Under pressure from the FCC and lawmakers, broadcasters earlier this year agreed to run at least four advertisements a week during prime-time hours, along with a 30-minute show about the transition before the February 17 deadline next year, to educate the public about the transition.

The National Association of Broadcasters, which has already spent millions of dollars in efforts to educate the public, has said awareness is increasing. According to a new survey by the trade organization, almost 80 percent of households with a TV have at least some knowledge of the digital transition, up from 38 percent a year ago.

But the Web site Ars Technica points out that the agency got answers from only about 66.7 percent of the 1,747 full-power TV license holders in the Federal Communications Commission’s database. The article notes that “while the report’s conclusions are still encouraging, the phrase ‘vast majority’ may be a tad overoptimistic.”

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) report issued Tuesday said about 91 percent of the 1,122 full-power TV stations that answered their survey said they were already broadcasting a digital TV signal.

The transition to digital TV is going smoothly for broadcasters, according to a government report issued earlier this week. But lawmakers are still worried that consumers may still be confused or unaware of the change.

“Some of these stations still need to order equipment, such as antennas, to build their final digital facilities. Furthermore, stations may have coordination issues to address, to complete their final digital facilities,” the agency said. “Stations also need to coordinate with cable providers and satellite companies to ensure that cable and satellite facilities receive digital signals when the analog signals are turned off.”

While TVs made after March 2007 will have digital tuners built-in, TVs made before then won’t. This means that some folks will have to either buy a new TV or get a digital-tuner box, which will be subsidized by the government. The government is already offering vouchers to help people buy these boxes.

The agency’s study also said some stations still had technical and logistical issues to work out before the February 17, 2009, deadline for making the big switch from analog to digital broadcast.

While it looks like the TV broadcasters are on track to meet the deadline, some lawmakers worry that there is still confusion about what the digital transition means to consumers.

“Far too many Americans are unaware of, or unprepared for, February 17, 2009,” Senate Commerce Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-HI) said in a statement after the GAO’s report was released. “It is imperative that all stakeholders in the DTV transition, both public and private, work together to ensure that local communities are fully informed and prepared for the transition, and that no consumer is left in the dark.”

In February 2009, TV broadcasters will vacate wireless spectrum used to broadcast analog TV signals. Instead, broadcasters will transmit digital TV signals, which use spectrum more efficiently and provide better picture quality. The transition to digital means that some older TVs, and TVs with analog-only tuners, will have to be retrofitted to tune into digital signals.

“Broadcast stations have made substantial progress in transitioning to DTV, with the vast majority already transmitting a digital signal,” the GAO concluded.

Yes, there are other ways to get this data, but there are advantages to using Trackthis: First, you can attach a descriptor to your query (like “lamp shade”). Second, you can use Twitter to easily change your message delivery options: you can quickly turn on or off SMS updates for Trackthis alerts, for example. This may be useful.

Trackthis is from mashup master Phillip Brand, aka PB30, who also created the WatchBOL site that aggregates our uStream videos when we record podcasts like Buzz Out Loud and Real Deal.

While I try to get Web 2.0 Expo darling du jour Fireball working (still no luck), I thought it’d be worth covering another location service for Twitter: Trackthis. You tell it a package tracking number from FedEx, UPS, USPS, or DHL, and it will Twitter you back whenever there’s an update from the shipper.

90 miles to go…

The whole delightful, lovely thing about technology is that it knows no boundaries. The whole mean, portentous thing about technology is that it knows no boundaries. Freelance home-office workers used to enjoy only the delights. Now they are not so sure.

Elance would rather the freelancers monitored their own activity, relying on that somewhat quaint concept called honesty.

And how does oDesk recreate the spirit of office joy in the homes of freelance workers?

Well, they take photos of the freelancers’ computer screens. Six times an hour. They record mouse clicks and keystrokes. They take photographs of the freelancers themselves, noting, should they wish to, their sniffs, squints and nose-picking habits.

Here’s some more of Arise’s own words:

I am sure that a really, really clever company such as Slydial will already have created such a useful tool. (Some telephonic genii are already in possession of technology that allows your cellphone call to sound like it’s coming from a busy street, so that you can fake the reason you’re late for a meeting.)

I notice, for example, on oDesk’s site, that there doesn’t appear to be a livecam monitoring the movements of Chief Executive, Gary Swart. Shouldn’t there be? Shouldn’t clients be sure that the person who, presumably, takes a healthy chunk of profit share, is productive at all times? Even should he be forced, for business reasons naturally, to play golf?

