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Originally announced in July, the special Flickr-branded Getty collection will be launching in early March. It’s the first official move by Flickr where users can sell their images, although all the purchasing and organization will be done on Getty’s end. In the interim Getty has set up a Flickr group where those selected can discuss licensing and rights issues if there are any.

The partnership between Flickr and Getty Images is finally moving forward. Early Wednesday the Yahoo-owned photo-sharing service announced that invitations from Getty have been going out in high numbers. Some members who have had one or more of their images chosen to be on Getty’s sale site could have gotten notice as early as last week.

Unlike microstock services such as iStockPhoto, Shutterstock, and Fotolia, the Getty/Flickr partnership will be royalty-free and rights-managed only. It’s also going to continue to be invite-only, whereas the other sites allow user submissions.

Oracle announced its intent to buy Sun on April 20. The announcement followed a lengthy series of talks and meetings between Sun and other suitors looking to pick up the company.

Investors holding approximately 62 percent of all shares of Sun common stock voted yes to the deal under which Oracle will acquire Sun for $9.50 a share in cash, a total of $7.4 billion, or $5.6 billion net of Sun’s cash and debt.

Sun Microsystems announced Thursday that the stockholders at its special meeting voted in favor of the merger agreement with Oracle.

The global downturn has been hard on Sun, which is expecting lower sales and a net loss for its fiscal fourth quarter.

The acquisition still faces antitrust scrutiny by the U.S. Department of Justice over one sticking point on Java licensing. But Oracle is confident the merger will be completed by the end of the summer.

Password data, according to Siegrist, is encrypted on the PC and on the servers. He said that no one–himself included–can decrypt them without the master password that only you know. Assuming the encryption is as good as he says it is, this should protect your security even if their servers are compromised. The company provides a lot of security information on its FAQ.

Joe Siegrist, Lastpass CEO

But even if you do come up with a clever and hard-to-remember password, don’t use it for every site. Since lots of people do that, there’s the risk that a sleazy site operator–or a sleazy person who works for a legitimate site–could use it to break into your accounts on other sites.

RoboForm has a free trial version that’s limited to 10 passwords after the trial ends. Lastpass is free.

Password managers
One solution is to use a password manager. There are several available programs and Web storage services, but the ones I’m most familiar with are RoboForm and Lastpass. These programs can generate passwords for you and remember them so you don’t have to. Both programs are, themselves, password protected, though you have the option of running RoboForm without a password or having Lastpass remember its own password on your PC. That’s OK as long as no one else has access to your machine. I recommend that you manually enter your master password on a laptop that could more easily fall into the wrong hands.

One way to create a password that’s hard to guess but easy to remember is to make up a phrase. You could type in the entire phrase (some sites let you use spaces, others don’t) or you can use the initials of each word in the phrase, for instance, “IgfLESi85″ for “I graduated from Lincoln Elementary School in ‘85.” An even better one would be “MbfihswE&S” for “My best friends in high school were Eric and Steve.” You get the idea–upper case numbers, letters, and symbols that are seemingly meaningless to everyone but you. Microsoft has an excellent primer on passwords and a password strength checker.

There are also versions for Blackberry, iPhone, Windows Mobile, and Android as well as a Web site for phones and browsers that aren’t supported directly.

(Credit: Lastpass)

RoboForm has been around for a long time, but Lastpass is a relatively new offering. Company CEO Joe Siegrist describes the program as a hybrid because it stores your passwords and usernames both on your machine and on the Web. You can download the browser plug-in to a PC or a
Mac to work directly with
Firefox on either platform or Internet Explorer on Windows, but there are also ways to use it with
Safari and Chrome. Because it has a Web interface, it can work with any Web-enabled device, but the plug-ins for IE and Firefox make it easier to use.

On Firefox and IE, Lastpass records your usernames and passwords when you first enter password-protected sites and then enters them for you automatically for subsequent visits. Passwords are stored in a “vault,” which is actually a Web page stored on your PC, as well as the company’s servers, so you can access it from any device, including a borrowed machine. The password vault on your machine is automatically synchronized with the server, so you don’t have to worry about synchronizing or backing up your data.

