particle detectors, BaBar at Stanford and Belle at Tsukuba, Japan, independently detected broken symmetries with results that Kobayashi and Maskawa predicted 29 years earlier.

Scientists are still trying to understand how broken symmetry allowed the universe to survive the Big Bang an estimated 14 billion years ago. They believe that if equal amounts of matter and antimatter appeared, they would have annihilated each other. Scientists believe that a deviation of one extra particle of matter for every 10 billion antimatter particles could have allowed the cosmos to survive. Just how that happened is unclear. Researchers at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva hope to shed light on the process.

Analysis: How will Android compare to the iPhone?

The G1, the first Android-based smart phone, has a lot to prove.


Nutilus Science & Technology News
By: Marco Ayllon
Dallas October 7,2008

Google’s Android is as an open-source operating system meant to give smart phone manufacturers a powerful platform on which to base their phones. It’s even been touted as a challenger to Apple’s iPhone OS.

But iPhone users have grown accustomed to thinking about phone hardware and software as part of a unified whole. So the first Android-running smart phone bears the burden of representing Android to the world. The Google-backed G1’s user experience will be a function of the HTC hardware, the Google Android platform, and service provider (T-Mobile) combined. How will the G1 (introduced last month and scheduled for release later this month) stack up next to the Apple gold standard?

“Apple’s business is to be three steps ahead of everyone else. Apple is still two steps ahead,” said Gene Munster, senior research analyst at investment bank Piper Jaffray, on the launch of the G1.

The hardware
The philosophy of the G1 device is straightforward. Begin with an iPhone-like touch screen-based smart phone, then add all the features that critics wish the iPhone had. And knock $20 off the 8GB iPhone 3G’s $199 price.

A trackball and flip-out QWERTY keyboard may appeal to business people used to typing on their BlackBerries. A memory slot will let you swap microSD memory cards, and a removable battery means you can carry a spare. And the G1’s 3-megapixel camera should be an improvement over the iPhone’s 2-megapixel camera.

Of course, all these extra slots, keys, and buttons carry a cost. At .62 inches thick and 5.6 ounces in weight, the G1 is more than 25 percent thicker and nearly 20 percent heavier than the iPhone 3G. If you’re a fan of the iPhone’s sleek, single-button approach, you could find the G1 a tad chunky and inelegant.

And then there are limitations. The G1’s touch screen doesn’t support multi-touch, and the unit’s accelerometer won’t recognize that you want to use the screen in landscape mode unless you open the keyboard. Also conspicuously absent from the G1 is a standard headset jack. So if you want to listen to music or watch video, you’ll need a special headphone adapter to connect to its proprietary design. (The original iPhone had a recessed headphone jack requiring an adapter for many third-party headphones; Apple ditched that design in the iPhone 3G.) Finally, the G1’s memory slot will only support expansion up to a maximum of 8GB—not very impressive when you consider that the iPhone 3G ships with 8GB standard for $199, or 16GB for $299. (You can, of course, buy multiple expansion cards for a G1.)

The service provider
Thankfully, T-Mobile has already backed off on a planned 1GB monthly data cap for G1 service. This should let users take better advantage of the smart phone’s capabilities. Unfortunately, when the G1 launches on October 22, T-Mobile’s 3G network will only cover 22 markets in the U.S., jumping to 27 in November. In comparison, AT&T’s 3G network covers more than 275 markets, with up to 350 covered by year’s end. (Like the iPhone, G1 users will have the option of using T-Mobile’s slower EDGE network, or existing Wi-Fi networks.)

The software platform
As you would expect from a Google-based smart phone, the G1 appears to do a very solid job integrating Google applications including Gmail, Google Talk, and most impressively, Maps. Google Maps’ Street View, coupled with the G1’s GPS capabilities, will actually pan the first-person perspective screen image as you pivot the phone, helping you orient yourself with photographic landmarks. (It is rumored that the next update to the iPhone software will include Street View as well.)

Buyers may be surprised to discover that the G1 does not ship with an extensive library of pre-installed software or games. It does come with a few neat apps such as ShopSavvy, which allows you to comparison-shop online by scanning product barcodes using the built-incamera. Ecorio will help you track your carbon footprint, and, unlike iPhone apps, it can actually run in the background. The Amazon MP3 store will let you browse millions of songs using the 3G network, but Wi-Fi is required to purchase and download music.

But don’t expect to be able to sync your G1 with iTunes. In fact, don’t expect to sync your G1 with your desktop computer at all. That could make life tough for Outlook users, and may scare away potential business users attracted by the device’s added keyboard.

New software will be available for download using the beta version of the Android Market, Google’s answer to Apple’s App Store. But analyst Gene Munster warns that users could find the process of downloading and installing Android apps significantly less straightforward than they have come to expect based on experience with Apple’s App Store.

Developer perspective
Apple has come under fire by iPhone developers for restrictive nondisclosure requirements (since lifted) and arbitrariness when it comes to selecting which applications to include in its App Store. Will frustrated developers jump eagerly to Google Android’s open-source approach? Carl Howe, enterprise research director for technology research and consulting firm Yankee Group, speculates that the opposite may be the case.

“From a developer’s point of view, [Android’s] openness is trumped by having a consistent platform,” said Howe. “With the iPhone, there’s one screen size. There’s one interface. The SDK is designed to make it really easy to develop software. But most importantly they have a way to monetize that software quickly.”

That said, Google Android’s open-source, free market approach means that canny developers could build in device functionality that service providers might now want—and that Apple may not allow to see the light of day.

So why are handset providers so fond of Google Android? By opting for Google’s open OS, manufacturers save $2 to $10 per unit, said Howe. “Android is for handset makers, and the iPhone is for users.”

The possibilities of Google Android’s open approach may be endless, but whether and when such possibilities are realized remains to be seen. For the foreseeable future, Apple’s seamless user experience gives iPhone the clear edge.

MySpace Agrees To Integrate HP Printing Services

Nautilus Science & Technology News
By: Marco Ayllon
Dallas October 7, 2008

The partnership allows MySpace users to print photos stored on their profiles; there are about 4 billion images posted on the social network.

Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) on Tuesday said it has made a deal with MySpace to have HP printing services integrated across multiple areas of the online social network, including all photo sections. Financial terms were not disclosed.
The agreement, unveiled at HP's Annual Imaging and Printing Conference in San Diego, opens up MySpace's millions of users to HP, which can offer to print photos stored on MySpace profiles. About 4 billion images are posted on the social network.

"Sharing and storing photos online is integral to the social networking experience and one of the most popular activities on MySpace," Chris DeWolfe, chief executive and co-founder of MySpace, said in a statement.
The first stage of the partnership will have an HP-branded print button that enables MySpace users to preview and print photos directly from their profiles. That service will launch in November in the United States, Australia, Western Europe, and Canada. In the future, the companies plan to add the option of buying personalized merchandise with photos from MySpace.

MySpace, which is owned by News Corp., has more than 120 million users worldwide, including 76 million in the United States, according to ComScore.

MySpace has multiple partnerships with companies to bring services to users. Last month, the company launched a digital music service that enables users to stream music free or buy songs through a partnership with Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN).com. Since Amazon sells MP3s without digital rights management technology, users can play the songs on most devices, create their own playlists with up to 100 songs, and share their playlists with people who visit their profile pages.