Solar-Geek Gathering Grows

Noah Kaye, director of public affairs at the Solar Energy Industries Association, wrote in an email today that last week’s Solar Power 2006 Conference & Expo in San Jose lured more than 7,000 registered attendees. “Turnout at Solar Power 2006 shattered our expectations,” he wrote. That’s a far cry from the 1,100 who attended last year, and it doesn’t even include the additional 2,000 who attended the public night October 17.

Those numbers make Solar Power the largest solar conference in the world so far, with Dresden’s European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition—which previously claimed the title—boasting 6,500 attendees this year. It’s another sign that some see California as the next big market for solar, while worrying that the German market—by far the largest today—could be shrinking as the payment solar-power owners earn for delivering electricity to the German grid drops 5 percent each year.

Want to know more about the conference? Here’s a slideshow of the exhibit hall, and here are the stories I wrote from San Jose:
Three Huge Solar Trends
SunPower to Launch Large Panel
Solar Gets Home Financing
Google Goes Solar
Khosla Touts Centralized Solar
Schwarzenegger Likes Cleantech

Want to compare it to the Dresden conference? Take a SolarWorld factory tour, check out a Q-Cells party, or read my stories:
Solar: 3 Reasons for Optimism
Q&A: Creating as SolarWorld
ErSol Buys Into Thin Film
Blitzstrom Buys More Thin Film
Sun Cools New Refrigerator
Solar Energy for the Poor
Clean Energy Goes to the Movies

Five Googles?

At Solar Power 2006 in San Jose, Khosla Ventures founder Vinod Khosla said the first state to pass "real" clean policies will attract entrepreneurs and new businesses. "[They will bring the] biggest boom in job growth and the economy that we will see, because energy is far larger than the Internet," he said. "We will see five Googles in the first state to implement these." Who will become the first Poogle (power Google) or Cloogle (cleantech Google)?

jon stewart on net neutrality

Still funny.

Power Hungry

Several readers have asked me where they can get Energizer's Energi To Go chargers. Here's the deal: only the cell-phone chargers are on sale right now. Energizer originally planned to put the audio and gaming packs on retail shelves this month, at the same time as the cell-phone chargers, but the company says the launch has been postponed. Energizer's trying to enhance the efficiency of those packs so they will be smaller and require fewer batteries, a spokesperson said. The company hasn't announced a new launch date. As for the cell-phone chargers, here's a list of where you can buy them.

Bored by Apple

When Intel CEO Paul Otellini introduced Apple Computer's marketing guy Phil Schiller on stage at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, I thought, "Cool. Wonder what Apple has to say." After all, it was the first time an Apple ambassador showed up at IDF. Instead of an interesting talk or even some amazing demo, Phil went on and on about what Intel-inside machines Apple launched this year. My eyes glazed over. A history lesson. But Paul didn't disappoint. He laid out an aggressive product offering timeline for the next five years.

Holy Hybrid!

Honda unveiled a clean diesel engine today that it says will be as clean as a gasoline engine. In a story for Red Herring, I wrote that such technology could turn up the heat in what one analyst has called a “holy war” between diesels and hybrids. But a Red Herring reader, Ranjit Mathoda, pointed out that the two technologies aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. "Why not a diesel engine with a hybrid power train?" he wrote in an email. Good point. General Motors told me last year it was testing a diesel-hybrid Sprinter Van, although nobody has announced plans to commercialize diesel-hybrids. As Mr. Mathoda wrote in his blog, diesel-hybrid technology isn't cost-effective right now. Still, the potential is certainly exciting.

Play with Fire

We at Red Herring are thinking about creating a running tally of laptops that burst into flames as a result of faulty batteries from Sony. Ever since Dell recalled 4.1 million laptop batteries in mid August, stories about dangerous laptops have kept on coming. The latest is an incident at Yahoo and features, yes, a Dell laptop. Oh wait. I just read about a Lenovo ThinkPad caused a stir at LAX when its owner ran out of a plane during boarding because the laptop was smoking--it later caught fire. Three airlines--Korean, Quantas, and Virgin Atlantic--now bar passengers from using laptops unless they take off the battery packs and use the power outlets near their seats.

