Storage: More Deals Coming? (From Barron’s) An Oppenheimer analyst predicts which storage vendors might be looking to buy soon. I think he’s onto something in terms of data warehousing being a hot capability.

Quest Sees Opportunity in Cassandra (From MarketWatch) Quest seems to be setting itself up for success among progressive customers. The latest partnership with Riptano around Cassandra comes on the heels of Hadoop integration and the purchase of Surgient.

2010 Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle is Here (From Gartner Blog Network) Industry watchers love/hate Gartner’s various Hype Cycles, but we all look at them. Assuming you find some value in the model, what do you think about where the various cloud technologies landed?

IBM Transforms U.S. Open with Cloud Computing (From CIO Update) This is a story every year around U.S. Open time, but now we’re seeing IBM’s newfound analytics focus shining through. The amount of data available makes for a very rich tennis experience.

Oracle’s Hurd for Phillips Swap: What’s the Customer Relations Impact? (From ZDNet)
Speaking of Oracle and Mark Hurd, here’s a take on how Hurd will fare on the customer-relations front compared with Charles Phillips, the man he’s replacing. Looks like it’ll be a wash.

For more cloud-related news analysis and research, visit GigaOM Pro.

The research, published in Nature Materials this weekend, shows off a process called the “photon enhanced thermionic emissions (PETE)” that can make a solar cell convert light into electricity and also capture the heat for the same purpose. Calculations by the researchers, led by materials science professor Nick Melosh, show that a PETE solar device could help convert more than 50 percent of the sunlight and heat into electricity under concentration.

The research makes use of a process called thermionic energy converters that was first developed in the 1950s, and NASA and its counterpart in the Soviet Union at the time were exploring the idea to create high-power generators for deep-space missions. But the technology was never commercialized back then.

The Stanford researchers say they have found a way to combine the thermionic process and the use of semiconductors, which are building blocks for solar cells, and create a device that works best in high temperatures. Traditional solar cells only make part of the light spectrum to generate electricity, and the process actually generates heat, which is considered a waste and can also threaten the performance of solar cells. Finding a way to harvest the heat could lead to a more efficient and robust solar electric system.

The researchers first coated a piece of the semiconductor gallium-nitride (which can withstand high temperatures) with the metal cesium, but they didn’t achieve the high efficiency they wanted. The researchers are now looking at using other semiconductors, such as gallium-arsenide. A PETE device could have a higher efficiency than the theoretical maximum of roughly 30 percent for silicon and be comparable to the 41-42 percent triple-junction cells that have been developed in labs, the researchers say.

Gallium-arsenide, incidentally, already is a key ingredient in triple-junction solar cells used by concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) developers, such as startup SolFocus. A CPV system uses mirrors to concentrate sun light hundreds of times onto solar cells, but it doesn’t use the heat. Instead, the systems have designs that dissipate the heat, so that it doesn’t cook the solar cells.

The triple-junction cells used by CPV companies can make use of a broader light spectrum than silicon cells, so less of the sun’s energy becomes waste heat. The commercially-available triple-junction cells can hit close to 40 percent efficiency (under high concentration). Spectrolab has created a cell in the lab that could do 42 percent under high concentration.

Although a PETE device could convert heat into electricity, the process still leads to waste heat. The Stanford researchers propose to combine a PETE device with a solar thermal converter system, similar to the kind being used in large solar thermal plants that are being built in the deserts of California. The combined PETE/solar thermal system can “operate at temperatures exceeding 200 °C, enabling its waste heat to be used to power a secondary thermal engine, and boosting theoretical combined conversion efficiencies above 50%.”

Both CPV and concentrating solar thermal technologies are both emerging technologies because neither has captured a big chunk of the solar energy market. SolFocus recently completed a 1-megawatt system at a community college in California, and that was the largest CPV power plant in the country. Solar thermal technology developers such as BrightSource Energy and Abengoa Solar have gigawatts of projects under development in California, Nevada and Arizona, but none has broken ground yet.

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Green IT Overview: Q2 2010

Image courtesy of Nature Materials.

While my client and I are still happily using Google Wave for project collaboration, I am seeing more rough gaps — albeit ones within my new technology tolerance as an early adopter — that I would like to see filled in future versions of the product.

