Jefferson Graham
USA Today

LOS ANGELES — Jia Shen wanted to make a big splash with his new photo-sharing site, RockYou, so he targeted users of social networks such as MySpace and Facebook.

RockYou’s pitch: easy-to-share slideshows and decorations, including floating hearts and glitter text.

Shen is clearly onto something. In May, red-hot social network Facebook added RockYou to the list of outside applications Facebook fans can add to their personal pages; 15 million have signed up.

RockYou is one of a new breed of photo-sharing sites that cater to young and savvy Web users. The top three in the category — Photobucket, Flickr and Slide — garner more than 50% of all photo-sharing traffic, according to measurement firm Hitwise.

RockYou is one of three kinds of photo-sharing sites on the Web. There’s the hip brand, with cool ways to doll up your photos and share them. Second category: traditional upload-and-print sites such as Shutterfly and Kodak, primarily aimed at selling photo merchandise. In a category all its own, the single community sites such as Yahoo’s Flickr, focused on sharing and interaction, with group comments.

Some sites say goodbye

With the changes in photoland, some traditional sites are struggling to remain relevant. Early next year, Sony will shut its ImageStation site. Two other familiar sites are closing down this month: Yahoo Photos on Sept. 20; and PhotoSite on Sept. 27.

Traditional upload-and-print Yahoo Photos saw its audience plummet to 3.5 million users in July 2007 from 8.6 million in July 2006, according to market tracker Nielsen//NetRatings. Yahoo is migrating most Yahoo Photos customers to Flickr, a more community-oriented photo-sharing site that has been a hit for Yahoo since it acquired it in March 2005. Flickr’s audience almost doubled year to year, to 11.1 million users this July from 6.3 million users in July 2006, says Nielsen.

At Flickr, members can showcase their work in large, impressive displays and post directly to blogs. Sites such as RockYou and Slide take it up a notch. RockYou invites members to share their work at Facebook, MySpace, eBay, blogs and newer social sites such as Bebo, Hi5, Tagged and Zorpia.

“The whole point of sharing is to be able to see your pictures all over the Internet, not on just one site,” says Shen, RockYou’s co-founder and chief technology officer. “We don’t want to keep you on our site; we want you to go to MySpace and Facebook, where your friends are.”

Sites in a ‘paradigm shift’

The market shift happened this year, with the new sites attracting mega-audiences.

“In the old days — like a year ago — you would upload pictures to a site to share with family and friends,” says Bill Tancer, general manager of research for Hitwise. “What’s happened in photo sharing is a clear paradigm shift from, ‘I have some photos to show some friends,’ to ‘I want everyone all over the Internet to see them.’ “

Traditional sites such as Kodak Gallery, Shutterfly and Snapfish will “have to find a way to play in the social networking space, to remain relevant,” says Tancer.

Publicly traded Shutterfly says it’s not worried about the changes among netizens. The social network audience is a younger demographic, and “they don’t buy prints,” says CEO Jeffrey Housenbold. “Our audience does.”

Even while next-generation sites dominate the charts, the explosion in digital photography and online display has paid off for Shutterfly, too. “Our audience has grown 50% year to year,” says Housenbold.

It’s about to grow even more. Sony is encouraging its ImageStation members to transfer all their images directly to Shutterfly.

Housenbold says he’s open to adding social networklike tools for his members, letting them share pictures all over the Web, with links to share on blogs and websites. “But it’s not something our users have asked for.”

Shutterfly’s revenue stream stems from prints and photo goods. Sites such as RockYou and Slide are looking to advertising.

Shen says he has agreements with NBC Universal and Sony to sponsor slideshows and other RockYou widgets, both on his site and within the photo window on other sites such as Facebook. He wouldn’t offer specifics.

RockYou grew while Yahoo, ImageStation and PhotoSite stumbled, because “the younger demo has no affiliations to older brands,” he says. “By targeting young people and the social networks, it allowed us to grow virally.”

RockYou does more than just share photos; it also offers horoscopes and quizzes. Shen says he envisions selling prints one day — just in a different way. A popular RockYou add-on is glitter text. “Our users will put glitter text on their prints, and turn them into their own creations,” he says. “The print isn’t dead; it’s just going to evolve.”

 

The North American online experience is like the >stone age

BLAINE HARDEN
Sun

TOKYO — Americans may have invented the Internet, but the Japanese are running away with it.

