Internet Week party report: It never stops

The crowd at Tuesday night's Internet Week kickoff party.

(Credit: Steven Ekerovich/GuestofaGuest.com)

NEW YORK--Tuesday evening was the first night on the job for at least one of the waitresses at the brand-new Standard Hotel, a Los Angeles import straddling the about-to-open High Line elevated park in Manhattan's downtown Meatpacking District. And it must have been quite the trial by fire when several dozen unexpected patrons showed up for an impromptu Internet Week New York gathering.

That's the thing about Internet Week--as it has no centralized location, and events can vary wildly by geography (it seems like half the panels and conferences are in midtown hotels and the other half are in downtown NYU lecture halls), afterparties seem to be where everyone winds up. This one was the work of New York Times digital marketer Soraya Darabi and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, who invited a few people to the outdoor bar at the Standard. Guests "checked in" to mobile networking site Foursquare, their friends dropped by, and soon the place had snowballed to such an extent that the guests decided to give the bar staff a break and relocate to the notably less highbrow Hogs & Heifers Saloon across the street.

On the bright side, I'm expecting that some of the well-off dot-commers in attendance at the Standard, who included billionaire Mark Cuban, probably tipped well.

However haphazard it may seem after hours--Monday night, for example, featured an installment of the Ignitegeek-talks series, a TechSet party at champagne bar Bubble Lounge, and the festival's official kickoff event hosted by YouTube and the New York Observer--Internet Week has an agenda.

"New media and Internet technology are very important to the city of New York, certainly important to the film, television, and advertising world," said Katherine Oliver, commissioner of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting, at a small opening announcement Tuesday night at the new, Google-powered New York visitors' center in midtown. "All of our mediums are converging, and we're exploring ways that we can help these companies."

That's pretty clear at some of the events, like reviews site Yelp's party on Tuesday night, which aimed to showcase and promote local businesses in the Chelsea neighborhood, or the old-meets-new media partnership of YouTube and the Observer for the kickoff party, or Tuesday and Wednesday's convergence-themed Mediabistro Circus conference.

It's less evident, say, at two o'clock in the morning at Hogs & Heifers, where one of the primary objectives seemed to be convincing the people who'd flown in from San Francisco to get up and dance on the bar, as is customary in the establishment. (They didn't.)

(Photo credit: Steven Ekerovich/GuestofaGuest.com)

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Is community wind power full of hot air?

Call it wind power for the neighborhood.

Some companies are trying to stake out a middle ground in wind power by making mid-size turbines big enough for a school or big-box retailer to use, but not so big that they require a convoy of trucks to be delivered.

Distributed wind generation with medium-size turbines runs counter to the prevailing trends in the industry. In the past several years, turbines have gotten bigger and bigger to lower the cost of generated electricity. At the opposite extreme, there is rapid growth in sales of the small wind machines designed for a single home.

A new shape in wind?

(Credit: Optiwind)

But mid-size turbine advocates say if the industry can produce an economically attractive product, there's a large potential market.

Optiwind, a company formed two years ago to make mid-size turbines, is designing a machine to work in places with only a fair, or "Class 2," wind resource found in places like its home state of Connecticut. Potential customers could beschools, wastewater treatment plants, or businesses.

"We've designed systems to work in Class 2 areas, which happens to be where most of us live and work," said David Hurwitt, vice president of marketing at Optiwind. "I'm guessing there (are also) a lot of Wal-Marts in more rural areas where there's lots of wind and land."

Placing wind turbines near people--be it in suburbs or even rural farms--is contentious in many communities as people worry about noise, aesthetics, or flickering light. At the same time, the growing interest in cleaner forms of energy for environmental, economic, or political reasons has more people exploring on-site wind power.

Optiwind is developing turbines--slightly less than 200-feet tall--rated at 150 kilowatt or 300 kilowatts, aimed at organizations that have an electricity bill of at least $100,000 a year. Tied to the grid, these turbines cut electricity bills and give the purchaser a predictable cost of electricity, which can be very attractive to an organization like a school, Hurwitt said.

A 150-kilowatt turbine would cover a portion of the electricity needs of an office building or school. By contrast, typical utility-scale turbines are rated at 2,500 kilowatts or 3,000 kilowatts, generating enough electricity at capacity to power hundreds of homes and stores.

Concentrating wind
Optiwind's turbine eschews the traditional three-blade design and uses a silo-like structure with fans on either side. When the wind hits the structure, it curls over the surface and enters the fans at a higher density to produce more power, Hurwitt explained.

FloDesign Wind Turbine is another company building a mid-size turbine using technology adapted from jet engines. The company, which is funded by venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, is in the process of working on a prototype turbine that also works on the principle of packing more power into available wind.

