larryshouse.com

The key things to look out for are
Mac shipments,
iPhone momentum, and Apple’s forecast for the next quarter, which tends to dictate how the investment community responds to the earnings reports. Reporters are not allowed to ask questions during the calls, only the financial analysts are granted that privilege, which usually means you have to sit through a couple of minutes of “great quarter, guys.”

Come back to CNET News.com at 2 p.m. PDT (although we sincerely hope you never leave) for a live blog of Apple’s second-quarter earnings conference call.

The numbers themselves will probably come out around 1:15 p.m., and we’ll get something up quickly after they are released.

But tweens aren’t the only young demographic that the mobile industry is interested in targeting. On Friday the CTIA will feature a session at its fall trade show here that will provide results of a national survey of thousands of American teenagers. It will also provide a live panel of 13- to 19-year-olds, who will discuss how they use wireless. So stay tuned for more on those results later this week.

Nielsen says that 46 percent of the 20 million young consumers known as “tweens” are using mobile phones. On average kids get their first cell phone between the ages of 10 and 11 years old. About 55 percent of tweens, who own cell phones, send text messages and 21 percent download ringtones.

The main reason these kids have phones is because their parents want them to have them in case of an emergency or problem. But about 92 percent of those surveyed said they restrict how tweens use their phones, with 69 percent of them prohibiting the download of games and ringtones, which typically incur charges. Roughly 65 percent of tweens with phones get cell phone service through family plans.

SAN FRANCISCO–Nearly half of kids age 8 to 12 years old own cell phones in the U.S., in what could be the next big cell phone demographic for the mobile industry, according to a Nielsen report released here Wednesday at the
CTIA Fall 2008 trade show.

“Tweens have grown up with mobile phones and expect them to do much more than make a call,” Richard Wood, a vice president for Nielsen Mobile said in a statement. “Our clients want to understand tweens’ attitudes and mobile behavior in the context of their daily life and media consumption.”

As cell penetration approaches 85 percent in the U.S., cell phone operators are looking toward younger consumers to drive growth. And operators are focusing more effort in figuring out what is needed from this often difficult to survey group of consumers.

I imagine that his grip might be a little sweaty and uncertain. I also imagine that I would be wishing he were his professional partner, Karina Smirnoff.

Don't think different. Think irrepressibly horny geek.

He’s also begun to play his dance music while he sleeps. This would lead me to suggest that he succeeded in popping down to his local Apple store, where the nice chaps at the Genius Bar soothed his iTunes back to life, though Woz has not revealed whether his MacBook did, indeed, lose some bits.

Perhaps you, too, upon voting, will suddenly imagine that Woz’s slightly sweaty hand is reaching out to you, while he whispers: “Let’s tango, sugarplum.”

However, Woz is determined to be the sexiest entertainer since Ru Paul. (Well, for some.)

“It’s way out of character for this dance, but I can’t help it,” Wozniak wrote. “I’m sort of treating the judges like voyeurs at a peep show, ha ha ha.”

Please, if you have never watched this show, nor ever considered voting for anyone in it, surely the moment has come for you to lay down your inhibitions and watch one of tech’s most celebrated figures perform some peep for the peeps.

Woz’s Facebook Support Group would like to remind you (as my subjective objectivity forces me to remain impartial) that you can register lots of different e-mail addresses with ABC. This means you can call in 10 votes and e-mail at least 10 votes. If you’re clever. Which all of you are.

In rehearsals for his Argentine tango, he has struggled to find the right eyebrow furrow. You see, the Argentine tango is a love-hate thing. And Woz is struggling with the hate part. You’d think that he would just imagine the judges.

Once upon a time, Debbie did Dallas. Monday, Steve Wozniak is fully intending to hump a little Hollywood. Yes, unbridled, uninhibited, unimaginable sex. In the form of the Argentine tango.

(I will, because it is now my moral duty, be watching the show at 8pmPST- it’s on at 7pm in the Central Sexuality Zone- and offering my views as soon after the dancing as my excitement allows me to form words. In advance, may I admit that I will, occasionally, be flipping channels to see how the Golden State Warriors are doing against The Grizzlies)

His e-mails to his Facebook Support Group have become so detailed, so intimate, that at times, I find myself wondering what it would be like if Woz grabbed me by the digits and whisked me onto the dance floor.

Perhaps to dial up the sexiness, so that you will dial up the voting lines, Woz has revealed a sexy joke that is keeping him and Karina in erotic stitches. (Oh, most of you have surely experienced erotic stitches once in your lives.)

Then, why not do your technological duty and vote? (the Votewoz Twitter group now numbers more than 92,000).

