Comcast goes social with Plaxo acquisition    
May 15, 2008
Source: Google

Comcast is adding a social dimension to its services through the acquisition of Plaxo, a deal the two companies announced Wednesday afternoon.Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the purchase price is thought to be in the $150 to $170 range. 

The acquisition is a big win for Plaxo, whose Pulse social network service, with 1.5 million active monthly users, has been overshadowed by the likes of Facebook and MySpace. It's a smart move by Comcast, which can enhance the user experience across its 14 million high-speed Internet subscribers, 3 million voice customers, and 24.2 million cable subscribers.

The acquisition is built on a preexisting relationship. In May 2007, Comcast partnered with Plaxo to offer a networked address book to subscribers of its various services. Comcast is Plaxo's largest 
customer and partner, with Plaxo hosting all Comcast subscriber e-mail address book accounts. 

"The address book and Pulse combined will change the way people navigate through thousands of choices of content," said Sam Schwartz, executive vice president of Comcast Interactive Media. "You could know what shows your friends are watching, what they are downloading or what they are recording on DVR. Plaxo can help us build that vision. It's less about the Comcast.net portal and more about bringing the social aspects to all media consumption."Plaxo's software could also be applied to Comcast's tru2Way project, which will allow developers to create applications that run on any set-top boxes. 

"Many users on Pulse share Flickr photos with their friends and family. We want to extend that sharing whether they are in front of the TV, on the phone or at the computer," said Ben Golub, CEO of Plaxo. "Whether you are on Fandango (Comcast's movie ticket service) or on demand TV, it gets that much better with social graph layered on top."

Acquiring Plaxo will help Comcast socialize its cable, voice, and Internet services, including FanCast. "FanCast is major initiative in last couple years," Schwartz said. However, creating a user interface that can make sense out of all the content choices and devices will be even more difficult than creating a universal remote that a mere mortal could program and use.

"We understand that consumers are looking in lots of places for content, and it should be tied into one easy-to-use interface. You can ask it where to get content and it will tell you if it's on TV, in a theater, 
on demand, or on FanCast," Schwartz added. "We are very much innovating in terms of how consumers manage content. With the choices becoming almost infinite, you need better ways to navigate. The key is making it simple for the user. Right now we are in period of time where users could be confused--did they order it on Netflix, did they buy it on iTunes, did a friend buy it, is it loaded on a DVR. We can help create the best possible environment for the consumer." Plaxo includes features common features in today's social networks.

Plaxo will fall under Comcast Interactive Media, which is tasked with growing Comcast's Internet business. "Pulse features will be turned on in some Comcast properties starting this year, but it is a multi-year strategy as we give the social media experience to all platforms we are on," Schwartz said. 

Comcast could have chosen other routes to gain a social dimension, such as Google's nascent Friend Connect. "Friend Connect is complementary to Plaxo Pulse. It's trying to light up the long tail of the 
Web site. This is about making social media a natural part of the (Comcast) experience," said John McCrea, vice president of marketing at Plaxo. 

Adobe set to test new Flash Player 
May 15 , 2008 
SOURCE: TNN

Adobe on Thursday is expected to launch a beta test program 
for the latest version of its Flash Player software.

Flash Player 10, developed under the code name Astro, includes better support for 3D animation and video hardware acceleration, among other improvements.

Adobe said that Flash Player 10 will now support custom visual effects, created with Adobe's free Pixel Bender tools. Developers can write code to create effects that can be rendered by Flash Player at runtime.

Developers can also now target code to render through graphics processors, speeding up performance and freeing CPU bandwidth, Adobe says.

The beta version of Flash Player 10 will be available from Adobe's Labs site.Flash Player 10 will run on Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000, Mac OS X and Linux.

Adobe said that some of the new features in Flash Player 10 will ultimately be incorporated into a future release of Adobe AIR and the Open Screen Project, Adobe's movement to create industry consensus around Flash-based technologies for mobile devices.

IBM replants chip-cooling tech in solar farms  
May 15, 2008 
SOURCE: REUTERS

IBM has developed technology that will let solar cells withstand the heat of more than a 1,000 suns. At a technical conference on Thursday, representatives from IBM Research's photovoltaics research will 
present a method for cooling concentrating photovoltaics, a solar design where light is magnified onto high-performance solar cells. 

A SolFocus 6.2-kilowatt CPV device being tested in Spain. Click on the image to see a photo gallery of other concentrating photovoltaic systems.(Credit: SolFocus)Heat is a serious issue when it comes to concentrating photovoltaics, or CPV. The efficiency of cells degrades at high heat and can damage, and conceivably destroy, equipment at 
extremely high temperatures. 

IBM said that its liquid-metal cooling technique, adapted from high- powered computers' chips, can remove roughly three-quarters of the heat generated by a CPV system. CPV arrays use lenses and mirrors to magnify light onto solar cells that convert light to electricity. By cramming more light onto cells, the panels can generate more electricity. 

The technology, which has been around for decades, is being pursued once again by a number of companies, most of which are designing systems for solar power plants. These plants have rows of CPV systems that track the sun during the day and magnify light hundreds of 
times. 

As part of IBM's Big Green Innovations initiative, researchers looked into applying the company's chip design and manufacturing expertise in solar. It found that CPV companies had not paid enough attention to thermal problems, particularly as they move to higher light concentrations. 

"It's clear that everybody wants to go to higher concentrations," said Supratik Guha, lead scientist for photovoltaics at IBM Research. "In the last few years, CPV has sort of been trying to make a comeback 
and if you look at the numbers, it does have the potential to be really cheap." 

IBM looking at CIGS
Because heat dissipation is important for its high-end processors, IBM has developed a cooling system where a thin layer of liquid metals circulates behind a chip to transfer the heat from the chip to a 
"cooling block." (Credit: IBM)IBM has built a prototype of the thermal interface layer on a CPV system. In tests, it found that the technique can dramatically lower the heat of high-concentration devices. 

The technique only makes sense for very high levels of concentration, which are used on expensive, high-efficiency triple-junction solar cells, said Guha. IBM doesn't intend to manufacture CPV devices itself but it does hope to license its thermal interface layer to solar manufacturers, he said. 

In addition to working on thermal issues, IBM Research is working on "solution process" techniques for manufacturing CIGS cells. The solution process would be an alternative to the slower evaporation 
process for making CIGS cells. 

IBM is also working on manufacturing silicon solar cells on glass. More fundamental research focuses on improving solar cell efficiency through nanowires and nanoparticles, explained Guha.