Better NAND

The king of memory chips, or Samsung, if you prefer, is proud to unveil a 32-Gigabit NAND chip that uses high-k dieletric and design to boost performance. The company says this chip can make 64-Gigabyte memory cards possible. That means more storage for your movies and songs. Speaking of entertainment, everyone is speculating what Apple Computer will unveil tomorrow at a product launch dubbed "Showtime." Eydie did a nice piece about Apple's march into the living room, so check it out.

Solar for the Poor

Our intrepid energy reporter Jenn Kho is in Germany this week for the world's largest solar conference, where she has uncovered cool stories about turning sunlight into electricity. Her latest is about a discussion on making solar energy affordable for developing countries (see Solar Energy for the Poor). An intriguing proposition, no? Some of the fast-growing developing countries also are energy-hungry, so turning them away from conventional power-generating technologies is a good idea. Think of China's massive Three Gorges Dam, for example. Not that industrialized nations such as the United States shouldn't do the same, of course.

Intel: Labor Day is Over

A day after a long Labor Day weekend, Intel CEO Paul Otellini said he plans to cut the company's workforce by 10,500, or 10 percent, before the middle of next year and slash cost by $2 billion 2007 and $3 billion in 2008. These are the latest cost-saving measures he had promised Wall Street, which responded by saying, basically, "Yeah, that's nice, Paul. But really, you need to do more."

If It's Good Enough for PS3 ...

... it's good enough for a supercomputer. IBM, forever trying to find new outlets for its Cell processor, is building a supercomputer that will sport Cell and AMD's Opteron. The machine, called Roadrunner, is destined for a U.S. government lab, and it would faster than the world's reigning supercomputer, IBM's own Blue Gene L. So either way, IBM wins. Speaking of Cell and PS3, is it any surprise that Sony is delaying the game console launch, in Europe for now? It's like watching Prez Bush mispronouncing words--you know it's going to happen again and again.

WiMax on a Train

CalTrain "Baby Bullet" locomotive at 4th & King, originally uploaded by party of the third part.

Forget Snakes on a Plane.

Soon commuters in the San Francisco Bay Area will be able to enjoy high-speed wireless on the train.

Caltrain said last month that it has become the first rail line in the United States to test wireless broadband service on trains traveling up to 79 miles-per-hour.

The commuter rail service, which zips commuters between San Francisco and Silicon Valley, worked with Intel and Nomad Digital to test a high-speed wireless service based on WiMax, a long-range cousin of the popular WiFi wireless technology.

With the ‘proof of concept,’ completed, Caltrain said it will now work on the engineering required to make access available along 50-miles of rail line. Caltrain estimates the project will cost less than $334,000.

As a result, the train may soon have driving beat two ways: you can drink and watch streaming video.

Kill Your Television (It's Time to Buy a New One)

televisions-000820, originally uploaded by rabinal.

Like old-fashioned tube TVs? Too bad. A great piece in the New York Times on the end of an era.

"The end of picture-tube TVs is accelerating faster than a lot of us expected," said Randy Waynick, a senior vice president for Sony Electronics. The company, which offered 10 tube models two years ago, will pare that number to two next year, both of them wide screens. "Picture-tube TV sales reductions were far greater than forecast," Waynick said.

Roll Your Own Robot

Lego Mindstorms NXT, originally uploaded by msabramo.

Lego's Mindstorms NXT, launched August 2, is better than a robot. It's a robot you build yourself. A hacker's dream. Can't wait to see what people come up with.

Yet Another iPhone Rumor: Engadget's Got a Tip from a Reader's Coworker's Friend

I Want To Believe... iPhone, originally uploaded by Pedro Aznar.

