The Christian Science Monitor is being faced with the same choice that the New York Times is facing: change or adapt. They’re wisely choosing adaptation, as word filters down through the blogosphere that the last print edition of the 100 year old national newspaper will soon come out.

The question remains as to whether they’ll be able to sustain their current staff and editorial output under the new format. The Christian Science Monitor’s website is sharply growing, and has substantial readership, but by no means is one of the leading outfits for online news.

The Monitor has always been a news outfit I’ve respected for their bias and aherance to their ethos to “to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” Very few news organizations in any genre have remained steadfast to any guiding ethos, though the cynic might say that has been part of the downfall of the organization. There is no doubt that their aversion to scandal might cost them pageviews, but in a day where much of the much more visible news organization online and offline are becoming more known for pandering to the viewers than providing actual news, they might see a measure of success in staying the course.

How Do Their Numbers Look?

For some time, their online viewership has outstripped their hard-copy circulation. The Wikipedia reports that their circulation was only 56,083 for the daily print edition, where Quantcast puts their monthly pageviews at at two million, and unique visitors at over one million.

In terms of a general content strategy, it seems that they’re more or less on the right track, though if the focus is going to be for online only content, they may need to step up their efforts a bit in the social media department. They currently offer a variety of RSS feeds, including daily audio podcasts feeds as well.

Looking to promote themselves on social news services like Digg, Twitter and FriendFeed would serve them well, but we’ll give them a minute on that since they’re just now getting the hang of being an online only orgainzation.

Headcount and Other Costs

What’s likely to be of more importance is the headcount at the organization. Just as important for a New Media organization (which is what the Monitor should now be considered one of) as the the format is the organizational structure.  In general, Heritage Media organizations and newspapers in specificity have a very top-heavy editorial board.

The structure and staff of the Monitor isn’t published in fine detail, but based on what little they do let out about the structure, it appears that the staff of the organization is fairly lightweight as compared to most New Media organizations of similar size, though their writer compensation levels indicate that they’re definitely over-paying compared to your typical “A-List” blog.

According to ReadWriteWeb, the average top-tier blogger is paid between $10 and $200 per post, but according to the Monitor’s guidelines, they pay between $150 and $225. As they settle into the online space as a recognized name, they may see these rates decline a little, but they aren’t too far out of whack for an organization of their size.

They’re Gonna Make It After All

Given what they’re doing and their willingness to continue to push the edges of what’s possible for an online publication, it’s my opinion that we’ll be seeing quite a bit more of this news organization, and that they’ll be around for quite a while in their new format. It’s a little to early to say that they’re going to be the model of what a newspaper should look like as it makes it’s transition to New Media organization, but for those interested in this arena, this is definitely an organization to keep an eye on.

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I’ve always been a bit harsh on VCs and I do feel that my criticism of VCs has been deserved. If you look at the business of venture capital over the past 10 years, it’s pretty clear that VCs aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed.

That said, there is a place for venture capital and VCs have funded some wonderful companies over the years. The reality is that venture capital is not entirely useless; in recent years there have simply been far too many firms with far too much capital chasing too few good startups.

I think VCs have done a great disservice to themselves and to innovation over the past decade by allowing themselves to get caught up in an irrational exuberance that encouraged investment in overhyped startups that never should have received investment in the first place.

But I feel that the current infatuation VCs have with "cleantech" investments may be far more dangerous to Silicon Valley’s future than the irrational exuberance we’ve seen over the past decade for several reasons.

VC Cleantech Investments Are Being Driven by the Broken Economics of Venture Capital

Even though the ongoing global financial crisis has nothing to do with Silicon Valley directly, VCs have been the beneficiaries of capital glut that fueled one of Wall Street’s most impressive ponzi schemes ever.

As The Deal recently observed, "Many of those same [limited partners] that fattened venture funds are the same pension funds, endowments and other institutions that levered up, piled into hedge and private equity funds, and otherwise made a big problem even bigger."

Earlier this year, Paul Kedrosky argued that "venture capital still has too much money under management" and pointed out that if you took "pre-bubble 1994 figures" and adjusted for inflation, the average fund size in 2008 would be $100 million, not the $200 million that it is.