It’s the one about “the guy who checks into a hotel and asks for his porn channel to be disabled. The clerk tells him that their porn channel is normal and calls him a sick bastard.”

(Credit: CC Zabara Tango)

Whatever gets you in the mood to tango, I say. And Woz is preparing to create a very special mood on Monday. With the help of Karina’s fiance (the man who had to dance with the eliminated Denise Richards), Woz and his partner have concocted a move that seems to suggest that he is lifting up her dress with his foot.

Koonin said that change comes slow to the auto and fuels industry and sought to dispel the idea that the world is running out of liquid hydrocarbons that can be used for fuels.

Tackling cleaner urban transportation is important because for the first time in history, more people live in cities than outside them and cities are expected to become more dense.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.–The route to a less polluting
car looks more like a multipoint intersection than a single superhighway, a panel of experts said on Wednesday.

Also, putting a price on emitting carbon dioxide would help companies in the field, they said.

One of the biggest barriers to electric car adoption is the cost that batteries add to the price of a car. But Tesla’s Straubel said that trends point to greater use of electric cars for both political and environmental reasons.

Whither electric cars?

Transportation is also getting electrified. GM and Chrysler said they intend to release extended-range electric cars, also called serial hybrids, by the end of 2010.

A greener car? From left: MIT Media Lab's Ryan Chin, BP chief scientist Steven Koonin, and Tesla Motors CTO JB Straubel.

“We can at least double the capacity of battery engines,” he said. “We can make it quite competitive with the gasoline engine on the cost of operations basis.”

All of them agreed that there’s a need to shift from today’s fossil fuel-based transportation industry because of concerns over energy security and climate change. But it’s unlikely that one single technology will displace the gas-powered internal combustion engine.

“We should raise the price of driving. We should set a floor on the price of gasoline,” said Koonin. “That will drive innovation very rapidly…But I believe that’s politically impossible.”

“You have to ask whether change will be revolutionary or evolutionary. If I had to bet, I’d say it will be evolutionary,” said BP chief scientist Steven Koonin. “The most likely scenario is a plug-in hybrid with a very efficient engine powered by biofuels–with plausible technologies.”

Getting access to conventional sources–natural gas and oil–is getting more difficult, but there is plenty of fossil fuel around for transportation in other forms such as oil shale, tar sands, and coal, he said.

(Credit:
Martin LaMonica/CNET Networks)

Driving an electric car charged by a coal power plant does not offer much of an environmental benefit, he said. But, he said electricity in transportation offers the possibility of cleaner sources.

What’s the best policy?

Chin from MIT’s Media Lab is pursuing electric vehicles, but in a very different form from anything that Tesla is developing.

“Changing the mind shift from an automobile as a product–that you buy, use, and keep–to a service, that’s very disruptive,” Chin said.

“Every year the grid is going to become less and less CO2-intensive. It’s almost a guarantee,” Straubel said.

He said that concerns over energy security tend to drive interest in electric cars, over environmental concerns.

The auto and fuels industries are in the midst of dramatic technological change, but it’s still not clear how quickly which new technologies will be adopted.

But for the shared clean-transportation model to take hold, people need to be convinced that having access to transportation is more compelling than owning a car in the city.

BP, as well as some other incumbent oil companies, are investing in biofuels research. General Motors already touts having sold millions of flex-fuel cars that can run on gasoline or E85, a blend of ethanol and gas.

Also unknown is whether consumers are willing to switch from traditional car ownership to the “transportation as a service” model where people share a fleet of clean cars dispersed around a city.

Like high-profile energy investor Vinod Khosla who spoke earlier on Wednesday, Koonin said that biofuels have the potential to make a dent in the energy picture.

Chin said that transportation policy should promote a diversity of technologies, rather than a single one.

There are number of technological hurdles, though, to make ethanol sustainably, including enzymes to convert non-food plants effectively to ethanol.

Tesla recently released the all-electric Roadster, a $109,000 sports car and said earlier this month that it plans to begin making an all-electric $60,000 sports sedan by the end of 2010. After that sedan, Tesla plans to make the “Model S,” an all-electric car that’s meant to be a less expensive family car.

BP is looking at other so-called advanced biofuels, including butanol, because ethanol is less energy dense than gasoline and is a corrosive, Koonin said.

The City Car and RoboScooter are concepts in shared transportation, where all-electric foldable cars and scooters would be placed in different places in the city, such as near subway stations or the airport. People would pick up cars or scooters by swiping a credit card and leave it at another charging location when they’re done.

