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These seem like strange words to be directed at a jingle. Any jingle. Even the word “jingle” is from some time gone by and awry.

Because I do pretty much what everyone tells me, I went to YouTube and espied a chap called Jonathan Mann, a Mann who has decided to write a song every day.

Yes, someone had called me to play a winning Bing jingle over my cell phone.
This was a friend, indeed. A friend with no conscience.

Brands rarely use jingles these days. They just pay U2 or Coldplay a lot of money for an original track. Truly the “$5 footlong” era is somewhat to the Peyton Place side of Tony the Tiger.

He also shouted that the first thing I should do after I had scrubbed my armpits with sandpaper and removed myself from the shower was to watch the video on YouTube.

However, Mann seems to have been a little perturbed by the criticism, specifically that of MG Siegler at TechCrunch. So to prove his agility and, frankly not insignificant wit, he penned a heartfelt and quite harmonious homily, and uploaded it before the blogosphere’s bile had soaked into the organic cotton of his T-shirt.

A rather nice day at the Bing and Office office, no?

When it ended, my friend shouted into the phone, at least I think he shouted, that this ditty had won its creator $500 in a competition sponsored by Microsoft.

So, yes, one imagines that Microsoft thought it might have a little amusement with its jingle competition. $500 does not signify seriousness.

So you see, for a mere $500, Microsoft has been rewarded with significant publicity and joyous new music, all amounting, no doubt, to a little bada-Bing cha-ching.

I then discovered that his oeuvre had been pilloried. Words like “awful” winged their way toward Bing–even the phrase “worst ever.”

I heard a little techno beat, the voice of a distant cousin of the Pet Shop Boys and the oft-repeated phrase “Bing goes the Internet.”

I awoke on the floor of my house today with a thumping, bumping sound bashing lumps into my ears.

This seems to be a far more noble pursuit than, say, dropping a bomb every day. So I was relatively touched to see Jonathan Mann dancing in a very precise and slightly parodic manner to his composition.

Google Voice has also been in the news lately over Apple’s refusal to okay a mobile version of the service for the iPhone. Apple’s snub prompted a stern letter from the FCC asking Apple and AT&T to explain their actions.

Google Voice had been available only to users of GrandCentral, the service that Google took over in 2007 and transformed into Google Voice. The service was recently opened up to a greater number of people. Still, requests for a Google Voice number can take a long time to fill, which is why a 24-hour response time is a big benefit for military personnel.

Staying in touch with family and friends can be a challenge for military staffers, especially those serving overseas. With its latest campaign, Google is trying to help.

Using the free Google Voice service, military staffers can set up a single phone number that will automatically ring any phone and also receive voice mail as text transcriptions. Family and friends need only keep track of that one number, a benefit for personnel who may jump from one location to another. People can also dial the Google Voice number to leave voice mail for soldiers serving overseas, which are then retrieved from mobile trailers with Internet access.

“I spent 13 months in Iraq as an Army journalist where I flew in Black Hawks over Balad and Baghdad working to generate news coverage about my fellow soldiers,” writes Sweetnam. “The whole experience was physically and emotionally draining, but it was especially difficult when I called home at the end of the day and nobody was there to answer.”

Any active U.S. service member with a .mil email address can sign up for a free account at the Google Voice invitations for military personnel page.

In his guest blog, Sweetnam, who works with Google on the U.S. Army’s “Training with Industry” program, explained the problem of trying to call military staff overseas.

Google will now offer priority Google Voice accounts to active members of the service, according to the company’s official blog. Military staffers with .mil addresses will receive Google Voice invites within 24 hours after requesting them, says Tuesday’s blog, written by U.S. Army Sergeant Dale Sweetnam.

“I signed up for an account when I came to Google, and it’s already making communications much easier here in the States” writes Sweetnam. “I know when I return to combat, Google Voice will help make life a little more manageable.”

(Credit:
NIH, Medical Arts & Photography Branch)

Hearing aids and cochlear implants work like complicated miniature microphones to help the deaf and hard-of-hearing pick up the noises around them. Unfortunately, the hum of background noise also tends to be amplified, often creating a confusing melee of sound.