With the sorts of corporate principles espoused by these companies, wouldn’t it be a nice idea if clients were told what the CEOs are doing on their dime as well as their contractors?

I also failed to find anything on Arise’s site to detail CEO Angela Selden’s bathroom breaks. Shouldn’t we know how many she takes, when, and how much time she expends in doing, um, her business? Might that not be a positive gesture to create solidarity with your contractors? It would also be good for clients, giving them clearly defined times when a call to the CEO would not be appropriate.

Other companies that outsource call-centers are also developing technology that allows them to instantly interrupt any client calls, when, for example, a child or a dog makes the entirely immature and insensitive choice of crying or barking.

Arise’s workers have to schedule time to go to the bathroom. Specific time when their bodies will perform their necessary functions. Time that would be described as free time. As in unpaid.

Now, let’s just focus on that freedom standard for a moment.

Would it be immature and insensitive to suggest that these companies, so beloved of the income new technology brings, might offer their employees a little plug-in that masks the real noises coming from the house?

Yet perhaps the most joyous attitude comes from Arise.com, a company whose homepage proclaims the registered mantra: ‘Work. Freedom. Trust. Results.’

(Credit: CC NCinDC)

“Arise has set the standard providing thousands of home based businesses with the freedom to answer calls, e-mail and chat requests for prestigious U.S. and global companies.”

ODesk’s website promises that you can “hire, manage and pay contractors as if they were in your office.”

As it does with at least one of oDesk’s competitors, Elance.com.

There will be those who will say, quite understandably, that if these workers were in the office, then their manager could walk around and check just how often they watch YouTube, scrape words together on Scrabulous and pick at facial detritus.

But please forgive me if I confess that this high-tech shackling sends somewhat uncomfortable signals through my dorsal regions.

I am not sure if the company employs any workers who suffer from irritable bowel syndrome or ulcerative colitis. But perhaps those workers might not be amongst the richest of their contractors.

What is so dainty about this system is that clients can log in to watch the freelancers hoover their nostrils in real time.

Or does the idea of ‘Work. Freedom. Trust. Results’ have its limits?

However, if this long-tentacled monitoring is to become the price that home-based workers must pay, might I offer a couple of suggestions in the interests of freedom and trustworthiness?

Its investment arm, Intel Capital, is leading a $50 million round in SpectraWatt. Other investors include Goldman Sachs subsidiary Cogentrix Energy, PCG Clean Energy and Technology Fund, and German solar company Solon.

The SpectraWatt logo.

(Credit:
SpectraWatt)

The venture expects to start breaking ground on a facility in the middle of this year in Oregon and start shipping cells made from silicon to solar panel makers by the middle of next year. Andrew Wilson, the former general manager in the Intel New Business Initiatives group, will be SpectraWatt’s CEO.

In an interview, Wilson declined to provide specific technical information because the company is still in the process of seeking intellectual property protections.

He did say that the company will focus on improving solar cell efficiency–how well a panel converts light to electricity–as well as cutting the overall cost per watt.

“The solar industry is akin to where the microprocessor industry was in the late 1970s. There is a lot to be figured out and improved,” he said.

The company’s first plant in Oregon will produce 60 megawatts worth of cells. There will be a ground-breaking in about two months. Wilson said that the company has already secured customers and a supply of polysilicon, which is now in short supply worldwide.

Arvind Sodhani, president of Intel Capital and Intel executive vice president, said in a statement that the chipmaker is eyeing different business opportunities in clean tech. “This is an important investment for Intel Capital in the growing clean-tech sector, and we look forward to working with the company to support its expansion,” he said.

In addition to solar, Intel is investing in energy-efficiency processors and data center gear. Intel Capital, meanwhile, has invested in smart-grid company Grid Net, which is using WiMax wireless networks to broker communications between electricity utilities and customers.

Looking for a solar play
The Intel-SpectraWatt deal highlights the deepening cross-over between IT companies and the clean-technology sector.

IBM on Monday announced plans to enter the CIGS solar cell arena by forming a partnership with a Japanese semiconductor equipment maker. It’s one of four solar efforts at IBM, which has a companywide green technology initiative.

Hewlett-Packard earlier this month licensed transparent electronics to a solar concentrator start-up, Xtreme Energetics.