Of course, as a technical writer, my Google Wave wish list is very document-centric:

• Table Support. Perhaps it is because I use tables a lot in my technical documentation, but I wish that Google Wave would support tables to the level that Google Docs does. Table support could be supplied natively or through a gadget or extension. The lack of table support in Google Wave is a real disadvantage for those of us who want to collaborate on moderately complex documents via Google Wave.
• Spell Checker. I’d like to see Google Wave include a spell checker in a future release either natively, as an extension, or as a gadget.
• Microsoft Word Compatibility or Integration. My first project with Google Wave started out with my client and I using it to pass Word documents back and forth. Then as our level of comments and opinions on the document and its content grew we tried to work on the drafts natively in Google Wave. My initial cut-and-paste experience from MS Word into Google Wave was not so favorable, because of how Google Wave treated the XML underlying the original Word document. While a better cut-and-paste experience that doesn’t mangle the copy would satisfy me for a bit, my more ambitious wish is a way to upload Word documents directly into the body of a new or existing Wave, so that I and other collaborators could edit and create new text in real-time with Google Wave’s editing tools.
• Document Version Control. While this wish is probably best fulfilled by a Google Wave extension, there needs to be a level of document version control where when if I attach a document to a Wave, it can store multiple versions of the same document, instead of me having to blow away the document each time before I attach a new version of it to my current Wave.
• Email and/or RSS Alerts. A web browser is the first thing I open after I login into my PC in the morning and it the last thing I close out of when I log off for the night. Still I would like to see Google Wave include some type of email and or RSS alerts so that when a Wave changes collaborators would be notified automatically. Email alerts would especially be handy for those times I am on a client site and may not have access to Google Wave because of security restrictions that the organization has in place.
• Access via the Google Mobile App. The Google Mobile App is popular on both the iPhone and BlackBerry. It would be good to see Google Wave access via the app at some point in the future. I am a big proponent of mobile access to collaboration applications. But mobile access to Google Wave — while well done on the Waveboard iPhone application — is much too limited at the current time for teams who need constant access to their collaboration platform in order to stay in sync with project information.

My wish list is drawn from my initial Google Wave experience. What’s on your Google Wave wish list?

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• The Future of Work Platforms: An Overview

How can you find a way (and the time) to do more good in the world, while still keeping up with the demands of our businesses? One solution is to focus on one trait at a time.

First, make a list of all the positive traits you would like to have (generous, responsible, helpful, supportive, etc.).

Under each item, list ways you can incorporate more of that particular trait into your daily life. For example, if you want to be more responsible within your community, you might consider sponsoring an area youth program or volunteering to maintain a local park.

Finally, set aside time each day and week to devote to your commitment. Even 15-30 minutes a day can make a big difference. If you could commit to just 15 minutes a day, five days per week, at the end of the year, you would have contributed more than 65 hours of your time to improving the world around you. That’s more than a week and a half of your attention!

Many times, we put off getting involved and doing things that we really want to do because of the belief that there just isn’t enough time. On top of that, we think that the time we do have isn’t enough to make any kind of difference, but even small contributions add up. If we can find ways to give back in even the smallest ways, we can make big changes in the world around us.

In what small ways can you make a difference in the world around you? Share your tips for getting involved while still keeping up with your business and other commitments.

Image from Flickr by laRuth.

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• VMware’s Cloudy Ambitions: Can It Repeat Hypervisor Success?
• Infrastructure Overview, Q2 2010
• Defining Internal Cloud Options: From Appistry to VMware

A genie, a load of balls, and an ancient labyrinth come together to create a frustrating, but fun, puzzler.

One of the big boys in the movie biz, Warner Bros., has been solidly churning out iPhone apps for the past few months. Most of these apps have been global franchises, though, including Terminator Salvation, Watchmen and — the double whammy of brand-names — LEGO Batman.

Without a movie, cartoon series, or line of toys, Stuck Genie is an entirely original game. Containing 73 puzzles, the game challenges you to complete each one and earn the highest score.

You Look Like You’re Stuck

It’s immediately clear that the game is worthy of the Warner Bros. name. It’s bright and colorful, instantly pleasing to the eye and, although it’s not an established brand, the game has an artwork style that is very much its own.

