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Collaborative-storage provider Box.net on Tuesday announced that it had acquired Mountain View, Calif.,-based Increo Solutions, a company with two Web products: Embedit.in and Backboard.

Embedit.in, which was launched in June, lets users post and share their documents in the cloud using an Adobe Flash-based viewer. And Backboard, which is the company’s only paid product, lets users get feedback and collaborate on projects using that same document viewer.

Financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

In a company blog post on the acquisition, Box’s community manager, Sean Lindo, said these products will continue to run independently but that both would later be integrated into Box.net as added features.

In the past, renewable energy policies have led to boom and bust periods, which resulted in many failed companies, said Henry Lee, the director of environment and natural resources programs at Harvard University’s school of government.

Ken Zweibel, director of the GW Solar Institute at George Washington University, criticized the trend toward overemphasizing high-risk, high-reward energy research. “Programs to do practical research have shrunk during the last five years and programs to do high-risk, blue-sky research have gone through roof,” he said. Solar photovoltaics are becoming more affordable as prices fall, but proposals to the newly formed ARPA-E are unlikely to yield anything useful, Zweibel said.

Small green-tech start-ups and venture capitalists are now spending a significant amount of time in Washington because energy is heavily regulated. But there’s concern that bills are structured to favor certain technologies, said Alex Kinnier from Khosla Ventures, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm that is making an aggressive push into green tech.

Many companies and investors see energy as a promising area of economic growth, with more than $5.8 billion of venture capital placed in green tech last year. But energy is very different from information technology or other traditional tech industries. Bringing new energy products to market requires not only technology breakthroughs but also coordination among start-ups, large corporations, financiers, and government.

Rising oil prices can help drive investments in clean-energy technologies, but the volatility of prices makes sustained investment difficult, said Lee. Another challenge related to energy in the U.S. is the difficulty of locating good spots for wind and solar power projects and the resistance from states over national efforts to build new transmission lines to transfer solar and wind power.

“We can go into the details about the problems with all the subsidy schemes that have been tried but fundamentally there is this common sense that underlies cap and trade, which is that if something is bad, you should tax it and that is, in effect, what cap and trade does. And that puts things that don’t have that bad characteristic in a better competitive position,” said Richard Schmalensee, the director of the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research.

He also complained policymakers make decisions based on “very shallow knowledge” and are easily swayed by the media. Fears that China is taking over leadership in low-carbon technologies appear to motivate policymakers more than protecting the environment or concerns regarding climate change, Zweibel and Schmalensee said.

“We are not convinced that we have a global warming problem,” said Zweibel. “Let’s face it–that’s the truth.”

The speakers–three academics with expertise in energy and economics and a venture capitalist from Khosla Ventures–delved into the question of what role government should play in energy at the EmTech emerging technology conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Thursday. On the whole, they were pessimistic about the prospects of effective legislation for promoting a cleaner energy industry.

Updated September 26 at 6:50 a.m. PT with correction to Alex Kinnier’s affiliation.

The trend in energy policy has to been to promote a set of technologies, such as fuel cells or biofuels, for a while but not stay with it, said Lee. Corn ethanol, for example, has been criticized for questionable environmental benefits and contributing to higher food prices, but maintaining the program makes sense because second-generation ethanol could deliver significant improvements, he said.

The panelists argued that the House bill of the version is far from perfect but it’s an important step because it puts a price on carbon emissions. Under a cap-and-trade program–one of which is already in effect in the U.S.– large polluters, such as utilities and manufacturers, are given permits to pollute. Those carbon allowances can be bought and sold among participants so that they stay under a cap set by the government.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.–A change in national energy policies would help spur innovation around green technologies, but policymakers are motivated by power and pet projects rather than energy security or environmental protection, a panel of energy and business experts argued here Thursday.

The talk was timely. Although political debate in Washington has been dominated by health care over the past few months, the Senate is expected to take up a climate change and energy bill as early as next week, following a House version which narrowly passed in May. The broad House bill proposes a national system for regulating greenhouse gases, introduces higher efficiency standards, and calls for a mandate on renewable energy from utilities.

