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Solar expert Travis Bradford, who is president of the Prometheus Institute, said that Intel’s move into solar is not surprising, given the rapid growth of solar energy.

“It sure looks like solar will be consuming a lot of silicon so it’s another thing that we need to understand,” he said. “We (also) see a lot of overlap with respect to the research directions of the technology.”

In addition to solar, Intel is investing in energy-efficiency processors and data center gear. Intel Capital, meanwhile, has invested in smart-grid company Grid Net, which is using WiMax wireless networks to broker communications between electricity utilities and customers.

He did say that the company will focus on improving solar cell efficiency–how well a panel converts light to electricity–as well as cutting the overall cost per watt.

SpectraWatt’s Wilson said that Intel’s silicon expertise translates in the solar cell industry, even though there are significant differences in the end product.

IBM on Monday announced plans to enter the CIGS solar cell arena by forming a partnership with a Japanese semiconductor equipment maker. It’s one of four solar efforts at IBM, which has a companywide green technology initiative.

In an interview, Wilson declined to provide specific technical information because the company is still in the process of seeking intellectual property protections.

Its investment arm, Intel Capital, is leading a $50 million round in SpectraWatt. Other investors include Goldman Sachs subsidiary Cogentrix Energy, PCG Clean Energy and Technology Fund, and German solar company Solon.

“Compared to the stuff Intel makes, the (solar cell) stuff is pretty dumb,” Bradford said. “To be successful long term, you need downstream partners to work on different (solar panel) form factors for different types of installations. Intel doesn’t do downstream stuff–they do brains.”

On the other hand, Intel’s processors–the brains of computers–are more sophisticated than solar cells. And in solar, packaging the final goods is very important.

(Credit:
SpectraWatt)

Looking for a solar play
The Intel-SpectraWatt deal highlights the deepening cross-over between IT companies and the clean-technology sector.

Updated at 1:15 p.m. PDT with comments from Bradford and SpectraWatt.

Intel made a big leap into the burgeoning clean-tech sector on Monday by creating SpectraWatt, a spinoff company that will manufacture solar cells.

The SpectraWatt logo.

Like IBM and HP, Intel has expertise in semiconductor materials and capital-intensive, high-volume manufacturing. Those same skills are required in the solar photovoltaics business, which is growing rapidly–on the order of 40 percent to 50 percent–from soaring demand.

The venture expects to start breaking ground on a facility in the middle of this year in Oregon and start shipping cells made from silicon to solar panel makers by the middle of next year. Andrew Wilson, the former general manager in the Intel New Business Initiatives group, will be SpectraWatt’s CEO.

“Almost every company in the electronics and semiconductor industry is going to try to figure out how to get into solar–it’s going to be that big of an industry,” he said.

Arvind Sodhani, president of Intel Capital and Intel executive vice president, said in a statement that the chipmaker is eyeing different business opportunities in clean tech. “This is an important investment for Intel Capital in the growing clean-tech sector, and we look forward to working with the company to support its expansion,” he said.

Hewlett-Packard earlier this month licensed transparent electronics to a solar concentrator start-up, Xtreme Energetics.

The company’s first plant in Oregon will produce 60 megawatts worth of cells. There will be a ground-breaking in about two months. Wilson said that the company has already secured customers and a supply of polysilicon, which is now in short supply worldwide.

“The solar industry is akin to where the microprocessor industry was in the late 1970s. There is a lot to be figured out and improved,” he said.

General DVD format using MPEG2 compression image of VBR, it is a dynamic variable data stream compression, it has very different past VCD. VCD uses CBR format, the data stream is fixed, each disc is stored in a fixed length of the film; and DVD’s stored video can change the length of the data stream using a small, relatively speaking, a longer time the contrary, a large data stream, store the length of the short film. This is higher than the DVD5 DVD9 quality of the main reasons.

