Category: Tech news

Today on the Twitter blog, the company wrote a post that was all of three sentences to let people know about their new logos. Yay!

But there’s actually quite a bit more to it then it seems.

If you follow the link they provide to Guidelines page, you’ll find some interesting tidbits. Among them:

• Don’t: “Use anything other than the most current versions of the Twitter logos.”
• Don’t: “Use screenshots of other people’s profiles or Tweets without their permission.”

Both are interesting because both are broken all the time. Well, okay the first one doesn’t quite count yet because Twitter just officially launched their new logos. But hundreds if not thousands of sites around the web have been using old or fake Twitter logos to represent the company for a long time.

The latter rule is definitely more troublesome. Tweets are known to be public items, but Twitter is saying you can’t use screenshots of them without permission. We do this all the time. So does just about every other publication. We’ve never been told this is wrong, it seems to reek of fair use, but now Twitter is saying it’s a no-no. (Update below from Twitter)

A few months ago, Twitter tried to come up with their own solution for this with their own Blackbird Pie tweet embed tool. It’s interesting that in their post on it, they never said this screen-grabbing of tweets was wrong. In fact, they note “Mostly, we just think it’s a pain to take screen grabs of tweets.” Notice they call it a “pain”, not “wrong”.

Twitter does say it’s fine to use others’ tweets that you have permission to use. But again, isn’t this stuff already public?

Also interesting:

• Do: Make sure that if mentioning “Tweet,” you include a direct reference to Twitter (for instance, “Tweet with Twitter”) or display the Twitter marks with the mention of “Tweet.”

This would seem to be all about Twitter gaining the trademark to the word “tweet”, which they’ve been trying unsuccessfully to do. They also later note, “Please remember to capitalize the T in Twitter and Tweet!” As a commenter notes, it’s funny that they don’t even capitalize it in their own logo!

Update: Okay, we’ve clarified some things with Twitter.

From their spokesperson regarding the new logos:

The purpose of the update was to provide access to our new resources and to better clarify some guidelines.

We’re encouraging people to use the new marks. It’s okay for them to continue to use the old ones, but we’re hoping people will use the new ones. We said this before too, as this isn’t the first time our marks have changed.

And regarding the screenshots:

This isn’t a new part of the policy and was stated in the guidelines before. This serves primarily to protect users from their tweets being used as endorsements without their knowledge. Public tweets are public. But if you’re going to use tweets in static form (e.g. in a publication), you should have permission from the author/user. For instance, if someone famous were to tweet about liking something and then it was used on a billboard.

This doesn’t apply to broadcast — there are separate display guidelines about that. Our policies also don’t attempt to control the appropriate use of tweets in news reporting.

That’s a bit confusing (and I’ve asked for further clarification), but it sounds as if they won’t be enforcing the rule for individuals (including reporters) taking screenshots of tweets. It’s more for advertisers attempting to use tweets as endorsements without permission.

Update 2: More clarity from Twitter:

For news, whether online or print, it’s okay to use screenshots of Tweets. The permission applies more to merchandise, billboards, etc. Users’ rights are key.

In other words, screenshot away, bloggers. Which is good — but basically they’re just saying they won’t be enforcing the rules. That’s still a bit troubling going forward. They could enforce them anytime — why not just make the specific rules more clear? This reeks of the legal department covering asses here just in case they have to drop a hammer.

Regarding the capital “T” in tweet:

We view Tweet as meaning content on Twitter, rather than a generic word. With that, it should be capitalized when it’s a noun. This isn’t new, and it’s not something we enforce.

Again, that seems to be all about copyright — and mainly when used in publications.

New York-based file sharing site Drop.io has just posted the breaking news of its acquisition by Facebook on its company blog. This looks like it is the latest in a series of talent acquisitions by the social giant. Before its exit, Drop.io had $9.95 million in funding, led by RRE Ventures.

From the Drop.io blog:

“Today, we’re proud to announce that we’ve struck a deal with Facebook.  What this means is that Facebook has bought most of drop.io’s technology and assets, and Sam Lessin is moving to Facebook.

In the coming weeks, we’ll be winding down the drop.io service. As of this week, people will no longer be able to create new free drops, but you’ll be able to download content from existing drops until Dec. 15. Paid user accounts will still be available through Dec. 15 and paid users will be able to continue using the service normally.  After Dec. 15, paid accounts will be discontinued as well.”

