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If you thought that social-media sites were foaming at the mouth on Election Day in an attempt to get the most eye-catching, mashed-up, user-generated gimmicks in place, you might not be too surprised to find out that the social Web has gone just as nutty over the swearing-in of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States.

9:31 a.m. PT: Twitter has started to calm down slightly. Despite some sluggishness and very brief outages, the microblogging service managed to stay afloat during Obama’s swearing-in and speech.

9:15 a.m. PT: The live streams at many major news outlets are still problematic, as this Twitter post shows:

7:19 a.m. PT: A Twitter user asked me how you can watch the inauguration on your
iPhone. I pointed him to Ustream.tv’s inauguration stream. The Ustream app is brand-new in Apple’s App Store.

9:49 a.m. PT: From my colleague Ina Fried: “While the social media were buzzing, corporate e-mail systems were likely experiencing a light load. One tech PR person noted that he had gotten just a single e-mail in the last hour, a fraction of his usual volume.”

7:05 a.m. PT: Digital marketing agency Deep Focus has created Tweet The Inauguration, which aggregates Twitter updates that have, say, the word “inauguration” in them or are accompanied by the #inaug09 hash tag (which the Twitter community has generally accepted to delineate inaugural tweets. It’s a lot like Current’s strategy. My only gripe? It only displays one tweet at a time.

8:36 a.m. PT: The official Obama “Inaugural Tumblelog” now features a photo of incoming Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel making a funny face.

9:02 a.m. PT: My colleague Stephanie Condon has a report on the state of D.C.’s wireless infrastructure right now: Spectators crowd the Mall and wireless networks.

Also, I’m noticing that Twitter is loading a little more slowly.

8:38 a.m. PT: Guest post from Shankland: Now 10 out of 10 hot Google search terms are related to the inauguration. C-Span gets three of them.

8:07 a.m. PT: We’ve got a Twitterer estimating that 3,000 people are updating their Facebook statuses each minute using the Facebook-CNN live tool.

8:20 a.m. PT: Guest post from Stephen Shankland: Google Trends shows that eight out of 10 hot searches on Google are inauguration related. live inauguration coverage tops at “volcanic.”

8:05 a.m. PT: Lots of Twitterers have been talking about the fact that outgoing Vice President Dick Cheney is at the inauguration in a wheelchair after pulling a muscle in his back. We hope that Cheney makes a speedy recovery, but that hasn’t stopped the Web’s snarkmongerers from comparing the much-vilified vice president to the likes of the villainous Mr. Potter from It’s A Wonderful Life and Dr. Evil from Austin Powers.

8:30 a.m. PT: Guest post from Shankland: I just measured the time lag between live and the stream I’m watching the live stream at the Presidential Inauguration Committee site. It’s pretty significant: 2 minutes 11 seconds.

7:46 a.m. PT: Dispatch from our wacky-news correspondent, Stephen Shankland: “A viral marketing stunt at its finest: Trident’s site called Joe Biden’s teeth. Upload your smiling photo and give them your address and they’ll give you a pushpin on a Google maps mashup and send you some gum in 6 to 8 weeks.”

9:07 a.m. PT: Well, Obama’s officially President now. But I haven’t been able to see the Twitter reactions because there’s about a four or five-minute lag time.

9:22 a.m. PT: Observations on the digital generation: A bunch of Twitterers report that one of the TV streams showed that 10-year-old Malia Obama took out her camera and took a photo. Cute!

8:26 a.m. PT: Guest post from Stephen Shankland: I just did a test. 99 Twitter comments tagged #inaug09 in 45 seconds.

7:56 a.m. PT: Somebody is aggregating inauguration-related posts to TwitPic, the mobile photo service that syncs to Twitter. TwitPic crashed when it was the source of the first close-up photo of last week’s Hudson River plane crash: think it’ll stay afloat during Inauguration Day?

(Credit:
jane_davis on Flickr)

7:54 a.m. PT: Another inauguration aggregator: Twinauguration.com. I’m checking it out now.

7:22 a.m. PT: If you want a report that’s more on-the-ground and less about whether Twitter has crashed yet or not, check out our sister site, CBSNews.com, and its Political Hotsheet.

