quolomoyone.net

I do have a few quibbles with this model, like the need to remove the battery to access the microSD slot, the nonstandard headphone jack, and the lack of GPS. That said, CNET liked the Vu quite well, as did users, who rated it four stars out of five on average.

Find more deals, coupon codes, and bargains on CNET’s Shopper.com.

Buy an LG Vu directly from AT&T and it’ll cost you $300 (after rebate) with a two-year contract. Buy an LG Vu from Wirefly and it’ll cost you zilch.

To take advantage of this deal (which doesn’t have an expiration date and therefore may end at any time), you need to be a new AT&T customer. Just head to the Wirefly.com site and search for “LG Vu.”

Well, for the phone anyway: contracts start at $39.99 monthly, not including a mandatory data plan ($15 or $35 monthly), and there’s a $36 activation fee. However, you get a free Bluetooth headset and free shipping as part of the deal, and there’s not a rebate in sight.

The touchscreen-powered Vu gives the
iPhone a run for the money, at least in a few areas. It offers haptic feedback (meaning it vibrates when you press the screen), voice dialing, stereo Bluetooth, and AT&T’s optional Mobile TV service (which is fantastic–just make sure you live or work in an area that has coverage).

(Credit:
Wirefly)

Get LG's top-rated Vu free with contract. No rebates, no catches, just a smokin' deal.

Jobs: We’ll see.

While Steve Jobs has been critical of the Kindle’s chances, for anybody who doesn’t realize already, this is a completely fictional conversation. That said, feel free to comment on whether you agree with these theoretical opinions of the device and whether the Kindle 2 might appeal more to him–or not.

Jobs: Oops.

Jobs (laughing): Surf the Web? On an Etch-a-Sketch?

Jobs: Where is it?

Bezos: Bigger screen. No backlight. Better reading experience.

Jobs: You old softy.

Bezos: Why?

Jobs: (Tapping the screen with his finger numerous times). Nothing’s happening.

Bezos: A little Ayn Rand.

Bezos: We offer to ship her another at a discounted rate–basically, at cost.

Jobs: Safe flight.

Bezos: How do I know this isn’t one, too?

My Deep Throat simply goes by the handle “The Dude,” and it’s unclear whether he’s a disgruntled employee of Apple, Amazon, or the hotel where the meeting allegedly took place–or whether he’s employed at all. But he says, “It’s time this meeting came to light, man.” When I asked him why he chose this column as the venue for these revelations, he said, “I like your style. And I hear you bowl on the
Wii. We should roll sometime.”

Jobs: That was a smokescreen.

Jobs: Battery?

Jobs: Three years, huh?

Jobs: You don’t.

[Bezos pulled the Kindle out of a padded briefcase. He held down the Alt and home buttons to take it out of its screen-saver mode and handed it to Jobs. The Apple CEO held it in his hand, staring at it.]

Bezos: No, “Hi, Jeff, how’s it going?”

Jobs: You got any widgets?

Jobs: What percentage of that wants to read on a clunky looking reader that costs $400?

Bezos: I had a feeling you’d say that. Can you get more specific?

Jobs: It just does.

Jobs: It won’t work.

Bezos: It works.

Bezos: We aim to please.

Bezos (smiling): Why?

Bezos: Yeah. Sorry, I needed that. No one can tell me I can’t do something like you can.

Jobs: How’s someone going to take this country to country? You’re going to get roaming charges. How’s that going to work? Different Kindle for every country? Where’s the scalability?

When he came into the heavily guarded boardroom where the meeting was to take place, Jobs was wearing his signature sneakers, jeans and black mock turtleneck. The jeans had a hole in the front where a white pocket was sticking out. Bezos would later recount that for a second he thought they might have been the same jeans Jobs had worn at their meeting for the Segway in 2003. But they did look clean and washed. Bezos was dressed more formally, in a pressed shirt, but he wasn’t wearing a tie.

Bezos: Not everything has to be supersexy looking to sell.

Jobs: Dumb.

Bezos: People don’t read books.

Jobs: If people don’t read books, why are they going to read ebooks?

Bezos: You have 5 percent of the PC market. I’m looking at the 5 percent of people who read a lot. How’s that any different?

Jobs: This works, too. And it fits in my pocket. And it’s in color.

Bezos: I know.

