Coupled with the markets T-Mobile has already upgraded, it has a new HSPA+ network running in the PCS 1900 MHz in 37 cities, including many of the country’s largest. T-Mobile isn’t updating its coverage figure for the overhauled network, but these new markets will add considerable numbers to its last count of 100 million people covered.

T-Mobile will begin selling the iPhone sometime next year, but in the interim it has been trying to lure customers with unlocked iPhones over to its network. Its biggest obstacle, however, was the fact that its old network configuration could only supply the iPhone with 2G speeds. By relocating its HSPA+ from the Advanced Wireless Service (AWS) to the PCS band, it can now link to the iPhone’s 3G radios, but T-Mobile also clears up space for its LTE launch next year.

Update: Interestingly enough, T-Mobile customers won’t be the only ones benefiting from this upgrade. T-Mobile mobile virtual network operator Solavei said it would take advantage of its wholesaler’s reconfigured network to support the iPhone as well. Like T-Mobile it won’t sell the iPhone, but it will sell a micro or nano-SIM that fits into an unlocked iPhone and allows customers to take advantage of its $49 unlimited voice, text and data plans. Other MVNOs like Straight Talk already offer similar iPhone SIM activations, though they work mainly on AT&T’s HSPA network. Now that the reconfiguration is well underway, expect more MVNOs to start offering iPhone support over the T-Mobile network soon.

Here is the full description of the new upgraded markets from T-Mobile’s blog:

• New York, including The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island
• Newark, N.J., including the surrounding cities of East Orange, Elizabeth, Jersey City, North Bergen, Paterson and Union City
• Boston and Cambridge, Mass., including the surrounding cities of Amherst, Andover, Arlington, Bedford, Belmont, Billerica, Braintree, Brockton, Brookline, Burlington, Canton, Chelmsford, Chelsea, Chicopee, Dedham, Everett, Framingham, Hadley, Holbrook, Holyoke, Lawrence, Lexington, Lowell, Ludlow, Lynn, Malden, Marblehead, Medford, Melrose, Metheun, Milton, Nahant, Natick, Needham, Newton, Quincy, Reading, Revere, Salem, Saugus, Sommerville, Stoneham, Swampscott, Tewksbury, Wakefield, Walpole, Waltham, Watertown, Weston, Westwood, Weymouth, Wilmington, Winchester, Winthrop and Woburn
• Springfield, Mass.
• Providence, R.I., including the surrounding cities of Cranston, North Providence, Pawtucket and Warren
• Philadelphia
• Detroit and Warren, Mich., including the surrounding cities of Dearborn, Romulus, Royal Oak, Sterling Heights and Troy
• Dallas, including the surrounding cities of Arlington, Carrolton, The Colony, Denton, Farmers Branch, Flower Mound, Frisco, Garland, Grand Prairie, Irving, Lancaster, Lewisville, McKinney, Mesquite, Plano, Richardson, Rowlett and Southlake
• Fort Worth, Texas, including the surrounding cities of Keller and Mansfield
• Austin, Texas including the surrounding city of Round Rock
• San Antonio
• Tampa, Fla., including the surrounding cities of Clearwater, Largo, Safety Harbor, St. Petersburg and Vinoy Park

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• 2012: Data, spectrum and the race to LTE
• Mobile 2012 and beyond
• Takeaways from mobile’s second quarter

The site allows users to find their town on a map and then customize their own local feed with sources from categories like news, tech and entertainment. It is launching with content in 60 cities and a total of 1900 providers – but don’t be surprised if you feel like you’ve seen some of these videos before. Glocal is seeding its site with a lot of content pulled from YouTube, but Cavalieri told me that the goal is to eventually sign up publishers for their own site and get their content exclusively.

So why should publishers decide to put their videos on Glocal, and not YouTube? Cavalieri told me that he thinks local content gets lost on the Google-owned video site. He also believes that he can unlock content from local publishers that have been hesitant to put their assets online, in part because he wants to help them monetize it through a yet-to-be-launched ad network aimed at local advertisers. “Our platform is more conductive to monetization than YouTube,” he said.

