• Ladies & Gentleman…finally there’s something worth writing about.  After literal years of rumors and predictions, Apple has unveiled its tablet-based computer, appropriately titled the iPad.
• Watch a quick video overview of it here.
• Price starts at $499 for the 16GB WiFi ranging all the way up to $829 for the 64GB WiFi & 3G.
• Does this signify the soon-to-come death of Amazon’s Kindle?  Will the device be widely adopted by the health industry? ….only time will tell, but surely it will be exciting to see.

1. Top 10 solar technologies to watch out for.
2. Door opens for Aptera, 3 wheelers to grab DOE green car funds.
3. How Fort Irwin just signed the largest solar farm in the department of defense’s history.
4. After Bitter Feud, hybrid car startup, Greentech plans $6.5 billion plant.
5. Tata Nano increases production to keep up with strong demand.  Like I said, a carbon emissions nightmare.

• This is big.  Not just blogosphere big…..this is complete cultural shift big.
• Yale Physicists have for the first time in history made a definitive measurement of a “persistent current.”
• This persistent current, they describe as a “small but perpetual electric current that flows naturally through tiny rings of metal wire even without an external power source.”
• That’s right folks, a completely sustainable form of energy has been discovered.
• For years, these kind of studies have been covered up and slandered as fringe science and the work of conspiracy theorists, but now, with a school like Yale putting their name behind it, there’s no telling what’s to come next.  Exciting.

• A new national survey just came out from Kelton Research that shows some serious support for solar power:

92% of Americans think it is important for the nation to develop and use solar energy. This was consistent across all political party affiliations.

77% of Americans feel the Federal government should make solar power development a national priority, including the financial support needed.

Almost half (49%) of all Americans are currently pondering solar power options for their home or business.

43% of Americans make solar their top energy source, followed far behind by other sources including their second choice, wind (17%).

• That’s pretty awesome.  Progress is coming.

• The music industry as we know it is coming to an end, and faster than we once thought.
• One can blame two main causes for this; the internet, and music becoming almost completely digital.
• This, folks, I don’t feel is a bad thing.  I see a future where musicians utilize their digital content by giving it for free, as promotional means to get fans out to live shows.
• In fact, this is the only way I see it working.  There’s really no stopping the viral nature of the web, because no matter what, people crave information, and they want it for free.  Developers will keep coming up with more innovative/harder to track techniques for downloading and consumers will continue to download these programs and applications to facilitate their need for more, new content. It’s a circle that will never stop, and not to mention, downloading music is proven to be a greener practice, which gives it even more credibility in this day and age.
• NY Times’ Charles Blow reported back in the end of July:

A study last year conducted by members of PRS for Music, a nonprofit royalty collection agency, found that of the 13 million songs for sale online last year, 10 million never got a single buyer and 80 percent of all revenue came from about 52,000 songs. That’s less than one percent of the songs.

• It’s quite obvious what’s happening.  Money should never have been the deciding factor on an artist’s credibility or success. Within technology, you can see the cultural backlash to this failing industry model.
• My Advice for artists is this; utilize the long tail of our current market and give your music away for free to develop an audience/following.  If your music is good, these people will pay you to play live shows.  That’s it, that’s music.  If you’re in it for any other reasons than that, you may want to reevaluate your intentions.

• Who would have thought that Utah, of all the states, might just have the right idea to spread happiness across the US workforce and subsequently cause gigantic energy savings across the country.  What is the solution you might ask?  3 DAY WEEKENDS!
• About a year ago, Utah governor, John Huntman released the Working 4 Utah initiative.  The effort put 17,000 of the 24,000 executive branch employees on a 4 day a week, 10 hour per day schedule.
• The year has passed and the data is in, and it’s awesome.  Here are the just some of the many positive effects it is having on their society:

1. Energy in Utah has been cut by 13%, shrinking their carbon footprint by 6,000 metric tons.
2. Only 9 months into the program, Utah had saved $1.8 million from their budget.
3. A survey found 82% of the employees prefer the 4-day week schedule. It also showed “decreased health complaints, less stress and [taking] fewer sick days”.  Even customer complaints at the DMW are down.
4. Traffic has been dramatically decreased, plus with 10 hour work days, rush hour gets thinned out.
5. Commuting savings alone are expected to be in between $5 and $6 million per year.

