Yup, an actual check, ranging from $20 to $60. You just have to have a Nest. And sign up for certain plans with certain utility companies. And let the temperature at home creep up a little bit during “high-traffic” A/C hours.

Nest today announced that it’s going to be working with a handful of utility companies across the U.S. to sell its thermostats and offer immediate rebates like this one to potential customers.

If you sign up for a “Learn and Conserve” plan with Reliant, an NRG Energy company in Texas, the company will provide a Nest for you. Green Mountain Energy Company, also part of NRG, is going to offer a Nest for free to customers who sign up for certain plans in New York, Illinois and Pennsylvania.

National Grid, a utility company that serves the Northeast, is offering $100 rebates on Nest thermostats purchased through its website, bringing the cost down to $149 per device.

In addition, Nest is rolling out the aforementioned “Rush Hour Rewards” program in conjunction with some utility companies. If customers agree to adjust the Nest thermostat by a few degrees during the hours of peak energy usage, they’ll be rewarded with a seasonal rebate. The customer will be alerted to an impending “rush hour” via the Nest mobile app, and a pre-cooling setting is supposed to help adjust your home temperature ahead of time to keep the place comfortable. (Plus, if you get really hot, you can always manually adjust the temperature again.)

But what’s more interesting than the check you could potentially pocket is Nest’s move to partner with utility companies to sell and promote the product. Other, larger appliance makers have taken this tack before, and Nest is hoping it will lead to a bigger footprint in U.S. homes.

Nest, in case you’re not familiar with the product, is the brainchild of Matt Rogers and Tony Fadell, who oversaw the creation of the iPod at Apple. The thermostat first hit the market in the fall of 2011 and received many positive reviews from users, who praised its sensor-driven, Wi-Fi-connected, smart-energy capabilities in the home. It costs $249 and works with an app on iPhone, Android phones or desktop PCs.

Nest has declined to say how many units it has sold since launch, except to say that the second-generation version is “definitely appealing to more customers.” In January, GigaOM reported that Nest had raised $80 million in funding from existing and new investors.

It hasn’t been all smooth sailing for Nest. In February of 2012, Nest was slapped with a lawsuit from Honeywell International, which identified seven patents it believed Nest infringed on with its hot new thermostat.** That suit is continuing.

And the company is going up against industrial giants that have been making thermostats for decades. Honeywell also recently introduced a new Wi-Fi-capable smart thermostat that improves upon the company’s previous “smart” thermostats.

* It is nearly impossible to write about high-tech thermostats and not use at least one terrible hot/cold pun.
** Crap, I did it again.

In its trading debut Thursday, the stock surged 47 percent to $11.79 on the Nasdaq Stock Market, opening well above its $8 offering price and climbing throughout the trading day.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

In yet another instance of a Silicon Valley venture firm bringing in big government guns to class up the place, Khosla Ventures said that it had signed the international consulting firm run by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to “bring global and domestic insight to Khosla’s portfolio companies, helping them achieve their strategic goals in industries such as technology, energy, security and healthcare.”

In other words, strategery plus!

That will presumably be provided by Rice and her partners at RiceHadleyGates, which has offices in Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C., in an undisclosed financial arrangement with Khosla. RiceHadleyGates also includes former National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and former State Department official Anja Manuel.

In an interview yesterday, Manuel said that the goal was to help in areas that VCs might not be as familiar with, from Internet freedom laws in India to the challenges of moving into emerging markets.

“There are a lot of policy issues that entrepreneurs will be facing and we will try to be helpful as they sort through them,” she said. “We love working with innovative companies and want to make their global experience better.”

Khosla partner Samir Kaul said the firm was still figuring out how they will work together, but that Rice’s team would serve as “strategic advisers on an as needed basis.”

“What [RiceHadleyGates] does fits in very well with a lot of our themes as investors in energy and security, for example,” said Kaul. “We want to offer the companies we invest in as much help as possible and this is a real win in that regard.”

It’s certainly a high-profile move, although Khosla has done this before, signing former British Prime Minister Tony Blair on as a strategic adviser in 2010.

In addition, Andreessen Horowitz brought in former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, as well as former D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, to lend its portfolio companies additional expertise.

Rice’s firm certainly has a lot of that, especially related to thorny international issues. Rice, who was once the provost at Stanford University, was also the National Security Adviser in the administration of former President George W. Bush, before moving to the State Department.

Streaming or downloading 12 tracks, without compression, just 27 times by one user would, in energy terms, equate to the production and shipping of one physical 12-track CD album.

–Dagfinn Bach, in a Music Tank study on digital music consumption

Red Robot’s Co-Founders Pete Hawley (left) and Mike Ouye (right) standing in front of the company’s booth at PAX.

“Gamers are lazy,” said Pete Hawley, Red Robot Labs’ co-founder and chief product officer. “You can’t expect them to get off the couch.”

A year ago, the Mountain View, Calif., company attended the Penny Arcade Expo (a.k.a. PAX) in Seattle to launch its first game, Life is Crime. That weekend, three Red Robot employees hustled to make the convention a virtual game board, getting attendees to virtually commit more than 20,000 “crimes,” in addition to hospitalizing more than 1,000 people and stealing $35 million from real places.

The company is back at PAX this weekend with a much larger presence — 15 employees. It also secured a very small kiosk, which you practically need a map to find, given its far corner location behind Sony’s massive PlayStation booth.

But despite the company’s larger presence on the show floor, location-based gaming is still in its infancy, with many of today’s concepts still centered around checking into locations, like Foursquare. But Red Robot co-founder and CEO Mike Ouye said the company believes that there will be a much larger opportunity in the future for what they call “playing the planet.”

This year, Red Robot is here to show off its new fantasy game, Life is Magic, which will be launching soon for free on Android and iOS. In the fantasy land, players pan around a map of the U.S. to discover dungeons, where they must fight monsters. To purchase armor or new weapons, they virtually visit shops that exist in the real world, even if the stores — say, Best Buy or a candy shop — wouldn’t normally sell those items.

Given what Red Robot has learned over the past year, the game has two elements that the company believes are very important.

The first is to make it appear as if the player is in an actual fantasy land, while using real-world geographic data. Red Robot Labs does not use Google Maps. Rather, it has taken some of the underlying data found on maps, like lakes, rivers and mountains, and then places a fantasy-land overlay over that. Players may still feels like they are in Seattle because of the geographic layout, but also like they have escaped to a different land.

The second important aspect of the game is solving for gamer laziness.

In Life is Magic, players can travel to anywhere in the U.S. — without actually getting on a plane, taking a bus, or walking. Even if they aren’t really at the Starbucks on the corner, they can still interact with other players there. But the farther away the player goes from their real-world location, the more energy points they will need to conduct a task (those energy points can either be earned or purchased).

“It’s less about where you are, and more about where you can go,” Hawley said, given that 50 percent of mobile gaming happens in the home.