9:27 a.m. PT: I watched most of the inauguration coverage on Ustream, and had a pretty amusing ad placement the whole time (left). Former vice presidential candidate and Saturday Night Live fixture Sarah Palin, it appears, is not going anywhere any time soon.

7:27 a.m. PT: Have a look at Twitter Search’s top trending topics: ” #inaug09, Happy Inauguration, #inauguration, Washington, White House, President Obama, Hulu, #tcot, National Mall, MSNBC.”

6:56 a.m. PT: AllVoices.com, a “citizen journalism” site, appears to have been hacked on Inauguration Day, with the entire site replaced by a text message that says “HI ETHAN.”

8:28 a.m. PT: NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen Twitters a link to an AFP article that says Obama’s Whitehouse.gov site will take over one minute after noon. The AP news coverage streamed on Ustream just informed me that, by law, the President must be sworn in by noon.

9:41 a.m. PT: Former Bush strategist Karl Rove, now a prolific Twitter user, has posted the message “It (has) been quite a ride–heading home.” And a TwitPic.

(Credit:
Google)

7:51 a.m. PT: Just tried to load Paste Magazine’s Web app “Obamicon Me,” which stylizes any photo you give it to look like artist Shepard Fairey’s now-iconic “HOPE” poster. The site’s still up–but taking an awfully long time to load.

8:49 a.m. PT: Also from the Twitterverse: CNN’s reporting records for its online live streaming, with 8 million streams as of 11:10 a.m. Eastern. The previous record was 5.3 million on Election Day.

8:33 a.m. PT: A lot of Twitterers are griping about live-streaming issues, like this one:

8:15 a.m. PT: Another observation from my colleague Stephen Shankland: “Add this if you want: There’s a huge lag between CNN and the live streaming view I’m watching. Being out of sync makes live chat with your pals pretty awkward.”

Says comedian and “I’m a P.C.” mascot John Hodgman:

Cable network Current will be displaying related messages from Twitter on-screen in its inauguration coverage (which will also be streamed on Current.com), much as it did during the presidential debates.

9:01 a.m. PT: And, yes, Whitehouse.gov has now transitioned to its Obama incarnation.

Also, an early contender for the “great inauguration tweets” department, from @pistachio:

8:12 a.m. PT: CNN is reportedly saying that this is the most-watched event in television history worldwide. I wonder if they’re counting live streams on the Web?

8:01 a.m. PT: San Francisco counterculture blog Laughing Squid has linked to some Flickr photos detailing how pranksters changed every sign on the city’s Bush St. to “Obama St.”

8:52 a.m. PT: Just got my first flat-out Twitter outage of the day.

7:33 a.m. PT: Another Twitter user says that Ustream.tv’s live feed is holding up better than Hulu’s.

7:14 a.m. PT: Tim Shey reports via Twitter that the live broadcasts from both Hulu and CNN.com were too slow. “We went to good old digital broadcast: NBC in HD.”

7:31 a.m. PT: Yup, Twitter’s having issues. “Twitter already starting to fail under the load,” one user reports. “I’m not even getting the whale when it does.”

7:38 a.m. PT: What am I watching? I’ve found Ustream’s coverage to be very stable.

8:43 a.m. PT: Alerted via Twitter: The Senate’s inauguration live stream has crashed entirely. I get an instant page load error.

7:47 a.m. PT: In case you’re tired of whatever live stream you’re watching, here’s a very interesting article about how Obama’s inauguration may be one of the biggest days for the Internet–literally.

7:35 a.m. PT: Loads of Twitter users are directing me to TweetGrid, another aggregation site. The TweetGrid app has created an inauguration-specific site, but it’s already starting to periodically get downtime errors.

Not to mention the fact that a zillion of the Twitterati, from reporters to on-air anchors to random bystanders to Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, are actually in D.C. for the occasion. It shouldn’t be too hard to track down their raw commentary, especially since gossip blog Gawker is mining through notable media figures’ “tweets” to poke fun at them.