VCs have been put in an unusual position: many have been able to raise oversize funds but there really haven’t been many good markets to put a lot of money to work efficiently. Although a considerable amount of good money has been thrown after bad consumer Internet plays (especially in the Web 2.0 space), VCs weren’t completely clueless as to the changing economics of their business.

Obviously, investing an oversize fund across a larger number of smaller startups in markets like Web 2.0 isn’t viable. The economics of smaller deals don’t make sense and it’s been clear for some time M&A and IPO exits were not viable for the vast majority of these startups.

Cleantech startups, on the other hand, have been a VC’s wet dream.

Unlike most startups that have traditionally appealed to VCs, which target multi-billion dollar markets, cleantech startups target a much bigger market - the multi-trillion dollar global energy market.

But for startups taking on this trillion-dollar market which is already dominated by some of the world’s most powerful companies, a lot of capital is needed. And that’s just what VCs with oversize funds looking to invest large chunks of capital in one fell swoop like to hear.

I’ve seen few VCs actually question whether or not the economics of their business have changed for the better. Obviously, VCs have good reason to like their oversize funds (their management fees are based on committed capital), but I’ve yet to see many VCs consider that raising more money and investing it in more capital- intensive markets (like cleantech) is actually what they’re best positioned and best equipped to do.

VCs Don’t Know What They’re Doing

I would argue that VCs aren’t best positioned and best equipped to invest in this fashion. Although "cleantech" is tech, it’s not tech as VCs know it and I think most have absolutely no idea what they’re doing.

Case in point: Vinod Khosla, the Sun founder who is one of the most prominent Silicon Valley cleantech investors, invested in "an idea for a new sustainable cement" after receiving an email from a man he knew only casually.

Regardless of whether or not his investment in Calera turns out to be his "biggest win ever," Khosla’s approach highlights the new breed of irrational exuberance that cleantech has sparked. But if the recent shakeup at Tesla highlights one thing, it’s this: saving the world and making a fortune one startup at a time is not easy.

The reality is that most cleantech startups will never get off the ground commercially. Developing something that works in the lab is very different than developing something that works in the real world. And while much of the VC money flowing into the cleantech sector is currently being spent on R&D, it’s the scaling (for the technologies that even work) that will kill the VCs.

In short, the model that has worked for "traditional" VC technology investments will not work for cleantech.

Neal Dikeman of Jane Capital Partners explained this perfectly when he wrote:

In energy, there is no disruptive technology, only disruptive policy that makes some technologies look disruptive after the fact. In energy, the risk is in the scale up, not the R&D, and the end application is so massive, so capital intensive, and so utterly dependent on commodity prices, that you can’t invest in it like you invest in IT. It takes longer, 10x as much money, and the ante up to play the game for one project is the size of your largest fund. At scale, there is no capital efficient strategy in energy.

But we are Silicon Valley and we smash open gates with technology, and we know better than those energy dinosaurs in Houston, London, and Abu Dhabi, right? They just don’t get it, right? One game changing technology can force the oil companies and power companies to their knees. The one I’ve found really is new and different. This entrepreneur has discovered something new. And it can be *cheaper* than oil (if you define cheaper right).

Beware Silicon Valley, the great fortunes, wars, and economic crises of the world for 100 years are not technology ones, they were energy made. Half the schools you went to were built by oil money. And the entreprenuerial spirit in this industry was born in the hardscrabble oilfields of Pensylvania and Texas, and grew up in the far reaches of the globe. And the oil companies those entrepreneurs founded have forgotten more about technology in energy than you even know existed.

Be forewarned, you do not have a comparative advantage here. The oil men invented risk taking, AND risk management. The oil men are bigger, faster, smarter, richer, have more scientists and more entreprenuerial spirit than you, AND they know energy.

So while you fight the good fight to develop technology to change the world, don’t forget, be humble, learn what can be learned, build what can be built, and walk softly, because the elephant in this room floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee, and he has yet to take the field.

VCs clearly haven’t quite recognized this, although I think the situation at Telsa demonstrates that they’re finally getting clued in to reality a bit.

The bottom line is that many VCs are betting the farm on cleantech and they’re biting off more than they can chew.

VCs Are Becoming Subsidy-Hungry

So what are VCs supposed to do now that they’re playing in a market where they are really not equipped to compete? Ask for government handouts, of course!

Before I address this, a disclosure: I am not an American citizen and I could care less about who wins the United States presidency. Now that this is out of the way, let’s move on.

