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TokBox launched less than a year ago, but it has been working hard, appointing Nick Triantos as CEO, releasing a light desktop application based on Adobe AIR and building code to integrate its video chat into Facebook Chat.

Cool! Now I’m just holding my breath for the Valley moneymen to start realizing how much we need flying cars.

Video phone calls just haven’t caught on like all those cinematic depictions of the future said they would–kind of like flying
cars. But a bunch of investors led by Bain Capital Ventures still believe. They’ve pumped a $10 million Series B round into TokBox, a video chat and calling site based in San Francisco. Existing investor Sequoia Capital also participated.

“TokBox has an impressive, and very loyal and energetic user base,” Scott Friend, a partner at Bain Capital Ventures who will be joining the start-up’s board of directors, said in a statement. “The company is executing well, and its service offers consumers a variety of great features that strongly differentiate TokBox from competitors. We are excited to be investing with our partners at Seqouia in a company we believe has the potential to be the next ‘big thing’ in Web communication.”

I’ve been accused of being an Apple fanboy a number of times, but I have stuck with the BlackBerry both for functionality and Verizon’s network. I wanted to test some of the features (and play the games) on the iPhone and decided to give AT&T another shot.

My quick take? The iPhone is good, but not great. It doesn’t replace a computer and has enough idiosyncrasies to deter the business user from choosing it over a BlackBerry. For consumers it’s great, provided you can get AT&T to work for you.

I had been waiting for the 2.1 firmware upgrade before I got the phone because in the past I couldn’t even get one bar in my house in San Francisco. All reports said the problems were solved so I went for it. When I got home I checked and I did have 3 to 4 bars pretty consistently. I made a test call which took about 10 seconds to initialize and all seemed well.

The good stuff:
- The applications are fantastic and the user experience is truly unmatched
- Sound is great
- Integration with the
Mac is great
- Camera is surprisingly good
- The onscreen keyboard is usable (though I still prefer the BB keypad)

I decided to grab a few things from the App Store’s free section. Every item failed multiple times. After my fifth attempt on Pandora, iTunes told me I already had it, and so I did.

I’ll give the iPhone the full 30 days before AT&T punishes me for rejecting them. My hope is that I find the positive to outweigh the negative. So far I’m evenly split.

I went out and got myself a shiny new
iPhone 3G yesterday from the AT&T store on Geary Street in San Francisco (which was only out of stock once, they said.) The cell phone buying process is typically akin to some circle of hell, but overall I had a very pleasant experience.

The problems:
- AT&T network is shockingly bad. Verizon blows it away by a huge margin.
- Launching applications is slow (like three to four seconds)
- I have yet to get 3G coverage in San Francisco. It only worked for me in Burlingame, Calif., when I was down there for a meeting
- The time it takes to initialize a call is laughable. I did a test of the iPhone vs. my VZW BlackBerry and I had already finished the conversation before the iPhone had connected.
- For some reason Mail won’t consistently log in into Gmail. I don’t know which app is to blame.
- Shifting from portrait to landscape is highly inconsistent

I plugged the iPhone into my MacBook Pro, iTunes launched and the set-up process began. And ended. Three times. Then suddenly it worked and I was registered with Apple and AT&T.

Hard to believe it was an Apple product that was going this wonky on set-up.

Too bad “FAIL” will net you only seven points.

But in the wake of a server crash, Facebook users weren’t too pleased, as the message wall for the Scrabble application revealed. “Wow, does this suck,” one Facebook user wrote. “Why can’t you guys work out a licensing deal with the Scrabulous boys? Now we’re back to square one and have to go through all of your debugging process.”

“We’ll be back up shortly,” an apologetic error message read. “We’re working on some tech problems and Scrabble will be ready to play as soon as possible!” The game is slated to exit the beta phase in the middle of next month, and some (my colleague Rafe Needleman among them) initially found it to be a better-quality game experience than Scrabulous had been.

“Sucks, sucks, sucks,” another Facebook user said. “Locks up at 30 percent loading. Sucks. Oh, did I mention it sucks? Get a grip, Hasbro.”

Well, to be fair, rumor has it that Hasbro put out an acquisition offer for Scrabulous, only to have it rebuffed because its creators thought the amount offered was insufficient.

