filmlikenyc.com

The person behind the video describes the process: “This is a prototype of a FM modulated plasma arc speaker/tweeter. Have since built this circuit on a custom PCB & made an improved vertical discharge setup, using tungsten-tipped electrodes (see my other videos). This stops the plasma hopping about and causing the distortion you can hear…”

It’s not exactly high-fidelity, but it shows there are still a few tinkerers out there thinking about something other than the
iPod.

Neat!

Back in the early 1980s, there was a high-end speaker using this technology, the Hill Plasmatronic. (It sold for something like $8,000 a pair.) The plasma tweeter was mated with conventional midrange and woofer drivers; the treble from 700Hz up was produced by a ball of ionized gas. The massless tweeter was hailed as state of the art and has never been surpassed. I listened to a pair of them back in the day and mostly remember loving the tweeter and hating the speaker. You can find used Plasmatronics every now and then on the Web. Definitely a cult item.

Cruising around YouTube, I found “Plasma Speaker/Singing Arc,” an intriguing little video of a homemade “speaker” that makes sound by directly ionizing air.

Also participating in the funding is Time Warner Investments, and KTB Ventures. Time Warner Investments is a strategic investing arm for Time Warner; this investment will give Meebo hooks into major media properties. KTB’s portfolio has a Far East bias, with more than half of its portfolio companies based in China and Korea.

Meebo has a competitor nipping at its heels: Soashable (review) has the mission of creating an “open-source Meebo clone;”
it offers about the same core features as Meebo did when it launched in 2005. Trillian, which also makes a multinetwork IM client, has not kept up with Meebo on the Web front.

Meebo, which continues to release new Web-based instant message and chat applications, is announcing tonight that it has closed a $25 million funding round led by Jafco Ventures. Jafco’s investment portfolio includes other online communications plays, such as classifieds utility Oodle, Exchange competitor PostPath, and Web content tracker Attributor. It looks like a good club for Meebo to join.

Meebo’s previous investors, Sequoia Capital and Draper Fisher Jurvetson, also participated in this round.

As twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss power toward Wednesday’s semifinal in the rowing events of the Olympics in Beijing, their longstanding court case against Facebook is winding down.

Ware originally rejected claims of fraud in June, prompting the appeal.

A San Jose, Calif., judge ruled late last week that ConnectU, the start-up that the brothers founded with Harvard classmate Divya Narendra, must transfer its stock to Facebook as part of the settlement acquisition by Tuesday, despite the claims on behalf of ConnectU that Facebook failed to disclose its true valuation when negotiating the terms of the settlement. The start-up’s founders alleged fraud on Facebook’s part, and claimed that irreparable harm would ensue from the settlement going through in its present form.

Facebook had been valued on paper at $15 billion when Microsoft took a $240 million stake last November. But that valuation was specific to Microsoft’s preferred stock and the business deal surrounding it, Facebook said. Its real valuation is between $3 billion and $4 billion–reports place it at $3.75 billion.

Judge James Ware ruled last Friday that while ConnectU’s appeal can be heard, the settlement has to go through first. “The longer the court delays in enforcing the settlement between the parties, the more likely the value of the consideration subject of the settlement (i.e. the value of the stock of each company) will change,” Ware wrote in his ruling. “This means that the status quo cannot be preserved with a stay.”

ConnectU’s founders are slated to receive a mixture of cash and Facebook stock as part of the settlement. They originally sued Facebook in 2004, claiming that founder Mark Zuckerberg had swiped their code and business plan after being employed as a ConnectU software developer.

During his Road Trip 2008, CNET News reporter Daniel Terdiman visited New Orleans this summer, viewing the work to rebuild the city’s levees and its housing.

(Credit:
NOAA)

Gustav’s winds had reached 150mph as of midday Saturday, making it a dangerous Category 4 hurricane, according to the National Hurricane Center. The NHC predicted that Gustav could reach Category 5–the highest level possible.

