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Wideband is currently available in Minneapolis-Saint Paul, and parts of New England, New Jersey, and Philadelphia. According my press contact, Comcast plans to get it in “close to 10 million homes and businesses in the next couple of months,” which is a good percentage given the company’s overall customer base of 14.7 million subscribers.

The technology behind wideband, which is formally known as DOCSIS 3.0 brings with it the capability to hit speeds in excess of 300 Mbps, is six times faster than what Comcast is currently offering (or even capable of handling with its current network infrastructure). As mentioned before, this increase in download speed has not made a difference in Comcast’s bandwidth use restriction, which requires users to stay within 250 GB of downloads per month or face a one-year suspension upon the second offense.

Starting next month, subscribers of Comcast’s cable Internet service in Oregon and southwestern Washington state will be getting their connections switched over to “wideband.” The upgraded service, which was announced late last month doubles the speed of residential and business connections as well as offering two faster, more expensive plans that bring the maximum download speed to 22 and 50 Mbps respectively.

Why is this you ask? The G1 is missing the oh-so-important proximity sensor, which on the
iPhone tells the application you’re holding it up to your face. Also, the app doesn’t make use of the G1’s accelerometer, which means it can’t fake knowing you’re lifting it from palm to head. In the iPhone iteration, the application uses both of these sensors in tandem to do its voice searching magic.

(Credit:
Google)

A correction has been made to this story. See below for details.

The big difference, however, is that users will need to begin a voice search by tapping the microphone icon instead of simply holding their phone up to their face.

No doubt future Android devices that have either sensor will fall in line with the iPhone’s offering, such as the long-rumored G2. Until then G1 users will need to tap first.

Correction: This blog initially misstated why the G1 app does not allow you to just hold the phone up to your face. The T-Mobile G1 does have an accelerometer, but the application does not make use of it.

As mentioned in an earlier post about the upcoming firmware update for T-Mobile’s G1, the built-in Google search tool is getting voice-powered search. Like Google’s rule-breaking, first-party iPhone search application, users can simply talk into the application to have their queries transcribed into text.

Tugboat in the Panama Canal locks

The effects of this pollution can be felt more acutely by people who live along coastlines, according to Daniel Lack, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration researcher. Lack, who was the study’s lead author, notes that more than 70 percent of shipping traffic takes place within 250 miles of the coastline. Earlier research by another of the study’s authors found a correlation between particle pollution and premature deaths in coastal populations.

Ships likely release 0.9 teragrams (about 2.2 million pounds) of particulate pollution globally each year, according to the study, which is the first to give an estimate for particle pollution emissions produced by the world’s shipping fleets.

Researchers analyzed the exhaust of more than 200 commercial ships in the Gulf of Mexico and shipping channels near Galveston, Texas, in the summer of 2006. Specifically, researchers focused on sulfates, a kind of particulate pollution produced by diesel-fueled cars and trucks, but which is also found in ship exhaust.

Cars might get a lot of the press surrounding air pollution, but commercial shipping puts out a hefty amount of pollution as well. Cargo ships, tankers, and cruise ships spew almost half as much particle pollution as the world’s
cars, according to a study published Wednesday by the American Geophysical Union.

(Credit: Urs Hauenstein/CanalMuseum.com)

The study was published Wednesday in the Journal of Geophysical Research, an AGU publication.

Sulfates from shipping are capped under global regulations. But the AGU’s statement notes that other elements of ship exhaust, including soot, or black carbon, are not. A joint study by NOAA and the University of Colorado in 2008 found tugboats to be major culprits in that type of pollution. Shipping exhaust also contributes almost 30 percent of smog-forming nitrogen oxide gases, according to the AGU.

The search giant’s Google.org philanthropy on Thursday released updated numbers and policy recommendations on how the U.S. could dramatically change its energy consumption by 2030.

In just over 20 years, the U.S. could wean itself from coal and oil for electricity generation and nearly halve its gasoline consumption, according to an analysis done by energy experts at Google.

According to its Clean Energy by 2030 Web site:

The immediate policy proposals posted Thursday from Google.org program manager Michael Terrell and Google policy counsel Harry Wingo are:

• Change the renewable energy subsidy so it does not rely on tax credits, a policy that is less effective now because corporate profits are drying up.

Obama advisers have indicated that clean energy will be one of the incoming administration’s top priorities, tied to economic recovery. Whether the administration can successfully pass legislation, such as regulations on carbon emissions, remains to be seen, of course.