The attention to detail, especially important from such a big publisher, pervades almost every aspect of the game. Even the name-entry screen is fun, finding you spinning an alphabet wheel, and dragging letters around to spell your name.

Musically, the game features a chill-out soundtrack pinched straight from the beaches of Ibiza. It’s absolutely out of character for a puzzle game — especially one featuring a mischievous cartoon genie.

And yet it works: When the puzzles get tougher, the mellow background music makes it feel more like you’re chillaxing, as opposed to seriously flexing your cognitive problem-solving muscles.

Control Your Inner Genie

Before jumping into the first level proper, there’s a tutorial section. The tutorial explains the basics: By tapping and dragging, you control an orange ball moving through a labyrinth.

Your aim, in each level, is to collect the other balls dotted around the maze. The mazes are incredibly simple, and collecting the balls is achieved simply by colliding with them.

The real challenge is that the balls stick to your orange ball as you collect them; your shape grows and changes with each added ball. Maneuvering through the maze becomes tougher as you collect each ball, and forward planning is key to solving each puzzle.

Misadventures in the Maze

My sojourn through the freaky genie’s labyrinth hit a major roadblock, though. Closing the app to take a break, due to a tough level, I returned hours later to be sent back to the start of level one.

Apparently, Stuck Genie features no auto-save functionality. This means that to save, you have to exit the game by first pausing it and then clicking exit (which instigates a save). Simply tapping the iPhone’s Home button will exit, but it won’t save.

Furthermore, after working my way back to the tough level I’d been stuck on, I discovered that there’s no rest or rewind button. This is an all but essential feature for this genre of puzzle game.

To reset the level, you have to open the menu and select rewind; it doesn’t ruin the game, but it’s an oversight nonetheless. Far more preferable would be, say, tapping the genie to use a magical time-reversing crystal, or even just a plain old rewind/reset button.

Summing Up

There’s something about the cartoony yet ornate artwork, which, when melded with the Café del Mar-esque chill-out soundtrack make for a very mellow but challenging puzzler.

This mellow vibe is immensely important in Stuck Genie’s case, because some of the puzzles had me literally roaring with frustration — the good kind of frustration, though, when you know you’re being beat by a devious puzzle and you’ve just got to solve it.

Despite being so much fun from the off, the difficulty curve was unexpectedly steep. Nevertheless, fans of challenging puzzlers should download Stuck Genie and get stuck in immediately.

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• How to Market Your iPhone App: A Developer’s Guide
• Virtual Worlds: Trends and Opportunities

While in Hong Kong on a business trip recently, Oliver Goh was on his laptop playing around in a virtual world, when he realized he’d left the water running in his home back in Switzerland. He noticed this because the virtual world contained a recreation of his Swiss residence that pulled information about the home’s energy and water consumption in real time. The gauge that measures water use was blinking. No problem: After his avatar hit the right button, the real-world water valve in Switzerland turned off.

That’s one of the applications of the OpenShaspa Home Energy Kit, available starting tomorrow from the startup that Goh co-founded, also called Shaspa. Created with open-source components like Arduino circuit boards, the kit comes with a system that can monitor and control home power output with wireless sensors, and connect this data to mobile phone and Internet applications. (After reading Katie’s story on another open-source energy tool, ACme, Goh says he plans to add an OpenShaspa device driver that supports it.) Sensors for gas, water and other utility resources can be integrated into the control system, as well.

Other energy management systems can be controlled via cell phones or the web, but in what could be a first, OpenShaspa can be hooked up to a virtual world created with OpenSimulator, an open-source spinoff of Second Life, to a simulated recreation of your home. Not just a cool widget for MMO geeks, Shaspa’s developers believe that modeling energy consumption data in 3D could make it more comprehensible and easier to manage. (It could even be used for a “World of Greencraft”-type game envisioned by a Stanford professor.) And Goh noted an additional benefit of running OpenShaspa from a virtual world: You can ask an avatar friend to look after your real-world house while you’re gone.

The kit includes a “Social Energy Meter,” which as the name suggests, makes all this energy consumption data publicly available online, where it can be collectively analyzed, tracked and compared on Twitter, Facebook, Google and other systems. Shaspa also has plans for a corporate version. Goh tells me 17 residential homes in the UK will launch an OpenShaspa pilot program this June.

Image courtesy of Shaspa.

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• Report: Virtual Worlds for the Enterprise Market
• Virtual Worlds: Trends and Opportunities
• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era

Makayama’s Newspaper(s), an app that provides consolidated access to a variety of major international newspapers, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and, formerly, The Sun, was the app in question. It was The Sun, a popular UK daily, that caused the app to be initially rejected to begin with. As regular readers of that paper are likely aware, topless models are regularly included in one of its sections. Topless models are still a big no-no for the App Store, despite recent relaxation that has seen the rapid proliferation of bikini-clad models in a number of apps.

Even though Apple blocked the inclusion of The Sun in this iteration of Newspaper(s), they were careful to leave the door ajar for later on. According to iLounge, Apple told Makayama in their rejection letter that resubmitting the offending content once iPhone 3.0 is released, with its improved parental control features, would be appropriate. The new parental control options should, in theory, allow parents to control what kind of apps and content children have access to on the device, much like the blocking filters available on most cable/satellite boxes.

With the inclusion of such features, Apple should have no problem passing the onus of content filtering on to parents, which would let them focus on other issues when it comes to the App Store approval process. They might have to implement some kind of ratings system, like the ESRB does for video games, but once appropriate guidelines are established, they can be mostly hands-off.

Does this mean the floodgates are open for “Adult-only” type apps? There seems to be a market for them, considering the success of even pretty terrible apps like iGirl. I don’t think it would fit Apple’s corporate image to allow a proliferation of X-rated content, though, so they probably won’t allow things to get out of hand. On the other hand, hopefully, they can avoid things like the recent NIN: Access snafu or the rejection of a Tweetie update that seem to have a very negative effect on the public’s perception of the Apple brand.

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• Virtual Worlds: Trends and Opportunities
• How to Market Your iPhone App: A Developer’s Guide

Of course, it also didn’t help that, just last Tuesday, MTI received a letter from Nasdaq warning of an impending and involuntary delisting. So MTI is quitting Nasdaq just in time to avoid getting kicked off (the company said it was thinking of delisting even before Nasdaq’s warning).

Nasdaq pretty much bends over backwards to make it easy for companies to stay on the exchange. Once a stock is listed, it needs to meet at least one of three criteria: Net income from continuing operations of $500,000 in the last fiscal year, $35 million in market value of listed shares, or $2.5 million in stockholders’ equity. MTI had a net loss of at least $9.6 million for the past three years, a recent market cap below $5 million and, as of December 2008, $1.5 million in stockholder’s equity.

It gets worse. In MTI’s annual report to investors last week, PriceWaterhouseCoopers expressed concern about the company’s ability to continue to operate as a going concern.

The catalyst driving these unhappy events is MTI Micro, a subsidiary making methanol fuel cells as an alternative to lithium-ion batteries in portable devices. The biodegradable fuel cells used a proprietary technology called Mobion; the company intended to start selling Mobion products this year. In 2007, executives were confident about getting its fuel cells to market. Just last fall, the company was busy making them at once smaller and more powerful.

But the cost of developing and commercializing the fuel cells was crippling. At the end of 2008, MTI Micro helped build up a deficit of $118 million and left the company with $252,000 in working capital. As MTI said in its annual report:

“Because of these losses, limited current cash, cash equivalents and securities available for sale, negative cash flows and accumulated deficit, the report of the Company’s independent registered public accounting firm for the year ended December 31, 2008 expressed substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern.”

That’s after MTI raised $1 million by selling 1.1 million shares of Plug Power last year and raised $2 million by issuing convertible notes to a board member and others. But without more funding from the government or private investors, MTI said it “does not expect to continue to fund MTI Micro’s portable power source business.” MTI’s other operations can make it through December with the cash on hand, but MTI Micro looks to have enough to keep operating into this month.

MTI said its stock is likely to continue trading on the over-the-counter or the pink sheets markets.

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• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
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The angel fund is a for-profit venture that the Clean Energy Fund, a nonprofit founded with $30 million from the Pacific Gas and Electric Company bankruptcy, launched last April. Susan Preston, the angel fund’s general manager, said the fund raising is taking longer than expected because of the recession. “We’re working very hard at it, but it’s a struggle right now, no question about it,” she said. “We’re talking to lots of people all over the place, and everyone is saying, ‘We’re sorry, we agree with what you’re doing, but we just don’t have money right now.’”

The dramatic economic downturn has been such a shock that investors have become “like deer in the headlights,” Preston says. “You know you should move, but just can’t see how — that’s the best analogy I can think of for how people are feeling right now. If we can get them to move away from the headlights,” there will be a much more prosperous time ahead, she said.

Preston argues that early-stage startups are a good investment in the downturn because of their countercyclical nature. In other words, because companies are a few years away from an IPO or an acquisition, they could be well-poised to take advantage of an economic recovery down the road. “When you have a very early-stage company, you can have greater flexibility about when you decide to pull the trigger on a liquidity event,” she says, adding that startups are a good deal right now. “We can take advantage of valuations … and continue to organically grow these companies until we’re ready and the market’s ready for them.”

She thinks a time of cleantech acquisitions — read “exits” — is coming. “As cleantech becomes an increasingly important part of the economy, many companies will be looking for ways to expand in the market, and one very easy way for them to do that is through acquisition,” she says. “I actually think it’s a great time to be having investment activities. But it’s tough getting people to see that right now.”

The fund is looking at energy-efficiency technologies, such as lighting and energy-management software and components, she said. It also is considering technologies that could take advantage of anticipated new policies, such as technologies that calculate companies’ carbon footprints, which could work with a carbon cap-and-trade program. The fund in October announced investments in efficient-lighting startup HID Labs, biofuels company Allopartis Biotechnologies and an undisclosed solar company.

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• Cleantech Financing Trends: 2010 and Beyond
• Green IT Wrap-up: Q1 2009

Called the MESSAGE project — for Mobile Environmental Sensing System Across Grid Environments — the research is led by the Imperial College London. The government’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, which organized the conference and is partially backing the sensor research, said the network is the first of its kind in the world.

Set up in Gateshead, in northeast England, the pilot sensor network collects data on carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide and other pollutants, as well as temperature, humidity and noise levels, and keeps a count of passing vehicles. The info is all sent back to a central computer, which can power an updated, online pollution map of the area.

The researchers are aiming to demonstrate the potential of a small, low-cost system that can be used for planning, management, and control of the environmental impacts of transport. It looks like it’s still in the research stage, so it’s unclear what the plans are, if any, for commercialization of the project.

The Gateshead network has around 50 wireless sensors attached to railings and streetlights along major roads in the area. A team from Newcastle University designed the Gateshead system using ZigBee-based sensors. The group, which also includes the University of Cambridge, plans to set up more sensors in Cambridge, Leicester, and London, with all of the networks beaming their data back to a common central server. The Cambridge researchers are looking at using cell phones to support a sensor network, while the Imperial College plans to build a system using Wi-Fi and WiMAX for communications and positioning.

The systems could be a boon to cities trying to keep a lid on traffic buildups, and allow drivers, or even pedestrians who are keeping an eye on the real-time data on their iPhone, to change their route to avoid the extra pollution. “Other cities in the UK and around the world, such as New York and New Delhi, are interested in replicating what we’re doing here,” said Professor Phil Blythe of Newcastle University in a statement.

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• Green IT’s Q4 Winners: Wind Power, Solar Power, Smart Energy
• Report: Cleantech’s Third-Quarter Growing Pains
• The Internet of Things: What It Is, Why It Matters

Called “Eleanor,” the solar car has a cruising speed of 55 miles per hour — on a sunny day. Even if it’s cloudy, the team said that on a full charge the car’s batteries can hold enough power to drive from Boston to New York without needing any sunlight. That’s more than 200 miles on solar power.

There should be plenty of sunlight where they’re going — the car is set to compete in the World Solar Challenge race across Australia in October. This will be the 10th World Solar Challenge race, which draws teams from around the world for a 1,864 journey from Darwin in the Northern Territory to Adelaide in South Australia. The MIT team grabbed third place in the 2003 race, averaging 56 miles per hour with its last car, the “Tesseract.”

The new car (and the team behind it) will already be road-tested by the time it gets Down Under — the team plans to drive Eleanor across the U.S. this summer in preparation for the Australia race. And even though there’s only room for one in the car, the driver won’t be completely alone. The car, which is powered by about 20 square feet of monocrystalline silicon solar cells, is equipped with wireless monitors so the team’s lead and chase vehicles can keep an eye on the car’s performance in real time.

The driver also gets to sit up this time around. Previous solar cars have been almost flat, to cut down on drag. But that meant that drivers had to lay down when they were in the vehicle. New race regulations are bringing the solar cars closer to regular cars, requiring the driver to sit upright, with the seat back less than 27 degrees from vertical.

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• The Internet of Things: What It Is, Why It Matters
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The system uses a piezoelectric-based nanogenerator where the stretching of a nanowire creates electricity. Zhong Wang, a materials science and engineering professor who led the research, told the Technology Review that this is the first time a generator has been shown to get energy from small, irregular motion — irregular in terms of frequency of motion as well as amplitude of power. This opens the door for possible uses in implantable medical devices that get their power from muscle stretches, heartbeats and bloodflow.

Putting energy harvesting nanodevices into bodies may be a few years away, but there are some energy harvesting systems that are already on the market, or at least much closer to market, including wireless sensors, regenerative braking, and even bumps in the road. And it’s not just startups that are getting in the game.

Chipmaker Freescale Semiconductor is working with McLaren Electronic Systems on a project that could give Formula 1 race cars a turbo boost from power collected through regenerative braking. EnOcean, a spinoff of electronics and industrial engineering giant Siemens, makes wireless modules for building automation systems that can grab energy from ambient sources including solar, heat and vibration.

And then there’s the charge-up-your-iPhone-while-you-walk application, with M2E Power developing an electromagnetic system to power up portable devices. There are even ways to get power from everyday, ambient radiation. Scientists at the Idaho National Laboratory are working on getting power using nanoantennas that can absorb infrared energy.

Pretty soon, everything that moves, makes heat, or emits any kind of excess energy could be used to to power up tiny devices, or at least take some of the burden off primary power sources in home appliances or cars. Forget about putting a tiger in your tank — in the future, maybe you’ll stuff a few hamsters in there instead.

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• Green IT Wrap-up: Q1 2009
• The Smart Energy Home

American Superconductor is going for a whopping 10 megawatts, more than twice the power of some of the bigger turbines in operation today. General Electric, one of the largest manufactures of wind turbines in the world, currently makes turbines ranging from 1.5 MW to 3.6 MW.

American Superconductor said this week that it will work with the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory and its National Wind Technology Center to look at the economics of building a 10-MW turbine. The Devens, Mass.-based company said it can get a bigger power punch but still keep the size and weight under control by using its high temperature superconductor wire, which it claims is lighter and more efficient than the copper wire traditionally used in wind turbines.

Apparently even the economic downturn can’t stop these new turbines from spinning. Carpinteria, Calif.-based Clipper Windpower, which recently announced production cuts and layoffs, insisted to the Guardian that its work with the UK’s Crown Estate on a 7.5-MW offshore turbine, dubbed the Britannia project, is going full steam ahead. Clipper announced plans for the more powerful turbine last April, calling it the world’s largest offshore turbine.

But what about the growing physical size of these giants? The National Wind Technology Center is looking at that as well, saying earlier this month that it plans to install two big turbines at its lab just south of Boulder, Colo. The turbines, from GE and Siemens, don’t necessarily represent the largest turbines available, but they’ll be the largest ever installed at the wind center, giving scientists a chance to poke and prod the machines to see what kind of stresses the turbines can take. They plan to work on ways to get more power out of existing turbines, and on how to improve the durability of the turbine’s components.

The GE turbine, a 1.5-MW model of which is currently available, will have a 262-foot steel tower, with the diameter of the rotor reaching 250 feet. The whole thing weighs about 220 tons. The Siemens turbine, a late-stage prototype, will generate 2.3 MW, with a tower about the same height as GE’s, but a much bigger rotor, one that covers 331 feet.

Maybe we’ll have a better idea of how big these giants can be, or should be, when the wind center finishes its tests in late 2011.

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• Virtual Worlds: Trends and Opportunities
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That said, the significance of Public’s story is impossible to dismiss. Though for the most part it avoids depicting 9/11 as a structuring event, the film is aggressive in drawing the fundamental distinctions between the American mass consciousness of Before and After. After eight years, Public may be the first sign that post-9/11 cinema has finally come into its own.

Josh Harris founded Internet research firm Jupiter Communications and developed a chat client for Prodigy before becoming New York’s Internet It boy of the mid-to-late 1990s with Pseudo.com, the first Internet TV network. The director met her subject in 1999 the way most people met him: by stumbling into one of his infamous downtown loft parties. At the request of Harris, Timoner soon began documenting his activities.

The film follows Harris from the heady pre-millennial Psuedo days to his first massive art project, Quiet, where he invited dozens of artists to live with him in a bunker full of beds (each outfitted with a camera and a TV screen). Life (from sex to showering to everything in between) was filmed constantly, residents were subject to the interrogation of a CIA operative, and no one was allowed to leave.

When the FBI broke up the bunker and made everyone evacuate (the feds thought it was a millennial cult, and as one member says on screen, “We were quacking and walking like a duck”), Harris and his girlfriend Tanya moved into a loft outfitted with motion control cameras in every room, broadcasting their relationship 24 hours a day to an audience of eager chatters. This, too, fell apart; Harris’ sanity was slipping away as fast as his $80 million “on paper” fortune, and in late 2001, the entrepreneur left Manhattan, first for an apple farm, and finally for Ethiopia.

Harris is fascinating as an ego monster, but Timoner’s film is most valuable for demonstrating in detail his simultaneous delusion and prescience. A decade ago, when Harris offered his life up for consumption via online video, it was such a dangerous action that it ruined his only real adult romantic relationship and decimated his fortune. Today, We Live in Public-style lifecasting has become completely mundane.

As I walked out of the Public screening, a stranger recognized me from having seen my picture next to my writing on the Internet and joked, “Hey — YOU live in public!” I cringed at the comment, but it’s true: like many people my age, I’ve Twittered, Tumblred and Facebooked my way through my twenties, creating a hybrid public/private persona which will probably eventually raise existential dilemmas that I cannot, at this point, even contemplate. Over the past decade, our lives have become as fragmented and multi-messaged as the post-9/11 cable news screen.

The difference between this ever more common use of new technologies to live life online, and what Harris was doing with his motion-controlled surveillance cameras and live chat, is that each individual now controls what they choose to broadcast where — and in turn, what kinds of broadcasts to take in, and from whom.

Late in the film, MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe says he’s never heard of Josh Harris, and I imagine most of his site’s users haven’t either. The fact that Harris isn’t a household name for a new generation of web exhibitionists says more about the longevity of Internet fame than most of us would like to admit. Regardless, we’re all living our online lives better in the wake of Harris’ mistakes.

The film is not available online, but you can see the trailer here.

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The Onion News Network stole a lot of MacWorld’s thunder early on, continuing the trend of satirizing Apple tech culture with this video heralding the announcement of the MacBook Wheel, which went crazy viral in part because many people thought it was a real announcement from the San Francisco-based conference.

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

But then we got down to the actual events, video coverage for which had the following two challenges: do it fast and make it interesting. Unfortunately, that meant a real dearth of sharp coverage from MacWorld (which only lasted four days and lacked serious news from Apple) — but plenty of good video coming out of CES.

Gizmodo’s coverage from CES, while unembeddable, had some definite highlights — including this year’s video prank (admittedly a little less hardcore than last year’s black hat masterpiece).

And Boing Boing TV was where the real fun was, treating the event more like Nerd Slumber Camp/Gadget-Thon than the PR marketing blitz CES often seems to be from outside the Vegas city limits. (Though this feature on the Sony VAIO-P is damn sexy.)

Sure, there’s plenty of livestreaming options for CES coverage — but the secret is, as always, to make us non-conference attendees as jealous as possible that we can’t be there. And that’s something a well-edited three minutes can accomplish much more effectively than a uStream feed. Any other good ones I missed? The comments are an excellent place to share them.

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