On Saturday, the NHC began trying out Gustav updates via podcast. The NHC is also making a PDA/smartphone-friendly version of its site available.

Hurricane Gustav bears down on Cuba on Saturday evening local time.

On Friday, the AP said, Sprint Nextel’s emergency response team was heading down to the Gulf Coast in a caravan of trucks that can act as cell towers. Meanwhile, the wire service said, Verizon Wireless has spent $137 million over the past year to beef up its network in the Gulf Coast. And AT&T, the main landline provider in the region, has added capacity, replaced some cables with waterproof ones, and replaced copper wiring, which can short out when wet, with optical fiber.

Gustav is pounding Cuba right now. It is expected to reach the Gulf Coast on Monday afternoon.

According to the Associated Press, the nation’s wireless carriers have been preparing for such a storm since Katrina, which devastated their networks and left trapped residents without communications.

With Hurricane Gustav headed straight toward New Orleans, emergency officials and telecommunication companies are preparing for the worst.

On Friday, New Orleans marked the third anniversary of Katrina. That hurricane, a Category 5 storm that shrank to a Category 3 by the time it reached the Gulf Coast, killed between 1,500 and 1,600 people. Katrina also caused $80 billion in damage, making it the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history, according to Reuters.

(Credit: NOAA)

Hurricane Gustav is being closely followed by Tropical Storm Hanna.

Although mandatory evacuations have not yet been ordered in New Orleans, thousands of residents were getting out Saturday.

Verizon told the AP that all of its cell sites in the region now have batteries to power them for at least eight hours. Many also have generators with fuel for up to seven days. AT&T’s cell sites in the area have generators that last up to 36 hours, the AP reported, and Sprint installed generators at 1,300 cell sites in the Southeast last year.

Glide OS, the Webtop that impressed audiences at the D6 conference last month, has finally gotten around to working with Yahoo’s various Web mail properties this morning. Just in time too, since Yahoo’s vanity “Ymail” domain just went live yesterday.

Glide users can now drop in their Yahoo mail accounts as long as they're paying Plus members.

Users can now plug in their various Ymail, Rocketmail, and Yahoo Mail accounts and view them in one place, similar to Orgoo, a product that’s still in private beta. The one caveat for both services is that you must be a Yahoo Mail Plus subscriber, Yahoo’s $19.99 per year premium Web mail service.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

I also asked whether the 850U models, which connect to the Internet via an Ethernet jack, can work with a wireless network, and was told that while there’s no “official” wireless solution available from the company, a number of third-party adapters will work.

Other features of the 850U series include an expanded color gamut over the 800U series. According to the company, the Digital Cinema Color Re-Mastering technology can reproduce the same color points used in digital cinema, which are wider than those used in the HDTV standard (aka Rec 709). When we asked the company why its flagship models didn’t receive the same THX Display Certification found on the step-down TH-PZ800U series, we were told that rigorous adherence to the HDTV color standard was a prerequisite for THX. We’re certain that’s not the whole story–THX certification also costs money, and the 850U series is expensive enough already.

We detailed Panasonic’s full plasma lineup earlier this year, but having just returned from a press event devoted to the flagship TH-PZ850U series, it feels incumbent to reiterate some of the cool new features of these expensive sets.

I asked whether the Panasonic 850U was compatible with NetFlix’s Watch Now service for example, which as of Tuesday is available on a Roku set-top box, and Panasonic’s rep said that, as a streaming video service similar to YouTube, it was. Of course, the company did not confirm any additional partners at this time, but promised more to come. The ability to add new services to Viera Cast is a big draw, highlighted by the enticing “coming soon” sections in the main interface.

(Credit:
Panasonic)

The 46- and 50-inch versions of the 850U series will be available in June.