In the past two years, several attempts to pass carbon regulations, renew renewable energy tax credits, and increase fuel-efficiency standards have been defeated.

There is significant support for action on climate change and clean energy among voters and businesses. But any sort of bold policy proposals will face stiff resistance in Congress.

(Credit:
Google)

Google.org's projections for eliminating electricity generation from coal and oil by 2030. Click on image to enlarge.

• Fund existing programs to invest in smart grid technologies, which will allow consumers to monitor energy usage.

At the core of Google.org’s energy transformation proposal are mandates to increase efficiency of electrical appliances and vehicles; rapid increase in the use of wind, solar, and geothermal; and a transition to plug-in vehicles.

Pressure building for fast action?

It’s the most recent call to Washington leaders for quick action on energy and the environment.

Google first introduced its 2030 energy road map in October of this year; CEO Eric Schmidt, an adviser to Obama, made speeches earlier this year, calling on the federal government to show more leadership on climate change by fostering clean-technology businesses.

President-elect Barack Obama earlier this week reiterated his campaign pledges to invest heavily in clean-energy programs and make the U.S. a leader on climate change.

A number of other high-profile individuals and groups, including former Vice President Al Gore and businessman T. Boone Pickens, have called for government-led “moonshot” programs in energy, recalling how the Apollo Program in the 1960s led to a flourishing of technology progress.

Google’s proposal will benefit the U.S. by increasing energy security, protecting the environment, creating new jobs, and helping to create the conditions for long-term prosperity. Some of the necessary funds will be public, but much of it will come from the private sector–a typical approach for infrastructure and high technology investments.

• Mandate that U.S. government agencies purchase energy from renewable sources, use energy-efficient building products, and plug-in hybrid vehicles.

Sen. Barbara Boxer on Thursday said that a simplified climate change bill will be introduced next year. Meanwhile, the replacement of Rep. John Dingell by Henry Waxman at the head of the House Energy and Commerce Committee is interpreted as a move that can accelerate energy policy reform.

• A $3 billion appropriation to weatherize 1 million U.S. homes, which will cut energy bills by about 30 percent.

CNET News’ Declan McCullagh calls it an expensive lesson in the law of unintended consequences.

E-voting worries linger as Election Day nears

Ethanol maker VeraSun files for bankruptcy

Circuit City to close 155 stores

Obama campaign releases tech policy video

Tesla Motors secures $40 million in funding

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He’s talking about widespread adoption of touch-screen machines in the aftermath of the 2000 election debacle. But as the U.S. heads to the polls on Tuesday, there’s a lot of anxiousness over the reliability of the e-voting systems which have since been put in place. This, and other headlines of the day, in Monday’s podcast.

In the interview, McNamee declared, “You know the beautiful thing: June 29, 2009, is the two-year anniversary of the first shipment of the iPhone. Not one of those people will still be using an iPhone a month later.” In other words, every single last one of those original iPhone owners is going to drop their iPhone, leave AT&T, and sign up with Palm and Sprint, even though they have no idea what the Pre is going to cost. That’s usually an important consideration in a buying decision.

In an SEC filing for the ages, Palm attempted to do just that on Monday, distancing itself from comments made by Elevation Partners’ McNamee–Palm’s primary investor–regarding Palm’s Pre smartphone and Apple’s
iPhone. Palm is expected to launch the Pre at some point before the end of the first half of the year, and while the company’s financial backer is understandably excited, he seemed to lose all sense of perspective during an interview with Bloomberg last week.

•  “With respect to the statements in the second to last paragraph of the article that ‘the underlying technology for Research In Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry is about 13 years old, while the technology behind the iPhone goes back almost nine years,’ estimating one specific age for the many technology components underlying any mobile phone is inherently imprecise and these statements are withdrawn.”

•  “With respect to the implications in the second to last and last paragraphs of the article that Palm’s new operating system will give it an edge over competitors that ‘are going to run out of gas way before’ Palm, estimations of the relative useful lifespan of smartphone operating systems are conjecture, unverifiable at this time, and age is not necessarily predictive of their relative long-term success.”

(Credit:
Corrine Schulze/CNET)

Elevation Partners' Roger McNamee is excited about Palm's Pre smartphone. A little too excited.

