qzyphoto.com

Although the Demo 2008 pitch came off a bit like an infomercial, Voyant At Home looks like an important and useful Web application for consumers. It’s a personal financial planner that understands the impact of life events–children being born, college starting, retirement starting, and so on. You tell it your income and assets and when the life events will happen, and it tells you what your economic picture looks like. If you want to run some what-if questions, you can drag dates around (when you’re buying that
car, for example), or enter in alternate financial data–send the kid to public school, or do poorly on your 401(k). The application will show you a graph of your financial surplus or deficit.

Voyant At Home shows how the good and the bad of your financial future.

Voyant is software, but there’s an online social angle, too: You can connect with other people in similar financial straits and talk about how to manage through.

It wasn’t clear from the demo where the data comes from. If you have to enter it in manually, that’s a drag, although not a deal breaker. It would be better if you could import from Quicken. Quicken, of course, has its own financial planner, but Voyant looks both easier to use and more comprehensive in its analysis.

There’s a history to it. In 2006, MTV Networks acquired Atom Films, home to online indie hits like Gerbil in a Microwave, along with Shockwave and AddictingGames, and Atom Films founder Mika Salmi became head of MTV’s overall digital operations. While the short-form films site had some science fiction and horror hits, too, it was comedy that turned into the real successes, and that’s why the company has decided to rebrand it as a comedy-only site. “In the online viewing experience, you’ve got to grab the viewer immediately,” Roesch said, explaining that online video as a whole is best suited to comedic styles.

NEW YORK–Two years after acquiring it, MTV Networks has shaped Atom Films into Atom.com, a sister site to its Comedy Central network dedicated to short-form, Web-based comedy.

Online comedy video sites are a dime a dozen, but Roesch said that because of the ties to Comedy Central, Atom.com has an immediate lift above the fray. The new site has more than 20,000 videos in its library already, and predecessor AtomFilms.com pulled in more than 1.9 million unique visitors monthly, which execs say is more than online comedy brethren FunnyOrDie, SuperDeluxe, and The Onion combined. Built on Viacom’s Flux social platform, Atom.com also aims to be a community site of sorts.

Executives from the Viacom-owned MTV Networks held a press conference here on Thursday to kick off the new site, which Executive Vice President of Digital Media Erik Flannigan described as “our punk-rock label…where you’re purposely encouraging development that’s supposed to (expletive) with the system and break down boundaries.”

More Web shows are on the way, too, including an “advertorial” series called Agency, in which terrible advertisements for real brands are created by an incompetent, fictitious ad agency.

Along with four new original Web series commissioned by Comedy Central, which range from an animated show about conjoined twins connected at the naughty bits to a live-action series about three clueless slackers who attempt to be militia guards at the U.S.-Mexican border, Atom.com welcomes user-generated submissions. Select videos will be featured in a weekly “Upload Showdown,” and winners will become “pro” content creators on Atom.com and have access to additional Comedy Central resources like a spot on a new late-night televised program, Atom TV, a sort of week-in-review special about the site.

“There’s not a lot of viral tearjerkers,” Flannigan added, saying that Web comedy is now an essential part of American youth culture. “There is a social currency in your knowledge of and your passing along of short-form comedy.”

Atom TV, which premiered Tuesday morning at 2 a.m., is “jukebox-style, proudly low-budget, (and) super-late-night,” according to Scott Roesch, general manager of Atom.com. Eventually, Atom.com will percolate into video-on-demand cable television, where Atom Films had a presence in its early days. Ideally that’ll happen later this summer.

Company Mike Hess told Greentech Media that its forthcoming spire-shaped Windspire turbine can generate one third of the home’s electricity use.

The business of building wind farms with giant turbines is booming. But the world of small wind is getting more attention.

The company said it has secured $500,000 in funding from venture capital firm Big Sky Partners. As part of the investment, Michael Schwab of Big Sky Partners will join Mariah Power’s board.

Southwest Wind Power, which raised a series B round of $6.5 million last year, makes a ground-mounted propeller-type turbine for individual homes or business.

Mariah Power's vertical-axis wind turbine called the Windspire.

Mariah Power said on Wednesday that it has raised additional funding to bring its small wind turbine to market.

Marquiss Wind Power in January raised a Series A round to build up its square-shaped turbine meant for placement on top of the flat roofs of commercial buildings.

Mariah Power, based in Reno, Nev., makes a ground-mounted vertical-axis wind turbine that is designed for people’s homes or businesses. It’s expected to be available later this month for about $4,000.

(Credit:
Mariah Power)

NOTE: You can read the follow up blog about the result of Dong’s experiment here.