Broadband service here is eight to 30 times faster than in the United States — and considerably cheaper. Japan has the world’s fastest Internet connections, delivering more data at a lower cost than anywhere else, according to recent studies.

Accelerating broadband speed in this country — as well as in South Korea and much of Europe — is pushing open doors to Internet innovation that are likely to remain closed for years to come in much of the United States.

The speed advantage allows the Japanese to watch broadcastquality, full- screen television over the Internet, an experience that mocks the grainy, wallet- size images Americans endure.

Ultra- high- speed applications are being rolled out for low- cost, high- definition teleconferencing, for telemedicine — which allows urban doctors to diagnose diseases from a distance — and for advanced telecommuting to help Japan meet its goal of doubling the number of people who work from home by 2010.

For now and for at least the short term, these applications will be cheaper and probably better in Japan,” said Robert Pepper, senior managing director of global technology policy at Cisco Systems, the networking giant.

Japan has surged ahead of the United States on the wings of better wire and more aggressive government regulation, industry analysts say.

The copper wire used to hook up Japanese homes is newer and runs in shorter loops to telephone exchanges than in the U. S. This is partly a matter of geography and demographics: Japan is relatively small, highly urbanized and densely populated. But better wire is also a legacy of American bombs, which razed much of urban Japan during the Second World War and led to a wholesale rewiring of the country.

In 2000, the Japanese government seized its advantage in wire. In sharp contrast to the Bush administration over the same time period, regulators here compelled big phone companies to open up wires to upstart Internet providers.

In short order, broadband exploded. At first, it used the same DSL technology that exists in the United States. But because of the better, shorter wire in Japan, DSL service here is much faster. Ten to 20 times as fast, according to Pepper, one of the world’s leading experts on broadband infrastructure.

Indeed, DSL in Japan is often five to 10 times as fast as what is widely offered by U. S. cable providers, generally viewed as the fastest American carriers. >( Cable has not been much of a player in Japan.)

Perhaps more important, competition in Japan gave a kick in the pants to Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp., once a government- controlled enterprise and still Japan’s largest phone company. With the help of government subsidies and tax breaks, NTT launched a nationwide build- out of fibre optic lines to homes, making the lower- capacity copper wires obsolete.

>“ Obviously, without the competition, we would not have done all this at this pace,” said Hideki Ohmichi, NTT’s senior manager for public relations.

His company now offers speeds on fibre of up to 100 megabits per second — 17 times faster than the top speed generally available from U. S. cable. About 8.8 million Japanese homes have fibre lines — roughly nine times that of the U. S.

The burgeoning optical fibre system is hurtling Japan into an Internet future that >experts say Americans are unlikely to experience for at least several years.

Japan’s leap forward, as the U. S. has lost ground among industrialized countries in providing high- speed broadband connections, has frustrated American tech innovators.

>“ The experience of the last seven years shows that sometimes you need a strong federal regulatory framework to ensure that competition happens in a way that is constructive,” said Vinton G. Cerf, a vice- president at Google.

Japan’s lead in speed is worrisome because it will shift Internet innovation away from the United States, warns Cerf, who is widely credited with helping to invent some of the Internet’s basic architecture. >“ Once you have very high speeds, I guarantee that people will figure out things to do with it that they haven’t done before,” he said.

As a champion of Japanesestyle competition through regulation, Cerf supports >“ Net neutrality” legislation now pending in Congress.

Previously ‘unknown’ firm now No. 2 in flash-memory industry

Jim Jamieson
Province

What is it? Sansa Clip MP3 player

Price: $40 US (one GB) and $60 US (two GB)

Rating 4 of 5

Why you need it: You love listening to your tunes at the gym, but want a wearable player with a readable screen at the right price.

Why you don’t: You’re happy with your current player and size doesn’t matter to you.

Our rating: Four mice.

Flash memory maker SanDisk has been making life miserable for most of its competitors in the MP3 player market since entering the space with no prior experience a couple of years ago.

After all, SanDisk invented flash storage cards and is the world’s largest supplier of those products.

So it was natural to use its expertise in flash memory and pick up the audio technology that combines with it to make the most common MP3 players these days.

It’s no surprise that within 18 months, SanDisk went from an unknown in the flash-memory-player world to No. 2 behind

market dominator Apple.

