At the risk of flogging a dead horse: Chatroulette is currently down. Again? Yes, again.

This time, no promises of an updated and redesigned version launching ‘tomorrow’ or ‘shortly’. If you’re lucky enough to even get the website address to resolve, you’ll be looking at a nice ’403 Forbidden’ or ’500 Internal Server Error’ page, or some nginx Web server landing page.

Which could of course mean there’s someone tinkering on the site right now and about to hit the launch button on the real next-generation, penis-free version of Chatroulette, not the underwhelming version that went live earlier this week.

Update: seems to be back up now, at least partially in some browsers. The underwhelming v2, that is.

Keep refreshing, voyeuristic boys and girls. What’s that? What do you mean you don’t care anymore? But it’s Chatroulette! It’s the future of online video communication!

Hello?

SunPower's installation at the DOE headquarters

Solar energy company SunPower Corporation has landed a sweet array of installation contracts for U.S. government entities, amounting to about 20 megawatt’s worth of new solar projects for groups such as the Navy.

The company declined to release how much these contracts are worth financially, but to give some idea of their impact, SunPower is saying the new business will generate 1,000 local jobs during their construction.

One of the plums SunPower scored was being one of five solar companies awarded what’s called an “indefinite delivery-indefinite quantity contract” by the Navy, which has five years to disperse $200 million. SunPower will be tapped to design, build, operate and maintain solar power systems for Navy and Marine Corps installations in the southwest U.S.

This follows the group’s announcement earlier this month that they’d won a contract to install a 15-megawatt project at Luke Air Force Base in Glendale, Arizona, to be the largest solar power installation at government facility.

In a company-issued statement, director of federal accounts Karen Butterfield said: “SunPower has the experience and credibility to successfully navigate the federal procurement process and deliver reliable, high performance solar systems that meet agency requirements. With the addition of a U.S.-based panel manufacturing facility this year, we have also bolstered our ability to serve this growing demand.”

Other projects noted in the contracts:

-A two-megawatt solar power system at a new “ultra-low energy office complex” and two parking lots at the Department of Energy’s new Research Support Facility on the National Renewable Energy Laboratory campus in Golden, Colorado. Funding will come from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, and the project is expected to finish in 2011.

-The General Services Administration (GSA) will use the SunPower’s T5 Solar Roof Tile system in their General Emmett Bean Federal Building in Indianapolis, with the project set to complete in January. The finished product would be the largest solar power system on a GSA facility.

SunPower is the latest in a series of companies who’ve benefitted from government spending in the greening of federal buildings: Lumenergi closed a $12.7 million second round funding led by Braemar Energy Ventures last week. The company makes energy-efficient networked lighting systems currently popular with new government construction – with contracts awarded at federal buildings in New Hampshire and Nevada.

Image courtsey of SunPower Corp.

Tags: government, Solar, solar energy

Companies: Lumenergi, Navy, SunPower, U.S. government

Google, Apple, Microsoft, Netflix, Amazon — when you hear these names, you usually think about how these tech giants all compete with one another. But what if they all teamed up for one cause? They’d be unstoppable, right? We’re about to find out.

All of these companies are currently sitting in the same boat about to storm the beaches. Which beaches? Those belonging to the the cable television providers in the U.S. It has only just begun, but the assault is underway.

Let me start by saying that of course the cable companies aren’t about to go away. Even if the mega assault by the tech juggernauts is successful, it will be many years before everyone’s addiction to cable gives way to something else. But it will. And that something else will be content served over the Internet.

And in that regard, the cable companies have positioned themselves fairly well because many of them are among the largest ISPs in the country now. But it’s their core business, cable television, that is facing this assault.

Just take a look at the big picture. Everyday there is a new story about how one of the aforementioned tech giants is on the verge of something new meant to control our time spent watching content — and much of it from the living room. Today’s story is about Google’s big pay-per-view movie plan for YouTube, a new service they’re hoping to debut later this year with full Hollywood studio support. If they land it, it could be huge. But that’s just today’s example.