Like IBM and HP, Intel has expertise in semiconductor materials and capital-intensive, high-volume manufacturing. Those same skills are required in the solar photovoltaics business, which is growing rapidly–on the order of 40 percent to 50 percent–from soaring demand.

SpectraWatt’s Wilson said that Intel’s silicon expertise translates in the solar cell industry, even though there are significant differences in the end product.

“It sure looks like solar will be consuming a lot of silicon so it’s another thing that we need to understand,” he said. “We (also) see a lot of overlap with respect to the research directions of the technology.”

Solar expert Travis Bradford, who is president of the Prometheus Institute, said that Intel’s move into solar is not surprising, given the rapid growth of solar energy.

“Almost every company in the electronics and semiconductor industry is going to try to figure out how to get into solar–it’s going to be that big of an industry,” he said.

On the other hand, Intel’s processors–the brains of computers–are more sophisticated than solar cells. And in solar, packaging the final goods is very important.

“Compared to the stuff Intel makes, the (solar cell) stuff is pretty dumb,” Bradford said. “To be successful long term, you need downstream partners to work on different (solar panel) form factors for different types of installations. Intel doesn’t do downstream stuff–they do brains.”

Updated at 1:15 p.m. PDT with comments from Bradford and SpectraWatt.

(Credit:
Rockstar Games)

In a startling bit of news, Electronic Arts announced Sunday morning that it has launched an uninvited bid to buy Grand Theft Auto video game franchise publisher Take-Two Interactive Software for $26 a share, or what could be a $2 billion deal.

And while EA, in its press release, did not make any reference to Vivendi’s December agreement to purchase Activision, there can be no doubt that this is the response EA had to make to keep its spot as the undisputed heavyweight champion of the video games business.

The announcement comes on the heels of what appears to be a spurned attempt at a friendly takeover of Take-Two at $25 a share. The announcement release included the text of a letter sent to Take-Two Executive Chairman Strauss Zelnick by EA CEO John Riccitiello.

“Dear Strauss,” Riccitiello wrote in the February 19 letter, “I am disappointed that you have rejected Electronic Arts’ $25 per share cash offer to acquire Take-Two Interactive Software…and declined to engage in the friendly negotiations we proposed. We continue to believe that an acquisition of Take-Two by EA is in the best interests of your shareholders, employees and other constituents, and we remain interested in acquiring Take-Two. So to further demonstrate our seriousness and encourage you to move forward now, I am writing to increase EA’s offer to acquire all of the outstanding shares of Take-Two to $26 per share in cash.”

Riccitiello’s offer asserted that it would expire on February 22, which was Friday. The announcement and the publication of the February 19 letter appears to be a strategic–and possibly a legally required–move aimed at putting shareholder pressure on Take-Two to accept the offer.

EA will hold a conference call Monday morning to discuss the Take-Two offer.

What seems certain is that EA’s board felt that it had to do something to counter Vivendi’s Activision purchase, a move that would have potentially made that combined company, known as Activision Blizzard–since Vivendi’s biggest video game holdings was World of Warcraft publisher Blizzard Entertainment–the world’s largest video game publisher.

For years, EA has held that top spot and has prided itself on being No. 1. So, if anyone is surprised that EA has now made a move that would likely re-establish its king-of-the-hill position, they haven’t been paying attention.

Take-Two, of course, is an interesting choice as the potential acquisition to cement that position. The company is big, of course, and its flagship Grand Theft Auto franchise is worth huge money. And that’s particularly true because the latest GTA title, Grand Theft Auto IV, is scheduled to be released on April 29 and will surely do gigantic business. EA would certainly like to get its hand on that revenue.

But Take-Two has also been the subject of numerous regulatory slaps-on-the-hand, most notably due to the sexual content hidden in its monstrously-popular Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The so-called “Hot Coffee” scandal in 2005 led to that game being removed from store shelves, and to oratorical chest thumping from the likes of Sen. Hillary Clinton about the destructive nature of video games.

Still, big bucks is what it’s all about, and despite its problems, Take-Two is still around, and, as noted above, is about to reap the windfall of the forthcoming GTA IV release. Presumably, EA could temper any criticisms of buying a controversial company like Take-Two by promising more oversight and moral control, though one wonders how much control a Redwood Shores, Calif., company could really exercise over a fiercely independent New York company like the $1.29 billion Take-Two.