Images: Distributing wind power in the neighborhood

Like Optiwind's turbine, FloDesign seeks to manipulate air movements so that wind blows faster through turbines to make more power in a smaller space.

"A bunch of other companies are experimenting with different types of wind acceleration. The idea is to improve the concentration of wind, which is the fuel you're working with," Optiwind's Hurwitt said.

Optiwind, which raised a series A round of venture capital from Charles River Ventures last year, plans to build and test its first turbine this year and hopes to launch a commercial product in 2011.

Steel in the ground
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory late last year published a report that found that community-owned wind installations can bring advantages to municipalities and can ease the load on the power grid. But these types of installations--and the machines suited for them--face a number of technical and financial challenges.

When mid-size turbines use the traditional three-blade wind turbine design, they suffer from having a higher capital cost per kilowatt to install and higher maintenance costs, according to the NREL report.

Northern Power, based in Barre, Vt., is managing to sell a mid-size turbine using a three-blade design. Inside, though, it uses a different drivetrain technology than its larger, utility-scale counterparts.

Instead of the typical gear box, its Northwind 100, which is rated at 100 kilowatts, has a direct drivetrain and a generator that uses permanent magnets, which is quieter and more reliable than other designs, said Northern Power CEO John Danner. "Reliability is the name of the game when you are selling to school principals or town mayors--they don't have maintenance departments to keep things up and running," Danner said.

With good wind, high electricity costs, and good incentives, the payback on a 100-kilowatt turbine can be as little as five years, Danner said.

NIMBY or welcome?
Hyannis Country Gardens in Cape Cod went through the rigmarole of erecting a Northern Power wind turbine earlier this year.

One of the store's owners, Diana Duffley, spent almost three years getting the necessary permitting, paying for studies on light flickering and acoustics, and hosting town meetings. After about four months, the turbine produced more electricity than the garden center consumes, with the excess generating about $1,200 worth of electricity.

Neighbors were initially concerned about how the turbine, which has a 120-foot tower, would look and the noise (the turbine is quieter than the garden center's irrigation system). Over time, more people became interested and supportive, she said.

"People are scared of wind. People are trying to get the Cape Wind (offshore farm) project and it's an extremely controversial subject on the Cape. I feel by doing this I can reduce people's fear of wind," Duffley said. "Here, people can see wind power done right."

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Behold the motion-sensitive controller wars

The new motion-control system from Sony was announced at E3 on the heels of similar new technology from both Microsoft and Nintendo.

(Credit: Gamespot)

LOS ANGELES--Forget the console wars. We're in the motion-sensitive controller wars.

That much became clear Tuesday when, following on Monday's announcement by Microsoft that it was working on Project Natal, an impressive and complex full-body, hands-free motion-sensitive control system, both Nintendo and Sony revealed plans for new, advanced systems of their own.

Of course, Microsoft is the only real newcomer to this party. After all, Sony introduced the Eye Toy, a system that incorporated users' body movements into some games, years ago, and Nintendo's Wii vaulted to huge popularity on the strength of the innovative controls of its now-famous Wii-mote.

But over the last two days here at E3--the video game industry's most watched trade show--we've seen the three major video game hardware makers each up the ante in the race to provide consumers with much more intuitive ways to play games. And it's abundantly clear that what's really going on here is an aggressive play by each of the three companies to make their offerings more palatable to mainstream audiences, people who have traditionally not considered themselves gamers.

Microsoft's Project Natal is a hands-free, full-body sensing control system that can be used to play games, watch movies, do virtual painting, and much more. It appears to be easy to use, and quick to get going on. It's not known yet how much it will cost, or whether it will be bundled with the Xbox or sold as an accessory.

Nintendo's Wii Motion Plus, Vitality Sensor, confidence -- Tuesday, Jun 2, 2009" href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10254524-1.html" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; font-weight: bold; font-style: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-family: inherit; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(0, 67, 127); text-decoration: none; cursor: pointer; ">newly announced improvements to Wii Motion Plus (see video below) is the most incremental of the three new systems. It takes the successful Wii-mote and adds a physical feedback system that lets users feel what they're doing, and it also allows for rotational motion in 3D space, such as spinning a skydiver's body around, which someone could do in "Wii Sports Resort," one of the games that Nintendo said would benefit from the new control system.

And Sony's new system is a set of wands with glowing orbs on top, that allow one-to-one motion like Nintendo's original Wii-mote, and which also give tangible physical feedback like the new Nintendo system.