Clearcall was initially developed for cell phones, but the Clearcall-filtered voices are distorted, and therefore distracting to those without hearing impairment. So Furst-Yust adapted the technology to instead be used as a software add-on for existing hearing aid devices.

Clearcall is patented and is available for licensing through Tel Aviv University’s commercialization company, Ramot. It could hit the market in a matter of months, according to the press release.

Meanwhile, Furst-Yust will keep working on her algorithm for other possible applications, including a device that filters out the sounds those without hearing impairment don’t want to hear–particularly music, which she says is easier to target than voices because our brains listen to music differently.

An ear with a cochlear implant.

Miriam Furst-Yust, a professor at Tel Aviv University’s School of Electrical Engineering, has developed new software called Clearcall that can improve speech recognition by up to 50 percent in hearing aids and cochlear implants, according to a press release put out by the American Friends of Tel Aviv University.

So why go that riskier route, borrowing money? Most companies that can attract venture capital do. Taking out loans is less attractive because loans typically have to be repaid with interest, regardless of how the company fares.

“I was revered.”–Former SpiralFrog CEO Mel Schrieberg

Schrieberg said Mohen asked him to be the guarantor of an American Express card that Mohen would use for business expenses. And since it was Stagg covering those expenses, he could deny any charge. That made Mohen beholden to Stagg as well as well as Schrieberg, who said he was never reimbursed for more than $40,000 that Mohen rung up on the credit card.

Click the image above to read our story on how SpiralFrog's founder, Joe Mohen, enabled a former employee to sell customers' e-mails.

Not at SpiralFrog, which paid Mohen $360,000 a year in annual “consulting fees,” documents show. Before he departed, former CEO Robin Kent was paid a $340,000 salary. Schrieberg’s salary was $279,000.

Although Mohen declined to specify how SpiralFrog’s prospects might have changed in October, records show that company executives believed that a Viacom investment, which to them seemed imminent, would save the start-up.

Schrieberg, a former IBM executive, had no operational experience in advertising or in music. In e-mails sent to several SpiralFrog employees, Mohen called some of Schrieberg’s decisions “insane.”

Schrieberg said he resigned of his own volition in October. But he acknowledged that Mohen came to him sometime around July 21 and told him that Khan would be taking over most of the CEO duties. He said he agreed to go along with the plan because Stagg and 3V were already calling most of the shots. But Schrieberg strongly maintains that he performed well at SpiralFrog and that the board and senior management were aware of “every penny” he spent as CEO.

“The board wants him removed now,” Mohen wrote in a July 21, 2008, e-mail exchange with Amir Khan, an executive at 3V Capital Management, SpiralFrog’s biggest financial backer. “He adds no value at this time. The management will be very demoralized, if he remains.”

In a private meeting, CEO Mel Schrieberg was stripped of most of his power after SpiralFrog’s board grew tired of his heavy spending on salaries and ineffective marketing strategies. Even worse for Schrieberg, the man intent on driving him out was an old friend and one of his main allies at the company, founder Joe Mohen.

Starting over

In an interview, Khan and Stagg said Schrieberg was kept around because of the ongoing Viacom negotiations. Stagg said he and the rest of the board believed that removing Schrieberg would have rattled the entertainment conglomerate, which had expressed interest in obtaining a minority stake in SpiralFrog. With Stagg’s blessing, Khan and some of his lieutenants at the hedge fund tried operating the start-up for several months without any official titles. In an interview, Mohen called this effort a disaster.

Still, everyone knew that such an endeavor would be impossible, according to Stagg, because the licensing deals that SpiralFrog had with Universal Music and EMI were nontransferable. If SpiralFrog went bankrupt, Mohen would have to renegotiate for new music licenses.

In the end, the current suit is a fight over the bones of a dead company. SpiralFrog’s domain name was sold in May to MyMojo, a mobile-content site, for $20,000, sources say. After three years’ worth of turf wars, more than $40 million worth of loans and investments, and a long list of unfulfilled promises, that’s pretty much all that was left.