Drop.io allowed users to exchange files or “drops” privately with their friends through web, email, or phone. The company will be shutting off all accounts after December 15th.

As this has all the markings of an acqui-hire, founder Sam Lessin will be joining the Product Management organization at Facebook, where his fellow Harvard alumnus and friend Mark Zuckerberg is CEO. We’ve got no word on what will happen to the rest of the team.

From Facebook, “We can confirm that we recently completed a small talent acquisition for Drop.io and acquired most of the company’s assets. We’re thrilled that Sam Lessin will be joining us at Facebook.”

Search engines like Bing and Google will swear up and down that their natural search results are determined by one thing and one thing only: the all-knowing, all-powerful Algorithm. Sure, paid results might pop up at the top or to the side, but they are always highlighted as such. But sometimes the temptation is too great and the natural search results, which are supposed to be sacrosanct, are used to promote a product or service owned by the same company that operates the search engine.

That certainly appears to be what is happening on Bing right now if you do a search for the term “datamarket.” The top result is for Windows Azure DataMarket, a product which just launched a couple days ago. Don’t get me wrong. It sounds like a cool product. It is a cloud-based service where people can upload and sell data in a consistent way.

But in terms of link juice, you’ve got to wonder whether Datamarket.com, the second result on Bing, is getting a raw deal. The Azure DataMarket result appears as a natural result, not a sponsored link (which both Microsoft and Google do for their own products but highlight them as such, see “Azure”).

If you do the same search for “datamarket” on Google, Datamarket.com is the top result, and the Microsoft site is nowhere to be found on the first page of results, which is also suspiciously convenient. It is pushed all the way to the second page. Are Google and Bing allowing their algorithms to do their magic, or is something else going on here?

And if you think that Google never promotes its own products, just search for any place such as the “Gramercy Park Hotel.” The second result is a module with a map, links, and data from Google’s Places. Google shows these kinds of Onebox results for many types of search, but in this case the most prominent link goes to a Google Places page.

There’s a lot of talk about how web apps and the cloud are heralding a new age of computing, but for the forseeable future many people are still going to be relying heavily on desktop software — especially as operating systems start to bake in their own App Stores.  And while desktop apps may offer advantages in terms of performance and user experience, in some ways web apps are actually better for developers — it’s much easier to track how people are using your application and iterate accordingly.

That’s where DeskMetrics comes in. The Brazilian startup, which launches today to the public, offers developers a set of components that will allow them to analyze how their desktop applications are being used, down to each click. This means developers can analyze which buttons users are clicking, how far along in various sign-up flows they’re getting, and more — just like web developers have been doing for years.

To get DeskMetrics working, a developer needs to integrate special native components into their application, which will allow them to track both clicks and when their users are installing, running, or — heaven forbid — uninstalling their application. All of this data can be followed from the DeskMetrics web interface, which updates in real-time and also features geo-mapping so you can see where in the world your app is taking off.

DeskMetrics isn’t the first company to tackle this problem. Founder Bernardo Porto says that competitors include Eqatec and PreEmptive Solutions’ Runtime Intelligence. But he says that DeskMetrics differentiates itself in a few ways. First, he says that DeskMetrics has support for more programming languages, including C, C++, Delphi, Visual Basic, and .NET (C#) (he says the competitors only support .NET). He also says that DeskMetrics is the only one of the three that reports data back in real-time.

Pricing is based on how many applications a developer is tracking and how frequently they’re used. A basic startup plan runs $49/month for one app and 20,000 sessions, and a premium plan goes for $669/month for 10 apps and 1 million sessions (there are a few price points between those).

I’m still a bit skeptical about how much real-time matters in this case — after all, developers can’t iterate on desktop software nearly as quickly as they can on the web. But the company has the endorsement of OpenCandy cofounder Chester Ng, who says that this was actually a problem OpenCandy wanted to solve early on (they provide add-on installs for desktop software) but haven’t gotten around to it yet — and they say DeskMetrics is the best solution that’s currently available.

Have you heard the news? The Verizon iPhone is coming. Today, Fortune has the 15th or so confirmation that the device will launch in early 2011. There’s way too much smoke now for there not to be a fire. But even more interesting than that tidbit is Fortune’s interview with Ivan Seidenberg, the CEO of Verizon. He wouldn’t speak directly about a Verizon iPhone launch, but he still had plenty to say about the device, and Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs.