7:29 a.m. PT: One Twitter user is very happy to have found a live stream with closed captioning, on the Senate’s Web site.

7:24 a.m. PT: Media pundit Jeff Jarvis has Twittered that he’s having issues with Ustream’s iPhone app while attempting to stream inauguration coverage. “Just as I tweeted I was watching live TV on my iPhone with UStream, it crashed,” Jarvis lamented. “Now it’s buffering. Tough day to launch this.”

All of the 10 hot Google search trends in the United States had to do with the inauguration at 8:35 a.m PST.

Here’s a roll call of a few notables: There’s an official user-sourced inauguration blog that uses collaborative platform Tumblr to post everything from recommended links to funny photos of people posing next to cardboard cut-outs of Obama. Social network Facebook has partnered with CNN for CNN Live, which displays participating members’ election-related status messages in a feed next to a live stream of the ceremony. MySpace, meanwhile, has collaborated with Ashton Kutcher’s Katalyst Media for a celeb-studded “Presidential Pledge” project.

Meanwhile, New York Times reporter Brian Stelter has Twittered that cell phone service in D.C. is already showing signs of stress; he says that he can text but not call.

Also on the live-streaming front, Web video hubs like Joost and Hulu–in addition to the sites of just about every major broadcaster–will be showing inauguration coverage with varying degrees of user commentary and interactivity.

We’ll be updating this post throughout the day to let you know what worked, what didn’t, and who’s going to be placing angry calls to their hosting providers on Tuesday night.

9:12 a.m. PT: Big on Twitter right now: The fact that Obama flubbed up his inaugural oath as Chief Justice John Roberts was swearing him in. Oops!

8:59 a.m. PT: Yup. Twitter’s “tweets” are coming in with several minutes of lag.

8:51 a.m. PT: From Shankland: The lag between CNN and live stream at the Presidential Inauguration Committee site dropped from more than 2 minutes to about 5 seconds. How’d they do that? What did they cut?

8:38 a.m. PT: My Ustream access has started to fuzz out.

9:37 a.m. PT: Just in from CNN: “According to early data, as of 11:45 a.m. ET today, CNN.com Live has served 13.9 million live video streams globally since 6 a.m., shattering its all time total daily streaming record set on Election Day with 5.3 million live streams.”

Their green buildings use daylighting extensively with things like full-height atriums and heliostats to reflect light into a building’s interior, rather than just for people near the buildings. Similarly, the air handling systems are sophisticated with the ability to monitor carbon dioxide levels indoors.

Its corporate headquarters–the Genzyme Center in Cambridge, Mass.–is Platinum-level LEED certified, the highest green building rating.

A planned 'green' manufacturing facility in Lyons, France.

Investing in green buildings is getting easier, says Genyzme, a company that knows from experience.

“We are in a business that’s competitive to join our organization as opposed to another biotech company,” Mattila said. “So why wouldn’t we do our best and make good environmental decisions?”

“The market has gotten a lot more savvy and (suppliers) are responding,” said Lisa Hartman, principal environmental engineer at Genzyme.

The company can recoup those costs in lower energy costs, worker productivity, and by improving its image in the community and with prospective employees.

“The best value is in how we make a better space for employees and that indoor quality aspect,” said Rick Mattila, director of environmental affairs. “When people have that, they feel more comfortable, less distracted, and therefore are more productive. That’s really where you gain from green buildings.”

(Credit:
Genzyme)

A sketch of Genzyme's planned green office building in Beijing, China.

(Credit:
Genzyme)

But employee or student productivity isn’t the only reason that going green is an easier decision, Genzyme representatives said.

But when I asked which green feature Genzyme found delivered the best bang for the buck, company representatives said that it’s all about people.

There are more products on the market with recycled content. Whereas five years ago, the company struggled to find contractors and suppliers, it now finds that they are advertising these green features.

The Framingham building, meanwhile, uses 40 percent less water than comparable sites with dual-flush toilets, waterless urinals, low-flow shower heads, a drip-feed irrigation system, and water sensors to prevent overwatering.

The Lyons facility, for example, will have a glass wall around the exterior of the building that will provide insulation and cooling in the summer.