Problem is, the servers that were hosting the “real” Scrabble app couldn’t handle the load of new migrants, and the application crashed on Tuesday afternoon. Oops!

When Scrabulous, a popular game on Facebook’s developer platform, was shut down earlier on Tuesday because of copyright infringement issues with the manufacturer of the Scrabble board game, word game fans weren’t totally left in the dark. After all, Electronic Arts (which handles the digital rights to Scrabble for the game’s parent company, Hasbro) had recently created an official beta version of Scrabble for the platform.

Ditching your old stuff

Sometimes I feel like people might think we talk the talk, but don’t walk the walk when it comes to using some Web services. Believe me when I tell you we use this stuff every day, and over the last month, nothing has been more useful to me than Craigslist. Why? I was moving, and I did 95 percent of it using a single service to find movers, boxes, people to buy and take away old furniture, and most importantly–a place to live.

We recommend Shifd (review), which works on your desktop as an Adobe Air application, or on your mobile phone while synchronizing them in both places. We like Shiftd the best because it mashes up maps into your notes, so if you’re trying to chart out some places or things that need remembering you can view them on a map right away, which can be immensely helpful.

The same thing goes for boxes. Don’t shell out money for new boxes. Chances are someone who just moved it trying to ditch their own. Here’s an advanced tip though: don’t bother sitting by your computer hitting refresh to wait for the newest giveaways to show up. Instead, set up a work flow in Yahoo Pipes that will do it for you. I’ve created an example feed that does this here. To tweak it to match the Craigslist in your area, just do a search in free stuff for “Moving Boxes” and dump in the RSS feed in the top pipe, then hit save and refresh. Then subscribe to the feed you’ve created and keep an eye on your RSS reader to be apprised of the latest freebies.

Movers

Oops, you’re temporarily homeless. What to do:

Hopefully this has given you the inside track on how to use Web 2.0 services to help make moving less of a pain, and more of a tactical and rewarding experience. If you’ve got tips of your own, leave them in the talkback.

Once you’ve found the place of your dreams it’s time to scope it out. If you’re looking to make sure you’re not going to get stuck paying too much, check out Rentometer (review) which will analyze how much your rent is compared with others in your area. Better yet, check out Hotpads (review), which gives you a overlay controls for population density, the median age, and general income so you can avoid moving into a retirement neighborhood or the student overflow from a local college (unless you’re seeking out either of those things).

Miscellaneous tips:

Another mash up that existed before Mash Maker, but that’s still accessible without the installation of the plug-in is HousingMaps, which mashes up Google Maps with Craigslist housing listings. You’re not going to find some of the most up-to-date listings from just an hour or so ago, or be able to search through them like you can on Craigslist, but using the filters it’s simply a fantastic way to check out a bunch of places with less text and more topography.

If you’re on a budget, also worth checking out is Craigslist’s move/haul section under the services category. You’ll find a slew of single day truck rentals from companies that rent out their trucks to people who are moving on the weekend for much lower costs than U-Haul and others.

Craigslist is full of people who can schlep your stuff, but getting recommendations on which companies or folks are trustworthy and careful is even better if you care about your stuff. If your job has a “spam” list or newsgroup set up, ask around. Also, visit Yelp and check out reviews of local moving services. You’ll find most are either terrible or fantastic, but it’s a far better way to get a lay of the land.

Continue reading to learn about research tools, finding movers, and what to do if you find yourself temporarily homeless…

Better yet, bribe your friends to help out with customized “I’m helping (your name) move” personalized T-shirts from CafePress or Zazzle that will let them get sweaty and not stink up their own clothes. For a laugh, wear them out so people know why you’re stinking up whatever restaurant you’re taking them to. You might even get better service and faster water refills from your server too.

Getting the job done

Also worth doing is giving your neighbors a once over. Go on StreetAdvisor and Rotten Neighbor (review) to see if you’re living next to some potentially volatile neighbors. Then go check out the registered sex offenders database.

How 'walkable' is your new place? Scope it out with WalkScore, which rates your home on what businesses and amenities are near by.

Before and after the move: make a list, check it wherever

Bribe your friends with customized T-shirts. They might forgive you for having them help move your metric ton of junk.

How much will you be paying compared with your neighbors? Rentometer.com knows. Just plug in your rent and how big your building is, and it does the rest.