• Sounds pretty amazing huh? I agree, and so do other places.  So far, El Paso, Texas and Melbourne Beach, Florida are launching their own programs.  Even a GM plant in Ohio is making the switch.
• Can you even imagine the savings of getting a state like New York, or California on a plan like this?  Well, let’s do it!
• THANK GOD IT’S THURSDAY!  (via GOOD)

• Now that the Cash for Clunkers program has drawn to a close, some interesting numbers are starting to come back.  Here are the top ten cars that were bought/clunked.

Most Popular Cars Bought

1. Toyota Corolla
2. Honda Civic
3. Ford Focus
4. Toyota Camry
5. Hyundai Elantra
6. Toyota Prius
7. Nissan Versa
8. Ford Escape FWD
9. Honda Fit
10. Honda CR-V AWD

Most Popular Clunkers

1. Ford Explorer 4WD
2. Ford F150 Pickup 2WD
3. Jeep Grand Cherokee 4WD
4. Jeep Cherokee 4WD
5. Ford Explorer 2WD
6. Dodge Caravan/Grand Caravan
7. Chevrolet Blazer 4WD
8. Ford F-150 Pickup 4WD
9. Chevrolet C1500 Pickup 2WD
10. Ford Windstar

• Is it just me, or does there seem to be a consistency here with the nationality of cars bought/clunked?  Hey US auto, get it together, eh?

• ‘China and the iPhone’ rumors have been brewing for quite some time, with nothing concrete coming from either Apple or Chinese telecoms…until today. First Shanghai Security News reported that Apple (AAPL) had reached a three-year deal with China Unicom to market the iPhone in the world’s largest cellphone market (600 million-plus subscribers). AFP and Reuters reported what China Unicom’s spokesperson told them: the two companies were still in negotiations and no agreement had been reached. Then, Tech.QQ, a Chinese blog quoted “informed sources” claiming a deal has been reached to launch the iPhone in China by the end of September 2009. The details are as follows:

• • The Apple and China Unicom deal will be a 3-year exclusive.
  • The iPhone will be customized for the China market (e.g. Chinese language and preloaded with “for China” apps).
  • China Unicom will pay Apple 3,000 CNY ($439 USD) per unit.
  • China Unicom will subsidize iPhone by pricing the iPhone below the 3,000 CNY paid to Apple. This would take the official iPhone price below the grey-market price for smuggled iPhones.
  • China Unicom has promised to sell a minimum 1 million units per year with significantly higher sales targets.
  • The iPhone for China will make use of Apple’s China App Store. (link)

• But will the iPhone even be a big success in China? I spent a year of my life living in China, when no one had an interest in the phone. China is a Microsoft lover and besides that, what they expect out of a phone, is much different than what the West is interested in. Take Japan for example. Softbank Mobile, one of Asia’s biggest tech companies and the exclusive carrier for the iPhone in Japan, can’t even give away the iPhone. They are the only country in the world actually offering the phone for free with a contract. They even discounted the data plan from $62 to $45.60 per month for existing and new subscribers. Many blamed the iPhone’s lack of MMS and Video for poor sales, but many blame the fact that a cell phone in Asia is the primary computing device for the mass majority. The iPhone requires a computer to be plugged into as well as iTunes (two things not common in an Asian household. Japan and China are identical in these instances. Apple must see the power in numbers, that of the 600M mobile suscribers, only a small percentage of that could make the phone a success. I polled 10 of my friends stilll living in Beijing and Shanghai, who said that interest in the iPhone is high (because it is American), but it’s more of an interest to play around with the phone that to actually want to purchase it. I think it will be an epic #fail.

