VentureBeat

Here’s the latest action:

Microsoft cut prices for its Xbox 360 videogame consoles in Japan by as much as 30 percent — The software giant is trying to increase momentum in its most challenging market as the holiday season approaches.

VP candidate Sarah Palin’s Wikipedia bio was cleaned up — The fact that a single user made 30 positive edits to Palin’s bio shortly before the announcement that she’s John McCain’s running mate led to a flurry of online speculation that the McCain campaign made the edits. The anonymous Wikipedia user acknowledged that they volunteer for the campaign, but denied any conflict of interest.

MySpace co-founder Tom Anderson has a rich hacker history — That history includes FBI confiscation of his computer equipment. TechCrunch revealed earlier that Anderson, who has more MySpace friends than anyone else in the world, is really 37, not 32 as his profile says.

Tesla to supply battery packs to Daimler — Tesla will provide the batteries for Daimler’s 150 electric Smart cars deployed in Berlin, according to AutoblogGreen. The site reported the rumor a few weeks ago and now says there’s confirmation in the German edition of the Financial Times.

Movie social network Flixster acquires iPhone app Movies.app — The application was purchased for an undisclosed price, then re-released last week. Movies.app is probably the first iPhone app to get acquired.

Only 25 percent of Internet traffic now routed through the United States — In the earliest days of the web, all traffic went through the U.S., and that number was still 70 percent a decade ago. The shift has implications for intelligence agencies and foreign policy.

GameStop Chief Operating Officer Daniel DeMatteo will succeed longtime CEO Richard Fontaine — Fontaine will stay on as videogame retailer’s chairman.

Linux developer Hans Reiser gets 15 years to life for killing his wife – A deal with prosecutors led to Reiser’s reduced sentence after he brought police to his wife’s body.

New software offers iPhone-like navigation on Windows Mobile devices – The application is called Kinoma Play and costs $30.

Game publisher Square Enix bids for Tecmo — If Tecmo’s board approves the deal, it would give Square Enix a stronger foothold in the United States.

Tech pioneer Judy Estrin warns of an innovation gap if the U.S. fails to invest – Estrin, formerly the chief technology officer at Cisco Systems, has written a book on “Closing the Innovation Gap.”

Today, Republican presidential candidate John McCain is introducing a tech agenda that differs from Democrat Barack Obama’s on “net neutrality” laws but has similar viewpoints on tax breaks, high-tech labor laws and other hot tech policy issues.

Obama made his sweep through Silicon Valley last year, connecting with top entrepreneurs like Marc Andreessen, and telling us about his technology policy proposal, that was impressive in its depth. McCain, who has given some interviews this year where he’s outlined his policies, has up until now not presented any formal proposal, and has been criticized because of that.

The McCain proposal is relatively pro-business, and pro-free trade, the Wall Street Journal notes in its early look at it. The plan includes a ten percent employee tax credit, to be paid to the company for employees who work in research and development — intended to convince companies to hire locally rather than look for help overseas. At the same time, it calls for expansion of the H1-B visa program, to help more skilled foreign workers come to the U.S. It would also provide tax breaks to telecommunications companies that bring high-speed internet access to rural and low-income areas (meanwhile, as the economy has worsened, more people have been cutting back on this expense).

This proposal sounds pretty good for libertarian-minded Silicon Valley, so far. More controversially, McCain is siding with telecommunications companies over the issue of “net neutrality.” His policy, shaped by telco-friendly ex-Federal Communications Commission Michael Powell, would oppose laws that seek to regulate which users can use how much Internet bandwidth at what price. Obama has come down on the other side of the net neutrality issue, siding with those who believe the telcos’ ability to regulate Internet availability is monopolistic and hinders innovation.

Broadly speaking, though, the plans differ more by what they emphasize and less by where they outright disagree. Obama also wants to give tax breaks to incentivize broadband access, improve how the visa work permit works, but wants to spend more on high-tech education initiatives.