Now, with the introduction of the Sansa Clip, SanDisk is really going after Apple and its iPod Shuffle, both in functionality and price point.

Designed for the fitness buff or traveller, the compact Clip — which comes with a clip to make it wearable — features an FM radio with ample presets and recorder, microphone and a bright OLED screen for easy navigation of tunes.

And the aforementioned price point doesn’t hurt, either, considering the Shuffle is $79 for one GB.

SanDisk says the rechargeable battery will supply up to 15 hours of life which, if you’re keeping track, trumps the Shuffle’s 12 hours.

Available at electronics retailers in Canada next month.

© The Vancouver Province 2007

 

Wendy Mclellan
Province

When Darci LaRocque sees someone using a BlackBerry, she can’t help watching them tap away on it, then asking whether they would like to learn a better way to perform the same task.

Her suggestions are always gratefully accepted.

“People think they know how to use their BlackBerry, but they don’t know how much there is to figure out,” she said.

LaRocque has read all the manuals and, after a couple years teaching executives at one Vancouver corporation how to use the addictive little machines, she has launched her own business offering training courses to companies and individuals who want to learn how to use the device more effectively.

“I live, eat and breathe BlackBerrys,” said LaRocque, president of Swirl Solutions. “I love training and watching people’s eyes light up when they figure out how to do things.”

LaRocque’s passion for BlackBerrys began three years ago when she was working in the IT department of a company that decided to give the wireless devices to 20 executives to see whether they were useful to people working away from the office. The pilot project was a huge success and the number of users in the company quickly rose to 400.

The executives got the BlackBerrys and LaRocque was responsible for helping them learn how to use them.

“They don’t come with instructions any more, but you can go online and look up the 200-page manual,” she said.

“Nobody reads the manual. Wherever I went in the office, executives would ask me about how to do things, so I decided to set up a training session on tips and tricks.”

LaRocque expected perhaps two dozen people would be interested. But the day she sent the e-mail invitation, 200 signed up. And when she started talking to IT staff in other companies, she found that while many companies provided BlackBerrys to employees, they weren’t teaching them how to use the devices.

It was the beginning of her new business. LaRocque started offering training sessions part-time while working at her IT job. As well as teaching people how to use the devices more efficiently, she also helps companies find cost-saving measures and set up policies for BlackBerry users.

This month, she started training as a full-time career.

“People seem to think BlackBerrys are just like a cellphone — some think it’s just for e-mail — but there’s a lot to learn. I teach time-saving, cost-saving ways to use them, and save time for the company help desk, too,” LaRocque said.

Vancouver clinical nurse specialist Elaine Unsworth, who took the training, said she learned “so many little things that made everything quicker.”

“I love my BlackBerry — I don’t know what I’d do without it,” she said. “I’m not truly addicted. I can turn it off. But I have it with me all the time.”

[email protected]

LITTLE DEVICE HAS ENDLESS ABILITIES

Darci LaRocque offers these tips:

– Typing “#TAXI” on any cellphone will call for a taxi anywhere in North America. But the call will cost you $1.25 plus applicable taxes and airtime according to your rate plan.

– The “Do Not Disturb” option under profiles will send calls directly to voice mail without ringing the phone. You shouldn’t even see the call coming in, but will be alerted when a new voice mail is received. Use during meetings.

– In an e-mail, type the letter “L” to “reply to all”. For Suretype Models, type the letter “A.”

– In an e-mail, type the letter “R” to reply just to the sender. For Suretype Models, type “Q.”

– If you lose your BlackBerry, the finder can call you if you filled out “owner information.” Look under “Options/Owner” and under the information area, write, “If lost, please call . . . “ and type in a number other than your BlackBerry number.

CANADIANS PLUGGED IN

Canadians are plugging in to technology with increasing frequency, according to a Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission report published last year:

– Nearly 75 per cent of households now have personal computers compared to 49 per cent in 1998;

– A quarter of Canadians say they spend 25 hours a week on the Internet;

– Sixty per cent used a cellphone in 2005;

– Twelve per cent own an MP3 player; and

– Three per cent have a BlackBerry.

Worldwide, BlackBerry says about eight million people subscribe to its mobile e-mail service and industry analysts forecast the number will more than double by 2009.