The EmTech 2008 conference, held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, put together a panel to discuss green transportation with Tesla Motors Chief Technology Officer JB Straubel, BP chief scientist Steven Koonin, and Ryan Chin, a student at the MIT Media Lab involved in the City Car and RoboScooter projects.

BP’s Koonin and Tesla’s Straubel recommended higher mileage mandates in the form of Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) and a renewable portfolio standard (RPS)–which mandates that utilities generate a certain percentage of its electricity from renewable sources.

Brooks co-founded iRobot in 1990 with two of his students, Helen Greiner, now chairman of iRobot, and Colin Angle, now iRobot’s chief executive officer.

The company’s first product was the Roomba robot vacuum cleaner, of which Brooks was a principle architect. Since then, then company has sold more than 3 million robots for the home and has supplied about 1,700 robots to the U.S. military, according to company statistics. On Monday, iRobot announced had it signed a contract to supply the U.S. Army with robots, parts, and services worth up to $200 million.

(Credit:
iRobot)

Brooks, a leading authority in the field of robotics, was the director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 1997 to 2007. He is still a professor in the electrical engineering and computer science department at MIT.

Rodney Brooks, co-founder of iRobot

Brooks’ new robotics venture is a Cambridge, Mass.-based company called Heartland Robotics, which will focus on industrial worker robots. The two companies will not compete directly, iRobot said Tuesday in a statement.

“Rod has been an integral part of iRobot over the years, playing a large role in the company’s success. We are fortunate that he will continue to be a part of the company, lending his expertise and knowledge to our roadmap forward,” Angle said in a statement.

Brooks at his MIT office in 2007.

iRobot co-founder Rodney Brooks is leaving his post as chief technology officer to concentrate on a new robotics company.

iRobot will begin looking for Brooks’ replacement in 2009. Brooks will remain on iRobot’s board of directors. He will also be chairman of a newly formed technical advisory board for the company, according to iRobot.

(Credit:
Candace Lombardi/CNET Networks)

“I want to effect a powerful evolution in the world’s labor markets, and my current focus is to develop low-cost robots that will empower American workers,” Brooks said in a statement on his Web site.

He also took a direct dig at the credibility of CNBC, asking, “Why have a bureau out in Silicon Valley?”

Lyons, while an editor at Forbes, started the anonymous “Secret Diary of Steve Jobs” blog and continued writing it, even after he was outed as the author. He spun the blog off into a book, Options, and later left Forbes for Newsweek. Around the time he made his job switch, he stopped writing as “Fake Steve.”

Newsweek columnist Dan Lyons, whose anonymous “Fake Steve Jobs” satire blog took the tech world by storm in 2007 went on a blunt rant on cable network CNBC that questioned its journalistic tactics–but contrary to a blog report, CNBC says he has not been banned from appearing on the network.

An additional correction was made at 8:40 a.m. PT. Dan Lyons used to be an editor at Forbes, not Fortune.

Lyons was facing off against CNBC’s Silicon Valley bureau chief, Jim Goldman, in a segment about the sudden news on Wednesday afternoon that Apple CEO Steve Jobs would be taking a medical leave of absence following conflicting rumors and reports about his health.

Silicon Alley Insider later reported that Lyons had been banned from the cable network for life. CNBC spokesman Kevin Goldman told CNET News that this is not true and that Lyons has not been banned from the network.

Clarification at 7:02 a.m. PST: This article originally noted Silicon Alley Insider’s report that Dan Lyons has been banned from CNBC. A CNBC representative disputes that assertion.

“You can try to backpedal and say that what you reported was true,” Lyons said to Goldman on CNBC, adding that the broadcast journalist had been “played” and “punked” by his sources at Apple, “but look, you should apologize to Gizmodo for having criticized them and apologize to your viewers for having gotten it so wrong.”

Days later, Jobs said he had been diagnosed with a “hormone imbalance,” implying that it was the reason he stepped down from the Macworld appearance. Goldman had been wrong. Then, on Wednesday, Jobs announced that he was taking the aforementioned leave of absence and that Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook would handle management in the interim.

Here’s what happened: Gizmodo, a well-established gadget blog owned by Gawker Media, had reported that Jobs’ health was “declining rapidly” and that his medical state was the reason that he would not be giving his traditional keynote address at the Macworld Expo. Goldman quickly shot down the rumor, citing sources; Jobs underwent treatment for pancreatic cancer in the past, but Apple had repeatedly insisted that he was now healthy.

A Wall Street analyst cut Yahoo’s 12-month price target to $24 a share on Wednesday, citing a worsening economic climate and storm clouds on the horizon for future earnings growth.

