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The cars’ lithium-ion batteries (from an undisclosed supplier) will be optimized for rapid charging and longer range. Those same batteries will be used in a Mercedes hybrid model as early as next year, the companies said.

Project Better Place, founded by former SAP executive Shai Agassi, is taking a similar approach in an effort to make electric car ownership more attractive.

The project, called e-mobility Germany, will have Daimler and its Smart subsidiary supply 100 electric town cars. RWE will install and run the charging stations in Berlin, the companies announced last Friday.

“Our joint initiative is a good example of what can be achieved when policy makers, energy suppliers, and the automotive industry all work together toward the same goal,” said Dieter Zetsche, chairman of the Board of Daimler, in a statement.

Auto giant Daimler and German utility RWE will launch a network of 500 battery-charging stations next year, a trial meant to give electric
car drivers the freedom to power up while on the go.

(Credit:
Daimler)

The cars will be equipped with communication equipment that will allow consumers to have their cars charged at different locations and be billed to one account.

It has signed on the governments of Israel and Denmark to test a system where electric car drivers in a restricted driving area can replace batteries in a network of stations.

Utility RWE said it envisions that car batteries from the 100 electric cars in Berlin could feed electricity back into the grid to lessen the load during peak times.

A charging station and electric car, part of the "e-mobility Berlin" project to build a network of charging stations.

The effort, modeled on a similar effort in London, is being financially supported by German government agencies as part of environmental policy.

Charging stations are expected to be installed at people’s homes as well as public spaces, such as offices, shopping centers, and parking lots.

While no one can predict what will happen to the economy over the next 12 to 18 months, you can bet your bottom dollar that threats to confidential data will increase substantially in that time frame. Why? Malicious code threats are growing exponentially while the cyberunderground becomes ever more sophisticated.

Fortunately, industry players are starting to team up to lower the cost, complexity, and integration effort needed for data-centric security. Last week, EMC’s RSA and Microsoft got together to announce that the software giant will integrate RSA’s Data Loss Prevention (DLP) into the Windows infrastructure in order to discover and classify data (Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and so on). Microsoft will also tightly integrate DLP with its Enterprise Rights Management (ERM) Server. Not to be outdone, security bigwig McAfee on Monday announced that it will integrate its DLP data discovery and policy management solutions with a leading ERM solution from Liquid Machines.

1. DLP solutions need to become more mainstream
While every company that conducts business over the Web needs DLP capabilities, software solutions require customization, sophisticated skills, and lots of dough. Microsoft’s data classification integration into Windows should help alleviate this by providing baked-in DLP basics.

2. DLP and ERM are complementary
DLP technology assumes you don’t know where sensitive data is so you want to find it, classify it, and keep it confidential. ERM, on the other hand, assumes you know exactly where the data lives and you want granular protection at the user and file level. These announcements demonstrate that the debate between DLP and ERM was misguided–large organizations need both solutions to safeguard known and unknown sensitive data across the network.

So what’s next? While other DLP vendors will form their own cozy relationships, my hope is that the industry comes together in a group hug and defines some meta data standards for classification, policy definition, and enforcement. I know this isn’t likely but it would sure go a long way to help us all protect our sensitive data.

3. Entitlement management is the next challenge
While we figured out how to centralize user authentication pretty well, we still leave entitlement management (i.e., user privileges) to each individual application. This method doesn’t scale, is full of security vulnerabilities, and is nearly impossible to audit. Liquid Machines, McAfee, Microsoft, and RSA get this as do others like Cisco Systems (through its Securent acquisition) and Rohati. Clearly, these vendors are positioning themselves for this next moneymaking opportunity.

Why the activity?

Photos of the alleged Kindle 2 were leaked late last year and speculation was high that a new Kindle would arrive in time for the holidays.

It’s interesting to note that one of the readers of my earlier story posted that he just got an e-mail from Amazon saying that the Kindle his girlfriend ordered for him during the holidays was due to ship on March 5. Of course, that’s just one buyer, but it wouldn’t shock me if Amazon shipped out the bulk of its orders for the Kindle around then.

Is this what Amazon.com will announce at its press conference on February 9?

