questionsetter.com

To recap the highlights: 3.5-inch touchscreen, preloaded U.S. maps, SiRFstar III chipset (which is the latest and greatest), and windshield mount. It also plays MP3s and photos. Just don’t expect any frills like traffic updates or a speakerphone.

Find more deals, coupon codes, and bargains on CNET’s Shopper.com.

(Credit:
eCost)

Has anyone purchased this model? If so, hit the comments and let your fellow Cheapskaters know what you think of it. For what it’s worth, I’ve never seen a lower price on a touchscreen GPS.

Remember the $99 Holux GPS from a couple months ago? It’s back, only this time it’s selling for just $84 (after a $45 mail-in rebate).

In the Renewable Electricity sector our index advanced 1.8% with 12 stocks advancing and 7 declining. Our scan of the news showed a series of normal announcements typical of an industry with some traction. The index results this week, moving counter to broad markets, are not surprising given the index’s 100 day beta of only .3.

The Solar index suffered another large decline dropping 5.2% bringing the YTD decline for the sector to -38.9%. Solarfun Power Holdings Co. Ltd (SOLF) -16% and JA Solar Holdings Co (JASO) -13.9% led the decline after an analyst downgrade prompted by declining margins and weaker demand. With 25 stocks declining versus 8 advances, these concerns must be widely held.

Fuel Cells had a strong week with the index increasing 7.8%. The increase was due in large part to the 44.6% gain for Ceramic Fuel Cells Ltd. (CFU.L) Ceramic reported it was constructing a manufacturing plant in Heinsberg, Germany and a substantial order for 50,000 2 kW micro CHP units from NUON. If these units are able operate reliability at a reasonable cost this could be an important breakthrough in a significant market targeted by a number of fuel cell companies.

Concerns with economic conditions drove all the broad stock indicators such as the S&P, EAFA, and emerging markets into negative territory for the week. Commodities, on the other hand, continued their advance with the broad based ETN tracking the DJ AIG commodity index (DJP) increasing 3.1% for the week. This was the week of oil history. Our sustainable energy indices were mixed with one, our biggest, declining and three advancing.

What did I learn this week? Market developments reinforced the highly “leveraged” nature of solar stock prices. High growth expectations result in high volatility. I also realized I need better information sources for some of the lesser developed markets like Brazil. These are important investment centers and I’ll be looking for improved resources. We also saw investors are carefully looking for the key breakthrough. Ceramic is now center stage.

In Biofuels our index advanced 1.8% led by an impressive 52.7% increase, in US dollars, for Basil Ecodiesel (ECOD3.SA). Despite Basil Ecodiesel being the largest biodiesel producer in Brazil, none of our usual news sources reported any developments to explain the sharp increase. Aventine (AVR) continued downward off another 7.3% in the wake of its liquidity issues, despite S&P leaving Aventine’s rating unchanged.

Mark is the founder of Camino Energy, a information provider specializing in globally traded sustainable energy stocks. He also is an investor in sustainable energy stocks.

As part of the upgrade, all Fios customers will now have access to download speeds of 50 megabits per second and uploads of 20 Mbps for about $140 a month. The company is also offering its symmetrical 20 Mbps download and 20 Mbps upload service to all Fios customers for $65 a month.

The company’s COO Denny Strigl is expected to announce the speed upgrades during his keynote speech at the NxtComm trade show here. The upgrades come as Verizon customers use more bandwidth intensive applications such as video downloading and photo sharing.

Verizon had already been offering these speeds in certain markets such as Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York. But now the service will be expanded to Verizon’s entire Fios customer base, which is spread throughout its 16-state territory. Previously Fios in these states, such as Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, topped out at 30Mbps/15Mbps and 15Mbps/15Mbps.

“The appetite for bandwidth shows no sign of slowing down,” Strigl said in a statement. “Neither will we. We’ve already had successful trials of the 100-megabit home, which will be a reality faster than anybody thinks.”

Verizon will also upgrade its mid-tier offering increasing speeds from 15Mbps/2Mbps to 20Mbps/5Mbps. And the low-end service will increase from 5Mbps/2Mbps to 10Mbps/2Mbps.

LAS VEGAS–Verizon Communications is boosting speeds for its Fios fiber-to-the-home service, the company plans to announce Wednesday.