Glocal was built by a team of four, and has been backed with a $1 million seed round by Compuware Ventures. Does a small, scrappy startup from Detroit have a chance to compete with the big boys? To be honest, I’m sceptical. However, the local focus of the site is a good reminder that online video doesn’t have to be about those big success stories that are popular everywhere.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Controversy, courtrooms and the cloud in Q1
• Connected Consumer Market Overview, Q2 2010
• Frenemy mine: The pros and cons of social partnerships for online media companies

The latest Twitter satellite office will make its home in a coworking space in the historic M@dison Building, a redesigned former theater that sells itself as “industrial chic” and is home to a handful of other startups. The move puts Twitter in interesting company with a small band of forwarding thinking companies applying the coworking concept, Shareable reports, citing examples from across the pond:

Twitter is only the latest in a small but powerful group of corporations that are dabbling in coworking. Mozilla recently opened its new ‘Moz Space‘ in London, welcoming both Mozilla staff and visitors who need a place to work. Also in London, Google recently opened the doors of its start-up incubator, called ‘Campus,’ which will serve as a “coworking and events space.”

Here in the U.S. always innovative Zappos is also experimenting with coworking in Las Vegas. But being down with coworking isn’t the only way Twitter is bang on trend with the move. Detroit, long more of a cautionary tale of everything that can go wrong with a city, is now in the midst of a renaissance of sorts, attracting tech start-ups and incubators, as well as urban hipsters looking for cheap housing and a scene on the upswing, according to the New York Times. “We’re happy to play a role in downtown Detroit’s digital renaissance,” Twitter president of global revenue Adam Bain said.

Will we see many more companies jumping on the coworking bandwagon in the future?

Image courtesy of Flickr user magerleagues.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Millennials in the enterprise, part 1: strategies for supporting the new digital workforce
• A 2011 NewNet Forecast
• What Enterprise Software Vendors Could Learn from the Consumer Space

Some of the biggest mistakes I’ve made in my professional life have been personal ones. There have been times when I’ve jumped the gun and made an incorrect assumption about a person or situation, sent the occasional indelicate email written in haste, or gone into a meeting in a grumpy mood. It’s not a pretty story, but one that needs to be told.

“When we are upset, we’re stupid,” says Randy Martin, a long-time executive coach. “So as a general rule, it’s never a good idea to communicate by phone, email or in person when angry or frustrated.” No kidding.

But despite my occasional bad behavior (and let’s tell the truth — who among us has not fallen off the courteous co-worker wagon from time to time?), I’ve had enough training and practice to know how to recover when I slip and fall on the road to interpersonal excellence.

As a consultant, I’ve seen my share of bad bosses throwing hissy fits, co-workers engaged in desk rage and customers going crazy — usually in the name of “getting the job done.” But does this justification really hold up? Not according to recent research.

In one August 2009 study, Wayne Hochwarter of the Florida State University College of Business asked more than 1,200 employees to provide opinions regarding the narcissistic tendencies of their immediate supervisor. Of those, 31 percent reported that their boss is prone to exaggerating his or her accomplishments to look good in front of others; 27 percent reported that their boss brags to others to get praise; 24 percent reported that their boss was self-centered; and 20 percent reported that their boss will do a favor only if guaranteed one in return.

“Having a narcissistic boss creates a toxic environment for virtually everyone who must come in contact with this individual,” Hochwarter said. “The team perspective ceases to exist, and the work environment becomes increasingly stressful. Productivity typically plummets as well.”

And the negative impact of poor people skills is not just reserved for those in charge. One survey of 1,500 workers by Christine Pearson at UNC-Chapel Hill found that 12 percent of staff surveyed had quit a job at some point to avoid nasty people at work and 45 percent were thinking about doing so. Moreover, more than half of those interviewed reported losing time at work worrying about other people’s rude behavior toward them.

So if all these anti-people attitudes and actions have a negative impact on productivity, does it stand to reason that having good people skills can make you more productive? The answer is a resounding “Yes.”

As part of the research for the second edition of his upcoming book, “250 Best-Paying Jobs,” Laurence Shatkin identified the skills associated with occupations with higher income. They included:

• Active Listening: The ability to listen to what other people are saying and asking questions as appropriate.
• Persuasion: The ability to enlist others to see and approach things differently.
• Negotiation: The ability to bring others together to try and reconcile differences.
• Teaching: The ability to impart to others how to do something.
• Social Perceptiveness: Being aware of others’ reactions and understanding why they react the way they do.

