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On the video side, content from Major League Baseball’s MLB.tv will be syndicated on Yahoo Sports through the 2010 season. This means that if you’re a Yahoo user, you’ll be able to watch live and on-demand baseball games on Yahoo Sports–provided that they’re not in your home market. MLB.com says this will amount to more than 2,400 games each year. Yahoo Sports will additionally broadcast game recap show FastCast and other MLB.com video.

Considering the turmoil over at Yahoo, the three-year agreement could be either a home run or a strikeout.

Yahoo announced Thursday that it has teamed up with MLB.com, the digital arm of professional baseball’s operations, in a partnership that encompasses both video distribution and ad sales.

The MLB.tv content will be available on a co-branded player on Yahoo Sports in 11 countries, including the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Currently, access to live out-of-market games on MLB.com’s MLB.tv requires a subscription of between $14.95 and $19.95 per month (or $89.95 and $119.95 per year), depending on quality. Yahoo users will pay the same subscription amount for the co-branded Yahoo Sports player.

That whole Microsoft thing, or Google thing, or News Corp. thing, or whatever it is now, could shake things up, though.

Yahoo will also be the exclusive advertising partner for MLB.tv in the 2009 and 2010 seasons. In the 2008 season, Yahoo will use its Clickable video ads as well as preroll and postroll ads provided by MLB Advanced Media. After that, Yahoo will take over completely by using its new AMP graphical ad system.

For more information about the process, see the USPTO’s description of the program here.

According to the “Peer to Patent” Web site, over 2,000 people have signed up to participate as reviewers of patent applications and have submitted 192 pieces of prior art on 42 patent applications.

It’s a simple fact that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (the “USPTO”) is inundated with patent applications. Given the sheer volume of applications, patent examiners can only spend a limited amount of time examining those applications. Further, given the fact that an applicant for a patent does not have to conduct a “prior art” search before filing, it is virtually impossible for an examiner to turn up all of the prior art that is relevant to a patent application.

Last year the USPTO, in conjunction with the New York Law School, launched a program titled “Peer to Patent.” This pilot project enables the public to comment on and submit prior art that may be relevant to pending patent applications. The project is somewhat limited in scope as only patent applications that relate to computer architecture, software, and information security are eligible for this process and applicants must agree to submit their patent applications to this process. However, preliminary numbers reported by the organization indicate that the project may be an effective means of reviewing patent applications.

Unbeknownst to many patent practitioners, however, the USPTO is getting ready to wrap up a yearlong pilot project directed at giving the examiners a little help in turning up prior art.

When new people are added to the invite list, the service sends a voice SMS, providing details on the event, who is invited, restaurant location and other details. Invitees then respond whether they will be attending.

The company promises that you can deliver your messages and get a confirmation in 60 seconds or less, guaranteed.

The service can be used for other activities, as well, such as locating a local plumber.

Depending on how many merchants are included, this service could save an organizer a lot of time.

The free Web and mobile service offers a way for friends to easily plan activities and make reservations at restaurants and other places, without anyone having to make a phone call.

SAN DIEGO–Arsenal Interactive launched an online concierge service called HeyCosmo at DemoFall on Tuesday.

You can get the entire map used in the video here.

Sometimes a picture can say a thousand words, but videos can tell a whole story.

Jed Lewison from political blog JedReport has put together a great four and a half minute video showing off the various residences owned by political candidate John McCain. There are approximately nine properties in all shown in the video. Lewison created the video using Google Earth of all things, and adds little tidbits of knowledge with each house, including price tags and historical information.

And of what will make Google’s display ads different from the rest of the market, he said, “We always want to be the most targeted. Greater targeting leads to greater advertiser value.”

Schmidt has made no secret of his desire to make more money from YouTube, the dominant video site on the Internet; Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion. In an interview last week with CNBC, he said about YouTube, “We’re working but have not yet in my view gotten a breakthrough around monetization…We’re working on that. That’s our highest priority this year.”

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.–YouTube users soon will see some new advertisements around their online videos.

Google, which bought YouTube in October 2006 for $1.65 billion in stock, makes the vast majority of its money from text ads that show up next to search results, but in particular through its acquisition of DoubleClick, it’s working to improve its business in display ads.

“We have new ad products that are not pre-roll and post-roll,” he said, referring to ads that show up before and after videos. “We have new approaches. Think of them as ads that are in the context of YouTube. They use the page around YouTube in interesting ways.”

Google CEO Eric Schmidt

(Credit:
Elinor Mills/CNET News.com)

“We are not the leader in display ads. As far as I can tell Yahoo is,” Schmidt said.

Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said the company is working on new ads for the video site in a meeting here with reporters before Google’s shareholder meeting, but he was cagey with details.

For what it’s worth, Google last year experimented with overlay ads that pop up within the YouTube video player itself for a few seconds. They didn’t go over too well with some viewers.

The new ads will launch “over the next few months,” Schmidt added.

The example given was a recipe widget on your computer that tells you how to make something, and if you don’t have one of the ingredients you can bookmark it. This information gets ported over to a shopping list widget, which you can then access on-the-go via the iPhone application.

Tings has widgets that share data across multiple platforms, starting with three popular ones.

Tingz is a new widget engine whose big feature is cross platform data sharing. At the TechCrunch50 conference it was shown off on a
Mac,
iPhone and Windows Media Center PC, with various widgets pulling together the same data set.

Presumably users would have it installed on both platforms to make the most use of it. When added on your desktop computer it adds contextual options on a system level so you can clip text, links, or other items and send them to your widget sandbox. Like Shifd, a cross-platform notes tool I use, this is handy way to port it around.

The service is currently in private beta and requires a software installation on all three platforms.