I just received an invite “to an important Amazon.com press conference” on the morning of Monday, February 9 in New York. I’m not going to say where it is (that’s not cool for Amazon’s PR people, who would have to deal with crashers), but let’s just say it’s in a location that relates to books.

If indeed this turns out to be the announcement for the new Kindle (to be clear, I have no confirmation of that), Amazon could very well offer customers who’ve already ordered the original Kindle–and are awaiting its arrival–the option of canceling their orders or receiving the new Kindle.

Not only did no new device show up, but Amazon basically stopped shipping the Kindle, even as it continued to advertise it front and center on Amazon.com, day after day. A note on the Kindle product page informed potential buyers that the Kindle was sold out and on back order for two to three months. Now it’s just listed as sold out and that Amazon would ship the device on a first-come, first-served basis.

As always, feel free to comment.

A few days ago I wrote a column speculating when Amazon’s new Kindle might arrive, and I might have gotten the answer Tuesday morning.

When the Kindle was first announced in 2007, Amazon held a very similar press conference (yes, in the morning), so I’d say there’s a good chance we’ll finally get some sort of official announcement on the next version–or versions–of Amazon’s popular digital reading device.

(Credit: Boy Genius Report)

Who Runs Gov is a wiki, powered by MindTouch. Registered users can edit the pages, but changes don’t go live until the site’s staffers approve the edits. Also, subjects of Who Runs Gov profile pages (or their staff) will be able to submit their own profile information for inclusion on pages about them, a fundamental difference from Wikipedia, where you’re not supposed to write about yourself.

In a quick side-by-side comparison with competitor Wikipedia, I found Who Runs Gov far more consistent and predictable, although–so far–lacking the diversity of viewpoints that makes it into many Wikipedia entries.

The Washington Post today is launching Who Runs Gov, a site primarily made up of a database of personalities in the United States government. If you’re looking for info on your state’s senator or representative, or details about a cabinet or high-ranking military official, it looks like the site could be a valuable resource.

Who Runs Gov profile pages are consistent and useful.

As on other wikis, users can easily check out the edits and revisions that have been made to any page.

Samsung’s NC20 Netbook shows that Via Technologies’ Nano processor can keep up with the Joneses. But will Nvidia be given the chance?

I find it almost amusing when Intel lists Via as one of two competitors (Advanced Micro Devices being the other) in its Form 10-K filings. It’s a fair analogy to say it’s like a mom-and-pop coffee shop among a dense cluster of Starbucks stores. You may draw a few customers but 99 percent of the market is going to go to Starbucks.

The sober reality is that Via faces the same daunting challenge that Nvidia does: competing with Intel. The largest Netbook vendors–Asus and Acer–are wedded to Intel processors and chipsets, as are most of the other major players. An incremental increase in processor performance from Via won’t necessarily tempt PC makers to drop Atom.

Nvidia faces a Catch 22. It needs a lot of Netbook design wins to make decent profit margins but customers won’t sign up for Nvidia’s Ion in the face of Intel’s bundling incentives.

(Credit:
CNET Reviews)

Samsung NC20 Netbook packs a Via Nano processor–not an Intel Atom.

Via helped pioneer the Netbook market in early 2008 by powering one of the earliest high-profile products, the Hewlett-Packard 2133 Mini-Note. In fact, Via was already supplying the inexpensive, low-power Via C7M–Nano’s predecessor–in 2005 when the Atom concept was just a glimmer in Intel’s eye.

Alas, Nvidia’s Ion seems destined only for tiny desktops for now. Nvidia has been shopping its Ion platform (Atom + Nvidia 9400M graphics) around and has had some success with top-tier PC companies looking to design diminutive desktops. But not any success to date in the Netbook space (although some smaller Asia-based Netbook makers are expected to announce Ion-based Netbooks at Computex in June).

CNET Reviews’ Dan Ackerman reviewed the new Samsung NC20 Netbook and found it not wanting in a matchup with the Asus Eee PC 1000HE, packing Intel’s latest and greatest Atom N280.

The Netbook market vacuum didn’t last long, however. Within months of Atom’s arrival, the Via C7M was squashed by the Intel juggernaut, not to rise again. (Largely due to the fact that the C7M was slow, as one reader points out.)

