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The banner for the Road Trip 2008 package includes a photograph of reporter Daniel Terdiman dressed in an Elvis-esque outfit. Graceland administrators said that a planned behind-the-scenes visit could only proceed if CNET News.com substituted a normal photograph of Terdiman for the existing one, and when CNET News.com said it couldn’t do that, Graceland canceled the visit.

So here I am in Memphis, and there will be no Graceland for me. It’s too bad, but it is what it is.

I received an e-mail from Kevin Kern, the director of public relations for Elvis Presley Enterprises that said, effectively, after looking again at the Road Trip 2008 special-project page, Graceland officials had realized there was a problem.

This was very disappointing. But I wanted to know more. So I wrote back to Kern, telling him I wanted to write something about this situation and asking if he could elaborate further on Graceland’s policy.

“We strictly prohibit the use of Elvis costumes in connection with media visits,” Kern wrote. “It is not a common occurrence with media visits, so we don’t typically say it on the front end, but we understand your Web site and style is a little different. With that being said, we would appreciate a new photo without the Elvis costume to be loaded in the banner on your site. I’m sorry to make the demand, but it is our policy.”

It also seemed appropriate, since I had arranged for a visit to Graceland, where I was going to be shown some of the coolest technology that is used there.

Kern quickly wrote back and said that, unfortunately, Graceland’s policy required them to cancel the visit.

If so, please continue to follow Road Trip 2008 here and on my Twitter feed and on my Qik channel.

After conferring with my editor, we decided that we couldn’t change the banner photograph. It had been up for more than two weeks and, after all, Graceland was just one destination on a much larger trip. To change it would be difficult on a practical level, since it would require a production artist to take the time to do so. It would also give the perception that we were allowing someone else to dictate our editorial decisions. That’s really something any media organization frowns upon.

Kern did not respond to my request for comment.

For this project, however, I find it a little hard to swallow this decision. The use of an Elvis image was, though prominent on the Road Trip package, downplayed from the perspective of linking it to Graceland and there was never any intention of my showing up at the mansion dressed any way other than as a normal person.

“While it’s true that I am dressed in an Elvis outfit in the banner of the project page, that is the full extent of how I’m portraying myself in that way,” I wrote. “To your specific concern, I am absolutely not wearing that outfit as I drive around the South. That was a rental that I had for a single day, we did the photo shoot, and then I returned it.”

So this year, we thought having me dress in an Elvis-esque jacket and sunglasses would do the trick. I actually wasn’t sure if that was the right image, and I canvassed my friends, co-workers and Twitter followers for other ideas. But nothing resonated quite like Elvis.

But about a week ago, that plan fell apart.

I threw in that last bit because Kern had expressed concern that I might actually show up at Graceland wearing the outfit.

(Credit:
CNET News.com)

And to be sure, I can sort of understand the idea that Elvis Presley Enterprises feels that it has to maintain total control over Elvis’ image and that without such a policy, reporters and other members of the media might constantly be showing up dressed as the King, wanting to do photo shoots dressed like that.

As I was preparing to begin Road Trip 2008, my tour of the South in search of many of the region’s most interesting attractions and destinations, it seemed that we needed to have a banner for the special-project page that evinced the South in some way.

Last year, when I did Road Trip 2007 in the Southwest, we took a similar approach, and I dressed in a cowboy hat for the banner photograph.

Policies are policies, but I really would have liked a more complete explanation, and I’m afraid, dear Road Trip readers, that I’ve let you down by not being able to provide you with the technology side of Graceland that I had planned. I hope you can forgive me.

MEMPHIS, Tenn.–I guess our version of a little bit of Southern humor didn’t go over so well with the folks who run Graceland.

And then I asked, gently, if there might not be some other way to work out this situation, beyond us taking down the photograph, especially “given the fact that I am in no other way portraying myself as Elvis.”

I wrote back to Kern to explain that the banner really had very little do with the Graceland visit.

So Elvis it was.

Graceland administrators said their policy prohibited a visit for Road Trip 2008 because the package was using a banner with a photograph of CNET News.com reporter Daniel Terdiman dressed in an Elvis-esque outfit.