Details are slim but the source reported the following specs. The HTC device will be called the “Dream” and will be about 5 inches long by 3 inches wide. What’s more, it will feature an alphabetic keyboard that will either slide or swivel out from under the display. There isn’t much more to tell at the moment, but the above details match rumors that Forbes reported last year. We apologize that we can’t offer any photos of the Dream but we can give you a look at an Android prototype that we examined last month at the GSMA World Congress. See the video for more details.

So far, we’ve only seen prototypes of a cell phone running Google’s Android platform, but InfoWorld has some gossip on what the first real device might be. According to a source “close to the situation”, HTC may become the first company to manufacture an Android device. Yet it also appears that Samsung, which also is a member of the Open Handset Alliance, is not far behind.

From the patent application, which Apple filed in August 2007:

(Credit:
Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)

The GUI has a set of messages exchanged between a user of the device and another person. The set of messages (is) displayed in a chronological order. In response to detecting a scrolling gesture comprising a substantially vertical movement of a user contact with the touch-screen display, the display of messages (is) scrolled in accordance with a direction of the scrolling gesture.

As demonstrated last month, the AIM-on-iPhone application–which AOL developed in just two weeks–offers a buddy list and lets users easily toggle among multiple instant-messaging conversations with a finger swipe.

AIM for the iPhone, as shown at Apple's March 6 event.

The news of the Patent Office’s action was first reported by the AppleInsider site late Monday.

At its iPhone SDK event last month, Apple touted an adaption of AOL’s instant-messaging client for the
iPhone. Now comes news of Apple’s own patent application for a chat feature.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published the application, titled “Portable Electronic Device for Instant Messaging,” on March 6–the very same day Apple was providing details on its software development kit for the iPhone, including AOL’s test version of the first “official” native Web chat for the gadget.

The iPhone already offers SMS messaging.

(Credit:
Nihon Uni )

The shirt will go on sale in June, with the short-sleeve version starting at about $190 and a long-sleeve T going for $220 and up. Just pair it with a bulletproof backpack, and you should be about ready to hit the mean city streets.

Nihon Uni, based in Osaka, reportedly came out with the garment in response to a rash of violent crimes against schoolchildren and convenience store clerks. The T-shirt promises to provide superior protection from slashing attacks, but its mesh fabric can be punctured by a sharp point.

If you’re going to wear knife-resistant clothes around town, you may as well look sharp doing it (sorry, no more bad puns for the whole rest of this blog). Nihon Uni, a Japanese uniform manufacturer, has created a T-shirt that promises to provide at least some stab protection.

The cloth is made of a polyethylene fiber that’s allegedly equal to aramid fiber used in body armor, according to the Daily Yomiuri. But if the picture to the left is any indication, the shirt’s not as sci-fi/armor-ey looking as one might expect. Plus, it’s machine-washable.

Google could have done this a lot better (and I trust it will). An embedded spreadsheet or a presentation should inherit the permissions of the surrounding wiki page. Better yet, you should be able to create a new document, spreadsheet, or presentation directly inside the wiki, without having to drop back the Apps interface.

Confused? Common-looking toolbars notwithstanding, Google Sites is clearly not integrated into Google’s other productivity applications. It feels like Sites and the other productivity applications are from two different evolutionary branches. They have similarly-colored fur, but they do not interbreed.

My first review of Google Sites was positive. I even chose to overlook some weird display issues as early beta bugs (every 1.0 product I review has them) that other reviewers, such as ZDNet’s Dennis Howlett, were not so kind about. I thought that, overall, it was a strong and useful collaboration product.

Try this with Sites, though, and you’ll feel jilted. First you have to create your spreadsheet outside of the wiki, which is just weird. The real killer, though, is that your spreadsheet will only show up in your wiki if you “publish” it in Docs, making it viewable to anyone who gets its URL. It doesn’t matter if you have carefully controlled the access to the wiki itself. If you want people to be able to edit your embedded spreadsheet, you’ve got to give them permission to do so from Google’s separate spreadsheet application, even if you’ve already given the people who you’re collaborating with on your wiki permission to edit the page that’s hosting the embedded sheet.

For those of you who read my prior review and have started using Sites, I apologize. This product still has great potential, but just as is the case with many of Microsoft’s productivity applications, this version 1.0 Google product is best avoided.

This is what happens if you try to embed a spreadsheet that isn't public. You don't want your spreadsheet to be public? Tough.

My second review–this one–is not positive. There’s only one thing about this product that really bugs me, but it’s annoying enough that I would throw the thing out the window if only it came in a box I could pick up. It’s this: The integration with Google’s productivity applications (word processor, spreadsheet, and presentations) is awful. To me, that’s the one thing I want most from a wiki, especially one from Google, which historically has put great collaboration features into its otherwise lightweight productivity applications. I want to be able to easily create a wiki and then embed a productivity document in it, so I can share the whole package with my co-workers.