One of the best ways to protect your online security is to have strong passwords that you change periodically. But that’s easier said than done. Coming up with hard-to-guess passwords is hard enough, but it’s even harder to have separate passwords for different sites and to remember new ones after you change them.

For a lot more on this password management, see CNET News reporter Elinor Mills’ post, “Facing the pain of passwords.”

Also, the additional $2 billion in funding to extend the program would come from a loan guarantee program for deploying renewable energy projects, such as solar and wind farms. In the current financially constrained funding environment, renewable energy company executives say that the Department of Energy loan guarantee program is very effective.

The cars that are being bought are on average 18 percent more fuel efficient than the cars they are replacing, according to the Department of Transportation.

The program has spurred vehicle sales in the ailing auto industry for both U.S. and foreign suppliers. But the program has its detractors, with some warning that the sales spike is temporary and that there are less costly ways to promote green technologies.

He calculated that the $6 billion originally allocated for the DOE loan guarantee program could result in over $100 billion in economic activity in the U.S.

“Redirecting one-third of the monies allotted to the loan guarantee program to reseed the Cash for Clunkers program–which has already taken an estimated 250,000 pollution-heavy cars and trucks off the road–appears to be a politically advantageous, though economically short-sided, move,” wrote analyst Nadav Enbar in an IDC Energy Insights paper.

But the overall impact from the program in reducing greenhouse gas emissions is about saving one hour of the U.S.’s carbon dioxide emissions, according to the AP analysis written by Seth Borenstein.

See CNET Car Tech’s choice of six cars that get the full trade-in value of the Cash for Clunkers program and meet the maximum price requirement.

The government-funded program, where people can get up to $4,500 for trading in a
car for a new, more fuel-efficient model, has been so popular that it may run out of funding by the end of the week. The House passed a bill to extend the program with an additional $2 billion which, if the Senate passes its version, would give consumers until Labor Day to trade in cars, according to an Associated Press report.

“It’s not that it’s a bad idea; just don’t sell it as a cost-effective energy savings method,” Michael Gerrard, director of the Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University said in an academic journal. “From an economic standpoint it seems to be a roaring success. From an environment and energy perspective, it’s not where you would put your first dollar.”

“As a carbon dioxide policy, this is a terribly wasteful thing to do,” Henry Jacoby, the co-director of the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology told the Associated Press for an article that analyzes the environmental benefits. “The amount of carbon you are saving per federal expenditure is very, very small.”

The Senate is expected to vote on a bill on Thursday to extend the Cash for Clunkers car trade-in program, but experts contend there are more cost-effective ways to get environmental benefits.

(Credit:
Ascending Technologies)

The Pelican is a micro air vehicle (MAV) with a quadrotor design, using four propellers on a carbon-fiber frame for lift and control. It maps hallways and rooms with a 32-yard-range laser scanner and stereo cameras while wirelessly reporting its progress to offboard computers. The location and mapping algorithm was implemented by the MIT team.

Just when you were getting used to the idea of unmanned aerial vehicles patrolling the skies over your city, they’re beginning to enter buildings.

It’s a good thing MAVs still sound like a thousand mosquitoes due to rotor noise. Otherwise they might start putting spies out of business.

The Pelican, based on hardware designed by German start-up Ascending Technologies with programming by a team at MIT, accomplished the mission on its fourth attempt, but with only a few minutes to spare. It netted a $10,000 prize at the International Aerial Robotics Competition.

This flying robot designed by a U.S.-German team recently won a contest in which the goal was to autonomously navigate inside a simulated nuclear power plant and find and image a control panel without the aid of a GPS.

Entering its 20th year, the small but venerable IARC proposes challenges that cannot be met with current technology, military or otherwise. In its next mission, the sixth, MAVs will have to penetrate a simulated security compound, steal a flash drive and replace it with a dud before exiting safely and undetected.

This quadrocopter can find its way around interiors.

Company marketers aren’t testing the social waters just for the fun of it, though.

According to the study, about 85 percent of respondents believe customer reviews across the Web are a great way to increase sales. They reason that consumers listen to their peers. By comparison, just 33 percent of companies believe a Facebook Fan page can increase sales.

