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Kamen believes the devices could be built for less than $2,Cartier Watches,000 each once they get into mass production. The trick, of course, is getting them into mass production.

“We need smart people to focus on the real issues,” Kamen said. “In a free culture, you get what you celebrate.”

Now he thinks cell phone manufacturer Nokia may be able to help out.

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Kamen’s devices are meant to be distributed directly to small communities where they’re needed the most. The water purification system, for example,wholesale jewelry, can clean up to 1,000 liters of water per day–that’s more than enough for the needs of 100 people. One of the electrical generation devices can generate all the energy needed to power one of those devices with enough left over to provide basic electrical needs for that same community.

It may sound overly ambitious, but Kamen takes inspiration from the mass distribution of cell phones in countries such as India and groundbreaking micro-loan programs that have helped entrepreneurs and communities in poor countries. (He’s not the only one looking toward cell phones as an answer. A 2007 CNET News series featured several similar efforts). He joked that in his “ever-optimistic perspective,” he’d like to think developers will embrace his project as enthusiastically as they do more mercantile efforts.

(Credit:
Dean Kamen)

But Kamen, also the creator of an array of medical devices and the founder of a worldwide organization that encourages students to study science, is perhaps most passionate about solving third-world health problems as basic as getting access to drinkable water and electricity.

“Expecting big government to do this is a fool’s errand,” Kamen said in an interview here at the Web 2.0 Expo at the Jacob Javits Center. But asking a consumer electronics company that can enjoy some positive publicity and stir enthusiasm for its devices in the process of doing some good may be a more reasonable pursuit.

Thursday morning, Nokia is expected to announce its “Calling All Innovators” competition,Rolex Watches, a global contest that will split up to $150,000 among several winners. The contest, Kamen hopes, will help get two devices he’s built–one that purifies and even desalinates water and another that can generate electricity from a variety of fuel sources–into mass production and make it easier to distribute and manage them throughout the world.

That’s where the Nokia contest could help. The contest is split into three categories: Eco-Challenge, Emerging Markets, and Technology Showcase. The Eco-Challenge is designed to create an application that could help consumers, for example, manage their environmental impact. The Technology Showcase is exactly that: It asks for the best single application that runs on a Nokia mobile device.

The unlikely Nokia partnership is part of what Kamen views as a bottoms-up approach to solving global health programs. While large international agencies and governments may be focused on big projects like building dams, Kamen believes going straight to the people who need it the most can be the right answer.

NEW YORK–In technology circles, Dean Kamen is probably best known as the guy who invented the Segway.

The Emerging Markets category probably cuts closest to Kamen’s aspirations: It asks developers to build applications that could, for example, improve access to weather or health information, create a micropayment system to pay for the distribution of those Kamen devices, even help monitor those water and electrical devices once they’re distributed.

Cisco’s Unified Communications release 7.0 adds support for Windows Mobile, in addition to Symbian and Blackberry.
iPhone support is in the works, McConnell said, but Android support is not planned at this point. It also interoperates with collaboration suites from competitors such as Microsoft and IBM. McConnell said that the software suite no longer requires a router for connections from a remote location, such as a home.

As Wall Street struggles to redefine itself, Cisco is busy this week introducing its latest wave of collaboration products to compete with Microsoft, IBM and Oracle.

The WebEx platform.

(Credit:
Cisco Systems )

Most of Cisco’s $40 billion in revenue comes from selling infrastructure to power networks and data centers. Don Proctor, senior vice president of Cisco’s software group, called collaboration the “next phase of the Internet” and a $34 billion market opportunity. It’s clear that Cisco hopes to bundle its communications hardware and software, creating collaborative infrastructure in a box, as it goes after more share of market and mind with its growing product portfolio.

PostPath and Jabber, two recent Cisco acquisitions, will be build into WebEx Connect for e-mail and instant messaging in the coming months, McConnell said. WebEx will be priced in the sub-$10 range per seat per month.