But why would Schrieberg share his card with Mohen? Schrieberg said he was just trying to help him out. Several former employees said, however, that Schrieberg went to great lengths to ingratiate himself with board members, including Mohen.

Power struggle

In early 2008, Schrieberg spearheaded a massive search engine- and affiliate-marketing campaign that would eventually cost the company $11 million, records show. The strategy was successful at drawing visitors but failed to generate lasting interest. Most people stayed a few minutes, viewed a few Web pages, and moved on. The practice of paying for traffic was supported by the board of directors and Mohen, but eventually, they lost faith in the strategy and in Schrieberg.

Certainly, SpiralFrog, which was trying to succeed with an unproven business model, wasn’t exactly in an ideal position from the start. But former insiders, most of whom requested anonymity, say inexperienced managers who allowed petty squabbles to cloud their judgment didn’t do themselves or their company any favors.

Despite his significant consulting fees and the private sale of some of his SpiralFrog shares, Mohen took out a personal loan of $115,000 in 2007 from a financial-services firm that was doing business with SpiralFrog, records show. He acknowledged to CNET News that he has not yet repaid the loan.

“The management team to a person was alienated by Stagg’s people,” Mohen said. “That was because they tried to operate a business, and they didn’t have the skills to do it.”

Click on the image above to see a full AOL invoice that led SpiralFrog’s board to strip CEO Mel Schrieberg of most of his authority.

Until the economic meltdown, Mohen said SpiralFrog was on track. “It was all going to happen for us in October,” he said. “We came a lot closer than people will ever know.”

Stagg may have overstated the situation a bit. Money would eventually trickle back in–virtually all of it from him–to help the company limp along while the board searched for an acquirer. There’s no doubt, however, that at that time, SpiralFrog was nearing collapse.

Click the image above to see copies of some of SpiralFrog's correspondence.

“(Schrieberg) needs to be kept out of the office. When I saw the invoice today, I realized how serious this is…the majority of the board and senior (management) team find him incompetent…Make him vice chair, and pay him for his cooperation.”–SpiralFrog founder Joe Mohen in an e-mail about former CEO Mel Schrieberg

After receiving $9 million in traditional equity funding in 2006, Stagg’s investment firm began loaning SpiralFrog money in May 2007. Eventually, Stagg would lend the music service $34 million in convertible notes, which gave him the option of converting the loans into stock. Stagg said he never recouped the money.

Could have been a contender

In December 2008, cash-strapped SpiralFrog appeared doomed. Entertainment conglomerate Viacom had expressed interest in acquiring a minority stake in the start-up three months beforehand, but the deal fell through. Yahoo would also eventually kick the tires on SpiralFrog but it also passed. Stagg, in a December 11, 2008, e-mail to SpiralFrog’s board, from which he had recently resigned, sized up SpiralFrog’s bleak financial situation.

On March 13, 2009, the music service was forced to turn over assets to creditors and shut down. To find out how a company that some called a potential iTunes killer so quickly turned into yet another dot-com flameout, CNET reviewed numerous documents and interviewed 13 people formerly associated with the company, including former board members, executives, and employees.

To Mohen, SpiralFrog “was all about him controlling the company, no matter who was in charge,” Schrieberg, who maintained his CEO title from January 2007 to October 2008, told CNET News in a phone interview. But Mohen, who had founded the pioneering voting site Election.com, hardly deserves all the blame for what went wrong.

In July 2008, two months before start-up SpiralFrog’s aspirations were shredded by the souring economy and a series of management gaffes, the long knives were already drawn in the music service’s executive suite.

Hiring relatives of board members can be problematic, according to corporate-governance experts. Employees can file discrimination suits, if they believe that a board member’s relative was given a promotion that rightfully should have gone to them. Schrieberg said all the hires were cleared by the company’s legal counsel. He also denied that such decisions made him unpopular with SpiralFrog employees. On the contrary, he said, “I was revered.”

During the two years Schrieberg was CEO, the company hired the sons of board members Steve Norcia, Tom Mackell, and Bob Gordon. Schrieberg confirmed this but said the board member’s sons were well-qualified.

Adding to the management dysfunction was Scott Stagg, who managed 3V (now called Stagg Capital), the company that loaned SpiralFrog $34 million. For nearly two years, Stagg paid all of SpiralFrog’s bills. Only sumo wrestlers are more likely to throw their weight around than Stagg, former employees have indicated, and even Mohen says management couldn’t do much without first checking with Stagg.

“(Schrieberg) needs to be kept out of the office,” Mohen wrote. “When I saw the invoice today, I realized how serious this is…At this point, the majority of the board and senior-(management) team find him incompetent…Make him vice chair, and pay him for his cooperation.”

In mid-September, the wheels came off. Viacom declined to invest in SpiralFrog. Stagg continued to provide some funding, but only a small percentage of what he once did. In November, Mohen gathered employees still left and told them that the company would not make payroll.

The situation was tough, but there was a brief upside for Mohen: without Stagg’s money, SpiralFrog’s management no longer had to placate him, former employees said. Mohen was named interim CEO and began looking for new investors. He tried convincing 3V to continue funding the company by threatening to steer SpiralFrog into bankruptcy and start all over with a new company.

“The management team…was alienated by Stagg’s people. That was because they tried to operate a business, and they didn’t have the skills to do it.”– Joe, Mohen, SpiralFrog founder

Khan replied that Schrieberg was “CEO only in name. His duties are all gone to me.” But Khan stopped short of agreeing to remove Schrieberg. “We can’t have another CEO leave,” he wrote.

It was a questionable call. According to several former employees, to entice users of illegal peer-to-peer sites to SpiralFrog’s legal and free music service, the company needed a CEO with a strong background in advertising and music. Schrieberg, who spent most of his career as a sales manager at companies like Xerox and IBM, had neither.

Stagg made several unsuccessful attempts to take control of the board but always failed. “The truth is, we never had control (of the company) because we never had control of the board,” Stagg said.

Another way SpiralFrog differed from most start-ups was that it spent lavishly on salaries. Start-up CEOs typically ask for more equity in their companies rather than a big paycheck. It’s common to see Silicon Valley managers earn less than $150,000 a year.

Perhaps not surprisingly, by the summer of 2008, it was becoming apparent that Mohen, Schrieberg, and Stagg were competing for control of the privately held SpiralFrog, former employees say. SpiralFrog was dependent on Stagg’s money, which gave him considerable influence. Schrieberg had the board behind him at least until July. Mohen’s personal financial troubles and feuding with fellow board members, meanwhile, sapped much of his power.

As for how he got into financial trouble, Mohen suggested that it was because of SpiralFrog’s collapse. “I risked everything on the company,” he said, adding that he invested $400,000 of his personal wealth, an amount he says he never recovered.

Mohen, 53, acknowledges that mistakes were made. But, he added, what else could you expect? SpiralFrog was breaking new ground as it attempted to become the first service to offer music downloads free of charge to the public. In his version of the company story, everyone did their best and came close to turning SpiralFrog into a hit service, which attracted more than 2.5 million register users before closing.

What really killed SpiralFrog, according to Mohen and Schrieberg, 66, was the collapse of the investment-banking industry in September and the nation’s subsequent financial meltdown. “There is not much you can do when funding and advertising sales go down precipitously due to economic conditions,” Schrieberg said.

A power struggle between Kent and Mohen paved the way for Schrieberg’s appointment as CEO. In December 2006, Kent nearly drove Mohen out of SpiralFrog in a failed takeover bid. Mohen barely had enough board votes to keep control, and Kent, who had become CEO only seven months earlier, was sent packing. Just days after that, Mohen handed SpiralFrog’s CEO position to Schrieberg, whom he had known for 11 years, Schrieberg said.

“At this time, the company is out of money, all employees have been terminated, (and) over $8 million of payables remain outstanding,” Stagg wrote. “There are multiple lawsuits with pending judgments, and the major music publishers, including Sony/ATV, Warner Chappell, and Harry Fox are expecting $550,000 of long overdue payments. Sony ATV is demanding a payment of $100,000 by Monday, December 15, which, if the company fails to meet, might force SpiralFrog to remove all of Sony ATV’s content from the site.”