© The Vancouver Province 2007

 

Sun

IRobot Corp. wants to broaden the appeal of its Roomba cleaning robots by introducing a more durable model with twice as much vacuuming power. The new vacuum can clean the entire floor of a home every day for three to five years, says chief executive officer Colin Angle. And the $250 device has automatic-scheduling features that were only previously available only on more expensive models. It seems home robots aren’t as popular as industrial and military robots. So IRobot hopes to get more families on the Jetson bandwagon when it introduces new robots next month that are “designed to help you manage your home and take care of it.” Whew, how did we manage before?

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

Edward C. Baig
USA Today

A familiar late-summer scenario: Folks remove memory cards from digital cameras and insert them into kiosks at drugstores and neighborhood photo finishers. Minutes later, they take their vacation prints with them.

I’ve been printing snapshots of my own family’s recent beach vacation by inserting a card into a far smaller kiosk-style printer in my house. It’s the HP Photosmart A826 Home Photo Center that Hewlett-Packard launched Tuesday. The rather funky-shaped $249 printer, complete with touch-screen and stylus, hits stores early next month.

Indeed, the light-blue-and-white model is probably the oddest looking compact printer I’ve come across.

I liked the design but don’t expect it to appeal to everybody. The 5.5-pound contraption stands nearly 11 inches tall and wide, and you can almost envision it waddling off like a penguin. It boasts a 7-inch touch-sensitive screen you can draw on.

It’s large enough to show off pictures slide-show style. In fact, the printer can double as a digital photo frame. Because of the peculiar shape, though, I don’t expect many people to use it that way.

Instead, they’ll stick to its main purpose: printing. For the most part, the quality of images (on the advanced HP photo paper the company recommends you use) rivals the prints you receive from the local lab. HP says such fade-resistant prints are meant to last generations.

Check back with me in a few decades to see if the pictures stand the test of time.

I did run into some snags. And keep in mind that, as with any compact printer, you are mostly limited to smaller prints, typically 4-by-6 or 5-by-7. This latest model can also handle panoramic 4-by-12 paper, as well as photo sticker paper and index cards.

But it’s an inappropriate choice for those who want to blow up large images or who need a printer for standard non-photography-related 8½-by-11 tasks.

A closer look:

•The basics. You can connect the printer to a PC or Mac via USB, though it’s not necessary. It’s simpler to insert memory cards into open slots on the front. The printer can handle Secure Digital, CompactFlash, Memory Stick and xD-Picture Cards, among other types. You can also print wirelessly off a Bluetooth-capable computer or phone through an optional $39 adapter.

The machine uses a single tricolor inkjet cartridge, which you slip into a compartment on the front.

While the internal paper tray can hold a batch of 100 sheets of same-size paper (you can’t load 4-by-6 and 5-by-7 sheets simultaneously), the cartridge will more than likely give way before the supply of paper is exhausted.

HP says you’ll get about 55 4-by-6 images off a single cartridge, which is not all that many. I was able to print 25 4-by-6 and 15 5-by-7 images before receiving a low-ink degradation warning. And the last few pictures I printed before receiving the warning came out darkish.

The company also says ink/paper costs amount to 29 cents per 4-by-6 photo, if you purchase a $35, 120-sheet value pack (containing two cartridges) at hpshopping.com.

You’ll pay $15 for a 60-sheet pack of 5-by-7 paper. Ink cartridges fetch about $20. Actual results will vary, of course, depending on the type of pictures you print.

It took about 75 seconds to spit out each of the smaller snapshots in my tests and not quite double that time to produce larger prints. Pictures are deposited onto an output tray folded out in front.

•Touch-screen tricks. Though no substitute for more robust editing on a computer, you can use the printer’s touch-screen to doctor photos. You can crop pictures, remove red-eye and automatically sharpen, brighten and improve the contrast.

With a stylus or your finger, you can draw on photos, a nifty feature, though the slippery screen makes it a tad difficult. You can change the color and line thickness of your scribbles or erase them before printing.

You can also use an onscreen keyboard to create albums, add captions or apply sepia, black-and-white and other effects. And you can add simple clip art and frames to pictures, though I wished for a bigger selection.

•Paper woes. Loading paper involves lifting a lid on the top, gently pushing an internal tray backward, and sliding a paper-width guide inside. It’s a surprisingly awkward and flimsy operation. I fretted about breaking something.

