Verizon and Redbox are creating a joint venture to provide movies on demand using the web as well as Redbox’s physical DVD rental kiosks around the country. The deal is seen as a blow against Netflix, which offers a DVD-by-mail and a streaming service, but it’s also a chance for Verizon to make money from streaming content and show off how awesome its fiber network is.

Details around the deal are limited, but here is what we know.

1. Verizon will own 65 percent of the joint venture while Coinstar, Redbox’s parent company, will own 35 percent.
2. The service will offer something Netflix currently doesn’t — a download option, which makes it more competitive with Amazon’s video offerings.
3. The offering will be available nationwide, not merely to Verizon customers.
4. Using Redbox helps the joint venture get access to new releases as content companies are trying to add more “windows” to the movie release process. Windowing is what content companies use to spread out the time between a movie released in theaters, when it hits rentals stores and when it makes its way to other services such as premium TV channels. The general thinking is this increases profits for each movie, but opinion is divided on that, and consumers hate it.
5. Verizon is counting on its existing relationship as a pay TV provider to get more content to the joint venture.
6. Whatever the end product looks like, it will launch in the second half of this year.

Given these facts, as scant as they are, it’s easy to see the threat to Netflix, as people could view the two offerings as fairly interchangeable as long as the pricing is competitive and the content is relatively equal. But without knowing about pricing or the content, the deal still has the potential to be a win for Verizon, given video is huge bandwidth suck on wireline and wireless networks. Netflix traffic was estimated to take up 20 percent of U.S. broadband traffic during peak hours according to Sandvine in the fall of 2010.

For Verizon, a streaming joint venture has three benefits. One, if it makes money from the service, that’s an additional revenue stream as well as a way to capture some value from its customers who cut the cord. Two, if the service can really deliver a video product that consumers love and will use, it will help drive traffic across Verizon’s networks. Customers in the FiOS areas will have a reason to sign up for the service if they haven’t already, while the joint venture will help drive traffic to mobile devices and other areas of the country. Verizon has a business selling bandwidth on 100 gigabit per second backbone pipes as well as leasing its fiber to cell phone providers to use as mobile backhaul.

Finally the joint venture gives Verizon a seat at the table with content companies as the industry tries to find new economic models based on the reality of an IP infrastructure that can deliver any content to anyone, anywhere. Sure, content companies are fighting the future with windowing and complicated rights agreements, while ISPs are trying to protect their business with broadband caps, but the future is coming, and Verizon is trying to get in on the ground floor rather than watch it pass it by.

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Honeywell's thermostat with Opower software

Honeywell, one of the world’s largest thermostat makers, tells me that twenty years ago it tested out thermostats that can learn the home owner’s behavior and adapt the heating and cooling accordingly, but ultimately decided that consumers didn’t take to them, and would rather control their thermostat themselves.

I asked Honeywell’s President of its Environmental and Combustion Controls division, Beth Wozniak, in an interview if Honeywell was interested in making learning thermostats, because there’s been so much discussion about the startup Nest, which has created what it calls the world’s first learning thermostat.

“We found that consumers prefer to control the thermostat, rather than being controlled by the thermostat,” said Wozniak. Instead of learning thermostats, Honeywell is focused on adding intelligence to digital and connected thermostats through simple UI, mobile apps, and partnerships like its one with Opower.

Opower will be providing the analytics and data to help Honeywell use home and building thermostats for demand response programs, where utilities can ask home owners to turn down their heating and cooling slightly during peak times of day. The Opower thermostats are being piloted with utilities right now, including at PG&E. The Opower software will also be used to create new ways for the home owner to save money on their energy bill, and Wozniak says by the end of the year the partnership will launch other products too.

For Honeywell, connected thermostats are still a small part of the company’s overall thermostat sales. While Wozniak declined to say what percent or what volume of Honeywell’s thermostat sales are connected thermostats, she said it’s the very early days of the connected thermostat market. Honeywell sells a whole host of other connected home products such as humidifiers and security systems, and a “total connected home system.”

Who knows if Nest and its learning thermostat will one day make a dent in the thermostat market, but Wozniak acknowledges that the startup has brought some much-needed attention to consumer thermostats in general. “Cell phones and tablets have set a whole new bar for how things can be connected.”

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One of the most obvious trends from the big smart grid conference DistribuTECH last week was how much analytics and big data tools will be used to try to remake energy in 2012, from curbing energy consumption, to reducing energy loss, to adding in more clean power to the grid. Here’s 10 ways that analytics and big data will start to shape the production and consumption of energy in the world:

1). Weather data: Having a finger on the pulse of constantly changing weather data on a micro and macro level can help utilities, building owners and consumers optimize their energy consumption habits and promote energy efficiency. Startup EnergyHub recently partnered with sensor network player Earth Networks to use weather data to make a more efficient form of demand response (utilities controlling power consumption). Other startups like EcoFactor, Opower and Tendril also use weather data as part of their energy behavioral analytics.