Though Nano is a necessary industry antidote to Intel’s grip on the Netbook market, in the scheme of market share numbers, Via’s chip is a blip at best.

Nvidia went out of its way this week to demonstrate a concept device at
CTIA in Las Vegas running Windows CE. Nvidia basically tore out the guts of an Intel-based HP Mini 1000 Netbook and replaced it with Tegra parts, according to a Nvidia spokesman Derek Perez, who attended CTIA this week.

Then there’s Tegra. This Nvidia chip platform may have more success in the category of so-called “$99″ Netbooks that are more akin–in the way they are offered to customers–to cell phones than laptops. These Netbooks, as depicted by Qualcomm, would be always-on and not part of the WinTel (Windows-Intel) ecosystem.

Nvidia’s predicament is even more difficult because the GPU supplier can offer something that Intel can’t: great graphics performance in a Netbook.

CNN's John King shows off his "Magic Wall" election map that's built on Perceptive Pixel's multitouch system.

“It was a ton of fun to be there and to work with creative people,” he said of his time at SNL.

Another key moment in Han’s company’s 2.5-year timeline was a military trade show where CNN executive producer David Bohrman just happened to be walking the floors. He took notice of Han’s technology, which unlike traditional touch screens allows you to use more than one finger–or the fingers of multiple users–at a time.

The result, in the case of CNN’s map anyway, has been the ability to zoom in and out of states, change them to different shades of blue or red, quickly tally electoral votes under different scenarios, and more.

(Credit:
Perceptive Pixel)

The applications for Perceptive Pixel’s technology run the gamut–from defense and government to private companies–depending upon how the software toolkit is used. The TV news applications are actually a small fraction of the current uses, Han said, although they are the most challenging and have the highest visibility.

The TED show “was the launch of this whole thing,” he said, noting that a video of his 2006 presentation quickly spread around the Web. That, of course was before the launches of Apple’s iPhone and Microsoft’s Surface, both of which also take advantage of touch technology.

A demo of Perceptive Pixel's multitouch screen using two hands.

“He saw the technology in a different way than anyone else had,” said Han, 32, who never conceived of his product’s application in television news. “I hadn’t thought of it that way, but I wasn’t disagreeing,” he said.

(Credit:
Perceptive Pixel)

Election Day freneticism is the norm for the likes of candidates, journalists, poll workers, campaign staffers, and commentators. But this time around, an unlikely tech entrepreneur and his employees entered the fray.

Jeff Han is the man behind CNN’s “Magic Wall” multitouch electronic wall map, the one reporter John King has been using all campaign season to illustrate election information and that was the target of a recent Saturday Night Live spoof (embedded at the end of this post). Han’s company, New York-based Perceptive Pixel, has also provided its technology to Fox News Channel (Bill Hemmer’s “Bill-board”) and to ABC News, which unveiled its version of the map Tuesday night.

(Credit:
Perceptive Pixel)

So far, Han said his company is weathering the economic downturn and its user base continues to grow. He wants all new clients to see the SNL skit, which he said relays the important message that technology is just that. What matters is using it appropriately. Same for multitouch specifically, he said; there are times when it’s the perfect solution. There are also times when other technologies are more appropriate.

Han’s employees were stationed at CNN, Fox, and ABC Tuesday night to help their graphics departments make sure things ran smoothly. But amid the frenzy of the day he said he was confident it would all go well–they had been working long and hard with the TV networks in preparation for the big night.

Han–a crowd favorite at the Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) conference in 2006 and 2007–even equipped, trained, and collaborated with SNL staff for the spoof skit in which cast member Fred Armisen gets carried away drawing a green cat over the country and moving Minnesota on top of Virginia.

“In the wrong hands, it doesn’t work,” he said, thankful that King was the one presenting his technology for the first time to much of the world.

With his background in computer graphics, Han said at one point it hit him that what he liked about the field was not so much the pretty, photo-realistic presentation of information, but interacting with the information, manipulating it, and moving things around. That’s what led Han–who conducted research for and is still associated with New York University’s computer science department–to start working on his multitouch system about six years ago.

(Credit:
Perceptive Pixel)

Jeff Han demonstrates his company's multitouch system.