A couple of times, I received out-of-paper warnings when there was still paper in the tray. Another time, the whole printer shook menacingly until I received an onscreen warning to “load paper face forward along the left edge.”

Worse, I received a “blue screen” with an error code reminiscent of the type you sometimes get with Windows computers. The blue screen disappeared by itself, and I was able to resume printing.

Such problems aside, the new machine has several welcoming features for people who want to print snapshots, including the large touch display and funky but appealing design.

I’d be more cheerful if it offered greater ink capacity, was smoother on paper handling and less expensive.

Beware of mail warning you’re in a scandalous video; it’s a ploy to turn your computer into a ‘zombie’ to spread spam

Gillian Shaw
Sun

Viewing this YouTube video could be dangerous to your computer’s health.

That’s a warning from the technology security specialists at Sophos, who are tracking the latest virus outbreak being delivered through malicious e-mails — purporting to be links to YouTube videos — with such enticing subjects as: “Dude, what if your wife finds this?”

Security experts expect the current virus attack could precede a repeat of the massive pump-and-dump stock e-mail spam that occurred earlier this summer.

The e-mails that are currently flooding inboxes pretend to be from friends warning the recipient they are on YouTube in some scandalous video.

“I cant believe you put this video online. This video of you is all over the net. See for yourself,” reads one warning in the bogus e-mails.

However, when the recipient clicks on the link expecting to see themselves online, the action triggers a virus which takes over the computer, turning it into a so-called “zombie” that can be used to help spread more spam.

“What it is, is a method of engaging the user into downloading a variant of the Storm virus,” said Ron O’Brien, senior security analyst with Sophos.

O’Brien said the latest virus outbreak follows what would be considered by virus writers as a wildly successfully e-card campaign earlier this summer that saw computers infected when people clicked on a link purporting to be an electronic greeting card.

O’Brien said that method of delivery has faltered as awareness of it has spread. The latest technique is designed to replace it, as a means of building up more armies of infected, or zombie, computers.

“Think of the spam that sets up the infrastructure as being kind of the initial cycle,” he said. “Then, what they are able to do is they can rent out those [zombie] networks.

“We saw that infrastructure being put in place over the Fourth of July [weekend], followed by one of the largest pump-and-dump scams in history.”

O’Brien said the current virus outbreak could be aimed at repeating that performance.

“It does suggest very strongly that if the campaign is successful those newly infected computers could be used to conduct an even larger spam campaign,” he said.

Pump-and-dump spam schemes use unsolicited e-mail to tout a company’s stock, reaping profits for its instigators who unload cheap stock. After pumping the price with their hype, the stock sellers dump their shares and investors are left with worthless stock.

O’Brien said the back-to-school season is also a busy time for Internet fraudsters, who take the advantage of the fact that many young people are starting to use their computers after a summer off, or are heading off to school with new computers. While updated anti-virus software can detect and block the latest viruses, O’Brien said many users don’t have these protection programs on their computers.

“With kids going back to school, a lot are trading e-mail addresses for the first time,” he said. “It is highly likely the intended audience for this campaign is young people.

“Like the back-to-school shopping phenomenon, there is a back-to-school ‘malware‘ phenomenon as well.”

This week’s virus is just the sort of attack Surrey-based Wizard IT Services is fighting with its latest anti-spam project SpamRats.com. SpamRats identifies the source sending out spam and “blacklists” the senders, creating an automatic block that stops malicious and unsolicited e-mail before it gets on an e-mail server.

Michael Peddemors, president and chief executive of Wizard IT, a company that specializes in anti-spam technologies for Internet service providers and telecom companies, said SpamRats is more effective than filtering when it comes to stopping spam.

“As far as we’re concerned, spam can be stopped. But it can’t be stopped with filtering. . . . Spammers are always going to find a way around it,” he said.

Peddemors said SpamRats, which blocks spam e-mail from even entering into the mail system of an ISP or a company, saves money in terms of lightening the load on bandwidth and computing resources.

“It is like somebody knocking on your door saying, ‘We want to give you this letter.’ We’re saying, ‘We’re not taking it. Don’t give it to me. Nobody is home to you.’

“It saves on bandwidth and on the number of servers that are needed.”