To avoid that cycle, the U.S. needs a combination of policies, including tax incentives, research money, and a cap-and-trade program, Lee said. Caps on carbon emissions won’t start to take hold for many years, panelists said. So, abandoning existing supports for solar now would essentially shut that industry down, even though the cost of solar continues to drop, Schmalensee said.

“We’re all in agreement we want a price on carbon…The thing that concerns us greatly is that the ways these rules can be written can very much bias who the winners are and who the losers are over the long term and can sub-optimize the ultimate solutions,” Kinnier said.

“One of the problems with Washington is that they fall in love and then they fall out of love after two or three years,” said Lee. “But you can’t give up on these things after three or four years and in our government we have a tendency to do that. We don’t have a lot of patience and it takes time to make things that really work.”

For example, incentives to store carbon underground at coal plants will lead many companies into that field. But Kinnier said that policies should also encourage technologies that use carbon dioxide to make a product, such as building materials or chemicals.

Right now, there are subsidies and tax credits to promote the installation of solar and wind power. In the federal stimulus plan, the Department of Energy was allotted tens of billions of dollars to fund long-term research and promote development of existing technologies, such as plug-in electric vehicles.

No kind words

In practice, policy making around energy is messy business, the panelists said. It’s even harder now, given the fierce partisanship now in Washington and the shaky economic situation, noted Lee.

I find it hard to evaluate an MP3 player until I’ve lived with it for a little while. Specifications, demos, and even quick hands-on tests don’t tell you the most important thing: how does it sound? Can you listen to it for an hour? A week? The rest of your life?

The iPod Touch was noticeably louder at the same volume setting on the car stereo. The trebly parts–cymbals, high-hat, the squeak of a saxophone reed–were still distinct, but the bass sounded rounder and warmer, and the midrange (the most important spectrum when choosing audio gear) shone through. It made me realize how much sound was missing when I listened to the Zune HD.

Zune HD

The Zune HD sounded very crisp and clean, with clear separation in the bass, but the midrange–guitar, vocals–didn’t seem full or loud enough. When I turned it up to try and get a fuller sound, the treble became overwhelming.

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CNET)

On industrial design, I think they’re about even–a commendable feat for Microsoft given how far behind the previous Zunes were. On user interface, the iPod Touch may be more intuitive at first, but the Zune HD is way cooler–I love the way artist images and words scroll across the background as you play a song–and gives you far more customization over the music-playing experience. (I’m amazed that the iPod Touch still doesn’t have an easy way to add songs to a now-playing queue, for instance.)

On a straight specifications basis, each of them has clear advantages.

The iPod Touch excels as a portable multifunction computer, with tens of thousands of available applications, and it’s the only choice for Mac users. The Zune HD has superior music-discovery features, particularly when used with a Zune Pass subscription. Plus, it has an HD Radio and a sophisticated desktop PC client that makes iTunes look stale.

The difference became most obvious when I took a couple songs–Radiohead’s “How to Disappear Completely” and Mr. Bungle’s NSFW funk-bizarro song “Squeeze Me Macaroni”–and listened to them back to back on each player. On the Zune HD, the acoustic guitar in the Radiohead song sounded clinky and thin, and the percussion in the Bungle song was unbearably high-pitched. On the iPod Touch, the guitar sounded like guitar and the percussion was complementary rather than overwhelming.

iPod Touch

But what about the actual sound? To try them out, I ran them into the audio input jack in my car, which is how I most often listen to portable music. I turned each device up to just below maximum volume (I’ve heard my iPhone distort at its max), and made sure the EQ settings were completely flat.

Hearing is subjective–apparently younger listeners are beginning to prefer the “sizzle” of highly compressed MP3s, and one listener’s “crisp” is another’s “harsh.” And I’m an analog fan, with far more records than CDs in my home collection. But to me, the Zune HD sounded pretty good, while the new iPod Touch is the best-sounding MP3 player I’ve ever heard, comparing favorably with a decent CD player.

