He is the founder and chief executive of REMcloud, a startup that on Tuesday plans to formally launch a would-be social network based around stories people experience while they sleep. Like Twitter, users of the site post snatches of text, in this case brief accounts of what they dreamed.

The site, among other things, responds with an automated interpretation of each dream, based on the analysis of individual keywords in the text. That information comes from existing databases offered by Web companies, Muhota says. (Existing sites that focus on dream interpretation include Dream Central, DreamForth and Dreamanity).

A more unusual element of REMcloud, Muhota says, will be the interactions people have over dreams. Friends of a user, for example, can rate dreams the user posts or post their own interpretations of them. (Dreams can be posted publicly or limited to a circle of followers, Muhota says).

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Thank goodness for sparkly vampires and animated toys–otherwise, this summer has been pretty weak in the megahit movie department for Hollywood.

But both “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse” and “Toy Story 3″ are sequels, so a lot of hopes for some entertainment innovation are riding on the success of a high-tech, big-brain film called “Inception.”

The story about people who slip into dreams and steal secrets is opening July 16 with the tag line: “Your mind is the scene of the crime.”

But that does not even come close to explaining this movie, which appears dense and difficult to comprehend.

Check out this trailer, which looks great and chock full of special effects, but is still pretty perplexing:

The headline, obviously, is that smartphone usage is spiking. But there are a few other data points worth noting as well. Mobile Internet devices like the iPod touch and Nintendo DSi have seen a fourfold jump in use. Their traffic share grew 17 percent from about seven percent.

Among smartphone operating systems, Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone OS is the leader with a 50 percent share of the traffic across AdMob’s network. Google’s (GOOG) Android ranks second with a 24 percent share, followed by Nokia’s (NOK) Symbian, whose 43 percent share a year ago has fallen to just 18 percent today. Bringing up the rear: Research in Motion’s (RIMM) RIM OS with four percent and Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows Mobile with two percent.

And Palm’s (PALM) webOS? AdMob doesn’t seem to have broken it out. Presumably, webOS accounts for a portion of the two percent share claimed by the “Other” category in the chart above (click to enlarge).

Top smartphones for the month were as one would expect: The iPhone led the pack with 49.5 percent of requests made across AdMob’s network. It was followed by Motorola’s (MOT) Droid with 7.8 percent and the HTC Dream with 3.2 percent. RIM’s BlackBerry 8300 claimed 1.5 percent, a tenth of a percent more than Palm’s Pre. (Click tables below to enlarge.)

While a lot of the hype around the upcoming Apple iPad has thankfully died down, reaching its crescendo at the unveiling of the tablet device last month, the buzz of two kinds building now is perhaps worse.

The first meme has to do with a notion that the iPad is dead on arrival for a wide variety of reasons. No support for Flash video technology. No USB ports. An eye-tiring screen. Too pricey. Too much like a giant iPhone without the phone. No camera.

You get the idea.

What’s most interesting to me is that some people I talk to say the Apple (AAPL) device is just terrible to use, despite the fact that they have never even touched one.

When I note that I have, indeed, taken it for a very short spin and liked what I saw quickly, they always then ask me all about it as if I held the wisdom of the ages.

My stock answer: “Since you are not buying one, I will spare you the pain.”

While that’s annoying enough, perhaps worse are the ongoing paeans that the iPad will somehow be the savior of traditional publishers of all kinds, providing–finally!–the just-right medium to make their various and sundry media relevant in the digital age.

But, like Goldilocks, that’s just a fairy tale until the iPad is actually out in the wild and subject to consumer use when it begins to be rolled out in late March.

Because even if the iPad proves to be as good at displaying magazine and rich advertising as seems possible (see the pretty video of Wired magazine on the iPad above), it’s not going to be clear whether it’s a success until regular people are using it on the same scale as its sister devices, the iPod and the iPhone.

In addition, it seems as if media companies–in their quest to somehow escape the powerful clutches of search giant Google (GOOG) or Kindle-bearing Amazon (AMZN)–are rushing into Apple’s arms without making the obvious connection more strongly.

Which is to keep remembering that Apple and the music industry have fought viciously over pricing and control ever since the iPod and its progeny took over the market for all nonpirated sales of music.

With their hands on none of the key technology and innovation levers online–not devices, not search, not social networking or e-commerce relationships–media giants continue to be without even a pair sticks to rub together to make digital fire.

They tout their premium content, of course, as being critical to the Apple iPad’s success, but it’s not at all clear it will turn out that way.

That’s why I cringed when I read the last lines from a piece by media writer David Carr of the New York Times, even before the iPad launch, titled, “A Savior in the Form of a Tablet”:

“I haven’t been this excited about buying something since I was 8 years old and sent away for the tiny seahorses I saw advertised in the back of a comic book. Come to think of it, the purchase didn’t really meet my expectations, but with the whole new year thing, a boy can dream, right?”

I suppose he can, but digital dreams–like those seahorses–can sure die fast.

Way back in the fall of 2001, when BoomTown was but a less-aged version of myself, I attended a keynote speech at the now-defunct Comdex show in Las Vegas, where Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates continued to bang the drum for one of his long-running obsessions: The tablet computer.

“The tablet takes cutting-edge PC technology and makes it available whenever you want it, which is why I’m already using a tablet as my everyday computer,” Gates said at the time to the audience gathered at the MGM Grand Garden Arena. “It’s a PC that is virtually without limits and within five years I predict it will be the most popular form of PC sold in America.”

Well, that did not happen.