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

Sun

NEW YORK — Yahoo Inc., the most popular provider of Web-based e-mail in the U.S., added a feature that lets users send free messages directly to mobile phones. The new service will debut today, the California-based company said in a statement. Customers will be able to send messages to mobile phones in the U.S., Canada, India and the Philippines. Yahoo Mail and its biggest competitors, Google Inc.’s Gmail and Microsoft Corp.’s Hotmail, are adding features to attract and keep users. Yahoo is the first of the three to offer free text messages, after adding more storage and instant messaging in February to match some features provided by its rivals. While revenue generated from e-mail is “not significant,” the service is important because it attracts people to Yahoo’s sites. Yahoo’s new program also lets customers send instant messages to users of Yahoo Messenger and Microsoft’s Windows Live Messenger, and Yahoo said it has made the e-mail service faster and added new search functions.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

Paul Davidson
USA Today

Solar power has long been the Mercedes-Benz of the renewable energy industry: sleek, quiet, low-maintenance.

Yet like a Mercedes, solar energy is universally adored but prohibitively expensive for most people. A 4-kilowatt solar photovoltaic system costs about $34,000 without government rebates or tax breaks.

As a result, solar power accounts for well under 1% of U.S. electricity generation. Other alternative energy sources, such as wind, biomass and geothermal, are far more widely deployed.

The outlook for solar, though, is getting much brighter. A few dozen companies say advances in technology will let them halve the price of solar-panel installations in as little as three years. By 2014, solar-system prices will be competitive with conventional electricity when energy savings are figured in, Deutsche Bank  says. And that’s without government incentives.

If that happens, solar panels would become common home and business appliances, says Brandon Owens of Cambridge Energy Research Associates.

Innovations — led by semiconductor firms and a new crop of “thin-film” solar makers — wring more power from sunlight, use less silicon to make panels and make factories more efficient.

Venture-capital firms pumped $264 million into solar companies in 2006, up from $64 million in 2004, research firm Clean Edge says. The start-ups also have benefited from $159 million in U.S. research grants this year, largesse from efforts to reduce power plants’ global-warming emissions.

Sharp price swings

High costs of solar panels have been due to volatile silicon prices, low production volumes and high setup costs.

Solar panels generate electricity when photons in sunlight knock loose electrons in silicon — the same material used in PC chips. The silicon is sandwiched between two metal plates; electrons flow from one to the other.

Several years ago, SunPower, a unit of Cypress Semiconductor, (CY) realized the top metal plate was reflecting the sun’s rays, cutting efficiency by reducing the percentage of sunlight converted to electricity. So the company decided to put both plates beneath the silicon. It now has an industry-high efficiency of 22% vs. an average of 16%, says analyst Dan Ries of Monness, Crespi Hardt & Co. That means fewer panels are needed to produce power, shaving installation costs and making systems more affordable for homes, which have smaller roofs than most commercial buildings.

SunPower, which says it will earn about $90 million on $740 million in sales this year, expects its prices to be competitive with grid power by 2012, says Vice President Julie Blunden.

Also poised to stir up the market is Applied Materials, the No. 1 producer of machines that make computer chips. It charged into the industry last year by paying $464 million for solar maker Applied Films. Now, it’s transferring to solar the efficiencies it brought to flat-panel TV and laptop manufacturing. Its machines carve an ultra-thin solar cell into a giant, 55-square-foot sheet of glass to slash production and setup costs.

“We want to get demand going,” says Applied CEO Mike Splinter.

Like wind power, solar energy is spotty, working at full capacity an average 20% to 30% of the time. Solar’s big advantage is that it supplies the most electricity midday, when demand peaks. And it can be located at homes and businesses, reducing the need to build pollution-belching power plants and unsightly transmission lines.

In states such as California, with high electricity prices and government incentives, solar is already a bargain for some customers. Wal-Mart recently said it’s putting solar panels on more than 20 of its stores in California and Hawaii. Google  is blanketing its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters with 9,212 solar panels, enough to light 1,000 homes.

Burning demand

The solar industry is expected to triple in the next three years, from about $13 billion to $40 billion in revenue, says analyst Jesse Pichel of Piper Jaffray. Turbocharging sales are government incentives in countries such as Germany and Japan. In the USA, generous customer rebates in California and New Jersey — by far the largest U.S. solar markets — along with a federal tax credit have trimmed system prices by a third or more.