A few hours later, I tried a similar test through the relatively cheap headphones that come with the Zune HD. Here, the Zune fared a bit better–it sounded louder, so I didn’t need to turn it up so much that the over-boosted treble hurt my ears–but there simply wasn’t as much audio information coming through, especially at the low end.

On Tuesday, I spent a few hours with the 32GB versions of Microsoft’s new Zune HD and Apple’s latest-generation iPod Touch. To me, these are the top-of-the-line competitors in the MP3 player market–if you’re a serious music listener with nearly $300 to spend, these are your two choices.

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Microsoft)

Your lesson? Don’t just read the specs and look at the interface before you buy an MP3 player. Spend some serious time listening to it, at volume.

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Josh Miller/CNET)

10:53 a.m.: Motorola plans to take Motoblur global next year, introducing the service across phone lines. The Dext will be the other phone, and it will be available next year on certain carriers that flashed by quickly, we’ll get confirmation on that later.

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10:44 a.m.: Now he’s getting into the other aspects of the phone, the ability to link calls with mapping software, remote wipe capabilities, and such. All your contacts and social-networking profiles are stored in the cloud, so that if your phone gets stolen you don’t really lose any data when you remote-wipe the phone. Cole Brodman, CTO of T-Mobile, comes up on stage.

10:46 a.m.: Brodman calls Motoblur a service, so we’re finally getting a clear picture. The other phone is the Motorola Cliq, and it will be available in time for the holidays, Brodman says.

10:49 a.m.: Streamlining the flood of social-networking information is an interesting way to look at a mobile phone, Brodman says, and he praises Motorola for the idea. People want a single device with a single service that can blend business and personal networks and uses. He puts the Cliq as a fourth-quarter introduction, and it will come in two colors, winter white and titanium. T-Mobile plans to give it a lot of play, he says.

11:04 a.m.: Om asks Jha about Palm, and Jha wisely decides not to take the bait. He calls the development of the mobile world “the biggest technology opportunity” at present and says that there’s plenty of room for a lot of different types of companies to do well in this market.

Fireside chat with Google's Andy Rubin, left; Jha, center; and Om Malik, right.

10:57 a.m.: Om asks Sanjay to clarify the definition of “smartphone,” a word that has been bandied about ever since Apple launched the iPhone. A rich browser is key, Jha says, although different companies have different definitions. Om wonders if a smartphone is a communications device first and a phone second, and Jha says priorities differ but voice is still very important.

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Josh Miller/CNET)

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Josh Miller/CNET)

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Josh Miller)

One of the halls at Mobilize '09 in San Francisco, where Motorola co-CEO Sanjay Jha will soon speak.

10:34 a.m.: Motorola likes Android because it was designed for smartphones from the beginning, Jha says. The company was a founding member of Google’s Open Handset Alliance and has contributed engineers to the project. That being said, there are an awful lot of choices in the mobile market right now, and people want choices in their phones, Jha says. That’s why Motorola plans to develop a range of smartphones tailored to different needs.

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Josh Miller/CNET)

Jha and Cole Brodman from T Mobile after introducing the new phone.

10:54 a.m.: Jha’s winding down, urging attendees to follow Motorola on Twitter. So there you go: Motorola announced two phones, the Cliq and the Dext, both of which will come with the Motoblur social-networking aggregation service. They’re setting up for the next part of this talk, a panel discussion involving Jha, Google’s Andy Rubin, and GigaOm’s Om Malik. (Clarification: During the presentation, Motorola presented the new device as two phones, one called the Cliq and one called the Dext. In reality, there is just one device, but it will be sold under different names. The phone will be known as the Cliq in the U.S., and it will be sold under the Dext name worldwide beginning in 2010.)