From a compatible DVD disc, the existing main car DVD majority support D5, D9 format not compatible with some, but nowadays the trend D5 D9 great place, car or a DVD can be read D9 newer technology, the most troublesome is the vehicle to carry a lot of discs, people had to return to the store CD’s. In addition, the ability to have the resources to download to their favorite movie has become a problem, therefore, car DVD player chip sources are not embarrassed face a situation not Gan.

Installation location

Car DVD Installation of the current main way to ceiling, shading plate, Built, portable, large-screen, head style that dominated in several ways, one by one of the following installed on the advantages and disadvantages in different locations:

Ceiling: is required to cars at the top of the car hanging DVD, therefore, space requirements for large vehicle, usually a small car is rarely used, mostly installed in commercial vehicles such as MPV. So small, economic models were excluded.

Shading plate: Just like its name, this DVD of the display is in the car sun visor, but the display may be the original car’s sun visor and the size and thickness are different, so the outcome will be a lack of some aesthetic .

Built-in: the host’s own screen stretching way back to turn interior drive rail type screen, this car DVD car more space saving, usually installed in the original CD or tape drive vehicle office, and when not in use display can be hidden inside the host machine, you can protect the display screen surface from wear. As the screen is small, the rear passengers watch more strenuous.

Portable: for owners to create their own personalized car. It need not be fixed in the car, only to rely on a special car equipped with power cable plugged into car cigarette lighter port, you can look at large at any time in the car. In this way the current majority, will function in the body, as tasteless gesture tasteless, meaningless.

Big-screen: it is the best on the market, like many middle-grade car car Original DVD, like the host and screen together, even played on the car interior landscaping effect, visual effect is very good. It is generally used for high-end car, and be mindful of security issues.

Head type: watching TV while driving is as not permitted by law, required to install the first seat on the head style seems safer, therefore, more suitable for public and commercial vehicles. This multi-packed in behind the front seats, rear passengers happy.

Of course, the perfect image to install on the DVD is totally inadequate facilities, but also have first-class sound to meet in order to make "sound" and "color" the two worlds into one, creating a perfect audio-visual experience. So you have to consider the power amplifier and speakers with the need to also make a noise like, in order to create the so-called car theater, in the funding and must not be distressed on.

In addition, car DVD on the car’s environment is quite a request, because the screen is a consumable, such as temperature, humidity, dust and other conditions of use, easy to produce a variety of equipment failure, so they need more careful care.

Car DVD Product Trend

Car DVD is not the point are not useful, and more than just a simple video player, if the reversing radar, GPS navigation, digital TV, Bluetooth hands-free car, etc. is integrated into the DVD machine, the function will be more practical, but that prices there are some expensive foreign brands over at least 7 8000, domestic brands are too cheap a price around 2000-3000. The above points are mainly on the development of car DVD why not something to think about before, the proposed modified car DVD owners who need to think carefully before conversion, select a product suited to their needs.

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Apple on the other hand is coming off one of the most successful operating system launches in the company’s history. Mac OS X Leopard was a solid release, packed with features. Overall, Leopard had relatively few problems throughout its life cycle.

Apple said Snow Leopard is expected to ship in September. Microsoft will release Windows 7 in October.

Windows 7 is essentially Microsoft’s maintenance release for Vista, that according to many accounts was a failure for the company. Putting aside all of the back and forth between the two companies, one industry analyst feels it comes down to the consumer.

While early testing of
Windows 7 seems to bear out improvements in the operating system, Microsoft is coming off a very bad consumer experience with Windows Vista. That is not a trivial obstacle for it to overcome.

(Credit:
Jim Dalrymple)

Apple introduces Mac OS X Snow Leopard at the WWDC.

It’s clear that Microsoft has a much bigger channel to push Windows 7 to customers, but we’ve seen with the Vista release that doesn’t always mean success for an operating system.

“The OS war is on in a big way,” said Michael Gartenberg, vice president of Strategy and Analysis at Interpret. “Charging $29 won’t win Apple any converts, but Microsoft is going to look really bad with its upgrade pricing.”

Apple and Microsoft are fighting for the mindshare of consumers as both companies prepare to roll out upgrades to their operating systems later this year.

