In May at TechCrunch Disrupt, we got our first look at Tunerfish, a Comcast-owned service that asks users the question, “What are you watching?”. Today, the app is headed to the iPhone — you can download the free application here.

The gist of the application is simple: instead of aimless channel surfing, which often yields lackluster results, Tunerfish lets you see what your friends are watching (think Foursquare for video). Launch the Tunerfish app, and you’ll see a list of the shows your Tunerfish friends have checked into (you can choose to check into content that spans television, movies, and online video) as well as trending shows. Once you’ve found something you like, you can check-in to notify the rest of your Tunerfish-using friends what you’ve come across. Updates can be syndicated to Facebook as well.

It’s a little basic, and I suspect that most people won’t have many friends who use the service yet, but it also has potential down the road. Tunerfish was built by the Plaxo team that Comcast acquired in 2008. John McCrea, who leads the team, says that at this point when you use Tunerfish and come across a show you’d like to watch, you’ll still have to surf to the proper channel yourself (in other words, there isn’t any integration with Comcast’s cable box or your TV).

However, he says that such automated channel changing will eventually be possible through “integrations with channel-changing apps and IP-enabled TVs and set-tops”. In the meantime, though, he says “the most important battleground for TV check-in apps will be smartphones and tablets”. McCrea also says that the team is talking to Comcast’s online video streaming service Fancast about ways to integrate the two services (picture seeing what your friend is watching and tapping their status update to start viewing that show immediately).

McCrea also says that an Android app is on the way.

Most green technologies gather energy above ground, but like Jules Verne, we want to take you on A Journey to the Center of the Earth. Alright, not even close to the center, but deep down nonetheless, where naturally occurring hot water can be turned into clean energy above ground.

It is estimated that the amount of heat within 30,000 feet below the earth’s surface holds potentially 50,000 times more energy than all global oil and natural gas resources combined. According to the Geothermal Energy Association, up to 6,400 megawatts of new capacity could be created from the geothermal projects under development in the U.S. But getting to that energy is proving to be a challenge.

Geothermal energy comes in a variety of forms, from residential fixtures to power a single home, to commercial plants that can power a city. Energy is usually harnessed from hot underground water or steam that naturally rises to the surface. Power plants drill holes into the rock to gain more direct access and use the hot water and steam to drive electric generators. After its use, the water can be pumped back underground to heat up anew. Power plants use different energy harnessing designs based on the type and temperature of the geothermal resource available.

Geothermal deals are heating up as it begins to prove itself as a viable energy source. For instance, Ormat Technologies recently bought Constellation Energy’s 50% share of the Mammoth Geothermal Plant in California for $72.5 million. The deal gives Ormat three power plants capable of generating 29 megawatts of power and rights to more than 10,000 acres of undeveloped federal lands.

Ormat’s home state of Nevada is a geothermal powerhouse. According to the Geothermal Energy Association, the state produces more geothermal energy than all but eight nations. Its geothermal capacity jumped from 200 to 400 megawatts during the last five years, and as many as 3,000 more megawatts are expected to be generated from developing projects. A typical coal-fired power plant can generate about 500 megawatts, though some are much larger. Nuclear power plants typically range from a 500 to 2000 megawatt capacity.

Unlike wind and solar, whose energy outputs fluctuate based on weather conditions, geothermal provides consistent base load electricity, which is the minimum amount a power utility’s customers need. It is also considered clean because it produces no greenhouse gas pollution, and renewable because the water can be reused. Last year, Obama gave $350 million in Recovery Act funding for geothermal projects.

Most geothermal plants have been located near the edges of tectonic plates, where there is a lot of geothermal activity, but companies like AltaRock Energy, which has received funding from Google, among others, are developing ways to generate steam in other geographic areas. The technology, known as Enhanced Geothermal Systems, drills into hot rocks miles below the surface and pumps cold water down to them to generate steam. The technology has been in development for a while, though there have been concerns that EGS might trigger seismic activity that could lead to earthquakes.

It’s been a very rocky road, to say the least. Last year, AltaRock abandoned its trials near a plant called The Geysers in northern California when instabilities in the rock caused the borehole to collapse. The company moved its tests to Oregon where it is working on a three-year EGS demo near Newberry National Volcanic National Monument. AltaRock’s competitor, Ram Power Corporation, purchased The Geysers in June. If the AltaRock’s Oregon demo is successful, a power generator will be placed next to the wells to test how much energy can be harnessed from them.