Ouye added that Red Robot is also licensing its technology to other game developers, including its maps, 3-D rendering capabilities, and points-of-interest database. Ultimately, he envisions having enough data from those games to make a “location interest graph.” A location interest graph would be able to reveal such data as the most popular app or the best gamers for a given area.

Three companies are currently licensing Red Robot’s technology, and the company has two internal games in the pipeline that will launch by the end of the year, including Life is Magic.

Red Robot has raised $15.5 million in capital from an impressive list of investors, including Benchmark Capital, Shasta Ventures, Rick Thompson, co-founder of Playdom, and Chamath Palihapitiya, a former Facebook executive.

Mojgan Khalili

Another prominent venture firm has stepped up in the marketing arena and hired well-regarded former Yahoo communications exec Mojgan Khalili as an operating partner.

In an interview yesterday, Vinod Khosla said that the move was part of the Silicon Valley firm’s motto of “venture assistance.”

Like many top VCs these days, Khosla said that helping build the start-ups it invests in is a key part of its offering. It already has partners specializing in recruiting and finance.

“We are building an operating organization and communications is an important part of that to help the companies we invest in,” said Khosla. “Obviously, other firms are using this function to promote themselves, but as a fund we don’t need more publicity.”

Khosla noted that Khalili’s job would be almost entirely focused on helping start-ups. But the latter part of that quote was referencing the boom in comms hiring by prominent VC firms — such as Andreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital — some of which are getting a lot of press attention, too.

Khosla acknowledged the importance of good marketing — even some entrepreneurs, such as Square’s Jack Dorsey, are PR naturals.

“He is someone who does press well,” he said. “But 90 percent of start-ups need help to do this function, which is increasingly critical.”

Khalili is a longtime comms exec, who most recently headed product issues at Yahoo, working with top execs there.

“Working with great partners at Khosla Ventures and assisting awesome companies in so many different industries like, tech, big data, health, food and energy makes this opportunity perfect,” she said. “I am really excited to dig in.”

Earlier this week, I slogged through the rain in a very dorkish GroupMe plastic poncho at SXSW in Austin to attend what I thought was one of the more interesting sessions, titled “Why Cleanweb Will Beat Cleantech.”

Perhaps because it was not yet another creepy location app (memo to Banjo and Highlight users, please stop attempting to get me to allow you to stalk me, cuz I ain’t!), it was more sparsely attended.

But the presentation by longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur Sunil Paul was a good one, given his premise that current information technology tools were at the heart of creating solutions around energy conservation.

The founder of Brightmail — and also the first start-up partner of Zynga CEO and founder Mark Pincus at a Washington, D.C., company called Freeloader (where I first met the pair) — thinks that clean technologies like solar can be better leveraged with Cleanweb, which he defined as the “application of information technology to resource constraints.”

In other words, more Airbnb (fewer hotel rooms mean less carbon emissions), more Zappos (fewer stores, less driving to stores, etc.) and more teleconferencing (that’s easy to grok) is evidence that the Cleanweb could be an important contributor to saving the planet.

Quoting a recent tweet he saw, Paul noted that a smartphone today has as much computing power as the computers that put a man on the moon, but all we do with them is launch birds into pigs.

“I am saying we can do something better with the aggressive application of software technology,” he said.

Actually, those Angry Birds are now in space, too.

In any case, here’s Paul’s interesting deck from the talk:

cleanweb_presentation-Sunil-2012-mar-10

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The bare facts are these, according to this lengthy analysis by Bloomberg News: Since 1953, the U.S. has imported more energy-producing resources than it has exported. The main reason is that the U.S. doesn’t have a lot of domestic oil production and has always relied on imports from other countries, many of them countries in the troubled Middle East. In a political context, the phrase “energy independence” is usually associated with pie-in-the-sky notions of being free from the odious burden of foreign policy entanglements in that region.

But now, Bloomberg says, the idea is no longer so pie-in-the-sky: Last year, the U.S. produced about 81 percent of its energy, up from a recent low of 70 percent in 2005. What gives? A boost in domestic oil production, more efficient cars, stricter mileage standards, ethanol in our gasoline and a significant surge in U.S. production of natural gas. In fact, if this keeps up, the U.S. is on track to be the biggest energy producer in the world within eight years.

Does that sound like something of an opportunity? You’d better believe it. Insight Venture Partners, the New York-based venture capital and private equity firm that has in the past invested in tech properties like Twitter, Tumblr, LivingSocial and FlipBoard, is leading a massive $165 million investment in a Texas-based oil and gas database company called Drilling Info.

Essentially, what the company does is provide a lot of incredibly specialized information about where energy resources like gas and oil wells are located, what its characteristics are, how long a site is likely to be productive, and so on. The database is offered via the cloud as a software-as-service product. “It really focuses on giving energy companies the data they need to make smarter decisions about where and how they spend their production resources,” Deven Parekh, managing director at Insight, told me. The database tracks information like depletion curves — a measure of how long a well can continue producing oil — and environmental information, seismic data and so on.

Offering it as an SAAS product just makes it easier to manage and maintain. Once upon a time, database companies would send out CDs with software and data updates. Using the cloud makes it easier to keep the data current, and to save on costs.

Parekh told me that Drilling Info has about 3,000 customers in the U.S. and worldwide; and while he wouldn’t disclose its annual revenue, he said it’s in the tens of millions each year. Its customers produce about 90 percent of the oil and gas produced in the U.S. A lot of its demand is coming from companies working on so-called “unconventional exploration” for oil and gas resources, and there’s also significant international interest, too. For example, there are more companies working on methods for getting hard-to-reach oil in shale reserves.

Parekh says the moment has come for some serious investment in energy production technologies. “Everyone pays attention to all the innovation going on at Apple and Google, but what they tend not to appreciate is how much innovation is taking place in the energy industry,” he said. “We don’t talk about it every day, but there’s so much going on.”

Battery Ventures and Eastern Advisors Private Fund are also investing, and at least part of the funding round is going toward earlier shareholders. The capital will be used to expand its customer footprint, but also to possibly make some acquisitions.

Note: Initially the headline on this story said it was Index Ventures, not Insight, making the investment. I’ve since corrected it, though the initial erroneous headline is still making the rounds on Twitter. Sorry about that.

We are now posting the full videos from the recent AsiaD conference, which took place in Hong Kong in October.

We’re following the schedule of the actual event. Up now: Al Gore, former Vice President, Nobel Prize winner, environmental activist, sometime VC, occasional entrepreneur and all-around busy dude.

Of course, Gore talked about a wide range of issues, from the legacy of Apple’s Steve Jobs (Gore is on the company’s board), to being an adviser to Google, to the “broken” U.S. political system, to alternative energy.