Typically, Apple sells its new operating systems for $129. That’s a flat fee. Everyone gets the same version that includes all features and enhancements. However, Leopard users will be offered an upgrade to Snow Leopard for $29. Microsoft has yet to release its upgrade pricing, but it is expected to be much higher.

“It’s really immaterial the degree of the rewrite in the operating system,” Ross Rubin, director of analysis for market research firm NPD, told CNET. “The key is the consumer benefit.”

Apple is coming from a strong position with Mac OS X Leopard, so upgrades to its newest Snow Leopard release should be very strong.

Microsoft will have to fight the industry perception that Windows 7 is just Vista with a few fixes. That could certainly lead to slower adoption of the new operating system out of the gate.

Apple doesn’t have to fight off that negative perception from its users or the industry. Macs have been selling better than ever and there is no sense that will slow down anytime soon.

Apple on Monday showed Worldwide Developers Conference attendees Snow Leopard, the next major version of Mac OS X. Apple has been very open about the fact that
Snow Leopard is meant to be an under-the-hood maintenance release, focusing on performance enhancements to the operating system.

In fact, I’m willing to bet that Openbravo would allow Google to plagiarize its Manifesto for Google’s own use. Any takers there in Mountain View?

commentary

Here are just two of the commitments Openbravo made:

Yesterday I suggested that Google could allay a lot of concerns about what it intends to do with others’ applications, data, etc. by firmly committing to open source, open data, and open APIs. Today, albeit on a much smaller scale, open-source ERP provider, Openbravo, did just that with the Openbravo Manifesto.

Open Source: A functional version of our software is always published under an open source license. Our goal is to enable any person with the required skills to install, configure and use Openbravo ERP and POS in a production environment. Open access to the development trunk: We guarantee read access to the main development trunk for everyone. Commit access is provided to all people that have demonstrated technical skills.

This is precisely the sort of commitment that allows partners, customers, and community developers to trust a company, when backed up by appropriate licensing (as it is in Openbravo’s case). Openbravo is tiny compared to Google. Imagine how much more of an impact this sort of commitment would have if used by Google?

Disclosure: I am an advisor to Openbravo.

Moto Rokr E8

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

Nokia 5310

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

T-Mobile may be the smallest major carrier, but that doesn’t mean it lacks a decent selection of phones. In the past few months the company has introduced two music phones that won our praise. The Motorola Rokr E8 offers an innovative “ModeShift” keypad, a 3.5mm headset jack, and a well-stocked music player that delivers on performance. The Nokia Xpress Music 5310 also brings a nifty music player to the table, but it packages it in a more traditional design. So, which is the better cell phone for listening to your tunes? In the latest CNET cell phone Prizefight we pit the Rokr E8 against the Xpress Music 5310 to see which handset comes out on top.

This is the video in question.

(Credit: Stephanie Lenz)

SAN JOSE, Calif.–Stephanie Lenz is an angry Pennsylvania mother who refuses to back down from the music industry.

Lenz’s attorneys were in federal district court on Friday morning, trying to thwart a motion to dismiss her lawsuit against Universal Music Group. A year ago, the music label ordered YouTube to pull down a 30-second video she shot of her infant son dancing to Prince’s song “Let’s Go Crazy.”

Lenz, who resides in a rural Pennsylvania area, claims that her video is protected under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Fair Use provision in copyright law. She fought the order, and eventually, Universal Music abandoned any claim that she violated Prince’s copyright. YouTube has since reposted her clip.

Now Lenz is out to teach the music industry a lesson.

What Lenz and her attorneys at the Electronic Frontier Foundation want are for media companies to stop sending take-down notices in a “willy nilly” fashion and to make sure that they have a legitimate claim of copyright violation before acting. They failed do this with Lenz’s video, according to Corynne McSherry, an EFF attorney.

“This video is so clearly noninfringing,” McSherry said. “What we’ve seen is that Universal Music had the view that they could take down Prince content as a matter of principle. But what they were obligated to do was form a good-faith belief that the video was infringing…They may not have formed a good-faith belief at all.”

