California Bans Power-Hungry TVs: Critics Blast Regulation

California TV shoppers are going green - whether they like it or not. However, not everyone is excited about the regulation's possible impact. On Wednesday, the California Energy Commission voted unanimously to apply a new standard requiring TVs up to 58-inches in screen size sold in the state to eat up 33 percent less electricity than they do currently by 2011 and 49 percent less by 2013. The move is a first-ever clamp down on TV set sales in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Representatives for the consumer electronics industry have blasted the measure saying that the new rules will drive up the cost of HDTVs for state residents, result in the loss of California-based jobs, and limit the number of innovative HDTV features available to California TV owners. The California regulation takes effect Jan. 1, 2011. Despite the lingering energy crisis, California is the first state to take action of this kind. The new regulation does not impact TVs currently on retail shelves. Although the U.S. government has guidelines such as Energy Star in place for PCs and other computers, there is no federal energy efficiency standard for TVs. Impact on Sales and Price Unclear Since the new energy rules have just been passed, many of its future implications remain unknown. What loopholes might exist?

How will flat panel TV makers such as Sony, Samsung, and Panasonic handle compliance with the California law? Can California residence buy a power hungry TV over the Internet that doesn't meet California's standards and get away with it? TVs with screen sizes larger than 58 inches now account for no more than 3 percent of all TVs sold, according industry statistics. Will manufacturers try to elude the law by focusing sales and promotions on larger TVs with screen sizes greater than 58 inches. Most significantly, how much will it cost TV makers to obey the energy efficiency regulations, and how much of those costs will be passed along to consumers? Instead of allowing customers to choose the products they want, the Commission has decided to impose arbitrary standards that will hamper innovation and limit consumer choice.

Not Everyone Excited The Consumer Electronics Association, which member include some of the biggest TV makers, says this new regulation is "unprecedented and unnecessary." Jason Oxman, CEA's senior vice president of industry affairs blasted CEC in a statement released to its Web site Wednesday: "Simply put, this is bad policy-dangerous for the California economy, dangerous for technology innovation and dangerous for consumer freedom. It will result in higher prices for consumers, job losses for Californians, and lost tax revenue for the state." You can read CEA's entire statement here. According to California's energy commission, state residents are expected to save $8.1 billion in energy costs over a 10-year period as a result of the regulation. What the CEA fails to do in its attack against the California Energy Commission is explain how jobs will be lost, why consumers will pay more for HDTVs, and what innovative features will be missing from HDTVs sold in California. Additionally, California commission says the new restrictions will be like taking 500,000 cars off its roads by reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 3 million metric tons a year. (PC World's Tom Spring contributed to this report)

Blogging. Lifestreaming. What's next: Lifelogging!

Smile when you talk to research legend Gordon Bell. Bell wears two cameras around his neck all his waking hours. You're on candid camera. One of them he calls a SenseCam.

It's all part of a project Bell calls MyLifeBits. It takes a digital photograph every 20 seconds or so - all day, every day, year after year. (I'll tell you below how to buy your own SenseCam.) The other camera takes pictures and video only when Bell presses the right buttons. He's documented the project, and made a case for why we'll all have MyLifeBits projects of our own, in a new book called Total Recall: How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything. Gordon's archive includes phone calls, IM scripts, years of email, web pages visited, and daily activities captured by the SenseCam. The book's official Web site explains the MyLifeBits project: "MyLifeBits captures and holds a lifetime's worth of articles, books, letters, memos, photos, presentations, music, home movies, and videotaped lectures. One of the challenges of MyLifeBits has been to build applications, e.g. timelines and viewers for people to take their personal memorabilia out of the shoebox and store them digitally for all kinds of future usage from a daily aid to memory through record keeping to immortality." This automated capture of everything is called Lifelogging.

But we're all definitely headed in his direction. Bell, who works as a principal researcher for Microsoft, is way ahead of everyone. Soon enough, lifelogging will go mainstream. The digital technology trends are plain to see. Why you'll lifelog Many big cultural transformations occur when technology unleashes human nature.

Storage and digital cameras are getting cheaper and smaller. More interestingly, however, cultural trends are all pointing toward an acceptance of lifelogging. Wireless connectivity is becoming more ubiquitous. People feel compelled to record their lives, and have for millennia. Blogs. As technology progresses, it gets easier and therefore more popular.

Twitter. Evernote. Facebook. Self-photos with camera phones. In fact, the hardest part is coping with the huge variety of ways we can share thoughts and experiences.