This sounds like a battle that will be played out in the press–hi, there, I’ll be your messenger for this battle–and could force EA to raise its offer even more. Take-Two, unlike Yahoo in the case of Microsoft’s bid to buy it, is in pretty good shape, with its stock, at about $17 a share, in the mid-range of a yearly range of $11.82 to $24.80.

Of course, these types of battles being what they are, EA’s publication of its letter and its offer puts pressure on Take-Two to accept what is a premium over its share price. The alternative, EA hinted at, is shareholder lawsuits against Take-Two’s management if they choose not to accept that premium.

“There can be no certainty that in the future EA or any other buyer would pay the same high premium we are offering today,” Riccitiello wrote in his February 19 letter. “We want to work with you and your team to complete the transaction in time to begin realizing its significant marketplace benefits in advance of this year’s holiday selling season.”

One might think, as I do, that what EA is really saying with that statement is that it wants to be the owner when Grand Theft Auto IV is released, the green starts rolling in and Take-Two’s stock skyrockets.

But Riccitiello suggested he thinks that Wall Street has already taken that revenue into account.

“We believe Take-Two’s current share price already reflects investor expectations for a strong release of GTA IV as well as the longer-term issues that Take-Two faces,” the EA CEO wrote. “Once GTA IV ships, Take-Two will again be dependent on less-popular titles and face increasing challenges to compete with larger and better-capitalized competitors.”

Like, um, EA, for example.

And, to be sure, there can be no doubt that EA does offer Take-Two a massive distribution and marketing infrastructure that could certainly boost the performance of Grand Theft Auto and Take-Two’s other titles.

So, this looks to be the big news in the video game industry for the next few days, at least. I can’t claim to have enough insight into the management of either company to be able to predict what Take-Two will ultimately decide to do. That’s in part because Take-Two is famously tight-lipped about its business decisions.

But you can be I’ll be watching closely. So stay tuned.

Benchmark Capital's Bill Gurley: Hunker down

(Credit:
CNET News)

From a high level, this downturn is different from the Internet bubble of 1999. First, the last downturn started in our backyard. We were the speculators; this time it is someone else. This means that the “crash on the beach” wont be nearly as severe. In the Internet crash, many times the customer was actually another VC‐backed company and as such, there was a strong negative spiral. That said, while this downturn might be shallower than last, it could last longer in terms of absolute time. The American consumer is super-leveraged which wasn’t true before the 1930s or the 1970s. The overall economy will have trouble gaining momentum with this debt anchor, and my best guess is the contraction is not finished yet. As such, it might take a long, long time before we see glory days again.

Like every major shift in the environment, this one will offer opportunities as well as risks. JP Morgan was able to buy two great assets as substantial discounts with government assurances, precisely because they played the game frugally while others were more risk seeking. The real key is to have a keen understanding of the game on the field and to be the one that adjusts swiftly, rather than the one that moves after it’s become blatantly obvious to everyone else it’s time to move. Many companies that thrived post 2001‐2003 were simply “Last Man Standing” in their industry. It doesn’t sound all that glamorous, but it was the exact right strategy to deploy at the time.

(You can read the rest of his memo here.)

In the meantime, there’s no denying that hard times have arrived. This week saw layoffs at several high-profile tech start-ups, including Tesla Motors, Zillow, Adbrite, and Zivity, among others. I can’t find anybody who believes that it’s going to stop there.

Until recently, tech start-ups had successfully navigated through the shoals. It’s just that the storm now hitting the rest of the economy is starting to gust through the Web 2.0 world as well. But as Gurley correctly notes, this is the time to hunker down. Experience counts for something–and that’s something the survivors of the dot-com crash have in spades. Recall that when the Internet bubble burst, the average tech start-up was ill-prepared to deal with the bust. But anyone who survived that near-death encounter ought to know what to do now that the clouds again are gathering.

Earlier, I had a chance to sit down with Webware Editor in Chief Rafe Needleman, who covers the world of Web 2.0 start-ups as closely as anyone in the technology reporting realm. Check out the video we did together on the CNET News Daily Debrief.

Recently, the nation’s two largest cable operators have been talking about offering their cable lineup to subscribers online so they can view their favorite shows on their computers. And now, YouTube, the site Viacom sued for more than a $1 billion in 2007 and threatened to have shut down, is signing deals with big studios like Sony Pictures and Lionsgate, as well as TV network CBS. (CNET News is published by CBS Interactive, a unit of CBS.)