Perceptive Pixel founder Jeff Han

(Credit:
James Martin / CNET)

Threadless.com founder Jake Nickell and chief creative officer Jeffrey Kalmikoff on Friday chatted with TechWeb’s Jennifer Pahlka about crowdsourcing design and feedback from a user-base that’s buying up more than 100,000 T-shirts a month. Despite darkening economic times, Nickell says the site is still getting 150 to 200 user submitted designs per day, a number that the Threadless community whittles down to just nine that get released as new shirts on a weekly basis.

Not all is bad though, Nickell says there are more than 800,000 people signed up for the company’s weekly e-mail newsletter, which he says has driven repeat business.

One thing that was not mentioned in the interview was how well the company’s brick and mortar store was doing, and if the pair planned on continuing retail expansion. The Chicago store, which opened up in September of 2007 offers most all of what’s available online, in addition to designer’s art in a gallery space. It was also the first in a series of planned retail operations across the country, including stores in Colorado and California which have not yet opened.

Threadless founder Jake Nickell and chief creative officer Jeffrey Kalmikoff chat with TechWeb’s Jennifer Pahlka.

Kalmikoff said one of the things that keeps the designs coming in is how much designers are getting paid. According to him, the $2,000 (plus being able to retain the copyright on the image) is approximately four to five times what’s being offered at other design shops. Nickell also said that unlike efforts from competitors, the Threadless formula has worked so well because the site doesn’t ask designers to create T-shirt designs around specific things, something he said can limit the number of submissions they get.

Part of the operation that’s not quite as streamlined, however is Threadless’ marketing, something Nickell and Kalmikoff say they’ve learned on the fly after a few follies. “The whole idea of reciprocal promotion is something we now think about when doing a partnership,” said Kalmikoff, who described early missteps where the company would offer what later turned out to be free sponsorship for movies, video games, and film festivals without getting any promotion in return.

To further the site’s marketing push, Nickell says Threadless will soon be getting Facebook Connect integration. “All these moments when you could be sharing, commenting, posting a blog post. (That) interaction becomes content,” he said. Threadless users who log-in with their Facebook credential can shoot their activity on the site and favorite designs back out to their public feed.

“The deep Web holds an almost limitless wealth of data, yet most of that information is collecting dust because nobody’s come up with a way to mine the data in a way that’s useful to researchers and consumers,” Wozniak said in a statement Tuesday.

Steve Wozniak

Apple co-founder and “Dancing With the Stars” celebrity du jour Steve Wozniak has joined the advisory board of DeepDyve, a “deep Web” search company that aims to discover hard-to-find information on the Internet that mainstream search engines overlook.

DeepDyve, formerly named Infovell, specializes in searches for biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, patents, physical-science areas, and Wikipedia.

(Credit:
Stephen Shankland/CNET News)

“Steve’s place in the history of computing is already well established. But what sets him apart is his passion for technology and his commitment to mentoring and fostering the next generation of technology companies,” DeepDyve Chief Executive William Park said in a statement.

As more and more enterprises switch from Unix to Linux to gain performance and shed costs, Red Hat and Novell stand to gain.

For those wondering how big Red Hat and Novell can become on operating-system revenue alone, keep that $61 billion number in mind. Most of that $61 billion is hardware-related, but it meant approximately $650 million in Linux server sales for Red Hat and Novell over the past year. As Linux eats into Unix, Red Hat and Novell can expect to grow linearly with it.

Good for IBM, but the real news in this Unix market share carve-up isn’t Unix at all: it’s Linux.

Or perhaps they can do better. As the operating system comes to include big-ticket items like virtualization, perhaps the roughly 1 percent of the overall server market that Red Hat and Novell claim in software revenue will become 2 percent…or more.

Linux server growth has been outpacing Unix server growth for some time, with Linux gaining more than a full percentage point of market share to land at 13.4 percent market share earlier this year, according to IDC.

commentary

Last week, IBM announced that over the past 10 years, it has gone from also-ran to first place in the Unix server market, claiming 35 percent of the $61 billion market in 2008 to Sun’s 29 percent share, as noted in the Post-Bulletin.

This is the big opportunity. It’s a good time to be selling Linux server-related software subscriptions.