IBM has long sold a weather prediction service called Deep Thunder to municipalities, organizations and utilities, which use it to do things like tailor their services, change routes, or generate more or less power. I think weather data could some day provide a platform for some very important next generation services and applications for energy efficiency, much in the way that location data is used as a platform for a variety of services.

2). Cell phone data: Cell phones in our pockets are essentially palm-sized sensors and computers sending a constant stream of information to the cloud where companies could one day use that data to create energy efficiency and better energy products. And yes, a lot of that data is private information, but after that data is anonymized it can be used for the greater good of the community — particularly via the billions of cell phones in developing countries. A startup called Jana does research projects around cell phone data in developing countries, and looks to work with NGOs on programs to create better infrastructure, energy infrastructure and resources.

3). Connected thermostat data: One of the biggest trends from DistribuTECH this year was the overwhelming amount of smart thermostats that are now being sold and marketed. Companies can incorporate that thermostat data into data bases that can be used to promote energy efficiency. EcoFactor’s service remembers every time a home owner overrides the automated smart thermostat system and changes the personalized service to accommodate that manual override. Using 100,000 connected thermostats (which produce 5 billion data points each month) EnergyHub found some interesting statistics like folks in cold climates have a lower average heating temperature set point than households in warmer states.

4). Hadoop & energy databases: The open source data base tool Hadoop is well known — and oft used — in the computing worlds. But in the energy and utility worlds it’s quite rare. However, as the amount of energy data has started to rapidly grow from the smart grid, some companies are embracing Hadoop as a key way to manage energy info. Opower tells me it’s using Hadoop (and the company commercializing Hadoop, Cloudera) as an important way to manage its massive energy data streams. Likewise PJM has turned to Hadoop as a way to organize the energy data coming off of a synchophaser sensor project.

5). Clean power data: One of the main goals for the smart grid is to enable the addition of more variable clean power, which is far more unreliable than fossil fuels (the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow 24/7). Analytics crunching the data from a utilities’ energy supply and demand can help make clean power a little less variable, by being able to more accurately predict the environmental conditions, as well as more accurately assess demand from energy users.

6). Electric car data: Electric cars will by their nature be connected cars, using information technology to manage the vehicle charge and location. Utilities will be closely tracking the charging habits of electric car owners in order to make sure that the grid isn’t overloaded in some early adopter neighborhoods.

7). Power line sensors: One of the areas of low hanging fruit for the power grid is the simple task of helping utilities find blackouts more easily and be able to monitor and manage grid outages. That’s partly where sensor systems called synchophasers come in, which can in real time monitor the health of power lines, collecting multiple data streams per second. Expect all major networks to have synchophaser systems installed over the coming years.

8). Real estate data: Startups like First Fuel Software can use big data to make super accurate assessments about buildings and ways to reduce the energy consumption of buildings — without any extra hardware or monitoring software being installed at the building. Things like weather around the building, demographics of the people in the building, and the building’s historical energy consumption can be used to create an accurate projection. The best way to make a building more energy efficient is by getting as much data about the building;s energy use as possible.

9). Variable pricing: Some day when electricity is sold throughout the world at different prices dependent on supply and demand, massive data bases will be needed. This type of variable pricing is offered in some places in the world, but if it ever becomes ubiquitous it will help curb consumption, by offering high prices when energy is being over used.

10). Using behavioral analytics to curb energy consumption: Getting into the brains of energy users is the job of startups like Opower and Tendril (after it acquired Gr0unded Power.) Essentially these companies have collected data on consumers and demographics and they are using it to try to guess the best way to influence the consumer to do things like upgrade their home appliances and lights to more efficient ones.

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There are numerous methods to find out information regarding somebody that you are suspicious of. One thing that can be done within this day and age will be employ similar to Spybubble, that is application you could deploy on to their own cell phone. Even so, this may merely work in case his or her cell phone is compatible with the program. Moreover, it is merely going to offer you a specific amount of knowledge.

For example, should you be searching for about in which your kids goes in the evening, you then may be influenced to make use of the system given it includes a Gps device feature. However, if they turn their own telephone off of, or abandon their cell phone someplace that’s not exactly where they are going, then you are not really going to obtain the information you need. This will spark a dilemma should you be depending on your Spybubble to help you keep the little one risk-free.

One more thing that you need to remember would be the fact looking at text messages could be instead challenging company. For instance, the kids may have signal titles for many issues that would otherwise become warning signs. Which means that although you may notice what they’re declaring, something like “It is a great sunny evening today” indicates one among their friends just became a new truckload of some thing illegal. You undoubtedly is not going to know by simply using a secret agent plan.