All this recent activity seems to suggest that cable companies and big media companies finally understand that the Web is their future. People want to watch what they want when they want. And the Internet provides an ideal way to connect people to their favorite content.

While these efforts are a step forward, the cable operators and the media companies are still trying to maintain control and strike a balance between the old and the new. Their biggest fear (and a reasonable one) is disrupting an extremely lucrative business model that has served them well for the past 30 years. But experts caution that if they move too slowly, they could risk losing everything to digital piracy.

In short, do you give up some of your existing revenue and hope you can make that money back through advertising? Or do you stick with your current model and fight what could be a losing battle to protect your copyrights?

“There is no way to put the genie back in the bottle now,” said Avner Ronen, CEO of Boxee, a company that acts as a sort of browser for the TV to help people find and play online video on their big screen TVs. “But if users can’t easily get the content legally and reasonably priced in a reasonable amount of time, they will go out and get it some other place. That has been proven with music, and video is no different.”

Appetite for online video grows

There is little doubt the online media age is upon us. Movie studios and network TV companies have been serving up popular shows online for at least the past couple of years. And now the nation’s two largest cable operators, Comcast and Time Warner Cable, are testing services that allow their cable TV viewers to watch their regular cable lineup over the Net on their computers.

Time Warner Cable, the second-largest cable operator in the country, is already testing its online video-on-demand service in Milwaukee. The service allows Time Warner customers who subscribe to HBO, for example, to watch episodes of “Entourage” or “Flight of the Conchords” online through the Web site. Subscribers who don’t pay for HBO, don’t get access to those shows. Comcast isn’t in tests yet, but the company plans to offer a similar service available through its Fancast Web site later this year.

Unlike video Web sites such as Hulu.com, which is owned by NBC and News Corp., and CBS’ TV.com, the cable online video services are not free. And it doesn’t sound like the cable operators have any intention of offering them for free.

“We believe we can add more value to the entertainment that people are already paying for,” said Sam Swartz, executive vice president for Comcast Interactive Media. “We recognize that consumers have different ways to consume content. Some will want to view it on a PC. Others will want to see it on a TV. Our job is–for the same subscription fee–to offer it to consumers on whatever platform they want.”

One thing has become very clear to be successful in offering online video: Content is king. And sites that don’t have it die. Just look at Joost, which was founded in 2007 by Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, the same pair who founded Skype and Kazaa. But the company had trouble landing top TV shows and films and two years later, it’s on the auction block.

Meanwhile, NBC and News Corp.’s Hulu.com has flourished providing online access not only to NBC’s and News Corp.’s own content, but also TV content from others, as well as some movies. CBS has also gotten into the game by offering some of its TV shows online through its Web site TV.com. And now movie studios are courting the once loathed and feared YouTube. The site owned by Google recently signed distribution deals with Sony Pictures, CBS, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Lionsgate, Starz, Discovery Communications, and National Geographic.

Show me the money

Media companies plan to make money from these services through advertising, a model that has worked well in the broadcast world for more than 50 years. But making money in advertising on the Web has so far proven harder than in the broadcast market.

The problem is that media companies make more money from airing a show on broadcast than they do online, even though a lot of people who record their television shows with a DVR fast-forward through the broadcast commercials. And viewers of Hulu can’t forward through the commercials offered during their shows. The other problem is that advertising firms get paid bigger budgets to develop advertising for TV spots than they do for Web spots, providing an incentive to push clients toward TV advertising rather than online advertising.

Another major problem with the current business model is that cable companies spend tens of billions of dollars each year to license content from media companies. They then turn around and sell subscriptions to their service to consumers, who view the content. Popular content, such as the sports channel ESPN or the all-news channel CNN, are very expensive. And if consumers can get the same content from those sites for free on the Web, why would they pay $100 or more a month to subscribe to cable?

Understandably, cable operators have pushed hard to keep media companies from offering too much of their content for free online.

“Media companies are getting pressure from the cable companies to not put as much content online,” Ronen said. “Cable is saying, ‘Why should we be helping people cut the cable cord when we’re paying $20 billion a year for content.’”

Still, online distribution represents a new opportunity for media companies providing them the chance to monetize older content that sits unused in their archives as well as bringing in additional revenue from new products associated with popular shows.