With its massive success with the Wii, Nintendo would seem to have a leg up over its competitors. That's only because it doesn't have to work very hard to market its motion-sensitive control regimen at this point: everyone knows that the Wii controller is simple, easy to use, and responds to users' hand and arm gestures.

On the other hand, Nintendo's new technology also represents the smallest incremental change, meaning that it will actually be more difficult to convince would-be customers that its new offering is much different than what it had before.

By comparison, both Sony and Microsoft are offering something entirely new, and will certainly have little trouble building marketing campaigns around them once they're ready to go on sale. The answer to the question of when those technologies actually will go on sale is not yet known, and it's certainly a big question. Whoever is last to this game will probably have a hard time selling their technology as new and innovative.

Based on this new arms race, however, it's clear there is exactly one guaranteed winner: consumers. Until now, people who wanted a true motion-sensitive controller had only one choice: the Wii. Now--or rather, when the technology hits the market--people who are considering buying a video game console will be able to choose whichever system they want. Their choice, in the end, may well be able to come down to which games are on offer.

And one would have to expect, since it's very obvious that all three companies are now going after the truly mainstream audience, that all three will be pushing their developer partners hard to come up with more casual gaming experiences, and fast.

I really liked what I saw from all three companies, even though all three technologies are somewhat different.

I actually think that Microsoft's Project Natal (see video below) is the biggest leap forward, and offers consumers the widest user experience. And given that Microsoft has been making huge strides in developing its Xbox Live service in such a way that there are plenty of things for casual gamers, or even non-gamers, to do, I suspect that Natal will end up being a real winner for the Xbox platform.

That said, the Xbox is also seen in the wider world, I think, as a much harder-core gaming console, as is the PS3. So, it was crucial for both Sony and Microsoft to come up with something for the casual gamer, and now. Whether they can change the perception of their consoles as geared to the hard-core is something I think will take some time. On the other hand, both companies are surely willing to throw a lot of marketing dollars at the problem, so I have faith those non-gamers out there will be seeing a lot of advertising geared at them.

Nintendo, meanwhile, has the opposite problem: it has to find a way to convince core gamers it has something to offer them. So I would imagine the company will be pushing its developer partners to incorporate its latest technology into more games geared to the "Halo" set.

Everyone wants to know about winners and losers, and I don't think we have any losers here. Whether we can crown winners yet is also unclear. I would have to say it's too early for that. But my sense is that there is plenty to be excited about here. And one thing that strikes me is that the technological innovations we've now seen from all three companies suggests that we're not about to see the next generation of consoles any time soon.

And why would we? With the new technology each company keeps putting out, we've already got three new systems, and we don't need to spend several hundred more dollars to get there.

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Speedy Opera 10 beta reconfigures as Web suite

Opera 10 has entered beta with the unstated goal of becoming more than a mere browser. Available for Windows,Mac, and Linux, the Norwegian program hopes to become a speedy utility--Turbo-charged, in their words--that handles browsing, e-mail, RSS, and torrents with robust features.

Improvements to Speed Dial give users more customization power than before.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

The most obvious changes in Opera 10 are the new default skin, created by British designer Jon Hicks, and a revamped Tab bar. The skin, Opera says, will continue to evolve before Opera 10 is finalized. Double-click or pull down on the bar below the tabs and above the location bar and you get thumbnail previews of each tab. The previews are resizable, so users who want to see only a small sliver of a tab to identify it visually don't have to worry about sacrificing screen real estate. The bar doesn't remember your last position for it when manually adjusted and then closed by double-clicking, but it does remember when you restart Opera.

One change Opera has yet to make is to rejigger the location bar to perform "smart searches." Whereas Firefoxand Chrome have both forced their location bar search protocol to do this by default, Opera's still takes you to a search results page. This may not bother some users, but after spending the majority of the past few months on Firefox and Chrome, I found it mildly irritating.

Opera's revamped Tab Bar can show (or hide) tab previews.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

You'll have an easier time tweaking the look of Opera 10, with improvements to Speed Dial and toolbar customizations. Speed Dial has received a refresh. You can expand it to show as many as 25 Web sites and set a background image. You can also set it to never appear. Customization is easier, too. Right-click on any toolbar to reveal a Customize option. From there, you can hide a toolbar or a particular widget such as the search box, download, and change skins on the fly, add or remove buttons, and add or adjust Panels. Opera has had the features in Panels, such as Notes, for a long time.

In this version, though, they round them all up behind one unified sidebar interface. Notes, Bookmarks, History, and Transfers are standard, as is a Widgets option from which you can download more panels. These widgets include things like a Facebook interface, a to-do list, and a Google services manager.