(Credit:
Hyatt)
Bezos, who was on his way to New York, flew down from Seattle for the quick tete a tete. Jobs was late. Apparently, he’s always late. Bezos knew that, so he came late, too.

Jobs: Well, it sucks then. And the interface sucks. Why is there a keyboard? It adds an extra 20 percent to the dimensions.

Bezos: Maybe we go Bluetooth and no wireless abroad. You connect your mobile to the device via Bluetooth.

Bezos: U.S. first. We see how it does.

Jobs: Will authors stand for that?

[Jobs mulled over the comment.]

Bezos: What do you think of the screen?

Bezos: I’ll sell more Kindles than Apple TVs.

[He was taking a closer look at the protective case when the Kindle suddenly dislodged itself and fell on to the table with a loud thud.]

Bezos: I think it looks pretty good.

Bezos (sheepishly): We’re working on that.

Bezos: It’ll be all right. Had to get it out. The next one will be better.

The two billionaires sat down.

Bezos: What choice will they have? It’s better than what they get now from traditional publishers.

[Jobs continued playing with the device.]

Jobs: Best customer support in the world won’t make this thing fly.

Jobs: Their thing looks better than yours. But it sucks, too.

[Silence]

Bezos: We’re trying to being conservative.

Jobs: Mystery’s good. Scarcity, too. It’s not a bad thing to be out of stock. Put a rope up. Don’t let people in the door. They want to get in.

Bezos: Removable.

Bezos: Think about it. “The Apple Reader powered by Amazon.”

Bezos: There newspapers on magazines on there, too–and blogs. Imagine the commuter going to work–”

Jobs: I already told you. People don’t read anymore. It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is. Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed.

Jobs: Feels good, right?

Jobs: I give you what you want? Are we done here?

Jobs: You wanted my honest assessment. Well, that’s it. It’ll never work.

Bezos: Thanks, man.

Jobs: You seed it to reviewers?

Jobs: I’ll give you that. But your soul, Jeff? Isn’t that going a little too far? How ’bout a nice 15 percent discount on the Nano or some Macbooks. We’ll make some real dough.

Anyway, here’s the account of the meeting. There was a tape involved, though it was hard to decipher in patches due to the fact that it was well worn and may have been previously used in The Dude’s answering machine.

Bezos: Anything else?

Bezos: We’re going to plaster this thing on our homepage day-in-day-out. It’ll sell. Anything we put on our homepage sells.

Jobs: How ’bout “The Apple Reader powered by Apple?”

Bezos: To take notes, type in URLs to surf the Web. I told you, there’s a built-in wireless connection. Sprint EVDO.

Bezos (ignoring him): It’ll have its own store. With thousands of books. And anybody will be able to create an ebook and upload it to the store. We’re going to take up to a 65 percent cut on the content.

Bezos: Not yet. Everything goes out tomorrow to everyone at once.

[Jobs turned the device over and looked at the back of it.]

Jobs: How ’bout Europe? Asia?

Bezos: If we didn’t have it, people would criticize us for not having it.

Jobs: Until I make it cool to read ‘em.

Jobs: Maybe not on your planet. On mine, it does.

Jobs: Hi, Jeff. How’s it going? Now, where is it?

Jobs: High bar, Jeff. How many do you think you’ll sell?

Jobs: Its shape is not innovative, it’s not elegant, it doesn’t feel anthropomorphic. And what’s with this big button here? I just turned a page and didn’t mean to. What’s this book?

[Jobs whipped out his
iPhone.]

Jobs: Again, right here. And the content’s free.

The meeting was supposed to take place at 8 a.m. at Hyatt Regency near the San Francisco airport, the same place where the two had come four years earlier to get a sneak peek at “Ginger,” which we now know as the Segway.

Bezos: You were the one who said people wouldn’t watch video on a tiny little
iPod screen–and then you brought out an iPod with video capabilities.

Jobs: I’m standing on the street and I drop the iPhone it’s got a decent shot at not breaking. I take that bet. What happens when a customer calls and says her $400 device slipped out the crappy 50-cent case and went boom. What do you do then?

Bezos: You could do one for us. You do the hardware, we do the store. Sony’s toast.

Jobs: No features are value added. They’re either features or they’re not.

As Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos readies to take center stage Monday morning to release what will most likely be the next version of his company’s much-hyped digital reading device, I recently obtained some very interesting–and exclusive–information concerning a very hush-hush meeting between Steve Jobs and Bezos that took place on the eve of the launch of the original Kindle back in November of 2007.