As media companies try to figure out how to make more money from the Web while not biting the hand that feeds them, i.e. the cable companies, they are experimenting with which content to distribute online and how much of that content they make available for free to online viewers. For example, NBC offers full episodes of all three seasons of the show “Friday Night Lights” on Hulu.com. But the super-popular comedy “30 Rock” only offers full episodes of some of the most recent episodes.

Content owners have also restricted the use of services, like Hulu, overseas, since there are special content license deals with foreign broadcasters for TV shows and movies produced for the U.S. market.

But there have also been occasions where media companies have actually taken content off the Web. Earlier this year, Hulu.com upset fans of the FX show “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” when it yanked almost the entire three seasons of the show. Distraught users sent angry messages on Twitter and Hulu was forced to post a response in a blog saying that it was FX’s decision to pull the show and not Hulu’s.

The situation demonstrated that it is the media companies, and not video-playing Web sites, such as Hulu, that have control of the content.

Media companies, likely nudged by the cable companies, have also tried to keep the online video viewing on the PC. For much of this year, Hulu has been blocking Boxee, a software application that provides an easy way to discover and view online video on the TV.

While the media and cable companies may be merely trying to protect their copyrighted content and existing business models, they may find their attempts to control the distribution of their content fruitless. Boxee CEO Ronen said that these companies are risking losing complete control of their content through piracy.

“Piracy will become an even bigger concern for them if they don’t give viewers what they want,” he said. “It’s already happening, especially overseas where you can’t get access to most of this content legally.”

But Comcast’s Swartz said that the online video market is still young. And experimentation is necessary at this stage.

“We are in the bottom of the second inning when it comes to putting content online,” he said. “Content owners are realizing that they put some content out there and they aren’t making money. Now they are at the point where they are trying to figure out which business models will work.”

Of course, the big question is whether they will figure it out in time. The game may only be in the bottom of the second inning, but it could be over a lot quicker than Swartz or any of the other cable and big media execs realize.

SAN FRANCISCO–Global warming is real, and new evidence shows it may be worse than we previously thought, former Vice President Al Gore said during an RSA keynote address on emerging green technologies Friday.

The talk, which ran 45 minutes and closed the conference here, updated the presentation used in his Academy Award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth.

Friday’s talk was similar to one Gore delivered in February at the annual TED conference, but without the slides. During the speech here, the 2007 Nobel Laureate was interrupted by hecklers three times; each was removed by security.

In an arrangement with RSA, Gore specifically requested that members of the press not be allowed inside the talk. And throughout the speech, security guards did their best to keep people from holding up cell phones and other photographic equipment, although no one was asked to leave for taking a picture.

Individual attendees of RSA are allowed to blog their personal experiences, and RSA also allows them to photograph almost anything they want in exchange for being photographed by the conference for future marketing use.

Gore arrived to a standing ovation. He thanked the audience, and said he had respect for the people sitting in the auditorium and for the conference itself. He then opened with a joke about he and wife, Tipper, buying and running a franchise fast-food restaurant.

He drew a quick comparison between computer security and the global threat presented by global warming. He said most computer network threats are silent threats, like carbon dioxide. He said to make CO2 visible, he’d like governments to stop taxing employees and instead tax companies for their carbon footprint.

Gore then launched into new research on global warming. As a senator, he said, he specialized in nuclear warfare and had occasion to talk with military generals. He said he learned that each level of conflict–local, regional, and the rare global–required “a different allocation of resources, a different mix of tactics and strategies, a different way of conceiving the overall problem.”

The environmental challenge is roughly the same, he said. Most of us have to deal with local problems such as clean water. Then there are regional problems, such as acid rain. And finally there are global concerns, such as global warming.

Gore then talked about a tale of two planets, Venus and Earth. He said that Venus wasn’t 877 degrees Fahrenheit just because it’s closer to the sun; he said it’s because it’s covered in carbon dioxide gas, which absorbs infrared radiation. “It’s not complicated; it’s physics,” he said. In all of human existence, carbon dioxide never went above 300 parts per million. “This year,” he said, “it’s 385 parts per million.”

Gore talked about Antarctica, and the effect of all that new carbon dioxide. He said the north polar icecap is normally the size of the lower 48 states, “give or take an Arizona.” He said that in the summer of 2005, we lost the equivalent mass equal to the entire region east of the Mississippi river. Then in 2007, another large chunk broke off, or, as the scientists explained to Gore, “it fell off a cliff.” He said that some scientists he’s talked to now believe that within the next five years, the north polar ice cap will cease to exist during the summers.