(Credit:
Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)

• Google’s cost per click–the amount advertisers pay on average–increased 13.8 percent in the second quarter. Microsoft’s increased 5.6 percent, but Yahoo’s dropped 7.3 percent, Efficient Frontier said.

• Google for the first time attained a majority of the search ad money spent in Japan, with 56 percent in the quarter.

• Among specific search advertising categories, automotive ad spending increased 24 percent, retail increased 1 percent, financial services dropped 7 percent, and travel dropped 17 percent.

Also of interest:

According to the statistics from search marketing firm Efficient Frontier, which bases its conclusions on data from a specific set of large-scale search advertisers, Yahoo dropped nearly 2 percentage points to 17.8 percent of spending and Microsoft stayed level at about 4.8 percent.

Search ads are shown next to some search results; advertisers bid for placement next to searches using specific keywords and pay only when a searcher clicks on an ad. Yahoo signed a deal in June under which Google will supply some search ads. Yahoo expects up to $800 million in new revenue during the first year of the deal, but it’s triggered antitrust scrutiny from the Justice Department, several states, and Congress.

(Credit:
Efficient Frontier)

Google dominates the share of search ad spending measured by Efficient Frontier.

Google increased its share of money spent on search ads to 77.4 percent in the second quarter, up 2 percentage points from the year-earlier period, according to new data that doubtless will interest those gauging the antitrust implications of the search leader’s new advertising partnership with Yahoo.

Here are some news tidbits from today that were too small to fill out entire posts. We’ve grouped together three that are worth your time.

Netvibes adds Google search, trend tracking. Netvibes users will find a new Google search box in their start pages. Any search will show up with results that keep the user in the Netvibes environment, and will be saved as a new tab. As TechCrunch noticed, the company also soft launched a new section called Buzz that tracks some of the most favorite links using Netvibes’ starring system. Results can be honed down to within the last hour or the last two days.

A Spore with more parts. Too cheap to shell out $10 for the full version of EA’s Spore Creature Creator? Computer maker HP is offering a free demo version that has a few more parts than the standard demo offering. Like I said when I checked it out earlier this month, this is one piece of software that’s got a fully connected Web 2.0 presence with a community site and YouTube integration.

FriendFeed puts out an
iPhone app. Social aggregator FriendFeed has launched an iPhone-friendly version of its news feed (http://friendfeed.com/i). Previously users had to use a service like FFtoGo to get the stream of news reformatted to match the resolution on the popular handheld device. The new look incorporates image sharing, using a bit of a work-around with Mail2FF, a service that posts e-mailed photos and messages to your activity stream or private rooms.

FriendFeed's new iPhone app is now hand and eye-friendly.

(Credit:
FriendFeed)

We’ve seen what Gmail, Twitter, and Delicious look like in paper, but what about Flickr, YouTube, and others? Sean Flannagan over at Deeplinking has put together a gallery of site prototypes that have been constructed out of paper. While tools like Adobe’s Thermo and the freshly launched Balsamiq are making this less of a necessity, some of the best ideas are scribbled out on wet cocktail napkins right?

One of my favorites from the collection of Flickr places (coverage), which I’ve put side by side with its final result below. Be sure to check out the original version on Flickr that houses the massive, 2,000-plus pixel-wide size.

[Via BoingBoing and DownloadSquad]

See some of your favorite sites go from paper to live. (click to see full-size)

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

A network administrator for the city of San Francisco has been arrested on charges of taking control of the city’s computer network and locking administrators out, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Meanwhile, the network is up and running despite the fact that administrators have limited to no access.

Officials told the newspaper they were making some headway into regaining access to the system, but they fear that Childs has rigged a system to remotely destroy data.

Childs, who has worked for the city for five years, is accused of tampering with the new Fiber Wide Area Network after allegedly being disciplined for poor performance. He is accused of electronically spying on his supervisors and their attempt to fire him, according to authorities.

Terry Childs, 43, was due to be arraigned on Tuesday after his arrest Sunday. He remains in jail on $5 million bail.