The developer of the HairMax LaserComb claims the comb will restore your hair and prevent hair loss by applying low-level laser therapy.

(Credit:
Dong Ngo/CNET Networks)

I just recently got my hands on a product that could potentially restore my thinning beauty as well as my confidence: a comb.

It’s no ordinary comb. Calling it HairMax LaserComb, Lexington International, the developer of the product, claims it will restore your hair and prevent hair loss by applying low-level laser therapy–an effect similar to photosynthesis or photo-bio stimulation–to your scalp.

The therapy supposedly energizes and improves blood circulation while stimulating the growth of individual hair follicles, and, as a result, produces thicker, healthier hair and combats hair loss.

Out of the package, the LaserComb comes in a nice case that contains the comb–about the same size as a regular hair brush–plus an introduction DVD, a pair of spare comb teeth, and a manual. It seems to be a very easy product to use.

The LaserComb itself has two pairs of teeth and an array of nine laser beams in the middle. Each of these beams is the same as that of a laser pointer used for presentations. As I powered it on, the lights lit up and the comb emitted a faint beep every two seconds, which is half of the time that you are supposed to keep the comb on your head before lifting it up. The comb is designed to be used just like you use a regular comb but in much slower motion.

The HairMax LaserComb is FDA-approved and safe to be used by anyone, male and female. Lexington International claims that if used regularly–three times or more a week, 10 to 15 minutes each time–you will be able to see improvements, including thicker and more manageable hair. After a few months, you will likely notice their hair becoming fuller and denser as the hair count actually increases, according to the company.

This guy looks like he could use some heavy LaserCombing.

(Credit:
Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)

Like most hair treatment therapies, there’s no guarantee. Lexington International says that the results vary depending on the individual. I will personally use it for about 10 weeks to see if I am the type who’s LaserComb-friendly. In the meantime, if you want to try it out yourself, you can get one for $545, which is not cheap but at least it’s only a one-time charge. You can also get the HairMax LaserComb SE Edition that’s more compact and has only five laser beams for $395.

Related story:

Photos: Beauty tools for gadget lovers

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One of the first questions most venture capitalists ask would-be entrepreneurs is about the size of the target market. Selling into a niche market is generally frowned upon.

That is, of course, unless you’re Kleiner Perkins and you want to throw $100 million at startups focused on the BOOMING iPhone applications market. With all of 10 million iPhones projected to be sold by the end of 2008, it’s unclear how this is a good idea.

Perhaps the
iPhone user demographics are such that an overwhelming majority want to buy applications, but I doubt it. Look at the
Mac market. I’m a rabid Mac fan, but if I’m starting an applications company, I’m not going to go public on a Mac-only platform.

The iPhone has come roaring out of the gates, and I expect this to continue for a long time. I wasn’t a believer at first but after buying one for my wife, it has grown on me. A lot.

What with its push into the enterprise with things like Exchange support, its popularity will likely increase. But it’s still a relatively small market. How many
iPod-only applications companies do you know? Not many.

This isn’t a slam on the iPhone, which is a wonderful device. It’s simply an open question as to whether there’s a compelling market for applications on a device that has a limited market and a browser-based application interface that isn’t going to make for an iPhone-only applications market, anyway. Maybe this should be called the mobile applications fund.

That would make sense.

Tivoli unveiled its NetWorks Go Wi-Fi radio in 2007, but it was subsequently delayed its release.

(Credit: dvice.com)

In June 2007, Tivoli Audio unveiled two Wi-Fi radios at a Manhattan event: the Tivoli Audio NetWorks tabletop radio and the portable NetWorks Go (pictured above). Both models were said to offer identical functionality: the capability to tune in any MP3, WMA, or RealAudio Internet radio station, network audio sources (PC-based digital music collections), and standard over-the-air FM radio. And it wasn’t just vaporware, either: company founder and CEO Tom DeVesto used the prototype to quickly pull up two distant stations based on requests from the audience. Unfortunately, neither product was released. The fall 2007 release window came and went, and it wasn’t until February that a brief notice on Tivoli’s Web site officially rescheduled the release date to June 2008.

However, it looks as if later this week we’ll be getting updates on these products. The company’s annual New York City media event is Wednesday, May 7, and the invitation prods attendees to arrive promptly “since Tom DeVesto, Tivoli CEO, will be unveiling the first global audio product at the start of the event to allow for plenty of time to experience it, ask questions and get first-hand knowledge.” Public relations hyperbole notwithstanding, it’s a safe bet that the event will indeed be the relaunch of the NetWorks Wi-Fi radios–though this time, we should be getting final specifications, pricing, and an imminent release date.