Mattila estimated that the premium for doing a LEED-certified building is about 2 percent.

These buildings are meant to be efficient with energy as well as water.

She said that if companies plan on going green from the beginning, the cost will be lower than if they change specifications after several months.

Now, it’s making more. It recently completed a laboratory in Framingham, Mass. It’s also planning a manufacturing facility in Lyons, France and an office in Beijing, China.

The biotech company on Wednesday hosted a teleconference with bloggers where it shared its views on green buildings and getting the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification.

The panels, which are expected to begin appearing on the high-end version of the gasoline-electric hybrid car as early as next spring, will supply part of the 2 to 5 kilowatts needed to power the air conditioning, MarketWatch cited the Japanese business daily as reporting. Kyocera will reportedly supply the panels.

The move would make Toyota the first major automaker to incorporate a solar-power generation system into a mass-produced car.

Prius was introduced in 1997 and has since sold more than 1 million vehicles worldwide. The car was redesigned in 2003, and a third generation has been widely expected to appear soon.

Toyota plans to install solar panels on the roof of the next generation of Prius hybrid
cars, according to a report in Monday’s edition of the Nikkei newspaper.

Better coverage, less cost
For one, Wi-Fi is an inexpensive way to improve in-home coverage. And as carriers migrate to 3G services, it’s likely to get harder for them to provide in-home coverage because 3G service operates at higher frequencies, which don’t penetrate walls as well. So if customers weren’t getting good cell phone reception in their homes or offices with current cellular technology, the situation won’t be much improved with 3G. But Wi-Fi could help because it allows operators to leverage a high-speed wireless network that already exists in consumers’ homes to achieve full, “five bar” coverage.

Popular devices such as Research In Motion’s BlackBerry and Apple’s iPhone already have Wi-Fi built in. Still some carriers, such as Verizon Wireless, say they don’t need Wi-Fi. Instead, Verizon is focused on deploying a faster 4G wireless network. But in the meantime, there are already millions of Wi-Fi hot spots throughout the country, and with or without their mobile carrier, consumers will soon figure out ways to use them.

“What we’re offering today is about connecting laptop computers to a high-speed wireless network,” Woodward added. “Right now, we don’t do seamless hand-off from one network to another. And I have a hard time envisioning where that might happen.”

So why aren’t more mobile operators jumping on the Wi-Fi bandwagon? The reason is simple: They’re scared. Specifically, they are worried about cannibalizing their existing voice services and making their networks so open that subscribers can bypass their own services and applications completely.

This is a legitimate concern. Phone companies have already seen the same scenario play out on the broadband side of their businesses. Today, broadband providers compete on speeds and feeds. They have tried offering Web portals and content directly to consumers, but the reality is that consumers can bypass their traditional phone service with services like Skype or Vonage. And they can get content directly from the likes of Google or YouTube. Essentially, the broadband providers have been reduced to dumb pipe providers.

Cisco Systems also recently introduced a network-based hand-off technology that it’s selling to its corporate customers. The software, which runs on its new mobility appliance, keeps track of devices and phones on the network. When it detects a device is leaving the Wi-Fi network , it automatically switches the connection to the cellular network and vice versa.

Indeed, for Wi-Fi to be truly useful on mobile devices like handsets a seamless hand-off between the cellular and Wi-Fi networks is necessary. But carriers like AT&T do hand-offs between cellular technologies all the time. When AT&T subscribers travel between its 2.5G EDGE network and the 3G HSPA network, the device switches from one network to another and callers on either end have no idea.

And their biggest fear is that the same thing will happen in their mobile businesses. Still, dual mode wireless devices are coming whether cell phone operators like it or not. In-Stat forecasts that the global supply of dual mode voice and data Wi-Fi handsets will increase by nearly 360 percent this year.

Joe Sims, vice president and general manager of T-Mobile USA’s Broadband and New Business Division, claims the hand-off between the two networks works very well.

When asked if its Hotspot @Home users could use a mobile version of Skype, T-Mobile’s Sims said they could, but he added, “We’re not necessarily going to advertise that.”