Microsoft has announced a milestone with its Office Live Workspace product: It’s scored its millionth user. And the company has announced the product will be out of beta this year.

Offlice Live does have its own text editor, but it’s rather weak and doesn’t have Google Docs’ killer feature: simultaneous editing. If someone edits a document you’ve got open and you then try to save it, you get a conflict error and have to decide whose edits you want to kill.

Tidbit: Office Live Workspace works nicely in Internet Explorer and also in
Firefox. But you get a blocking error page if you try to use it in Google Chrome.

As ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley writes, Microsoft believes that users don’t want to create big files and documents “on the Web.” Maybe that’s because they can’t.

There are people who say that Office Live is a Google Docs competitor. It certainly could be, someday, and I’d like to see that. But it’s not right now. What it is right now is a way for people who have paid for the
Microsoft Office suite to share files with other people who have the suite. It’s useful, but it’s no Google Docs, nor Zoho for that matter.

Yay, Microsoft. Now go back and build the service we want, please.

Those other productivity suites are a) free, and b) browser-based. They don’t require that you pay for and then install software on your PC.

I believe Microsoft could make an honest Google Docs competitor without killing its Microsoft Office business. Eventually, Microsoft will have to. So it might be smart for Microsoft to encourage people to start thinking about the company as an expansive supplier of productivity solutions–desktop and Web-based–rather than just a company that makes desktop office products that, by the way, also have some add-on Web support.

Less seems to be known about the Nvidia GTX 260 and 280, though a Turkish site is claiming to have all the specifications.

The names of the two upcoming product families have been widely reported: The ATI line is branded as the Radeon HD 4800, while the Nvidia is dubbed the GeForce GTX 200.

Advanced Micro Devices is expected to launch the HD 4850 (price estimates of graphics boards range between $189 and $219) and then follow with the 4870 (estimates range between $199 and $279). In the fourth quarter, AMD plans to add the dual-chip ATI Radeon 4870 X2.

Nvidia will respond with the high-end GeForce GTX 200 family. Initial products will be the GeForce GTX 260 and GTX 280.

Tech site tg daily said “that card vendors will start printing their boxes next week, which means that the specifications are final at this time.”

AMD-ATI and Nvidia are preparing for the next graphics chip showdown. And there is already a good deal of information (and rumor) on the two chips due in June.

VR-Zone has already gotten its hands on some preliminary performance numbers for the HD 4850 and 4870. German-language site Hardware-Infos has posted a table with specifications of the HD 4850 and 4870.

Click here for ongoing coverage from CNET News, ‘Tough times for tech’

“In this environment, the combination of meeting current expectations but also reaffirming their outlook is an incredible performance,” he said. “You made my evening,” he told Reuters.

Big Blue said its year-to-date free cash flow was approximately $6.4 billion at the end of the quarter and its cash balance was $9.8 billion.

While much of the tech sector is bemoaning a sluggish economy, Big Blue sees blue skies ahead. IBM on Wednesday announced positive preliminary earnings for the third quarter of 2008.

IBM is also optimistic about results for the rest of the year. In its statement, the company reaffirmed its outlook for the full year, saying it continues to expect earnings per share of at least $8.75 for the fiscal year 2008, showing growth of 22 percent over 2007.

IBM says it will offer more details in its regularly scheduled Webcast, which is planned for October 16.

IBM said earnings per share were at $2.05 for the quarter, up 22 percent from the same period last year. Net income rose 20 percent to reach $2.8 billion, while revenue rose 5 percent to $25.3 billion.

“For companies to be reaffirming their outlook through the end of the year is h-u-g-e,” Mike Holland, chairman of investment company Holland & Co., told Reuters.

“It is very nice to see some positive news, not just for IBM but for–to a degree–the tech space overall, given the downdraft we have seen in recent weeks,” Chuck Jones, a technology analyst for Atlantic Trust Private Wealth Management, told Reuters.