Editor’s note: What follows is our live coverage of Motorola co-CEO Sanjay Jha’s speech at Mobilize ‘09 in San Francisco Thursday, where Jha introduced Motorola’s first phone running Google’s Android operating system. Jha’s speech was followed by a panel discussion with Google’s Andy Rubin and conference host Om Malik of GigaOm. During the presentation, Motorola presented the new device as two phones, one called the Cliq and one called the Dext. In reality, there is just one device, but it will be sold under different names. The phone will be known as the Cliq in the U.S., and it will be sold under the Dext name worldwide beginning in 2010.

10:24 a.m. PDT: We’re in place here at the UCSF Mission Bay Conference Center for Mobilize 2009, where Motorola co-CEO Sanjay Jha is about to take the podium. There are about 250 people crammed into one of those college-style amphitheater lecture halls awaiting the expected debut of Motorola’s first Android phones. Let this serve as your two-minute warning.

Jha introduces Motoblur, which syncs multimedia from all your favorite social-networking apps.

10:42 a.m.: Jha has yet to discuss the phone’s browser or other capabilities, devoting the entire discussion so far to the social-networking applications of this phone. It’s still not clear whether this is an actual phone or a mega-application that Motorola has developed for its Android phones.

Motorola co-CEO Sanjay Jha takes the stage.

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Josh Miller/CNET)

Motorola Cliq up close.

The Motorola Dext.

Motorola's new Cliq, photographed after the keynote and panel discussion.

The Cliq has social skills and comes in two colors…'for all you fashionistas.'

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Josh Miller/CNET)

10:29 a.m.: Kevin Tofel of GigaOm’s jkOnTheRun takes the stage for the cell phone warnings, and to introduce Sanjay Jha. Jha says he’s going to focus on broadband wireless, with a nod to the “tremendous change” in the last year or so as high-speed wireless becomes widespread. He’s defining that as 500Kbps.

10:47 a.m.: Brodman’s company has been one of the highest-profile backers of Google’s Android, and he spends a few minutes reviewing the accomplishments of Google and Android’s developers. Brodman is going back and forth between calling the Blur a phone and a service, further confusing the issue.

10:31 a.m.: This is shaping up as your garden-variety mobile-is-the-future keynote so far, as Jha points to the huge gains in mobile subscribers in the U.S. while noting that emerging markets provide an even bigger opportunity. That mobile adoption is changing the way people communicate, he says, leading to the rise of things like Facebook and Twitter where you’re always connected and always broadcasting.

11:09 a.m.: Om asks Rubin and Jha how they would improve the iPhone. Jha says he’s been focused on improving Motorola’s phones, which pretty much everyone would agree needed some work.

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Josh Miller/CNET)

10:37 a.m.: Social networking is a key app for mobile phones. Jha makes the dubious claim that the “vast majority” of social-network users have a presence on the Holy Trinity of social: Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. Still, there’s no denying that mobile and social networking go together, with large numbers of people accessing their social networks on phones.

10:59 a.m.: Om asks Andy Rubin how the smartphone has the potential to disrupt everything, not just the tech industry but other industries, like trucking. Rubin notes that phones benefit from Moore’s Law just like PCs and are starting to approach the performance of PCs from five years ago. It’s about connecting to the Internet, really, and phones are just the new and interesting way of getting there, he says.

10:33 a.m.: It’s not just phones that are going mobile, Jha says, but smartphones are the “backbone” of the mobile industry. He rightly points out that nobody knows exactly how to define the term “smartphone,” although you need basic things like big screens, anytime wireless, and a multithreaded multitasking operating system. That operating system, Jha says, is Android.

10:36 a.m.: He’s going to talk about two devices, one that he’s going to demonstrate today and another that will be shown off in a few weeks, with a launch in time for the holiday season.

11:02 a.m.: Om asks Rubin how Motorola became interested in Android, and Rubin politely avoids pointing out that Motorola had little choice, having failed to get traction for its Linux phones and watching Windows Mobile development fall behind that of other operating systems. Jha describes the partnership between Google and Motorola as “two drunks in a bar” who needed each other and found each other, which is up there with the most eyebrow-raising things I’ve heard a CEO say on stage.