The fact that VCs are, by in large, supporting Barack Obama to be the next president of the United States is no secret. They’ve raised millions of dollars for his campaign.

And for good reason: he has called for an investment of $150 billion over the next 10 years "to catalyze private efforts to build a clean energy future." From direct investment to incentives to tax breaks, Obama’s plan appeals to cleantech-infatuated VCs for one simple reason: they expect that it will benefit their investments either directly or indirectly.

While their support is to be expected because of this, I think it’s worrisome that VCs are so attached to the outcome of a presidential election. If VCs are investing in companies that they feel can only thrive with a president who will provide investment, incentives and tax breaks that happen to support their portfolio companies, haven’t they lost their way? Are they not supposed to be investing in companies with the potential to do great things on their own?

In a 2005 post, Kedrosky wrote:

Too many people are trying to boil the ocean in clean power investments that require the world to change for them to be successful. Much better is finding opportunities where you can succeed nicely even if the world doesn’t oblige, and where you succeed wonderfully if the planet plays along.

Unfortunately, VCs know that the world isn’t going to change and are hoping that the not-so-invisible hand of government is going to change it for them.

Even one of my least favorite Silicon Valley movers and shakers, Carly Fiorina, observed:

Barack Obama believes a big government program is the answer, and I find it interesting that the Valley, which has historically believed that you let entrepreneurs and businesses do as much as possible, supports this: that’s anathema to how the Valley works.

I agree.

About a month and a half ago, I spoke with a hedge fund manager who took the time to tell me about a new cleantech fund he was launching. It was not the virtues of the companies he planned to invest in that he extolled; it was the tax benefits that would exist for the fund because of the nature of the investments.

This highlights a major problem that is created when subsidies come into play: the benefits of the subsidies (some of which may on their own guarantee a return of some sort) distort the normal investment decision-making process. Investments are not necessarily made in companies because those companies can compete in a fundamentally sound manner on their own but because a benefit can be realized from the subsidies that will be available to them.

For VCs who typically make their money from "home run" exits, investing in markets manipulated by government handouts is problematic for obvious reasons - most of these markets will not miraculously become self-sustaining at some point in the future. Instead, these markets will remain attached to the teat of government.

In the United States, for instance, it’s established that corn ethanol is not all that it was cracked up to be. Not only has it not benefitted the environment, it has made gas costlier. Yet in an effort to "level the playing field," billions of dollars in corn ethanol subsidies have created a powerful special interest group that it looks like Americans won’t be able to get rid of.

From my perspective, technologies that are commercially viable don’t need subsidies and if VCs are calling for them, it means they think they’ve invested in technologies that aren’t viable.

So Why Does Any of this Matter?

By now, you’re probably asking: why does any of this matter? Why should I care about VCs and their cleantech investments?

The answer is simple: while I don’t believe most startups need it and I think it is glamorized, venture capital has played an important role in Silicon Valley. Venture capital does have a place in the market and it has contributed to the development of some of the most successful technology companies ever built.

But the economics of venture capital are out of whack and that in turn has forced VCs into markets where they really have business being. VCs now find themselves in a position where they’re investing in companies that they really shouldn’t be investing in, many of which will need government handouts to even have a chance at surviving in the market.

In short, VCs have gone in the wrong direction and I would argue that their investments in the cleantech space represent a misallocation of their capital.

None of this is good news for the type of technology entrepreneurs who VCs have traditionally backed (and I’m not talking about the Kevin Roses and Mark Zuckerbergs of the world).

Over the long term, this will likely change the face of Silicon Valley in negative ways.

In the simplest analysis, some firms are not looking to create the next Intel, Microsoft or Google. They’re looking to create the next Exxon Mobil and we can expect this trend to continue if the next president of the United States moves ahead with a cleantech welfare program.

But just as one probably wouldn’t find it sensible to appoint Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson the CEO of Google, it’s not sensible for Silicon Valley VCs who know more about software and semiconductors to think themselves modern day John D. Rockefellers.

Rockefeller’s biographer wrote that the rise of Standard Oil "was not meteor-like, but accomplished over a quarter of a century by courageous venturing in a field so risky that most large capitalists avoided it, by arduous labors, and by more sagacious and farsighted planning than had been applied to any other American industry."

VCs should not dream of finding the cleantech version of Standard Oil. It’s likely a search for El Dorado.