Okay, this is getting ridiculous. Gizmo blog Engadget has got a wild tip that Apple's long-rumored phone will make its debut in August.

...proceed with caution. We have no confirmation here, but sometimes a tip is too juicy not to share, no matter how suspect it might be. A reader is reporting to us that a coworker's tech-unsavvy friend, who is regularly hired by Apple to do marketing photo shoots, was recently brought on to take some shots of "the sleekest, sexiest damn phone he's ever seen."

This one deserves a dumptruck-sized dose of skepticism (you'd think a company as secretive as Apple might have its own photographer, on payroll, for starters). In fact, the rumor is becoming a bit of a joke among the Apple faithful (see image, above). Dozens of media outlets, including Red Herring, have speculated about such a phone for more than a year now. The key questions remain the same:

-Will it have Wi-Fi?
-Will Apple partner with a carrier such as Verizon or Cingular? Or will it go it launch its own service by partnering with a so-called Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO)?
-We can assume it will have iTunes... but will it be able to download music directly? Or will we have to continue synching our phones with a PC (a la Motorola's Rockr)?

The New York Times has a great overview of the new generation of wi-fi handsets today...

The phones, while a potential money-saver for consumers, could cause big problems for cellphone companies. They have invested billions in their nationwide networks of cell towers, and they could find that customers are bypassing them in favor of Wi-Fi connections. The struggling Bell operating companies could also suffer if the new phones accelerate the trend toward cheap Internet-based calling, reducing the need for a standard phone line in homes with wireless networks.

Is the 'Macture' at hand?

iHeaven, originally uploaded by Samtherocker.

Evangelicals have the rapture. Apple true believers have something you might call the 'macture.' It's the idea that, one day, Apple will hit a kind of tipping point and become the computer of choice for the masses. Is it time to drink that Kool Aid? eWeek's David Morgenstern made a smart case yesterday that the time is now:

...Apple over the past five years has executed successfully on a technology and business strategy that puts a thick computing platform in the middle of digital workflows. This plan was articulated before the release of Mac OS X.

The company now offers its users an elegant hardware platform, a robust graphics foundation in its operating system, support for rich content standards, and most importantly, a solid list of solution-based programs for content creation and management from Apple and its software developers.

Guess what? Real customers, not just gamers, want performance, will buy performance and can use it. Apple is counting on it.

Care to comment on this?

Dude, You're Getting a Fire: Part II

fire patrol, originally uploaded by niznoz.

Another report of a Dell laptop fire.

Next thing he knew, fire extinguishers were going off and the place was filled with smoke as another Dell burst into flames. "The battery burned its way straight through the laptop creating the beautiful hole with which is so beautifully depicted in the picture," he says.

Intel Core 2 Duo and Girl Power

Intel enlisted the help of two professional female gamers from Frag Dolls at its launch of 10 Core 2 Duo processors at its HQ in Silicon Valley yesterday. Which is a good thing considering that most of the speakers and special guests at those events are men. The gaming PC business is tiny (makes up less than 5 percent of AMD's desktop chip revenue), but both Intel and AMD work hard to cultivate a following among the tech-savvy gamers. I checked out a $6,000 VooDooPC Omen that comes with a clear side panel and a pink liquid-cooling system. Chatted with VooDooPC president Rahul Sood, who seemed a bit overwhelmed by all the attention to his blog about Intel dis-inviting ATI (which is being sold to AMD) to the event. Anyway, there was a funny skit at the Core 2 Duo launch, involving two Intel employees taking their laptops with them on a flight from SF to New York City. The guy with the Intel-based notebook finished all his work during the flight while the other guy with the AMD-based notebook didn't because the battery died in mid-air.

Blogging News.com blogging Red Herring

Red Herring has spotted an Apple patent filing that appears to cover a method for operating an iPod click wheel without actually having to touch the device.

Thanks for the mention of my colleague Eydie Cubarrubia's story. But how about a link brother? ;-)

Call it 'Snakes on a Flame'...