11:08 a.m.: Om asks Rubin which came first: the Android OS or iPhone OS? Rubin says he doesn’t know, but notes that people who work on operating systems tend to bounce around doing that kind of work. Om jokingly dings Rubin for avoiding the question, although Rubin points out that Apple is sort of secretive about its work.

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Josh Miller/CNET)

Motoblur

Jha talks about what makes a smartphone, with emphasis on the last item.

11:11 a.m.: What will the mobile Internet look like in 2011? Context-awareness is important, Jha says, and things like health care and fitness will be just as important as multimedia, which will get a huge boost from faster 4G networks. Rubin says the Web needs to move forward as a platform, hewing to Google’s company line about the browser becoming the future development platform for application.

11:11 a.m.: That’s going to be all from UCSF Mission Bay. We’re going to get a much closer look at the Cliq phone and Blur service later today, with CNET Reviews’ Kent German and Bonnie Cha sharing their thoughts over the course of the day. Thanks for hanging out with us this morning.

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10:40 a.m.: First announcement: Motoblur. It’s seems to be a phone designed around one of those river-like streams that brings together all your different social-networking profiles, at least according to the video we’re watching. It has a special user interface designed to bring those social-networking applications to the forefront, a screen that can show off tweets, status updates, and let you update your own status from the phone. A social-networking phone?

10:51 a.m.: Jha comes back on stage to praise T-Mobile, and share additional details about the phone. It’s got Wi-Fi, a 5-megapixel camera and video recording at 24 frames per second, a standard headphone jack, an HTML browser from Google that sounds like the standard mobile Chrome browser, turn-by-turn directions, and access to Android Market apps.

Rubin and Jha, holding Motorola's new Cliq.

11:04 a.m.: Om asks if this is Motorola’s comeback play, and Jha calls it “a start.” The Motoblur service will be a huge part of Motorola’s strategy over the next 18-20 months.

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Josh Miller/CNET)

According to rumors, the release of Mac OS X 10.6, Apple’s operating system also known as Snow Leopard, might arrive a bit early. Though Apple announced at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June that Snow Leopard would hit stores in September, tech blogs became overly excited when it was whispered that it might be ready to debut on or about August 28.

Is it worth upgrading right away, or should I wait?

What’s the one killer feature worth upgrading for?

What’s the difference between Snow Leopard and Leopard?

Some people are fans of waiting until the first update, the 0.1 release, which tends to correct any of the immediate issues that inevitably pop up when a new operating system is released to the public. Some who attempted to upgrade to the first version of Leopard ran into trouble after the software was installed, and when they attempted to restart their machines a blue screen would appear instead. But it appeared to hinge on a specific piece of third-party software many had installed that was out of date. The majority had a smooth transition to Leopard.

Many people will probably consider support for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 the most important new feature of Snow Leopard. Improved Exchange support will be integrated into Mail, iCal, and Address Book in Snow Leopard, which means e-mail, calendar appointments, to-do lists, and contacts from Outlook will be viewable on your personal calendar, mail, and address books. It also allows things like dragging and dropping contacts into iCal to schedule meetings, and your Mac will be able to discover time conflicts between personal and work calendars and change the meeting time and location.

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Overall, we think this will be a worthwhile upgrade if the speed claims turn out to be true. Another way of looking at is that for the price of the Quicktime to Quicktime Pro upgrade, you get most of the Quicktime Pro features plus a newly tweaked core OS. We think it’s a good deal for Apple OS X 10.5 users.

So far, Apple has said only “September.” Recent rumors have indicated it might be ready earlier than that, but it’s mid-August now, so that’s mostly inconsequential. No matter what, it’s going to be available before Windows 7 is set to roll out on October 22. When it’s available, we’ll be sure to let you know.

Expose, an operating system UI feature for organizing open application windows, or just the windows from a particular application currently running, gets tweaked a bit too. In Snow Leopard, Expose is integrated with app icons in the dock, which cuts out the need to first switch to the specific application you want before activating Expose to see its open windows. It also means you don’t have to use a keyboard, or use a trackpad gesture to call it up. Clicking and holding an app’s icon will bring all windows open that are associated with that program to the front.