In the Sanford report, Lindsay said:

Previously, Yahoo’s 12-month price target was set at $26 a share by Jeffrey Lindsay, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., based on the controversial Yahoo-Google advertising search deal going through.

Lindsay puts that figure potentially at $27 a share.

That report did little to cheer Yahoo’s stock, which fell as low as $17.25 a share in early morning trading.

Our new valuation is based upon our pessimistic outlook for GDP and earnings growth but assumes no further short term dollar appreciation, which we now think is less likely following the recent government bail-out of Freddie
Mac and Fannie Mae and the likely downward impact this will have in interest rates and the U.S. currency.

Although Google monetizes paid search better than either Yahoo or Microsoft, outsourcing to Microsoft is a better option for Yahoo shareholders for two reasons: (a) Yahoo can likely only outsource a minority of its search business to Google to ensure that the deal passes regulatory muster; and (b) Yahoo must also still incur the cost of maintaining its own operation–the former Project Panama. In a deal with Microsoft, however Yahoo could potentially outsource 100 percent of its paid search activities and could also eliminate the cost of maintaining its own paid search operation.

But Lindsay points out that without such a deal, he places Yahoo’s 12-month price target at only $21 a share. And he further notes that recent reports indicate the deal is receiving greater scrutiny by the government with the addition of an outside antitrust litigator.

And on the other side of the spectrum, a similar ad outsourcing deal with Microsoft could push Yahoo’s price to $26 a share in a 12-month period, Lindsay noted.

And a sale of Yahoo’s search business to Microsoft?

While Lindsay’s current expectations call for Yahoo’s stock to rise to $24 a share in the next 12 months, he notes it’s based on Yahoo and Google going forward with their advertising deal.

NEW YORK–Two years after acquiring it, MTV Networks has shaped Atom Films into Atom.com, a sister site to its Comedy Central network dedicated to short-form, Web-based comedy.

Along with four new original Web series commissioned by Comedy Central, which range from an animated show about conjoined twins connected at the naughty bits to a live-action series about three clueless slackers who attempt to be militia guards at the U.S.-Mexican border, Atom.com welcomes user-generated submissions. Select videos will be featured in a weekly “Upload Showdown,” and winners will become “pro” content creators on Atom.com and have access to additional Comedy Central resources like a spot on a new late-night televised program, Atom TV, a sort of week-in-review special about the site.

Executives from the Viacom-owned MTV Networks held a press conference here on Thursday to kick off the new site, which Executive Vice President of Digital Media Erik Flannigan described as “our punk-rock label…where you’re purposely encouraging development that’s supposed to (expletive) with the system and break down boundaries.”

“There’s not a lot of viral tearjerkers,” Flannigan added, saying that Web comedy is now an essential part of American youth culture. “There is a social currency in your knowledge of and your passing along of short-form comedy.”

Online comedy video sites are a dime a dozen, but Roesch said that because of the ties to Comedy Central, Atom.com has an immediate lift above the fray. The new site has more than 20,000 videos in its library already, and predecessor AtomFilms.com pulled in more than 1.9 million unique visitors monthly, which execs say is more than online comedy brethren FunnyOrDie, SuperDeluxe, and The Onion combined. Built on Viacom’s Flux social platform, Atom.com also aims to be a community site of sorts.

More Web shows are on the way, too, including an “advertorial” series called Agency, in which terrible advertisements for real brands are created by an incompetent, fictitious ad agency.

There’s a history to it. In 2006, MTV Networks acquired Atom Films, home to online indie hits like Gerbil in a Microwave, along with Shockwave and AddictingGames, and Atom Films founder Mika Salmi became head of MTV’s overall digital operations. While the short-form films site had some science fiction and horror hits, too, it was comedy that turned into the real successes, and that’s why the company has decided to rebrand it as a comedy-only site. “In the online viewing experience, you’ve got to grab the viewer immediately,” Roesch said, explaining that online video as a whole is best suited to comedic styles.

Atom TV, which premiered Tuesday morning at 2 a.m., is “jukebox-style, proudly low-budget, (and) super-late-night,” according to Scott Roesch, general manager of Atom.com. Eventually, Atom.com will percolate into video-on-demand cable television, where Atom Films had a presence in its early days. Ideally that’ll happen later this summer.