Cisco has also found a way to make its high-end, $300,000 TelePresence videoconferencing product more attractive to large corporations with multiple locations. Telepresence Expert on Demand provides integration with the Cisco Unified Contact Center, dealing with scenarios in which an expert can be summoned to a session. For example, a bank branch could call upon an expert in financial planning to meet with a customer via Telepresence.

WebEx, the Web conferencing service that Cisco acquired in March 2007 for $3.2 billion, has been turned into a Web applications platform. WebEx Connect includes e-mail, calendaring, team spaces, bookmarking, and document sharing, and integrates with the Unified Communications portfolio. Like Salesforce.com, Facebook and other Web platforms, WebEx will allow third parties to build applications (widgets) that integrate with the platform and sell them through a marketplace. Cisco plans to add soft phone, video phone, speed dialing, and federated presence widgets.

“It’s a major launch for us, including a comprehensive update to our Unified Communications platform, a new collaboration client for WebEx and Telepresence Expert on Demand,” said Rick McConnell, vice president and general manager of Cisco’s Unified Communications division.

“With the Telepresence system installed, you hit speed dial, which integrates with the Contact Center and rounds up an expert to address questions,” McConnell said.

Last year, the label brought Utada Hikaru, Japan’s top recording artist, to the United States. EMI helped the singer find an audience in the U.S. without pressing any CDs initially. But the U.S. digital-only campaign was at best an effort to put otherwise hard-to-find product in front of her U.S. fans. Before digital music, those fans might wait months before an expensive import CD hit our shores.

Caroline Records specializes in introducing international music stars to U.S. audiences. Naturally, this means executives are often less sure of whether a foreign performer can find a niche audience here. Spending big on untested and unknown acts doesn’t make sense. As part of the digital-only promotion, EMI didn’t seek radio airplay for Yelle’s music and didn’t buy banner or print ads in traditional music magazines like Rolling Stone or Blender.

“We’re definitely spending less than on a traditional campaign,” Rougvie said. “It doesn’t make sense when you’re going out the door to spend a lot of money putting out a physical product and taking in costs before you know what (the demand is).”

The label couldn’t have asked for a better test case than Yelle. The 25-year-old from St. Brieuc, France, told CNET News.com on Wednesday that she grew up with the Internet and fully understands its power to promote and distribute music.

Beyond the cost savings that digital music offers, Rougvie says there is growing need for an act to obtain a “groundswell of digital support” from music blogs, download stores, and MySpace to prove to a label that it can attract fans and is worthy of a larger investment. For that reason, focusing on digital at the beginning of a promotion makes sense.

French singer Yelle is helping to usher out era of disc promos

“I don’t know when my first EP on vinyl will come out,” said Yelle, whose real name is Julie Budet. “I don’t know whether it will come out. I think it’s a bonus if it does. It’s a plus. I think now you can download music, buy CDs, and that’s what people really want. But I would be really proud if my album will be out in vinyl.”

For an industry that has been decimated by digital technology, this is an example of how at least one of the four largest music labels is putting it to work.

She is unwittingly helping The EMI Group, one of the four largest music companies, to push CDs further into the shadows. Already a star in her own country and a growing nightclub favorite in the U.S., Yelle was being promoted until recently in this country exclusively through digital means.

The movement to phase out discs as promotional devices has been around for some time. Last year, EMI drastically scaled back the numbers of CDs it sent out as promos. Just a few years ago, the label may have sent out CDs as complete albums. Now it distributes secure online access where retailers or reviewers can hear songs.

Naturally, EMI is trying it again.

Instead, executives took to MySpace, music widgets, and powerful music blogs like Pitchfork. The label started digital and stayed digital until it reached a critical mass. On April 1, EMI finally released a CD version of Yelle’s album, Pop Up.

(Credit:
EMI Music)

For decades, music labels trying to break in an act pressed thousands of vinyl records or CDs to distribute to disc jockeys, record stores, journalists, and fans. Those types of promotions have grown too expensive in an era of shrinking music sales, says Jeff Rougvie, general manager of EMI’s Caroline Records, who is leading Yelle’s U.S. campaign.