And just as Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ prediction that the company would sell 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008 would have been quite embarrassing had Apple not reached that goal, McNamee’s words could still come back to haunt Palm and Elevation Partners if the Pre isn’t a success.

Salesmen are prone to hyperbole, of course. But the timing of McNamee’s comments created problems for Palm, since the company was about to launch a stock offering to raise money to finance the actual launch of the Pre, currently starring in late-night television infomercials. McNamee’s comments could conceivably be interpreted as a sales prediction, which could entice someone to purchase Palm’s stock only to be disappointed and possibly litigious when Palm fails to put Apple’s iPhone division out of business in July.

Roger McNamee is about to learn that nothing can ever be withdrawn from the Internet.

The stock offering worked out for Palm, raising $83.9 million that should keep the lights on for another few months. The Pre does indeed look like one of the first smartphones released since the iPhone capable of eroding the buzz around Apple in the mobile market, but Palm has to launch it first.

So Palm had to file a lengthy “free writing prospectus” with the Securities and Exchange Commission, clarifying or withdrawing 10 references made during McNamee’s interview. For example, Palm called McNamee’s iPhone reference “an exaggerated prediction of consumer behavior pattern.”

Other highlights:

“By improving our analysis of the link structure of the web, Google has begun minimizing the impact of many Googlebombs. Now we will typically return commentary, discussions, and articles about the Googlebombs instead,” Ryan Moulton and Kendra Carattini said in the post.

(Credit:
Google)

It didn’t affect search sites of either Yahoo or Microsoft on Thursday morning.

After about an hour, news of the Googlebomb effort derailed the Googlebomb itself.

Eric Baillargeon of Montreal initiated this particular Googlebomb and claimed a victory at 10:45 a.m. PST.

Google tries to address the issue in part because “over time, we’ve seen more people assume that they are Google’s opinion, or that Google has hand-coded the results for these Googlebombed queries,” which isn’t true.

One administration after George Bush became the top result for a Google search for “miserable failure,” new President Barack Obama has his own such artificially engineered result for the query “cheerful achievement.”

(Credit:
Google)

Google uses an algorithm called PageRank to help choose what sites get top rankings in search results; a site’s PageRank score is higher when many other sites link to it. A Googlebomb can exploit this algorithm when many people create Web pages and appropriate links.

Earlier Thursday morning, a search for the relatively unusual term returned Obama’s whitehouse.gov site as the top link, the result of a bit of work called a Googlebomb . However, perhaps illustrating the frailty of this particular effort, the result had been bumped to second place behind news of the Obama Googlebomb published by the Google Blogoscoped blog. See the more recent view in the screenshot below.

A Googlebomb returned President Barack Obama's official Web site as the top Google search result for 'cheerful achievement.'

Update 10:13 a.m. PST January 23: Google didn’t have anything new to share about this particular Googlebomb, instead reiterating a two-year-old blog post about the subject.

Intel will target solid-state drives for server computers in a tie up with Hitachi that was announced Monday night.

Solid-state drives are generally faster than hard-disk drives, particularly at reading data.

Hitachi GST said it will continue to provide its customers with both “traditional” hard-disk drives in addition to the SSDs.

The agreement is exclusive to the two companies with the first Serial Attached SCSI and Fibre Channel products expected to be available in early 2010. Both Serial Attached SCSI and Fibre Channel are interfaces typically used in servers.

Hitachi said it will use its expertise in drive firmware, reliability, qualification and system integration in combination with Intel’s technology and manufacturing capabilities.

(Credit:
Intel)

“The combination of a leading Enterprise drive supplier with a NAND technology and manufacturing leader will produce world-class solutions in terms of reliability, performance and system compatibility,” the companies said in a statement.

Intel solid state drive

The new SSDs will be “branded and exclusively sold and supported by Hitachi GST” and use Intel NAND flash memory and SSD technology.

Intel and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) said they will “jointly develop and deliver” Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) and Fibre Channel (FC) solid-state drives (SSDs) for servers, workstations, and storage systems.

The companies said the SSDs will not replace hard disk drives but complement them. “The new generation of solid-state drive technology complements existing enterprise-class hard disk drives and is intended for use in storage applications that require extremely high Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS) performance and power efficiency,” according to the two companies.

While Hitachi is a large supplier of hard disk drives, Intel manufactures and sells consumer and enterprise-class solid-state drives (and the flash memory chips inside the drives). The enterprise-class X25-E Extreme SSDs that Intel offers now are based on Serial ATA (SATA) technology. As are its consumer-class drives.