But Gates did keep his promise about using a tablet–he kept on doing so and also harping on the topic all the time, with Microsoft even releasing a giant tabletop Surface several years ago and supporting multitouch in the coming Windows 7.

I recall Gates talking about the idea of how important the tablet is on innumerable occasions, more than any single concept I can recall.

It is ironic, then, that all the hype has suddenly and firmly coalesced around the particulars of the tablet that Apple (AAPL) will be unveiling in the coming months.

And now that CEO Steve Jobs is back fine-tuning the whole shebang, the obsession has moved into overdrive, punctuated only by endless stories about every single new app for the iPhone and fights over some of those new apps for the iPhone.

It’s a complete aside, but how ironic is it that Apple has somehow managed to make Google (GOOG)–the Skynet of the Internet–seem like a victim over this Google Voice shrillathon?

Back to the Apple tablet, which is playbook hype for iconic computer giant.

Besides being a secret project everyone in Silicon Valley seems to know about, the coming device is enjoying full-on breathless reportage of every single possible button and every possible feature, with every single bit of functionality parsed, dissected, masticated and spat back out.

But let’s be honest–in the end, this Apple tablet is probably going to be some kind of giant, sleeker, more glorified and doubtlessly niftier version of the iPod touch, called the iTab or the iPad or the iAmSoCoolAren’tI?, at three times the price.

Now, as it turns out, Microsoft (MSFT) is also at work on a table device, this time called the Courier.

This development became known recently after a demo video of it in use was somehow “leaked”–three guesses about which software giant in Redmond, Wash., put that out, and the first two don’t count!–to Gizmodo.

It seems to be some kind of tablet mixed with a journal mixed with a day planner, with a hinged two-page look. Digital writing and a stylus are involved, but also lots of touchscreen action.

Well, I say, good for Microsoft, and perhaps for Gates, who has now mostly disengaged himself from the day-to-day particulars of the behemoth he built, including the Courier.

Nonetheless, in all likelihood, Apple will still garner the most buzz in this tablet faceoff and will, more than likely, sell more.

A delicious irony, given that in their fascinating and long-running rivalry, it has usually been Jobs playing the hopeless dreamer and Gates the one who makes bank from the dreams of others.

No longer, which should make this round between Microsoft and Apple the most interesting of all.

Speaking of dreaming of dreams, it is always a good time to post the video of Susan Boyle singing “I Dreamed a Dream”:

And there it was in Yahoo’s second-quarter earnings call yesterday, when–as the first question–an analyst asked Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz what she thought about Bing, the new and innovative search offering from Microsoft.

“I think actually Bing is a good product,” said Bartz. “I think they’ve done a good job. I think Microsoft should be given kudos for Bing.”

It was a politic thing to say, to be sure, especially with Microsoft (MSFT) and Yahoo (YHOO) still zeroing in on a search and online advertising deal, as has been previously reported by BoomTown.

Sources I have spoken to over the past two days say the deal is still on good footing and could be struck very soon, even as early as tomorrow, although it is still not a certainty–especially given the bumpy history between Yahoo and Microsoft.

Thus, it behooves Bartz not to let loose with one of her patented zingers–and you just know she has several at the ready, in case the deal goes south–right now when the pair of companies that I have described as the Internet’s version of the Lindsay Lohan-Samantha Ronson drama might finally agree to join together in a partnership.

That’s why Bartz did not say, “I personally think we would be better off if we never heard the word ‘Microsoft,’” as she did at an investor conference in June, when asked about a possible search and online advertising deal.

And why she did not say, as she did on Fox Business Network around the same time, about the early kudos for Bing: “One day is one day…it does not a trend make.”

And why Bartz did not say, as she scribbled on a jokey-but-pokey Post-It note to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer (see photo) that she left in the Green Room of the seventh D: All Things Digital conference:

“Steve,
forget it
won’t help
ha
Carol”

Nope, now is the time for some judicious happy talk from Bartz, who appears to have a lot more self-control than I have ever given her credit for.

She’ll need it, for sure, if she does actually pull off a deal with Microsoft–because that is when the real fireworks will begin between the Silicon Valley Internet giant and the Redmond, Wash., tech behemoth.

Well, I can dream, can’t I?

Or, as the perfect song, “Happy Talk,” from the classic musical, “South Pacific,” goes: “You got to have a dream/If you don’t have a dream/How you gonna have a dream come true?”

And, for those who have missed it (you cretins!), here it is in all its glory, in a video from the lovely movie version:

In design, the device seems to borrow quite a bit from T-Mobile’s Sidekick, and its touchscreen GUI owes a thing or two to Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone. Which makes perfect sense, since that’s the device it’s clearly intended to compete with. The G1 will run on both 3G and Wi-Fi and be tethered to the T-Mobile (DT) network. It will come preloaded with a version of Amazon’s MP3 store and Android Market, an application store similar to Apple’s App Store. And it will support and sync with the broad spectrum of Google (GOOG) apps–Google Talk, Google Calendar, etc. Its browser is something the dev team refers to as Chrome-Lite, a mobile version of Google’s new Webkit-based Chrome browser.

Oddly, the G1 has no built-in video player. Odder still, it has just 1GB of memory. T-Mobile has helpfully outfitted it with a 1GB/month bandwidth cap, though.

The G1 supports PDFs and Microsoft Office documents as well. Email will be handled through Gmail; there is no Exchange support, though presumably, engineers developing for Android Market will fill that void in short order.

Oh, the device offers copy-and-paste functionality. Hear that Apple?

It will arrive at market Oct. 22. Price: a highly-subsidized $179.