Quicktime gets a mysterious new version number, and is now called Quicktime X. It’s a bit slicker, and the new interface appears similar to the iPhone’s media player. The real change is that many features that were previously in the Pro version of Quicktime are now in the free version. You will be able to edit video inside QuickTime using a video timeline ribbon that appears along the bottom of the screen. And there will be fewer steps involved in video uploading. You don’t have to worry about file formats–Quicktime will do any necessary conversion and upload directly to video-hosting sites or MobileMe, Apple’s subscription service that syncs personal files on any of its devices. Apple promises it will take just one click to record audio or video (on a Mac’s built-in mic or camera) with the new Quicktime. It will also support HTTP streaming of a wider variety of file formats (like h.264 and AAC). It’s a feature that many competing media players have long offered, and it automatically adjusts the playback bit rate according to what the connection can handle. It also means you can stream video or audio through more firewalls.

First thing to know: This is not a complete overhaul of Mac OS X. Rather, it’s a series of small to medium-sized improvements, what Apple calls “refinements.” Much of the new shine to OS X 10.6 comes from changes that are under the surface, possibly not obvious to the unobservant. But Apple does say that the improvements make the overall OS much faster, including a 45-percent faster installation than the previous version of the operating system, OS X 10.5, or Leopard. Apple is also promising faster boot times, quicker shut down, a speedier process when joining wireless networks, and faster backups to Time Machine. And it’s not just quicker, Apple says, it’s lighter: Upon install it frees up 6GB of space.

Related: Microsoft is improving its Exchange support for the Mac too. This week Microsoft said that Outlook for Mac will replace Entourage, the current e-mail and calendar program in the Mac Office suite. Although it will still differ from the Windows version of Outlook, it will add support for more Exchange features, such as public folders and rights management features.

Apple surprised people by putting the price to upgrade to Snow Leopard at a very attractive $29 for a single license, and $49 for a five-user family pack. But there’s a catch: you have to already have Leopard installed to pay those prices. If you’re upgrading from a previous version of Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger), you’ll have to pay $169, which includes an upgrade to 10.5 (Leopard) and 10.6 (Snow Leopard). For a 5-user family pack license, it’ll cost $229. And Snow Leopard is only compatible with Macs containing Intel chips. On the OS front, Leopard is the end of the line for PowerPC Mac owners.

Apple's Bertrand Serlet outlines changes to Mac OS X 10.6 at WWDC.

When will it be available?

How much does it matter that it could arrive five whole days before September officially begins? It doesn’t. Regardless of when the operating system ships, here’s what to expect from Snow Leopard, and why it might matter to you.

Specific applications have been tinkered with as well, with a lot of attention focused on Quicktime, Expose, and a shiny new Safari 4 browser, which was released in June. For more on that, see here.

How much?

Google on Tuesday launched a gallery of 29 themes for Google Chrome (requires Google Chrome 3.0 beta for Windows). But Mozilla, while refraining from sniggering, boasted it’s now up to 20,000.

Mozilla Labs announced Monday that Firefox now has 20,000 Personas, with 10,000 of them arriving in the last 10 weeks.

Cosmetic changes are, well, cosmetic, but a lot of people like them as a way to add some flair to their machines. Many had been pestering Google to add themes support even though Chrome employs a Spartan user interface without much acreage for artistry. Last week’s developer version of Chrome added a “Get themes” button in the Options dialog box, and now Google has flipped the switch to activate the Web page that button points to.

Mozilla has its own skinning technology in the works, a plug-in called Personas that launched on Mozilla Labs in March. That head start, coupled with its vastly larger and more engaged external audience, gives it a big lead over Chrome when it comes to getting gussied up.

Why so large? Themes can come with a background image that shows on Chrome’s new-tab page that offers a much greater chance for expressiveness, especially since that page is the default when Chrome launches. That could help Google with its attempt to recruit artists to supply their own themes, as some have done with the iGoogle customizable home page.