Bezos: Why?

Bezos: The Web is a value-added feature.

Bezos: Yeah. What do you think?

Sunday, November 18, 2007–8:30 am

Bezos: We’ll see.

The boardroom inside the Hyatt near the San Francisco airport.

Jobs: Let me give you some advice. Don’t tell people how many you’ve sold.

Bezos: That’s because it’s not a touch screen.

Jobs: I think it sucks.

[Jobs turned the screen of his iPhone toward Bezos.]

Jobs: Jesus. How many times can I say it? There are design firms out there that could come up with things we’ve never thought of–things that would make you crap in your pants. And this is what you come up with after three years.

Jobs: Shame. Always better to give it first to a few light heavyweights, if you know what I mean.

Like the Rhapsody service, Nokia’s music service allows subscribers to share their music with other subscribers.

The new service called “Comes with Music” offers users of certain Nokia phones a year’s subscription to the company’s music service. The program will initially be offered through Carphone Warehouse in the U.K., but Nokia has plans to eventually roll it out globally.

(Credit:
Crave UK)

Nokia is clearly going after Apple with the launch of the new music store and the bundled offering. The company, which is the No. 1 maker of cell phones in the world, sees services as a key component of its strategy going forward.

Nokia hasn’t said when it will begin rolling out the Comes With Music bundle in other countries. The Nokia Music Store is currently only available in a handful of markets, including much of Europe, Singapore and Australia. U.S. customers will likely have to wait awhile before they can get access to the Nokia Music Store or the Comes With Music bundle.

This is a clear differentiator from other music stores and services. Apple’s iTunes requires users pay for individual songs or albums. Verizon Wireless and Real have launched the new Rhapsody music store for mobile phones. It also allows subscribers to download and listen to as much music as they like for $15 a month. But once users stop paying the subscription fee, access to the music disappears.

While Nokia’s music store is much smaller than what is currently offered by iTunes, the company has managed to sign up three of the largest music labels, Universal, Sony BMG, and Warner Music Group.

Nokia first announced the Comes With Music service last year. The service essentially bundles access to digital music with the purchase of a new handset. The first phone to use the service is the 5310 XpressMusic device. With the free one-year subscription to the service, Nokia users can download as many songs as they want and keep the songs even after the subscription expires.

It’s not known yet how much Nokia will charge for the new 5310 XpressMusic with the one-year music subscription. Carphone Warehouse currently sells the prepaid version of the 5310 for about $145, including $18 worth of talk time. T-Mobile USA has subsidized it for about $50 with a two-year contract, making it much cheaper option than Apple’s iPhone 3G, which costs $200 with AT&T’s subsidy.

Nokia launched a new music service Tuesday in the U.K. that bundles free access to music with the purchase of a phone.

Prices for ads on news and gaming Web sites dropped from May to June, but they rose for entertainment.

(Credit:
Pubmatic)

Of the five categories Pubmatic monitors, games and news fared worse than average. News plunged from $1.10 in May to 48 cents in June, and games dropped from $1 to 80 cents. The entertainment category, though, rose from 29 cents to 40 cents. The lowest-price category, social networks, dropped from 32 cents to 27 cents.

Overall, the cost of online ads, as measured by effective cost-per-thousand impressions, dipped a bit from 38 cents in April to 37 cents in May to 36 cents in June, said Pubmatic, which sells technology designed to help advertisers fine-tune online ad campaigns. The company measures ad prices through its network of more than 4,000 customers that place ads on various Web sites, largely in the United States.

Online advertising prices remained roughly flat in June compared with April and May, but some categories of sites fared better than others, according to data released Tuesday.

For large Web sites–those with more than 100 million page views per month–ad prices increased from 21 cents in May to 23 cents in June. Medium sites, with traffic between 1 million and 100 million page views, rose from 33 cents to 46 cents, and small sites dropped from $1.13 to 81 cents.

Stitcher is a free, ad supported app. There is no word yet on when the app is going to be available to the general public, but the limited beta test ends at the end of this week.

My favorite potential application of Stitcher is to create your own customized station for listening to on your daily commute. You could make a station that kicks off your morning with the sports scores from the night before, followed up by the top headlines from CNN, stories from your favorite local news station, and capped off by discussion of the hottest tech stories from CNET.