“They don’t want to do this unless it delivers the return on investment that their companies are expecting,” Freedman said.

Retailers have a love-hate relationship with social media, according to a study set to be released next week.

Sixty-five percent of companies are using Twitter as a tool to market their brands. However, 9 percent said they don’t plan to open a Twitter account or market their brand through it.

Still, it’s not Facebook or Twitter–the two social tools retailers are using most often–that companies expect will help them increase sales. Instead, customer reviews take the top spot.

“Brands are especially worried about negative comments hurting a brand, but they also know that they need to go social. That’s why they’re using Facebook and Twitter with some success,” E-tailing Group spokeswoman Lauren Freedman said.

Looking ahead, the E-tailing Group sees social adoption continuing to grow in the marketplace. Twenty-five percent of respondents expect that companies will be “much more aggressive” in the social arena. And 50 percent said companies will be “more aggressive” in the next six months.

Eighty-six percent of respondents already use Facebook Fan pages to deliver a social experience to their customers. Only 1 percent of those companies have no plans to deploy a Facebook Fan page.

The E-tailing Group, which specializes in retail sector trends, surveyed 117 companies–from small to large–to assess how retailers and brands view the social Web.

Fifty-five percent said they allow customer reviews on their sites and feature blogs. And 50 percent have used viral videos.

“Quick adoption of social networks is a guarantee over the next six months,” Freedman said. “That’s mainly due to movements to social brands by the competition.”

Ninety-three percent of companies surveyed said they are seeking greater customer engagement through social-media efforts. And 76 percent want to use social networks to “mobilize advocates through word of mouth.”

In other words, no company wants to be left behind.

The biggest concern among respondents is that consumers will “trash their products in front of a large audience,” according to E-tailing Group. At the same time, companies very much want to partake in the social Web.

Of all social media, Facebook drew the most interest of respondents, followed by Twitter. Tying for third place were customer reviews and blogs. Viral videos took fifth.

Brian Prentice, a research vice president with Gartner’s Emerging Trends and Technologies Group, speculates that it just might be. Google has been actively developing open-source alternatives to leading proprietary products, like Google Wave to compete with Microsoft Outlook and SharePoint. As Prentice indicates, Google has also been publicly advocating passage of the Patent Reform Act of 2009, which might have a lot to do with its open-source strategy.

Google contributes to open source for a variety of reasons, not the least reason being that it recognizes open source is an efficient way to create community around its products. But perhaps Google has this more subtle, and sophisticated, reason as well?

The proposed legislation alters the way damages are calculated in infringement suits to be “calculated as the price of licensing a ’similar non-infringing substitute in the relative market.’” Now if that alternative is a free, open-source piece of software, then damages drop to zero, as Prentice notes:

Does that mean that free open source products can now be considered substitutes in a relative market? I’ve been trying to play the scenarios out in my head. If Google Wave, hypothetically, infringes a patent that IBM holds and they’re found guilty of doing so, could they simply claim that the relative market value is zero because there are existing free OSS mail and IM solutions? Once Google Wave is shipping, can other organizations infringe on patents Microsoft holds relative to Exchange comfortable in the knowledge that Wave creates a zero dollar relative market value for collaboration?

Martin Fink of Hewlett-Packard first started talking about the value of using open source to commoditize a competitor’s core offering through open source back in his 2002 book “The Business and Economics of Open Source.” But Prentice’s idea takes Fink’s argument and runs with it…at Usain Bolt speeds.

Here’s why.

Brilliant.

This is incredibly insightful on Prentice’s part, and amazingly shrewd if, in fact, Google is playing this game. It takes open-source advocacy to an entirely new, Sun T’zu-esque plane.

If true, The Register’s question–”Is Google spending $106.5m to open source a codec?”–calls up a different response than the author of that article gives. Maybe $106 million is cheap compared to the cost of getting hit with video compression patent suits (from Microsoft, Apple, and others), if Google open source’s On2’s video compression codecs.

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

Open source means different things to different people. It can be a software development methodology, a distribution technique, or a marketing gimmick. Could it also be a way to minimize patent infringement damages?