The most interesting thing he had to say was the last bit about the iPhone in the piece:

According to Seidenberg, Jobs told him during a December 2009 meeting, “Decisions you made [at Verizon] are decisions we would make at Apple.”

That sounds like it’s Jobs more or less saying that he respects Verizon because they stood up to him. They wouldn’t compromise on their vision.

And that, of course, implies that AT&T was the “easy” company in that scenario. That is, they’re the ones who were easily romanced into bed. It only took a few drinks. And it sounds as if Apple was fine to have their fling with AT&T while they waited on Verizon, the company they wanted to marry. The company of their dreams. And now the two finally appear ready to tie the knot.

The fact that Apple approached Verizon first (this has been reported before), way back in 2005, says it all. The company originally wanted to partner with Verizon instead of AT&T, but neither Verizon nor Apple were willing to compromise. Here’s the key blurb:

Seidenberg’s soon-to-be-unveiled Verizon iPhone almost didn’t happen. Verizon executives say they passed on an opportunity to be the exclusive network for the phone back in 2005 largely because they felt that Apple and CEO Steve Jobs wanted too much control over how and where the devices would be sold — and too big a cut of the monthly service fees. Verizon didn’t want to give up maintenance of its devices or its relationship with its customers, and it sought to distribute the phone through multiple retail partners. So Apple went with AT&T, of course, and conversations between Apple and Verizon about a phone essentially ceased for two years.

AT&T was willing to compromise, which Apple undoubtedly appreciated, but perhaps didn’t respect. Before the launch of the iPhone in 2007, Seidenberg went back to Jobs to break their scorned lover silence. While Apple was already dating AT&T at that point, they agreed to keep flirting on the side.

After the iPhone’s successful launch, problems with AT&T began to arise almost immediately (this has also been reported before). And so in December of 2007, Lowell McAdam (an exec who will be the next Verizon CEO) called the then more vulnerable Jobs to rekindle the flame:

He called Jobs in December 2007 and told him, “We really ought to talk about how we do business together. We weren’t able to [reach an agreement] a couple of years before, but it’s probably worth having another discussion to make sure we’re not missing something.” Jobs, according to McAdam, replied, “Yeah, you’re probably right. We have missed something.”

But with both sides still wanting their way, and the AT&T contract in their way, not much tangible happened until this past month when the iPad went for sale in Verizon’s stores. This was sort of like Price Charles making an official appearance with Camilla Parker Bowles for the first time — but only as an “unofficial companion”. The wedding is soon to follow.

AT&T, meanwhile, is already playing the “you’ll never love them as much as you love me” card:

AT&T wishes its rival good luck with that. “We carry half the U.S. wireless data on the fastest 3G network,” says Larry Solomon, an AT&T spokesman. “Verizon’s network hasn’t been battle-tested yet, so you don’t know if they can handle the data load or not.” In anticipation of competition, AT&T has been signing customers up for new, two-year contracts to discourage defectors to Verizon.

Don’t worry AT&T, you’ll still get some action on the side. But your role will now be that of extramarital lover. You just weren’t good enough in the sack, and Apple’s mind was always elsewhere — on they company they truly love, Verizon. Let’s just hope Apple doesn’t do anything irrational in order to consummate the union. You know, things like the village bicycle, Google, are doing.

[images: Dreamworks Pictures]

We are hearing reports that Facebook is weeks away from launching a new, redesigned dedicated gaming portal. Details are sparse at this point, but the portal will present a new, more feature rich way to both find games and play games within the social network. We are told that Facebook will launch the portal with a number of game publishers as partners.

With 200 million Facebook users playing games on the site monthly (or 40% of its userbase), it’s not surprising that Facebook is ramping up its gaming initiatives. The company alluded to launching a new dashboard at its gaming press event held in September, with the social network’s product manager for the games team Jared Morganstern telling the press that there will be a wave of innovation around the dashboard. At that time, Facebook announced changes with gaming applications in relation to the news feed and bookmarks.

Earlier in the year, the social network launched an updated Games dashboard for users but we’re told that this new platform will be a centralized place for users to both find and play games. While we don’t know who the partners are at launch, we can only assume that Facebook would want to have the game publishers who attract the most traffic (i.e. Zynga, Playdom) on board for a new portal. We understand that Facebook will announce a number of initial partners at launch and will steadily be adding partners along the way as well.