Utilizing Apple’s ad hoc distribution program, Stitcher let a beta version of their
iPhone app loose on 100 testers today. While the app suffers from some stability issues, due to its unfinished nature, Stitcher provides a slick solution to those looking for customized audio programming.

While there is a bigger market for music, I think that there is a sizable market for customized news and information. A lot of people listen to news and sports on the radio and Stitcher makes it easy to have a highly personalized stream to get you caught up on what matters to you.

Stitcher is trying to be to news and information what Pandora is to music. The service provides you with a variety of audio programming, broken down by topics, such as sports, technology, and world news. Sources for the app include CNN, CNET, ESPN, AP, WSJ, Reuters, and a variety of local sources. As you rate the various audio streams and podcasts, Stitcher learns what you might like and serves up content.

Elon Musk, the company’s founder and CEO, called the launch a “great day for SpaceX.”

A privately developed rocket is now orbiting the Earth.

The rocket carries a payload mass simulator developed by SpaceX, which is aiming for private space transportation and deliveries.

Space Exploration Technologies’ Falcon 1 launched into orbit at 4:15 p.m. PDT Sunday from Omelek Island, which is in the Kwajalein Atoll, about 2,500 miles southwest of Hawaii. Just over nine minutes later, the Falcon 1 reached orbit, the company said.

“The data shows we achieved a super precise orbit insertion–middle of the bull’s eye–and then went on to coast and restart the second stage, which was icing on the cake,” Musk, who is also co-founder and former head of online payment company PayPal, said in a statement.

Falcon 1 lifts off on Sunday.

Musk said it is the first privately developed liquid fuel rocket to orbit the Earth.

The successful launch comes after the company, better known as SpaceX, had suffered three unsuccessful attempts over the past two years.

(Credit:
SpaceX)

Click here for SpaceX’s video of the launch.

Yahoo-Google deal could raise ad costs by double digits

Apple is famous for keeping a tight rein on its proprietary technology. Indeed, after Steve Jobs returned as CEO, one of his first important decisions was to pull the plug on the company’s
Mac clone program. So it’s been a source of puzzlement why Apple hasn’t moved since a clone maker called Psystar began selling a desktop computer running Apple’s Mac OS in April. Now it has. CNET News’ Ina Fried explains the context for the lawsuit filed earlier Tuesday.

Sopogy thinks small to make megawatts of solar power

Listen now:

CNET News’ Holly Jackson spoke with Julia Brasil, winner of a $10,000 scholarship from Sony for a contest on how to bring more women into game development.

The backstory on Senate’s Google-Yahoo hearing

San Francisco IT worker arrested in hijacking of city’s network

Yes, Twitter bought Summize

Skippy the Kangaroo was a cutie but he may be more–a lot more–than that, if the findings of a group of scientists prove accurate.

Download today’s podcast

Today’s stories:

The famed designer's planned home wind turbine.

(Credit:
Philippe Starck Network)

Abengoa Rakes in $426 million for 4 Solar Power Plants - Earth2Tech
Spanish renewable-energy giant will use a range of solar technologies to install 300 megawatts worth of electricity.
ReCellular Announces Investment, Expansion - Press release
Cell phone recycler adds $15 million in investment, a sign that recycling e-waste could be profitable.
Green from Green: Rising Energy Costs May be Good News for ‘Clean Tech’ Firms–and Their Investors - Knowledge@Wharton
More on the Internet bubble versus clean-tech bubble discussion.
Energy dilemma: Cheap or green? - The Economist
Snapshot from Britain on the social challenges of investing in clean energy over cheaper, dirty sources.
Blackstone Establishes Cleantech Energy Group - Press release
More big private-equity money moving in.
Cellulosic Ethanol Primer: I Like the Name “Celluline” - Gas 2.0
Good primer to get the basics on ethanol production.
Philippe Starck Turns His Attention to Ecology - The New York Times
For the design-conscious, an interview with Philippe Starck, who is intent on democratizing “ecology” with beautiful objects.
Kangaroo farming would cut greenhouse gases: study - Reuters
Can we now convince the Australians to savor a ‘roo steak and chips?

Dutch town tests ‘air-purifying’ concrete - AFP
“Green bricks” that convert harmful air pollutants into harmless nitrates in sunlight will be tested this year. Sounds extremely clever.
Five Fuel-Saving Technologies - Car And Driver
Everybody seems to want a plug-in hybrid or hydrogen fuel cell, but mass-produced models are a few years away. Check out some near-term technology options for efficiency.