• David here, live….reporting from my NY – LA American Airlines flight.
• Seems like just yesterday when I wrote about the the launch of their inflight Gogo WiFi service. Fast forward four months and I’m video chatting with Glu while he works on our new site design.  Nice.
• Overall, I’m quite impressed with the service.  Video-chatting was near flawless, only getting slightly laggy when Glu took a hand-roll break outside.
• Speakeasy’s speed check returned the following download/upload speeds:  1932kbps/266 on an LA server and 1288/307 on a NY server.  Not too bad at all.
• Make the internet free when you check a bag ($15 for one, $25 for an additional) and AA, you’ll have one very happy customer.
• ….and below my friends, might just be the first “I’m on a boat/I’m on a plane” wireless interaction….tinyComb wins.

• In retrospect, I have to agree with Farhad, but will a VC give the money back? Consider this; A VC who loses confidence or interest in a company can choose to cease new investments in that company and get diluted, or give the money back. But why would they? An LP who loses confidence in a VC fund technically still faces a legal obligation to continue meeting their capital calls. At best, they face losing all their capital. At worst, they have no choice but to throw good money after (perceived) bad. (EarlyStageVC). So as VC’s continue to live off of fumes (the average return is lower than a government bond, with a much higher magnitude of risk), will they continue to raise new funds, continue to take their 2% (and 20-30% of profits) in the belief that the good times are around the bend, or will they concede? With the overcrowded market, it seems that the life of the VC cannot live on as they once have before. It has been 11 years since the venture industry has returned more cash than it has plowed into investments, according to the National Venture Capital Association. The industry is now managing $257 billion, up from $64 billion in 1997. The general sentiment in the market since it has crashed is to avoid putting money into an industry than hasn’t turned a profit in that amount of time. So, the question now may be less of when will they give it back, as when will the VC’s run out of money, starting the long awaited industry shakedown? If there was any year to have it happen, 2009 seems appropriate. Look out.

(Image Via Forbes)

• Speaking at the Symbian Partner Event in San Francisco yesterday, an AT&T executive made some bold claims as to what the companies strategy is going to be for the next 5 years.
• Roger Smith, director of next generation services for AT&T discussed how the company will move forward with their smart phone strategy. The company wants to standardize their smart phones on a single operating system as part of their “dramatic consolidation” of mobile platforms initiative taking place throughout the next few years.
• Smart phones, by 2014, will make up the majority of phones connecting to AT&T’s network, and they want to make sure that they have a ubiquitious platform (aside from the iPhone) that will cut down on technical issues and increase third party involvement in developing applications.
• What’s interesting here? AT&T wants to go with an open-source mobile platform and it’s not Google’s Android. Smith said that Symbian is “a very credible and likely candidate” to become that one operating system.
• Nokia just completed its acquisition of Symbian, the largest mobile operating platform provider, which plans to go entirely open-source.  Over 77 million phones were sold usig Symbian last year.
• This is a surprising move for a big carrier to want to shift to an entire open platform, since in the past they have been notorious for wanting to stay in full control and lock up the decks.
• This could have been a huge get for Google if they could have convinced AT&T to jump on board with their own Android platform, which so far has only been embraced by one carrier and one manufacturer (supposedly two now); T-Mobile and HTC. Android has been poorly recieved thus far, despite 1 million phones projected to be shipped through its first quarter. Besides AT&T, Sprint’s CEO, Dan Hesse has publicly said that ‘he doesn’t think Android is ready yet’.
• With the pace at which smart phones are growing and the time frame the big carriers are placing on choosing what the future of their phone platforms will be, Google may be missing out hugely. Their whole idea of a mobile OS being open is a success in some sense considering the carriers are looking to move in that direction, however Google is not going to be the one getting credit for it.
• Whether or not Google is at the healm, this is a good day for the mobile industry. Nokia, Symbian and AT&T are doing their part to raise te bar for mobile standards. Once open everywhere, major strides can be made.