By contrast, the phone companies have been required to have procedures in place that enable a new provider to submit a voice disconnection order on behalf of the consumer.

“This significantly complicates the process of switching video providers, thereby entrenching the cable incumbents’ dominant market position,” Verizon said in the petition.

“Verizon’s fairy tale complaint is a lame attempt to deflect criticism from its years-long illegal practice of misusing proprietary information to prevent consumers from switching to a new phone provider,” Brian Dietz, vice president of Communications for the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) said in a statement. “This is yet another example of Verizon looking for a regulatory handout to help them compete, rather than focusing on a customer-friendly approach to providing–or switching–service.”

Verizon Communications is asking the Federal Communications Commission to force cable operators to streamline their process for allowing people to switch video providers.

But the cable industry says that Verizon’s complaints are unfounded.

The cable industry has also been competing on the phone companies’ turf with its digital voice services that replace traditional phone lines. It’s also getting good traction selling this service as part of a bundle and has been stealing millions of customers from the phone companies.

In its petition with the FCC filed on Wednesday, Verizon said that cable operators require customers to contact them directly when they want to cancel service, which often leads to more work for the new video provider and confusion for the consumer.

Verizon thinks a ruling by the FCC is needed to “establish parity in the processes for cancelling telephone and video services.” Verizon sees the cable companies’ reluctance to expedite the cancellation process as an attempt to discourage people from switching providers, which ultimately hurts competition.

Verizon’s petition comes as the two largest cable operators in the U.S., Comcast and Time Warner Cable supposedly discuss financially backing a new company formed by combining Sprint Nextel’s WiMax division and the WiMax operator Clearwire, according to news reports.

WiMax, which provides more bandwidth than current 3G cellular technology, is one of two main 4G wireless technologies that will likely be deployed in the U.S. These networks will not only allow cell phones to connect to the Internet, but they will also connect other consumer electronic devices like digital cameras, music players and gaming devices.

A partnership between the cable companies and Sprint and Clearwire could help the companies develop an integrated wireless service that would compete with Verizon and AT&T, which own their cellular networks.

AT&T and Verizon have been spending billions of dollars to upgrade their networks they can offer a triple play package of services to consumers that includes telephony, broadband, and TV service. And they’ve started to gain traction in areas where their TV service is available.

LeapFrog also had its upcoming Leapster 2 ($69.99) at the event, which is targeted at even younger children. The idea behind the Didj is to up the gaming and graphics ante while continuing to integrate the learning stuff that the company’s known for. Those educational elements are starting to show up in a handful of DS games, but LeapFrog’s giving the whole educational-gaming slant a harder spin to appeal to parents who would prefer to have their grade-schoolers graduate to something other than the DS.

LeapFrog's upcoming Didj gaming system.

(Credit:
LeapFrog)

The Leapster 2 will be available this July as well.

Here’s a rundown of the Didj’s key specs:

According to LeapFrog’s news release, “Players first select and personalize an avatar. Then they design the game, choosing background scenery, color schemes or music. Most important, parents and kids can then customize content, connecting gameplay with schoolwork. Multiplication hard to master? Kids can choose to be quizzed on the 6s, 7s and 8s tables. Spelling a stumbling block? Kids can create a custom spelling list from the 10,000-word database and practice for next week’s test.”

I saw an early build of the game that ships with Didj and the graphics are indeed–excuse the pun–a nice leap forward for LeapFrog. The system is scheduled to be released in July with an MSRP of $90 and a total of 10 games will be available during the first year, including Star Wars and Indiana Jones branded titles.

I stopped by a LeapFrog event today to at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York. I was pleasantly surprised when the company representatives trotted out a new handheld learning/gaming system, the Didj ($89.99), which is due to arrive this summer. LeapFrog doesn’t exactly bill the Didj as a Nintendo DS competitor, but the the new device is geared toward 6- to 10-year-olds, an age bracket where the DS currently rules.

While the Didj doesn’t have a Wi-Fi connection like the DS, there’s a whole online angle that LeapFrog’s working with its LeapFrog Connect Application. The application lets children customize game content (the device connects via USB to both PCs and Macs).