We hear the launch of the platform is slated for mid-November.

We’ve reached out to Facebook for comment and we’ll update the post when we hear back.

Update: A spokesperson for Facebook responded to us with this: As we announced in September, we have a games team working on building features to make it easier for people to discover and re-engage with games. We have nothing further to share at this time.

That’s not a denial, so I’m pretty sure something is in the works.

It’s pretty easy being green if you’re a Silicon Valley notable apparently. We just got word that Paul Buchheit, creator of Gmail, Friendfeed and now a Facebook employee, has surpassed Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz’s 70K contribution to the Yes on Prop 19 campaign.

Buchheit’s 100K donation, in celebration of the 41st anniversary of email, joins that of industry heavyweights Moskovitz, Sean Parker, Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel and Steve Silberstein in the effort to legalize marijuana in California. Voters will have a chance to weigh in on the measure November 2nd.

Buchheit was the originator of the term “Don’t Be Evil” while he was at Google. His current employer Facebook rejected advertising from marijuana activists over the summer.

Update: Buchheit explains his motivation behind supporting the controversial proposition and why it seems like Silicon Valley has come out particularly strong in favor of marijuana legalization.

“The essential issue is that prohibition not only strips us of our personal liberty, but it also funnels billions of dollars to violent criminal organizations. Prop19 obviously won’t solve all our problems, but I believe that it could be the turning point that leads us towards a more safe and sane drug policy. On this issue, the politicians will follow where the voters lead.

Prop 19 is popular in many areas, but the support in Silicon Valley is more visible because people here tend to have a greater degree of independence, and are therefore more likely to publicly express their support for what has historically been a controversial issue.”

Buchheit goes into the issue further in a post on his own blog here.

Bryan Hansel, chief executive of Smith Electric Vehicles U.S., headquartered in Kansas City, Mo., almost disdains the word “green.” His company makes all-electric trucks for medium-duty commercial and industrial use. They compete against brands like Ford, Peterbilt and Hino.

Smith’s EV technology is also constantly compared to traditional diesel, gas and alternative fuel combustion engines. Hansel believes his trucks have to dominate based on performance and cost savings in light of this. Even the company’s logo is orange not green.

The CEO emphasizes the relative price predictability of electricity over liquid fuels instead of strictly environmental benefits. In 2008— the year Hansel joined Smith Electric—  the transportation sector used 13.88 million barrels of liquid fuels per day, and the industrial sector used 4.75 million in the United States according to the Energy Information Administration of the U.S. Department of Energy. Liquid fuel demand is expected to increase, with those sectors using 14.27 million and 4.82 million barrels of liquid fuel per day by 2015.

The cost of liquid fuels (primarily petroleum-based) fluctuates more dramatically than electricity’s. The prices are impacted by crude oil production, world oil pricing, taxes, and advances in fuel technology. Meanwhile, electricity can be generated from renewable sources, on or off the grid (like a rooftop solar array) and purchased from a utility at a price that’s locked in over the long-term.

For every gallon of gasoline used, according to the U.S. EPA 2,421 grams of carbon dioxide (CO2) are emitted into the atmosphere, and 2,778 grams per gallon of diesel. The greenhouse gas emissions could also be taxed in the future.

Hansel’s cost savings message resonated with some major corporations, including Staples, Frito-Lay and Coca Cola. Currently, The Smith Newton is the only all electric, medium-to-heavy truck offering on the GSA schedule, which means soon Smith Electric may count the U.S. military a large customer.

Hansel spoke with TechCrunch this week about how Smith is convincing American fleet managers to try electric trucks, and some of the challenges the company faces as it scales to meet the demand. (Interview after the photo.)

Smith Electric Vehicles was founded in 1920 in the UK. How and why did you join the company?

I never thought about designing vehicles, or woke up and said ‘I’ll be the electric truck guy,’ but I had been around mechanical engineering and manufacturing my entire life. I ran a product development company for more than 15 years where we helped bring products to market for Fortune 500 companies— that was Virdev.

This particular opportunity came about for me when a friend of mine acquired Smith [in the UK] and had brought its technology and business to the strong state that it is in today. He said, ‘hey, you need this technology that I’ve got [in the United States].’ He knew that I understood what it takes to scale product, drive costs out, and that this was in my fiber.

