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If you think utilities will swiftly adopt smart-grid technologies, consider the story of GridPoint.

Despite being only seven years old, the high-profile energy start-up has adjusted its strategy a few times and made a string of acquisitions. At first, it planned on selling home energy management systems and batteries to consumers, then shifted its focus to selling smart-grid equipment to utilities, such as software to manage home energy or charge electric cars.

Last week, GridPoint announced that it has signed a deal to supply energy management software and hardware to the United States Postal Service, which has set a goal of lowering energy use by 30 percent by 2015. It could bring in as much as $28.7 million over three years to GridPoint.

The deal is significant because GridPoint sees commercial and industrial energy management, which it entered through its acquisition of ADMMicro last November, as a business with better near-term potential than smart-grid gear, according to the company. Utilities are slow at buying IT-related technology, whereas businesses make quicker decisions based on a return on investment, the company has found.

“The fact of the matter is that the (smart-grid) marketplace is taking time to evolve from pilots to significant rollouts. As a business, we need to make sure we have an opportunity to generate business from multiple sources,” said GridPoint Executive Vice President John Clark, who joined the company after it acquired V2Green, which made utility software for managing electric vehicle charging.

GridPoint isn’t alone in noticing how slowly things are moving in certain areas of the smart grid.

Between the federal government and utilities, about $8 billion will be spent on modernizing the grid with two-way meters and other digital technologies. But for companies that aren’t directly linked to smart metering, that money, which has been slow in coming, may not be all that meaningful.

“There is some disappointment, or disillusionment, that the market did not materialize as fast as people thought, particularly for the tech start-ups and investors that targeted it,” said Rick Nicholson, an analyst at IDC’s Energy Insights service, which recently adjusted its forecasts for spending in North America. “It’s still going to materialize into a multibillion-dollar market, it’s just going to take longer.”

Finding a niche
Smart-grid technologies are designed to make the grid more reliable and efficient for utilities and give consumers more control over how they use energy. But the nature of doing business at a utility means the technology upgrade process is slow.

Utilities typically negotiate with public utility commissions on how they will recoup the costs of capital investment, such as smart meters, batteries, or in-home energy displays for consumers. That investment cycle, coupled with utilities focus on reliability, means they don’t have big incentives to move quickly, said Rob Day, an investor at Black Coral Capital.

The decision to buy IT to use energy more efficiently at commercial or municipal organization is more straight-forward. At the U.S. Postal Service, GridPoint will be installing submetering hardware, which can report energy usage of big energy consumers in a building, such as heating and air conditioning units. Data from hundreds or thousands of locations is collected with an on-board computer and can then be viewed by energy managers through a portal. With that level of detail and alerts, organizations can find ways to lower energy use and troubleshoot equipment problems, Clark explained.

GridPoint hopes to parlay its energy-management services into revenue from installing solar arrays or performing energy audits, a line of business it gained in February when it acquired Standard Renewable Energy, which also caters to residential customers. GridPoint can also work with utilities on demand-response programs where customers are paid to dial down electricity use during peak times, Clark said.

There’s ample opportunity to make money by lowering energy use at businesses, but it’s a crowded market, said Day. Established building-automation companies, such as Siemens and Johnson Controls, have broad product lines and the demand-response field also has a number of suppliers. “I’ve seen a lot of start-ups and established companies targeting that sector,” Day said.

The consumer end of the smart grid is also taking time to take shape. There are a number of companies that have developed home energy management systems to give consumers more detailed electricity consumption data and recommendations on how to be more efficient. GridPoint’s customer-facing software is being used at smart-grid programs in Boulder, Colo.

But there are some doubts about how large that business can become and questions over whether utilities can effectively market these products. A recent survey by the Boston Consulting Group found that many consumers were eager to reduce energy use, but few understood the benefits of smart meters or utilities’ smart-grid programs.

There are certainly still a number of companies earning money by supplying utilities. Smart meter makers or industrial conglomerates, such as Siemens, ABB, and General Electric, have many utility-related products while metering related companies, such as SilverSpring Networks, are doing well, said IDC’s Nicholson.