The 46-inch TH-45PZ850U ($3,099) and the 50-inch TH-50PZ850U ($3,499) will be available in June, while the 58-inch TH-58PZ850U and the 65-inch TH-65PZ850U (prices for both to be determined) will ship in the fall of this year. We expect to have a review of the 50-inch 850U model by the beginning of June, when we’ll flesh out the details and evaluate the flesh tones of laughing babies for ourselves.

YouTube and Picasa services are available right from the TV in Panasonic's flagship TH-PZ850U.

The coolest? A demo at the event proved that the 850Us can stream YouTube videos, right on the TV screen with no PC required. The TV’s “Viera Cast” interface allows you to search YouTube by keyword, sort videos by popularity, or access your own list of favorite videos, for example. During the demo we were treated to a video of a laughing baby, the (no-surprise) current champ of the popularity list. According to Panasonic, the entire catalog of YouTube videos is available on the TV, although it may take a day or two for a new one on the site to appear on Viera Cast. The TV can also access Picasa, Google’s photo sharing site, so you can view digital photos stored at your (or someone else’s) Picasa account directly on the big screen.

The 850U series will also ship with a stock ticker widget that will allow you to track favorite stocks, courtesy of Bloomberg, as well as local and national weather information provided by The Weather Channel. The only other Internet-connected HDTV we’ve reviewed is Samsung’s LN52A650, which offers stocks and video along with a text-based news feed. The IPTV functionality of Viera Cast was altogether more impressive since it can actually stream video and access online photos. For its part, Panasonic is not planning to add an RSS-style feed as seen on the Samsung models.

(Credit:
Masa Fukata, Panasonic)

The Republican party canceled nearly all scheduled events for the Republican National Convention Monday, save official business, out of respect for those impacted by Hurricane Gustav. However, a few special guests remained on the docket of speakers at the St. Paul Xcel Energy Center here, including Cindy McCain and first lady Laura Bush.

“We anticipate a full and robust effort, but the last thing we want to do is try and take credit for any amount of money raised,” Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign manager, told reporters Monday morning.

The Obama campaign also sent an e-mail to supporters, urging them to donate to the Red Cross at an Obama-sponsored site.

“I would ask that each one of us commit to join together to aid those in need as quickly as possible,” Cindy McCain said. “As John has been saying for the last several days, this is a time when we take off our Republican hats and put on our American hats.”

Republican National Convention leaders also asked convention attendees to pledge donations to hurricane relief funds via text to the code 2HELP, using the keyword GIVE.

(Credit:
BarackObama.com)

The aspiring first lady asked the audience to visit CauseGreater.com, a site that lists contact information for the disaster relief funds in each of the Gulf Coast states. “Visit JohnMcCain.com” is emblazoned on the bottom of the site, along with the notification that the site was paid for by the McCain campaign.

(Credit:
JohnMcCain.com)

The Web site and solicitations for text donations were just a couple of the many ways the RNC is trying to support hurricane victims; the GOP plans to ship out 80,000 care packages from the Xcel Center this week to the affected areas and has set up a phone bank in Minneapolis at which volunteers are calling McCain supporters to ask for donations to charities.

Of course, Barack Obama’s campaign could not leave it up to the Republican camp to harness technology for the betterment of the Gulf Coast. The Democratic presidential candidate contacted his cadre of supporters who receive text messages from the campaign, with a text that read, “Barack asks that you give to the Red Cross: give 5 dollars by texting GIVE to 24357 or give more by calling 1-800-435-7669 or at redcross.org/donate. Please fwd.”

Barack Obama's campaign makes an online plea for hurricane aid.

ST. PAUL, Minn.–While John McCain saw a flood of online donations last week thanks to his newly announced VP choice Sarah Palin, his campaign on Monday was steering Web donors to a site which–while not quite apolitical–some might call nobler than JohnMcCain.com.

Of course, getting people to try Chrome is easier than getting them to switch, but Google appears determined to push the open-source browser as hard as possible. On Tuesday, the company began a program to let people get the latest Chrome updates.