Here’s his onstage interview with Walt Mossberg:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111118/former-vp-and-apple-director-al-gore-on-steve-jobs-and-more-the-full-asiad-interview-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110630/following-google-microsoft-kills-its-energy-monitoring-service/ http://allthingsd.com/20110630/following-google-microsoft-kills-its-energy-monitoring-service/#comments Thu, 30 Jun 2011 18:51:12 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=93396 Days after Google announced plans to kill its PowerMeter service, Microsoft said Thursday it plans to discontinue its similar Hohm energy monitoring service as of May 31, 2012. In a blog post, Microsoft cited slow adoption for the service, for which hopes were high at launch in 2009.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110630/following-google-microsoft-kills-its-energy-monitoring-service/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110321/ibm-offers-its-cloud-to-watch-the-uks-electrical-grid/ http://allthingsd.com/20110321/ibm-offers-its-cloud-to-watch-the-uks-electrical-grid/#comments Mon, 21 Mar 2011 13:00:09 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://newenterprise.allthingsd.com/?p=4163 Computing giant IBM and the British telecom concern Cable & Wireless say they’re collaborating to build a cloud computing system that would monitor the power usage of some 50 million smart electrical meters in the UK.

The idea, they say, is to use cloud computing to monitor and analyze power use at British homes and businesses, as part of an overall plan to reduce the country’s energy use and therefore its carbon footprint.

Several existing wireless players have tossed their hats in the ring to build smart meter systems, including BT, Telefonica and Vodafone. They all want a piece of a big UK government contract that could be worth as much as $14 billion to install smart meters in every home by 2020 as part of a wider plan to reduce its carbon emissions by 80 percent by the year 2050.

IBM and C&W say their plan, which they call the UK Smart Energy Cloud, will gather data many times a day from smart meters around the country and store it in a cloud hosted in the UK. The data would then go to power utilities for analysis, to make sure customers are billed according to their usage.

IBM is also involved in a nationwide smart grid project in Malta and has a hand in a pilot project in Denmark. C&W has more than 1,000 network sites, and many, it says, are located at electrical substations. IBM and C&W would essentially become a middle man, saving UK power retailers from having to make huge investments in computing and communications infrastructure.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110321/ibm-offers-its-cloud-to-watch-the-uks-electrical-grid/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20110223/transphorm-nabs-20-million-from-google-ventures-kleiner/ http://allthingsd.com/20110223/transphorm-nabs-20-million-from-google-ventures-kleiner/#comments Wed, 23 Feb 2011 19:00:40 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=41003

Yet another “stealth” start-up came out of hiding today with a big Silicon Valley funding.

That would be Transphorm, a power conversion technology company, that has raised $20 million more in a Series C financing led by Google Ventures and including Kleiner Perkins, Foundation Capital and Lux Capital.

That adds to $18 million already raised.

Said the Transphorm about its goals:

“Inefficient electric power conversion results in hundreds of terawatts of lost energy across the electrical grid, equivalent to 318 coal-fired power plants and costing the U.S. economy $40 billion a year. Leveraging breakthroughs in modern materials and a world-class team, Transphorm’s ultra-efficient and cost-competitive power modules eliminate up to 90 percent of all electric conversion losses.”

Here’s the official press release:

Transphorm emerges from stealth to redefine energy efficiency

Company backed by $38 million from leading venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins, Google Ventures, Foundation Capital, and Lux Capital

New approach to electric power conversion eliminates multi-billion dollar efficiency losses

Mountain View, Calif. February 23, 2011–Transphorm Inc., redefining energy efficiency with the most efficient and compact power conversion technology, emerges from stealth mode today at a private event at Google Ventures. The company announced it completed a $20 million Series C financing led by Google Ventures, with participation from existing venture investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Foundation Capital and Lux Capital. This brings the total capital raised from all rounds to $38 million.

Inefficient electric power conversion results in hundreds of terawatts of lost energy across the electrical grid, equivalent to 318 coal-fired power plants and costing the U.S. economy $40 billion a year. Leveraging breakthroughs in modern materials and a world-class team, Transphorm’s ultra-efficient and cost-competitive power modules eliminate up to 90 percent of all electric conversion losses. From HVACs to hybrids, from servers to solar panels, Transphorm enables significant energy savings across the grid.

“We founded Transphorm to re-imagine what enhanced efficiency in the generation and use of electrical energy can do for our economy,” said Umesh Mishra, CEO of Transphorm. “Why put up with needless energy waste in every electrical system and device, when we can quickly and cost-effectively design products that are inherently energy efficient? Transphorm’s next-generation power modules cut waste, increase efficiency, reduce system size and simplify overall product design.”

“Since we deliver a complete solution from the original materials through to the final modules, we are in a position to rapidly innovate and deliver product in quick response to demand,” said Primit Parikh, President of Transphorm. “We look forward to helping our partners open a new era in ultra-efficient and compact power conversion.”

Founded by the experienced entrepreneurial team of Umesh Mishra and Primit Parikh, Transphorm boasts world-class engineers as well as top business and manufacturing executives who will guide the commercialization of Transphorm’s technology.

“Solving the enormous problem of power waste will create immediate, long-term shared value for Transphorm’s customers and investors,” said Randy Komisar, partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. “It was imperative for our firm to get behind Transphorm because it is the first company with a viable, commercial-scale solution to energy losses associated with high-voltage power conversion.”

Transphorm delivers custom-designed power modules that are easy to embed in virtually any electrical system, from consumer electronics products, to industrial motor drives, to inverters for solar panels and electric vehicles, and sells these modules to power equipment manufacturers. The company will unveil its first product at the upcoming APEC conference, taking place in Fort Worth, Tex. from Mar. 6 -10, 2011.

“We recognize the need to innovate to uncover new opportunities for optimal energy efficiency,” said Toshihiro Sawa, Managing Director, Technology & Development Division of Yaskawa Electric Corporation. “The time is right to develop power conversion technologies that can cut power waste and reduce excess heat, and Transphorm provides a viable solution today.”

“It is imperative that power conversion efficiency be increased both to cut unnecessary losses and to save energy, but also to reduce waste heat which has negative impact on volume, weight, cost and reliability,” said Dr. Leo Casey, CTO, Satcon Corporation. “The innovations made by Transphorm offer an attractive solution to this problem.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110223/transphorm-nabs-20-million-from-google-ventures-kleiner/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110210/oil-firms-hit-by-hackers-from-china-report-says/ http://allthingsd.com/20110210/oil-firms-hit-by-hackers-from-china-report-says/#comments Thu, 10 Feb 2011 13:30:50 +0000 Nathan Hodge and Adam Entous http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=36174 Hackers who appear to be based in China have conducted a “coordinated, covert and targeted” campaign of cyber espionage against major Western energy firms, according to a report expected to be issued today by cybersecurity firm McAfee Inc.

Law-enforcement agencies said they are investigating the incidents, which McAfee said have been going on at least since late 2009 but may have started as early as 2007. The company said the attacks, which it dubbed “Night Dragon,” were still occurring.