Speaking of Google Earth, try out the YouTube viewer (also in Google Maps) to see if there’s been anything cool or outright insane going on in your area. If you see a lot of news reports about murders and drug use that have been geocoded to your block–you might want to steer clear. If you’re moving to Oakland, there’s also Oakland Crime Spotting, which was put together by the guys at Stamen Design. It’s one of the more beautiful ways to see bad guys on a map.

Equipment

Trulia has the most eye candy of the two, with a time line viewer called HindSight that will show you growth and other housing trends by geography. It’s really only useful in a few cities, unlike Trulia’s core service which will let you hunt for houses with a high level of ease. Fellow housing search tool Zillow is also great for potential homebuyers, and ties in things such as a mortgage finder and a great map tool that includes homes for sale, recently sold homes, and even places people are just thinking about selling and just waiting for the right offer to get out.

Mash Maker (review) from Intel is a very slick tool for parsing through Craigslist’s myriad of listings and making the data accessible in ways that Craigslist does not provide for. There are a few “plug-ins” for Craiglist in the Mash Maker gallery. The most useful ones are the tables plus maps one that will let you see pricing, move in dates, and more in an easy to use chart that can be sorted. There’s also a great one that will give you the price versus subregion that will tell you the average price of apartments based on each neighborhood you’re looking at.

If you’re trying to buy a house, there are some even better services that bring a lot more depth to the table. Trulia and Zillow offer simple and deep services that give you a lot of information and put you in touch with real estate folks or homeowners without you even needing to leave your house.

U-Haul is for newbies (unless you have furniture). If you’re just in need of a truck, check out Zipcar or if Northern California–CityCarShare.org that will let you rent one for about $5 an hour, depending on where you live. You can even set it all up without having to talk to a human. If you really want to keep it simple and rent through U-Haul, avoid its site like the plague and call in, as the site won’t give you a specific pick-up time which can be crucial if you’ve got people coming to help you or time lines to keep.

To take it a step further, set up e-mail or SMS alerts when a new item is added using a service such as RSSFwd or Pingie. Just don’t be surprised if the person who posted the ad is a little freaked out that you contacted them within a minute or two of it going live.

If you were using Trulia, or Google Maps, hop on Street View and check out the outside of the place you’re looking at as well as the surrounding area. There’s a big chance your place isn’t on there, which isn’t a problem if you live in the same city and have checked the place out in person–but what if this is somewhere else? This would have been the perfect situation to use the now defunct GoSee4Me to hire someone else to take photos. Otherwise, hop on Facebook and see which one of your friends lives in that city and ask if they’ll snap some shots for you.

After having just finished, I know I could have done some things better, and I thought this would be a good chance provide a focused collection of tips and tricks for each stage of a move. Something useful for any would-be movers who have never used the Web to hunt for a new place, then get the job done by selling excess junk, and finding the right equipment to get from point A to point B. I’ve also nixed using just Craigslist, as a balanced attack using several best-of-breed Web services will save you time and money.

When moving there comes a time when you need to get rid of things. Besides Craigslist and eBay (which are great), we recommend Freecycle. Freecycle has more than 5 million users who are taking each others free stuff. If it’s gadgets you’re getting rid of, you might also be able to scrap together some cash with services such as BuyMyTronics. We wrote about this back in November, so go read about it there.

Don't sit around hitting refresh on Craigslist. Use Yahoo Pipes and an RSS notification service to give you alerts.

Getting stuff from point A to point B takes a lot of physical work as much as it does mental. Save some brainpower by keeping a list of things you need to do before, and after the move including small or large items to need to buy. Your best bet for this is a to-do list application because little pieces of paper get lost.

To see how “walkable” the area is, give Walk Score (review) a whirl. Just plug in the address of the place you’re looking at and it will give you a map of what’s close based on grocery stores, eateries, coffee shops, schools and transportation. The one thing it doesn’t take into account is how close you are to freeways and large elevations–which might hinder said walking. For that, use Google Earth’s elevation feature to zoom into your neighborhood and check out the topography.

If you feel like keeping your stuff, but maybe making a little cash on the side, use a service such as Zilok (review) which lets you rent your stuff to other people. Be sure to set this up in advance though–it might take a while for someone to bite.