VCs should instead downsize and get back to the basics. VCs do play a role in fostering innovation in Silicon Valley and judging by their investments over the past decade, there’s a lot of room for improvement.

Silicon Valley as we know it may depend on that improvement.

This post was contributed by Drama 2.0.

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Yesterday Wall Street Journal writer Jessica Vascellaro wrote a piece titled, "Twitter Goes Mainstream". The lengthy article talks about how the short messaging service has moved into the mainstream because companies are starting to use it like Zappos and Comcast. The biggest note that Ms. Vascellaro fails to point out is that the people receiving the messages aren’t mainstream. It’s the same early adopter crowd for the most part. A followup column might look at who the average Twitter recipient is. Most importantly, let’s hope they implement a revenue plan before they hit mainstream!

Funny enough, while I was watching Fox News this past weekend, host Clayton Morris pimped Twitter as he does so often. The other host had some remarks that had me questioning whether Twitter really has moved into the mainstream. Here’s a quick video of the discussion:

Company Name

Daily Grommet

20-Word Description

Daily Grommet tells the story of one product discovery a day with video, original content, live comments, blogs and emails.

CEO’s Pitch

Many people are delighted to support independent or innovative companies with stylish, inventive, useful products. But who has the time to find them? That’s what we do.

Daily Grommet discovers one fresh product a day, and tells its true story. One blogger called us the anti-Amazon because “rather than having everything for everyone with the consumer being responsible to find it, Daily Grommet has only one thing for you, as long as you dig what the Grommettes dig.” Even bigger, we’re taking all those conversations that happen among friends about the products they use and like, and we’re organizing them into a powerful, social media-based word of mouth campaign.

Mashable’s Take

Partially an ode to the Home Shopping Network or QVC, albeit styled in new media-esque proportions, and partially a play on the Woot philosophy of “one day, one deal,” Daily Grommet is a showcase of items shown individually, complete with video presentations, and a descriptive storyline of how the site’s reviewers came upon each product. Naturally, visitors are encouraged to post comments.

Looking into Daily Grommet’s history, the venture is certainly very young. Only a handful of items are listed at present in the menu of ‘Past Grommets.’ But the idea put forth by its creators is as quaint and homely as it is enjoyable to observe. For the job undertaken, the site’s dimensions are perfectly crafted, really. Others perhaps try to professionalize too much. This project, meanwhile, seems to connote that time honored phrase of “keeping it real.” Take a look for yourself. You’ll see what I mean.

Of course, there’s only one way Daily Grommet can really succeed in its pursuit. And that is to remain steadfast with its rollout. In the early days of the podcasting boom, the term daily was loosely used, and understandably so. Things were very rough cut and almost entirely unrehearsed and laden with defined schedules and the like. Now, the option to keep things casual doesn’t serve creators’ interests. No reason to jump to conclusions yet, though. All things being said, Daily Grommet is young, so we’ll just have to see where things go.

As far as its basis for existence is concerned, I think Daily Grommet holds considerable promise. While the product lineup to start the week isn’t my cup of tea, it is diverse enough to target a broad audience that doesn’t take to things like clearance priced flash drives and super cheap computer monitors. Today, for instance, the site features a Microplane Zester/Grater. Rejoice, all you kitchen hounds!

We’ll see what comes of Daily Grommet as the days go by. Suffice it to say that initial signs point to interesting times ahead for this one. Nothing’s guaranteed, but more often than not, sheer perseverance is what gets participants in the new media market to higher places with more potent exposure.

Editor’s Note: This post is part of an ongoing series at Mashable - The Startup Review, Sponsored by Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

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The Guardian, one of the UK’s biggest newspapers, is breaking ranks with its dead tree counterparts and offering up its content in full-text RSS feeds. As the Google Reader team notes in its blog post about the move, The Guardian in turn becomes the first major newspaper in the world to do so.

To-date, newspapers have only offered partial feeds primarily because there isn’t nearly as much money to be made in RSS advertising as there is in selling more conventional banner, text, and overlay ads on websites. With a partial feed that only offers a headline and brief summary, the thinking is that people will click thru to the website to read the article, and in turn, load those ads.

The problem with this model is that very few people subscribe to partial feeds, because they offer little value. The Guardian is trying to turn this model upside down, and I think it could be successful, both as a user that wants to consume content in an RSS reader, and from a business perspective for the newspaper.