McAfee said the hackers targeted five multinational firms, but wouldn’t identify the companies by name because some of them are clients. McAfee said it was sharing the findings “to protect those not yet impacted and to repair those who have been.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110210/oil-firms-hit-by-hackers-from-china-report-says/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110131/google-puts-more-cash-toward-capital-clout/ http://allthingsd.com/20110131/google-puts-more-cash-toward-capital-clout/#comments Tue, 01 Feb 2011 00:30:51 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=56810 “I’ve never seen a tech company ramp up faster than they have in the last year or two,” tech lobbyist Ralph Hellmann once said of Google. “They’re using all the tools in the lobbying tool kit.”

And buying some new ones as well.

The company spent $5.16 million trying to influence policy in Washington, according to the Lobbying Disclosure Act Database.

That’s 28 percent more than the $4.03 million it spent last year, but then Google’s interests on Capitol Hill these days are quite a bit more extensive than they once were. Where once there were competition and privacy issues and little else, there are now privacy, data security, patent reform, copyright, renewable energy and tax reform issues, among other things.

Oh. And rivals with differing interests and bigger lobbying spends. Microsoft, for example, which ended the year with a $6.91 million lobbying spend to Google’s $5.16 million.

PREVIOUSLY:

• What Tech Companies Are Spending in Washington

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110131/google-puts-more-cash-toward-capital-clout/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20101222/help-im-addicted-to-cityville/ http://allthingsd.com/20101222/help-im-addicted-to-cityville/#comments Wed, 22 Dec 2010 13:00:48 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=1425 Earlier this month, I had a lot of nervous energy and a bunch of spare time on my hands, since my husband was in the hospital for an unusually complicated appendectomy. He’s much better now, but I haven’t fully recovered, because I picked up a bad case of addiction to CityVille, the newly released social game from Zynga.

CityVille is the perfect hospital waiting-room activity. You click to create buildings and plant crops, click to harvest them and collect money from your shops, click to visit your friends’ cities and help them do the same things.

Unlike in a real city, everything you can possibly accomplish in the game is good. You receive money, goods, reputation points, energy and random bonus prizes constantly.

Most of these are useful, but some of them are not. For instance, I currently have a stock of 22 virtual danishes received as bonuses from my in-game coffee shop, and no way to spend them.

Among the early adopter types I know in the tech industry, there’s a sense that casual gaming on Facebook serves an entirely different demographic from their own. The thinking is that games from Zynga and the like replace relatively mindless activities like watching soap operas.

But as someone who has just reorganized her virtual retail shops to be surrounded by virtual trees, so as to accumulate more virtual bonus points, I can see how social gaming–especially as it gets more social–might appeal to the desire for mindless diversions in all of us.

And, I began to get an answer to a question I am asked a lot: Why are so many people playing these seemingly meaningless games?

CityVille is Zynga’s latest attempt to extend the dominance of its breakout social game FarmVille, which has long been the most popular such diversion on Facebook.

Of all of Zynga’s games, CityVille has been heralded as the most social to date, with new features such as a franchise system that allows users to actually participate in the building of their friends’ cities. Personally, I’ve never gotten into FarmVille, although it’s obviously quite addictive as well and hugely popular.

Chalk it up to the new social features, the slightly less awkward and cutesy 3-D graphics, or a momentary openness to mindless diversion on my part, but CityVille is the only Facebook game that’s truly sucked me in so far.

Zynga says CityVille is its fastest-growing game ever. According to AppData, CityVille has 54 million monthly active users, for second place overall (and only two million behind FarmVille).

There are no consequences in CityVille and there is no strategy. There’s also no winning (rather, as in FarmVille, an endlessly extending horizon of tasks to complete).

The worst thing that can happen is a crop can wither or you can allocate your “energy” to collecting rent and not have enough to empty the cash registers at your stores.

But, not to worry–come back in five minutes and there’s another unit of energy waiting for you.

CityVille is satisfying on a superficial level that I hadn’t thought possible. It’s not even like Angry Birds, my former casual game of choice, which breaks all sorts of age and language barriers in its simplicity, but still requires you to position the slingshot correctly and think through the physics of the various projectiles.

In CityVille, all you do is click, click, click.

Zynga seems to want three things from users: Their time, their money and their recruitment of their friends. As for time, I’ve given plenty of it, although you usually run out of stuff to do about 15 minutes into any one session (Zynga wouldn’t want game play to be a burden or feel too complicated).

But I’m not sure my obsession is paying off for Zynga. I’ve spent a grand total of 50 cents on the game. That’s because I wanted to spend the 15 Facebook credits I’d gotten as part of a launch promotion, but Zynga had a minimum purchase of 20 credits. Coughing up two quarters got me the difference–and it also hooked up my Facebook account to my PayPal account for the first time.

I currently have 20 CityVille “neighbors.” They are Facebook connections from all different parts of my life, including high school friends, tech industry people and fellow reporters. We get credits for heading over to each other’s cities and helping out, accepting roles at each other’s city halls and other municipal buildings and setting up franchises in each other’s cities and resupplying them.

And Zynga constantly harasses us to post on our own or other people’s Facebook walls to ask them for in-game gifts and brag about in-game achievements.

Conscious of polluting other people’s walls and admitting to people how much CityVille I play, I usually decline all the offers to broadcast my CityVille needs and accomplishments. But it’s clear Zynga could stand to add even more communication channels if it wanted to; a friend recently emailed me off-game to ask if I could hurry up and send him a CityVille zoning permit.

I get the sense most of my particular set of neighbors haven’t given Zynga a lot of cash for virtual goods, considering our cities are growing at about the same rate and I see them on there at least once a day helping tend to my crops and resupplying their franchises. There are no in-game advertisements.

A few of my neighbors, however, have accumulated premium goodies galore. A certain Facebook exec’s city is decorated with paid-for doodads like a basketball court, tennis court and bronze statue–but I imagine it’s not too hard for him, of all people, to stock up on Facebook credits.

A particular start-up CEO who’s my virtual neighbor seems to play on an hourly basis. He has already hit level 35. You know that somewhere a Zynga engineer is scurrying to create more tasks and content to add more levels to keep up with him and other addicts.

And only one of my neighbors appears to have never returned to the game after setting up her initial city.

Meanwhile, my own city keeps on growing. I’m currently at level 26. I’m now the mayor of my city and considering a run for governor.

But, now that I’m back from the hospital, I’d honestly really like to stop playing this game and let the healing begin.

Update: Since I first wrote a draft of this post on Sunday CityVille added 10 million users. I’ve updated the stats as of Wednesday morning.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101222/help-im-addicted-to-cityville/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20101214/hp-photosmart-estation-printer-zeen-tablet-review/ http://allthingsd.com/20101214/hp-photosmart-estation-printer-zeen-tablet-review/#comments Tue, 14 Dec 2010 23:02:13 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://solution.allthingsd.com/?p=1567 Just when you think you can’t fit anything else into an all-in-one device that already prints, copies, scans, and faxes, HP ups the ante. The HP Photosmart eStation e-All-in-One performs all those tasks and includes a seven-inch, touch-screen tablet computer that doubles as a display when snapped onto the printer. This tablet lets users do things like check email, Facebook or weather, but I can’t imagine using it much as a stand-alone tablet, at least in its current version. And people who just want basic printer functions may grow tired of the tablet’s extra features.