We love the idea of a small, easy-to-use Wi-Fi radio–especially one that’s truly portable. The question is, will Tivoli’s solution be too little too late? We’ve seen plenty of other Wi-Fi radios in the past year, with the price on many models dipping less than $200. Price issues are particularly thorny for Tivoli: we’ve noticed its prices–which already include a Bose-like premium–actually creeping upward in recent months. That’s a tough sell to increasingly cash-strapped consumers who are accustomed to falling prices for their consumer tech.

We’ll have full coverage of the Tivoli announcement–whatever it may be–on Wednesday. In the meantime: do you have any interest in a standalone Internet radio, or do you just fire up your Web browser when you want to listen to online audio?

Read: Coming this fall: Two new Tivoli Wi-Fi radios (CNET Crave)
Read: Wi-Fi radio roundup (CNET Reviews)
Read: Tivoli flashes back to 2002, unveils Internet-radio products (Dvice.com)

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.–Microsoft Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie on Thursday offered a long-term view of where Microsoft and the world of computing are heading over the next few decades. Speaking at the MIT Emerging Technology Conference here, Mundie envisioned a 3D virtual world populated by virtual presences, using a combination of client and cloud services.

He called this next generation “spatial computing” and listed numerous attributes: many-core processors; parallel programming; seamlessly connected and fully productive; context-aware and model-based; personalized, humanistic, and adaptive; 3D and immersive; and utilizing speech, vision and gestures.

What comes next? Microsoft’s Craig Mundie says spatial computing.

(Credit:
Dan Farber/CNET Networks)

Mundie gave a few examples from Microsoft Research to illustrate the concept of spatial computing. In a few months, the compay plans to test a new virtual reception assistant in some of its campus buildings. The assistant, which takes the form of an avatar, helps schedule shuttle reservations to get people to various locations across the 10-million-square-foot Redmond, Wash., campus.

The system includes array microphones and natural language processing by which the avatar listens to the subjects and then interacts with them in real time. The system has been programmed to differentiate people by their clothing. Someone in a suit, for instance, would more likely be a visitor and not a potential shuttle rider.

Microsoft's prototype reception assistant system.

(Credit:
Dan Farber/CNET Networks )

The prototype system is a resource hog, consuming 40 percent of its eight-core processor system even when idle. Eventually, Mundie said, such a system could be used for rural medical clinics.

“For a few thousand dollars you could put in an assistant who can guide robotic interaction,” he said. “There is a wealth of opportunity for this, and it will allow people to develop applications and change the way the bulk of the population interacts with computers.”

In another demo, Mundie offered a glimpse into the future of the live Web. He played out a scenario in which he was in an store, took a picture of a magazine cover on Northwest Indian art with his smartphone, and then placed the phone on a Microsoft Surface technology table when he got to his hotel. The pictures in the phone showed up on the surface table and he dragged them around. The system analyzed the image to determine how to use the photo as a way to pursue next steps in a virtual Web world. The system found the a digital version of the magazine and Mundie proceeded to explore magazine pages. From the magazine image of an art object, he went virtually to the store where the art object was on display.

The 3D store environment was stitched together with Photosynth technology and interactive. Mundie could “walk” through the store and have a text or voice conversation with a store representative or someone, such as his wife, via his buddy list. In addition, he could watch videos and examine 3D models of the art objects, spinning them around to look at all the different parts of a sculpture.

Then he showed how a smart handheld device could be used to navigate in a physical space. Pointing the device at a particular space would show local information, such as when buses were expected to arrive or what stores are having sales that would be of interest to the user based on their profile.

Mundie categorized this demo as an illustration of the power of the client and the cloud in spatial computing. “You have to have a to-and-fro between local and centralized data services,” he said.

Programming tools, which have been a strength of Microsoft, will play a crucial role in the emergence of spatial computing. To create a kind of parallel universe–a cyberspace version of the physical world–everyone has to contribute on a continuous basis, Mundie said. Sensors and users will be generating trillions of bits of data, which requires addressing concurrency and complexity in a more loosely coupled, distributed and asynchronous environment, he said.

“Our tools are not designed to address this level of system design,” Mundie explained. “We have to see a paradigm change in the way we write applications.”

(Credit:
Microsoft)

Mundie also said that software development hasn’t graduated to become a formal engineering discipline. “The resilience of systems is not up to the task,” he said. “We have to master the transition to a parallel programming environment, with highly distributed, concurrent systems. It’s nascent at this point but it’s required to achieve these capabilities.”

