While broadband service provider networks and utilities’ two-way smart grids belong together, the utilities are acting like a reluctant bride in an arranged marriage. Reasonable adults can see that combining the two is a good idea, but utilities and communications companies are oftentimes miles apart over standards, access and security. As a result, utilities are resisting any forced union that would involve hooking up their meters to customers’ broadband connections rather than a private network.

And that’s a shame, given how combining broadband and utility-provided smart meters could help consumers access web-based applications from Google’s PowerMeter to Microsoft’s Hohm, and to deliver innovative services such as tweets about home energy consumption. It’s also cheaper to use a home’s broadband than for a utility to build its own network. And data can be displayed to the customer a lot faster, too, because the speed of a normal broadband connection is generally faster than a utility’s private network. It can take as long as 24 hours to display the info back to the consumer on utility networks. Continue »

Updated with comment from Pandora: Internet radio provider Pandora Media has raised $35 million in new funding, peHUB is reporting, just two days after the company celebrated the establishment of a royalty deal that ends years of negotiation with record labels and content owners. It’s not clear whether there are new investors involved or whether the funding comes from existing backers. Stakeholders in Pandora include Crosslink Capital, WaldenVC, Selby Venture Partners and Labrador Ventures. Continue »

Rick Marini, who co-founded Tickle.com, the quiz site that Monster.com acquired for $100 million in 2004 and later abandoned, is back with SuperFan. The site, which went live this week, is a social network where people can join the fan pages of various celebrities, bands, sports teams and other pop culture icons and compete to win control of their favorites.

SuperFan has two notable things going for it: the integration of game mechanics directly into the site, and a solid team behind the scenes. The company’s board includes proven names such as Rapture’s Sean Fanning, WonderHill’s James Currier and social gaming application guru Blake Commagere. Plus, all of SuperFan’s employees came from Tickle. As for the site itself, it incorporates game mechanics and quizzes –- Tickle’s stickiest feature -– to both monetize it and augment the amount of time people spend on it, something fan pages on Facebook and MySpace don’t do. Continue »

Google is looking to make future versions of its Android operating system more social, said Andy Rubin, one of its creators and Google’s vice president of engineering (platforms), at an event in San Francisco earlier this morning. The event was held with T-Mobile USA to announce the launch of its newest Android-based phone, the MyTouch.

Frank Meehan, CEO of INQ Mobile, a speaker at our Mobilize 09 conference, must be really proud. He was the first to develop a device that specifically marries social networking to mobiles. And now everyone is doing it — including Google. Continue »

Enough is enough. It’s time for Eric Schmidt to resign from Apple’s board. Sure, Apple and Google have a common enemy in Microsoft, so at one time it made sense for Google CEO Eric Schmidt to have a seat on Apple’s board of directors. But Apple and Google are competing on more and more fronts, Android and Chrome OS being among the most prominent examples. Continue »

The Times this week, in a story about a new line of “stylishly designed” electronics from Memorex targeted at women, asks if women are getting the gadgets they deserve. I would answer no. Women (and really everyone) deserve gadgets that are easy to use. And a hot pink, handbag-shaped iPod speaker dock from Memorex wouldn’t change the fact that I have to spend hours tweaking my home network or updating my iTunes software in order to set up a music playlist for a party. Continue »