The use of these sites and of media prove that people instinctively capture more whenever capturing becomes easier. The state of the art in sharing right now brings all those ways together into a phenomenon called lifestreaming. But like blogs, lifestreaming has been co-opted into the social networking impulse. Lifestreaming was originally conceptualized as the capturing of all digital "stuff" you create or interact with for your own purposes - kind of like a very detailed diary. Now, the idea of lifestreaming is to capture your blog and Twitter posts, YouTube uploads, records of what music you listen to, videos you watch, blogs you read and so on.

The purpose is identical to the purpose of Twitter and Facebook - human connection and personal memory. The audience is now both you and your social group. A friend of mine named Steve Rubel is at the forefront of a widespread public exploration of the possibilities of lifestreaming. I have a Posterous account myself, but use it only for posting iPhone pictures to Twitter. He and others prefer Posterous.

All I have to do is take a picture, then e-mail it to the address assigned to my account by Posterous. You can post a wide range of media on Posterous, but so far I use it mainly for pictures. The service then posts a link to the picture on Twitter. I've been thinking about posting a lot more on Posterous. Lifestreaming only happens when you work at it.

But I tend to forget. And that's where Lifelogging comes in. It started out as a science fiction-like lifestyle experiment to transmit live, first-person vantage point video all day, every day. The definition of lifelogging has evolved over the years. Think The Truman Show, the story of a man who discovered his life was being broadcast around the world at every moment.

I'd like to propose a simplified definition: Lifelogging is automated lifestreaming. But now it means all kind of things. That means whatever experiences you'd like to share or record, you simply turn it on and the sharing or recording happens by itself. The article was accompanied by a video that included footage from Bell's own SenseCam. Buy your own 'SenseCam' BusinessWeek published a nice article on Bell and his MyLifeBits project and new book last month.

The reporter in the video said: "Maybe you'd like to wear one of those SenseCams around your neck. Those are custom-made." That was true when he said it, but soon it won't be. But you can't have one. A U.K.-based company called ViconRevue is transforming Bell's Microsoft-developed SenseCam into a consumer product. It also will use an accelerometer (the kind used in cell phones like the iPhone) and light sensors to figure out when you're in a new environment - say, you walk into a restaurant - and snap a picture at that moment. The public version will have an adjustable frequency of automated photos, with a minimum of once every 30 seconds.

It will even have a heat sensor to detect when someone is standing in front of you, to make sure they get their picture taken. An $820 version of the camera for researchers will go on sale this year. The device has 1 GB of storage, which reportedly holds 30,000 pictures. The company plans a consumer version for release some time next year at a yet-unspecified price. They'll tell you when and where you can buy the camera when that information becomes available. I recommend that you visit the company's Web site and add your e-mail address to their update list.

The ViconRevue SenseCam is just the beginning. For example, imagine a SenseCam that does face recognition, and captures every face in a "log" that includes the subject's Facebook profile information. I imagine a universe of software tools and hardware products that automatically post to your "automated lifestream," or lifelog, whatever you choose to post. Some ambitious startup should create software that uses image recognition, GPS data, computer-activity monitoring and so on to summarize your activities intelligently, and post that information to your lifelog automatically. "Mike is writing his column." "Mike is begging his editor for more time to write his column." "Mike is eating lunch (again)." "Mike is walking with his wife." "Mike and his wife are watching a movie." All this could be posted on a timeline with SenseCam photos and other media. I'm sure there's a universe of lifelogging products we can't yet imagine.

These are some lifelogging approaches I can easily imagine. Like all culture-shifting technologies, lifelogging comes with upsides and downsides. Lifelogging feels like science fiction. The upsides are: * Better memory about our lives; literally photographic memory. * Evidence when we're falsely accused * Capturing of amazing events * Evidence against criminals and sociopaths when we witness crimes * Ability to share our memories, strengthen personal bonds * Leaving our lives for posterity * Self examination (Wow, I'm spending all my time working!) But the downsides are: * Potential privacy abuse * Potential accidental abuse of other people's privacy * Self incrimination * Behavior change (will people act differently when everything is recorded and shared?) History shows, however, that most people will gladly give up their privacy and take on a few other risks in order to enhance social sharing. But it's real.

And it's coming soon. It's culture-changing. Mike Elgan writes about technology and global tech culture. Contact Mike at mike.elgan@elgan.com, follow him on Twitter or his blog, The Raw Feed.