GridPoint, which has raised more than $220 million in equity financing, is considered visionary in the smart-grid field and continues to pursue business with utilities. In the past several months, it has announced that its products will be used in stimulus-funded smart-grid programs and an electric vehicle charging trial with utility Baltimore Gas and Electric Company. But given the pace of technology change in the power industry, companies like GridPoint need to find a lucrative corner of the market while the smart grid matures.

“Would our investors have liked for the smart-grid space to take off and be the billions and billions of dollars people thought it would be two or three years ago? Absolutely,” said GridPoint’s Clark. “We believe it will, and part of being a successful early-stage company is making sure you’re there to participate.”

Yahoo Inc is planning to introduce features that will give its users even more access to updates from the popular social networking site Facebook, expanding a partnership the web companies struck last year.

Yahoo and Facebook accounts can be more broadly linked together, allowing Yahoo users, for instance, to have a Facebook newsfeed delivered to their homepage or mail.

The additional integration will also make it easier to share activities performed on Yahoo sites, such as photos uploaded Yahoo’s Flickr, across Facebook. The expansion was announced by Yahoo on Sunday.

The new features underscore Yahoo’s efforts to tap the popularity of social networking, and keep its users from fleeing to hot sites like Facebook, which counts more than 350 million worldwide users.

Yahoo also said it would rename Yahoo Profiles, a central spot for users to manage their identity and activities, to Yahoo Pulse and change the settings to make privacy features easier to use.

Intel® Atom™ processors

Processor numbers for the Intel® Atom™ processor family are categorized by a three digit numerical sequence. Netbook class Intel® Atom™ processors have an alpha prefix of N, and Intel Atom processors with an alpha prefix of Z indicate the processor is for Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs).

A higher number within a processor class or family generally indicates more features. A higher processor number may have more of one feature and less of another.

Intel® Celeron® processors

Processor numbers for the Intel® Celeron® brand are expressed with either a three digit numerical sequence or a five character sequence with an alphabetical prefix and four digits, depending on the processor type.

A higher number within a processor class or family generally indicates more features such as cache, clock speed, Front Side Bus or other Intel technologies¹. A higher number processor may also have more of one feature and less of another.

Intel® Pentium® processors

Processor numbers for the Intel Pentium brand have an alpha prefix followed by a four character numerical sequence. All are desktop energy-efficient dual-core processors with TDP that is greater than or equal to 65W.

A higher number within a processor class or family generally indicates more features such as cache, clock speed, Front Side Bus or other Intel technologies¹. A higher number processor may also have more of one feature and less of another.

Intel® Core™ processors

Processor numbers for the Intel® Core™ processor family have an alpha/numerical identifier followed by a three digit numerical sequence.

A higher number within a processor class or family generally indicates more features, including: cache, clock speed, Front Side Bus, Intel® QuickPath Interconnect, new instructions, or other Intel technologies¹. A higher processor number may also have more of one feature and less of another.

Processor numbers for the Intel® Core™2 processor family brands are categorized with an alpha prefix followed by a four digit numerical sequence. The table below explains the alpha prefixes used for the Intel Core 2 processor families.

Alpha Prefix Description
QX Desktop or mobile quad-core extreme performance processors
X Desktop or mobile dual-core extreme performance processors
Q Desktop quad-core high performance processors
E Desktop energy efficient dual-core processors with TDP greater than or equal to 55W
T Mobile highly energy efficient processors with TDP 30-39W
P Mobile highly energy efficient processor with TDP 20-29 W
L Mobile highly energy efficient with TDP 12-19W
U Mobile ultra high energy efficient with TDP less than or equal to 11.9W
S Mobile small form-factor with 22×22 BGA package

Processor numbers for the Intel® Core™2 Quad family have an alpha prefix followed by a four digit numerical sequence. Additionally, low power Intel Core 2 Quad processors are identifiable by an “S” suffix which represents processors having a lower thermal design power.