Over the years, printers have progressively shifted from PC accessories to devices that can work independent of PCs. They started small, as dedicated 4×6 printers that had built-in memory-card readers and used basic photo-editing capabilities, and have matured into models like last year’s HP Photosmart Premium All-in-One with Touch-Smart Web that offered apps for printable things like maps, coloring book pages and recipes.

The $400 HP e-All-in-One (http://3.ly/DP8b) takes this concept a step further by enabling even more independence from the PC because its tablet—named the Zeen—is more robust and can browse the Web, check email in a dedicated email program and run a limited selection of apps. It also works as a stand-alone tablet when detached from the e-All-in-One, though it only connects to the Internet via Wi-Fi rather than a cellular connection. It runs on the Android 2.1 operating system, but can only access certain apps rather than any app in the Android Market.

Perhaps an even more important new feature is that this all-in-one will print anything emailed to it from any device connected to the Internet, thanks to ePrint, a cloud-based printing system. This system assigns an email address to the e-All-in-One during its set-up and almost anything sent to that email address will print out, including attachments, no matter where the email is coming from.

One catch is that you must only send the document to the e-All-in-One’s email address and can’t CC anyone else or add another address to the “to” line of the email. A spokesman for HP said that this is done to prevent spam print-outs because batches sent to several people won’t print.

HP also has an exclusive relationship with products running Apple’s latest iOS 4.2 operating system for hand-held devices. Apple’s iPads, iPhones, and iPod touches now have a built-in feature called AirPrint which allows them to print anything directly to HP’s new ePrint printers as long as these devices and the printer are connected to the same Wi-Fi network. I tested this several times using an iPhone and it worked, printing Web pages, emails and photos. I liked the ease of using ePrint and AirPrint. Printouts looked sharp and printed quickly.

But I found the concept behind the e-All-in-One’s detachable tablet screen to be both alluring and confusing. It’s great to be able to do more with the printer’s touch screen and apps—but you don’t want to stand at a desk looking down at this screen, so it makes sense that the tablet is detachable. On the other hand, tablets often work in place of printed paper. I use my iPad for things like finding a recipe online, standing the iPad on my kitchen counter and cooking from that on-screen recipe. If I used the eStation All-in-One like that, I would ultimately print less often, which seems to defeat the purpose of having this big thing in your home. The HP eStation All-in-One measures about 18 inches wide and about 14 inches deep.

HP’s Zeen tablet can be detached from the e-station, but its uses as a stand-alone are questionable.

In order to save energy, the eStation All-in-One goes to sleep when it hasn’t been used for 15 minutes. This is a fine idea for environmental reasons, but in sleep mode, it also turns off its connection to the local Wi-Fi network. This means that if documents are emailed to its assigned address it may not print if it’s not awake and online. An HP spokesman said the company recently issued a fix for this problem that wakes up the printer when something is sent to it, but not all printers have been updated.

The Zeen tablet’s battery recharges every time it’s docked in the eStation All-in-One’s base, and HP estimates that its battery life is around four to six hours with Wi-Fi turned on. Hard buttons for volume and power are hidden on the Zeen’s back edge, as are speakers. A spokesman for HP said that eStation All-in-Ones will be updated early next year to run Android 2.2, which is faster and plays Flash videos.

The Zeen’s four gigabytes of internal memory hold roughly 100 apps, 35 of which come pre-loaded on the tablet. These include apps for MapQuest, Disney, Facebook and the Barnes and Noble bookstore, from which digital books, magazines and newspapers can be purchased and downloaded. Photos, videos, music and other files must be stored on an SD card in the Zeen’s SD card slot.

All documents sent to the e-All-in-One using HP’s ePrint can be seen online at hp.com/go/ePrintCenter as long as users register their printer and set up an account, which I did in about two minutes. Here, too, users can add or remove apps from their printer. I preferred adding and removing apps directly from my Zeen tablet’s screen, but it takes some digging to find the Add More icon for adding apps. Over a dozen HP products support ePrint; they range from $100 to $450.

The concept of ePrint is a smart one, but the printer’s tendency to go into sleep mode to save energy is a problem. I like that the Zeen tablet detaches from the e-All-in-One, but its functionality as a tablet with limited apps and capabilities isn’t very sensible.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101214/hp-photosmart-estation-printer-zeen-tablet-review/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100820/viral-graphic-what-if-solar-power-grew-as-fast-as-facebook/ http://allthingsd.com/20100820/viral-graphic-what-if-solar-power-grew-as-fast-as-facebook/#comments Fri, 20 Aug 2010 07:15:19 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=32530

In a slight switcheroo from viral video, here is a cool infographic from the One Block Off the Grid solar energy blog.

As 1BOG notes:

“Facebook recently passed 500 million users. If the growth rate of the world’s largest and fastest growing social network could be applied to solar, it would only take 4.7 years to power the entire world with solar energy.”

And that’s without adding in all the energy expended poking, friending and throwing sheep!

Check out the graphic (click in it to make it larger)–1BOG explains that the green is the growth curve of Facebook since 2004 if it were applied to global solar energy. The x-axis is months and the y-axis represents additional terawatts solar energy generating capacity that would be added over the next decade.

So you don’t miss a video, here is the one that Facebook showed at the launch of its Places geo-location feature yesterday (and which seems to have been shot partly in Dolores Park in San Francisco, right near All Things Digital Worldwide HQ):

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100820/viral-graphic-what-if-solar-power-grew-as-fast-as-facebook/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20100729/liveblogging-microsoft%e2%80%99s-financial-analyst-meeting-afternoon-session-nobody-puts-stevie-in-the-corner/ http://allthingsd.com/20100729/liveblogging-microsoft%e2%80%99s-financial-analyst-meeting-afternoon-session-nobody-puts-stevie-in-the-corner/#comments Thu, 29 Jul 2010 20:15:07 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=31432

BoomTown has been in Redmond, Wash. today to attend Microsoft’s annual Financial Analyst Meeeting, where top execs from the software giant have been taking the stage to talk about All Things Microsoft.

I liveblogged this morning’s sessions here, and now the afternoon opened with CEO Steve Ballmer.

The pugnacious exec has been under a little bit of pressure from Wall Street, due to the company’s naggingly limp stock price, even though Microsoft (MSFT) just turned in record results for its fourth quarter

He has even been subject to an ongoing series of rumors, scuttling around the tech sector, that Ballmer would even be replaced due to the moribund shares.

That did not happen today, with Ballmer appearing as confident as ever, very loud and proud, hanging out and kibitzing with investor dudes (they are all dudes here, for the most part) at the technology showcase after the morning session.

Like a particularly aggressive tour director on “The Love Boat,” in fact, he even ordered the analysts to go see all the stuff on display, such as a mobile data center, Windows 7 Phones and its gesture gaming technology now called Kinect.

We complied.