Photo credit: Flickr/Johann kr.

When do you think it would be appropriate to revoke Google's "Do No Evil?" credentials? Mountain View is in talks with Verizon that would allow the Big V to prioritize Internet traffic as it sees fit. So, if Site A wants to pay Verizon $X so that it loads faster than Site B, Site B has two options: it could either pay Verizon $2X so that it loads faster, or it can be content with the fact that its rival just paid for better access to the same customer base. Internet, we hardly knew ye.

Editor’s note: In the following guest post, former Google product manager and MyLikes CEO Bindu Reddy has some advice for her former employer on how to kickstart a social network. Reddy’s last guest post looked at the advertising threat Facebook poses to Google.

While there have been a lot of rumors floating around about Google’s social aspirations, including its recent acquisition of Slide and work on Google Me—a purported extension of Google's profiles that is going to be built on Buzz—there is also quite a bit of skepticism about Google's ability to succeed in the social networking space.

Most people are focused on Google building a good product. But even a really good product won't be enough for Google to gain real traction in the social space.

A lot of people underestimate the challenge of being a latecomer to a space like social networking. Social networks are similar to online marketplaces such as auction websites. For those of us who have been around for a few years, there was a time when there were a lot of online auction markets including offerings from Amazon and Yahoo. Only eBay, the leader, survived and stayed No. 1—not because it had the best auction site, but because it was the first one to reach a critical mass of users.

Trying to take on Facebook today is a daunting task even if someone comes up with a great product. There is a really high barrier to switching to a new network along with all your friends.

The only way that Google can hope to gain momentum is if it can gain critical mass rapidly after launch and make the Google network as valuable as the alternatives to a significant pocket of users.

With Buzz, Google took the correct first step and made the uncharacteristic move of exposing Buzz to the firehose of Gmail traffic. However distribution does not necessarily guarantee usage or retention and Buzz seems to have fizzled out after the initial buzz around it died down.

So this time around what can Google do that will help attract and retain millions of users to a social network that is built from scratch? To answer this question, Google needs to look at smaller social apps that seem to be gaining some traction lately.

Following Twitter's lead to some extent, companies like Ustream, TweetPhoto, TwitPic and DailyBooth have realized that a relatively small set of users are capable of driving massive amounts of repeat traffic and engagement.

Whether it is real-life celebrities like Lady Gaga, who can generate 390,000 visits to a photo on TwitPic with one tweet and the Jonas Brothers, who can generate 2 million views to a stream on Ustream, or online celebrities like iJustine who has more than 90,000 followers on DailyBooth, these start-ups have been able to capitalize on the magic of the one-way folllow.

As few as 5,000 large influencers can bring and retain millions of users with them. All you need to do is to look at the engagement that is generated by the 5.5 million people following Britney Spears on Twitter or the nearly 11 million fans Megan Fox has on Facebook to be convinced.

So here is one way Google could still have a fighting chance: Before launching a new social network, they could actively enlist around 1,000 of the top online celebrities—starting with Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and Justin Bieber and going down the list. They already have a bunch of them on YouTube. It shouldn't be too hard with their brand, clout and the resources they can bring to bear given that they have more than $30 billion in cold hard cash. Make it really attractive, fun and easy to use for these users and enable a personal publishing platform for them. Make a great mobile product and do photos, audio and video well. Make it even easier for big influencers to manage and monetize their online social presence, and tie it into Twitter, Facebook and all the rest as much as possible.

Build the iPhone to Twitter's Blackberry.

Admittedly, signing up Web celebs is just a way to kickstart Google’s social network. Google still needs to do a better job of understanding people and how they relate to one another to keep it going. But enabling this kind of one-to-one communication between influencers and their fans would be a good first step towards creating engagement and it would also bring in a number of aspiring users who hope to be influencers in their niche. The users in the community then would need to take care of the problem of ongoing engagement and critical mass.

And for launch, make an ad much like the Expendables trailer. Only instead of Slyvester Stallone, Bruce Wills, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jason Statham and Jet Li, you would have Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Megan Fox, Paris Hilton, Eminem and Fred all telling you why Google Me is the place to be :)

Photo credit: Lady Gaga

Amazon.co.uk is now shipping the new Kindle to readers in the UK and has just opened the UK Kindle Store, giving them the opportunity to pay £149 for the 3G model and £109 for the Wi-Fi-only model. Books range from about £3 to £11, a slight change in pricing from the US store.