...because that's the only way to describe this fire-fighting robotic snake.

Lovingly nicknamed Anna Konda (no explanation necessary), the Norwegian bot was assembled using 20 hydraulic motors powered by a regular fire hose, whose 100 bars of pressure give it enough strength to break through walls and even lift a car right up off the ground. Anna consists of ten segments containing angle sensors, two valves, and two motors each -- rotating around orthogonal axes and wrapped in a tough steel exoskeleton -- that are controlled by a computer to help her maneuver over numerous types of terrain.

Pirates Need Hardware Too!

Ye have a barnacle-covered PC that be getting sluggish? Ye have a new PC and be looking for memory that makes it faster than a clipper with a full mast? Want to enhance yer gaming experience by boosting th' performance o' yer gaming rig?

Avast, so says the new product configurator from Corsair memory. Nice to see Pirate-speak (piratish, piratese???) getting equal time along with Japanese, English, and Portugese.

Stone Cold Hate for Microsoft's Zune

Zune - interface screenshot, originally uploaded by guybo.

John Gruber, one of the funniest Mac bloggers around has some of the old SCH* for Microsoft's Zune music player.

I mean, if this is even vaguely the form factor of the device they plan to ship, it’s so shameless a rip-off that they might as well have called it the “xPod” or even the “Ipod” (“It’s a totally different name — we have a capital ‘I’, see!”). The scroll wheel, the sparsity of buttons, the plain white facade. But that “Microsoft Designs the iPod Package” video be damned, you just know there are executives at Microsoft dying to slap a logo on the front of this thing, right?

*Stone Cold Hate

WiMAX Gets More Ink

WiMax is getting more ink in the press lately, with Intel's $600M investment in Clearwire and more Intel news about its mobile WiMax chip, Rosedale II. Motorola is doing its part. The telecom equipment maker will begin a WiMax trial in Tokyo, starting in September. It's also won a contract to build a nationwide WiMax network in Pakistan, starting early next year. The efforts of those large companies are good for startups, such as Paris-based Sequans Communications, which just raised $24 million.

AMD's Canadian Ally

For a while, AMD executives said they didn't want to do what Intel does so well: bundling microprocessors with other chips. This is the strategy for Centrino, which is a group of microprocessor, chipset, and WiFi chip. Every time you see a laptop with the Centrino sticker, you know that computer has several Intel chips inside. Time has changed for AMD, which realizes that it's got to offer more than microprocessors in order to attract customers who like to one-stop shop. The chip company today said it will pay $5.4 billion for graphics chip company ATI in Canada and build ATI's technologies into future microprocessors. The aquisition is the latest step taken by AMD this year to re-focus its effort on selling x86 computer chips. It sold its Alchemy chip line to Raza Microelectronics, and it now markets x86 chips by Transmeta that target the cheap-PC market.

Mean Green Speed Machines

Cleantech entrepreneurs are not sitting on the sidelines this year as auto majors launch their 2007 models. Aside from the Hyanide, Tesla Motors revealed its sporty, sexy electric car last week. Look for a photo in the next Red Herring magazine! Also, the IndyCar Series is switching to 100 percent ethanol next year--check out this story. Here's are some photos I took of Jamie Schwartzkopf, head of the racing program for ethanol company Renova Energy, at the Fuel Ethanol Workshop & Expo last month.

Do You Play Golf?

Do you play golf?
No.
Do you play games?
No.
That's pretty much how I started the interview with OnNet CEO Kevin Lee, hours before he flew back to Korea today. Mr. Lee has run the game publisher for a decade now. His specialty: golf games for PCs and mobile. You can play it for free, which tempts me to try it out. Never played golf--swung the club a few times. Check out the game site here. Check out my story on Korea in late August.

Clean Energy Exuberance?