While Yelle is a fan of digital music and technology, she says there is still a place for plastic.

A version of “A cause des garcons” has been viewed 3.5 million times since August. Her songs have also been heard on such TV shows as “The Hills” and “Entourage.”

Sweet faced and playful, French electro-pop star Yelle seems an unlikely figure to stick a dagger into the heart of a much-loved but quickly disappearing staple of the music industry.

Yelle, pronounced Yeah-elle, was discovered by EMI’s unit in France one week after she posted “Short Dick Cuizi,” a song that took swipes at a member of a rival band. She renamed the song “Je veux te voir” and then released Pop Up, which features three songs, “Je veux te voir,” “Parle a ma main,” and “A cause des garcons” attracting big audiences at YouTube.

Digital allows EMI to get product to niche audiences affordably as well as generate incremental income for the company. Hikaru would later go on to sell 7.2 million downloads worldwide.

EMI says it has already seen positive results.

(Credit: Smith Magazine) Legend has it that Hemingway was once challenged to write a story in only six words. His response? “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Last year, SMITH Magazine re-ignited the micro-format by asking its readers for their own six-word memoirs. Thousands submitted short life stories, ranging from the bittersweet (”Three marriages. Two divorces. BA .333″), poignant (”Look Mom: I’ve finally written something”), and sad (”I still make coffee for two”) to the inspirational (”Business school? Bah! Pop music? Hurrah”) and aspirational (”Next Life Van Morrison Backup singer”). The magazine collected almost 1,000 of these six-word memoirs in the book “Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure,” including additions from celebrities including Stephen Colbert, Jane Goodall, Dave Eggers, and more. My six-word memoir is as follows: Blogging keeps me from writing more.

Microsoft Office is so jam-packed with features that an entire industry has been created to help people find the ones they need. (An example is Addintools’ $30 Classic Menu for Office 2007.) Why would anyone suggest that you add even more functions to Office apps? Because the best free Office add-ins can save you considerable time and trouble, without costing you a red cent. Here are five of my favorite Office helpers.

Keep people from viewing the data hidden in Office docs
You may be sharing more information than you intend to when you send someone a Word document, Excel worksheet, or PowerPoint presentation. If two or more people have worked on the file, there’s a good chance that anyone who opens the file subsequently can view insertions and–more importantly–deletions made by each person, as well as any comments they may have made, and other personal information relating to the file’s creator. Microsoft’s Remove Hidden Data program for Office 2003 and XP will remove such data in a file before you share it. (See below for a description of Office 2007’s built-in Document Inspector, which functions similarly.)

Propose as many as five different meeting times and let TimeBridge Personal Scheduling Manager poll attendees find the best one.

After you download and install the program (and after Microsoft “validates” your copy of Office), you’ll find a Remove Hidden Data option on the File menu of your Office apps. You can also remove the hidden information from several files at once by running the program separately. Among the information the program removes are comments, revision marks, deleted text, user names, and macros.

I counted 67 different features, though more are being added all the time. While technically free, ExTools is officially donationware; the developer requests a donation of $5 or more, so if you find it useful, drop a few dollars in the e-hat to help ensure that the features keep on coming.

Keep your secrets by running Office 2007's Document Inspector before sharing your files.

Teach Excel some new tricks with ExTools
If you could create your own Excel toolbar, it would probably include a list of your favorite worksheets, a super-clipboard for storing text you reuse frequently, and the ability to save and back up a worksheet with one click. It may also let you switch a vertical range to horizontal (and vice versa) with a single click, reverse the order of a row of cells just as quickly, and save a selection as an Excel, text, HTML, or comma-delimited (CSV) file. You get all these features and more with ExTools, and its partner for Office 2007, ExTools RX.

Office 2007 adds the Document Inspector that cleanses Word 2007, Excel 2007, and PowerPoint 2007 of revisions, versions, presentation notes, hidden rows and columns, and other metadata, including personally identifiable information. To activate this feature, click the Office button and choose Prepare>Inspect Document>Inspect. After it runs, select Remove All as necessary.