The next thing you have to think about is the thing that occur in the wedding that you get a few incriminating proof towards your child. Maybe you use the Spybubble and pay attention to that your particular kid will be on a regular basis with a high-risk of injury. Should this happen, you will should face them. Nevertheless what’s going to anyone declare? Are you going to let them know which you have utilized any traveler software on his or her cell phone? How will they will figure out how to believe in anyone and then?

This is the reason you will need to combine something similar to Spybubble with sincere communication. As an example, it is possible to tell your kid that they’re in a position to go out late at night only when they’ve got the software placed on their own telephone if they retain their particular telephone on them constantly. You can look at this kind of simply by calling them as well as letting them know if they don’t grab, chances are they will certainly get rid of their particular late-night privileges.

If you can blend the application of Spybubble together with trustworthy connection, you happen to be likely to note that your situation can easily increase. You could end up creating a far more healthy partnership with your kid which is according to believe in instead of upon doubt.

News about wireless bandwidth hogs, new session-based pricing from Leap Wireless and the appearance of a new web site aimed at helping consumers understand their data caps and the limits those impose, all point to a growing problem in the wireless industry. And that problem isn’t congestion. Rather, unless the industry figures out how to give people connectivity at a reasonable costs, wireless will always be luxury access technology and ubiquitous connectivity will be a pipe dream.

The problem isn’t congestion, it’s a stagnation.

A study Friday noted that the top one percent of wireless users consume half of all the data. Meanwhile, Public Knowledge on Friday launched a web site designed to help consumers understand their data caps. On Thursday Leap Wireless’ CEO said the company would begin offering data sessions in addition to its regular tiered data plans. Under that scenario a user might buy a data plan just like he would buy pre-paid minutes on an as-needed basis after reaching his cap. All these bits of news are linked by one key problem: wireless data is in high demand, but it’s also expensive to deliver.

And the tension between what consumers want from their wireless networks and what operators want to give them is leading to stories that harp on congestion, new pricing models and consumer advocacy around high-priced plans. But it’s time to stop trying to address that tension solely with new types of rate plans, and customer education. If we want wireless data to become ubiquitous and deliver on the promise of connectivity, the industry needs to address its costs and educate consumers on those costs in a transparent way.

Part of the problem is just a matter of physics — airwaves can only carry so many bits per hertz — but other aspects of the high cost are related to policy and the reluctance of the industry to embrace, or even talk about, technologies that will help them deliver wireless at a lower price per bit. Right now, sending a bit over the cellular airwaves costs a lot more money than it does to send that same bit over fiber or even DSL. How much more depends on if you are in a populated city or out in rural America (it also depends on if you are in America) as well as the type of network the bit is sent over (i.e., LTE, CDMA or HSPA). But broadly speaking it’s at least 200x more expensive to use cell networks according to analyst Chetan Sharma. He estimates that number will drop over time to 100x, but clearly that’s still a huge disparity.

Not all bits are equal (or as expensive). So let’s rethink the network.

Fortunately, not all data has to travel over the gilded cellular pipes. Smart consumers already use Wi-Fi networks for streaming video and movies, but ideally this will become more automated. This means operators must include Wi-Fi in their networks, and actively shunt certain types of traffic to those networks when available. In short, we need application-aware wireless networks that send traffic to the cheapest, but most appropriate network the application can use and the consumer will accept.

This means when I stream YouTube videos, my carrier routes me over to Wi-Fi if it’s available but my email and voice calls stay on 3G if the Wi-Fi is weak. As a consumer I would advocate Wi-Fi as the default network with carriers switching me over to a cellular plan only when absolutely necessary, much like upstart Republic Wireless tries to do. Buying cell phone plans becomes a little more complicated, perhaps involving a short questionnaire that a consumer fills out ranking what types of traffic he needs to get instantaneously versus the traffic he is willing to compromise on.

This new type of plan also means that consumers may have to accept lower quality service for streaming video, might end up paying for access to a carrier Wi-Fi network and will need to accept their operators monitoring the applications they use. There’s a role for developers here in building tools that help consumers see exactly what their operators are doing, and the FCC should stay active in enforcing the spirit of the network neutrality rules. I have a hard time believing that carriers could behave well enough for me to trust them with something like this — just look at their historical stances on Wi-Fi, or the recent questions around Google’s Wallet service on Verizon’s network, but something has to give and I don’t think it will be the operators.

We want what we want. Until we have to pay for it.

CTIA says ladies like their mobile data.