U.S. cell phone operators are starting to embrace Wi-Fi in order to extend the reach of their high-speed wireless networks without breaking the bank, but some are being more cautious than others.

“Wi-Fi offers us a way to provide high-speed access in an area where we don’t have 3G, like in a rural setting,” said Mike Woodward, vice president of business mobility for AT&T. “There might be a coffee shop or some other hot spot in that area that offers our Wi-Fi service, and customers can connect that way.”

But AT&T hasn’t yet opened the free access to its mobile phone customers. Not even users of the
iPhone–which has built-in Wi-Fi but doesn’t yet allow the download of voice over IP clients like Skype–can get access to the Wi-Fi hot spots for free. What’s more, AT&T seems cagey about putting any of its voice traffic over a Wi-Fi network.

“Wi-Fi offers us a way to provide high-speed access in an area where we don’t have 3G, like in a rural setting.” –Mike Woodward,
VP of business mobility,
AT&T

“It’s seamless,” he said. “You can’t tell that the call is switching from one network to another.”

Switching among networks
The same thing needs to happen between Wi-Fi networks and cellular networks. And while the technology for this hand-off is somewhat more complicated between Wi-Fi and cellular than it is between two cellular technologies, it already exists. T-Mobile uses a technology called UMA (Unlicensed Mobile Access), which detects when one signal fades and another comes into range.

T-Mobile USA was the first major U.S. wireless carrier to see the merits of using Wi-Fi. Last year, the German-owned phone company, which is the fourth largest mobile operator in the U.S., launched its Hotspot @Home service that automatically switches between subscribers’ home Wi-Fi networks and its cellular network. For $10 more a month, subscribers are able to talk as much as they like while on the Wi-Fi network.

And finally, Wi-Fi allows cellular operators to compete more aggressively on price. If the voice traffic is carried over a low-cost IP network instead of over a more costly cellular network, they can offer more aggressive prices and still make decent profit margins.

Once seamless hand-offs between Wi-Fi and cellular are mastered, there are essentially no technical barriers that would keep a cell phone operator from using Wi-Fi technology. And, in fact, carriers could reap many benefits from using Wi-Fi to offload voice traffic, especially as the price for voice minutes continues to decline.

Now it looks like other carriers are jumping on the Wi-Fi bandwagon. But operators, such as AT&T, are hesitating when it comes to offering Wi-Fi services for handsets. Recently AT&T, the largest mobile operator in the U.S., said it would allow its broadband subscribers and 3G, or third-generation, laptop data users to have free access to its 17,000 Wi-Fi hot spots around the country. The company also has launched a promotion with Starbucks coffee shops to give users two hours of free Wi-Fi access with the purchase of a Starbucks reward card.

Even though the technology has been developed for large companies, Pat Calhoun, CTO for Cisco’s wireless networking business, said carriers could eventually adapt the technology for use on their own networks.

AT&T primarily sees Wi-Fi as a way to fill in coverage gaps for its 3G wireless data service.

What’s more, because Wi-Fi mobile services are delivered over a consumer’s own broadband connection, it reduces the transport cost that the carrier has to pay to get the traffic from the cell tower to its wired backbone network. Some experts say that Wi-Fi can actually help reduce this so-called backhaul expense by a factor of about 10.

ZoneAlarm ForceField is a new security utility that promises bulletproof protection against browser-related threats. It normally sells for $29.95, but Check Point Software is offering it absolutely free, today only, as part of a Patch Tuesday promotion.

The software relies on a technique called “virtual browsing” to protect your PC against unauthorized downloads, malware installations, phishers, keyloggers, and the like. It also promises total privacy by erasing the (virtual) browser’s cache, cookies, history, and passwords. According to Check Point, the program won’t interfere with any existing security software you might already have.

I haven’t tried ForceField yet, and I tend to think my browser (Firefox 3) already provides pretty solid protection from Web threats. But, hey, it’s a one-day-only freebie, and you know me: I’m all about the freebies.

Note: The above promo video is fairly amusing, but it has segments that are NSFW.

Find more deals, coupon codes, and bargains on CNET’s Shopper.com.