Until recently Kindles had to be imported into the UK surreptitiously. Amazon’s Kindle apps should also reflect this change for local Britons.

Read more…

This is a guest post by Jeff Lynn, the Chairman of The Coalition for a Digital Economy (Coadec) and Co-Founder and CEO of Seedrs. In this piece he argues that if we want to encourage angel investing in the UK, the discussion in the angel community needs to focus more on the returns investors can achieve. Last week saw the release of two significant reports on angel investing. In the US, super-angel Ron Conway presented the results of an audit his company, SV Angel, had conducted on the 500+ investments it has made over the past 12 years. Meanwhile, in the UK, Professors Colin Mason and Richard Harrison published an annual report on the state of angel investing in Britain.

Productivity apps are two-a-penny, but productivity is one of the major boons of the iPad's large touchscreen interface. Tapping and moving things around is a very natural, human way to approach things. And yet productivity apps often remain stuck in the click and point world of the mouse, and refuse to make the best of a visual and spacial approach. Indeed, on a laptop I often find myself resorting to a fast, simple text-based To-Do list just because I can cut and paste items on the list up or down depending on priority. But I've recently tried out a productivity app on the iPad which might actually convert me over. iNow [iTunes link] is an iPad app which does one simple thing. It lets you create a To Do list you can move around and re-order very, very simply and easily. And the developers, Stone Soup Software, have taken a clever approach, which is tried and trusted: that of air traffic controllers. Say what?

Is it possible to make online ads "sticky" so that users engage with them longer? That's the aim of a new partnership between CBS-owned Last.fm and MXP4, the interactive music startup. Using MXP4's technology, Last.fm is to begin offering brands the option to create ads that users of the music streaming and discovery service can interact with, such as remixing a track in realtime or "singing along in karaoke mode", all within the ad itself. In a way it's similar in concept to Apple's new iAds in the sense that ads become fully blown apps. And obviously, a music oriented app is a perfect fit for Last.fm.

Nearly every company has a social media presence these days, right? And, naturally, tech companies execute best. Although perhaps not. A slightly self-serving study by PR and marketing agency Wildfire, which analysed the social media activity of the 2009 Deloitte Fast Tech 50, found that 90% of the UK tech companies featured had a presence on two or more social networks but the majority fail to actually use social media in a social way. Instead, far too many brands are treating the likes of Twitter and Facebook as a traditional marketing channel. Staggeringly (or maybe not), while 74% of companies operated an official Twitter account, 43% of brands had never replied to a single tweet. Overall, the study found that 57% used Twitter solely for one-way marketing activity.

As in sometimes it’s hard for him to get a table without a prior reservation … Foodspotting founder Alexa Andrzejewski snapped the above pic of Apple demi-god Steve Jobs outside of San Francisco hotspot Flour + Water over the weekend.

What’s particularly notable here is that Andrejweski, who may I remind you owns her own location-based photo posting site, regrettably posted the photo to Twitpic instead of Foodspotting and offered no background or explanation as to whether she was part of Jobs’ entourage or just an innocent photo bomb bystander (we’ve contacted her for more info and will update this post if she responds).

The widespread reach of this image is further proof that we now live in a time where tech luminaries now draw as many eyeballs Hollywood stars, even if they do not hold the same sway over restaurant maitre d’s.  According to Sfoodie, when the customers right in front of Jobs snagged the last seats in the packed Flour + Water house so he did what a normal well-adjusted human would do and left.


Eat your heart out Dan Lyons.


Update: Andrejweski responds to us in an email, with more photos and the backstory behind the original image.


You don’t know how much I wish I’d posted “Steve Jobs @ Flour + Water” on Foodspotting now that it’s gotten Digged and over 25,000 views, but I was just caught up in the moment because I was so happy for my friend Kim, the guy in the picture, and we don’t *normally* encourage celebrity spotting.

Kim (@taro) is an awesome Swedish programmer living in Japan. He took a month off from work here at Smart.fm to do a cross-country road trip, with the idea of hitting Apple land as the Mecca of the voyage. He’d just spent the previous day in Cupertino, just to see “The Apple Temple.”

Kim is the the biggest Steve Jobs/Apple fanboy in the universe [Editor's note. Insert MG joke here], and his trip ended with him seeing Steve Jobs and getting his picture with him plastered all over the place.

Kim’s second love to Apple is food, so I’d been planning to take him to Flour + Water for months. I had no idea that Steve Jobs would be waiting in line right behind us! What are the chances that, as our other flabbergasted friend Simon put it, “the great god in his infinite kindness and wisdom would grace @kimtaro with his presence at Flour + Water.”