Lotus simplifies client licensing; makes Designer free

IBM/Lotus Tuesday whittled its client licensing options from 11 to two and said its Domino Designer development tool would now be offered free of charge in hopes of increasing application development on the platform. The Messaging license, which allows access to Domino e-mail from any client, is $99 per user. The news came as Lotus unveiled Notes/Domino 8.5.1, a point release that includes support for real-time synchronization with Apple's iPhone (see related story here). As part of the 8.5.1 unveiling, IBM revealed two client options that will replace the laundry list of previous options. The Enterprise license is $159 per user and adds Mobile Connect VPN software and Domino Designer tools that give users access to any existing Notes applications and any homegrown programs.

The tool was originally built into the Notes client in its very earliest releases. IBM officials say giving away Designer was a major step toward expanding development on the Domino platform. The tool eventually became a separate offering that carried a price tag of $864. "When we started to sell to IT more, when Lotus was bought by IBM, we put the Designer into a separate product and it took it out of the hands of the power users, the people who are in the line-of-business and really sort of isolated Notes application development to this specialized universe," says Ed Brill, director of product management for Lotus Software. "What we are really trying to do by giving it away free is democratizing it again and getting it out into the hands of everybody." Users can download Domino Designer, which is based on the Eclipse platform, free at IBM deverloperWorks. Other features of the 8.5.1 release include updates to Domino Designer, which adds support for Lotus XPages application model running on a Notes or mobile client. Users who want to link the software with a Domino server will have to buy a $150 license.

Web browser support was added in 8.5. XPages lets users develop Web applications with little or no coding. Follow John Fontana on Twitter: twitter.com/johnfontana XPages also can be used to convert existing Notes applications to Web applications.

Windows 7 drives RAM capacity explosion; Vista SP2 usage rising

Windows 7 will drive the average PC RAM capacity to 4GB in the next 18 months. There you'll find a collection of dynamic chart objects that provide a real-time view into data gathered from xpnet.com's nearly 20,000 contributing members. That's the conclusion of researchers at the exo.performance.network who are monitoring the ramp-up to Windows 7's launch on October 22. After evaluating data collected from early adopters of the Windows 7 RTM code spread across several hundred IT sites, the xpnet.com team observed that nearly 50 percent sported memory capacities of 4GB or higher, with some reaching as high as 12GB. The average of all Windows 7 PCs was 3.7GB, which is in stark contrast to Windows XP PCs, where the average RAM capacity (for all versions) hovers at just under 1.7GB. Windows 7 RAM installations also best Vista's average of 2.7GB. In fact, the move from a Vista-centric world to one defined by Windows 7 will likely drive a jump in RAM capacity (by 33 percent) comparable to the one experienced during the transition from Windows XP to Vista (a jump of 37 percent in installed RAM). [ Is your PC ready to run Windows 7? Find out by using InfoWorld's Windows Sentinel tool, which also lets you track performance and other aspects of your Windows PCs and servers. ] Note: You can check out the latest data from the exo.repository by visiting InfoWorld's Windows Pulse page.

The bottom line: While much has been made about Windows 7's supposedly reduced memory footprint, the reality is that a combination of Moore's Law (as it applies to RAM density) and the harsh lessons of the Vista debacle are prompting customers to err on the side of caution and equip Windows 7 PCs with ample RAM out of the gate. [ If the charts in this story are not visible, you can see them in the original story at InfoWorld.com. ] Vista SP2 adoption risingThe adoption rate for Windows Vista Service Pack 2 ticked up a bit over the past few weeks. Meanwhile, the number of systems reporting SP1 installed dropped 2 percentage points (now 72 percent), as did the few laggards still running the Vista RTM release (now at just under 8 percent). Given the breadth of bug fixes and performance enhancements provide by Vista SP2, including improvements to Bluetooth support and an improved wireless networking stack, xpnet.com researchers expect the adoption rate to climb steadily as IT shops finish internal testing and deploy it more widely. After lagging behind Service Pack 1 by a wide margin, SP2 is now gaining momentum, with nearly 20 percent of PCs reporting the newer service pack level. However, they also note that this trend may be tempered somewhat by the conversion of many long-term Vista deployment projects to Windows 7 when it becomes available. This should signal the tipping point for application developers who have been waiting for the technology to reach critical mass before investing in additional multithreading development/multicore tuning for the core product lines. Multicore pushes single-core into the minorityOne development the xpnet.com team has been watching closely is the transition from single- to multicore CPUs. Data from the exo.respository indicates that multicore is now the dominant CPU architecture, with fully 57 percent of the installed base sporting CPUs with two or more cores.

