Applied Materials touts 'largest' solar setup

The solar power installation at Applied Materials' headquarters is further evidence that companies looking to go green should think blacktop.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based maker of gear for making high-tech products announced Friday that it has completed the installation a pair of solar power systems that together can produce 2.1 megawatts of energy--which qualifies it, the company says, as the "largest solar power deployment at a corporate facility in the United States."

The 1.2-megawatt SunPower Tracker looks to the sky above the parking lot at Applied Materials.

(Credit: SunPower, via PR Newswire Photo Service)

At the nearby Mountain View campus of green-minded Google, an expansive solar installation accounts for 1.6 megawatts. In Nelson, Calif., Far West Rice Mills earlier this year dedicated a 1-megawatt solar array.

Applied Materials splits the solar workload into two pieces serving as a canopy over its parking lot: a 950-kilowatt SunPower PowerGuard installation and a 1.2-megawatt SunPower Tracker setup.

Parking lots, with their wide-open expanses, are an area of focus for some solar power enthusiasts. Researchers, meanwhile, are looking into the power=generating potential of asphalt itself.

The relationship between SunPower and Applied Materials is mutually reinforcing. The solar panels supplied by SunPower are equipped with solar cells manufactured in a process that uses Baccini technology from Applied Materials.

Applied Materials said its solar power system is expected to eliminate more than 2,700 tons of carbon dioxide emissions, or roughly the output of 450 cars. Since November 2007, when the first part of the system went into operation, the solar energy output has been just over 1,400 megawatt hours.

The company also took the opportunity to put in a plug for congressional renewal of the solar energy tax credit, which is set to expire at the end of the year. Applied Materials said that an eight-year extension of the tax credit would create 1.2 million job opportunities and stimulate more than $200 billion in solar energy investments.

Google denies disassembling Vista software

The source code underlying Google's Chrome Web browser suggests that Google used a reverse-engineering technique called disassembly to figure out how to employ a useful Windows Vista security feature, but the company said it didn't, in fact, do so.

The Chrome source code said a particular security feature available on Vista, Data Execution Prevention, can be used on Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 SP1, though it's not documented for the older operating systems. The source code also said the feature can be understood with a disassembler, a method of reverse-engineering that deconstructs a binary file--such as Windows--into instructions more easily understood by a human.

An explanatory comment in the Chrome source code mentions use of a disassembler to figure out the security feature. "Completely undocumented from Microsoft. You can find this information by disassembling Vista's SP1 kernel32.dll with your favorite disassembler," the comment says.

But Google itself didn't take that route. "We did not disassemble this code," the company said in a statement. "The source code indicates that the technique came from http://www.uninformed.org/?v=2&a=4. Please also note that...disassembling is just one of several methods one can use to find this information."

Software companies trying to protect their proprietary software often aren't fans of disassemblers. For example, Vista's End-User License Agreement (PDF) states, "You may not...reverse-engineer, decompile, or disassemble the software, except and only to the extent that applicable law expressly permits, despite this limitation."

Google stuck up for the practice, though. "Disassembling is a common and accepted practice in software development, frequently used to make sure software features are compatible with other software programs or operating systems," the company said.

Regarding the Data Execution Prevention interface, the Chrome source code says, "Try documented ways first. Only available on Vista SP1 and Windows 2008." The method described at Uninformed comes in a later section, labeled thus: "Go in darker areas. Only available on Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 SP1."

Photos: Academy of Sciences rebirth

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Long a San Francisco tradition, the California Academy of Sciences, which was badly damaged in the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989, was closed for major renovations in 2005. On September 27, it is scheduled to re-open, an almost entirely new set of buildings, and one of the world's most innovative green museums.

The facility stands out as the only one in the world with a planetarium, an aquarium, a natural history museum, and a top-level research institution in one venue.

On Thursday, the museum was opened for a special press and members-only preview, and several hundred people were allowed in for the first time to visit all the exhibits.

While many of the different areas of Academy of Sciences are wonderful, perhaps the most special element of all is the building's living roof, a 2.5-acre, wildflower covered, wildlife paradise. It has seven hills, inspired by San Francisco's famous topography, and is home to many species of butterflies and birds. The roof also collects rain runoff and filters it to the massive rainforest below.

Here, the museum is seen from the observation deck of the de Young museum, which was also badly damaged in the 1989 earthquake, and re-opened after its own major makeover in 2005.

The new Academy of Sciences was designed by world-renowned architect Renzo Piano.

Focus testing Gaia's 'zOMG'

Focus group testers play Gaia Online's forthcoming casual MMO, 'zOMG,' at the company's headquarters in San Jose, Calif. The new game, which is scheduled to go into public beta in a couple of months, is an adjunct to Gaia's existing casual virtual world, which has more than 7 million users.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)

SAN JOSE, Calif.--How do you fine tune a game that has been long in the making and is just a couple of months from going public?

That was the central question behind a focus group I sat in on Tuesday, as the developers behind the wildly popular casual virtual world Gaia Online invited seven devoted players to put zOMG, their new massively multiplayer online game, through its paces.

During the session, which lasted about two hours, the seven players--five women and two men ranging in age from 19 to 25--were asked to pound away at zOMG in a bid to help the designers see just what was working at this point in the development process, what wasn't and to discover whether the players would recommend the game to friends.

Already, the Web-based Gaia Online has more than 7 million unique monthly users, and an auction system with more than 100,000 transactions per day. Gaia is mainly a social environment without a deep goal-oriented gaming element, but now, with the planned launch of zOMG, the company is adding an MMO that will be a separate, but adjunct, gaming environment that will essentially have direct paths into the company's larger virtual world and which will be peppered with references to the original environment.