It really happened this quickly. On a Friday, I sold a business making medical devices in October 2008. By Monday, I was thinking about bringing electric trucks to North America. I had closed a deal to license the technology by January of 2009.

How do you deal with “haters,” people who don’t believe electric vehicles will ever be on par with combustion engine vehicles, or worth the investment?

Personally, I don’t run into these people. That’s because I’m not in a consumer environment. I’m not telling anyone ‘Here’s an electric vehicle that’s going to replace the sports car or family sedan you’re so emotionally attached to already.’ In the business to business environment that we focus on, people make logical financial and operational decisions.

We talk to customers about the ten-year total life cost of their fleets and individual vehicles. We ask them, ‘Can you predict diesel fuel costs for ten years? How would you like to do that versus buying electricity at a more predictable level?’ If they buy a new diesel truck today— Smith Electric vehicles end up being 80% cheaper on a per mile basis from fuel savings.

Over ten years, for total life cost, if you’re driving about a 50-mile route every day, and coming back to the place to recharge overnight, at a central depot, then they’re at least 50% cheaper.

What about your business keeps you up at night?

I’ve been overwhelmed by corporations saying ‘We’re ready to go, we’ll take thousands of vehicles! Can you build em?’ There’s nobody ready to supply those parts. People are telling them the battery supplies and motors are just around the corner. It’s not quite that easy.

We have to sell our suppliers on the fact that we have orders. We work with one company that was a supplier to the EV-1! They have hung around and maintained in the industry this long, and they’ve heard every story. One company in the industry said it would build 200,000 hybrid-electric vehicles. They only made 25,000. So suppliers have reason to be cautious, I understand.

We have to do everything we say we’ll do to win them over. And we have to trust them. What has kept me up is trying to give them disclosures. Should we put them in touch with our customers, directly? We’ve done so with Frito-Lay, Coca Cola and Staples. We’ve had our clients and suppliers— and some of them regard each other as competitors— in the same room, talking about their various challenges of adoption.

How many Smith Electric Vehicles are operating in the U.S. already?

There are more than a hundred out there already. Hundreds more will be on the road domestically by early next year. We also have a Department of Energy grant to deliver 510 vehicles that will ship before the middle of next year. We’re certainly ramping up production. The vehicles each have on-board data collection. We’re real time downloading data to understand how they’re being deployed, how they’re working and what’s optimal for our customers.

Who have been your most important customers to date and why?

They’ve all been pioneering and important strategic launch partners. We actually said no to potential clients, at times. When you are a company that’s new to the U.S., it’s hard to say ‘We’re not selling to you yet. At this time, we’re only selling to launch partners.’

A focused strategy has worked for us, and created a level of demand that’s unprecedented in the sector here. It was a magic bullet. Prospective clients wanted us to electrify other things, or sell quantities we wouldn’t sell. A more focused strategy helped us maintain a higher quality overall.

Our largest order came from Frito-Lay. I have to give them credit for being visionaries. They have dedicated staff, engineering and fleet managers to bring their electric vehicles program online, and make electrification work in their business.

Your trucks can’t plug into the wall, or recharge at EV stations that are becoming more pervasive in the U.S.— would you ever go into building EV charging stations for trucks?

We have a three-phase, 60 amp service requirement, and all the charging technology is built into our trucks. Today, it’s true that there is no commercially available charger for our trucks. EV charging station companies [like Coulomb or ClipperCreek] don’t have a product available for us yet.

If they do bring something to market, that would help push our customers in that direction. Right now, customers have a central depot or warehouse setup. The trucks go back and charge at the same place when they’re not in use. While commercial availability of EV charging stations is part of the evolution of our business, we’ll never build charge points. It’s not part of our service offering.

It’s true. AOL is planning to launch a new homepage design next week. There have been reports, but no screenshots. Until now. A source close to AOL (but not, you know, us) provided the screenshot below.

As you can see, it maintains a consistent look and feel with the current homepage (second one below). But there are a few major differences. It’s going from a two-column to a three-column layout, with more splashy feature items above the fold. Instead of a single main column with rotating features at the top and news sections below, now the whole middle column will become featured items with bigger photos. The search box at the top is also more prominent, with tabs for web, image, video, maps, and news search.

The directory to other AOL sites in the left sidebar is pushed down to make more room for the featured items (which drive more traffic). The first columns is still news, with latest headlines first, but the second spot now goes to “Local News” and neighborhood picks (hello, Patch?)