These are people skills, one and all. But beyond the benefits of bringing home the bigger bucks, Ben Leichtling, PhD and author of “How to Stop Bullies in Their Tracks,” says that good personal skills have the power to make your job easier as well.

“Having the support of other good people you work with is part of what makes us productive,” says Leichtling. “In fact, the Department of Labor Statistics estimates that workers and managers spend half to two-thirds of their time dealing with people problems. The bottom line is that good people skills reduce the people crap you have to deal with,” he says.

An aptitude for working with others is so important that the month of September has officially been declared International People Skills Month. So make a commitment to hone your people skills and play nice with the other kids in the company or customer sandbox. You may just find that it makes you not only popular, but more productive.

Has improving your people skills aided your productivity?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Personal tools lead to practical business
• 12 tech leaders’ resolutions for 2012
• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution

How easy it is to forget that everything we use and talk about every day now — just one year later — didn’t have a set of agreed-upon terms. I thought I’d share some slides from my old presentation to show how difficult it is to come up with ways to describe the tools that we use.

I discussed what I called Social Media Aggregation Broadcasting Tools or SABTs. I defined SABTs as third-party applications that allow you to both aggregate and broadcast messages — or status updates — to your other networks.

I divided those into four categories:

1. Active
2. Passive
3. Niche
4. Integrated

So here is how I grouped applications that were available last summer:

Active SABTs were the applications that let you actively broadcast your updates to multiple networks. At the time, Ping.fm was still in private beta by invitation only.

Passive SABTs were the applications that you could add to your blog to allow others to update update their own social networks. All you had to do was make those links available to your readers and provide content worth sharing. Then you could sit back while others shared your content with their friends, fans and followers.

Niche SABTs were the applications that began popping up that were exclusive to a single network. The most common were the clients being developed for Twitter to make it easier to tweet without having to constantly visit the web site to access your account.

Integrated SABTs were the built-in broadcasting features that some of the social networks were adding on as integrated features.

Despite the chuckle that I got when I read my earnest attempt at crafting these terms, I actually feel that my theories still hold up. My attempt to “name” these tools was definitely more than a little awkward, but the intention was clear.

We are all facing a huge influx of apps and tools that we are struggling to understand, to learn how to use, and to integrate into our everyday work.

Seeing how far we’ve come in less than a year’s time is not just amusing — it is downright fascinating.

What are some of the ways you explained social media “back in the day” that gives you a little chuckle today?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• 12 tech leaders’ resolutions for 2012
• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution
• Millennials in the enterprise, part 1: strategies for supporting the new digital workforce

Most electric vehicles now in the works remain at least a year away from production, and further still from profitability. But a growing number of automakers in Europe, Japan and the U.S. are betting that the energy storage component — whether lithium-ion or nickel-hydride — will become a lucrative sideline in a next-generation automotive industry. Moves by companies including Toyota, Daimler, Nissan and Tesla Motors, which aim to supply third-party automakers with battery packs and chargers, may represent some of the first signs of real revenue in the high-tech vehicle market.

As one of the only major automakers to produce its own batteries, Toyota could have an advantage in an electrified vehicle market if battery supply fails to keep up with increasing demand. On the one hand, it could keep the technology for its own use and let other automakers struggle with the shortages Toyota experienced last year. But according to Executive Vice President Masatami Takimoto, Toyota sees an opportunity for new revenue through selling battery packs to rival plug-in hybrid makers. It’s not alone. Nissan said last month that it plans to roll out enough batteries to equip 200,000 electric and hybrid vehicles annually within the next several years (2011 or later) through a joint venture with NEC Global.

Competition for a piece of the next-gen auto supply pie is not limited to big industry players — not least of all because the Department of Energy’s Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing incentives program has made grants and direct loans available for making batteries and other components for electric, hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles.

Silicon Valley startup Tesla Motors, maker of the luxury electric Roadster sports car, has drummed up business with Daimler AG for its battery packs and chargers. Under an agreement revealed at this year’s Detroit Auto Show, Tesla will supply the German automaker with components for a 1,000-vehicle test fleet of electric Smart cars scheduled to hit U.S. roads in 2010 — the startup’s first such deal with a third-party manufacturer.

