As Skype looks to build out revenue streams following its IPO, the company has been launching programs targeting enterprise customers. Last week, Skype launched Skype Connect, which is a way for business’ employees to make domestic and international calls using regular office telephones.

I was thumbing through Twitter messages on my Blackberry on Monday (I use Twitter as a “mobile first, web second” product) when I saw the following Tweet (see graphic).

I resisted the temptation to jump in with a response because I knew it was too complicated of a topic to discuss on Twitter.  But I thought I should do a quick post on the topic.

Thank heaven for the little things.

The European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference, also known as PV Sec, is underway this week in Valencia, Spain, and some of the early buzz is around the materials and components that can make slight differences in efficiency or cost.

"There is a lot being spent on incremental efficiency improvements," said Alain Harrus, a partner at Crosslink Capital who is in Spain at the moment.

I love Jackson Hole, Wyoming.  It is one of the most extraordinarily beautiful settings in the world.  One cannot help being in a good mood when observing the breathtaking wildlife, open sky and the awe-inspiring Grand Tetons.

Vision and Decision

Thanks again to all the commenters, Facebook posters, tweeters and retweeters on this blog, SeekingAlpha and the Hebrew Version on Themarker.com. Now we need to turn this e-army into an army for change.

I want to try to lay out 3 framework principles for the fix:

Peter Thiel, entrepreneur, VC, angel, Facebook board member, and hedge fund manager, penned a long and thoughtful piece about the possibility of an impending apocalypse and how that might lead to financial bubbles. It was written in 2008 but I only came across it yesterday (on Hacker News). He calls it The Optimistic Thought Experiment.

According to new research from Pew Internet, 82% of American adults own a cell phone, Blackberry, iPhone or other similar devices. And 65% of adults who own them say they have slept with their cell phones on or right next to their beds.

Yet consumers don’t know what these devices are made of exactly, and what their environmental and health impact may be. Phone manufacturers aren’t required to share all the details. Some do anyway.

When I was ready to transition from computer programmer to project manager, my employer, Xerox Corporation, sent me to its huge training center in Leesburg, Virginia. Over two weeks, the people there taught me some of the skills I needed in order to succeed in my new role: managing projects, motivating people, complying with employment regulations, and preparing status reports and presentations. The company also encouraged me to complete an MBA, on a part-time basis, at New York University.

Oh, Behave!

That could actually serve as the informal motto of the energy industry. Getting individuals and businesses to change the way they interact with their thermostat has become one primary goals of utilities, regulators and energy start-ups. To spur adoption of renewables, incentives have to be properly calibrated.

I've never been much of a fan of incubators. Some have made the model work. My favorite of the bunch is Betaworks, based here in NYC. Betaworks is more than an incubator, but they have shown that they can make the incubation model work with projects like bit.ly and chartbeat.

For the past two years, Fwix has been building a hyperlocal news site for cities and neighborhoods around the country in a very automated fashion. Its homepage for every city has been three columns filled with recent news and blog headlines, along with other local data like weather (see second screenshot below). Today, it is scrapping that approach to become more of a hyperlocal places directory.

An interesting beneficiary of Apple’s launch of music-oriented social network Ping—social status updater Ping.fm. According to Seesmic CEO Loic Le Meur, Ping.fm saw a record number of accounts created yesterday (Seesmic acquired Ping.fm earlier this year).