First and foremost, The Guardian instantly gains an advantage on every other newspaper in the world, because their feeds are now way more useful than those of its competitors. And while RSS may still be fairly niche, The Guardian also positions itself to take advantage of the viralness that is now built into many RSS readers. For example, in Google Reader, when you “share” an item, it is broadcast to your Google contacts, on Friendfeed, and on dozens of other Web aggregators.

Most RSS readers also include the more mainstream concept of simply emailing a story to a friend – something one isn’t likely to do from within the reader when there is only a headline and short summary. While all of that sharing might not translate into immediate revenue for The Guardian, it does give their stories and brand greater exposure in a market that is currently being completely dominated by alternative sources like blogs, most of which offer full-text feeds.

There are a couple caveats about The Guardians implementation of full-text feeds. As the company notes in a blog post, images and cartoons won’t always be included, and content where publishing rights are uncertain (such as a story from one of the wire services) will be limited to excerpts in the feed. Fair enough. Nonetheless, The Guardian is taking a very progressive (and long overdue) step for old media. It will be interesting to see who follows suit.

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The New York Times is launching the public beta of its TimesPeople social network this evening, an offering we first reviewed earlier this summer.

In the morning, readers of the NYTimes.com will see a new toolbar at the top of the home page and most NYTimes pages. They’ll be able to register and join TimesPeople for free and start sharing recommendations and comments with fellow Times readers immediately. They’ll also be able to view public activities of other members.

Users will also be able to share ratings and reviews of movies, broadway shows, restaurants and more. Here’s the member’s home page where you will see a live feed of activities by TimesPeople members and what they’re sharing and saying:

All members will have profile pages which will show their public activities as well as the activities of other network members and lists of people they follow and those that follow them just like on Twitter. They’ll also be able to sign up for RSS feeds with the latest activities of other users and sync their updates to their Facebook news feed through a TimesPeople application. There’s even a Digg-like section on the home page that shows all of the top NYTimes news items as voted by fellow TimesPeople members.

Naturally some people will be concerned about security and privacy matters regarding their activities on the NYTimes website. The good news is that TimesPeople will NOT monitor standard site activity such as reading articles, clicking links, or viewing graphics. These activities as well as e-mailing articles or videos will remain private.

Over all, TimesPeople is a well-designed service for loyal NYTimes readers who want to use social networking features. While the concept and execution are on point, one gets the feeling that a better idea would be to have a social network for newspapers that wasn’t dedicated to just one source, in this case the well-respected NYTimes. Perhaps users would be better served if they could subscribe to other newspaper sites much as they can with RSS readers and share comments and stories that way. Maybe call it The PaperBoy? In any event, if you love the NYTimes then you should enjoy TimesPeople.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:The New York Times (Tries) Getting More SocialNew York Times’ Free Content is Paying OffDigg, Facebook and Newsvine Buttons on the New York TimesReport: Digg Hires Investment Bank to Pursue SaleHear Steve Wozniak Speak at the Social Networking ConferenceThe New York Times Eliminating 100 Newsroom Jobs in ‘08New York Times Launches TechMeme Competitor

London-based Hubdub is a predictive marketplace for news. The basic idea is that Hubdub posts questions, you predict which answer will win and then if you are correct, you receive credits that help you reach the leaderboard. Hubdub launched at DEMO earlier this year and SomewhatFrank and TechnicallySpeaking have good overviews of how the service works. Hubdub CEO Nigel Eccles noted that over 2 million "Hubdub dollars" are traded daily within the network.

This morning Hubdub is announcing a new partnership with Reuters. Eccles tells me that the Reuters question section is one of the most popular within Hubdub. Hubdub has created a special section for Reuters which highlights the latest news and events. On the community site, interested members can friend other members and the Reuters account as well. There’s also a widget option so visitors can take the latest Reuters predictions and place them around the Web.

When Hubdub launched, I told Eccles that in a year I wanted a percentage of accuracy with the questions and answers listed on Hubdub. We are getting close to the one-year mark and I look forward to some analysis of how well the Hubdub community did with their predictions.

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OutShouts lets you send or share videos with text, audio or webcam video messages attached. You can record an audio message or video from your webcam and include it with the video you select from their search engine.