After a lovely lunch, here is a report of the action at the afternoon session at FAM:

1 pm PT: Ballmer took to the stage to talk about Microsoft’s consumer businesses.

First to get praise: Xbox, a money-losing, but very innovative business.

Read the screen: FY10 A Great Year. FY11: Even better.

Ballmer was hot on Kinect, which will be “wow.”

Next: Bing!

Share was from eight to 12.7 percent, frequent releases, mobile focus and strong brand awareness.

Yay. Except the part about Google (GOOG) still having a 70 percent share of the search market.

“We’re not confused, we have a lot of work to do here,” said Ballmer, who noted the price tag for competing in search was high. “It’s going to take a lot more.”

A lot.

Office 2010 was next and it’ll be cloudier, touchier, socialier than ever.

Next up: Windows 7–a definite home run, with an almost 93 percent share on laptops.

“Suffice it to say, Windows is the tide that floats all boats,” said Ballmer.

That is, of course, except that PCs are being inevitably supplanted by many other types of other consumer devices.

Thus, Ballmer moved onto tablets, which he called slates and convertibles.

He took some shots at Apple (AAPL), and promised something would be coming soon.

It better.

Ballmer did admit the truth: “They’ve sold certainly more than I’d like them to sell, let me just be clear about that.”

Then it was onto a demo of some new stuff, including the availability of a “Personal Cloud” for users of Windows 7 and Windows Phone 7.

Essentially, as many companies have been trying to do, it a way for consumers to have access to photos, music and more anywhere on any device.

There was also a new Windows synch feature, which is part of this anything-anywhere-anytime-any device theme.

At this point in the afternoon, I have to say that the thought of a hyper-sharing world of endless data shooting all over the place was exhausting.

I suddenly started thinking about starting a site called Hermit.com–please don’t visit, as I have nothing to share with you and I don’t care what you’re doing either.

Where were those sugary donuts, Microsoft?

I perked up at the demo of the Windows Phone 7, which is very slick and looks terrific. As with Bing, it is nicely differentiated from Apple’s iPhone or Google’s Android mobile operating system.

There is some nice automatic integration in the Windows 7 Phone with Facebook, the powerful social networking platform, with cool blue dots as the updating signal.

2:06 pm: Ballmer was back, declaring he’s not only a PC, but “I’m a Phone too!”

Not quite as catchy a motto, but I like the effort.

Ballmer also touched on Microsoft’s retail stores, which I like to call Not-Apple-But-They-Look-Like-Them Stores.

Next up: CFO Peter Klein, whom I have never seen in person. Let me say, compared to most Microsoft execs, he is unusually young looking, as if he just got his driver’s license.

But he is clearly a smartie, pulling out all the big graphs of money stuff, discussing the economics of the cloud and how it will will result in profit growth.

Many wish the boxed software business did not have to die, but it is on its last legs, so it’s time to hug the cloud for dear life

Klein’s argument that it will all be okay: Microsoft will sell to more users, they’ll earn more per customer and customer satisfaction is increased.

He walked through the numbers, which have been good, noting he hoped for more of the same.

2:31 pm: It’s Q&A time, with Ballmer coming out and calling for “ENERGY!” from the group.

If there were donuts, perhaps! Otherwise, it’s more of a snoozy afternoon situation. Zzzzzzz.

While waiting for other execs to get onstage, Ballmer made a kind of humble-pie statement for shareholders, noting he is a big one too and wanted the stock price higher.

“I’m all in,” he declared, noting he still held 86 percent of his shares in Microsoft since he arrived decades ago.

Of course, that 14 percent represents billions of dollars to have to scrape by on.

The first question was: Wassup with tablets? “It feels like right now you are not completely clear,” said the questioners.

Ballmer was a bit defensive, with his voice going up and up some more. It’ll use Intel (INTC) chips and Windows, but he was still not more specific.

“We’ll be in market as soon as we can,” he said, which was to say that he was not saying.

The next few questions were about financial details and costs. Again, Ballmer noted the returns were strong and other execs said the company had discipline.

More about the cloud, which COO Kevin Turner continued to declare was a big focus. “The proof’s in the pudding,” he said. “But clearly, we have to execute.”

Another question about the tablet, which seemed to annoy Ballmer, who made a lot of noise about being ready to compete.

One tidbit: The Windows 7 tablet will print.

Wheeeee!

After declaring Google’s Android, a “weird collection” of phones, he repeated that Microsoft was all in with its tablet.

Well, get in then!

A good question is asked about what Ballmer thought would be a good sign of progress on mobile phones a year from now.

Well, more share and to stop the downward slide of it.

Then a key question: What if Windows 7 Phone does not work, if it is like the failed Vista operating system software.

For the first time, Ballmer answered quietly: “It won’t be.”

And, then much louder, he’s all in.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100729/liveblogging-microsoft%e2%80%99s-financial-analyst-meeting-afternoon-session-nobody-puts-stevie-in-the-corner/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20100615/the-summer-to-go-on-a-power-diet/ http://allthingsd.com/20100615/the-summer-to-go-on-a-power-diet/#comments Tue, 15 Jun 2010 23:40:45 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://solution.allthingsd.com/?p=1251 As temperatures climb to their highest levels, so, too, do the cost of home utilities bills. So how do you at least keep your energy-sucking electronics in check?

Summer months are the most expensive electricity usage months of the year, according to a study from the U.S. Energy Information Association, a government agency. So whether you’re trying to save money or attempting to live a more environmentally friendly lifestyle, several technologies can make the task a bit easier. This week, I’ve prepared a run down of some of the many devices and websites that can help you to reduce power consumption.

Intelligent Power Strips

Call it standby power, vampire power or phantom power: When your appliances are plugged into the wall and not in use, they’re still sucking up energy. To solve this problem, some people go around their house unplugging electronics, but then they have to go around plugging these in again when they need to use them. And certain machines, like TiVos (TIVO), for example, will reboot every time they’re unplugged and plugged, which takes significantly more time than turning on a lamp after plugging it in again.

Smart strips like the HP Monster Digital PowerCenter let you choose which plugged-in devices stay on.

A number of special power strips have come out within the year that are designed to simplify this process by ensuring devices don’t draw power while plugged in. The $40 Smart Strip Power Strip from Bits Ltd. (bitsltd.net) has either seven or 10 outlets, depending on the model. These include three red outlets for products you never want to turn off and one blue “control” outlet. Electronics plugged into the remaining white outlets stay on or shut down depending on what’s plugged into the blue outlet. So if your computer is plugged into a blue outlet and you shut it down, your speakers, scanner, printer and monitor would also turn off as long as they’re plugged into the Smart Strip’s white outlets.

A similar product, in which plugged-in electronics take their cue from a control outlet, is the $50 HP (HPQ) Monster Digital PowerCenter with GreenPower (http://3.ly/3hXF). This strip, which has six three-pronged outlets, also includes two surge-protected phone connections for fax lines or modems.

The iGo Green Power Smart Tower.