(Credit:
Stephen Shankland/CNET News)

Boerries joined Yahoo four years ago and led its effort to bring its services to mobile phones and more recently TVs. News of his departure was first reported by Kara Swisher at All Things D on Wednesday, and Yahoo confirmed the departure.

Marco Boerries, Yahoo's outgoing chief of mobile and TV efforts.

In addition, Yahoo News chief Neeraj Khemlani is departing for Hearst.

Swisher quoted Boerries’ good-bye memo as saying it’s been difficult for him to reconcile his personal and professional lives, given that his family lives in Germany.

However, one source close to the situation said Boerries’ departure had more to do with Yahoo’s latest management reorganization under Chief Executive Carol Bartz, which is expected to be announced Thursday or Friday.

Marco Boerries, the chief of Yahoo’s Connected Life division, is leaving the company, Yahoo said Wednesday.

As always, the venture community is looking for its next big thing. The cleantech world is no exception. Despite the dearth of exits, so much capital has flowed into the cleantech sector that investors need new places to put it. So despite my promise to certain friends not to blog certain funding rumors in each category, the top 4 contenders are:

Carbon IT - With some sort of cap and trade a near certainty, the interest is picking up in one of the few areas in carbon that looks like a “venture bet”. I should know, I have one of these companies myself.

Food related technologies - High food prices and rising fertilizer costs, what can I say?

N-generation solar technologies - Everyone not in the first wave is looking to get in to the 4th wave. Not sure venture investors will fare better in the 3rd or 4th wave than they did in the second, but they are going to try.

All in all, quite an eye opening one day “deep dive” into the demand side of the four top contenders for cleantech’s next big thing. (Pardon the expression deep dive, I’ve always found that term amusing, especially since cleantech VCs use it all the time now to describe the 6 conferences they went to and 12 business plans they read to become an expert in, say, solar, so I couldn’t resist.)

Green building materials - I’m not sure it would be my thing, but investors across the board seem to think this area is ripe for a hit.

No eco friendly building in this day and age would be complete without a solar panel on the roof. Gaia Napa’s solar system is apparently providing 10% of the electricity needs on site, while at the Gaia Anderson, the panels have not yet arrived. But perhaps the most telling for would-be solar barons, Wen Chang did not know or care whose technology powered the solar panels. Only that they arrived and worked.

Neal Dikeman is a founding partner at Jane Capital Partners LLC, a boutique merchant bank advising strategic investors and startups in cleantech. He is the founding CEO of Carbonflow, founding contributor of Cleantech Blog, a Contributing Editor to Alt Energy Stocks, Chairman of Cleantech.org, and a blogger for CNET’s Greentech blog.

I had a chance to visit one of the Gaia Hotels, which bills itself as a new eco-hotel chain, this weekend. The experience put those four contending areas in a bit of a new light, as the creator of the Gaia ecotel concept toured me around and shed some light on the decisions that went into them from the demand side. (Note: “ecotel”, “bit of a new light”, “shed some light”, “demand side”, all good cleantechisms).

After launching a LEED Gold Certified facility in Napa Valley a little under two years ago, Gaia opened a new one in Northern California, focused on outdoor recreational travelers, which they expect to achieve at least LEED Silver. I had lunch with Wen Chang, the creator behind Gaia, this Saturday. When it came to green building materials, I was frankly amazed how much impact the LEED program had on the design and materials selection, and how big a selling point LEED was to this concept. Everything from using photovoltaic panels and Solatube daylighting, to low flow shower heads, low water usage and local landscape selection, and chemical free gardening and stormwater management, all the way to the carpet made from recycled materials, CFLs in the night stand, and sustainable forest products. Talk about demand stimulus, after an extensive tour, I was ready to buy a green building materials company myself. Especially since the ecotel was booked solid!

Moving on to the food technology, the Gaia Anderson restaurant is not yet open, but is intended to be an organic and locally grown food (I assume that Napa will count as “local” for the wine, but I did not ask!).

And of course front and center in the lobby, there were Renewable Energy Credits (though not carbon credits) purchased from our friends at Renewable Choice Energy, to offset the power usage, and a monitoring system to show power and water usage, and solar production.