By way of contrast, rival startup Fisker Automotive plans to stay out of the supply business at least until it secures a market foothold. The company has not reached production for its plug-in hybrid Fisker Karma, and it sees the model’s exclusive powertrain and battery pack from Quantum Technologies as a competitive advantage – and key to getting the vehicle to market fast. “Once we get this to market in numbers,” said Fisker spokesperson Russell Datz in an interview, “plans may change.”

Daimler, which plans to launch an electric version of not only the subcompact Smart, but also a Mercedes sedan, has other pots brewing. The company sources nickel-metal hydride battery packs from Cobasys and lithium-ion packs from Continental AG for its hybrids. But Daimler also owns 90 percent of a joint venture launched two months ago with Germany’s Evonik Industries AG to develop lithium-ion batteries — for its own vehicles and, eventually, third-party manufacturers.

To be sure, components sidelines offer nothing close to a silver bullet for today’s automakers. Many parts manufacturers have come to the brink of bankruptcy as automakers cut production and lenders refuse credit to those doing business with Detroit’s beleaguered Big Three.

At least one of the Big Three could have had a hefty piece of the now-hot battery market. A first-mover in the sector, GM started building sideline nickel-metal hydride business (similar to the one envisioned by Daimler) 15 years ago. But GM ended up selling its stake in a battery venture to Texaco (later acquired by Chevron). Called GM Ovonic, the joint venture with a subsidiary of Michigan’s Energy Conversion Devices launched in 1994 to commercialize nickel-metal hydride batteries for electric vehicles.

Toyota entered the picture two years later with the joint venture Panasonic EV Energy. The company now gets about 70 percent of all hybrid battery sales (most of them nickel-metal hydride batteries for Toyota’s Prius), which customers including Ford, Nissan, and GM itself. GM failed to parlay battery technology licensing and sales into significant revenue, and gave up on its energy storage sideline after a few short years — handing the market to Toyota. In a few years, Daimler, Tesla or Nissan may be ready to give it a run for its money.

Photo of Toyota Prius battery courtesy of Toyota.

This article also appeared on BusinessWeek.com.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Ups and downs for cleantech in Q1
• Electric vehicle outlook: 2012–2017
• Flash analysis: the Fisker debacle and its implications on investing, innovation, and government incentives

A few years ago I retrofitted my home to run mostly on solar power, and was rewarded for doing so with a generous subsidy that amounted to about half the cost of the system. Such subsidies did much to stimulate demand for solar technology, and are being phased out as the industry approaches parity with other power sources.

A similar program could enable us to get a “two-for-one” deal by stimulating demand for electric and serial hybrid vehicles, while also rewarding car companies for ramping up their production capacity. While electric vehicles are more economically viable than they were in the 1990s, they are still substantially more expensive than conventional cars. In a severe recession, demand for new vehicles overall will soften, and for expensive vehicles, even more so.

Of course, there are already subsidy programs of various types for green vehicles, and the recently proposed stimulus package includes $200 million for grant program for electric vehicles. But this idea is meant to encourage people to book orders now, so manufacturers can book revenue in 2009 and invest in production in 2010 and beyond, essentially a way of breaking the bottleneck that’s caused car sales to drop like a rock this past year.

One way to get around this chicken-or-the-egg dilemma is to create a rebate program where customers can book orders for electric and serial hybrids for future delivery, with the government providing a substantial subsidy to encourage consumers to book orders. The program could work something like this:

• The customer books an order, making a small downpayment that may be spread over the time from order to delivery, zero down if they have good credit.
• The government pays 25 percent of its rebate to the car manufacturer on signing, the remaining 75 percent on delivery.
• The customer starts paying the remainder of the balance on delivery, of course, and has the option to transfer the order to someone else if they are unable to afford the vehicle at delivery.
• The car maker’s risk of producing too many vehicles is offset by the initial 25 percent payment (although this risk is probably minimal since these vehicles will still be in scarce supply relative to other classes).

The logic here is to encourage people to book orders for vehicles that will not be delivered in quantity before 2010 or later, but also not defer the decision because they are unable to buy a vehicle now or are concerned that they may be out of work in the future. A program like this would be a simple way to jump-start orders, finance investments in electric and plug-in hybrid vehicle production, and immediately put people to work in the auto industry. It would also give auto companies the ability to forecast actual demand for these vehicles, and encourage them to accelerate their migration to electric/hybrid platforms. What it would not do is reward them for simply doing more of the same — the biggest risk of any blank-check approach.