Tomorrow: For bullet-fast app launches, skip the menu and go straight to the command prompt.

Poll attendees to find the best time for a meeting
Everybody’s busy, as anyone who has ever tried to schedule a meeting with more than two attendees quickly learns. TimeBridge Personal Scheduling Manager is an Outlook add-in that lets you send e-mails to the attendees with as many as five proposed meeting times. They select the times they’re available or not, and they can even mark one of the times as “best.” Once all the people respond, the program sends you and the attendees an e-mail suggesting the best time, which it adds to your Outlook calendar. The program places a toolbar in Outlook 2003 and 2007, from which you can create a new meeting, view your scheduled meetings, and edit your account settings.

You have to register (name, e-mail address, and time zone) to send meeting invitations, but attendees need not sign up, though they can invite others, and add the meeting to their Outlook or Google Calendar. You can also network your calendars to see who’s available when prior to scheduling the meeting.

Send text messages from Outlook
If you use Outlook 2003 or 2007 and you’re having a hard time keeping track of your text messages, why not let the program manage your SMS correspondence for you? The Microsoft Office SMS Add-in lets you treat each message like an e-mail: save drafts, view all sent items, forward them as e-mail or SMS, even spell-check messages before you send them. There are some restrictions, however: you can send messages to any phone on a GSM network, but you can’t retrieve messages from the phone, and the program does not support Flash SMS or the Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS).

View the responses of meeting attendees by clicking a link in the TimeBridge Outlook toolbar.

YouTube comes to PowerPoint
No matter how many fancy transitions, jumping graphics, animated lines of text, or “borrowed” comic strips you add to your PowerPoint slides, your audience will be sawing logs unless you provide them with content that matters. Shyam Pillai’s YouTube Video Wizard lets you insert a YouTube video in any version of PowerPoint from 97 to 2007 with just a few clicks. After you download and install the program, just click Insert>YouTube video, insert the video’s URL, choose to play it once or loop it, set the size and placement of the playback window in the slide, and then run your presentation. The video will be embedded in a slide, complete with Flash control. You must have a working Internet connection to run the video, and there’s not much you can do to embellish the slides they appear on, but now you can let lonelygirl15 help you get your message across.

Spielberg, creator of sci-fi classics like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., Men in Black, and the War of the Worlds remake a few years ago, is reportedly himself a believer in paranormal phenomena. In creating a social network for fellow enthusiasts as well as people who claim to have encountered the otherworldly, Spielberg is tapping into a lifelong passion.

But its exact ties to tech and entertainment are unclear. “The project may have originally been associated with Yahoo but the project was killed off before launch,” TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington wrote. “But if our sources are right, the idea has lived on and a team in Los Angeles is working to launch it in the next few months.”

Here’s another theory: What if this is in conjunction with some kind of upcoming Spielberg project, a sort of uber-viral meta-campaign along the lines of the HBO Voyeur Project? (Whatever happened to that, anyway?)

(Credit:
Hanna-Barbera)

Who wants to believe? TechCrunch reported Monday night that Steven Spielberg is developing a new social network where people can talk about their encounters with the paranormal and extraterrestrial.

On Steven Spielberg's rumored social network, maybe you can discuss whether that ghost was really a ghost or just the creepy old caretaker from the abandoned amusement park.

The European Founders Fund, consisting of thirtysomething brothers Alexander, Marc and Oliver Samwer, has reportedly put out a “very brief press release” explaining that they have invested in the Palo Alto, Calif.-based social-networking site. An exact amount was not disclosed.

The investment firm was not immediately available for comment.

A trio of German entrepreneurs-turned-investors may have invested in Facebook, TechCrunch wrote Tuesday.

The European Founders Fund does not appear to be affiliated with longtime Facebook investor The Founders Fund, spearheaded by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel.

According to the European Founders Fund’s Web site, the brothers have already invested in a number of social-media ventures: business social network LinkedIn, the Second Life-based Anshe Chung Studios, and the German social network StudiVZ, which was acquired last year. Prior to becoming investors, the Samwers founded Alando (purchased by eBay) and Jamba (purchased by VeriSign).