There are already a ton of services that have this cross platform data sharing, and panelist Digg.com’s Kevin Rose pointed out these tools are invariably at odds with the built-in widget platforms found on OS X and
Windows Vista. The one thing I think it has going for it is the built-in payment platform where you give Tingz your credit card credentials and and developers can let you pay for services via their widgets. This was shown off for something like buying movie tickets.

(Credit:
Tingz.net)

The Windows Media Center app might have been the most out of place, as it was advertised as being large and eye friendly but the text still looked incredibly small. It runs as an application within Media Center, which could make it useful for getting some Web video widgets to run right on your TV.

They were there to give voice to the findings of a 32-page report, which showcased 31 companies that have implemented so-called green initiatives that also have helped their bottom lines.

Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, flanked by a coterie of CEOs featured in the report, also used the occasion on Tuesday to shine the spotlight on private sector green initiatives. At the same time, he hammered the Bush administration’s attentiveness to environmental issues.

(Credit:
Charles Cooper/CNET News.com)

•  Solar-powered Web hosting
An EPA estimate predicts that data center energy consumption will increase by 12 percent per year. Considering how the average data center can be 40 times more energy intensive than your basic office building, there’s special urgency to break the cycle. Maybe it’s still the exception to the rule, but Affordable Internet Services Online (AISO.net) in Southern California powers its 2,000-square-foot building with power from 120 solar panels. (I spoke with CTO Phil Nail, who says that the company’s making up whatever extra start-up costs incurred in the coin of smaller monthly energy bills.)

“Washington is asleep at the wheel,” he said in a brief appearance at the San Francisco offices of the Environmental Defense Fund.

He also lauded the businesses that have embraced energy-saving policies. A handful of the companies featured in the EDF report turning out for the event included Sun Microsystems’ Jonathan Schwartz, Ken Grossman of Sierra Nevada Brewing; Casey Sheahan of Patagonia, SunPower’s Richard Swanson; and Charles Kavitsky, chairman of the Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company.

•  Telecommuting
More than 44 million Americans do at least some of their work outside of the office. The biggest adopters of telecommuting in the tech world are IBM and Sun Microsystems, which bought into the idea in the 1990s. Big Blue says that 40 percent of its global workforce work outside of a corporate office. At Sun, 20,000 employees work at home full-time or divide their work week between a company office and home office. Considering how much it costs to fill up on gas these days, Schwartz likened Sun’s telecommuting policy to granting “a pay raise.”

Schwarzenegger, whose position on environmental questions is far to the left of his colleagues in the Republican Party, also blasted the administration for meddling in a long-running dispute over controlling tailpipe emissions in California.

•  Company-run travel
Here’s a stat that caught my eye. In the greater San Francisco area, more than 70 percent of commuters drive to work alone. As my old basketball coach was wont to say, “WTF?” The flip side of that equation is that more companies are offering free employee shuttle transportation. About one fourth of Google’s local workforce arrives at the corporate headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., by shuttle.

It was purely coincidence but the release of a report on how businesses are using technology to reduce their carbon footprint came just as the price of a barrel of crude on the NYMEX topped $129 for the first time.

(Credit:
Charles Cooper/CNET News.com)

“We’re going to be like a bunch of ‘Terminators’ and march forward,” said Schwarzenegger, who sported a green tie for the occasion. “It’s as simple as that.”

•  Advanced teleconferencing to reduce travel
Both Cisco and Hewlett-Packard sell videoconferencing systems with life-size, real-time communications. These so-called telepresence systems are more immersive than previous generations of teleconferencing technologies and being offered as substitutes to travel.

Energy waste is for girly men.

Democrats and environmentalists have claimed that the White House influenced a decision by Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson to deny California’s waiver request so it could limit tailpipe emissions. At the time, the EPA said it did not have authority to get involved in questions regulating greenhouse gas emissions. The U.S. Supreme Court subsequently ruled that the agency did have that power and Schwarzenegger said the state planned to press ahead with its plans.

The two companies have signed an agreement to collaborate on an electric car based on Mitzubishi’s i Miev that should become available in late 2010 or early 2011. The car will be manufactured by Mitsubishi, but sold under the Peugeot brand name, according to the agreement.

Siemens is providing technology for the car’s power train which includes the motor/generator, the power electronics, and the interface with the car’s battery.

(Credit:
RUF Automobile)

Mitsubishi and Peugeot Citroën made an announcement of a similar nature late Tuesday at the Geneva Motor Show.

The Greenster sports old-school style on the outside, but green-school tech on the inside.

The Greenster, like its name suggests, is designed to look like a roadster vehicle of yesteryear complete with plaid seats. But the tech speaks to the 2000’s interest in green technology.

(Credit:
RUF Automobile)

(Credit:
RUF Automobile)

Greenster's interior includes the nice throwback touch of black, white, and tan plaid seats.

RUF's Greenster in partnership with Siemens.

The i Miev, which will take about 7 hours to recharge at 200V outlets and 14 hours at 100V outlets, is being launched this summer in Japan, with testing and pilot projects underway in the U.S., Europe, and New Zealand, according to Mitsubishi.

The electric vehicle will be able to recharge in less than an hour when plugged into a 400V outlet. The company made no mention of how long the car might take to recharge if the street version is made to plug into household outlets, which fall between 100 and 240 volts, depending on the country.

The Greenster concept car displayed at the Geneva Motor Show had only one motor. But the Pfaffenhausen, Germany-based company said in a statement that the street version, which the company plans to start selling in 2010, will actually have a dual-motor system.

RUF Automobile and Siemens Corporate Technology, the research arm of Siemens, debuted their all electric
car concept at the Geneva Motor Show this week.