VentureBeat

Here’s the latest action:
1) Wikileaks judge restores restores site, slaps self on wrist
2) AllPeers’ peer-to-peer scheme fails to capture users
3) Chevron, Weyerhaeuser join up for cellulosic ethanol
4) Saudi Arabia and IBM partner to develop green nanotech
5) Akamai wins patent fight, but not happy with ruling
6) Woz points out flaws in Apple’s latest products
7) Global warming, now with double the lethality
8) LinkedIn’s new features look a little more like Facebook
9) Fastcompany.tv launches with Robert Scoble
10) Fortune tops “Most Admired” list with Valley companies

Wikileaks judge restores site, slaps self on wrist — A federal judge who ordered that whistle-blower site Wikileaks be scrubbed from the web not only reversed his own order, but has since released a statement suggesting that he overstepped his bounds and possibly violated the First Amendment, acknowledging that free speech on the Internet is a tricky issue.

AllPeers’ P2P sharing extension fails to capture users, closes — AllPeers, a clever Firefox extension that allowed the peer-to-peer sharing, is dead. The prognosis: Not enough users to satisfy the investors, Mangrove Capital Partners and Index Ventures. There’s a brief obituary at TechCrunch.

Chevron and Weyerhaeuser join forces for cellulosic ethanol — Ain’t green great? Take Chevron and Weyerhaeuser, two giant companies known for environmental damage — the first for oil exploration, the latter for logging and creating Superfund sites — add an impending global crisis, and come up with Catchlight Energy, a new joint venture to research cellulosic ethanol. The company will employ up to 40 researchers, making it one of the larger cellulosic efforts.

Saudi Arabia and IBM partner to develop green nanotech — Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is keeping up with the Joneses by setting up its own nanotech research lab, which will put most of its efforts toward solar energy. The Jones here, in case you missed it, is Abu Dhabi with its $15 billion Masdar City initiative.

Akamai prevails in patent fight, but unhappy with the winnings — Akamai won a patent battle with rival content distribution network Limelight, but the amount — $45 million — was less than half of the $100 million the company thought it deserved, according to Xconomy. Limelight, for its part, would prefer to multiply the amount by 0; it’s appealing the case.

Woz points out the flaws with latest Apple products — Acting as the super-ego to the ego of Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak spent some time criticizing the Apple Air and iPhone to the Sydney Morning Herald. (The id, we’ll assume, is represented by Apple fanboys.) The brief version: He thinks that some fairly vital features were unnecessarily left out of the two devices.

Global warming, now with double the lethality — According to a study cited by the New Scientist: “A rise in CO₂ increases the temperature and water vapour content of the atmosphere, which in turn accelerate ozone production and encourage particulates to hang around in the air.” That means more lung damage, and ultimately, more deaths.

LinkedIn’s new features make it more like Facebook — Unfair perhaps, but the business networking site will inevitably be compared to Facebook. Web Worker Daily explains why new LinkedIn features like status updates make it more like its chattier rival.

FastCompany.tv launches entrepreneur-focused web shows — Robert Scoble has the first two shows on the new video portal, Fastcompany.tv.

Fortune ranks “Most Admired” companies, tech firms top list — Apple is number one and Google is number four on Fortune’s new list of the 20 most admired companies, which doubles as a clever way for Fortune to get 20 pageviews from a single article.

Television and especially high definition television is something that we’re already seeing as a viable method for internet distribution. Best found in the rampant use of torrents, the widespread availability and demand for high-definition TV (HDTV) is already upon us.

But currently there’s no efficient method to stream media at such high resolution - a problem that Akamai is attempting to solve by expanding the company’s delivery hardware. Akamai plans to overcome speed limitations by building closer proximity to cable providers and more importantly, to the end user. Diminishing physical distance helps to not only maintain faster speed but also a more consistent bandwidth.

While bulking up on hardware isn’t sexy in a peer-to-peer age, Akamai’s push into HD marks a decisive advantage over competitors, like Limelight and Move Networks. Akamai has aggressively maintained its dominance in the content-delivery-network (CDN) market, despite the recent influx of companies, by buying up a P2P competitor (Red Swoosh) as well as content management tools (Nine Systems). By integrating Red Swoosh’s efficient distributed delivery mechanism (read P2P) into its hardware, Akamai is lowering its distribution costs to manage while other CDN companies begin a price war.

Thankfully, updating software for HD television on the internet will not be as costly as Akamai’s hardware upgrade. Adobe’s adoption of the video codec H.264 (a compression for video that uses substantially smaller file sizes) into the ubiquitous Flash will only fuel the fires of delivering HD content over-the-web. The improvements to Flash’s video have taken cues from the continued popularity of the Apple Trailer web site with its use of H.264 for high-definition video. Similarly hopeful for internet HD TV is the implementation of Microsoft’s Silverlight technology. Built into Netflix’s new Watch-Now service, Silverlight allows interaction with other users as well as solid Operating System for video watching. Netflix’s service was built in less than three weeks for a presentation and left many drooling in the audience.

However, the timing of Akamai’s announcement comes after a disappointing second quarter for the company and facing the “possibility that after two years of extremely rapid expansion, video streaming and consumption is flattening.” The glimmer of hope is that streaming HD television through the internet is a market with large potential. For the broadcasting industry, who are particularly interested in maintaining vertical distribution, streaming is the ideal method of providing content without worrying about pricing, piracy and ownership - the main issues which resulted in NBC’s recent pullout from iTunes downloading service.