In addition to improvements to the browser, users can create panels to manage to their e-mail, newsfeeds, and chat, as well as select default clients to manage those services outside of Opera. The Opera default e-mail client, however, should be noted as the slickest of the baked-in browser e-mail clients. The e-mail folder tree smoothly integrates in a collapsible panel, while message composition opens in a new browser tab. Combined with Opera's MyOpera synchronization service, it provides users with a full-featured e-mail and browsing experience.

Opera's had e-mail integration for a while, but this is the most seamless it's been.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

Web developers will appreciate further improvements to Opera Dragonfly. In addition to the changes introduced in the alpha, developers can now edit the DOM and inspect HTTP headers from within the browser.

Opera 10 continues development of its Turbo mode, which uses proprietary compression technology to accelerate page loading. It's recommended for users in crowded Wi-Fi spots or on slow DSL lines or 56k modems, and users might even see slower page load times if they use it on a broadband connection, according to the company. According to their press release for this beta, Turbo "can offer broadband-like speeds on dial-up." If you have personal experience verifying this, please let me know in the comments below.

The Opera 10 beta 1 is definitely faster than its previous publicly available predecessor, the Opera 10 alpha, which in turn was dramatically faster than the most recent stable Opera, version 9.6. On a Windows XP desktop, with Service Pack 3, 2 GB of RAM, and a 2.8GHz processor, Opera 10 beta scored 5836.6 milliseconds on WebKit's SunSpider JavaScript test. The Opera 10 alpha hit 6068.7 ms on the same machine, while Opera 9.62 scored 7008.2 ms. This works out to be about 13 percent faster, although previous tests that I had done on a different computer found Opera 10 alpha to be three times faster than Opera 9.62.

Customizing toolbars is easier in Opera 10.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

Keeping in mind that the test only looks at JavaScript run times and that running the test on different computers can result in shockingly different results, we're still seeing performance improvements, although not as drastic as the jump from version 9 to version 10. Also, due to time constraints, I was unable to run Opera through tests on Mozilla's Dromaeo at the time the story was published. These will be updated later in the day on Wednesday.

Opera 10 remains the only browser to successfully complete all aspects of the test. While the new version of Chrome scores 100 out of 100 on the Acid3 standards compliance test, it fails the linktest. For users looking for the most complete feature experience, and one that's cross-platform and synchronizable out of the box, Opera 10 remains an excellent alternative browser.________________________________________________________________

Adobe service puts browsers side by side

Adobe's BrowserLab is a hosted service that allows Web developers to visualize what their site looks like in different browsers.

(Credit: Adobe)

Adobe on Tuesday said it is offering a free preview of its BrowserLab service, which allows Web developers to quickly see what their site looks like on a number of browsers.

The technology, previously code-named Meer Meer, was shown last year at the company's Max developer conference. Using virtualization, the tool can show how a site will look in Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safarirunning on different operating systems. Running BrowserLab requires a Mac or PC with Adobe Flash 10.

"Cross-browser testing has been one of the biggest challenges for Web designers because it is such an arduous and time-intensive task," Adobe's Lea Hickman said in a statement. "Now with Adobe BrowserLab, designers have a simple solution that enables comprehensive browser compatibility testing in just a matter of minutes, leaving Web designers with more time to be creative and deliver the high-impact sites customers are demanding."

Designers can compare a site in two browsers side by side as well as use an "onion skin" mode that shows a site in multiple browsers overlaid one on top of the other.

Adobe said that the preview version would be free, though it plans to charge at some point.

BrowserLab "will move to be a paid service down the line, though we have not announced the timing," Adobe product manager Scott Fegette said in a statement. "Currently the focus is on getting the preview out to users and making sure we're providing the best possible user experience."

Microsoft showed off a similar tool, SuperPreview, at its Mix09 event in Las Vegas earlier this year. Microsoft announced that the latest version of its Expression Web software for Windows would include the feature and show multiple browsers via a cloud-based service. It also made a free standalone version of SuperPreview available to allow users to compare how Web pages render in the three latest versions of Internet Explorer--IE 6, IE 7, and IE 8.

Fegette said that Microsoft's approach requires a large PC-based application.

"All we know is what was announced about SuperPreview a couple months ago at Mix, which at its core appears to be a large, Windows-only desktop application available for download which provides previewing support for locally-installed versions of Internet Explorer 7 and 8 alongside a dedicated IE 6 emulator, with the promise of 'cloud-based access' to alternate operating systems and browsers at an undisclosed point in the future," Fegette said.

BrowserLab's "onion skin" view compares how a Web site looks in multiple browsers with different browsers' views overlaid on one another.

(Credit: Adobe)

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