On Wednesday, at an event in San Francisco, Apple is widely expected to debut their next iteration of the Apple TV — which will likely now be called the “iTV”. Alongside it, they’re expected to unveil a new layer of iTunes that will allow people to rent television shows for $0.99 a pop. Again, that too could be huge.

But it doesn’t really matter if one of these individual things doesn’t hit it big (and certainly the current Apple TV hasn’t). It’s the fact that all of these giant companies are clearly focused on this one thing: invading the living room and changing the way we consume video entertainment.

And they absolutely should be focused on that space. It’s a multi-billion dollar goldmine of potential that is sitting around begging to be disrupted. Consumers want this — even if many don’t realize it yet.

You see, there are plenty of us more tech-savvy consumers who have long thought about severing our ties with cable television — and some of us already have to varying degrees. Most average consumers simply don’t realize there are better alternatives out there yet, because the truth is that there is no singular better alternative right now. But these services from the likes of Microsoft, Apple, Netflix, etc. keep moving forward. And as more enter the game, they keep pushing each other to improve at a more rapid pace.

Cable is vulnerable because for far too long they’ve screwed us all with ridiculous prices for a crapload of content that we simply don’t want. Despite the ever-present promise of a-la-carte pricing, it has never come to fruition. And so our cable bills remain close to (or over) $100 a month. We’re paying for so much stuff we simply don’t want. But we have no choice.

Further, the vast majority of consumers would agree that the cable companies have just about the worst customer service imaginable. They’re continually promising to get better, but they never do. They’re always over-billing, service is always going out, and their phone lines are always jam-packed with complaints that fall upon deaf ears. Compare this to a company like Netflix which actually reaches out to you when they think they might have screwed up — even in the smallest way.

And on top of the garbage customer support, there’s the actual user experience of cable. It’s awful. Each company seems to be competing with the others for who can pick the worst cable box with the shittiest software. For a little while it looked like TiVo may solve that problem with their own DVR box that provided a layer on top of the cable box. But the cable companies put a quick end to that when they started including DVRs in their own boxes — complete with true-to-form god-awful UIs — for far cheaper.

It’s almost unbelievable to me that in this day and age that the user interface many of us have in our cable boxes looks as if it was designed with a crayon by a 6-year-old. This is how we interact with the device that is for many, the most-used in their home: the TV. A lot of kitchen appliances now have better UIs.

Apple, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, Amazon — all of these guys offer experiences that are a million times better than cable. The only thing that’s holding them back is the content. Netflix is the one arguably making the most headway here, but that’s mainly for movies and older television shows. But Netflix is smart in that they’re not trying to do their own thing. They’re great as a supplement to something like the Xbox 360 and soon, undoubtedly, the iTV. If Xbox Live really can get live sports programming too, it will be another step.

The same is true if YouTube gets major Hollywood rentals. Undoubtedly, this will be a part of the Google TV package that will launch later this year. It’s an interesting model because Google TV is a platform that’s meant to lay on top of existing cable. But in that regard, it may end up being a great bridge to move people away from their cable addiction, and towards content over the Internet.

And if Apple’s iTV comes with the television show rentals, it will also be an important step. For most people, buying each television show you want to watch doesn’t make a lot of sense. But renting them for a cheaper price does. As a person who only is interested in a handful of shows, I expect such a solution to be a fraction of a fraction of the cost of my cable bill. I can’t wait.

Amazon has a pipeline into the living room through a few set top boxes already, but they’re also likely working on their own solution — in the same way they have their Kindle solution for digital books. People probably never thought the Kindle and other similar devices would lead to a changing of the book industry as quickly as it has — but it’s happening, just ask the Borders down the street from me which is going out of businesses.

And with cable, it’s going to happen too.

The music industry has already been disrupted. The book industry has been disrupted. The mobile industry has been disrupted. Now it’s time for the cable industry to be disrupted. There are too many major players with too many billions of dollars worth of resources for something not to hit and change the industry. It’s amazing that all of these guys are focusing on the same thing at the same time.

I, for one, cannot wait for the day when cable has to surrender and fall back into its role as a dumb pipe for the Internet. Innovation always tops greed and complacency. Always. The assault is underway.