The new, right-hand column is more focussed on discovery, with trending topics and most-shared stories. If you log in with AOL Lifestream, you can see the links and stories your friends are sharing across several social networks including Facebook,Twitter, MySpace, and YouTube. At least, that’s what it looks like from the screenshot.

New homepage

Current homepage

Author’s note: Delay pedals are a one of the most common types of guitar effects. They function essentially as an echo -– taking the note or chord that you play and then spitting it back out again and again at a certain interval. We recently looked at four of these devices. The best one, the Memory Lane 2, is the review that follows. If you’re not a musician, though, may we suggest an awesome writeup of the MacBook Air or Logitech’s Google TV instead?

The Diamond Memory Lane 2 is hands-down the nicest sounding delay pedal I’ve played. The tone is warm and real. The delay signal has the ability to sound like a mirror of your dry signal. or it can even add some of its own pleasant character to enhance your tone.

The Memory Lane has most of the features you’d find on any analog delay pedal: feedback, modulation, mix, plus a few extras. For instance, there are two separate delays to switch between, which allows you some versatility in a live performance. You can keep a shallow, T. Rex–style slapback sound on deck while, on the other channel, you’re freaking out on psychedelic waves of delay. Tap tempo is a nice addition since it can be hard to find on analog delays, and it allows you to easily sync up with the rest of your band.

Out of the box, the oscillations of the delay signal are a bit limited if you’re used to a lot of feedback and zany sounds, as with Electro-Harmonix’s Memory Man. This can be remedied by opening up the pedal and putting the pedal in ’space ship mode’ by fiddling with an interior switch. Once you get used to the settings, this pedal is just plain fun to use. You can easily dial in familiar delay tones or go exploring off the deep end.

The EQ knob has some nice coloring effects, brightening and darkening your delay signal by emphasizing either high or low frequencies. There’s also a switch to add some dotted eighth notes to your delay. This means that instead of just the constant pulse of the delay, it will actually come back to you in more of a rhythm. This can be used for either a trippy effect or a backing rhythm for scale practice.

The pedal’s large round knobs for each setting help with mid-song adjustments. You can either bend over quickly to change them by hand or just edge the knobs with your shoe.

The Memory Lane’s killer app is its ability to add other effects to the delay signal. If you have a distortion pedal, for example, you could make all your delays sound crunchy and messed-up. You can achieve this by putting an insert cable into the expression-pedal input. This presents all sorts of silly options and makes an otherwise straightforward pedal a lot more versatile.

Even without added effects, the two expression-pedal options — delay time and feedback — are a huge bonus. They allow you to adjust either value with a pedal, so you don’t have to stop playing.

The main downside of the Memory Lane 2 is the price. You could buy a pretty nice guitar or several other pedals for what it costs. On the other hand, if you have that kind of extra cash, the increased quality and value is there.

WIRED Transparent when you need it, but has its own juicy tone when you want to get crazy. Built like a tank. Overall sound is among the best we’ve heard. Good amount of features to keep you interested.

TIRED Pricey McPricey–pants. Learning curve skews towards the steep end. Expression pedals not included.

Google TV has landed! Er … sort of. Even though the future of the video-aggregation and search service might look uncertain, Logitech has loosed its flagship Google TV set-top box — the Revue — for living rooms everywhere.

Hardware

Like most set-top boxes, the Revue isn’t much to look at. It’s relatively small and discrete, and even though it sports a tiny fan it’s whisper quiet. In terms of connectivity it skews high end; component/composite have been cast off in favor of HDMI ports (both in and out) and digital audio out, and trusty 10/100 Ethernet all make cameos on the device’s backside. There’s even 802.11n connectivity. This simple setup makes installation a breeze, and getting our particular daisy chain running (DirecTV DVR>Revue>HDTV) took just under 10 minutes.

Poking around through the menus is mostly smooth thanks to the combination of the Revue’s 1.2-GHz Atom processor and integrated GPU, although we did notice occasional lag during multitasking. The Revue’s lack of any kind of storage felt counter-intuitive to us, but it’s clear that Logitech conceived of the device as more of an intermediary than an end-all be-all hub.