Oil prices fall to a "mere" $73 a barrel, and clean energy stocks fall too. The WilderHill Clean Energy Index (ECO), which tracks clean energy stocks in the United States, has dropped about 10 percent from the beginning of the month. But while the market is volatile, investor interest in the exchange-traded fund that mirrors the index is surprisingly steady, says Rob Wilder, president of WilderShares, which manages the index. “We’re still getting $2, $3, $4 million of net inflows,” he said. “There have only been two days in the last year that we got more sells than buys.”

Engineer Emphysema

At the Energy Tech Investor Conference in San Francisco today, Athena Institute CEO P.S. Reilly teased Bill Capp, CEO of Beacon Power, for not being able to think of an “interesting thing” for her to use for his introduction. “They say if you smoke 10 years, it takes 10 years for your body to recover,” she said. “I think it’s the same thing with being an engineer.”

Remember This

A photo album that is smaller than a grain of rice? That's the idea behind HP's memory spot, a tiny chip that can store photos or a short audio/video clip. Pretty cool invention. I was at the demo at the HP Labs in Palo Alto yesterday and saw the technology being used to put personal medical data on a hospital wristband and store a boy's off-key singing of a dinosaur song, to be sent to his grandparents no doubt.

Crouching Hyena

Check out this monster: a hybrid vehicle that combines the features of a dirt bike, a snowmobile, and a four-wheeler. Called Hyanide, this is a cool ride. Wait until our auto reporter, Jenn Kho, gets back from her vacation on Vancouver Island in Canada--she'd love this concept car. She's a guru on hybrid cars and recently wrote a story about how mainstream auto makers and startups are tinkering with all sorts of novel technologies (read her story here).

Weekend Photostream: Where am I supposed to work?

Where am I supposed to work?, originally uploaded by amberlion.

More cats and computers.

Don't Worry Kids, Your Robot Teacher Won't Eat You

Robot Attack!, originally uploaded by Dan Coulter.

Funniest caveat in a hardware-related news story this year:

To be sure, it’s not like the classroom will be headed by a large mechanical being drawing on whiteboards and lecturing in a monotone voice

Read the rest of Eydie Cubarrubia's story here (as featured in News.com's "Extra" blog).

Sniping at Apple

Very clever. Anyone care to offer a reality check?

Weekend Photostream: Computer History Museum

Computer History Museum, originally uploaded by Laughing Squid.

And they say Disneyland is the Happiest Place on Earth.

From the Magazine: Has Apple's Halo Cracked?

Has the iPod lost its cool? Factories in China that make Apple's music player have come under fire for mistreating workers. A new Wi-Fi portable music player finally offers users something the iPod doesn't. European regulators are gearing up for round two against the iPod's tight paring with Apple's iTunes music servers. And now analysts say they expect slowing iPod sales to harm the company's upcoming earnings report.

Read Eydie Cubarrubia's full report.

Real Men of Genius: Mr. Google Custom Server Builder

Real Men of Genius, originally uploaded by Vaguely Artistic.

Red Herring's Semi-Official Hardware Blog Presents: Real Men of Genius
Real Men of Genius
Today we salute you, Mr. Google Custom Server Builder.
Mr. Google Custom Server Builder
You've given us the real American dream: two gigs of storage for our email, the ability to search for images of fried food from any computer in the world, and a little sign that says, "Go nuts buddy!"
Pinch me, I'm dreamin'!
Pushing server-side innovation to its limits, you're doing a job traditionally reserved for women with tiny hands in the sweatshops of East Asia.
Sweatshops in East Asia!
You could buy from IBM, Dell, Sun. But no. Instead of spending any of the $9 billion Google has in the bank on servers you're rolling your own, patenting a "drive-cooling baffle,' and even looking into designing your own microprocessors.
I thank heavens for the drive cooling baffle!
So crack open an ice-cold Bud Light, server room monkey. You may be a nerd, but anyone who would rather build a computer than shop for one is our kind of nerd.
Mr. Google Custom Server Builder.