[images: Dreamworks]

In terms of brand recognition, it’s hard to top a huge live display billboard in Las Vegas. But Foursquare has managed to do it. As you can see above, they now have a massive, multi-level and multi-angle display practically screaming about the service to all those in Times Square in New York City.

“Check in, find your friends, unlock your city,” the ad reads. In smaller print at the bottom it talks about checking in to American Eagle for some kind of special. Foursquare head of business development Tristan Walker confirms that American Eagle are the ones paying for the ad, which he says is the “largest digital billboard in Times Square.”

American Eagle or not, this is clearly a huge ad (and a huge win) for Foursquare itself. Walker thanks Foursquare’s designer Mari Sheibley for designing the thing. And hints that a version 2 is coming.

The phrase “you can’t buy this kind of publicity” comes to mind — probably because Foursquare, while well-funded, undoubtedly couldn’t buy this type of ad. And yet there it is.

This also managed to one-up the big branding rival Gowalla got in New York City earlier this year when they were a part of a massive billboard that loomed large over Madison Square Garden.

This Times Square billboard is just about the opposite of a check in off the grid for the service.

[photo via WillMcD on Flickr and Twitter]

Inventor: Paul Allen
Filed: August 27, 2010
Abstract: A method for preventing innovation, specifically in the tech sector, by way of a dangerous misconception of what is patentable and a sadly overtaxed intellectual property regulatory system.
Summary of the Invention: During a period of change and invention, ideas may occur to a person, and a few possible ways of manifesting those ideas. By instantly submitting a patent request, the person can secure as their own property not only the methods they have actually invented, but all possible derivatives and independent creations resembling said methods. After waiting a suitable period of time, during which the entire landscape of the industry may change, the patent holder then can exchange these patents for riches, while simultaneously nullifying the gains of a decentralized, idea-powered economy.

Continue reading…

Remember Diaspora? You’ll be forgiven if you don’t. Since they received a lot of hype as the open-source “Facebook Alternative” this past May, they’ve been quiet. In fact, they hadn’t given any updates on their progress since early July. But today they’ve re-emerged with some updates. Notably, they say: “We have Diaspora working, we like it, and it will be open-sourced on September 15th.” That’s just three weeks away.

That’s good news. But even though it has only been three months since the initial buzz began about the project, the online world has slightly changed. Back then, it seemed as if everyone with a voice on the web was screaming bloody murder about Facebook and their privacy issues. That plus a timely New York Times profile helped Diaspora raise over $200,000 from the crowd-sourced fundraising site Kickstarter — the most ever raised on the site and an amazing $190,000 more than Diaspora’s original goal. But today, again, just three months later, Facebook is still growing like a weed. Controversy keeps bubbling up, but it just as quickly subsides.

We all forgot to quit.

And so the question remains: will a project like Diaspora be able to get any traction given Facebook’s 500 million person head start?

At the very least, Diaspora is being realistic about what they can and cannot do. In the post today they’ve noted that they have for now scrapped the idea of plugins and APIs in favor of “simple and high value features.” I like the sound of that.

Further, they write:

We are spending a good chunk of time concentrating on building clear, contextual sharing. That means an intuitive way for users to decide, and not notice deciding, what content goes to their coworkers and what goes to their drinking buddies. We know that’s a hard UI problem and we take it seriously.

And while the open-sourcing of the project begins on September 15, they won’t be done working on it. Two of the members of the core four-person team are taking a leave from their studies at NYU (this was a Summer project for all of them) and the work will continue long-term.

Meanwhile, the team notes that it is time for some R&R, as three of them will be attending the Burning Man festival in California. Presumably, those pictures will only be shared with their “drinking buddies” list in Diaspora.

For once, people are talking about Six Apart, a blogging pioneer which hasn’t otherwise generated much chatter recently. Rumors are flying that the company’s in the midst of some kind of a deal — though we hear executives at Six Apart are denying anything’s afoot.

The most specific rumor we’ve heard is that Six Apart is looking at deals in Japan, a market it entered in 2003 and where it remains the dominant blogging platform. And sure enough, Six Apart has hired GCA Savvian, a boutique investment banking firm with offices in both Tokyo and San Francisco that’s well-known for its Internet startup deals.