(Credit:
LeapFrog)

Processor: 393 MHz Arm 9
Display: 320×240 resolution
One 24-bit 2D layer (no hardware acceleration)
One 16-bit 3D layer
One YUV video layer (no hardware acceleration)
Graphics: API OpenGL ES 1.1–A reduced instruction set version of OpenGL for embedded systems Main RAM: 32 MB DDRI 131 MHz
NAND Flash: 256MB for data storage/download content
Media Cartridge: 64MB
System Software: Brio–Firmware is built on an abstraction layer called Brio to make OS and hardware transparent to developers. This means all software must be ported to Brio to run on this device.
Screen LCD: 3.2 inches, 16.7-Million Color TFT

Even though the Democrats have enjoyed a majority on Capitol Hill since last year, their leadership has shown zero interest in resuscitating those proposals. While the FCC did adopt FCC broad principles (PDF) in August 2005 saying consumers may use the applications of their choice, the agency admitted on the day of their adoption that the guidelines “are not enforceable.”

If Comcast fails to comply, it will be automatically required to “suspend the network management practices” associated with handling BitTorrent transfers.

Comcast representatives told CNET News as recently as Tuesday that the company’s lawyers needed to review the order before they were able to discuss an appeal; they did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

Moreover, the practices employed by Comcast are ill-tailored to the company’s professed goal of combating network congestion. In sum, the record evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that Comcast’s conduct poses a substantial threat to both the open character and efficient operation of the Internet, and is not reasonable.”

As I wrote in an article a few weeks ago, the FCC may have trouble defending its actions in court.

The majority bloc of FCC commissioners–not one is an engineer–wrote in Wednesday’s order (PDF):

It is our expert judgment that Comcast’s practices do not constitute reasonable network management…Comcast’s practices contravene industry standards and have significantly impeded Internet users’ ability to use applications and access content of their choice.

The ruling from the FCC stems from a request submitted in November by Free Press and its political allies, including some Yale, Harvard, and Stanford law school faculty. They claim that the FCC has the authority–under existing law–to “impose additional regulations” declaring Comcast’s throttling to be illegal. They also enlisted the help of computer scientists from schools including MIT and Carnegie Mellon who argued that Comcast’s throttling did not amount to reasonable network management.

The Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday finally released the text of its 3-2 ruling saying Comcast violated the law when throttling BitTorrent transfers, marking the first time any broadband provider has been found to violate Net neutrality rules.

“Governments need to make sure they have a very thorough record,” he said. “The FCC of late has not been doing that.”

In March, Comcast and BitTorrent declared a truce, with the broadband provider saying it will adopt a “capacity management technique that is protocol-agnostic” by the end of 2008. Before the announcement, Comcast had responded to network congestion caused by BitTorrent users by sending forged TCP reset packets, which disrupted transfers and prevented some users from uploading files.

Comcast is widely expected to appeal the FCC’s 67-page order to a federal court, most likely the D.C. Circuit, which has taken a dim view of the commission’s expansions of its authority in the absence of a law passed by Congress.

Also at the conference, Verizon’s chief technologist said delaying some peer-to-peer traffic may be necessary to prevent voice applications from being unusable (the company says it is not currently prioritizing traffic in this manner).

In 2006, Congress rejected five different bills, backed by groups including Google, Amazon.com, Free Press, and Public Knowledge, that would have explicitly handed the FCC the power to police Net neutrality violations.

Comcast will be required to take these steps in the next 30 days: disclose “the precise contours” of its current and future network management practices, and submit a “nondiscriminatory network management” compliance plan so government regulators can decide whether they approve. The company will not be fined.

(Ironically, some of the same interest groups that sued the FCC over its claim to possess unfettered authority–even in the absence of congressional authorization–to enforce broadcast flag rules are now backing its theories of unfettered authority to police Net neutrality violations. Public Knowledge, for instance, claimed the FCC’s use of so-called ancillary authority was “arbitrary and capricious” and “unlawful.” Now it loves the idea.)

Not helping Comcast’s credibility was its poker-faced denial in August 2007 of initial allegations that it was filtering BitTorrent traffic. A few months later, though, it turned out that Comcast really was throttling BitTorrent, after all, and the company was forced to concede to the FCC that it blocks only “excessive” traffic. (The FCC picked up on this in its order, saying “Comcast’s first reaction to allegations of discriminatory treatment was not honesty, but at best misdirection and obfuscation.”)

Robert McDowell, one of the two dissenting commissioners, said at the Progress and Freedom Foundation’s conference this week that the FCC had relied on dubious evidence, including unsigned declarations.