Controllers

Controls are a mixed bag. Put simply, the smallish wireless keyboard that ships with the Revue leaves a lot to be desired. Though it functions well enough — even letting you assign macros for common remote control commands — it feels cheap and largely forgettable. The integrated multitouch trackpad, remote-ish D-pad and the TV-centric shortcut keys for “DVR” and “Guide” make this feel more like a universal remote, less like a wireless keyboard, but we still couldn’t shake the feeling that we were back in 1998 using grandma’s WebTV.

Fortunately, there’s an app for that. After tinkering with the Revue’s QWERTY, we rushed to the Android app store to download Logitech’s Harmony app. Loading the app effectively turns your Android (and soon iOS) device into a touchscreen universal remote ala Logitech’s Harmony line of boobtube clickers. Not only was this control scheme much more intuitive for moving the cursor around the screen, but using Android’s navigational gestures and voice search made finding content a cinch.

In many ways, the smartphone control scheme is one of the smartest things about the Revue. Though bringing QWERTY into the living room is a necessary evil for a search-minded product, it makes sense to leverage the lithe and efficient navigational vocabulary that smartphone users have built up over the years.

Service

Of course, the biggest draw for the Revue is the Google TV service. In short, Google has engineered an Android-powered interface that overlays your broadcast service and grabs video from the web. Filling the space between is search functionality, and access to streaming services from Netflix, Amazon VOD, YouTube, Napster and Pandora. Google wisely rounded out these offerings with video-sharing partnerships with CNN, TBS, TNT and HBO, and paired it all with a dozen or so apps and a fully functional Chrome browser (with working Flash and HTML5).

It sounds like a clusterfrak, but navigation is actually fairly simple. While the credits were rolling on a live broadcast of 30 Rock, we got a hankering for old episodes of The State. All it took was the hitting the Search key and Google’s minimalist query bar popped up at the top of the screen. From there, it was a just a matter of typing in the title and watching Google TV scour our DirecTV guide, all of its embedded streaming services, our connected DLNA devices and even the old fashioned web. What we got back was a little scattershot, but ultimately useful. The search results showed Amazon VOD had it for purchase, YouTube had clips available and the rest were mainly false positives. Netflix had it available to stream, but we had to effectively launch the app and look for it ourselves. Like our experience with the TiVo Premier, it’s a little jarring to hop from one proprietary interface to another, but it’s a small price to pay for the sheer convenience of adequate search.

Should I get this?

In all, the Revue is very much a step in the right direction. Despite being slightly overpriced, it’s a smart marriage of hardware and services that’s poised to usher in the next era of web-infused TV. Even though the future looks bright — especially with the entire Android Marketplace slated to hit Google TV in 2011 — there are still a few rain clouds on the horizon. As it stands, Hulu, ABC, and NBC have blocked their online video feeds from playback on the Revue. Though this is likely to change (Google is currently in negotiations with the content providers), the precariousness of content licensing and the impact it has on products like the Revue can’t be ignored. Is this enough to scuttle the device? Hardly. Our advice is to consider the device’s strengths today, while also exercising cautious optimism about its future.

WIRED A smart way to bring the online video to the big screen. Integrated search is a boon to listless channel hoppers. Plays nice with both satellite and cable DVRs. Compatible with a slew of other Logitech remotes and peripherals. Ships with HDMI cable. Easy setup. Viewing Gmail and Twitter in 50 inches is kind of awesome.

TIRED Availability of web video is at the mercy of content providers. Drab and uninspired looks. Network slowdowns = visible artifacts and buffering. Handles multitabbed browsing about as well as a smartphone.

After teasing us for years with all the sweet cars it sells in Europe — Focus RS, anyone? — Ford is finally bringing some of them to America. First up is the Fiesta, a competent subcompact aimed at first-time buyers and, perhaps oddly, baby boomers.

The Euro-designed and developed Fiesta is Ford’s big push into small cars, an increasingly competitive arena long dominated by Toyota and Honda. You’ve gotta pack a lot of value into a well-engineered car to excel in this segment, and Ford largely succeeds. The Fiesta is a comfortable, competent subcompact that is supremely practical and, ultimately, hard not to like.

With those sharp angles, the steeply raked windshield and aquiline headlamps that make it look like the car is glaring at you, the Fiesta has a definite Euro look. Ford calls it “kinetic design,” and it works better on the Fiesta hatchback than the sedan we drove. We weren’t keen on the sedan’s look at first, but it grew on us. That said, the lime squeeze metallic paint (really, that’s what they call it) is louder than a Motorhead concert.