(via PC Magazine)

I do like Socialmedian's comment system.

See also: Twine (review).

Like Digg, sort of, but with better focus.

On Socialmedian, you either join or create topics you’re interested in, such as “Web 2.0,” “Obama,” or what have you. You can also follow particular people’s updates if that’s you cup of tea. It has the potential to work since the mechanics of contributing and following are good. There’s a bookmarklet for grabbing URLs to share. This is something that Broong didn’t get right, for example.

The site has been in closed alpha testing until now, but it is scheduled to open up to all tonight.

The challenge for this service is that, like any other social product, it’s worthless without users. And given the slight bias the site has toward celebrity users (they’re the ones people will probably want to follow), there’s an even bigger challenge of getting people who are already Internet-famous to lock in to the system and use it regularly.

As a business, Socialmedian could work. One of the project’s backers is Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, an arm of the Washington Post Company that could nudge the development of the service into something that media properties might want to adopt–and pay for. Likewise, CEO Jason Goldberg says, he’s getting queries from businesses who are interested in setting up private Socialmedian installations for hosting internal conversations.

I have no intention of trying to build a community of followers on Socialmedian, although if Ping.FM would let me cross-post items to the service, I would happily feed items to it. Also, I find that Friendfeed is doing a good job of keeping me updated in my field, even if the community does feel a bit more self-referential than I’d like. It looks like Socialmedian will do a better job of pulling in opinions from people they may not already be connected with.

One smart move: An easy way to send any item (either the page the item is about or the discussion around it on Socialmedian) to Twitter. During my testing of the service, I also found that it did a good job of auto-categorizing items into relevant topics. Users can also manually tag items they create.

Socialmedian is a new Web 2.0 conversation service that does a decent job of repackaging concepts that users of Digg and Twitter will find familiar. I fear it’s a bit too similar to other existing services to break into the mainstream, but there are some concepts and experiments on the site that make it work, at least for its devoted early beta users.

ASPEN, Colo.–Recording industry and motion picture lobbyists are renewing their push to convince broadband providers to monitor customers and detect copyright infringements, claiming the concept is working abroad and should be adopted in the United States.

Looking ahead a few years from now, the content industry may not be satisfied with voluntary agreements. Let’s say that AT&T and some of its larger rivals start to filter pirated material and demonstrate (at least to a first approximation) that it’s possible, but one ISP does not. Look for the RIAA and MPAA and their political allies to ask Congress for a law that would transform theretofore “voluntary” agreements into mandatory ones.

(Credit:
Declan McCullagh/News.com)

In a statement sent to CNET News on Monday, an AT&T spokesman said: “There is nothing inherently wrong with P2P applications, which are legal technologies that are used and welcomed on our network. We have consistently said that AT&T will not become an enforcement agent on the Internet, nor will we inhibit the ability of our customers to access any
legal content they want.”

Not one of multiple AT&T representatives we contacted responded to our followup question, which was: “Can you confirm that AT&T is not monitoring and has no plans to monitor its customers’ traffic or other online activities to detect possible copyright infringements?”

During a discussion at the Progress and Freedom Foundation’s technology policy conference here, Perlmutter said one filtering solution would involve identifying particular files that are (or are not) permitted to be sent to particular destinations. That would be a “very tailored approach,” she said.

Also at the conference on Monday, IFPI’s Perlmutter rattled off a list of countries that have taken at least some steps toward antipiracy filtering, through laws enacted by the legislature or other means: France, South Korea, New Zealand, Belgium, and Australia. In addition, Canada’s copyright lobby has pushed for legally-mandated filtering.

(What’s a little odd is that the conference organizers said they couldn’t find any broadband provider representatives to participate in the panel discussion–even though Jeff Brueggeman, AT&T’s vice president for regulatory planning and policy, was listed as attending the event, and executives from Comcast and Verizon were sitting, silently, in the audience.)

In the U.S., she said, referring to broadband providers, “increasingly they will be partnering with us–they will be doing deals with us.”