A Whisper to a Shout

Sure, you can always share your favorite videos on twitter or via email with links, but OutShouts allows you to customize the message. This makes the old way of sharing messages seem rather dull compared to an OutShouts message which makes it all the more personal because of the customization. Being able to record an audio or video message adds something extra to whatever you share with someone. This is what the message looks like in email:

Many Ways to Share a Shout

Once you create your personalized message you don’t have to deliver it via email. You can share it on many popular social networks by embedding it as a widget on Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and many others. You can also post it on many of the social bookmarking sites such as Delicious, Google Bookmarks and others.

Playlists

Just as on YouTube, you can save any videos that you like to your playlist for easy access later on.

You can also save OutShouts by other members to your favorite list. The interface is intuitive and the performance isn’t sluggish at all.

Final Thoughts

OutShouts seems to be unique enough to warrant further investigation. The concept of being able to add a voice or webcam comment to a video that you want to share is appealing, especially because there’s no special editing involved. You simple press record and that message will be attached to the video you select. The only real question I have is where are they getting these videos? In all of my searching I didn’t see any videos from the usual suspects, i.e. YouTube, Google Video or MetaCafe.

It would be nice if we could select where we want to search and perhaps even allow us to upload our own video content. In the mean time, OutShouts makes it very easy to send customized multimedia shoutouts.

—Related Articles at Mashable - All That’s New on the Web:Outshouts Makes Shout Outs Embeddable

Source:Mashable!

The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) is not happy with the fact that Google will start serving ads to Yahoo, and they’ve asked the US Department of Justice, the European Commission and the Competition Bureau of Canada to block the deal. This is pretty much along the lines with what Microsoft’s been saying about this deal, and they’re likely to support WAN on this one, so Google and Yahoo now have some very strong opposition working against them.

WAN’s president Gavin O’Reilly is surprisingly factual in his comments about the complaint: “The proposed advertising deal between Google and Yahoo would seriously weaken that competition, resulting in less revenues and higher prices for our members. WAN is also concerned that this deal would give Google unwarranted market power over important segments of online advertising. Advertisers will increasingly migrate to Google since they will see diminishing price advantages to advertising through Yahoo. Google has refused to allow Yahoo to show Google ads on the websites of new publishing partners it acquires after the deal is finalized - in other words, Google has imposed a condition that impedes one of Yahoo’s last remaining opportunities to compete with Google. What this means for newspapers is that Yahoo’s bids for their ad business will almost certainly be lower than they are today.”

It makes sense, and the fact that many newspapers aren’t too happy with Google News (their complaints that Google is stealing content from them, however, makes very little sense, but that’s another story) isn’t helping the relations between WAN and Google. Is Google-Yahoo deal really a monopoly? It’s hard to say, but it’s not far from one; this time Google is up against its first really big hurdle, the kind of which took billions of dollars and lots of credibility from Microsoft’s pockets in the recent years.

—Related Articles at Mashable - All That’s New on the Web:Google Opens Print Ads To MarketersNewspapers Building an Online Ad Network?Belgian Newspapers Sue Google For Sending Them Traffic - AgainYahoo Starts Layoffs While Deciding What To Do NextNokia Loves Google, T-Mobile Loves YahooYahoo Gets Better Consumer Rating than GoogleGoogle Wants to Index Millions of Old Newspapers

There are countless online spreadsheets and word processors these days, but not too many online databases. Sometimes the best way to work with data is naturally within a database. Managing data in a spreadsheet can only get you so far. Sure, it’s great for number crunching and financial analysis, but if you want to enter data once and use it over and over again in queries and reports and share them with others, then the best solution is an online database. Here are six of the most popular online database services available today.

Zoho DB & Reports

Zoho DB & Reports offers a free and easy way to create your own database online. You can create a database from scratch or by importing data from an existing spreadsheet. The databases run rather quickly, which was a pleasant surprise. There doesn’t appear to be any limits in place for the number of databases you can create.

You can share any database with anyone you want by simply adding their email address and sending them a link. They don’t even have to join Zoho to view the database which is a nice change of pace from other services. Another excellent feature is the ability to embed any database or view on your website. Here’s an example of a database called The Zone where I have every Twilight Zone episode along with other information. You can share databases with individuals, make them public or keep them private.