When Steve Jobs politely declined our request for a photo with Kim, we walked away sullenly, but moments later my husband turned around to snap this “photobomb.” It was the happiest day of Kim’s life! Here are a few more photos to dispel the Photoshop charges. Plus this guy did a thorough analysis here.


By the way — he was there with his family of course. And yes, we were just bystanders.


Alexa

Today at the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, CA, Google CEO Eric Schmidt sat down with a group of reporters after his panel to answer questions. A lot of questions. 45 minutes worth of questions. That included the death of Wave and the success of Android. But one area that a lot of people are interested in right now as it relates to Google is their overall social strategy — and what their thoughts are on social gaming.

When asked about Google’s social intentions going forward, Schmidt noted that “there have been a whole bunch of leaks. Some have been correct, some not correct.” This is an obvious reference to the rumored Google Me project, and perhaps to Google’s investment in social gaming company Zynga. Both of which appear to be very correct.

Schmidt went on to say that Google has always believed that their products would be better with more social signals. That said, he thinks the media is obsessed with “Facebook versus Google.” Schmidt elaborated: “We’re not trying to do what Facebook does.”  ”The world does not need another Facebook,” he continued. This echoes his comments from last week.

When I asked specifically for a comment about Google buying social app maker Slide and investing in Zynga, as expected, Schmidt declined to comment. But he did offer up some of his general thoughts about social gaming.

Schmidt sees Google getting more involved in “sort of casual things.” He cited their Pac-Man logo as one example of a type of game like that. But he followed that up with: “I would doubt that we’ll get into significant gaming — but you never know.“

Such a statement seems to go against Google’s recent maneuvers. But you never know.

Watch him talk about it in the video below.

“Evite sucks” is not a revolutionary opinion. The online invitation company has been the subject of substantial vitriol for how much their site design feels like it’s from 1998, when they launched. It would be impossible not to respond to this overwhelming criticism, and the newly re-launched Evite attempts to address many of its user experience problems.

“It should feel snappier than it has in the past,” says Evite CEO Hans Wooley. Yes it should, with hipper clones like Pingg, Punchbowl, Socializr and Crush3r fast approaching. Even the moms have moved their PTA bakesale announcements over to Paperless Post.

But the MySpace of online invitation services refuses to take any lessons from these smaller, scrappier startups, something that even MySpace, to its credit, is now starting to do. It’s still slow (according to Alexa 76% of sites are faster than the old Evite.com) and it’s still full of ads.

This latest Fantasy Interactive-designed version boasts a much cleaner UI designed to take you straight to the invites, a marked improvement. Glomming off the socialized content trend, it has a new Facebook Events-like feature imaginatively called “Event Conversation,” where hosts and guests can comment and post pictures. The site also added hundreds of new still cheesy looking invitations and small functionality changes like being able to seamlessly add guests from past events to an invitation

I tried sending out an invite earlier today and the new site loaded “sending” and timed out before it told me that I needed more information to complete the process, even though I had all the fields filled out.

Then, despite the fact that the prompt was telling me I couldn’t send an invite, I got two successive emails in my inbox thanking me for sending an invite. Twenty minutes later I still hadn’t received my actual invite. So I’ll post what I did receive below.

That is not attractive anyway you slice it. Compare this with the welcome email I received and the invite I created on Pingg, which both arrived at the same time. Look ma, no Wolverine (or any) ad!

When I finally did receive an Evite invitation after trying three times, it looked like this, with no party information visible. There was absolutely nothing at all to aid a user in the decision of whether or not to attend. In stark contrast to Pingg, you’re basically forced to click though. 

When asked why the emailed invite was not at all informative, an Evite representative responded:

“We try to encourage RSVP and interaction with the invite, that is why event hosts love Evite, they get to track RSVPs and easily communicate with guests. Also, our business model is built on the invitation view, there is no advertising in the invitation email.”

The “Also, our business model …” aside speaks volumes. The new Evite can add all the social sharing and conversation functionality it wants but unless it pays attention to how people are actually inviting other people to things, it’s just another platform with the fatal flaw of refusing to understand that user experience should trump advertising revenue always. But especially when people can just use Facebook.

Their promo video and screencaps below.