Finding a place

Know before you go

Parse through Craigslist listings on a map with HousingMaps.com

So your new lease doesn’t start for a week or two and you need a place to crash. Out of vacation hours and patience? There’s hope for you yet. You can simply try Couchsurfing which is a network of people who let folks stay in their house while traveling. You’ll never have to tell anyone about it, and it’s certainly cheaper than staying at a hotel or imposing on your friends and family.

Ultimately, it’s all a matter of playing the odds of hardware failure, while keeping in mind all the dumb things that we can do to sabotage ourselves.

I can’t claim to have come up with “the answer,” but I’ve thought about the issues, read through some discussions about what people consider best practices, and have tried to roughly quantify relative failure rates. What’s right for you will depend on priorities and circumstances, but hopefully the following will offer some food for thought.

Add it all up and my guess is that, for most people, minimizing the possibility of human error is more important than incrementally reducing the impact of a potential hardware failure.

With those reliability estimates and human realities as a baseline, here are my thoughts for some reasonable practices:

A post earlier this year by CNET News.com’s Stephen Shankland pondering how he should store photos while traveling got me thinking about the same question.

commentary

That’s the hardware. Then there’s the wetware–i.e. you.

If at all economically feasible, carry enough flash memory to hold all your photos. Flash has a good 10x the reliability of hard disks, more when you consider that it’s probably going to be OK even if you drop it or run it through the washing machine. Common wisdom is that name brands are, in the aggregate, more reliable, and some higher-end cards also come with data recovery software. This seems reasonable. However, I’ve never seen actual data to bolster this belief–only random stories about crappy off-brand cards purchased on eBay. One data recover company notes that differences in build quality are indeed part of the reliability story but goes on to say it doesn’t correlate in any consistent way to brand.
Because photos can sometimes be recovered from memory cards after they’ve had a problem, it’s a good idea to have at least one backup card. That way, if there’s a problem, you can take the card out of the camera and work on it when you get home. Messing with it in the field is a recipe for losing data that could otherwise have been retrieved. A lot of people advocate putting fewer eggs in one basket. That is, they suggest using multiple smaller cards rather than one or two larger ones. This is hard to argue against so long as you develop a good system to ensure you don’t lose the spare cards or accidentally erase or otherwise mess something up while you’re swapping them around. Given overall flash reliability, I don’t see this as a particular win–and may even be a net loss if taken to the extreme of some complicated scheme of rotating cards in and out of the camera. Although I tend not to bother, making a periodic hard disk backup of your memory cards is good belt-and-suspenders practice. If you’re traveling with other people, a hard disk is also a good way to trade pictures. A computer is one possibility. Hard disk-based media players or portable devices specifically designed for the purpose are others. If you can’t keep everything on flash, then you obviously need to copy it somewhere. Based on the numbers I threw out above, I wouldn’t trust a single hard disk backup as my only copy of anything I really cared about. In this case, I’d want either a second hard disk or a way to burn a copy to DVD. (One advantage of making DVDs is that you can potentially mail a copy to yourself at home. (Laptop and DVDs were the solutions that Shankland eventually decided on.) If you have a bunch of spare thumb drives of reasonable capacity laying around, that may be another possibility.
Cameras break too–maybe more so than any of the other parts we’re talking about here, especially if you’re in harsh conditions. I’m not sure of the final digital camera mortality rate on the Grand Canyon boating trip I took a couple of years back, but a fair number bit the dust. So definitely consider a backup camera. Sharing memory card format and/or batteries between main and backup is nice, if feasible.

This one’s even harder to quantify. However, speaking for myself, I’m always misplacing loose memory cards. Furthermore, procedures that involve a lot of multi-step copying, editing, and so forth offer lots of potential to erase something that you thought you backed up or for an operation to otherwise fail without your knowledge. Or you might, like me, sometimes just do something really dumb. Also, consider theft and other forms of loss beyond your control.

Real-world failure rates are hard to come by. However, having been the owner of a variety of laptops and other devices with hard disk drives, a 1:100 drive failure rate in a portable device over the course of a month’s vacation doesn’t seem out of line. Flash memory fails too. Anecdotal information from a couple of dealers (based on product returns) suggests that a 1:1000 rate is a reasonable stake in the ground–10x the reliability of disk. Further complicating the story is that some errors are recoverable, but you’d probably better stop using the card when you have a problem.