In its report, Forrester predicted that 2 million U.S. consumers will buy an e-reader this year, in addition to the 1 million who bought one in 2008.

Of the number of e-book users questioned in the In-Stat survey, more than 58 percent own the Amazon Kindle, while 9 percent use Sony’s Reader. Around 45.5 percent of them spend between $9 and $20 a month on e-books.

(Credit: In-Stat)

The tech industry buzzes a lot about e-book readers. But how widely are they actually used?

Another study released last week by Forrester discovered that consumers find e-book readers much too expensive. Extrapolating from the 4,706 U.S. consumers questioned, Forrester found that almost 65 percent of U.S. adults online would consider a price of $98 or less too expensive for an e-book reader but would still purchase one.

Among 1,529 consumers who responded to a July 2009 questionnaire from research firm In-Stat, only 5.8 percent currently own an e-book reader. And only 11 percent of those questioned said they planned to buy one in the next 12 months, according to the In-Stat report released this week.

Among current users of e-book readers, In-Stat found the number one requested feature is e-mail. Potential buyers cited better battery life and Internet connectivity as the two most important factors in persuading them to buy a reader.

Those results are significant in a market where Amazon’s least expensive Kindle sells for $299, even after a recent price cut, and Sony’s less-pricey Pocket edition Reader sells for $199.

In-Stat’s survey found a greater tolerance for high prices. Among its audience, 40 percent of potential buyers would pay $200 to $299 for a reader, 29 percent would pay $100 to $199, and 13.6 percent would pay less than $100.

(Credit: Forrester Research)

Those low results may be even more significant given that In-Stat’s survey audience consisted of high-end consumers who typically adopt new technology earlier than the general public.

Fewer than 20 percent said $99 to $148 was too pricey for a reader though they would still buy one, while 14 percent said the same about readers in the $149 to $198 range.

Forrester’s blog dissected the meaning of its survey: “The maximum addressable market for eReaders as they are currently priced is substantial–but to reach the largest market possible, the prices will need to come way down. And even then, eReaders are never going to be as big a market as MP3 players, which 110 million US consumers own.”

The company announced that it was developing plant-based plastics for solar-cell components, which included the use of cotton and castor beans, in August 2008.

BioSolar's biomass backsheets for solar cells will work with existing industrial manufacturing machines.

“BioSolar’s goal is to reduce the costs of solar modules and make solar energy greener by replacing petroleum-based module components with bio-based materials made from renewable plant sources,” David Lee, CEO of BioSolar, said in a statement.

A backsheet is the bottom layer of a photovoltaic cell used by solar manufacturers to protect the cell from moisture, temperature fluctuations, and the elements.

BioSolar’s BioBacksheet-A, a new addition to the company’s line of backsheets, consists of a sheet of aluminum foil sandwiched between two layers of polymer made from renewable plant sources. The aluminum used in the sheets is also 100 percent recyclable.

(Credit:
BioSolar)

BioSolar has filed a patent application for a new type of backing for photovoltaic cells.

The BioBacksheet-A can meet the requirement of thin-film photovoltaics “to have a water vapor transmissions rate of nearly zero,” according to BioSolar.

The company is also trying to make it easy for interested solar manufacturers to make the switch from petroleum-based components. BioSolar’s rolls of biomass backsheets can be used with existing industrial machines, according to the company.

Barnes & Noble has shut the doors on its how-to Web site Quamut. What remains are digital and physical guides in its stores.

Barnes & Noble also continues to run in-house ads for the site on its online store, despite the change.

What remains are the 1,685 guides which will continue to be sold both at Barnes & Noble’s online store as digital downloads, and at brick-and-mortar stores as laminated paper reference guides. These range anywhere from $2.95 to $5.95 depending on what format they’re in.

There’s no word yet on whether the company will continue to invest in the creation of more guides, or if its user-generated how-to guides will once again be made available. For now, the only way to access them is through a Web cache like Google.

A Barnes & Noble representative could not be immediately reached for comment.

Barnes & Noble has quietly shuttered its how-to site Quamut. The site, which was launched back in late March 2008, was a mix of professionally produced how-to guides and user-created wikis, the latter of which are no longer available.

(Credit:
CNET)