Photo: Shoshie

Remember back in the day when Google was only activating 100,000 Android units a day? You should — it was May. By June, that number had jumped to 160,000 units a day. And today it now stands at 200,000 Android units activated a day. That’s pretty incredible.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt revealed as much today during a sit down with a group of journalists after his panel at the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, CA. When asked about how the Android platform is doing, Schmidt was practically glowing. He cited the recent quarterly shipment numbers (the ones showing total shipments passed those of the iPhone in the U.S.) and said that he just checked their own internal numbers this morning.

When someone said they didn’t know a good way to measure Android’s success, Schmidt quickly responded, “trust me, we do.” He then joked about the fact that he carries around the recently cancelled Nexus One. When someone suggested that was a classic, sort of like the Apple II, Schmidt joked: “is that a compliment?“

Schmidt specifically cited the Droid X as a reason for the recent Android surge. And he noted he was excited about the new Galaxy as well because it’s on all the carriers.

When questioned if the revenue coming in from Android was enough to make the whole project worthwhile, Schmidt said that it absolutely was. He noted that the idea behind Android is that it drives search — and that search is still their primary means of revenue. “Trust me that revenue is large enough to pay for all of the Android activities and a whole bunch more,” he noted.

He said that they don’t break out Android revenue numbers because they consider it a part of search.

Schmidt also quickly transitioned to note that they “love the success of the iPhone” as well thanks to how much it also drives search.

Below find the video of him talking about Android.

More from Schmidt:

Eric Schmidt: Every 2 Days We Create As Much Information As We Did Up To 2003

Schmidt Talks Wave's Death: "We Celebrate Our Failures." [Video]

Google's Schmidt Doubts Company Will Get Into "Significant" Gaming

As you may have heard, Google Wave is dead. But why is it dead? Google CEO Eric Schmidt took some time today after his panel at the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, CA to answer that.

When BBC reporter Maggie Shiels asked about the reasons behind the product’s demise, Schmidt noted that Google liked the UI and a lot of the technology behind the product, but it simply to take off. “We try things,” he said. “Remember, we celebrate our failures. This is a company where it’s absolutely okay to try something that’s very hard, have it not be successful, and take the learning from that,” he continued.

If something does hit, he noted that Google gets strongly behind it. That simply wasn’t the case here.

Schmidt also said that Google would be taking the technology behind Wave and applying it to technologies that they haven’t announced yet. Everyone believes this will be Google’s next big push into the social space (which executive Vic Gundotra will apparently be leading). He says the Wave guys are going to be working on things like Wave — but again, things that aren’t announced yet.

I followed up with a question about Buzz — Google’s other recently launched social tool. “The Buzz team is doing very well,” Schmidt said. But he noted that “we tend to lump Buzz into the Gmail success.” When I asked if Google considered attaching Wave with Gmail as well to bolster it, Schmidt replied that “there were a number of such ideas, yes.”

Watch the full video below.

Related:

Eric Schmidt: Every 2 Days We Create As Much Information As We Did Up To 2003

Schmidt: Google Now Activating 200,000 Android Units A Day [Video]

Google's Schmidt Doubts Company Will Get Into "Significant" Gaming

Instantiations has been known for their popular Java/Ajax development tools and in particular their Google Web Toolkit (GWT) designer. They’re so closely associated with it that at the top of their page, they note: “GWT Designer is not affiliated with or sponsored by Google Inc.” Except now they can change that part. Because Google has just acquired them.

The company has just acknowledged the purchase on their site today and have begun to email customers notifying them of the change. As they note, the Eclipse team and the tools have been bought by Google and they plan to use the move to be able to take their software to the next level.

This makes sense for Google not only because of the popular GWT Designer, but also because of the overall Ajax and Java focus. Ajax is a huge component of all Google web apps. While apps built for Google’s Android platform are built using Java.

So yes, this seems to be a no-brainer. It’s not quite as splashy as the Slide buy, but it makes sense.

From the note they’re sending out:

From our new Google home, we will be able to leverage our Eclipse Java industry knowledge, award-winning technology and world class development team to continue advancing the state-of-the-art in software development tools. But first and foremost we want to say how much we appreciate your patronage and support through the years. Thank you!

How does this affect you? Please rest assured that your existing Support Agreement will be honored. Our highly responsive tech support team is in place and ready to take care of you.

New downloads for the Eclipse Java products will disabled for a short time during the transition. Please stay tuned for exciting new announcements coming soon on the Google Web Toolkit blog.

As Googlers we plan to continue to provide significant value to your business for many years.