A rise in fake antivirus offerings on Web sites around the globe shows that scammers are increasingly turning to social engineering to get malware on computers rather than exploiting holes in software, a Google study to be released on Tuesday indicates.

Fake antivirus–false pop-up warnings designed to scare money out of computer users–represents 15 percent of all malware that Google detects on Web sites, according to 13-month analysis the company conducted between January 2009 and February 2010.

That’s a five-fold increase from when the company first started its analysis, Niels Provos, a principal software engineer at Google, said in an interview.

Meanwhile, fake antivirus scams represent half of all malware delivered via advertisements, which is becoming a problem for high-profile sites that rely on their advertisers and ad networks to distribute clean ads.

Google analyzed 240 million Web pages and uncovered more than 11,000 domains involved in fake antivirus distribution for the study, which Google is set to unveil at the Usenix Workshop on Large-Scale Exploits and Emergent Threats Tuesday in San Jose, Calif.

Researchers also found that over the course of the study, domains used for distributing the malware were online for shorter and shorter periods of time in the face of Google’s Safe Browsing technology. Used in Chrome and Firefox, Safe Browsing helps alert Web browsers to sites hosting malware, Provos said.

“As early as 2003, malware authors prompted users to download fake AV software by sending messages via a vulnerability in the Microsoft Messenger service. We observed the first form of fake AV attack involving Web sites, e.g. Malwarealarm.com, in our systems on March 3, 2007,” the report says. “At that time, fake AV attacks employed simple JavaScript to display an alert that asked users to download a fake AV executable.”

“More recent fake AV sites have evolved to use complex JavaScript to mimic the look and feel of the Windows user interface,” the report continues. “In some cases, the fake AV detects even the operating system version running on the target machine and adjusts its interface to match.”

Fake antivirus is easy money for scammers, Provos said.

“Once it is installed on the user system, it’s difficult to uninstall, you can’t run Windows updates anymore or install other antivirus products, and you must install the [operating] system,” rending it unusable until it is cleaned up, he said.

Provos said when encountering a fake antivirus message, Web surfers should close the browser and restart the program. People who are duped by the scam may have to get professional help in cleaning up the computer, he said. They should also monitor their credit card accounts because scammers can use the credit card information for identity fraud.

source:- Cnet News

EDITOR: During the next three to five years, the international Internet system will evolve to the new IPV6 protocol standard, which will provide a quantum leap in comprehensive Internet capabilities. This will affect defense, economic prosperity, communications and sharing of information within nations and internationally, as well as daily household integration of hi tech systems. The current IPV4 system was developed and funded entirely by the United States Government and US private companies [using substantial US Government funds]. Whoever leads the development and deployment of IPV6 will, in fact, have a dominant role in being the architect and “toll keeper” of the rapidly growing international information superhighway.

The national security and economic stability of the United States has been based on control of the first generation of Internet communication technologies. Today, Asian countries have surpassed the United States in development and use of the next generation of Internet Protocol. Although Japan, Korea and Europe have joined with the United States in International Summits to set new Internet standards, China is secretly and substantially developing its own IPV6 infrastructure and solutions.

Beijing is taking advantage of technologies and investment from America and its allies. The concern of international economists, human rights advocates and defense experts is that Beijing will use its political and economic leverage in many areas of the developing world to eventually dominate new Internet standards, imbued with the repressive nature of its own non-democratic regime. In addition, whoever controls the distribution of the technologies related to the IPV6 will have the ability to monitor and block information, disrupt communications and, in a time of conflict, shut down entire IT systems vital to a nation’s economy and defense.

IPV6, THE NEW INTERNET: The dominant edge of America’s economic, communications and military leadership is based on a national investment made 50 years ago to create what became today’s global Internet communications systems. At a June 28, 2005 testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform, Alex Lightman, CEO of IPV6 Summit, stated, “…some $9 trillion out of America’s $13 million economy is related to IT services, subscriptions and transactions… It is also responsible for the creation of millions of American jobs… And it is the backbone of thousands of products and services vital to the national defense and homeland security systems.”