It’s November 25th, 2008 and eBay is going down in flames. Traffic has dropped off 20% this year alone with no hope in sight. What went wrong with the company besides those awful commercials? Here’s 10 Reasons why. Feel free to add to the list.

1. Overpopulated. Ebay got out of control 4 years ago with the whole ‘eBay Millionaires’ hype that spawned into ‘Sell Your Stuff On eBay’ brick and mortar stores and ultimately led to a massive influx of ubiquitous products.

2. Poorly Regulated. Counterfeit items and fake products flooded eBay all the way through 2006. Luxury brands have actually had to hire employees specifically to find people selling illegitimate items claiming to be ‘Real’. I prefer the term ‘Not Guaranteed Authentic’, but either way, it was detrimental to eBay.

3. Scams. Next we saw the Nigerian scandals popping up. For the last 2 years, it has been such a task to resell any technology item like a mobile phone or a laptop. Countless times I tried selling my Blackberry or Apple Macbook only to find the winning bidder is located in Nigeria and is trying to pull off some scam with a foreign bank account.

4. User Experience. Once eBay had it’s millionaires, along came the businesses that made their living off of it. New software was built for on-demand mass listings on eBay where eRetailers were clearing out their warehouses for decent margins. Now, when I search for a golf club or a pair of sneakers on eBay, I may as well be on Shopzilla, sifting through professional listed products. The whole ‘Auction’ experience on the users end has become entirely depleted. The original eBay users went there because it was an ‘event’ and if you were able to get the item, you actually felt like you won something. Now I feel the same budget guilt buying something on eBay as I would buying a Cinnabun. Sometime worse because I waited 7 days for an auction to end and found a better deal on another web site.

5. Speedy Purchases. Once Amazon rolled out ‘one-click’ purchases versus ‘3, 7 or 10 day auctions’ on eBay, I could never figure out a reason why I would ever go back to eBay to find items. When eBay was one of the first movers in the online shopping place, it felt alright to wait for an auction to end so long as I was getting a good deal on something I wanted. Now sifting through good deals versus bad deals, combined with the hassles of eBay makes me always want to go to a reliable online Amazon type site, where I can count of my item being slightly higher priced (which now is rarely the case), but I know I purchased it, I get a legitimate receipt and I can can count on it arriving to my doorstep 99.9% of the time. ‘Buy-It-Now’ just didn’t make the cut man.

6. Business Model. As eBay progressed, they constantly were trying to figure out how to scale the business beyond just it’s core, which is auctions. They made a mistake by taking the old Geo-Cities mentality of, if you aren’t on our site, then no one will find you. eBay wanted to become the premier destination for small-mid size businesses to be found and make sales online. This created a mass confusion for consumers who once went to eBay for a unique experience. It became the ’strip-mall’ of the Interent.

7. Paypal Hassles. When eBay was hot, PayPal grew hot with it and became a household name for buying things easily online. Every eBay merchant was signed up to use it, and in turn, every consumer had a PayPal account. Still one of the most profitable arms for eBay to this day, PayPal too has had its share of problems with both business and consumer headaches involving payment fraud, disputes and more. But even PayPal is beginning to slip. Let me ask you one question. Can you even remember your PayPal username and password? Didn’t think so Mr.1999

8. Skype Confusion. When eBay bought Skype, everyone expected a revolutionary integration into shopping, where sellers and buyers could talk instantly over the internet to recreate a somewhat realistic experience. Everyone thought it would come fast, but it dragged on and on, and when it finally debuted, no one cared anymore. Skype is finally making some money on its own, but the dream was sadly never realized for eBay.

9. High Seller Fees. eBay became so focused on businesses, that Listing Fees for the individuals who actually wanted to sell an item or two went through the roof. Suddenly eBay didn’t care about those who helped create the foundation for an early age user generated success story. Note to eBay: Business generated is not the same thing.