Tesla has released the details of their 2010 Q2 financial performance, and it looks like things are coming up roses for the nascent auto maker. Sales are up, with nearly $27m in sales coming in — translating to a total of around 250 Roadsters shipped. Their gross margins are up, though; their business is growing, and hopefully cash on hand will suffice to pay for R&D and manufacturing until they start eking out a profit.

Critically, the launch of the Model S sedan is on track, and much of the cost of development is already behind them. With a far lower price and larger target demographic, it is likely the first Tesla car many will actually see on the road, and not parked in some entrepreneur’s driveway in Mountain View.

Continue reading…

Today at the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, CA, the first panel featured Google CEO Eric Schmidt. As moderator David Kirkpatrick was introducing him, he rattled off a massive stat.

Every two days now we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization up until  2003, according to Schmidt. That’s something like five exabytes of data, he says.

Let me repeat that: we create as much information in two days now as we did from the dawn of man through 2003.

“The real issue is user-generated content,” Schmidt said. He noted that pictures, instant messages, and tweets all add to this.

Naturally, all of this information helps Google. But he cautioned that just because companies like his can do all sorts of things with this information, the more pressing question now is if they should. Schmidt noted that while technology is neutral, he doesn’t believe people are ready for what’s coming.

“I spend most of my time assuming the world is not ready for the technology revolution that will be happening to them soon,” Schmidt said.

At a time when print book sellers like Barnes & Noble are in retreat, digital books on the iPad and Kindle hold a lot of hope for keeping books alive in the digital age. But so far most of the titles are just digital versions of printed books, with maybe a video or two thrown in. Slowly, however, as new capabilities are added to these digital books and they are linked to the living Web, some books will become more than just books.

One company experimenting with the form is Vook. Started by Brad Inman, who previously founded TurnHere and HomeGain, Vooks are electronic books sold in versions for the iPad, iPhone/iPod Touch, and the browser. They generally incorporate video, sometimes produced by one of the TurnHere network’s 10,000 freelance videographers, but up until now they didn’t go much beyond that in terms of presenting a new experience.

Vook is in the process of updating all of its titles on the iPad, beginning with Reckless Road, a tribute to Guns N’ Roses written by one of Slash’s early friends from high school who documented everything with video, photos, and his recollections. The Vook has a new interface, and a slew of new features, including the ability to highlight text and share it with your friends via Facebook, Twitter, or email. Since there are often videos in these Vooks, you can share those also. Within the next month or two, more social features will be added such as the ability to leave comments and ratings. “I think we are going to find out better and better ways to light up the text,” says Inman.

There are 62 Vooks available, including Seth Godin’s Unleashing the Super Idea Virus and Gary Vaynerchuk’s Crush It!. There are also cookbooks, and Sherlock Holmes mysteries. Inman says that by the end of this year, Vook will put out 250 titles. Upcoming titles include another Seth Godin book , Linchpin and a version of Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Discovering Your Life Mission. Self-help seems to be big theme in the catalog.

Each Vook costs anywhere from $2 to $17. Most of them are priced around $5. But the new Vooks also support ads which can take over the entire screen. These will be able to tap into regular in-app advertising networks, and will also b used to cross-promote other Vooks.

None of the Vooks I’ve seen have really blown me away yet. I think that is just because they happen to be repurposed print books instead of created from scratch with videos and images in mind. I suspect that the cookbooks and other practical how-to books will benefit first from the incorporation of video. But Vooks are cheap to make. Inman estimates that most Vooks can break even after selling a few thousand copies, sometimes as little as 500 copies. Most books need to get into the tens of thousands of print copies sold before they start to break even for the publisher.

Electronic books like the Vook are disruptive in that they don’t need to sell as many to be competitive. Maybe that means fewer blockbusters. But a big hit will also be much more profitable. Vook is still waiting for that hit. A vook that sells 2,000 copies is considered a success. Overall, only 30,000 Vooks have been sold (100,000 have been downloaded if you include free versions).

Are Vooks what will replace books? I don’t think so, but Inman is pushing in the right direction.

I just had the opportunity to test-drive the new Nissan Leaf here in sunny Seattle, and had enough time with the car to garner some first impressions, take some pictures, and shoot a little video.

The Leaf, as you are probably aware, is Nissan’s new plug-in electric vehicle, and the first of the new generation of consumer EVs to be released here in the States. Sure, you’ve got the Tesla, and even the more family-oriented Model S, but they’re beyond the reach of the average city-dweller. Priced at just under $33K ($25K including the government rebate), the car is really competing with Accords and Legacys and the like. While it’s easy to suggest that it also competes with the Volt, the pricing and technology really set the two apart; all they’ve got in common is an electric motor. I tried to keep all that in mind when comparing the car in my mind with others on the market.