The $80 Power Smart Tower with iGo Green Technology (http://3.ly/C7ce) includes four outlets that are always on and four that power down when anything that’s plugged in turns off. It also has two built-in USB power ports for charging via USB.

Track More, Waste Less

When people go on diets, they’re often told to write down everything they eat so they’re more conscious of what they’re ingesting every day. A study by the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford showed a 5% to 15% reduction in power consumption just by providing energy information to consumers.

One tool that could help you trace your electricity usage is the Consumer Electronics Association’s Energy Calculator (http://3.ly/gp2M). People fill in data on how much they use specific devices—like “digital television, 21 to 39 inches” or “notebook PC”— in their home per day or per month. The site calculates typical watts per device and figures out the energy-consumption costs for each over the period of a month and over a year, and then adds up the totals for each device. The idea is to let people see how small usage adjustments can have a big monetary impact over time.

If you’d rather not do the work of inputting data on your power usage, the Google PowerMeter (google.com/powermeter) might be up your alley. It digitally tracks your usage patterns using meter data supplied by your utility company and its results can be accessed from any Web browser or your iGoogle homepage. A Google representative says this service is gradually rolling out in tests with utility companies. Currently, 10 utilities are partnered with PowerMeter in five countries, including the U.S.

If your utility company isn’t one of the 10 that work with Google’s (GOOG) PowerMeter, you can buy a special gadget that monitors consumption, including some that physically hook into your fuse box. A list can be found here (http://3.ly/Un3h). One relatively less expensive device from Current Cost is $169.

Before You Buy

If you’re buying new electronics soon, you may want to consider a product’s energy efficiency before buying it.

The U.S. Department of Energy has a Web database of Energy Star compliant products, which meet requirements set by the DOE and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (http://3.ly/SSsy).

Information on the Consumer Electronics Association website (http://3.ly/4x9P) helps people decide whether to replace or repair a product, from an efficiency standpoint.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Email Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100615/the-summer-to-go-on-a-power-diet/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100603/alan-mulally-session/ http://allthingsd.com/20100603/alan-mulally-session/#comments Thu, 03 Jun 2010 19:27:26 +0000 Peter Kafka http://d8.allthingsd.com/?p=484 Ford CEO Alan Mulally has come to D8 to take the hot seat, a position he should be used to after steering Ford through the recent financial crisis. Ford shunned the bailout money that carried GM through a restructuring and sustained Chrysler through its sale to Italian automaker Fiat.

Ford (F) recently released SYNC, a voice-activation package on some models that integrates the content and functionality of mobile devices with the car itself. SYNC also adds apps to the car, though it’s not clear what these features will mean for the future of American automakers.

Liveblog

Mullaly appears onstage wearing a very bright red vest. Vibrant!

At Walt’s request, Mulally shows off a piece of paper with handwritten notes that purport to explain Ford’s interest in all things digital. Lots of computers are involved in the creation of your Taurus.

12:30 pm: Kara wants to know why cars have been basically digitally ignorant for a long time. Walt: You open the door to you car and it’s 1957 again. Why is that?

For the record, Mulally doesn’t think you should text and drive.

He also wants you to keep your hands on the wheels and eyes on the road. So there’s lots of digital stuff being built into dashboard and console. Like the SYNC iPod/phone, etc., manager.

Ford is playing around with features like allowing drivers to have their text messages read to them. But safety is paramount. All of our data says your safest operation is when you have your hands on the wheel and eyes on the road. But right now, we feel that listening to email and text is a good first step. But we don’t want you sending email and text via voice, at least for now.

12:35 pm: Kara–Why is this taking so long? [i.e., "where is my jetpack?"]

Walt: Yeah! Even fancy German and Japanese cars don’t do it well. It’s pathetic!

Mulally: Don’t blame me! I just got here. Part of the problem is that car development is much slower than consumer electronics R&D cycle. For instance, a lot of competitors have embedded a phone in the car. We’re avoiding that and focusing on interface, so as consumers exchange and swap devices, they can do that.

12:38 pm: A pitch for “My Ford Touch,” which seems to have lots of bells and whistles, but sounds confusing to this frequent walker and subway-taker.

12:39 pm: Walt tries explaining it. “The instrument cluster, which has been on steering wheels forever, is now going to be a on a screen.”

Mulally: Right. We want to make it intuitive. Etc.

12:40 pm: Still trying to explain it. Screen goes on steering wheel and allows customizable controls for operating car, as well as extras.

12:41 pm: Kara–what is that people want to do, anyway?

Mulally: Good question. We watch what people do in cars and try to help them do it, because they’re going to do it anyway. For instance, we’re building in Pandora to our cars. You’ll get the music via the Web, from your cellphone, but you’ll operate it on our panel. Also Stitcher, Open Beak, etc.

A lot of people here are using apps. You’ll get to use them in the car.

12:43 pm: Walt–Will you need a special Ford version of these apps?

Mulally: Yep. You use our API

12:44 pm: Kara wants better navigation services. She doesn’t want to hear a mean German lady giving her directions though.

Walt: Yeah! All of your GPS systems are lousy! The ones on phones are better!

Mulally: We’re with you. That’s why we want to rely on developers to build the good stuff, via our API.

12:47 pm: Let’s talk about the car industry, period. You just got here. You were in aerospace, before. Also, the whole oil spill thing does change the way we look at cars, right?

Mulally: Before I left Boeing (BA), I thought about where the car industry was going. What I decided was that the industry is the soul of Manufacturing–“big M”–all around the world. Lots of stuff goes into this, no matter what country or region. It’s also part of the solution to economic growth, energy independence and environmental sustainability.

On that note: Clearly, the internal combustion engine is going to be around for a while. But we can make them operate more efficiently, etc. Take a v6 and make it run like a v8m, etc. Meanwhile hybrids are tough because you have two different systems: Batteries and internal combustion. Then in the future, we need to move to all-electric. We have a great road map for all of this. First all-electric cars launch this year. Hydrogen is farther out, don’t have the tech for it yet.

12:52 pm: Mulally describes challenges of electric car–need to figure out how and where to get the juice to cars.

12:53 pm: Kara–What about health of business?

Mulally: I like being here much better than testifying in front of Congress.

Kara: How did you get here?

Mulally: I flew! That’s why we have airplanes. For long-distance travel.

12:53 pm: A Zuckerberg hoodie joke.

12:54 pm: Mulally–Time goes fast. Last year, I was testifying on behalf my competitors, who were bankrupt. Now I’m a capitalist. But if GM and Chrysler went away, they’d take the supply base along with them, and they’d probably have put the U.S. into a bona fide depression.

I was asking for temporary help. I didn’t think all of us would end up owning our competitors.

12:57 pm: Mulally–Recovery is coming, by the way. We’ll have 3.5 percent expansion of GDP this year. And Ford is doing well. We’ll have market-share increases.

Kara: What kind of car do you drive?

Mulally: A different one every night.

Q&A

[I hope someone asks about the New York Times series that said that anything you do in your car besides driving is a safety risk. Anyone?]

Q: Please talk about the Mercury situation.