Here’s a sampling of
green-tech news, with quick commentary:

I wrote about Spotplex, back in November after having a conversation with their CEO, Doyon Kim (previously founded Dialpad, which sold to Yahoo 2005). At the time, I expressed concerns with the way that their site operates. In order for the content from a site to be included on Spotplex, the publisher of that content had to install a code snippit on their site, which also tracked analytics. The most trafficked stories were then displayed on Spotplex’s homepage. I think that this restriction severely limited the amount of content that was included on the site, thus drastically reducing its value. This may not have been the best approach, in comparison to sites like Digg and Techmeme which rely on community input and not publisher participation.

TechCrunch is reporting that the reason for Spotplex’s shuttering is “lack of adequate funding.” Whether that means that they failed to find additional investors for the startup or that their money was poorly managed is unclear right now. I tend to think that the lack of funding might be attributed to the site not catching on as well as expected.

After over a year of operation, Spotplex is closing up shop, according to a message on their site. The company states that, “We regret to inform you that Spotplex is going offline. This was a very hard decision for us and we are sure you will miss the service as much as we do.”

There is no doubt that Spotplex had talented and experienced people behind it, but, in my opinion, there were some key flaws in the site’s core functionality, which really hurt them in the end.

Previous coverage:
Aviary’s creative suite is more than a pretty Flash app

Flash apps are taking over–Phoenix is the latest proof
Web-based multimedia suite Aviary invites beta testers

Previous coverage: CIA technology will map your face

Galpert only had six minutes to talk about the suite of Web-based graphics tools, but managed to throw in a mention about an upcoming vector-based editing tool akin to Adobe Illustrator. He also announced a 3D modeling tool that will take advantage of its sister-service that lets users create complex textures. Galpert didn’t reveal the names of the two forthcoming apps, but said that a less confusing name convention was on the way.

What makes Overlay.TV interesting is that it’s going for both media creators and consumers. It’s got a Facebook app that lets you tag up your videos. It also works with over a dozen popular hosts like YouTube, MySpace.com, and Yahoo Video.

BigStage is a 3D avatar service that puts together a rendered head based on three photographs it takes with your Webcam. It’ll figure out your bone structure, how much your nose sticks out, and how large your ears are.

Previous coverage:
Animoto adds personal music videos to Facebook

Video-creation service Animoto has lit my fire

Can Animoto make you the next Spielberg?

Michael Galpert, the co-founder of Aviary, a Web-based photo editor we’ve covered several times here on Webware (see link dump below) showed off the service’s latest layer tracking technology (video here).

That’s the end of the conference sessions for the day. Stay tuned for the fireside chat about how start-ups can get noticed among all the noise from competitors.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.–The Web has come a long way. The aesthetic of a site can oftentimes determine whether or not a wary user will dig deeper and explore your site. The four companies below offer some of the most beautiful products shown off Tuesday at the Under the Radar social media and entertainment conference, but are they really useful? For the most part, yes. Read more about them below.

Overlay.TV is a company that’s doing something very similar to VideoClix.TV (see coverage). It’ll link up the items, people, or subject matter that are found in videos to online stores so people can buy or get more information on what they’re watching. Some of the demos I’ve seen of competing products are incredibly engaging, albeit a far cry from the virgin, ad-free purity of what’s seen on most video sites.

Animoto, one of my colleague Elinor Mills’ favorite slideshow tools and as CEO Brad Jefferson calls it “The end of the slideshow” (in the boring, stodgy sense, of course). Jefferson says he’s seen a large amount of users taking advantage of its premium services, which offer the capability to create full-length videos as opposed to the 30-second clips that free members get. In the future, the company is moving toward offering artists and companies a branded player and tools for users to create videos that involve products, songs, TV shows, and feature-length films.

The site is opening up with pictures in two months, and a version that integrates live videos about six months later. Strietzel thinks the future of the technology will be tie-ins with social networks to pull in faces from your buddy lists to make adjoining advertisements more targeted with rendered 3D heads of your friends. Creepy.

Co-founder Jonathan Strietzel’s demo of the face maker reminded me a lot of Gizmoz, which does the same thing, except with Big Stage you can make live changes to your avatar in moving video clips and pictures and see the changes reflected right away.