Continue reading…

Symantec recent report doesn’t have very nice things to say about iOS’s security. Something about a PDF exploit and bad guys taking control of iPhones and iPads – you know, a real security hole that Apple should address immediately. Hitler doesn’t care, though. His solution? Hitlerfix. Click through for the timely adaptation of the meme.

Sure, VCs may be headed out of town for their August vacations, but we’re hard at work here at TechCrunch getting ready for our fall conference TechCrunch Disrupt, September 27-29 at the San Francisco Design Center Concourse.

If you’re a new startup that will be ready to launch this fall, we want to hear from you. Apply to the Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt. The deadline is midnight PST Sunday, August 8 (you have through the end of the weekend for those who want the fine-print definition of midnight). Details follow.

StartUp Battlefield Eligibility:

• If you’re a startup that will be ready to launch at the end of September, we want to know about you. By launch, we mean that you want to either (1) announce and enter a closed beta or (2) open to the public on stage at the conference.
• If you’re a startup that’s opened to the public since June 1, 2010 you are also eligible to apply. The hurdle for companies who have already been public is much higher. If your launch has been covered extensively in the press, you’re not likely a fit, because our focus is showcasing new startups and new products on stage. But make your case, and we’ll consider companies on a case-by-case basis.
• If you’re an existing startup or company with a new product launch, you may also be eligible to apply. The product should be a completely new line of business for you, not a new feature release—no matter how extensive, fresh or improved—of an existing product. Good example: AdBrite launched Spottt at a previous TechCrunch40 event. It was a new ad product for AdBrite, with an independent brand, site and platform. Bad example: new mobile version, new ipad version, new APIs or geo-location integration. These things are all great and important for startups to pursue. They’re just not our target for the Disrupt competition.

There are no other rules:

• Companies may be funded or unfunded.
• Companies may be from any geography in the world. In fact, we like to showcase geographic diversity.
• Startups may be from any sector. Yes, our sweet spot is consumer and mobile internet, but we’re thrilled when we can showcase enterprise applications, hardware, greentech and other new areas of innovation.

There are no costs to apply or present, and if you’re selected you’ll receive complimentary passes to attend the event.

Also, every year, people love to tell us that we need to feature more diversity on stage, especially more women founders. Help us. If you know a great new startup, please recommend them to apply to TechCrunch Disrupt ASAP.

How to Apply:

• Complete an application, powered by Producteev, by Sunday August 8
• We strongly favor applications that include a short video demo. It doesn’t need to be a fancy demo, but it really helps to see your product. Due to the heavy number of applications, we may not be able to screen applications that do not include a video.

Pre-emptive answer to: What happens if I miss the deadline? You may submit a late applicaiton. But we prioritize review of applications submitted before the deadline. We will continue to review all applications until we reach our target number of launch companies, likely 25. We’ll finalize our launch companies by the end of August.

We have already extended offers to several new startups, so please apply for consideration to TechCrunch Disrupt ASAP.

You’ll be in good company:
Soluto was our grand champion at TechCrunch Disrupt NY. They cashed their $50,000 grand prize, take their StartUp Battlefield Trophy everywhere they go in Tel Aviv Israel, and are gaining momentun and consumer adoption worldwide.

uJam, the runner up and audience-choice favorite, is helping consumers compose, produce, and publish their own music.

Check out all 22 great companies that launched at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC.

What can I do if my startup doesn’t qualify?
There are lots of ways to participate at TechCrunch Disrupt.

If you’ve already launched or don’t get a final spot on stage, we have a high-visibility exhibitor space in StartUp Alley. Discounted rates apply for companies less than 2 years old and with less than $2 million in funding. Register online for StartUp Alley packages.

We have exhibitor and sponsor packages in all shapes and sizes for companies great and small. Exhibitor packages are also available online. Contact Heather Harde or Jeanne Logozzo to learn about custom sponsorship packages.

Come be Disruptive
Early bird tickets are on sale through August 31. Join us.

Minutes ago, San Francisco federal judge Vaughn Walker struck down the infamous Proposition 8, a measure that banned same-sex marriage in California. Twitter and Facebook are abuzz with the news (as you’d expect), but one other site is also seeing an immense amount of traffic from it: document sharing hub Scribd.