(Credit:
Medis Technologies)

Medis 24-7 Power Pack fuel cell available–Engadget
A fuel cell charger and liquid fuel cartridges for consumer electronics are now available. Here’s hoping they recycle used cartridges.
Back to whale oil–Gristmill
Climate crusader Joseph Romm digs up YouTube videos of presidential candidate John McCain’s town meetings where he says that renewable energy can’t be counted on for a significant portion of America’s needs and that truly clean technologies “don’t work.”
Charge your iPod with vodka?–Blast
Don’t get too excited, but word from Horizon Fuel Cells is that liquor cabinet boozes will indeed work (clear alcohol preferred) and that drug-store alcohol is best.
Summit produces clean-energy agenda–Greentech Media
Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, one of the conference hosts, says he’s taking the recommendations to both party conventions and to the Senate.
Driven: Shai Agassi’s audacious plan to put electric cars on the road–Wired
In-depth profile of the former SAP executive and his current work for Project Better Place, with some fresh details on the technology to enable the battery-swapping business model.
APC announces next-generation fuel cell product for data centers–press release
Fuel cells for backup power in data centers is a commercially viable application for hydrogen, though less sexy than hydrogen-powered
cars.

A sampling of
green-tech news with quick commentary. Investor support of climate action grows–CBS News

Big polluters feel the, uh, heat from shareholders. Resolutions related to climate change more than doubled over the past five years, according to Ceres.
Masdar breaks ground on photovoltaic factory in Germany–press release
Abu Dhabi-based fund invests big in solar, diversifying from oil. This is also a major shot in the arm for thin-film solar cells, upping competition with silicon.
Coskata due diligence–R-Squared Energy Blog
Blogger Robert Rapier gives a hot ethanol start-up a rigorous screening and leaves with some questions. The key on all these cellulosic ethanol companies will be getting costs down at a commercial scale–and the numbers aren’t yet in.

A liquid fuel charger for your gadgets.

http://twitter.com/andrewbaron

Credit Baron for knowing how to push the right button. He is reaping a PR windfall, generating the most discussion about Rocketboom since Amanda Congdon decided to seek fame and fortune elsewhere.

The winner of this auction gets my account with all of my followers. The account is in my name now, but the winner of the auction can pick any other name that’s available on Twitter for the transfer. For example, you could have http://www.twitter.com/x where x=any name thats not already taken. You can change it yourself at anytime too, one of the cool features about Twitter settings.

Finally, I’d just like to give props to all of you out there who are following me on Twitter. No offense what so ever - we can easily find each other again.

It would be silly to just delete this account I have here, especially if there is someone out there that had like interests and had something to say or wanted to get involved in some relevant conversations. In terms of monetary value, I have no expectations or needs at all so I decided not to put a minimum bid on this. Whatever will be, will be.

I was hoping that might be the reaction in the “Twitosphere” after finding out that Andrew Baron put his Twitter account up for auction on eBay. Silly me.

I fell for the bait so here’s my two cents. Everyone’s going to get their 15 minutes’ worth of fame, no matter how silly. So don’t waste any more brain cells worrying about all this. As Stowe Boyd aptly notes, it’s not like trading in hard goods. “When it comes to virtual relationships, we’re still talking about human relationship. This will go down as little more than a transparent stunt in this hair-trigger era we inhabit.

I really love my Twitter account but I feel like I haven’t been using it the way I want to. Quite honestly, I feel sorry for all of my followers because they wind up with my tweets in their timelines and I haven’t been able to utilize the medium the way I want to. I also participate in another Twitter account over on Rocketboom so I’m thinking I’ll post more over there and start up a new account to do what I want to do next.

My first reaction was to chuckle. It sounded like something out of Seinfeld–an auction about nothing. Would anyone be so much of an egomaniac to believe anybody would care? Then again, if Rocketboom’s founder is serious about “auctioning” his Twitter account, have at it, pal. More likely, I’m sure he’s laughing about every click we waste agonizing about the supposed implications.

http://twitter.com/andrewbaron

What if someone started an auction and we all ignored it?

So basically it’s like getting a new account with your own name, but having a pre-installed audience.

Also, as with any dynamic group, there is obviously risk. My followers could jump ship at anytime. There is no guarantee on this part. People will come and go, thats just the way it is. Whether you represent a company, a group or just yourself, this group will not want to be sold to, Im sure. The successful winner will share a reciprocal value with the followers.

The first sign of value to most people would be the number of followers I have (the audience size). At the beg. of this auction, there are 1397 followers and I am actually quite proud of the actual quality of these followers, moreso than the number. Feel free to explore everyone to see who’s there.

Here’s the text of Baron’s post. Make of it what you will.

Some folks are getting really worked up over the fact that the auction will include Baron’s 1,400 something or so “followers” as well. Well, in case you haven’t heard, slavery was outlawed in the 19th century. I’m sure Baron’s “followers” will make up their own minds if there’s a change in ownership.