The good news for her is that U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel said he would take the matter under consideration after hearing arguments from both sides.

In April, Fogel tossed out the lawsuit Lenz filed against Universal in October. Fogel said her argument that Universal was misusing its copyright was weak.

The judge did allow Lenz’s EFF attorneys, however, to try their arguments a second time.

EFF promptly filed a second complaint, arguing that Universal Music should compensate Lenz for falsely accusing her of violating the law and getting her video removed from Google’s video-sharing service. The music label has asked the judge to dismiss the case.

A lawyer for Universal Music argued that the label isn’t liable for ordering Lenz’s video to be removed because it doesn’t have to think about Fair Use prior to sending take-down notices. There is no legal obligation to think about it in advance.

EFF, which advocates for the rights of Internet users, disagrees. The group has always said there is real harm caused when a media company issues take-down notices. For example, Lenz had to spend time learning why her video was taken down and convincing YouTube that she had not violated copyright law.

Even though Universal Music now says it no longer considers Lenz’s baby video to be infringing on its copyright, Lenz says just receiving the take-down letter caused her harm.

Fogel gave no timetable on when he might make a decision. Should he decline to dismiss the case, Lenz’s lawsuit would be allowed to move forward.

Motorola’s executive management shakeup continues as the company replaces two more senior executives.

The company has replaced treasurer Steve Strobel with Larry R. Raymond, a former vice president and treasurer at Sears Roebuck. Strobel had most recently been working for a private equity firm.

Motorola also replaced Mike Fenger, who had been the head of mobile devices in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Stephen Nolan, formerly vice president of sales at Motorola for Continental Europe, will now be in charge of the EMEA region.

The changes at the top are all part of Motorola’s plan to transform its leadership team and move forward, a company spokeswoman told The Wall Street Journal.

Motorola’s handset business, which makes up the bulk of the company’s revenue, has experienced heavy losses over the past several quarters. The company hasn’t had a hit phone since its popular ultra-thin Razr. And it’s been losing market share while other companies such as Nokia and Samsung have gained market share.

Amid sharp criticism from investors, the company’s board of directors forced the resignation of CEO Ed Zander and replaced him with Greg Brown.

Since taking over as CEO, Brown has been shaking up the executive suite. Several top executives have left the company, including the CFO, head of marketing, and the president of Motorola’s Mobile Device unit.

Soon after Brown took over, Motorola announced that it was considering splitting off the mobile device unit from the rest of the company in an effort to return value to shareholders. Brown told reporters in February at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that he was fully committed to the mobile handset business.

Reuters reported last week that cell phone manufacturers in Asia have expressed interest in working with Motorola’s handset business. Chinese mobile phone maker ZTE was supposedly in talks with Motorola last month over a partnership, Reuters said. Xiong Hui, marketing vice president for handsets at ZTE, told Reuters during an interview at the Mobile World Congress in February that it had been “keeping in touch with Motorola on a wider cooperation.”

(Credit: Rohdesign)

Designer Mike Rohde attended several panels at SXSW Interactive last week and created 34 pages of sketchnotes for them in real-time, captured in a Moleskine sketchbook:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rohdesign/sets/72157604109069527/

And here’s his post about them with a little more detail:

http://www.rohdesign.com/weblog/archives/002768.html

What I like about this unique format of panel transcripts is that it shows how rich those on-stage conversations actually were. Sometimes you find yourself in the audience, passive and wondering if the discussion on-stage is really all that meaningful to you. Well, it is — as long as you engage and translate what’s being said into another creative act.

Or as someone pointed out on one of last year’s SXSW panels: “I write it down not to remember it later. I write it down to remember it now.”

Updated 3:35 p.m. PDT with additional details and comments from conference call.

As we already knew, times are still tough for Advanced Micro Devices.

The company reported its first-quarter financial results Thursday after the close of the market, and it continues to lose hundreds of millions of dollars. AMD had already warned investors that revenue would fall short of early expectations, and the official number, at $1.5 billion, was in line with the revised expectations.