Disclosure: Last.fm is a part of CBS Interactive, which also publishes CNET News.

Dogpile has raised $250,000 in just two months for pets in need, the metasearch engine announced Friday. Its goal is to raise $1 million by the end of 2009. Dogpile raises the money each time a user conducts a search. The more searches conducted on the site, the more Dogpile can contribute to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), as well as other animal-related charities. The Dogpile “Search and Rescue” program will continue through the end of 2009.

Vudu, a company that provides streaming movies through its set-top box, has launched an iPhone app that will allow its users to browse and search the company’s catalog of titles, as well as purchase and rent those movies for viewing on their Vudu box at home. The app is free and available now in the iTunes App Store.

Last.fm announced Friday that it has launched a mobile version of its social radio platform for
Google Android-based phones. The Last.fm app, which is already available for the
iPhone and
iPod Touch, allows users to listen to the company’s streaming radio stations and plays in the background while users perform other functions on the device. Last.fm’s Android app is free and available now in the Android Market.

Tripwolf, a travel guide site that combines professional material and user submissions, announced that it has closed a $2.5 million funding round led by the MairDumont Group. According to the company’s executives, they plan to use the funding to launch an iPhone app and expand their operation abroad.

URL shortening service, Bit.ly, announced Thursday that it has updated its Twitter plug-in for Firefox. The update now provides users with the context of a Twitter conversation when they hover their mouse over the “in reply to” link in Twitter. The update is available now for Firefox users.

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To illustrate this, Gladwell uses the example of Robert Oppenheimer, “father” of the atomic bomb, and Christopher Langan, a brilliant scientist who had much the same innate talent and work ethic but lacked the same domestic comforts, which enabled Oppenheimer to reach acclaim and Langan…not so much.

When I apply this to start-ups and, specifically, to open source, it seems to ring true. Red Hat wasn’t the best Linux distribution when it first achieved prominence: it happened to be in the right place at the right time (and a tremendous amount of work was put into it). Ditto for MySQL, which early on, displaced PostgreSQL despite not managing transactions, as just one example, as well as PostgreSQL.

If Bill Gates’ parents had lacked the financial wherewithal to send him to that school, or even if he had been born a decade later, it’s unlikely that he would have managed to accomplish what he did.

I’m not a fan of Malcolm Gladwell’s earlier books, Blink and Tipping Point. His “insights” tend to be obvious and provide little predictive power (i.e., knowing his theory does nothing to help you plot your way to success). Indeed, the most they provide is rear-view mirror insight into why something might have happened.

Such is life, and such is success. It’s a strange cocktail of hard work, intelligent people, and the right circumstances. The problem is that it’s hard to impossible to predict where success will “strike.” The good news is that this randomizes dramatic success, such that breakthroughs are somewhat democratic.

Consider…the success stories of technology entrepreneurs Bill Gates and Sun Microsystems founder Bill Joy. While most biographies of these men focus on their exceptional individual qualities–their innate intelligence, their fierce determination–Mr. Gladwell presents a more nuanced analysis, emphasizing the range of opportunities to which each man was exposed. Mr. Gates, for example, attended an elite Seattle private school that, thanks to the proceeds of a parents’ group rummage sale, installed a computer terminal in 1968–almost unheard of at the time. And this was not just any computer: It was a state-of-the-art time-sharing terminal directly linked to a mainframe in downtown Seattle. “It was an amazing thing,” Mr. Gates tells the author. Mr. Gates says that he and his friends were drawn to the computer, which was kept “in a funny little room that we subsequently took control of.”

…[S]uccess seems to stem as much from context as from personal attributes. Intrinsic ability appears to be a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for exceptional achievement. It also helps to be born at the right time–the 1830s for titans of industry, the 1950s for computer whizzes–and in the right home environment, with the right cultural heritage. But the elements of success are not all matters of happenstance and talent: Hard work (practicing a skill for at least 10,000 hours) is essential, too, as even Mozart discovered….

Gladwell’s new book, Outliers, is no different, but I find it more interesting, perhaps in part because it helps to explain a complex subject in pithy prose. As The Wall Street Journal details in an engaging book review, Outliers identifies the necessary traits of successful people, only two of which do people have any control over. The last? Well, it’s a matter of happenstance: