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Despite these weak spots, the A-HD could be a great starter HD camcorder, or even a secondary one for two-camera shoots. You can get it for $119.99 shipped from Amazon. Circuit City has it for the same price, though you’ll likely have to pay sales tax as well. Even so, this is without a doubt the best deal you’re likely to find on an HD camcorder. The Cheapskate is mighty tempted.

I haven’t tried the A-HD myself, but I can tell you it has a few limitations–most notably its lack of an optical zoom. According to various user reviews, it falters when capturing fast-moving subjects, and it’s not particularly good at recording audio. (Speaking of reviews, watch this unintentionally hilarious one on YouTube.)

In the market for a digital camcorder? You could spend $179.99 on one of those Flip Video Ultras, which let you record a whopping 60 minutes of YouTube-quality video. Or you could pay $119 for the Aiptek A-HD, which records hours’ worth of high-definition (720p) video on inexpensive memory cards. Hmmm…

(Credit:
Aiptek)

Yeah, talk about a no-brainer. The A-HD is a slim, pocketable camcorder (and 5-megapixel camera) with a swiveling 2.4-inch LCD and an SD slot that accommodates cards up to 8GB (good for about 4 hours of HD video–get one here for a measly $28). It captures video in H.264 format, which you should have no trouble editing in programs like Pinnacle Studio Plus 11. And it includes component-video outputs for connecting directly to your HDTV.

The Aiptek A-HD records 720p video on inexpensive SD cards.

Registering your Web site at Google’s Webmaster Central site can help find bogus search-engine optimization tricks others may use on your site, such as keywords written in white text on white backgrounds, he added.

“Spammers are human,” Cutts said. “You have the power to raise their blood pressure. Make them spend more time and effort…If spammer gets frustrated, he’s more likely to look for someone easier.”

• Use captcha systems to make sure real people, not bots, are commenting on your site. He uses a simple math puzzle–what’s 2 + 2?–but he also likes KittenAuth, which makes people identify kitten photos.

Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team and an engineer who’s been working on the problem for eight years, offered some tips about combating it during a speech at the Web 2.0 Expo here.

SAN FRANCISCO–It’s no secret that spam now pollutes Web sites as well as e-mail in-boxes. But Web site operators can take actions to combat it, a Google expert in the area said Friday.

(Credit:
Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)

One blogger merely requires people to type the word “orange” into a field. “The vast majority of bots will never do that,” Cutts said.

How? Forthwith, some tips for those who manage their own or others’ Web sites.

• Reconfigure software settings after you’ve installed it. A little modification of various settings will throw bots off the scent. “If you can off the beaten path, away from default software installations, you’ll save yourself a ton of grief,” he said.

Matt Cutts, Google's lead engineer for combating Web spam, at the Web 2.0 Expo

• Don’t be afraid of legitimate purveyors of search-engine optimization services. “SEO is not spam. Google does not hate SEO,” Cutts said. “There are plenty of white-hat SEO (companies) who can help you out.”

• Employ systems that rank people by trust and reputation. For example, eBay shows how long a person has been a member and how satisfied others are with transactions with that person.

As I reported in our own family’s on-going XO Laptop experiment, the rewards of learning can be both immediate and self-evident, if only the game is not too deeply buried under layers of flashy but meaningless praise. We are struggling against a consumeristic tide that bombards our daughter with unrealistic promises of happiness and prestige/social status, but we are also winning a few battles here and there as the intrinsic rewards of authentic accomplishment push aside the TV clutter for another day.

Last year Amy put her PhD in neuroscience to good use when she wrote the article debunking Baby Einstein. I, too, aired my thoughts in an article titled buy now, pay forever: the business of tech toys. Today, a blog from open source community member Stormy Peters teaches that we may have it all wrong when it comes to rewards and motivation.

Adlerian psychology teaches that every human being has the goal of belonging, of making a place in his or her world. Discouraged children, who find themselves unable to accomplish this goal on the socially useful side of life through cooperation and contribution, may develop mistaken goals in their struggle to belong. But what is it that encourages or discourages a child? One theory is that praise, which represents a form of judgement, orders the child within an external locus of power, making them helpless or powerless when praise is witheld, whereas responses or natural consequences that relate to a self-centered view—doing things for their own sake— help the child develop an authentic and independent sense of self. What does this have to do with technology?

If the Adlerian hypothesis is correct, that children really want is to belong and to be significant, then how do external rewards help or hurt the child as they grow into adulthood? A dependence on external rewards for a sense of self leads to a profound feeling of emptiness, which is chronicled in the excellent book The Price Of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids. So without telling anybody how to be a better parent, let me just suggest that you look at social software and tech gadgets from a new perspective: what is the reward and who defines it? The more external and the more arbitrary the reward, the more the reward may diminish (to the point of extinction) intrinsic motivation. Conversely, the more ways a child can find some intrinsic reward in the activity (even if it’s the reward of decorating rather than programming a laptop), the more the child builds an intrinsic sense of belonging and significance.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

HBO Subscribers are getting a slightly better end of the deal than their Showtime counterparts as long as they’re willing to watch the shows on their PCs and forgo bringing the programming with them on portable devices. I’m still interested to see how much legacy programming HBO intends to offer in its first few months, as two of the key reasons for piracy are people simply not wanting to buy DVDs or missing the episode within its initial TV window. Isn’t this what they created on-demand programming for in the first place?

The New York Times is reporting that HBO is launching its own online distribution service for a portion of its content both past and present. Starting this week, lucky residents of Green Bay and Milwaukee, Wisconsin will be the first to get dibs on the new software application that can be set up to download and stack episodes old and new that can be watched on their PCs. Cable provider Time Warner (the same folks working on the lovely bandwidth metering down in Texas) is sending out the application on an CD to current HBO subscribers “soon.”

The Times notes competitor Showtime’s foray into digital distribution that started with iTunes back in 2006. Showtime currently has just over a dozen shows on iTunes and Amazon’s Unbox service at $2 a pop, although unlike HBO’s standalone downloading media player, both services are on a purchase model that allow users to repeatedly watch episodes on their computers, TVs, and in the case of iTunes–iPods and iPhones.

Already there are a few caveats to using the fancy new software. For one, the application is limited to Windows machines, and unlike standard network television channels, Internet users can’t access the programming without being an HBO subscriber–a system that’s likely to be checked with activation servers. The downloaded content is also given a self-expiration date of one month, regardless of whether or not it’s been watched. In many ways it’s similar to the BBC’s efforts with the iPlayer project, both in helping people catch up on old episodes, and attempting to curb piracy with easy access.

Chances are, Google is being tight-lipped about Android’s progress for one of two reasons: it’s having more trouble than it originally anticipated or it simply doesn’t want us to know anything before it springs some major developments on us.

I guess not.

Google’s Android platform may be as wonderful as the company wants us to believe and some may even say that it’s better. But unless I can actually see it with my own eyes and I have some concrete information about its development, I need to consider it AWOL.

While I know that there are probably thousands of people right now that are anxiously awaiting an Android-based phone, I can’t help but wonder how many have stopped caring. Let’s face it — if something is announced towards the end of 2007 and it’s hardly mentioned by the middle of 2008, how many people can we truly expect to care?

Here’s my theory:

Wake up, Google. We want to hear more about Android.

To make matters worse, I was perusing Google’s Android Developers blog and there has been little mention of anything important surrounding the launch and availability of Android.

Google got into the open handset business with too much hope for the future. The company figured that because of its success online, it could expect to enjoy the same kind of success in an extremely competitive environment — the cell phone industry. Realizing that it’s probably not all it’s alleged to be, Google ran into trouble with software development and getting Android up and running on some of its partners’ devices. And in an attempt to reassure us that everything is fine, it has maintained radio silence.

And in the end, it’s on Google to find a reason why we should care about Android and except for the boring updates on the company’s Android blog, Google has gone silent. If you ask me, it better wake up soon or there could be more trouble on that front than it may expect.

Regardless, I can’t help but wonder if things have gone awry. After all, in an industry where the
iPhone gets most of the attention, wouldn’t Google want to do what it can to remind us all that it has something of its own up its sleeve?

Even though the company promised it would be the cornerstone of its mobile plans going forward, Google’s Android platform has fallen off the radar in the past few months. Some say it’s because the company has had a series of issues with its SDK and companies are complaining about the difficulty of developing on the platform. All the while, we’ve been waiting for something from the Android camp to find out what’s going on.

With that in mind, I can’t help but wonder what is really going on at the company. Is it simply trying to hide its problems so we think that everything is running smoothly or is it doing all it can to build up the hype? If it’s the latter, I don’t think it’s doing a very good job.

Disagree? Take a look at what Google has said recently about Android. If you notice, the company has stayed relatively tight-lipped about its plans going forward and although it may hint at interesting developments going forward, I’m not sold on the fact that anything big is coming out of the Android camp.

A quick glance around the Web tells you everything you need to know about Android — nothing. I spent a good hour looking for something to discuss here and after giving up in disgust, the best I could come up with was some useless news about the top Android applications.

• Dell made a decision: Asus’ Eee PC shouldn’t have all the fun. And speaking of Netbooks, the nostalgia-laden Commodore name is having a decidedly 2008 moment in connection with that nascent but red-hot market.

EA is bringing its new creature feature to the iPhone and iPod Touch.

If you have a short memory or didn’t have time to catch up on Crave this week (editor’s note: for shame!), no worries, we’ve got you covered. Here’s a look back at some of the truly interesting, strange, and wonderfully silly stories we Craved.

• A Crave reader stopped by his local Fry’s Electronics store, and all he got was this lousy 120GB Zune.

• Fighting with your significant other? Try getting a DVR.

See anything awesome we missed? Send it our way at crave at cnet dot com.

(Credit:
CNET)

• CNET’s Nicole Lee got a peek at the Peek, and then looked the other way.

(Credit:
EA Mobile)

• Everywhere we turned, we saw Blu-ray, but for how much longer, we’re not so sure.

CNET gets its hands on Dell's Inspiron Mini 9.

• Stop saving your pennies, gamers. Word’s finally out that Microsoft’s
Xbox 360 will dip below $200.

• The next-generation
iPod Touch and iPod Nano could look like this.

• The world gets ready for Spore–and so does the iPhone.

(Credit: Le Timbre)

Space is not the only thing that’s micro about “Le Stamp:” The fixed price menu is very limited with only two or three choices of every course. The chef is from Manchester, UK, but the food is French and excellent. Reservations are competitive but democratic: As with the Momofuku Ko restaurant in New York, status doesn’t matter for landing one of the few tables; everyone can make a reservation, even on short notice. Nonetheless, the dining experience is exclusive — the night I was there, the waiting line of people exceeded the number of guests still working on their meals, which struck me as a very obvious manifestation of “artificial scarcity.” Blend scarcity and timing and you create buzz and intrigue, writes Ed Cotton. Oui!

After reading and talking so much recently about the concept of “democratic exclusivity” (first coined by Ed Cotton on the Influx Insights blog and then promoted by the relentless Piers Fawkes), I was delighted to finally experience it myself when I was strolling the streets of Paris last week. I spent a day (a micro-vacation!) in the not-so-touristy 6th district around Metro Vavin in Montparnasse (in fact, I rarely left it, which was a much more satisfying experience than zig-zagging from the left to the right bank all the time as I used to) and discovered “Le Timbre,” (French for “the stamp”), a true micro-restaurant in the size of, yep, a stamp. Literally squeezed into a hole-in-the-wall, this place has a total of 12 tables and 24 tightly packed seats, and one is forced by proximity to engage accidental dining partners.

That suggests to me that perhaps Yang has accepted the fact that, either by combining with Microsoft or perhaps AOL, Yahoo’s independent days are coming to an end.

He didn’t say Yahoo didn’t want to sell itself, saying merely that the board and management are committed to choosing whatever option maximizes shareholder value. Adding to the sense that this was mostly bargaining for a higher price, he said the company “will not enter into any transaction that does not recognize the full value (of Yahoo).”

The between the lines stuff was in Chief Executive Jerry Yang’s comments. In some ways, his words sounded like more of the same.

Although he noted that Yahoo rejected Microsoft’s initial offer, he said “our board and management continue to be open to any and all options, including a sale to Microsoft.”

The Microsoft takeover effort was both between the lines in Yahoo’s earnings report and on the bottom line itself.

“As outlined in our investor presentation, we believe we can significantly accelerate our revenue growth, return to our historically high margins, and double our operating cash flow by 2010,” he said in a statement. “This quarter’s solid performance underscores the fact that we are executing on that plan.”

The bottom line part was Yahoo’s notation that it spent $14 million on outside advisers related to both Microsoft’s bid and exploring other alternatives, as well as for litigation costs related to the bid.

However, I read his words more as a pitch for a higher price than as a real justification for his go-it-alone approach. He talked about the strength of the current strategy, but notably didn’t use the words “independent company” anywhere in his words.

Update: Yang practically confirmed as much on the call in a brief discussion of the Microsoft proposal. Here were his key points:

Yang said that the company is still “exploring a number of strategic alternatives.”

Updated 2:15 p.m. PDT, with comments from CEO Jerry Yang on the conference call.

Papadopoulos also advocated a free market in which all interfaces and formats are based on open standards; customers own their data, relationships, and metadata; and customers can extract, synchronize or purge their data unilaterally. This echoes recent efforts to promote openness and data portability.

Click here for more from GigaOM on Structure 08.

There will be a grid of a half dozen very large cloud infrastructure providers and a hundred or so regional providers, Papadopoulos said. It will also look more like the banking world, he continued, with customers willing to trust the service providers with their private data as they do banks with their money. It’s a question of when, not if, this scenario will occur.

Papadopoulos acknowledged that the nirvana of every customer or user in charge of their own data that lives in the cloud has challenges. Today, users cede control of their data to service providers like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, and others. It’s not as easy for users to manage and move their data as it should be, which means users are generally stuck with the user experience and monetization schemes of the host sites. “It’s proprietary systems all over again,” Papadopoulos said. Over the last several years Sun has differentiated itself proprietary vendors, focusing on free open-source software and open standards.

(Credit:
Dan Farber)

SAN FRANCISCO–Speaking at the Structure 08 conference here, Sun Microsystems CTO Greg Papadopoulos predicted that by the beginning of 2010 the majority of systems sold would be for Web, high performance computing and software-as-a-service applications. “We are going through this phase change in computing in a big way,” he said. He made a similar prediction last year.

Papadopoulos has predicted a “neutron star collapse of data centers,” meaning at some juncture it won’t make sense for businesses to build their own data centers. Instead they will contract for computing resources from hosting providers who bring “brutal efficiency” for utilization, power, security, service levels, and idea-to-deploy time.

Papadopoulos also laid out a map (see below) of the current universe of cloud computing in terms of increasing virtualization and consolidation across various categories: processor, operating system, language, and application services. Over time, the categories will fill out more especially as more languages and applications services or platforms rise up. Papadopoulos pointed to two Sun projects, Dark Star and Project Caroline. Dark Star is about software infrastructure designed to simplify the creation massively scalable online games, virtual worlds and social networking applications. Project Caroline is a hosting platform for developing and delivering Internet-based services. It’s not clear why the Sun research projects are positioned at the far right on the chart, and players such as Google, Joyent, and Rackable are missing.

Sun CTO Greg Papadopoulos

(Credit:
Sun)

Higher up in stack developers have more targets and more freedom to innovate below it, Papadopoulos said.

Further out into the future, Papadopoulos expects that the technology infrastructure industry will be similar to the energy industry. In past presentations, he has called this transition the Red Shift.

Click here to see more stories from the Structure 08 conference and on cloud computing generally.

The FCC is not commenting on the proposal, but according to the AP, the agency is negotiating with carriers on a number of terms. Most importantly, ETFs would be capped at an undisclosed amount and carriers would be required to prorate fees according to how long a customer has stayed with the contract. While most major carriers prorate ETFs already (the longer a customer has been in a contract, the lower the ETF) they are not required to do so. Legislation proposed in the Senate last year also calls for prorating ETFs, but so far the Cell Phone Consumer Empowerment Act of 2007 is not close to passing.

Carriers have long held that ETFs are necessary because they sell phones at a loss to their customers. In their view, the fees are a way to recoup the costs for offering free or heavily discounted new phones. The Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, which counts a lot of carriers in its membership, supports ETFs for the same reason; it contends that ETFs benefit consumers because they allow carriers to offer phones and plans at a lower monthly price.

The FCC proposal also would prohibit carriers from charging an ETF to customers who change terms of a contract or end one contract and start another. New customers would be able to end a contract without paying an ETF in the first 30 days of their contract or for up to 10 days after they receive their first bill.

As expected, the government would give carriers some concessions in return for the regulations. The AP says the proposal would prohibit states from regulating ETFs and that carriers could not be held liable in a number of ETF-related class action lawsuits that customers have filed in several states.

If you hate paying a fee to end your cell phone contract yearly (and really, who doesn’t?), you’ll be interested to know that the Federal Communications Commission may just have your back. The Associated Press is reporting today that the FCC is considering proposals to regulate, but not eliminate, the early-termination fees (ETFs) that have become a sore spot for cell phone owners. Currently, wireless carriers charge up to $200 for customers who leave service contracts before their end date.