A: We had too many brands. Ford, Mercury and Lincoln. Mercury was supposed to be a gap-bridger between Ford and Lincoln. But the Ford line expanded, so we didn’t need Mercury. “Everybody’s got great options in Ford.” It’s also good news for Lincoln–because we don’t have other premium brands anymore, we’ll refocus on Lincoln for luxury.

Q: Proud Tesla owner Jason Calacanis wants to know why electric isn’t everywhere already.

A: We can make electric cars, but as you know, we can improve them, like battery life.

Calacanis: No. It’s not a problem. Batteries are great at Tesla.

Mulally: Nope. Most of them are too big, too heavy. There’s a lot of room to improve the batteries.

Other point is that the infrastructure has to get there. You need charging stations for people in apartments, in rural areas, etc. When we get there, Ford will be there.

Kara, and Walt want Jason to tell us how much his Tesla cost. Astonishingly, he goes mute.

Q: Did you really say you don’t intend to get a revenue stream from connectivity of cars to data? You don’t want a piece of money made by Yelp, Garmin, etc.?

A: You heard me correctly. We’re laser-focused on safe and efficient transportation. So there’s no conflict of interest.

Q: Walt wants to if these electronics actually sell cars.

A: I demoed this stuff for you, and you’re a tough critic, and you said “whoa!” This technology is absolutely a differentiator.

Q: You’re talking about innovation in cars. Does dealer network have to change too?

A: Absolutely. We’ve been right-sizing the dealer network to match demand for five years. Once you do that, throughput goes up, profitability goes up, interest in improving facilities goes up, etc. Then we can improve consumer experience.

Walt: Because it’s terrible right now.

Mulally agrees without saying so.

Q: China is pushing hard for electric cars. What does that mean for you?

A: I think China is going to continue to take a real leadership position on this. Big population, and they have a chance to really make a difference and maybe leapfrog the past.

Q: There’s that great Ford quote about not listening to his customers, because if he did he’d be in the horse business. So how you do innovate?

A: Stay closet to innovation. And have a point of view about how the industry is going to progress.

Q: Ah! Someone asked about focusing while you drive.

A: Eighty percent of accidents involve taking your eyes off the road. So we’re convinced that the mind has the cognitive ability to do other things while driving as long as you continue to watch the road. So we minimize anything that’s a distraction: Keyboard, certain confusing apps, etc. We are definitely going to be a gatekeeper with regard to apps, because it’s crucial that you not be distracted.

We’re done! Thanks for sticking around. See you in a year!

A note about our coverage: This liveblog is not an official transcript of the conversation that occurred onstage. Rather, it is a compilation of quotes, paraphrased statements and ad-lib observations written and posted to the Web as quickly as possible. It is not intended as a transcript and should not be interpreted as one.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100603/alan-mulally-session/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20100224/viral-video-bill-gates-ted-talk-on-innovating-to-zero-emissions/ http://allthingsd.com/20100224/viral-video-bill-gates-ted-talk-on-innovating-to-zero-emissions/#comments Wed, 24 Feb 2010 13:15:59 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=24787

One of the more remarked-upon talks at the recent TED conference was by Microsoft co-founder and mega-philanthropist Bill Gates.

Rather than talk about his work around AIDS and other global medical issues like malaria (last year he released a box full of mosquitoes at the conference to make a point), or education reform, he focused, surprisingly, on the future of energy and the need to reach zero carbon emissions by 2050.

In fact, the Microsoft (MSFT) leader said that if he had one planetary wish, this would be it. Well, also someday beating Google (GOOG) in search, but Gates managed to keep that to himself.

All kidding aside, it was a very interesting talk, and here is the video of the speech by Gates:

[Photo Credit: James Duncan Davidson for TED]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100224/viral-video-bill-gates-ted-talk-on-innovating-to-zero-emissions/feed/ 5 http://allthingsd.com/20100222/google%e2%80%99s-ad-platform-update/ http://allthingsd.com/20100222/google%e2%80%99s-ad-platform-update/#comments Mon, 22 Feb 2010 18:58:25 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=35354

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100222/google%e2%80%99s-ad-platform-update/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100112/cirrus-logic-ups-dec-qtr-guidance-stock-rallies/ http://allthingsd.com/20100112/cirrus-logic-ups-dec-qtr-guidance-stock-rallies/#comments Tue, 12 Jan 2010 08:00:40 +0000 Eric Savitz http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=20013 Cirrus Logic (CRUS) late Monday said it now sees revenue for its fiscal third quarter ended December 26 of $65 million, above previous guidance of $58 million to $62 million. The company said the better-than-expected results reflected strong demand for a range of audio products, and modest improvement in demand for energy products.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100112/cirrus-logic-ups-dec-qtr-guidance-stock-rallies/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091202/just-slap-the-thing-in-a-macbook-already-will-ya/ http://allthingsd.com/20091202/just-slap-the-thing-in-a-macbook-already-will-ya/#comments Wed, 02 Dec 2009 22:12:40 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=30146 With 1.3-billion transistors and a 48-core processor, Intel’s new “Single-chip Cloud Computer” could power a formidable computer indeed. But it will be a while before the SCC reaches market, if ever.

Uncrated at an event in San Francisco Wednesday, the next-generation chip boasts approximately 10 to 20 times the processing power found inside current Intel (INTC) “Core” CPUs. And it can operate on as little as 25 watts, or at 125 watts when running at maximum performance–about the amount of energy consumed by two household light bulbs.

“With a chip like this, you could imagine a cloud datacenter of the future which will be an order of magnitude more energy efficient than what exists today, saving significant resources on space and power costs,” said Justin Rattner, head of Intel Labs and Intel’s chief technology officer. “Over time, I expect these advanced concepts to find their way into mainstream devices.”

But not yet. Right now, Intel is giving the chips to a few select research partners, who will use them to develop new software applications and programming models for future multicore processors. Said Ratner, “This is not a product. It never will be a product. But it provides a very good platform for conducting research.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091202/just-slap-the-thing-in-a-macbook-already-will-ya/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090514/inspector-gadget-are-electronic-gizmos-power-vampires/ http://allthingsd.com/20090514/inspector-gadget-are-electronic-gizmos-power-vampires/#comments Thu, 14 May 2009 18:27:54 +0000 Ana Campoy http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=11817 Cell phones and laptops may seem like pretty minor offenders when it comes to energy guzzling. But as they become ubiquitous all over the planet, their growing power consumption is emerging as a major source of concern for those trying to conserve energy and stop global warming.

Communication gadgets and other consumer electronics burn up 15 percent of all the electricity consumed in households around the world, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency. If the use of electronics continues to spread at the current pace, their energy draw could double by 2022 and triple by 2030. At that point, they would absorb as much electricity as all houses in the U.S. and Japan today.

But are electric gadgets vampires or saviors? Telecommuters who would otherwise burn gasoline to get to work, or drivers who get to their destination quicker by using a GPS device are actually saving energy, argues the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.

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