10. Competition. Even Craigslist does a better job of filtering out garbage than eBay does. These are two web 1.0 companies that have taken on lives of their own. Craig is surviving due to low costs, not selling out to the corporate slick and letting users continue to sell event tickets. It also still looks like crap, which still makes users believe they may find a deal. Craig never tried to grow up out of what he knew his business was. Other than Craigslist, we have seen the rise of many similar online storefront providers such as Amazon who take care of shipping fulfillment as well. Not to mention, many brands have been able to survive on their own outside of aggregators by working hard on their search engine optimization and other online marketing strategies.

• ChaCha is the human powered mobile search engine that actually employs ‘guides’ to answer questions you query through your phone.
• In Septmeber I wrote an article about how ChaCha has not paid a dime to the people they promised money to.
• I thought the problem had gone away after much criticism against the company, but today I recieved a disturbing comment on the old article. They still haven’t paid their search guides!
• User Lily says “I barely became a guide [with ChaCha]. I’m owed $170, just got my card and started to look around for a ‘pay me now’ button. Does it exist? Is it supposed to be there now? Reading all this has got me horrified! Are there any pro-chacha stories?? Should I continue to guide, or is this all a scam? It seems legit, but all I’m seeing is people who are dissatisfied or unpaid!! Help! If anybody can help me, please email me at lilybugme@neomail.com!! Thankyou!!”
• Well Lily, I don’t see a pay day in sight for you. This problem has been occuring for months.
• What are these ‘guides’ supposed to do?

• Nicholas Carr, author of ‘The Big Switch’, wrote a piece today on his blog about the death of the blogosphere.
• This isn’t the first time I’ve heard it this year, but here is the argument in a nutshell:
  • “Almost all of the popular blogs today are commercial ventures with teams of writers, aggressive ad-sales operations, bloated sites, and strategies of self-linking. Some are good, some are boring, but to argue that they’re part of a “blogosphere” that is distinguishable from the “mainstream media” seems more and more like an act of nostalgia, if not self-delusion”.
• As with anything popular, some parts will enter the mainstream, especially if it involves original news. One could make the distinction that once a blog enters the mainstream, that it takes on the definition of just an online newspaper with a distributed staff. Let’s take Silicon Allley Insider for example. They are now an online newspaper and the only thing that they hold true to the blogosphere is that they post in ‘reverse chronological order’ (the definition of a blog). But, what is the answer to this so-called death? If you think that it’s micro-blogging, you’re wrong. As we are seeing with the growing popularity of Twitter, even micro-blogging has entered the mainstream. If you ask me, Twitter is often times far less personal than a blog. I have to limit my characters and many times the people i follow are just syndicating an update from somewhere else (like a blog headline). Sorry Nicholas, as I have said before, it’s hard to call something dead that really has no definition and spans so many personalities, genres, formats, groups, etc. Maybe it’s mainstream, but what are you reccomending we do? Podcast? hah, right.

RoughType, Performancing.com, Furrier.org, Economist and Valleywag

• Last week at an SAI/Founder’s Club Event, Gawker Media head Nick Denton spoke about the crash and burn of internet advertising rates coming next year.
• He is quoted as saying, “All of them should be terrified. Anyone who isn’t prepared for ads to go down 40 percent is crazy.”
• This is not the dotcom crash of 2000. There are too many internet companies out there now hoping for this to be true so they can become the next LowerMyBills.com. For those that don’t know, LowerMyBills was started by now legendary Matt Coffin, and it was the lead generation company that came in and snatched up online ads at unbelieveably low rates after the dotcom crash. They were paying such low amounts for their conversions that they ended up becoming increadibly profitable and sold to Experian for $330M in 2005. Too many companies are entrenched in their search ad positioning, not to mention the amount of search arbitrage, lead gen, competitive startups, and other kinds of companies that are willing to pay the price they are right now as opposed to droppig out of the game. Certain ad networks with weak target markets may have to break some bad news to their publishers, but the majority of the online ad space will stay pumping. 40% is ludicrous. But, I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

MediaMemo, NickDenton