The Tuesday focus group wasn't the first Gaia has held at its offices, and it won't be the last. But it was the first time the company had allowed a reporter in the room to witness the proceedings, a risky move if the testers said they didn't like the game.

In the end, I'd say that the testers I watched were generally pleased with the game. They liked its mechanics and the way it tied into the larger Gaia Online world, but they did have some sobering comments for the producers about why they would recommend it to their friends.

Yahoo Is Counting on Apex

Slouched in a chair in the Holy Cannoli conference room at Yahoo!'s (YHOO) Silicon Valley headquarters one recent September day, a taciturn Jerry Yang looks every bit the embattled chief executive he is. With profits falling and sales growth slowing, the Internet portal's stock price has sunk below 19—a five-year low and 40% less than what Microsoft (MSFT) offered before walking away from its $47.5 billion buyout bid in May. Angry shareholders are still calling for his head. Then Yang starts talking about the imminent debut of an ambitious online advertising system. He leans forward, and the words pour out. "This is a big bet," he says, his voice rising. "It is truly the next generation of advertising."

It's also a do-or-die proposition. More than any other project, the ad system could be Yang's last chance to reverse the flagging fortunes of the company he co-founded in 1994 with Stanford University buddy David Filo. The culmination of a marathon effort by hundreds of engineers, the system—code-named Apex, for Advertiser Publisher Exchange—will be unveiled at the annual Advertising Week conference in New York, which opens on Sept. 22. Apex' goal is to make it far easier to buy and sell display ads, those pictorial and video banners that are the chief revenue source for most Web sites.

The core of the system is a free online marketplace where publishers—Yahoo and its network of partners, including 784 newspapers—use a simple dashboard to post ad slots available on their Web pages. Advertisers, using anonymous data on visitors to the pages, can target ads to the most likely prospective buyers in particular geographic areas—say, ads for minivans to married women aged 31 to 40 in the Chicago metro area. In one transaction, they can reach potential buyers on Yahoo and on partner sites.

Yang's big hope is that improved targeting, greater reach, and less buying friction will make advertisers willing to pay higher rates. In particular, Yahoo aims to help more Web pages, especially "remnant" pages with little obvious commercial value, command something a bit closer to the rates Google (GOOG) gets on search-results pages. This way, Yahoo can start to close the widening gap between Google's expected $16.2 billion in revenue this year and Yahoo's $5.6 billion.

Under a previous ad deal, some newspapers already have generated ad rates on some Yahoo pages two to three times what Yahoo itself was getting. In Atlanta, Cox Newspapers grossed an additional $1 million this year selling ads on Yahoo, thanks to the ability to get broader reach among local consumers and thus lure bigger-spending advertisers. Apex will automate that process, allowing partners to sell ads on many more Yahoo pages. Leon Levitt, Cox's vice-president of digital media, says his company eventually plans to shift all its display ad placement business away from its current partner, Google's DoubleClick unit.

Yahoo's ambitious plan has gained urgency in recent days as a tentative $800 million-a-year search-advertising deal with Google faces intense scrutiny from antitrust officials. If that setup is nixed, Yang will be all the more dependent on display ads to convince shareholders he didn't mess up in resisting the Microsoft deal. Meantime, rivals are pursuing similar plans. Next year, Google is expected to expand DoubleClick's own ad exchange, which matches ad buyers and sellers. "We want to apply the science of search to what is today the art of display," says David Rosenblatt, a Google ad executive. Microsoft hopes to expand its display reach in the coming year or so, too.

"WEB 2.0 WORLD"

Yahoo has a lot to prove. Its last big software project, a search-ad system called Panama, was delayed repeatedly and has failed to slow Google.

Stocks soar as officials confirm gov't rescue plan

Wall Street extended a huge rally Friday as investors stormed back into the market, relieved that the government plans to rescue banks from billions of dollars in bad debt. The Dow Jones industrials rose nearly 360 points, giving them a massive gain of more than 770 points over two days, and Treasurys fell as money flowed into equities.

A new ban on short selling, or placing bets that a stock will fall, was likely adding to the market's gains. And Friday was a quarterly "quadruple witching" day, which marks the simultaneous expiration of options contracts, an event that often adds to volatility.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, speaking about the rescue plan said a bold approach is needed to remove troubled assets from the books of financial firms. He gave few details, but said he would work on it through the weekend with congressional leaders.

A plan to help the banking industry could help alleviate the uncertainty that has been sending the markets into tumult over the past week. Lending has grinded to a virtual standstill in the wake of the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and the bailout of teetering insurer American International Group Inc.

The government took other steps Friday to restore stability to the financial system. The Federal Reserve said it will expand its emergency lending and let commercial banks finance purchases of asset-backed paper from money market funds. The Fed will also buy short-term debt obligations issued by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks.

And to help calm investors' anxieties, the Treasury Department has decided to use a Depression-era fund to provide guarantees for U.S. money market mutual funds. Money market mutual funds are typically considered safe, but many investors have been fleeing them due to worries about the funds' exposure to the embattled financial industry.

To help limit the freefall in financial stocks, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced it is temporarily banning the short-selling of nearly 800 financial stocks. Short-selling is the common practice of betting against company stocks by borrowing its shares, selling them, and pocketing the difference when they fall.

"The federal government has been petitioned by Wall Street to take evasive action in the money markets, the stock and bond markets, to avoid a complete meltdown of the credit system," said Joe Battipaglia, market strategist at Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. "Once the credit system melts down, the economy falls. We can hand-wring about if this is the proper thing for the government to do, or if Wall Street pulled the panic button too soon, but that's something for the historians to sort out."