IT Spot

Shanghai developers plan to begin construction next year on what they say will be the world’s first sustainable “eco-city” on a plot almost the size of Manhattan. The Dongtan, or East Beach, project is to be built on Chongming Island and is slated to eventually support half a million residents.

Among other things, the city is envisioned to recycle almost all of its waste, produce its electricity, and ferry people around in hydrogen fuel-cell buses and solar-powered water taxis, according to The Seattle Times

But amid high hopes, there is fear that the environmental project will end up as “another grand idea that failed in practice.”

Read the story at The Seattle Times: “Can a bold new “eco-city” clear the air in China?“

(Credit: VisBox)

It used to be that if you wanted to get a good look at microscopic bits of matter, you had to have to use, well, a microscope. You’d smoosh a drop of liquid between two small glass plates, slip them under the lens, and then fiddle with the focus until the mitochondria — hopefully — came into view. At least, that’s how it was in my high school biology class way back when (and never mind those film strips).

Things are different if you’re a scientific researcher at a 21st-century institution of higher learning. Take the Tufts University School of Engineering, which has the luxury of a $350,000 scientific display device called the VisWall, from company called VisBox, that casts molecules and more into eye-popping 3D relief on an 8-by-14-foot screen. In flat-screen mode, it’s said to be twice as sharp as an HDTV–just the thing for studying the inner workings of the colon, apparently.

Read more from The Boston Globe: “Plasma TV has nothing on this visionary virtual device“

The robotic stars of last year’s DARPA Urban Grand Challenge, an autonomous car race, will have a rematch at the Toyota Grand Prix in Long Beach, Calif., later this month.

This time, their competition will be solely about speed.

“Boss,” an autonomous Chevy Tahoe from Carnegie Mellon University and winner of the $2 million Urban Grand Challenge, will compete once again against “Junior,” a robotic Volkswagen Passat from Stanford University, which took second place in the contest. The two teams, which have a long rivalry, will also face off against “Ben,” a self-driving Toyota Prius from the University of Pennsylvania and Lehigh University. Ben finished sixth in the urban challenge.

Unlike the Urban Challenge, which measured each contestant’s performance not just by speed but also by their driving skills, the three teams will be judged by how fast they can drive one lap of the 1.97-mile track. Of course, they’ll have to stay on the track.

The race, called the Robotic Grand Prix, will take place on April 20 and will be part of the “Green Power Prix-View,” which features futuristic alternative-energy vehicles.

LAS VEGAS - Nigel Clifford, the CEO of smartphone OS provider Symbian, is well aware that everyone’s looking at this industry with hungry eyes.

“No fixed Internet brand can afford to ignore the mobile marketplace,” he said in a wide-ranging interview on the sidelines of CTIA 2008, where Symbian is hosting the Smartphone Summit a day before things officially get started.

As Google and Apple have shown over the last year, everybody wants a part of the mobile world. Symbian dominates this world at present, with well over 60 percent market share in the smartphone industry. But it’s facing challenges from all sides, as Apple goes after its consumers, Google goes after its developers, and Microsoft and Research in Motion continue to court businesspeople.

In a way, however, Clifford sees the competition as wider than just the phone market. “There’s 3 billion (mobile phone) subscribers in the world, and 3 billion who are not. I can see a whole generation experiencing the Internet for the first time on the mobile device,” he said.

Of course, the PC industry wants to get those people inside its big tent as well. This means that mobile phones are going to have to get smarter, and embrace the Internet that’s already in place for PC users around the world.

“There just has to be one Internet that you access, and we as hardware and software suppliers have to find a way to do that,” Clifford said. The era of the mobile Internet seems to be officially dead as smartphone companies go after bringing the full Internet experience to their customers.

Apple has certainly made that a centerpiece of its pitch for the iPhone. Clifford recognizes that the PC industry is going to have to start doing iPhone-like things into the future. “No fixed internet brand can afford to ignore the mobile marketplace. The PC is going to be capped in the marketplace. They’re coming, and they’re bringing some of their smarts with them.”

I’ll post much more of the interview with Clifford after I have a chance to transcribe it later in the day.

Undertone Networks, one of the last independent online advertising networks, said Monday that it has taken its first round of private equity investment from JMI Equity, the firm that took DoubleClick private in 2005 and then sold to Google last year.

The 6-year-old Undertone would not disclose terms of the deal, except to say that the investment was worth more than $40 million.

The company didn’t need to raise the money. It has been profitable since its launch in 2002, according to Undertone President Michael Cassidy. But the funds will help the company grow through acquisitions and into international markets, Cassidy said. The online ad network represents graphical and video ad sales for high-end publishers including the New York Times, USA Today and Discovery Networks.

Undertone’s independent rivals have grown scarce. Major online media companies Google, AOL and Yahoo have bought up most of the large online ad networks and related technology in the last year or so. AOL, for example, bought Advertising.com and Tacoda; Google acquired DoubleClick; and Yahoo absorbed Right Media and Blue Lithium.

In absence of those independents, Undertone likely aims to be the next major ad network. And that means buying up smaller fish.

Without naming names, Cassidy said that there are some upstarts that are making improvements in the online advertising business. “We’re on the potential acquirer side now,” he said.

IBM has been indefinitely barred from entering into new contracts with the U.S. federal government.

The General Services Administration’s Web site shows that IBM was added to a database of “excluded” contractors and subcontractors on March 27 by the Environmental Protection Agency. Under reciprocity rules, other agencies honor the exclusion.