Zoho Creator

Zoho Creator is not really a database service but a Web application builder. What’s strange is that it’s eerily similar to their own Zoho DB in that you can create databases as well. Zoho Creator does offer a great deal more options than Zoho DB. It offers an excellent interface builder for creating customized forms and the ability to build database applications for the mobile platform.

They have their own API for those interested in building more complex databases. Their scripting language is called Deluge. Zoho has stated that there are plans to one day unite Zoho DB and Creator into one product which makes perfect sense.

DabbleDB

DabbleDB is similar to Zoho DB except that it doesn’t offer a free account. There’s only a 30-day trial, otherwise you’ll need a premium account. After kicking the tires with the trial version you’ll notice that it isn’t as easy to use as Zoho’s other database solutions. The interface doesn’t present the data as well as Zoho DB’s useful Tabbed interface. The performance was brisk with the test database, which included a few hundred records. There doesn’t seem to be enough options or features to justify the expense when compared to the free offerings available today.

Blist

Blist provides the best looking interface for any database service. Its Ajaxy look and feel makes the databases you create look rather slick. Unfortunately, the sharing feature still needs some work because it isn’t as easy to share databases as it should be. However, allowing people to view your databases without requiring them to sign up for the service is a great feature. They do need to join Blist if they want to make any changes or contribute anything to the database, which makes sense. Another nice touch is the ability to copy any public database, which is a great time-saver because you can use them as templates.

Strata

Strata from Kirix is a unique kind of database service. They describe themselves as a fusion of a Web browser and a built-in relational database. That’s not a bad way of putting it. It’s important to note that Strata is not free. There’s a 30-day trial that you can download for Windows or Linux to see what it can do.

QuickBase

QuickBase is from Intuit, the people behind Quicken and QuickBooks. They were one of the first online database services. Needless to say, their service is robust with features and the performance very strong. Just like DabbleDB there’s no free account, just a trial version. The least expensive account that you can get is $15 per month for 5 users.

Conclusion

When you want to slice and dice data online and share the results, using one of these online databases could be exactly what you need. Which one is the best database service? At this point in time, if one had to make a pick the edge would go to Zoho DB & Reports because of its SSL and mobile support. However, you can’t go wrong with Blist if you aren’t interested in mobile access to your databases or SSL security. If Zoho ever does merge Creator with Zoho DB & Reports, it will only make their solution that much stronger.

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I took some time out last night before I went to bed to go ahead and take apart the Esquire magazine cover that famously has an e-Ink segmented display. As I mentioned the other morning, I have a bit of experience in working with the e-Ink displays, though my experience was in the programming side (working with the prototyping kit) on the matrix style display, not the segmented display that’s present in the current issue of Esquire magazine.

The video is 20 minutes long, which is a bit much for one of our typical videos, but I give you an up close and personal look at each piece as I take it out, and try to keep you from falling asleep by relating what I know about how the technology functions and what makes it special (and how it can be applied to publications looking to go digital from either side of the divide).

Watch the video via the embed below or download the MP4.

I found a few technical resources around the Web that were particularly interesting - and in these cases it’s a good idea to read the comments and discussion following the blog post.

MAKE Magazine - It’s important you read the comments there if you in any way want to tinker with the cover.  A lot of your work may be done for you.  As I stated once I got my hands on this, from a hardware geek perspective, I was a little disappointed they chose to go with segmented rather than matrix display. You’ll see this reflected in the reaction there. Also from MAKE: some hardware hacking tips for the board.

Esquire Magazine - Don’t bother with the video from Esquire, but the infographics here that talk about how it was made are pretty informative. If you’re looking to do some work with this medium (either as a designer, publisher or ad agency) these are some good crib notes to start with once your prototyping stage is done. When I was working with the prototyping kits, they hadn’t quite worked out the manufacturing chain to a science (and I haven’t talked to e-Ink in about three years). If you’re serious about using this material, you should take any tips you can get on how this is done before you start the prototyping process.

e-Ink Prototyping Kit Store - As I said in the video, not a lot of creative agencies are working with this material yet for a couple of reasons.  For one, it requires some serious technical and programming chops. For another, the prototyping kits are expensive. To work with segmented systems, get ready to drop $1,500 per kit. On the matrix display systems, it’s $3,000 (an explanation of what the difference is available in the video). That said, this is a wide open market, and I for one am ready for some folks to start doing cool things with this stuff.

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