Proof that Stagg and 3V did control SpiralFrog could potentially cost the investor more than he’s already lost over it. Antaeus Capital, a financial-services firm that began working with SpiralFrog in 2006, has asserted in a lawsuit that the start-up breached several agreements. The complaint, filed last November, alleges that SpiralFrog was really Stagg’s property and that he should make good on the money the company owed. The case is still moving through the courts.

Who is in charge?

Headquartered in New York, SpiralFrog was a different kind of start-up from the get-go. It funded operations through loans. The company issued secured notes, essentially a contract whereby a company promises to repay at a certain interest rate.

The terms of drawn-up contracts, copies of which were obtained by CNET, called for Viacom to give SpiralFrog $100,000 in cash and $6.5 million worth of advertising on its MTV Networks unit. In exchange, Viacom would receive 4.3 million shares of preferred stock. The deal, if closed, would have valued SpiralFrog at about $120 million.

In September, at about the time the economy was becoming unglued, Viacom backed out of investment talks, and SpiralFrog’s chances to survive the recession soured. One executive who did business with SpiralFrog and had seen the company’s books said it’s hard for him to conceive that anyone would have bought it. The source said the company’s debt was just too big and complicated.

The start-up’s short, troubled history saw other clashes among managers. At the center of most of them was Mohen. He butted heads with his handpicked CEO, as well as SpiralFrog’s board of directors and financial backers.

Nonetheless, Schrieberg lost the board’s backing on July 21, when a $974,000 invoice from AOL, for affiliate-marketing services, reached the desks of Mohen and other board members. The bill was a shock; Schrieberg had told the board that the costs add up to about $600,000, according to 3V’s Khan. In an e-mail exchange between Mohen and Khan, who was also a board member, Mohen lobbied for 3V to oust Schrieberg.

That’s the sort of mix-and-match experience that could be addressed through a new deal between DARPA and Geosemble Technologies, which makes a product called GeoXray that aims to quickly answer the question “What’s around here?” for both government agencies and civilian users. In a nutshell, it works this way: you can peruse dining options or identify enemy assembly areas simply by clicking on aerial images of your area of operations.

“An integrated interface makes it simple for anyone to view a satellite image of any place in the world, then click on a location or object to automatically extract relevant information,” DARPA program manager Todd Hughes said in a statement. “The application uses automatic techniques to accurately display geographically relevant news articles, business intelligence, events and databases onto satellite and aerial imagery.”

“The seamless integration of news and data with imagery and maps brings an important new capability to government users, and has game-changing implications for online publishing and real estate,” said Andre Doumitt, Geosemble CEO. “There is a lot of imagery available out there - high resolution, 3D, ground level, etc. This DARPA program enhances our position as the ‘data inside’ provider for those who need accurate and timely intelligence about their imagery, with accuracy down to the building level.”

The El Segundo, Calif.-based company is already pitching GeoXray as a quick and efficient way for shoppers to scout out retail opportunities without having to walk or drive around. It’s easy to imagine this program linked to a Zillow-like real estate site.

Ever been out on patrol and had a sudden urge for chapli kabobs with a side of bendai?

In its new DARPA program, Geosemble will expand its range of information sources beyond text to include video and audio sources.

GeoXray uses artificial intelligence to assign textual keywords to geospatial datasets, which in turn allows the customer to view information associated with a specific location. The data is summarized and displayed chronologically on what the company calls an “intuitive, user-friendly interface.”

The Collider is due to for a restart in November. One can only hope it’s a safe one.

Sources told The Independent that the scientist was not thought to be threatening the Collider itself, but rather was helping terrorists choose nuclear targets for attack.

(Credit: CC Ethan Hein/Flickr)

A 32-year-old nuclear physicist, part of the Large Hadron Collider project on the Swiss-French border, has been arrested by French police on suspicion of involvement with al-Qaeda.

CERN reassured the Independent that the suspect was not working on any of the major elements of the Collider, nor did he have access to the tunnel in which the Big Bang experiment is to be carried out. The CERN representative added, “None of our research has potential for military application, and all our results are published openly in the public domain.”

Of Algerian origin, he was arrested together with his brother, who was not working on the Collider.

According to The Independent, the arrest was made after anti-terrorist police had followed his movements for more than a year. Le Figaro newspaper suggested that the man’s name had originally come to light in connection with the “Afghan network” of terrorist groups based in Europe.

The French Ministry of the Interior told Le Figaro that, having seized the man’s two computers, three hard disks, and several USB keys, it believed the threat was serious. A Ministry spokesman said, “Our investigation showed without doubt that there were targets in France and elsewhere and indicated that we have perhaps avoided the worst.”

YouTube goes on to declare that the rights holders capitalized on the huge popularity of this visual ode to marital joy. Searches for “Chris Brown Forever” also leaped like a heart at the words “I do.”

They also were rather happy with the performance of “Forever,” the Chris Brown song to which the wedding party waddles and wafts into the church. According to the announcement:

In an announcement entitled, “I now pronounce you monetized: a YouTube video case study,” posted by Chris LaRosa, technical account manager, and Ali Sandler, music partner manager, the Tubers’ hoops are cocked at the joy of the video’s success (now more than 12 million views).

It is healthy for this nation’s economy that someone is making some money out of YouTube. It would merely be interesting to understand precisely, or even vaguely, how monetizable the site–or even a single video on the site–truly is.

You see, if I ever want to get married, my brave and lovely bride and I would try to get some sense of which artists with whom to negotiate.

I only ask because, well, when you see the word “monetization,” you hope to also see a reference to the actual money that was “tized.”

At YouTube, we have sophisticated content management tools in place to help rights holders control their content on our site. The rights holders for “Forever” used these tools to claim and monetize the song, as well as to start running Click-to-Buy links over the video, giving viewers the opportunity to purchase the music track on Amazon and iTunes.

Last week, at this here mental-research facility, we asked the question, YouTube, how much are you making off Jill and Kevin’s wedding? And those fine boffins over at the Tube have decided to answer–kind of, at least.

The song sold extremely well on iTunes and in Amazon’s MP3 store. It reached Nos. 4 and 3 on those charts, respectively.

Still, there is one small item that appears to have been omitted in the answer to our question: what does this all mean, in terms of dollars?

“The bright idea is not so much putting the sensors in. It’s what you do with the data–you get reams of information so you have to try to figure out what’s important and not,” Guasti said.

Saving green or green PR?

The Green Innovation Data Center was designed for tours so customers can get some ideas on how to lighten their own data centers’ energy load. But it’s not just for show–the center runs applications used by thousands of people.

IBM’s tech staff did what many others in their position have done: they consolidated their computing workload with virtualization and upgraded to new, more energy-efficient hardware.

IBM’s main problem was data center sprawl. Five years ago, internal IT staff could barely keep up with growing demand for computing resources from employees, causing an expansion from one data center location to four–a situation that was costly and inefficient.

Now, those four data centers have been consolidated into a single spot with the latest in energy-efficient tech gear, including a network of 200 sensors and water-cooled servers. It also uses what are considered the best practices for physically laying out a data center, with close attention to everything from cabling to air flow.

Photos: Inside IBM’s deep green data center

Combining IT and building architecture
To keep the air conditioning well tuned, IBM is gathering lots of data. Sensors are placed behind, in front of, and top of server and storage racks to monitor the temperature. The data is collected and analyzed so that the air and water cooling systems can be automatically adjusted as needed, Guasti explained.

To lighten the overall cooling load, IBM is using its liquid-cooling systems, originally code-named Cool Blue, which fit onto the back of server racks. These heat exchangers cool the hot air coming from servers’ fans by circulating cold water through coils, which absorb the server heat and then are cooled using the building’s chiller.

Just office buildings or hotels heat or cool rooms even when there are no people in them, many data centers operators don’t have fine-grained control over cooling systems. That means the temperature can be set lower than it needs to be or a “hot spot” emerges when one piece of equipment has a heavy computing load.

Also, the influx of data on energy use lets data center managers better track related costs.

IBM is looking at a variety of other ways to lower energy consumption, including using solid-state hard drives and using outside air–filtered to clean out contaminants and humidity–to cool the building, Guasti said.

But packing more servers–each with multicore processors–into smaller spaces creates more heat, exacerbating the challenge of keeping the space cool. IBM is using a number of techniques to cool efficiently, but the guiding principle is to match the cooling with the required heating load.

Operators can get a “thermal map” of the data center based on the sensor data to help find trouble spots. They are also beta testing an upcoming version of IBM’s Tivoli Energy Management software, which will be able to incorporate the sensor data into the systems management program.

SOUTHBURY, Conn.–IBM’s “green” data center here is kind of like a techie version of the “This Old House” television show. But in this case, the project was to build a showcase for energy-efficiency computing, rather than construct a new addition for a suburban home.

Making data centers more energy efficient has been a growing priority for technology managers for the past few years, as companies seek to trim spending on electricity and reduce their environmental footprint. The Environmental Protection Agency in 2007 estimated that data centers alone use about 1.5 percent of all electricity in the U.S. and are on a pace to double consumption in the coming years. In IBM’s case, it deals with high volumes–its wikis are used by 365,000 people–and a growing number of applications.

“You have to physically integrate the IT and physical (cooling) equipment so you can adjust the air conditioning to match the thermal load–the system should be very dynamic,” said Peter Guasti, program director for IBM’s Green Innovations Data Center.

Updated at 7:15 A.M. PT with corrected title for Toole and video added.

But the company measures the “payback” from upgrading its data center not only with energy savings and environmental benefits. It’s also measured in business process improvements, Toole said.

“The instrumentation we have with what is going on is so much more granular than before. We haven’t had dashboards with regard to the green aspects before,” Toole said. “Now we can see things like energy on a smartphone and we’re able to manage that.”

For example, the data center allows IBM to operate an internal “cloud computer.” Employees can procure computing resources–server processing and storage space, for example–for a certain amount of time on a subscription basis. In the past, employees asked the IT group to install a server for each new application, which is less efficient than a shared-resources model.

Air flows along a predetermined path with “cold aisles” pumping cooled air to the front of equipment from the floor and hot air behind server fans being sucked upward from the ceiling in “hot aisles.”

And the investments IBM made in making the center more efficient are “very cost justified,” said Patrick Toole, the company’s newly named chief information officer, in an interview. IBM as a company has wrung $3 billion in costs over the past year, which it plans to continue, he said.

So what do you think? Does Verizon deserve its award?

U.S. Cellular rated highest in the North Central region. It had fewer customer-reported problems with initial connections, static, or interference, and late or failed voice message notifications.

AT&T rated near the bottom in all regions but the Mid-Atlantic and North Central. Sprint rated in the middle or at the bottom in all regions. See J.D. Power’s chart for the full rankings.

Another day, another cell phone study from J.D. Power and Associates. This time, it’s not customer service–T-Mobile, Alltel, and Verizon Wireless tied for that honor earlier this month–but a survey of the all-important call quality.

In the Western region, Verizon tied with Alltel and T-Mobile (in its press release, Verizon identified T-Mobile only as “one other carrier”–meow). T-Mobile performed well in reducing the number of problems with echoes and distortion, and Alltel performed well in limiting the number of late or failed messages.

Just like last year, Verizon was the overall winner this time around. The carrier ranked highest in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Southeast, and Southwest regions. According to the study, Verizon had particular success with limiting dropped calls, failed initial connections, and late or failed text and voice messages.

That’s particularly important with plug-in electric hybrids–essentially the same type of vehicle as today’s hybrids with bigger batteries–because actual mileage will vary significantly based on driving conditions and how often a car is recharged.

Having a rating for electricity per mile allows a consumer to figure out how much it costs to run a car per mile by using the local per-kilowatt-hour electricity cost, he added.