It’s no secret that Facebook has been hunting for new investors ever since it was pegged with a whopping $15 billion valuation following Microsoft’s famous purchase of a $240 million stake. Some of the rumors pertaining to potential investors, like a shadowy bit of gossip involving unnamed hedge funds, have turned out to be unsubstantiated.

Now Bill Gates has declared that
Windows 7, the next release of the operating system, won’t be nearly as bad as Vista:

commentary

Microsoft must spend some days gazing around in a stupor. The company continues to print money yet its most recent product launch of Vista fell on deaf ears. Microsoft of course wants money, but it also wants to be thought of as a leader in the software world, and with Vista it is definitely following…but who it’s following, nobody knows.

Great! So…why buy Vista in the interim, which is by all accounts a memory and power hog, and is grossly inefficient? Customers seem to get Gates’ logic, however, and have been buying Macs in droves which requires less power, less memory, is more efficient, and is a heck of a lot nicer to use. Thanks for the advice, Bill!

We’re hard at work, I would say, on the next version, which we call Windows 7. I’m very excited about the work being done there…[which will require] lower power, take less memory [and] be more efficient.

Next Thursday, we'll find out more about what Apple has in mind for third-party iPhone software.

(Credit:
Apple)

Apple also said to expect details on “some exciting new enterprise features,” which at first blush sounds to me like a method of getting the iPhone to work more closely with corporate e-mail software. It’s not clear whether the SDK will actually become available next week, or whether Apple is planning to use the occasion to explain what options developers will have for getting their applications on the iPhone. Check out our report on the iPhone SDK and the possibilities for official third-party application development for more background on what might be discussed next week.

Apple distributed invitations Wednesday morning for “an
iPhone software road map” event next week, which means we’re finally going to hear details on the plans for an iPhone software development kit.

As you might be aware, next week is March, not February, which means Apple will have missed its deadline for shipping the SDK this month. Still, on Thursday, March 6, at 10 a.m. PST the company will hold a “town hall” meeting at its headquarters in Cupertino to discuss the State of the iPhone, and probably answer several questions about how iPhone application development will unfold.

Apple will be playing host twice next week, holding its annual shareholders meeting on Tuesday and then two days later having us all trek down I-280 once again for the iPhone event.

HTC Hero

HTC Whitestone

Huawei G6610

LG BL20

LG GD900 Crystal

Motorola

Nokia N97 Mini

Nokia 7020

Samsung GT-i8320

Samsung GT-3650C

Samsung GT-S5510

Samsung SPH-i350

Sony Ericsson Jalou

Sony Ericsson J105a

Sony Ericsson J105i

Sony Ericsson Satio

Because the FCC has to certify every phone sold in the United States, not to mention test its SAR rating, the agency’s online database offers a lot of sneak peeks to those who dig. And to save you the trouble, Crave has combed through the database for you. Here are a selection of filings from the past week on new and upcoming cell phones. Click through to read the full report.

August may be a slow month for news, but it’s not a slow period for new cell phones at the Federal Communications Commission. This week we saw a CDMA HTC Hero (Sprint, anyone?) and Whitestone, the LG GD900 Crystal, the Samsung Jalou, and the return of the Sony Ericsson Satio.

(Credit:
HTC)

Hello to the Hero.

The difference, of course, is that Amazon is a pioneer in e-commerce for consumers and has a vast line-up.

Amazon TextBuyIt is designed to let mobile device users window-shop, compare prices, and purchase products from Amazon.

Amazon.com unveiled on Wednesday a text-messaging shopping service, which adds a mainstream player to the mix of companies that offer shopping to-go.

Amazon is not alone in offering a mobile shopping service. For example, mShopper, which launched in 2007, lets people shop for and buy products from their mobile devices.

Shoppers send a text message to “Amazon” with the product name, search term, UPC, or ISBN code. The e-commerce giant will offer matching products, as well as prices. Buyers can purchase products by replying to the text message and punching in a single-digit number next to the desired item. Amazon will then call the person to confirm the order.