The auto industry can and should become more like that of technology. Rewarding technological innovation like this could do a lot to push the industry in the right direction while encouraging the car companies to invest in facilities and people in the near-term to ramp up for mass production when the economy recovers in 2010 and beyond.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Flash analysis: the Fisker debacle and its implications on investing, innovation, and government incentives
• Cleantech first-quarter 2013 analysis and outlook
• The fourth quarter of 2012 in cleantech

So how’s YouTube doing with this first attempt? I just fired up my Wii to give it a test drive, and here’s my quick take:

The YouTube site has been optimized for the TV, stripped down to its bare essentials; that’s good. I especially like how video thumbnails “pop up” when you move your Wiimote cursor over them. It seems as though the “high quality” viewing option that you often get on the web version isn’t available (I couldn’t access it for videos I know have it), and that’s not so good — especially since you’re supposed to be watching from your couch.

You can log into your YouTube account to see videos you’ve uploaded or that were recommended by your contacts, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to access your account’s messaging system. You can search for videos by keyword, but I couldn’t find a way to filter out the results based on view count, rating, etc. And this may be false causality, but while a YouTube video was playing and I hit “Back” on my Wii’s Opera browser, the screen froze and the entire console locked up — an extremely rare occurrence.

All in all, then, it’s a potentially fun YouTube feature that has a lot of room for improvement. (Then again, that’s why they call it beta.) It’s pretty good for casual viewing if you’re not too picky about what you watch, but right now, I’d say your better bet is Stumbleupon’s video channel for the Wii. At the moment, the best way to use YouTube’s “TV Website” might be to create a playlist of videos on your PC first. Then, when you’ve got your popcorn ready, sit down and watch them from your couch.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Who and what to watch in the new era of the living room
• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution
• Connected Consumer 2011: Rise of the Virtual Video Operator

General Motors

“It’s temporarily on hold as we assess our cash situation,” GM spokesperson Sharon Basel told the Detroit Free Press today. “I don’t think it’s a surprise that we’re studying and reviewing everything given the position we’re in.” Nor would it be a surprise if GM is using the Flint plant for leverage in its emergency loan negotiations with the White House, as suggested on the GM-Volt blog today:

There are now less than 10 business days left in this month of December that GM said it would be out of cash by the end of without a federal loan.

It may very well be up to President Bush and Treasury Secretary Paulson to decide whether the Volt will make it in November 2010 as we’ve all been waiting for.

Basel told MSNBC she didn’t know if the Volt assembly plant in Detroit-Hamtramck would also be delayed. She emphasized that the company still plans to roll the fuel-efficient Chevies into showrooms by 2010, and said a small engine factory in Austria is one of “lots of options” GM has for producing the Volt and Cruze engines. Flint Mayor Don Williamson said in the local Journal that GM may use an existing plant in Flint to save $150 million compared with the $370 million investment required for the all-new facility.

In the meantime, GM opened its eighth vehicle plant in China and and ramped up production of Chevrolet Aveos in Mexico this week. But it’s not the only company pausing green vehicle projects. Factory construction for another electric car, Tesla’s Model S, is also on hold pending government aid. And facing its first sales decline in 13 years, Toyota said on Monday it will stop work on a Prius plant in Mississippi whose construction is 90 percent complete.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Ups and downs for cleantech in Q1
• Waiting for the EV market to materialize
• Flash analysis: the Fisker debacle and its implications on investing, innovation, and government incentives

Fisker last month finalized plans for Valmet Automotive of Finland to assemble the Karma when it reaches full-scale production. Today the Irvine, Calif.-based startup slightly narrowed its window for entering the next phase, delivery to North American showrooms, saying it expects to begin that in November of 2009, compared with the fourth-quarter time line laid out in previous announcements.

As we’ve noted before, that’s an ambitious schedule. Manufacturing and production — things Detroit’s Big Three have had decades to master — can prove to be a minefield of delays for green car startups.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Flash analysis: the Fisker debacle and its implications on investing, innovation, and government incentives
• Cleantech first-quarter 2013 analysis and outlook
• Tesla’s Model X could make the electric SUV a hit