Despite the cost of wireless plans, we want and will use wireless data. On Friday, the CTIA put out a study noting how women use the wireless network for an increasing amount of stuff. And articles offering a word of caution about viewing the Superbowl on your mobile phone get that while it may make you bust through your data cap, people will watch bits of a big game on the go. That very idea was unthinkable a few years ago, but mobile has changed our surfing, shopping and even our TV watching habits.

Carriers have moved forward in delivering faster networks that can deliver between 5 and 12 Mbps down — enough for video, voice and even the most demanding web services — but their current cost models don’t match up with the usage expected and advertised on the networks they’re building. Consumers look at carriers’ pricing, their marketing (which shows customers streaming video on their phones) and their comments in the press about high costs for mobile data and congestion, and recognize that carriers are not telling the whole truth. If network resources are such a precious commodity, then why not price data so it costs more at peak times? Or why even encourage video on the LTE network?

But when will that disconnect between the ease of using a service and the high cost of that service start to change or curtail consumer behavior? In short, when will a user suddenly think, “Maybe I shouldn’t use my phone for this, right now?” In a mobile-first world, will wireless become a second-class access technology, or will carriers adapt their networks and their cost structures in time?

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Ask Newt about SOPA or online privacy.

Imagine if your son or daughter created a brilliant mash-up for their English class that you thought was a perfect display of his or her personality, so you decided to share the mash-up on your family blog. Unfortunately, little Susie or Johnny included a brief movie clip or perhaps a fraction of a song in their class project, and suddenly your blog is gone thanks to a complaint from a rightsholder and the passage of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). If you want your blog back you can take the offending material down, and if you don’t want to do that, then you could sue arguing fair use. Regardless, it’s up to you to figure out what’s wrong and fight to have your blog re-instated.

A growing problem as the web and technology becomes more central to how we share, communicate and work is that an average person doesn’t know how abstract laws can affect their lives and the media doesn’t expose how well (or poorly) politicians understand technology. As a result, certain companies with lobbyists are getting away moulding our laws and policies in their favor and in the process they are going to hinder how Internet works and thrives.

Horror stories about SOPA abound, but what about your cell phone? Can a police officer search the contents of your phone during a traffic stop? Can a customs agent rifle through your laptop files as you return from a trip abroad? What about the history of your Google searches or checkins on Foursquare, can those be used against you in a court of law? These are not idle issues and instead of focusing on who is a socialist or paying  attention solely to where someone stands on social issues such as abortion or gay marriage, the broader media, politicians and citizenry need to start paying attention to and thinking about tech policy.

So while debates over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) will continue to rage as we head into an election year in the U.S. France, The U.K and other places, we should ask elected officials about how they view the Internet and how connectivity can change the world.

Thomas Friedman danced around the issue in his New York Times’ column Tuesday, when he suggested politicians need to be asked about how we can bring to bear the budding infrastructure we’re building to connect people and things to solve some of our problems. Sure the web is disruptive, and disruptive is scary, especially for politicians, but as technology becomes more engrained in our lives it also becomes a target for politicians. So we need politicians that understand it and view it as a tool, yes, one that can be abused, but also one that can be harnessed for society’s benefits, such as improving rural access to healthcare.

Rather than letting the web turn into a partisan issue kind of like spectrum policy has become, or letting industry interests try to cut the web off at the knees as the content industry seems to be doing with SOPA, it’s time to shape some questions that can help voters understand how politicians stand on various issues such as privacy, censorship and the real issues where the government’s views on technology will impact citizens’ lives. I’m not suggesting every Congressman must have a detailed understanding of what a DNS server is, but it’s time they stopped equating the Internet with nerds, and look ahead to how the web can improve government, lower costs and maybe solve some pressing problems.

Here are a few questions I’d like to see at the upcoming debates, but feel free to offer more in the comments below. Honestly, as citizens we also need to be thinking about how we would answer these questions (or want our politicians to answer them) as well.

• As the Internet is changing the skill sets demanded by employers, what does the federal/state/local government need to do to ensure our educational system keeps up? Are there subjects we need to add? Procedures we need to change? Skills our administrators and teachers need? Infrastructure that should be as important as a chalkboard is in classrooms?
• As people store more information online, what do you see as the biggest risks for consumers, corporations and governments? What laws need to change?
• Can you name an area of government where you see adding connectivity or developing a program that uses connectivity could improve service and/or save taxpayers money?
• Our digital footprints are forever and we’re now leaving digital records of every casual search, photograph, thought and place we visit. When much of this information was in a physical form, to get at this data required the government to justify the need to invade someone’s privacy. Our current laws don’t always protect digital information in this same way. Should it?
• Do you consider our current wireline broadband market competitive? How do we keep improving it? Is fiber to the home to as many places as possible a good goal for the government to pursue, recognizing it could cost taxpayers billions?

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