The Professional Services Council, a trade association that counts IBM as a member, has charged that the suspension was taken place before the company had a chance to respond to the EPA’s concerns.

The GSA’s database says IBM was listed “based on an indictment or other adequate evidence (a) to suspect the commission of an offense that is a cause for debarment or (b) that other causes for debarment under the agency regulations may exist.”

IBM does about $1.43 billion in business a year with the federal government.

Layoffs hit close to home Monday at Dell, which said it will close its Austin, Texas, desktop manufacturing facility as part of an effort to trim billions in costs.

The Austin facility, which replaced a smaller facility in Austin, is where Dell fine-tuned its “build-to-order” strategy that allowed it to vault ahead of Compaq for the top spot in PCs in the early part of the decade. By not building PCs until orders get placed, Dell minimizes the time it holds components in inventory, which in turn reduces costs. (Round Rock, Texas-based Dell, in fact, doesn’t own components until the forklift carrying them crosses a white line on the floor. See our story from a visit to the center here.)

Although still considered a leader in logistics and low-cost manufacturing, Dell began to see its market share erode in 2005 because of complaints about poor customer service, among other factors. Dell is now number two behind Hewlett-Packard (which bought Compaq) in PCs.

Dell also reaffirmed its plans to reduce employee headcount by at least 8,800. So far, it has eliminated 3,200 positions. Overall, the company hopes to reduce expenses by $3 billion a year on average over the next three years.

Dell also has desktop manufacturing facilities in Tennessee and North Carolina.

The Panasonic SC-BT100 will cost just under $1,000.

(Credit: Panasonic)

Now that Blu-ray has secured its position as the one and only HD disc format, it’s only natural to see it becoming more of a standard feature on desktop PCs, laptops, camcorders, and–now–home theater systems. Samsung’s HT-BD2T has been available for months, while the Panasonic SC-BT100–which debuted at January’s Consumer Electronics Show–is due to hit stores later this spring. Panasonic has yet to confirm pricing for its model, but the unit has already popped up on J&R’s website for $1,000 (give or take a nickel).

If the price sticks, it would appear to be a pretty good deal at first glance. (Plenty of high-style home theater systems can cost north of $1,000, despite being limited to playing back standard CDs and DVDs.) Indeed, the Panasonic has a few advantages versus the Samsung: it’s got a five-disc changer (versus the single-disc player on the Samsung), an SD slot (for playing back digital media, including high-def AVCHD video), and wireless rear speakers. It’s also said to be Profile 1.1 compliant, meaning that it can play the BonusView (picture-in-picture video content) found on some newer Blu-ray discs.

Unfortunately, there’s a pretty big list of caveats as well. The Samsung is a 7.1-channel system out of the box, whereas the Panasonic is merely 7.1-ready: you’ll need to invest in an additional set of speakers (and another wireless transceiver unit) to get to seven speakers. And while Profile 1.1 compatibility betters many of the Blu-ray players currently on the market, it’s already behind the curve compared to the state of the art Profile 2.0/BD-Live players already announced (Panasonic’s own DMP-BD50) or available (the PlayStation 3). Furthermore, the SC-BT100 is likely to have the same limitations found on the DVD-only Panasonic home theater systems for the 2008 model year: iPod video playback is only available from the low-res composite output, and the skimpy connectivity (just one set of analog and one digital audio-only jack apiece). Those limitations are easy to shrug off on the $300 SC-PT660 and $400 SC-PT760, but become a lot harder to justify on a $1,000 unit.

You can have your cake (Blu-ray 2.0) and eat it too (7.1 home theater with plenty of inputs and outputs) for about $150 more than the SC-BT100’s asking price by investing in a $400 PS3 plus a $750 Onkyo HT-S908 home theater system. Still, compared to the $1,500 price of the Samsung HT-BD2T, the $1,000 Panasonic model comes much closer to justifying itself versus purchasing such dedicated components. As those prices continue to drop–and feature sets continue to improve–look for the reaction to such Blu-ray home theater systems begin to move from “why bother?” to “why not?”.

Related coverage
CNET TV hands-on video: Panasonic SC-BT100
CNET review: Panasonic SC-PT660
CNET review: Panasonic SC-PT760
CNET review: Samsung HT-BD2T
CNET @ CES 2008: Panasonic’s new Blu-ray player goes Profile 2.0
Crave: PS3 firmware with BD-Live support now available

Intel is working on technology that would allow handheld Internet devices to wirelessly use big screens.

Intel Mobile Internet Device (MID) could connect wirelessly to a big screen

All technology is a problem looking for a solution. (Or the converse.) Intel is working on technology that would mitigate one of the inherent problems with ultra-small devices: ultra-small screens. Vic Lortz, a Research Scientist and senior architect at Intel’s Communications Technology Lab in Hillsboro, discussed a technology that would include a wireless display feature on big-screen digital TVs allowing Mobile Internet Devices, or MIDs, to wirelessly use the display on a big screen.

“Imagine if digital TVs included a wireless display feature (either integrated or through an external adapter) so that a MID could easily use that large display instead of or in addition to the integrated screen of the MID,” he writes. “Intel is working on this and other similar problems…As we identify the necessary set of technologies and standards to support, we will integrate them into our next-generation mobile devices (both laptops and MIDs).”

Lortz says the success of the MID may ride on whether technologies like this come to fruition. “If we succeed, the MID may confound its detractors and become the next big thing after all.”