As InfoWorld's tests show, Windows 7 is strongly poised to take advantage of multicore PCs, more so than XP and Vista.

The Net's Most Heinous Hoaxes

Most online hoaxes are mildly annoying, and a few are hilarious. Plastering an epilepsy forum with flashing images? But propagating a false AMBER Alert over Twitter? Not cool.

Twitter/Facebook Amber Alert The AMBER Alert system-a child abduction alert system broadcast over radio, TV, satellite radio, and other media whenever a child is abducted-was created after nine-year-old Amber Hagerman was abducted and murdered in Arlington, Texas, in 1996. Recently, some users have also broadcast alerts over text messages and Twitter. We'll take a look at some of the Web's most heinous hoaxes over the years, and sprinkle in a handful of amusing ones. Last July, someone tweeted an AMBER Alert for a three-year-old girl. It turned out to be a false alarm. People responded by spreading the alert as fast and as far as they could.

A similar sequence of panicked, rapid-fire tweeting followed another false AMBER Alert occurred in September. Though we're glad that no abduction occurred in either case, there's a disturbing "cry wolf" aspect to the story-what happens the next time a real AMBER Alert goes out? How heinous is this? For eroding the value of a potentially vital line of defense against child abduction, this hoax sets the platinum standard for repugnance. The site included tips on how to insert a feeding tube and a waste removal tube, and where to drill air-holes "prior to kitten insertion." It also included a gallery of pictures of "Bonsai Kittens" and a guestbook filled with love (and hate) mail. Bonsai Kitten Paging PETA: In 2001, a group of enterprising MIT grad students put together a little Web site called Bonsai Kitten, which detailed how to grow a kitten in a jar for aesthetic purposes.

The site was so realistic that it caused uproar among kitty enthusiasts and animal rights activists (including the Humane Society), and it eventually gained enough notoriety that the FBI investigated the site's authenticity (or lack thereof). But since no kittens were actually harmed in the perpetration of this hoax, we think it tends more toward the hilarious than the heinous. Some of the pranks they allegedly pulled are a bit more serious, however, such as the Epilepsy Forum Raid. Epilepsy Forum Raid Anonymous, a group of online pranksters, has been blamed for an array of notorious acts of Internet grief-from uploading porn on YouTube to launching denial-of-service attacks on Scientology sites. In March of 2008, an epilepsy support forum run by the Epilepsy Foundation of America was attacked with uploads of flashing animations. The animations-which were clearly intended to induce seizures and/or migraines in epileptics-can be very dangerous for epilepsy sufferers. The National Society for Epilepsy, based in the UK, fell prey to a similar attack.

The attack was investigated by the FBI, which found no connections to the group Anonymous. Bigfoot's Body Bigfoot is alive-okay, actually he's dead, and he's in a freezer in Georgia. Internet speculation has attributed the attack variously to The Internet Hate Machine, to 7chan.org, or to eBaum's World. At least, that's what The New York Times and other major news outlets reported on August 14, 2008. In the finest "made you look" tradition, two men from Georgia announced that they had found the body of Bigfoot and would present definitive proof (in the form of photographs and DNA) that Bigfoot existed. Quasi-expert Tom Biscardi, an inveterate promoter of all things Bigfoot (and perpetrator of his own Bigfoot hoax just three years prior), vouched for the men. In fact, they revealed, they saw three other Bigfoots in the woods as they were dragging the dead beast's body back to their car-possible evidence that these creatures had mastered the intricacies of contract bridge but had not yet learned to control their tempers over botched bidding.

How bad is this? But an Indiana man fronted $50,000 on behalf of Biscardi for the "body," and is now suing the pair of hoaxers to get his money back. Not surprisingly, the body turned out to be a costume stuffed in a freezer. The most heinous part of this hoax is the fact that someone actually fell for it. Alabama legislators began receiving letters from outraged scientists and civilians, but that's about as dangerous as the situation got. Changing the Value of Pi On April Fool's Day 1998, Mark Boslough wrote a fictional piece about Alabama legislators calling on the state government to pass a law that would change the value of pi from 3.14159... to the "Biblical value" of 3. Boslough's titled his article "Alabama Legislature Lays Siege to Pi." Though the piece was originally posted to a newsgroup, it ended up being forwarded...and forwarded...and forwarded...

