Turns out Sprint isn’t the only new U.S. carrier allowed to sell the iPhone this year. On Wednesday regional carrier C Spire (formerly known as Cellular South) announced on its website pre-order instructions to buy Apple’s latest smartphone.

What’s sad, though, is that Apple bypassed T-Mobile, far more well-known, in favor of a carrier whose name most people would have to Google. And it’s not that the carrier hasn’t made it clear it wants the iPhone. At our GigaOM Mobilize conference several weeks ago, T-Mobile CMO and EVP Cole Brodman said it’s asked to sell the popular smartphone, but the ball was in Apple’s court.

Apple hasn’t yet responded why they went with C Spire, but if you look at C Spire and T-Mobile’s respective voice and data coverage maps on their sites, the two are either tied or C Spire has a very slight edge. So that may be one clue.

During Tuesday’s earnings call, CEO Tim Cook said Apple wants to “make the iPhone more accessible to a broader market,” so going with a smaller, regional carrier like C Spire does fit with that strategy. It’s certainly not a household name the way AT&T and Verizon are, but if Apple intends to expand the market for its smartphone–and in effect, the rest of its product line–reaching customers where they live is important.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The future of mobile: a segment analysis by GigaOM Pro
• Mobile Q2: Smartphone growth surges; iPad’s rule continues
• Report: How Mobile Cloud Computing Will Change Tech

alt=''
border='0'
/>

GigaOM

EcoFactor, a startup that uses big data tools to act as a new brain for connected thermostats, has some stellar results from ten different trials where it automated the process of turning up and down consumer’s thermostats. The company, which launched at the end of 2009, says that on average its services can reduce a person’s home energy use by 17 percent compared to a programmable but non-optimized thermostat.

That’s a 17 percent reduction in a consumer’s energy bill, too, and EcoFactor found it could reduce consumer’s bills by up to per month when its service was used. EcoFactor did many of its trials during demand response events for utilities, which are times (like a really hot day) when a utility wants to turn down the energy consumption of some users to better manage the grid. EcoFactor also found that it delivered better demand response events for utilities, providing a 36 percent increase in yield for utilities during the event.

As I noted back when the company launched: finally a smart way to control thermostats. I’m not sure why every utility, energy service provider and consumer wouldn’t want to use this. The only requirement is a connected thermostat (well, and waiting for the service to be available in your area).

Here’s how it works: EcoFactor collects thousands of data points — from weather to regional building codes to home value — that give a clue about how an individual home might use energy and also respond to a service that promotes energy savings. EcoFactor then combines that service with the consumer’s ability to manually override the system (i.e., press up and down on the thermostat). When a consumer signs up for the service, EcoFactor uses the first couple of weeks to set a baseline for how that individual user prefers the temperature in their home: When a person pushes up or down on the thermostat, the original baseline starts to get set.

Then EcoFactor’s service automatically makes over 1,000 micro adjustments per month to the thermostat, bumping it up and down every so slightly, so that the user doesn’t notice the temperature change but also reduces her energy consumption. During demand response events on a particularly hot day in the summer, EcoFactor can precool some houses, turning on the AC a bit before the demand response event; then it can turn down the power use of the house during the event while the house acts essentially as a thermal battery, and the residents don’t notice the inconvenience of having their energy use curbed.

EcoFactor is first and foremost targeting consumers as its end customers, but it is working via distribution channels like utilities, broadband service providers (cable, DSL) and home security systems companies to reach those customers. The only reason EcoFactor isn’t in more widespread use today is probably because partners like utilities and telcos are notoriously slow-moving when it comes to adopting new services. EcoFactor worked with Oncor in Texas and other unnamed utilities for its trials.

It’s still in the early days for the service. The demand response trials included hundreds of homes, and EcoFactor says by the end of the year (after its summer trials), it will have been tested in “tens of thousands of homes.” In the utility world, that’s still a small footprint.

But EcoFactor is one of the only companies out there in the energy and utility world that is truly leveraging big data tools and the cloud to make energy use smarter. (To learn more about cloud computing, come to our Structure event on June 22 and 23 in San Francisco.) And for those not used to reading energy reduction metrics, 17 percent is actually really high for an energy management service. In comparison, OPower’s smarter energy bills on average reduce consumer energy consumption by 2 percent. EcoFactor is backed by RockPort Capital Partners and Claremont Creek Ventures.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (subscription req’d):

• Report: Cleantech’s Third-Quarter Growing Pains
• Infrastructure Overview, Q2 2010
• Cleantech Was a Market Leader in Q4

alt=''
border='0'
/>

GigaOM — Tech News, Analysis and Trends

Website Design Software is what you need in order to create multiple sites, landing pages and blogs in order to market products or promote an online business or service. You need to create lots of web pages to support your main website, and to increase your page rankings in the leading three search engines. You need to use lots of different pages to create back-links to your main site, thereby increasing your page rank.

Boosting the ranking of your main site or online storefront with the use of lots of other sites is actually something that internet marketers are not happy with. As long as each of the websites you do create do not have totally identical content, you will avoid conducting bad practice. If you do not have the time to write articles or posts for your many sites, you can just hire web content writers to do the job for you.

A different template should be used for each of your other websites, and you can get templates right from your website designer software.

The internet has shown us that lots of sites means lots of individual revenue streams. Even if all the websites are focused on a particular topic, if the management of these websites is done well, you can probably pocket a little extra cash across all the sites and blogs you maintain. If better SEO functionality is required, then website designer software such as XSitePro will help you out with that. Such software can assist you in simultaneously creating, designing, and even managing as many sites as you can handle. You do not need to be an expert in website design and have knowledge of all the HTML coding, for instance, as web design software has come a long way these days and will usually help you make a website that could have been professionally-commissioned.

Those that don’t have a clue on website design do end up outsourcing the work to a dedicated firm. As long as you are just creating one or two websites, this is managable. If you are considering more than five websites, then you are going to be spending a lot on outsourcing the work to be done for you. Thus, it would be best for you to rely on website designer software in creating your numerous web pages. XSitePro, amongst other web designing software, are great for those with little experience, and are easier to learn from and understand the basics of web page design.

Here’s a clue how popular smartphones have become as cameras: Apple’s iPhone 4 is quickly approaching the No. 1 spot to become the most-used camera on Flickr.

Wired Top Stories