(Credit: PDT, Ltd.)

The Minoru is supposed to ship December 2008 for less than $100.

I’m a big View-Master collector, but even I never sat back and wondered aloud, “When will they come up with a Webcam that does 3D?” Then arrives the Minoru 3D Webcam.

More encouragingly, you don’t need a special Web platform or software for viewing: standard video IM clients or YouTube and its ilk are all compatible; the video will just look badly out of registration until you put the glasses on.

I can’t help but wonder how much more satisfying the experience might be if the Minoru fed two discrete images to a viewer on the other end wearing video goggles.

The Minoru has two discrete lenses spaced at roughly human eye distance, but unlike a View-Master reel, it doesn’t deliver two discrete images, rather it mixes both together into a blurry-looking mess that requires the goofy two-color glasses that have kept 3D on the launch pad since Day 1.

Minoru 3D Webcam. The name means "reality" in Japanese.

Despite advertised measures to decrease pollution, as the one-month countdown to the Beijing Olympics approaches, the government’s numbers rank Beijing as having the dirtiest air in China.

This does not mean that the air will not get cleaner this month. Large numbers of personal vehicles, as well as cargo trucks that do not have Beijing license plates, will be taken off the roads in efforts to reduce
car pollution. Additionally, the hyperactive construction with huge numbers of buildings scheduled for completion or undergoing rushed renovation before the Games will stop completely late this month when a citywide construction freeze goes into effect.

With a rating of 98, officially a “blue sky day” but only by two points, Beijing yesterday had the dirtiest air among monitored cities according to the Chinese government Web site that releases daily pollution figures.

The government is planning drastic measures. I hope for the sake of the athletes, visitors, and Beijing residents that they have clear, clean skies. But let’s not kid ourselves: the pollution problem in Beijing is not going to go away any time soon. Cleaning up for two weeks may be a nice show, but the city really needs drastic measures. My favorite option: even bigger car taxes than exist now, and get that subway going.

Only four other cities, including the capitals of Sichuan, Qinghai, and Liaoning Provinces, ranked above 90 on the scale.

(Credit:
HelioVolt)

The little solar cell that could. HelioVolt says CIGS cells are approaching silicon in effciency.

Company CEO BJ Stanbery will present a paper at the IEEE Photovoltaics Specialists Conference where he will disclose the efficiency threshold which HelioVolt has reached in its labs. The well-financed company expects it can go much further in converting light to electricity.

For comparison, commercial silicon cells convert light to electricity at about 14 percent to 20 percent. But efficiency doesn’t translate into commercial viability.

What matters more than the efficiency record is the speed with which solar companies can manufacture. Ultimately, high scale is what brings costs down, said John Langdon, HelioVolt’s vice president of marketing.

At first, the company plans to put the cells onto a glass substrate for solar panels. Later, it intends to put the flexible cells onto a plastic substrate so it can be integrated into building materials, like roofs or awnings.

Companies are pursuing alternative materials to silicon to get around the high prices and demand associated with it. Thin-film cells use less material than traditional cells.

Competitor Nanosolar claims an efficiency in the nine to ten percent range for its commercial products which started shipping at the end of last year and higher results in its labs.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratories (NREL) earlier this year said that it attained 19.9 percent efficiency for a solar cell made out of CIGS (copper indium gallium selenide), an alternative to traditional silicon.

But working with CIGS is notoriously difficult, particularly manufacturing at large scale.

In fact, when HelioVolt first delivers product at the end of this year or early next year, Langdon said that the efficiency will be between 10 and 12 percent because it’s a more efficient process.

Another venture-backed CIGS company, Miasole, had to set back its initial plans after technical difficulties and efficiency levels that were only 4 percent to 6 percent.

Solar high-flyer First Solar uses thin film solar cells made out of cadmium telluride that are less efficient than silicon.

More significant than the actual number is the fact that HelioVolt hit 12 percent efficiency with its manufacturing process, which it says can turn out a cell in six minutes.

“Everybody has known for years that the cost of CIGS film is much less than silicon–something like 3 cents on the dollar. The issue has always been making it fast enough,” he said.