Yesterday, both the New York Times and Robert Scoble unveiled publicly for the first time what a company called Kiha Software has been working on for about three years in stealth now: a piece of software called Aro Mobile. With $20 million in backing from the likes of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, they’re obviously getting a lot of buzz. And that should continue when they fully show the system off in a few weeks at Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. But for now we have a video sneak peak of it in action, and 1,000 exclusive beta invites for TechCrunch readers to try out the software themselves.

So what is Aro? Currently, it’s a piece of software that runs on top of Google’s mobile Android OS. But it’s not just another layer like some of those awful skins that OEMs design for Android. Instead, it weaves itself into the OS and uses AI and machine intelligence to make sense of what you’re doing with your phone. It natively ties into your email, phone, calendar, address book, and browser to make them potentially much more useful to you when you’re on the go.

Maybe someone sent you an email mentioning an address, the Aro system can recognize that and with the click of a button give you all kinds of actions you can do with it. The same is true with names — of both people and companies. And dozens of other things.

But it really is one of those things that’s better when you see it in action. So watch the videos below. And if you’re interested in signing up to test it out, use this link. The first 1,000 people who do will get priority access to the beta program (though it is still rolling out in waves as they ramp up).

Sencha is making a big bet on HTML5. The company, which was formerly known as Ext JS, raised a hefty $14 million round led by Sequoia Capital in June.  Since then it has been perfecting its HTML5 framework Sencha Touch — a framework that lets you build mobile web apps for iOS and Android that feel almost native and are also cross-platform. And today, the company is adding another big addition to its product suite: Sencha Animator.

If you’ve used Flash before, Animator should be fairly easy to pick up. It’s a tool for creating CSS3-based animations that will work on WebKit browsers — drag a few objects and images onto the screen, set up some keyframes, and you should be off and running. And, unlike Flash, these animations will work on iOS devices (and Android, BlackBerry, and anything else that supports WebKit). Here’s how the company is describing the product:

Sencha Animator allows you simply place objects (text, shapes, and images) onto a re-sizable stage area, configure their properties and then animate to bring them to life. You can move, scale, skew and rotate objects singly or at various levels of nesting, in 2D or 3D space. With Sencha Animator, you can also take advantage of CSS3 capabilities like gradients, blurs, reflections and shadows. You can create basic animations quickly and easily. But Animator is also designed to be a CSS3 power-tool. So when you need to add HTML or custom CSS, it’s easy to do that too. Best of all, Sencha Animator outputs pure CSS3 animation code, so it’s hardware accelerated on Apple iOS, which creates incredibly smooth animations. This also means it’s ready to work with any JavaScript library, not just Sencha.

The application is available for Mac, Windows, and Linux. It’s still rough around the edges — this is a beta release, and additional features, like a gradient maker, are still in the works. It also doesn’t support some major browsers like Firefox yet (Sencha says that Firefox hasn’t implemented support for CSS3 keyframes). You can see some demos of HTML/CSS-based animations at the bottom of this page.

Sencha will be selling a standard version of Animator for a price in the “low hundreds of dollars” for each user. This also obviously has a big appeal to advertisers — Sencha will be offering a version with additional functionality specifically for them.

Sencha isn’t the only company building HTML5/CSS3 based tools. Adobe is also hard at work on its own products, including a HTML5-editing tool called Edge (which hasn’t been released  yet). In the advertising space, Sprout offers Advine, a tool for authoring ad creative that supports both HTML5 and Flash.

Like other hot startups there is a healthy secondary market ecosystem for Twitter stock. The current street value of a share of any series of Twitter stock? At least $7 per share, say multiple sources with knowledge of transactions. With 225 million shares outstanding after a three for one stock split earlier this year, that’s a $1.575 billion valuation.

There aren’t nearly as many early Twitter employees with sizable amounts of stock to sell compared to Facebook, but the demand is there for those that are in the market. There are even a few funds that have been created with the sole purpose of buying stock from Twitter employees and investors, and the Twitter board of directors generally doesn’t interfere by exercising its right of first refusal.

The $7/share valuation is generally considered the “fair” price for larger transactions of at least $1 million. Smaller transactions, which can attract a more robust number of potential buyers, are sometimes closing at higher valuations, we’ve heard.

Twitter was last officially valued at $1.1 billion post money when it raised $100 million late last year. The company is still effectively revenue-free.