(Credit:
Nielsen Online)

That’s nearly 1.4 percent of all U.S. Internet users, Nielsen said. That may sound small, but it’s a pretty good response for a beta version of a product that most people don’t need, since so far, it only refines the familiar activity of using the Web.

“The interest in all things Google was apparent in the online discussion surrounding the somewhat-unexpected Chrome launch,” said Jon Stewart, research director of technology and search at Nielsen Online. “The browser was mentioned in nearly 1 percent of all online discussions the day after its launch–a respectable slightly-more-than-half of what the highly anticipated
iPhone 3G generated when it launched earlier this summer.”

It appears that nearly 2 million people in the United States downloaded Google’s new Chrome Web browser in its first week of availability, Nielsen Online said Wednesday.

Nielsen, which bases its statistics on the behavior of a panel of Internet users, said that from September 1 to September 7, 1.93 million people visited the Google “Thank You” page associated with the download process.

The buzz followed on the heels of the launch, according to Nielsen’s measurement of Chrome mentions on blogs, discussion boards, and other online forums.

The online chatter about Google’s browser surged to more than half the remarkable level of Apple's iPhone, Nielsen said. This chart shows the percentage of blog postings and other online commentary that mentioned Chrome.

AT&T also advises iPhone users to save data costs by taking several steps, such as using Wi-Fi whenever possible, turning off automatic e-mail checks, and keeping data roaming in the preset off position.

AT&T announced Tuesday it’s expanding its
iPhone international data plans, in a move designed to cut consumers’ reliance on pay-per-use data services.

On a pay-per-use data basis, users could pay as much as 0.0195 cents per kilobyte, which translates into nearly $40 for 2MB of data, according to AT&T.

Although AT&T’s two expanded data plans offer the discounted data roaming package in 67 countries, such as China, India, Israel, and the United Kingdom, the rate outside of these areas is higher.

“AT&T has worked diligently to provide affordable options for international roaming because the feature-rich mobile experience of iPhone is indispensable to users,” Bill Hague, AT&T wireless operations international executive vice president, said in a statement. “With these new international data plans, iPhone users can access more data in more countries for less cost.”

Under the expansion, which is slated to begin Wednesday, iPhone users can add one of two international plans to their existing service.

The 100MB iPhone plan will cost an additional monthly fee of $119.99, while the 200MB plan will run an additional $199.99 a month. Both plans can be added or dropped from users’ existing plans at any time, without penalty.

A 1 cent per KB rate is charged for areas outside the 67 countries, but a higher rate of nearly 2 cents, or 0.0195, per KB applies in 20 countries such as Bolivia, Mongolia, Saudi Arabia,Turkey, and Venezuela.

Regulators might not allow the AOL-GOOG paid-search deal to pass to YHOO, which would wipe out the other synergies–creating a large risk for both sides. We are reducing our YHOO price target to $21 but maintain TWX (Time Warner) at $18.50.

In addition, Lindsay points out that stock transactions over $3.4 billion are dilutive to Yahoo’s shareholders and that Time Warner was likely hoping to receive $6 billion to $8 billion for AOL, which is possible only if Yahoo can gain some synergies from the transaction.

Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay noted in a research note that despite reports that Yahoo is in talks with Time Warner, the probability of a deal between the media conglomerate’s struggling AOL unit and Yahoo remains relatively low, in part due to antitrust regulators’ concerns about the proposed Yahoo-Google deal.

A third point Lindsay raises:

Yahoo’s price target was snipped to $21 a share from $24 on Monday by a Wall Street analyst, following the Internet search pioneer’s confirmation that it is delaying its controversial search-advertising deal with Google.

Yahoo’s stock on Friday closed at $16 a share, slightly up from $15.58 a share the day before.

The primary source of synergies is staff reductions, where YHOO has (an) unimpressive track record. Other benefits, such as pricing power in display, and combining Advertising.com with Right Media Exchange, will not drive short-term incremental revenues.

In his research noted, Lindsay stated: