While the company doesn’t disclose sales volumes, a Nest spokesperson told me back in April that they’d done a survey of 10,000 of their customers (so they have at least that amount, and many more, the spokesperson said). The thermostat is also available at Lowe’s and through Nest’s online store.

There have been other digital thermostats out on the market for years, but Nest is looking to bring smart algorithms, nice design, and a cool brand to the normally boring world of thermostats. Nest’s learning thermostat learns your behavior over a couple weeks and starts helping you save energy by turning down heating and cooling when it isn’t necessary to your comfort (like when you leave the house, or during certain times of day).

Nest is attempting to turn the learning thermostat into a coveted device like Apple’s iPhone or iPad. Nest founder Tony Fadell was the former chief architect at Apple where he led the development of the iPod and the first three versions of the iPhone. He left Apple three years ago to start Nest.

Nest has — and will continue to have — battles to fight as a potentially disruptive startup in this space. For example thermostat giant Honeywell slapped Nest with a lawsuit for patent infringement, which Nest denies. Selling consumers thermostats — particularly a $250 thermostat — also might prove to be a difficult market, given a lot consumers currently don’t go out and buy (or even think about) thermostats.

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In the below video, Ramsey and Sorola explain the value of attending each year, show off their ability to “relate to the fans” and discuss how web content doesn’t quite fit in at the convention yet. (Note: It had been a long day for all of us, which is why they might seem a little punchy and my camerawork is below par.)

Red vs. Blue also had a heavily-attended Comic-Con panel on Thursday to promote the newest incarnation of the series, Red vs. Blue: Revelation, which was so popular on launch day that their website crashed.

“They are certainly popular. And they absolutely deserve it. They’ve put in the time, built the community and consistently expanded both the scope and quality of their work,” Eric Mortensen of blip.tv, which currently hosts RvB, wrote via email.

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As I discuss in my weekly column for GigaOM Pro (sub. req’d) VMforce and Heroku are public versions of what, up until now, has been a largely internal phenomenon — “adaptive PaaS.” They allow developers to launch applications without writing to the cloud platform; instead, the platform adapts the code to take advantage of the platform’s capabilities. Both VMforce and Heroku currently are limited in scope — VMforce within the Salesforce.com environment and Heroku to Ruby developers — but VMware is planning an expanded PaaS presence, and Heroku intends to open its service to new languages.

The popularity of Amazon Web Services (AWS), meanwhile, continues to grow. This week alone, Netflix expanded its EC2 usage to include some of the video service’s most important features and the White House migrated the Recovery.gov web site entirely to EC2. Investment firm research shows AWS crushing competitors’ offerings in terms of adoption, as do analysts looking solely at website hosting. AWS certainly doesn’t have a market share problem at present, but as IaaS resources become commoditized, value-added, “adaptive” PaaS offerings — and even value-added IaaS offerings — could start eating into its lead.

So, my question is this: If AWS really will be simplifying management within the coming weeks, what are the chances it does so via a PaaS offering of sorts? AWS has the tools to build a holistic PaaS offering, the economies of scale to make it profitable, and the SDKs to cater to specific set of developers. If it does so, the cloud computing discussion will take on an entirely different tenor as PaaS providers scramble to differentiate themselves from AWS in this area, too.

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Photo courtesy Flickr user Dominic’s Pics photostream

Verizon is smart to create an online payment platform that it can offer its 91.2 million wireless subscribers, but getting people to use it will be a challenge. If Verizon can get people accustomed to putting in their phone numbers instead of credit cards while  shopping online, then it could own a critical element in building an application and services platform that spans the wired and wireless world. Much like Apple has such a large stake in the mobile application and commerce space today because it has millions of credit cards in iTunes, Verizon could be expanding its own payments information for a similar goal.

Verizon’s billing will work when consumers go to a participating web site and choose something to download. When buying the approved game, music or other content, users click on the BilltoMobile button during checkout and enter their mobile numbers and mobile billing zip codes. Then they get a text message on their mobile phones with a one-time code, and once they enter this code into the online checkout window, they’re done. It’s not clear if Verizon will charge folks for this text.

No pre-registration or links to credit cards or bank accounts are required, which is good. Also worth nothing is that there is a $25 spending limit on purchases made via this platform, which means parents could let kids use it and control both the content the kids can download and how much they can spend. In fact, since teens have cell phones and not credit cards, such a service might really take off among the younger set.

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Image courtesy of Flickr user foforix

So what, right? The ads are probably incorrectly labeled, or something. But the word on the street (well, the word on Engadget, anyway) is that these might predict the much-anticipated Mac refreshes that we’ve been waiting for.

From Engadget:

Apple’s Australian online store lists the most affordable versions of the MacBook Pro, MacBook Air and Mac Pro at A$1599, A$1999 and A$3599, respectively, but the ads show significantly higher “starting at” prices of A$1899, A$2399, and A$4499.

Following the ads to Apple’s Australian online store reveals the same Mac models at the same old prices, so either these ads are terribly wrong or they’re been released a little early…

It has been over a year since Apple released a major update to its high-end Mac Pro computer. I know very well because I bought one last April at an astronomically high price, and as such, guard it with my life. (No one else is allowed near it. No one!) If history has taught me anything, it is that I am not allowed to have the best and brightest kit for long. Therefore, an update is imminent. As for the MacBook Pro, we can probably expect to see Apple upgrade it with Intel’s powerful i7 Chipset.

But why so much more expensive? Engadget’s Vladislav Savov suggests:

The rise in MacBook Pro pricing could be attributed to the cost of the i7 chipset, but it seems unlikely that in a recovering economy Apple would increase their prices significantly without having a cheaper baseline model available.

I am hoping to see something more than just a chipset upgrade this time around; support for Blu-Ray is one of those things I want (even though it’s something most people don’t need) and who wouldn’t like to see high-capacity SSD’s as-standard?

I know only this; I’m a weak-willed slave to Apple’s hardware. I was the same way with PC’s, but let’s face it, a tech-obsessed geek with a weakness for shiny new toys will usually spend far less on generic PC equipment than on the latest newness from Cupertino.

At a time when the entry-level iPad would more than easily meet my needs, I know for a fact that, instead, I’ll be ordering the most expensive model available when we Brits can (finally!) get our hands on them. The same thing happened a year ago when I bought my painfully-expensive Mac Pro — truth is, I could have gotten by with an iMac. And even now, despite having twin 30” HD Cinema displays, I feel like I’m missing out not owning a 27” iMac as well. Thankfully, I’m in a tiny minority of crazy people.

Are these ads correct? If they are, will we have new Macs before the end of the month? Apple’s New Zealand online store also displays odd pricing inconsistencies along similar lines to those on the Australian store. Perhaps we’re reading too much into it (as Apple crazies want to do) but let’s face it, one of two things will happen from here; either the ads will be replaced with ‘corrected’ prices, or, one day very soon, that little yellow sticky note will appear on Apple’s online store and insane gadget freaks like me will reach for our credit cards…

Am I as crazy as I think? Share your thoughts with me in the comments below.

What I did was actually a little convoluted though and here’s where AT&T still comes out ahead. I found a location that had both an AT&T store and a T-Mobile shop within walking distance because I had a unique situation. I wanted to port my AT&T number over to my Google Nexus One, but I didn’t want to close my AT&T account. That’s a problem because porting a number from one carrier to another generally shuts down an account. I couldn’t do that because my wife also has an iPhone with AT&T on the same family plan. So I really wanted to port my number from AT&T but then have them assign a new number to my iPhone. This would allow me to avoid the ETF on my line so that one of our kids — who is now ready for a phone — could use my iPhone 3GS for the remainder of the contract. Like I said — a little convoluted.

In the end it actually took two trips to the same AT&T store, but it all worked out. T-Mobile snagged my AT&T phone number in five minutes, which was key for me. I’ve had that number for nearly 10 years. While in the T-Mobile store, I increased my month-to-month plan from $59 to $79 a month in order to boost my minutes from 500 to unlimited. AT&T then assigned my iPhone a new number which is what my step-daughter will use when her birthday rolls around next week. Yes, she’s getting a used iPhone 3GS, but I have no doubt she’ll be happy. And Randall Stephenson wins as well, since technically, AT&T didn’t lose a customer. Of course, I wouldn’t expect my step-daughter to use gobs of 3G bandwidth, so AT&T probably comes out ahead on this deal.

It may sound like I’m leaving the Apple ecosystem and its mobile platform, but I’m not. The fact is, I only use the phone function of my iPhone about 1% of the time and I have a perfectly good phone with Google Voice in the Nexus One. As mentioned in my toolkit post last week, I’m going to give the iPad a serious look to see if it will meet my work needs, which are activities like blogging, browsing, email and reading RSS. If I find that it will work, I’ll likely grab a Wi-Fi unit. If not, I’ll wait for an iPod Touch refresh which I expect to hit in a few months. This way I can still enjoy the platform and the apps I’ve purchased over the past two years. And there’s simply no point in buying an iPad with 3G when I have a perfectly good, nearly new Verizon MiFi on a month-to-month 3G plan. That little gadget offers online capability to the iPad, iPod Touch, my netbooks, notebooks and more.

So goodbye for now iPhone. Maybe I’ll see you again real soon in a larger package!

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So far we’ve seen two examples of successful business models for adding wireless connectivity: buying service monthly from a cell phone company such as for a data card, or a device maker pricing the cost of wireless into the goods it sells as Amazon does on the Kindle. But buying additional subscriptions for a smarter photo frame or a connected navigation system hasn’t really panned out, never mind connected refrigerators. Consumers don’t want 20 different bills for wireless service associated with their devices, nor do they want a refrigerator that uses the T-Mobile network if they don’t have T-Mobile coverage at their home.

We’ve written about this problem before and touched on a possible solution: Wi-Fi. Personal hotspots that use the cellular network for connectivity and convert that signal to Wi-Fi are slowly creeping into the consumer world as a way to turn an iPod touch into an iPhone or merely replace a data card. That covers a range of devices with Wi-Fi chips on the go, and even in the car.

Inside a home, Wi-Fi is even easier to defend, as it’s a technology many already have. Your large appliances never leave the home, so Wi-Fi in a refrigerator or washing machine that talks to the WiFi-enabled box connected to the smart grid to monitor energy usage is a pretty safe bet for consumer appliance vendors to make. Why shell out the big bucks for a cellular connection for devices that stay home?

At a 4G conference in Florida, a Verizon executive gave a presentation outlining a possible use case by which GE would use LTE inside a refrigerator. The refrigerator could monitor things like the water filter, and through the LTE connection, offer broadband to a screen in the fridge and tell GE when the filter needed replacing. Then GE could ask the customer to click to buy a filter on the fridge. In a situation like that the consumer might pay for the access for broadband on the screen and GE might pay for the access to enable it to make more filter sales. That sounds great — for GE — but as a refrigerator-buying consumer, I’m not sold.

So while I’m glad to hear that device makers want to add connectivity to everything, I’m equally glad that they’re thinking hard about how to do it. Broadband will add value to a bunch of different devices, but it may not always have to come from the high-priced cellular network, especially inside the home. And if we are going to deliver it over the cell network, perhaps Wi-Fi is still the best way to go.

Image courtesy of Flickr user fihu

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