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Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

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Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Google now offers a gallery of themes for its Chrome browser.

The collection of themes includes Legal Pad, Star Gazing, Transparent (it’s not, on my Windows XP machine), Dots, and Pencil Sketch. One monochromatic theme called Minimal downloads nearly instantly, but Grass, at 1.3MB, takes more time.

This theme is called Grass.

The results were at best mixed, and at worst, severely dysfunctional. For example, I’d never heard that when using Google App Engine, none of your data-processing tasks can last longer than 30 seconds, lest the service throw an exception back at you.

Researchers found that the three platforms “delivered wildly variable performance results as Amazon, Google and Microsoft trialled, added and dropped new features.”

It’s way too early to suggest that cloud services can’t meet the customer needs, but it’s important to know what you are getting into if you want to use these services now. As with any nascent technology, early adopters will benefit in some ways and suffer in others. Cloud services still offer one of the most intriguing ways to consume IT and software applications.

Response times on the service also varied by a factor of 20 depending on the time of day the services were accessed. Anna Liu, associate professor in services engineering at the University of New South Wales School of Computer Science responsible for the study, also noted the immature monitoring tools and the inability to accurately estimate cost:

Follow me on Twitter @daveofdoom.

“None of the platforms have the kind of monitoring required to have a reasonable conversation about performance,” she said, in the report from Australia’s ITnews. “They provide some level of monitoring, but what little there is caters for developers, not business users. And while Amazon provides a dashboard of how much it is costing you so far, for example, there is nothing in terms of forecasts about what it will cost you in the future.

According to a new report by researchers in Australia, stress tests have revealed that the “infrastructure-on-demand services offered by Amazon, Google and Microsoft suffer from regular performance and availability issues.”

The seven-month study of Amazon’s EC2, Google’s App Engine, and Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing services simulated 2,000 concurrent users connecting to services from each of the three providers, with researchers measuring response times and other performance indicators.

It’s intended to be a third device for consumers at home. The application for the JournE is “when you want to access the Internet without booting your PC,” said Toshiba executive Marco Perino. And it’s an alternative to a smartphone, which Perino says “is not so practical because the keyboard is not the right size.”

Toshiba says to expect the JournE to go on sale in Europe first, by the end of 2009, with other regions following early next year. The price is set at 249 euros, which would be roughly $360. While that is more expensive than some Netbooks with far less functionality, at that price it’s a sure bet it would be cheaper than an Apple tablet.

It’s purely for accessing the Internet or sharing content to other devices around the home. For instance, it can be hooked up to a TV to stream Web-based content like video and photos. It’s not really designed for data input, but there will be applications that allow typing.

The JournE Touch, is–as you might gather from the name–a touch-screen mobile device. It’s Toshiba’s first, and they’re clearly racing to beat everyone else, including Apple’s long-awaited entry into the category, expected sometime early next year.

The JournE Touch has a 7-inch screen and is a half-inch thick, weighing in at less than a pound. Inside is an ARM processor, integrated Wi-Fi, and Windows CE.

BERLIN–We saw Toshiba’s first Blu-ray product announcement coming, but the touch-screen home media tablet that the company introduced here at IFA was a bit of a surprise.

The JournE Touch will be available in Europe first by the end of the year, with other regions to follow.

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Erica Ogg/CNET)

,prada bags

The primary goals of the 13-day mission are to deliver more than 7.5 tons of equipment and supplies to the International Space Station and to ferry Stott to the lab complex to replace outgoing flight engineer Timothy Kopra.

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.–Florida’s hard-to-predict weather threw the shuttle Discovery’s crew a curve ball early Tuesday, worsening when forecasters predicted improvement, generating unexpected lightning and offshore storms.

“Yes sir, will do,” Nickolenko said at 1:25 a.m. EDT He then called Discovery commander Frederick “Rick” Sturckow, saying “well, CJ, the vehicle and the operations were cooperating but the local weather unfortunately did not. So we’ll have to scrub for the day, but hope to try again tomorrow.”