Langdon said the company’s FASST process is like making a grilled cheese sandwich where two pieces of bread contain different chemicals. Under heat, the two layers of “cheese” bind together to form a cell.

Another CIGS company, Global Solar Energy, also uses co-evaporation. Earlier this year, it said it broke the 10 percent mark with its commercial products and expects to hit 13 percent or 14 percent this year.

NREL used a technique called co-evaporation where active chemicals are immersed in a solution, which then gets removed. That process can take 40 to 50 minutes, according to HelioVolt.

Solar upstart HelioVolt on Monday will announce that it has reached 12.2 percent efficiency with its CIGS solar cells, setting another mark in the race against competitors and silicon.

He founded the company, he’s accumulated this wealth, he’s got this foundation, he’s got this fame. That’s irreplaceable. Also, Bill grew up with every one of the technologies in this company. He’s got more capacity to remember things than anybody I’ve ever known. It’s unlikely we’ll have anybody again who has that breadth.

So how about Bill? Is he going to miss being in the trenches, slugging it out with Apple, Google, and Mozilla? It doesn’t sound like it from what he told the magazine:

This whole thing about which operating system somebody uses is a pretty silly thing versus issues involving starvation or death.

Paul Allen, who co-founded the company with Gates, remarked from the perspective of his own departure from the company in 1983:

As Bill Gates prepares to walk away from Microsoft, both the man and the company he founded will face challenges getting along without each other, according to the new issue of Newsweek magazine.

You don’t always realize how dramatic that transition is going to be when people aren’t depending on your decisions day by day.

(Credit:
Corinne Schulze/CNET News.com)

“He’s not just Bill Gates, he’s the Bill Gates,” Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO and Gates’ right-hand man for decades:

While the Newsweek story mentions Microsoft’s challenges in antitrust probes,
Windows Vista versus Windows XP, and the Internet search arena, the story also offers intimate perspectives from the people who know him the best, as well as Gates himself.

We will likely be seeing more of Bill Gates with people such as U2 front man Bono (like in this video), working on famine relief and education.

Gates was also responsible for stoking the fires of urgency at the software giant, said Ray Ozzie, who took over Gates’ job as chief software architect:

Gates, who is stepping down from his full-time role at Microsoft this week to focus on his $37 billion charitable foundation, is the subject of an article that profiles Microsoft’s successes and failures during his tenure, as well as the difficult transition the company and its founder will likely face. (CNET News.com plans to publish its own retrospective on Gates’ departure, but in the meantime, you might want to refresh yourself with some stories from when the transition was announced.)

A lot of the company’s strength is that Bill created a culture of crisis–if there weren’t a Google, we’d have to make one. This is a period of unprecedented strength for the company. If there had to be a time when Bill transitioned out, we couldn’t have set it up better than it is right now.

Update: Friday, May 2, at 1:57 p.m. PDT

Public companies tend to roll out their huge news either before or after the markets open. And Microsoft falls into that corporate titan category.

Reports Friday that Yahoo and Microsoft finally entered into serious merger talks gave the Internet search pioneer a huge lift in its share price.

Adding a little background to their share performance this morning, over the last 24 hours, reports have surfaced that Microsoft is leaning toward a “hostile” tender offer for Yahoo, while the Internet company could announce a search ad deal with Microsoft’s archrival Google next week.

In the meantime, Yahoo is up a respectable 4.35 percent in Friday morning trading at $27.98 per share, while Microsoft has been bouncing back and forth between positive and negative territory this morning. Microsoft’s stock is currently down 0.34 percent at $29.30 a share.

Yahoo closed the day with a sizable 6.92 percent gain to finish up at $28.67 per share. And in after-hours trading, it continued its ride, gaining an additional 1.12 percent to reach $28.99 a share.

The pitch this week has become more fevered after Microsoft’s ultimatum for Yahoo to respond by Saturday came and went and Microsoft said it anticipated making an announcement this week on its next course of action. Well, this week is almost over.

Yahoo investors, you may want to cool your heels.

Microsoft, meanwhile, wasn’t as lucky–falling 0.54 percent to $29.24 a share. The software giant dipped even further by 0.24 percent in after-hours trading.

If Microsoft acts like a number of any other corporate America titans, chances are it’s not likely to announce any “big” market-moving news until after the bell closes–at the earliest.