For the quarter, which ended March 29, AMD lost $358 million based on generally accepted accounting principles, but that number includes $50 million in charges related to the acquisition of ATI Technologies in 2006. Excluding that one-time charge, the company lost $308 million, or 51 cents a share, also in line with Wall Street expectations.

AMD’s processor business had a decent quarter, despite not having its two latest server and desktop processors on hand until late in the period. Revenue in the chip business was up 30 percent compared with last year’s first quarter, as unit sales increased. But the business took a step backward in profitability, losing $160 million in the first quarter after eking out a $21 million profit in the fourth quarter.

Despite Intel’s upbeat assessment of the economy on Tuesday, AMD saw “a challenging global environment for consumers” during the first quarter, said Bob Rivet, AMD’s chief financial officer.

It sounds like AMD is getting ready to do a top-to-bottom look at its operation to find places to cut costs beyond the 10 percent workforce reductions it has already announced. Chairman and CEO Hector Ruiz spoke of “revisiting” noncore businesses, such as AMD’s cell phone and consumer electronics businesses, if the company can’t find a way to make them profitable.

That sounds very much like additional layoffs beyond the 10 percent cuts and the possible jettisoning of AMD’s consumer electronics business, which lost $8 million on a 31 percent decline in revenue. The company needs to get its costs down from around $1.7 billion this quarter to about $1.5 billion a quarter by the end of the year, Rivet said.

The good news is that AMD will have fresh new products in place, at long last, by the time the second quarter ends. Barcelona and Phenom, quad-core chips for servers and desktops, should provide a lift to AMD’s performance in those areas, said Dirk Meyer, president and COO. And AMD also expects to launch its first processor designed specifically for notebooks in the second quarter.

However, despite the new products, AMD still expects revenue to decline in line with normal seasonal patterns looking forward into the second quarter. The current quarter is always the slowest period of the year for the PC and server industries, absent any catalysts such as the back-to-school season or the holidays.

And while I had expected to hear about the fabled “asset-light” strategy on the one-year anniversary of Ruiz uttering that phrase, we’re still in the dark as to AMD’s plans for cutting costs in its manufacturing operation. “I know you would like (more information) and I feel terrible I can’t provide you details on that,” Ruiz said, sounding almost chagrined.

The first quarter of 2008 marks the fifth straight quarter in which AMD has lost at least $350 million. It’s mind-boggling to understand how it’s sustained such losses for such a long period of time. In total, that’s $3.7 billion in losses racked up between the beginning of 2007 through the end of March 2008.

Ruiz promised to have AMD profitable by the third quarter of the year. It’s going to take strong sales in the face of an uncertain economic environment, substantial cost cutting, and a bit of luck to get there.

Intel said it has acquired NetEffect, a company specializing in Ethernet products and technologies for server compute clusters.

The chipmaker purchased NetEffect’s assets for $8 million, which include the company’s Ethernet product portfolio, intellectual property, and technology.

NetEffect is a provider of solutions incorporating iWARP, an Ethernet alternative to InfiniBand. NetEffect’s product portfolio includes 1-Gigabit and 10-Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) adapters for servers and blade configurations as well as 10GbE Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs).

“NetEffect’s role as a data communications solution provider…will enhance Intel’s current Ethernet efforts,” Tom Swinford, general manager, Intel LAN Access Division, said in a statement.

Swinford said NetEffect’s technology will be a boon to Intel’s existing business in 10-Gigabit Ethernet, including server virtualization, convergence of network and storage traffic, and server compute clusters.

Designed for multi-core processor-based servers and optimized for virtualization, Intel’s current portfolio of 10GbE server adapters includes single and dual port versions for both copper and fiber implementations. The NetEffect acquisition provides complementary High Performance Network Interface Card (NIC) products to Intel’s Ethernet portfolio.

NetEffect was founded in 1998 as Banderacom, a company focused on InfiniBand adapters and 16-port IB switch, and was recapitalized in 2004 as NetEffect. Thirty employees, primarily engineers, have joined the Intel team from NetEffect and will continue to be based in Austin, Texas.