In addition, creating a rich virtual environment that reflects the real world and is available to billions of people requires a lot of programmers. “If we want a million people to know how to do this, we have to mask complexity,” Mundie said. His goal is to program computers to have the equivalent of human senses that can operate well together. “That’s how we get to natural interfaces,” he said.

Mundie’s demos showed some progress in fulfilling Bill Gates’ dream of natural interfaces and seamless computing. The challenge for Microsoft will be turning lab demos into real products and services that can scale. With the Internet as the platform, and not Windows, Microsoft will have many more competitors, and partners, in its quest to realize the vision of spatial computing.

See also: Mundie: The cloud needs killer apps

Digital photo frames are really just expensive gift ideas for people you don’t know how to buy for.

(Credit:
Gizmodo)

We’ve all got a few of those types on our lists every year. And now there’s a kinda cool feature for one of them: Kodak now makes the Quick Touch. While you don’t have to touch the area of the frame where the photo would be (fewer greasy fingerprints!), the border can be swiped with a finger to advance through a collection of digital photos.

One of these will set you back $120, $180, or $230, depending on what level of features you want. The two high-end models can accept all major memory cards and USB drives. They also play MPEG and MP3 files.

(Via Gizmodo)

(Credit: Reporters Without Borders)

Wednesday has been announced by the French organization Reporters Sans Frontieres (Reporters Without Borders) as the first Online Free Expression Day. In recognition of its announcement, the group has initiated a 24-hour online protest going on now in nine virtual countries that have been labeled Internet enemies by the international press organization.

I stopped by the protest earlier Wednesday morning and found the demonstration to be similar to what I expected when I wrote about the event Tuesday. My primary concern with the protest was that it would be relegated to a dark corner on the Internet, and that does indeed seem to be the case (though the demonstration does provide a means to automatically e-mail friends about the event).

(Credit: Reporters Without Borders)

Once inside, I was greeted with a menu of Internet enemy countries that I could virtually visit to protest their legal policies. I started at the top and decided to venture to Burma as the first stop on my tour. After arriving in Burma, I was given an opportunity to identify myself and to choose from five ready-made slogans. After confirming my selection, I was transported to a crowd of anonymous looking avatars. Some of ghost figures held picket signs and some did not; those with signs represented real people who could be identified with a click, and those that did not were apparently there for visual effect.

(Credit: Reporters Without Borders)
In traveling to each of the nine countries, I discovered that China had attracted the most visitors with 3,664 people in attendance at 9:30 a.m. PDT; Burma was a distant second with 1,541 protesters on hand. All together, approximately 10,000 people were credited as being participants in the protest at the time.

As a Flash application, the protest is quite slick and well designed, but I still have doubts as to how effective this approach really is. The campaign has generated significant
attention from the mainstream
media, and it certainly isn’t a bad way to highlight the organization’s new list of “Internet Enemies” and an update to its Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents. Still, as protests go, this strikes me more as a completely sincere and well-intentioned publicity stunt than a true protest designed to mobilize the masses and catalyze change.

The last words of the organization’s press release seem to indicate exactly that: “The cyber-demonstration was devised and produced by the Saatchi & Saatchi advertising agency.” It’s hard to know what to think about an advertising firm devising a protest for a press freedoms organization. At least Reporters Without Borders elected to disclose it in its press release. I doubt many other groups would so freely acknowledge that their protest was anything but organic and that does deserve credit.

Microsoft announced Wednesday that it’s planning a quick hand-off in its pending acquisition of Greenfield Online, selling Greenfield’s online Internet survey business to ZM Capital.

Microsoft’s acquisition of Greenfield, a consumer shopping sites operator, and the hand-off of Greenfield’s survey business to ZM Capital’s ZM Surveys are expected to happen simultaneously in the fourth quarter. But the software giant noted its Greenfield deal is not contingent upon the side deal with ZM Surveys.

Greenfield’s Internet survey solutions (ISS) business collects, organizes, and sells consumer and business survey data to market research firms as well as offers real-time survey sampling. But the service does not fit in Microsoft’s game plan for its Live Search.

“It was very important to Microsoft to find the right partner to champion the continued growth of the Greenfield Online ISS business, which is not a fit within Microsoft’s strategy for our Live Search platform,” Tami Reller, chief financial officer of Windows and Online Services at Microsoft, said in a statement.

She added that the ISS sale will allow Redmond to focus on the part of Greenfield it plans to keep, as well as its Ciao comparison shopping business, in a move to aid its European commercial search strategy.

Microsoft is acquiring Greenfield for $486 million. Financial terms of the ZM Capital deal were not disclosed.