Today, the US Government is investing a mere fraction of what Japan, Korea, China and Europe are investing into developing the New Internet IPV6 protocol. Each nation’s IT standards reflect their own political and economic priorities. A repressive government’s priorities are ultimately in contradiction with democratic openness necessary for international peace and prosperity. Thus far, the Defense Department is the only US federal agency showing incentive in New Internet competitiveness. But DOD, worn down by interventions in the Middle East and elsewhere, has a mere fraction of the funding needed to maintain an edge over America’s competitors and adversaries.

CHINA’s INTERNET LEAP FORWARD: Since 1994, China has emerged from practically no public Internet usage to become the world’s second largest [after the United States] Internet population. Within two years, in 2007, China is expected to pass Japan as the world’s largest IPV6 user. Meanwhile, the US Internet market is dominated by the rapidly out-of- date IPV4 standard model. IPV6 is increasingly dominant in Japan and Korea. Meanwhile, non- democratic China has refused to join a global coalition. Instead, Beijing is quietly and steady developing hardware and software in preparing to take the lead in providing IPV6, not only for its own economic and military modernization but also to protect the Communist Party’s repressive dominance against its own citizens. Beijing can also use its political and economic leverage and advances in Internet censorship to protect dictators in developing countries across the world. More critically, as a component of “asymmetrical” electronic warfare, a country whose companies control and manage IPV6 technology can shut down entire IT systems.

THE CENSORSHIP “GOLDEN SHIELD” China has effectively “sanitized” its domestic Internet through extensive sophisticated on-line monitoring and censorship systems. This has been done with the willing assistance of high-profile US companies who seek greater play in the Chinese Government controlled market. Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society reports that China’s Internet censorship regime is “the most sophisticated in the world.” An Amnesty International investigation found that through early 2005, at least 54 persons were imprisoned for distributing “illegal” information through the Net.

A new Chinese Government high-tech surveillance project called “Golden Shield,” has been under development for the past five years. US companies have flaunted the post-Tiananmen Square Massacre law that bans selling “crime control and detection” equipment to China, writes Anne Applebaum in the July 21, 2005 Washington Post. According to numerous press reports, American companies like Yahoo have signed a “public pledge of self-discipline” to abide by China Net censorship regime. Cisco Systems has reportedly sold technologies to Chinese internal security agencies that block admission to Web sites unfavorable to China’s ruling minority, as well as certain material on sites otherwise accessible. And reportedly, Microsoft has altered the Chinese version of its blog tool, MSN Spaces, at the insistence of Communist information censors. The Orwellian collaboration between US companies and China’s Internet censors can dramatically alter IPV6 standards and significantly degrade the free flow of information essential for international peace and prosperity.

The term for the teenagers who listen emocore is emo kids. The society thinks about them as failures; they are not strong enough to hide their emotions, they’re sensitive, shy, introverted, and often quiet. Usually, Emo kids like to express their feeling writing poems about their problems with depression, confusion, and anger; all because the world fails to understand them. Emo poetry uses a combination of any of: a highly emotional tone, stream of consciousness writing, a simple (ABAB) or nonexistent rhyme scheme, references to the flesh, especially the heart, heavy use of dark or depressing adjectives, and concern over the mutability of time, love or both. Themes such as life is pain are common. You can check some ‘emo poems’ on our forum! Altough life is already very hard for them, emo kids have to suffer for even more society prosecution because of their condition. The term ‘emo’ itself is used nowadays as an insult. Adressed to a person means they are ‘overly emotional’. Emocore is compared with pop boy bands of 1990s. Critics cast the music as lacking any artistic merit and that the fashion is just … a fashion used to drive girls attention. The ones who are emo not because they feel it, but because they like to be trendy are named ‘posers’. A big percent of the current emo subculture is formed by posers. Emo subculture is acused that it is celebrating self-harm. As i’ve said before many fail to understand that those are only fake emos (rawrr you bastards, get away from here); actually i have no rights to judge them even if most of us suffer because of them.