Updated at 12:45 p.m. EDT: Correcting shuttle launch window; Discovery must be off by August 30.

While conditions improved as the morning wore on, the launch team ran out of time and NASA managers were forced to order a 24-hour delay.

Finally, with persistent rain showers and lightning strikes near the pad, Nickolenko called off the countdown.

Radar shows storm cells near launch complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. Conditions improved as Discovery's launch time approached, but it was not enough and NASA managers ordered a delay.

Forecasters predicted an 80 percent chance of good weather at launch time, but the air was unstable, storms did not dissipate as expected and the forecast was downgraded to 60 percent no-go after the crew strapped in for launch.

If the weather or a technical problem prevents a launch Wednesday, the shuttle team likely will stand down for 24 hours and then make two more back-to-back attempts Friday and Saturday.

NASA must get Discovery off the pad by August 30, or the flight will be delayed to mid-October because of upcoming Japanese and Russian space station launches and a conflict with the Air Force Eastern Range, which provides tracking and telemetry for all rockets launched from Florida.

“Well, looks like everything else was cooperating except for our local area weather,” Launch Director Pete Nickolenko said to Mike Moses, chairman of NASA’s Mission Management Team, during a final hold in the countdown.

“Yep, if we had 30 more minutes to go I think we’d have a real good shot today,” Moses said. “But it’s obviously not the right thing to do. So we can knock it off.”

Assuming no problems develop, NASA will reset the countdown for a launch attempt at 1:10 a.m. Wednesday. The most recent forecast called for a 70 percent chance of acceptable conditions.

(Credit:
NASA TV)

Sturckow, pilot Kevin Ford,gucci bags, flight engineer Jose Hernandez, Patrick Forrester, John “Danny” Olivas, European Space Agency astronaut Christer Fuglesang and space station flight engineer Nicole Stott climbed out of the orbiter about an hour and a half later, looking tired but in good spirits.

“We copy that,replica handbags, sir,” Sturckow replied. “When the weather is ready to cooperate, we’ll be ready to go.”

Launch was originally set for 1:36 a.m. EDT Tuesday and other than the weather, there were no problems of any significance.

Xerox said Monday it will buy Affiliated Computer Services in a cash and stock deal valued at $6.4 billion.

Indeed, Xerox will have a $22 billion company with $17 billion in recurring revenue. When you combine the Xerox deal with Dell’s purchase of Perot Systems last week you arrive at an easy conclusion: Everyone wants to be a services company.

This was originally posted at ZDNet’s Between the Lines.

Xerox is confident it will achieve significant incremental revenue growth by leveraging Xerox’s strong global brand and established client relationships to scale ACS’s business in Europe, Asia and South America. In addition, Xerox will integrate its intellectual property with ACS’s services to create new solutions for end-to-end support of customers’ work processes.

For Ursula Burns, Xerox’s CEO, the ACS deal is a defining moment that comes early in her tenure. In a statement,replica handbags, she said:

The deal has been approved by the boards of Xerox and ACS and by an ACS special committee. It is expected to close in the first quarter of 2010.

The company, which is in a dogfight with Hewlett-Packard for print managed services, is apparently looking for more foot soldiers to cross sell everything from process overhauls to document management programs. After all, HP can use its EDS army to sell print managed services in addition to other items. ACS had $1 billion in recurring revenue during fiscal 2009.

By combining Xerox’s strengths in document technology with ACS’s expertise in managing and automating work processes, we’re creating a new class of solution provider.

Xerox is valuing ACS at $63.11 a share, up from ACS’ closing price of $47.50. The move transforms Xerox into a services company that can focus on business process management and outsourcing (statement).

ACS shareholders get $18.60 in cash and 4.935 Xerox shares for each share they own. Xerox picks up ACS’ $2 billion debt. As for the synergies,louis vuitton handbags, Xerox said the deal is about growth:

However, there will be some savings. Xerox said it will save $300 million to $400 million annually in the first three years once the deal closes. The savings are related to back office, procurement,gucci bags, and the costs related to running a public company.