No deal appears to be imminent, since GCA Savvian’s banker for Six Apart, Steve Fletcher, and Six Apart’s lead dealmaker, Andrew Anker, are both on vacation.

Six Apart, whose name was inspired by the close birthdays of its founders, the husband-and-wife team of Ben and Mena Trott, was among the first companies to commercialize the then-nascent business of blogging when it launched in 2001. It sells the Movable Type software and subscriptions to its hosted TypePad service.

But it’s since moved aggressively into the business of selling advertising both on its own sites and its publishers’, a hybrid model similar to companies like Federated Media and Glam Media. It markets itself as a social advertising network second only to Facebook in reach, with an audience of 90 million monthly visitors. In June, it signed up enthusiast-content network Whiskey Media and women’s lifestyle site BettyConfidential.com as ad-sales clients, and acquired NaturalPath Media, a green-focused ad network.

Six Apart has done complex deals before. In 2007, it sold online community LiveJournal to a Russian company, SUP, with which it had a business partnership. One possibility: Since Six Apart’s blog software remains popular in Japan, could it sell it to Nifty, an Internet service provider with which it has long partnered to provide blogging services in that country?

It is likely that Six Apart’s investors are growing restive for a deal. August Capital led a $10 million round in 2004, and participated in a $12 million round in 2006. Most venture-capital firms like to see their portfolio companies sold within seven years of their initial investment. In theory, a deal in Japan could generate cash to buy out early investors — or help fund Six Apart’s push into the advertising business.

There’s nothing to suggest a deal is even close. But if Six Apart made a move, that sure would be something to blog about, wouldn’t it?

[Photo: Hans_van_Rijnberk]

Tags: blog software, blogging, Movable Type, Typepad

Companies: GCA Savvian, Nifty, six apart

People: Andrew Anker, Steve Fletcher

Motorola has acquired a new set of app development tools in the form of Y Combinator startup 280 North.

A Motorola official confirmed to TechCrunch that Motorola acquired the web-app developer to “help facilitate the continued expansion of Motorola’s application ecosystem.” The deal was reportedly worth $20 million.

280 North developed the Objective-J and Cappuccino app development platforms, designed for those with more limited and focused programming experience. The platforms were showed off in the company’s 280 Slides app.

These app development tools could be another way for Motorola to differentiate its devices from other Android phones. Device makers are already trying to do this by developing their own “flavors” of the basic Android operating system, including Motorola’s own MotoBlur.

Those major handset manufacturers are founding members of the Open Handset Alliance, which was created to help promote an open set of tools available to all developers in the form of the Android operating system.

The deal was closed earlier in the summer, according to the Motorola official cited by TechCrunch and Barron. 280 North had initially raised $250,000 in a 2008 Angel investment fundraising round, giving a pretty sizable exit for its current investors if the TechCrunch number is accurate.

I’ve reached out to both Motorola and 280 North for confirmation and details, and I’ll update if I hear back.

Tags: Android, cupp, development, droid, OHA, Open Handset Alliance, web apps

Companies: 280 North, Google, HTC, motorola, Samsung

Last month, we gave an update on the state of Tumblr that included some pretty impressive stats: over 6 million users, 1.5 billion pageviews a month, and 4.5 million new posts a day. Throw those all out the window.

The blogging/microblogging/ social/whateveryouwanttocallit network has just crossed 1 billion posts total posts today. You can tell by looking at the number after the “/post/” area in each Tumblr blog URL. Sometime a couple hours ago, it passed 1 billion — and the broken counter on the Tumblr About page confirms this (it was only set to got up to 999,999,999).

Aside from the massive billion number, Tumblr now stands at 7.2 million users. Those users are now generating over 5.2 million posts a day. Their Quantcast data now has them at 1.7 billion pageviews a month.

Yes, the network is still surging.

[thanks Andrew]

SAN FRANCISCO is considering making a bid for United Biscuits’ biscuit-making operations, which accounts for about 75% of United Biscuits total business, according to a report in the Sunday Times of London.