(Credit:
Argonne National Laboratory)

To get real-world mileage for a plug-in hybrid, researchers have come up with a formula to convert standard tests for a chassis dynamometer, seen here at Argonne National Laboratory, into mileage ratings.

Recalibrating your dynamometer

With multiple alternatives and a lot at stake, it’s unlikely that the question over how to represent fuel efficiency on a sticker will be resolved quickly. Sedans such as the Chevy Volt, Nissan Leaf, and plug-in Toyota Prius are scheduled for release over the next two years.

Industry group SAE International plans to recommend that the Environmental Protection Agency use “electricity per mile” in addition to the familiar miles-per-gallon rating for plug-in electric vehicles, according to a member of the SAE committee tasked with the job. The EPA is working on mileage ratings for plug-ins, which are poised to enter the market, and reviewing its rules for displaying fuel economy on car stickers.

Because efficiency for gas-electric hybrids is far more tricky than gasoline-only vehicles, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory recently said that it has developed a method researchers say accurately reflects real-world mileage of plug-in hybrids, which can vary greatly with driver behavior.

If you’re wondering how the familiar term “gas mileage” translates to a car that runs partially on electric batteries, you’re not alone.

“There are two different fuels that are being used so you need to report what the usage is for those two fuels,” said Gonder. “If you combine them into one (number) artificially, you can’t derive a final output like annual costs” or annual greenhouse gas emissions from a car.

To come up with a mileage rating today, cars run a course on a machine called a dynamometer–essentially a treadmill fitted for cars and trucks–and the results are converted into miles per gallon. The current conversions don’t work well because plug-ins operate in two modes–the first 20 or so miles when the car runs mainly on batteries and then in the “charge sustaining” mode for longer rides, said Gonder.

The annual fuel cost of Idaho National Labs’ plug-in Priuses ranged from $987 a year–in the case of an aggressive driver who never recharges from an outlet–to $478 per year with the driver charging about every 30 miles and seeking to maximize fuel economy. The average came to $789 per year with daily charging, from the equivalent of 55 mile per gallon mileage.

Updated on October 6 at 11:30 a.m. PT with corrected credit on photo caption.

Researchers found that the expected results matched actual mileage of a fleet of Toyota Priuses converted to be plug-ins operated by Idaho National Laboratory. Gonder said the methodology needs to be tested with other cars, but should be able to be adjusted for different types of plug-in vehicles, including the range-extended Chevy Volt.

In addition to cost per mile, there are a number of other proposals to measure fuel efficiency for electric cars. They include an electric car’s range–a big limitation of all-electric vehicles–or miles per gallon equivalent based on the energy in liquid fuels and batteries.

To address that issue, NREL researchers devised a formula to convert plug-in hybrid car performance on dynamometers to reflect actual driving performance, he said.

But labels aren’t the only problems that new auto technologies introduce. The automated tests used to measure fuel economy before vehicles are sold need to be adjusted as well, according to NREL researchers.

Within six months, an SAE committee plans to recommend to the EPA that plug-ins come with fuel-economy stickers that show both miles per gallon and electricity per mile, said Jeff Gonder, a research engineer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and a member of the committee.

“We’re trying to set appropriate expectations for what vehicles will get over a long period of time,” said Gonder. “We’re trying to predict the average (mileage) based on how often they drive between recharging.”

The data also made clear that the cost of operating a plug-in hybrid will vary significantly based on driving style and frequency of charging.

Plug-in hybrids run almost exclusively on battery power for the first 20 or 40 miles, with the battery working with the gasoline engine after that. Driving mainly off the battery will be cheaper in part because electric motors are relatively efficient. So the fuel economy for a 40-mile drive will be substantially better than when a person drives 200 miles in a plug-in hybrid, since the bulk of the driving will be fueled by the gasoline engine, Gonder explained.

Government agencies and automakers have been studying the question of mileage for gas-electric vehicles for years. But the issue rushed to the forefront in August when General Motors said that its forthcoming Chevy Volt will get 230 miles per gallon in the city and “triple-digit” combined city and highway mileage driving based on a draft of the EPA’s methodology. The EPA has not verified GM’s claims, as the tests have not been completed.