“Despite our best efforts, we can’t do this alone,” said Shira Perlmutter, a vice president for global legal policy at the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. “We need the help of ISPs. They have the technical ability to manage the flow over their pipes…The good news is that we’re beginning to see some of these solutions emerge, in particular in Europe and Asia.” (IFPI is the Recording Industry Association of America’s international affiliate.)

The idea isn’t exactly new: the Motion Picture Association of America said nearly a year ago that ISPs should police piracy, and one of its member companies asked federal regulators to make this a requirement. AT&T said in January that it’s testing technology that would let it become a copyright network cop, and the MPAA subsequently suggested that piracy-prone users should have their accounts terminated because they’re “hogging the bandwidth.”

Even if the content industry can sign deals with broadband providers, there are still a slew of unanswered questions–including ones about customers’ privacy and how filtering will work in practice. Will piratical transfers be automatically interrupted? Or just slowed? Will piracy-prone users merely find–this is what the IFPI suggests–their accounts suspended? How to detect whether content is licensed, or protected by fair use rights, which vary based on the situation? What if the transfer is encrypted?

A representative of the recording industry said on Monday that her companies would prefer to enter into voluntary “partnerships” with Internet service providers, but pointedly noted that some governments are mandating such surveillance “if you don’t work something out.”

MovieLabs did conduct tests last year of about a dozen “digital fingerprinting” technologies from companies such as Gracenote, Vobile, and Audible Magic. Certain products worked well in some environments, like on user-generated Web sites and on university networks, MovieLabs’ chief executive told us in January. But that’s not the same as saying it’ll work well for tens of millions of AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon subscribers.

Michael O’Leary, a senior vice president at the Motion Picture Association of America, said the relationship between content companies and broadband providers had become less adversarial than before and both sides had left the “us against them era” behind. (This was probably a reference to the political trench warfare that led Verizon to reject the RIAA’s request to identify a subscriber and the fuss over one proposal in Congress to implant anticopying technology into consumer devices.)

“Despite our best efforts, we can’t do this alone. We need the help of ISPs. They have the technical ability to manage the flow over their pipes…The good news is that we’re beginning to see some of these solutions emerge, in particular in Europe and Asia.” –Shira Perlmutter, International Federation of the Phonographic Industry

O’Leary welcomed what he described as today’s “multifaceted approach that involves working effectively with the ISPs and universities.”

Shira Perlmutter of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, an RIAA affiliate, talks up the benefits for broadband providers of policing users’ online activities. The MPAA’s Michael O’Leary is third from left.

CNET News reporter Marguerite Reardon contributed to this report

Energy Insight’s Blackmore agreed that most effective in-home displays will work in conjunction with smart meters and utilities’ energy-efficiency incentive programs. She said that increasingly, delivering usage information via the Web will become more prevalent.

For example, he said that there are some devices that turn red when the cost of energy goes up during peak time. “But with just a red light, I don’t see myself getting up from the couch to turn things off,” he said.

In-home displays may not have all the bells and whistles of more sophisticated meters that broker communication between a home and the utility, which are referred to as Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI). But simpler devices are enough for some consumers, according to one of the report’s authors.

The 283 consumers in the study voiced interest in devices that display real-time and historical energy usage. Because they act as a “feedback tool,” people take steps to reduce consumption.

As part of the GridWise initiative to modernize the U.S. power grid, the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest Laboratory conducted a year-long study in the Seattle area last year and found that consumers were able to reduce their energy consumption by about 10 percent with smart grid technology.

That’s why sophisticated displays that can represent information graphically are needed to get consumers to make changes and manage their overall consumption, said Jesse Berst, founding editor of the Smart Grid Newsletter.

But rather than access that information presented on a PC, most people said that they would prefer an “in-home display” that would look something like a programmable thermostat.

Although the technology is compelling, the cost of installing the infrastructure is expensive for utilities, one reason that smart grids are not yet pervasive.

There are some of these stripped-down devices on the market already. They cost between $100 and $300 and could reduce electricity consumption by up to 10 percent, according to Energy Insights.

Test programs under way
There are a number of pilot projects going on in the U.S. to test smart grid technology, including one in Texas with CenterPoint Energy and IBM. A $100 million project was recently proposed for Boulder, Colo., led by Xcel Energy.