Protesters make their voices heard
After talking for about 20 minutes, the first of three hecklers stood. A young woman started challenging Gore to admit he wanted to depopulate the Earth. She stood, taunting for about a minute before several security guards arrived to escort her out. As she was removed, a young man and a young woman toward the back stood up and began singing loudly. They, too, were removed. Then, after several minutes of silence from the audience, a middle-aged man stood up and started yelling that Gore was lying to the audience. He got the boot, as well.

Focusing on technology’s role, Gore said that we have automated the process of converting carbon into CO2. “Most of it is waste.” He said the amount of energy we actually use from carbon is a very small amount, “which posses a great challenge and a great opportunity.”

Gore cited his friend Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute, a nonprofit energy policy institute, who told him that people often assume that when we change technology there will be a loss.

Gore then recounted a business example. He talked about how a company in Canada was using environmental unfriendly chemicals to clean circuit boards and wanted to phase out the use of these chemicals in its business. The company first asked, “what alternatives are there?” and pursued that line of thinking for a while. Then one day an engineer asked a new question: “How do the circuit boards get dirty in the first place?” That question, and the resulting answer, created a new type of circuit board that has proved immensely profitable to the Canadian company.

Returning to his reason for speaking at RSA, Gore said that “because CO2 is invisible, we need information technology to track it.” Specifically, Gore said we need to track the efficiency of technology we already use.

Citing Lovins again, Gore said the Colorado-based scientist had looked at how much energy was useful in a gallon of gasoline. Lovins found that only 1 percent is useful in moving a
car from point A to point B. The rest, 99 percent, is waste, according to Lovins, “because the process, which is more than 100 years old, is incredibly inefficient,” Gore said.

Learning to ask the right questions
Gore asked the audience, “How can we change old technologies to be more efficient?” The answer, he said, is in learning to ask the right question. “Most of the productive questions are going to be in the second or third order of asking.”

Gore said that if we look at the true cost of carbon, we’re going to find that new technologies (such as solar energy) “are going to be much more useful to us now than they have been in the past.”

He then left the audience with a question: “How will future generations look back on us at the turn of the 21st century?” He said they could ask, “What were they thinking?” But, Gore, being Gore, said he was confident that instead they would ask, “How did they find the moral courage to do what they did?”

Gore left the stage to thundering applause.

I am in Paris, attending the DMI (Design Management Institute) annual European Conference. Executives from design-centric brands, corporate design managers, agencies, academics, and students gather to discuss the power of design not only in bridging decision-makers in organizations with the needs of consumers but also in facilitating product, service, social, and political innovation processes. The attendee list is very international and includes representatives from Renault, eBay, SK Telekom, SAP, BBC, Microsoft, and Vodafone, as well as professors/PhDs from business schools ESADE and ESSEC. I will blog more soon.

(Credit:
Toshiba)

With a lineup of perfectly serviceable, but not exactly standout mainstream laptops, Toshiba’s Satellite line has long played second-fiddle to the company’s excellent Qosmio multimedia laptops.

Aiming to correct this, Toshiba today unveiled an entirely redesigned Satellite line, with what is being called a new “Horizon” pattern in a “Fusion” finish. Toshiba describes it as, “gray pinstripes set upon a field of black.” We checked these out in person a few weeks ago, and they had a distinct metallic sheen, quite different from the current black-and-red flamed look.

The new models are the Satellite U400, the Satellite M300, the Satellite A300, and the Satellite P300, with 13.3-inch, 14.1-inch, 15.4-inch and 17-inch displays, respectively. Apart from the 13-inch U400, these new models include touch-sensitive media controls, a flush-mounted touch pad, and Harman Kardon speakers (which are already available on some higher-end Toshiba laptops).

Note the flush touch pad on the Toshiba Satellite A300.

(Credit:
Toshiba)

Perhaps the most interesting new development is something called Sleep-and-Charge, which means you can plug in and charge USB devices (iPods, mobile phones, and so forth) even if the laptop is in sleep or hibernate mode, or is totally powered off, as long as it’s plugged into an outlet. Most laptops provide power to USB ports only while they’re turned on.

All four are available today, starting from $826 to $999. Also new, but lacking most of these high-end upgrades, is the Satellite L350, positioned as a budget 17-inch AMD-powered desktop replacement, starting at $749.