Most states don’t offer solar rebates, but prices still have fallen about 90% since the mid-1980s — 40% annually the past five years — as surging sales have led to cost efficiencies, says Rhone Resch, head of the Solar Energy Industries Association. Now, experts say it will take a quantum technological leap to quickly lower prices to utility levels. An armada of companies say they are poised to do just that:

•Traditional solar makers. This group, which includes SunPower, relies on standard silicon wafers as a semiconductor. They make up more than 90% of the solar industry. Some are using less silicon, because electricity is produced only in the top layer.

Evergreen Solar uses two ribbons to finely shape molten silicon. Others cut silicon into wafers, losing up to half insilicon sawdust. Evergreen’s method eliminates the waste.

Sharp, the No. 1 manufacturer, takes a different tack, slashing setup costs by bundling panels with racks that attach them to roofs.

•Concentrating photovoltaic makers. They use lenses or mirrors to magnify sunlight. SolFocus‘ mirrors concentrate sunlight 500 times, letting them use a fraction of the semiconductor found in standard panels. But the systems don’t work on cloudy days and require cumbersome trackers to follow the sun, making them suitable only for utilities and big industrial customers.

•Thin-film manufacturers. They have achieved the lowest costs by layering 1% of the semiconductor in regular panels on sheets of glass. They often use material that’s cheaper than silicon. That’s a big advantage, because a worldwide silicon shortage has pushed up prices. First Solar’s (FSLR) production costs are $1.19 per watt of generating power vs. $2.80 for traditional solar systems. It says it will hit about $1 a watt, the price of building conventional power plants, by 2010. The start-up has contracts for $4 billion through 2012.

Another start-up, Nanosolar, embeds tiny semiconductor particles in ink, helping it churn out panels as easily as a printing press. And United Solar Ovonic deposits its semiconductor on flexible sheets of stainless steel that look like rolls of film and can be pasted on roofs at low cost.

One caveat: Thin-film panels are about half as efficient as standard systems. Thus, they need more space and are mostly geared to utilities and businesses.

Owens cautions that reaching grid-like prices could take longer than solar makers vow. States with more sunlight and higher power rates could get there sooner. Makers “have been promising the moon for a long, long time.”

 

Sun

1. Cyber Snipa Warboard, $70 US

A gaming keyboard for the serious warrior, the Warboard comes from Australia‘s gaming product maker, Cyber Snipa. It has intelligent macro programmable keys that let gamers set them as hotkeys for any combination or sequence of keystrokes, mouse movements and mouse clicks. That means hitting a single key can produce repetitive actions accurately and much more efficiently than a gamer could carry them out by hitting a combination of keys and mouse clicks. There are 10 macro keys but they each can handle two profiles, extending the number of assignable macro keys to 20. It has a full set of 17 replaceable combat keys, with symbols such as knives, pistols and submachineguns — giving the Warboard a certain cachet at gaming parties. Online at www.cybersnipa.com and through North American retailers listed on the site.

2. Upek Eikon Digital Privacy Manager, $40 US

We realize home computing may not have the same security imperatives as say, the airport, but keeping all those passwords in mind is more than we care to manage. So biometric authentication technology is the answer for the memory overload; and thanks to Upek, you can add a USB fingerprint reader with the same Protector Suite QLT software that is on millions of notebook PCs to your home computer. The software that comes bundled with it works with Windows Vista, XP Home and Professional, 2003 and 2000 operating systems. Available at www.upek.com/eikon.

3. SmartShopper, $150 US

By the time you get out the door to run errands or buy groceries, you have forgotten half the items on your list, or you lose it. The SmartShopper does away with those scraps of paper and replaces them with state-of-the-art voice recognition technology that notes every grocery item or errand you want to record. It even categorizes them for quick reference when you’re shopping. Press print as you head out the door and the list — complete with the quantities you need — will be ready to go. A useful item for parents sending their kids out the door with a ready-made list. Available at www.smartshopperusa.com

4. Solio universal hybrid charger, $120 Cdn

Charge from the sun or from a wall socket, the Solio will store energy in its internal rechargeable battery and power all your gadgets from mobile phones to iPods to digital cameras to game players and GPS devices. One hour of sun produces enough power to run your iPod for an hour, and it will provide about 25 minutes of talk time on most mobile phones. A great source of emergency power when you’re away from the grid. And it comes with interchangeable power tips, so you can power multiple gadgets with a single charger. Available at www.solio.com.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007