Smart grid technology is touted as a way to reduce stress on the power grid and lower consumers’ costs. But a study suggests that simple and relatively cheap energy meters could accomplish some of the same goals.

Berst said even after years of research, it’s still not clear what would make the most effective display even after years of study.

“Meter company devices are still a bit more utility-centric and geared toward demand response,” said Karen Blackmore, an analyst at Energy Insights. “Some consumers are perfectly willing to have a little device, perhaps with a touch screen or one that displays on TV.”

There are also significant benefits for the utility and the transmission grid. By dialing down consumption at peak times, utilities can avoid turning on costly–and typically very polluted–auxiliary power plants.

“The core is letting you significantly reduce your energy expenditures by programming some simple parameters and letting the (gateway) devices do the negotiation of turning appliances on and off and so forth,” Berst said. “Part of that will probably be in conjunction with a utility.”

Delivering usage information via the Web

The simplest in-home displays are cheaper but have limitations. Without a utility-run program and advanced meter, they will not be able to automatically dial down home appliances. Also, devices with small screens can project little usage information.

Consumers lower their energy bills and can get detailed reports on their usage trends, such as which devices in the home consume the most power.

In these installations, utilities offer consumers incentives to lower their consumption and have an automated way to remotely control appliances via the Internet or cell phone networks. For example, households that sign up for the efficiency program would get some sort of discount for allowing the utility to raise the thermostat on an air conditioner during times of heavy demand on the grid.

Energy Insight, an affiliate of IT research firm IDC, conducted a survey that confirms what most people would expect: consumers are crying out for more information on their electricity usage.

One possible Internet-connected system would be home gateways, or home automation devices that control several things in a home, including computers, appliances, security systems, and energy usage.

That’s not surprising given the rising costs of electricity in many parts of the U.S. and growing environmental concerns.

All of that makes a lot of sense, providing a virtualized infrastructure with the software and hardware running separately but creating a complete environment.

With few reference points for enterprise cloud computing consumption, many new and interesting companies are popping up to make cloud resources available, with the aim of simplifying the processes.

3Tera’s Applogic allows you to abstract the hardware from the software and adds a management layer. Anything that can run in a physical data center can run in an Applogic cloud without having to change any code.

Of course, the biggest question is if the cloud is anything more than “mainframe in a browser.”

Applogic provides a browser-based Visio-like UI that lets you create these “applications” by dragging in resources that create a definition file that describe the overall package. You don’t need to know anything about the infrastructure that an application or service is running on; you just need to define the level of resource availability and service level required.

The question in my mind is if this “virtualized layer” is what enterprises want. The other question is if cloud consumers will be interested in this type of Visio-like approach or will they just want to “mount” cloud resources that are managed from behind the firewall.

Applogic encapsulates all the virtual resources as “applications”–OS, apps, servers, etc., and let’s you superimpose the combined components as an image on a cloud or grid. Applogic will then consume the appropriate the resources from the underlying hardware and software.

3Tera’s CEO Barry X. Lynn wrote a guest post on ZDNet that got me wondering about how software companies can leverage tools that make the cloud more consumable for users and, specifically, enterprises. Lynn takes the view that operations will be abstracted completely from data in the future, which affects both enterprises and the software that they run their businesses on.

I spoke to Barry about how 3Tera works and got a demo of the service. My overall impression is that this is a very powerful tool set that is way ahead of how people are utilizing cloud-based resources today. I’m just not sure that the approach is the right one for the masses.

While enterprises are growing comfortable with applications in clouds and realizing the upside of dynamic provisioning and scaling, they will be developing new applications and replacing/changing existing ones. They will start building the new applications in clouds and as they change existing applications, will consider migrating them to the cloud in the process. This will afford them the advantages of much faster time to market, the ability to run applications on demand in multiple data centers (globally if appropriate) creating their first truly complete disaster recovery abilities and concentrate on their core businesses which may be financial services, health care, manufacturing, etc., but certainly is not data center operations. (They will leave that to the companies whose core business IS data center operations.)