The funniest part of the hoax? Save Toby Taking a cue from Bonsai Kitten, a site called Save Toby used a creepy premise to throw animal rights activists into a tizzy. It echoes an actual event: In 1897, the Indiana House of Representatives passed a resolution to change the value of pi to 3-luckily, irrationality prevailed and the bill died in the State Senate. The Save Toby saga began in the early days of 2005, when the site announced that its owners had found a wounded rabbit (which they named Toby) and nursed it back to health-but then declared that if they did not receive $50,000 in donations for the care of Toby by July 30, 2005, they would be forced to cook and eat the rabbit. Animal rights activists cried "animal cruelty," to which the owners responded that they were doing nothing cruel to Toby-in fact, they were trying to save him.

The owners asserted that the site was not a hoax: They would, indeed, cook and eat Toby if they did not receive the money. Supposedly, the site collected more than $24,000 before Bored.com bought it, and Toby was saved. (By the way, possible inspirations from pre-Internet days for the Save Toby hoaxers aren't hard to find.) But holding a bunny hostage for ransom? MySpace Suicide This hoax may have been the most senselessly cruel of any listed here. Real classy, fellas. In 2007, a 13-year-old girl committed suicide after being dumped by her MySpace "boyfriend." The girl's family later learned that the MySpace "boyfriend"-a cute boy named Josh-never existed.

The Josh character had gained the girl's confidence before sending her a message that told her he didn't want to be friend anymore because he'd heard she was a mean person. He was a fictional character made up by the mother of another girl. The girl, who was on medication for depression and attention deficit disorder, took her own life the next day. Then again, the scammers send out thousands of e-mail appeals every day in the hope of getting just one gullible person to reply. Our take: Unforgivable. 419 Nigerian Money Scams Nigerian money scams are so overexposed in the media these days that it's hard to believe people still fall for them.

The scam itself is pretty simple: The grifter promises the randomly chosen e-mail recipient an absurd amount of money to help the crook "transfer funds" from one bank to another (or some variation thereof). To help the con artist, all the victim has to do is provide his/her personal information, bank information, and, oh yeah, a small fee (around $200-a small price to pay, considering the impending payoff) to help transfer the money. The scammer obtains all of the scammee's personal info, and a tidy little sum besides. If the scammee goes along, bam! Not bad for one e-mail. In some cases, the scammers invite the victims to travel to Nigeria or a bordering country to complete the transaction. These scams can be life-threatening as well as costly.

In 1995, an American was killed in Lagos, Nigeria, while pursuing such a scam. Work-At-Home Scams Like the Nigerian money scams, work-at-home come-ons are heavily reported in the media. Truly horrific. Yet people still fall for them. But desperation or greed makes some people forget. Most people know that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Work-at-home scams promise you the opportunity to make quick, easy money from the comfort of your house; all you need is a computer-which, of course, you have. Except, of course, that materials will never come, and you'll have lost your money, and you still won't have a job. Any number of activities may be your ticket to riches-stuffing envelopes, transcribing, medical billing-but first you need to do send the scammer some money for preliminary materials. Heinous? And the fact that they prey primarily on unemployed or underemployed people who aren't exactly swimming in discretionary income (it's hard to imagine Warren Buffett jumping at the chance to make money by stuffing envelopes) increases their vileness quotient at least a little.

Such scams aren't life threatening, but they can certainly put a dent in your savings-especially if you fall for them more than once. Remember, if prospective employers ask you to send money before you start working for them...it's probably a scam. In September 2009, Facebook's PR went rogue and punk'd TechCrunch with a "Fax This Photo" option. Facebook Hoax on TechCrunch Guess you should stay on the good side of people who run your primary social networking site. TechCrunch reporter Jason Kincaid opened his Facebook on September 10, 2009, and discovered that under every photo there was a new option: "Fax This Photo." It seemed ridiculous-but everyone in the TechCrunch network saw it, so he sent an e-mail to Facebook. He then called Facebook PR...and discovered that it was all a big prank, and that Facebook staffers were placing bets on how long it would be before TechCrunch posted it.

They didn't respond, so he posted a skeptical note. Heinous? TechCrunch got PWN'd. Of Related Interest For two discussions-one old and one fairly new-of online scams, check out these stories: • "Top Five Online Scams" (2005) • "5 Facebook Schemes That Threaten Your Privacy" (2009) For a look at some relatively benign online hoaxes (mixed in with some evil ones), read this: • "The Top 25 Web Hoaxes and Pranks" (2007) And from deep in the vaults of PCWorld.com come these chestnuts: • "Devious Internet Hoaxes" (2002) • "The Worst Internet Hoaxes" (2001) Not at all.