The final ruling was uploaded to Scribd by Good As You and received over 50,000 hits “in a matter of minutes” according to Scribd Senior Director of Communications Michelle Laird — it’s up to over 125,000 reads as of this writing. CEO Trip Adler says, “a typical viral document gets 100,000 reads in 24 hours, this document has over 100,000 reads in about 24 minutes.”

Of course, the case is not yet settled: Prop 8 may be facing a long, time-consuming road to the Supreme Court over the next couple years. But for champions of equal rights, this is big news — expect to see that Scribd read count continue to trend skyward over the next few days.

Update: There are some issues with docs loading, which Scribd says are being caused by an outage at Amazon’s Web Services.

Image by laverrue

The consensus among people I talk to about the upcoming movie about Facebook, The Social Network, seems to be that it looks like it actually might be good. That said, most simply can’t believe that it actually will be because it’s about, well, Facebook. So is it just the trailer that is making it look decent? A few people on YouTube decided to try and find out by making their own trailer for a movie — about YouTube.

The Video Website looks very promising. The plot looks eerily similar to The Social Network – but it includes laughing babies and pandas. What more can you ask for?

It also contains lines of tense dialogue such as:

• “I’m talking about taking the entire humiliating experience of home videos and putting it online.”
• “We don’t have enough videos of adorable laughing babies.” “Then find more! This is my shot”
• “The keyboard cat wants more money.”

Watch it below.

Japan’s biggest business daily, The Nikkei, has just reported on its website that social gaming giant Zynga has acquired Tokyo-based startup Unoh for “several billion Yen” (one billion Yen currently translates to $11.6 million). Neither Zynga nor Unoh have officially confirmed the news yet (Robin Chan, Zynga’s GM of Asia Business Operations, tweeted about a “done deal” just 24 hours ago).

The move follows the $150 million Zynga raised from Japanese technology powerhouse SoftBank to build a joint venture to "develop and distribute social games across Japan." Now we know where some of that money has landed.

Zynga is said to have acquired 100% of Unoh, with The Nikkei saying that the Americans will transform their new Tokyo office into its strategic base for the Asian social games market as a whole. Unoh will localize Zynga’s games to better fit the taste of Asian customers and will also create titles for the local and international markets on its own.

The Japanese startup, which develops games for both cell phones and PCs, has so far been largely active in its home market only. Unoh’s current hit title is called Machitsuku (“Build a City” in Japanese), a free game with a virtual item-based business model. Machitsuku passed the three million user mark on Mixi, Japan’s largest social network (20 million members), just last week.

The Unoh deal marks Zynga’s second major acquisition in Asia. Zynga bought Beijing-based XPD Media (which was actually Chan’s company) in May this year for an undisclosed sum.

Chan spent a lot of time in Japan recently to build up a Tokyo office for Zynga, but even though I kept grilling him, he remained tight-lipped about his company’s Japan strategy. Rumors about possible acquisitions by Zynga in Japan (where I live) started making the rounds in the local startup scene in June (not to brag, but I actually foresaw the Unoh acquisition back then).

We’ve contacted both Robin Chan and Unoh CEO Shintaro Yamada for official confirmation and further information on the deal.

Maybe it was just ahead of its time. Or maybe there were just too many features to ever allow it to be defined properly, but Google is saying today that they are going to stop any further development of Google Wave.

Wave, a real time messaging platform, was unveiled in May 2009 to an enthusiastic crowd of developers at the Google I/O event in San Francisco. It would “set a new benchmark for interactivity,” said Sergey Brin.

The product is part email, part Twitter and part instant messaging. Users can drag files from the desktop to a discussion. Wave even showed character-by-character live typing. It fully launched this last May.

And while the service has many, or at least some, passionate users (including TechCrunchers), it “has not seen the user adoption we would have liked,” says Google.

The service will remain live, says Google, although they say it may eventually come down. Google has also open sourced parts of the code and say they will create tools to let users “liberate” their data: “The central parts of the code, as well as the protocols that have driven many of Wave's innovations, like drag-and-drop and character-by-character live typing, are already available as open source, so customers and partners can continue the innovation we began. In addition, we will work on tools so that users easily "liberate" their content from Wave.”

What happens to the Wave team, mostly located in Australia? Google won’t say, other than that they will be given new projects. Our guess is many, or all, of them will soon be working for Vic Gundotra and his new WWF (war with Facebook).

Update: And here’s Google CEO Eric Schmidt talking about the demise.