Silicon Valley, home to many who are both Democrat and libertarian, seems to favor Obama. He has raised more than McCain here, he presented his plan at the Googleplex in Mountain View, and he’s especially popular in the northern part of the valley (San Francisco). But McCain has his own high-profile supporters. He has signed on former eBay chief executive Meg Whitman to be his campaign’s national co-chairwoman, and has endorsements from former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina and Cisco Systems’ chief executive John Chambers.

When investing, it helps to have people on your side. Usually that means other business people, and sometimes regulators, but billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens is taking the sentiment to a new level with a just-announced public campaign aimed at bolstering domestic power sources.

The multi-million dollar media and advertising thrust by Pickens will attempt to swing common opinion away from foreign oil, and toward alternate energy investments –- which includes wind power, as well as natural gas for transportation.

Pickens, who made his fortune in oil and private equity, is the man behind plans for the world’s biggest wind farm, a risky play sizable enough to significantly multiply or divide even his ample assets. For a big win, he needs the support of the government to help build supporting infrastructure –- hence the big move.

The idea is intriguing, because although the root of Pickens’ fortune is in oil, he’s throwing his weight behind renewables. And he’s doing it during an election year. While John McCain spends most of his time talking about nuclear energy, which Pickens says will take “too long”, and offshore drilling, Barack Obama vocally supports all cleantech (including biofuels, which the World Bank appears ready to blame for sharp increases in the cost of food).

Though Pickens clearly has the most interest in wind, his rhetoric is centered around weaning the country off oil, which will take solar, biofuels and many other initiatives – making a clear match of his message with Obama’s.

It should be interesting to see how the energy debate plays out. Pickens isn’t the only one talking up clean energy. Al Gore’s $300 million awareness campaign about global warming just got underway, and the rest of the world is spending more time talking about the issues every day. The claim is that the ad campaigns are bipartisan, but in the current race, they seem to favor the more progressive Democrats — whereas Pickens himself has delighted in bedeviling Dems, including former presidential candidate John Kerry.

Cleantech as an investment sector is still picking up speed – the Cleantech Group this morning reported another record quarter, with $1.5 billion invested in green technologies in the United States alone. If Gore, Pickens and others get their way, there will be another flood of investment at all levels. The only question is, how high can the tide go?

John McCain emphasized the role of the private sector and called for a cap-and-trade system in a prepared speech he delivered today in Oregon, indicating that his policies will differ greatly from those of the Bush Administration, if he is elected.

McCain praised wind, solar and other renewable energy technologies as affordable and attractive alternatives to fossil fuels that could help revamp the country’s failed energy policies and significantly reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

In an effort to sway moderate and independent voters, McCain stressed his environmental bona fides and sought to distance himself from the Bush administration’s record — calling for a return to 1990 emissions levels by 2020 and for a 60% cut below 1990 levels by 2050.

Citing the success of the sulphur emissions trading program, instituted under the Clean Air Act, in reducing acid rain, McCain said a cap-and-trade system would have an “equally dramatic and permanent effect on carbon emissions by setting clear limits on emissions levels, while giving companies a financial incentive to reduce them.

Such a system would have the added benefit of fostering innovation and entrepreneurship among companies looking to make a profit from the sale of their permits, McCain said. “It is very hard to picture venture capitalists, corporate planners, small businesses and environmentalists all working to the same good purchase. But such cooperation is actually possible in the case of climate change,” he added.

Over time, the government would sell an increasing fraction of permits through an auctioning system to maximize federal revenues. Some of these proceeds would be used to fund advanced carbon capture systems and renewable energy projects, as well as promote the development of promising new technologies like hydrogen-powered vehicles. The rest would be invested in the country’s creaking electrical infrastructure, or used to bring clean energy to the states that need them.

A working cap-and-trade system would also help bring China, India and other developing nations to the table by demonstrating the U.S.’s firm commitment to emissions reduction. The U.S. will need to lead by example by fulfilling its obligations under a future successor to the Kyoto Protocol and by pushing for closer technological and political cooperation. While he stressed the importance of speaking to different nations’ interests, he called any comprehensive plan that did not include China and India a failure.

A McCain administration would use the government’s full purchasing power to encourage greater demand and adoption of the “best technologies and practices in energy conservation” and lean on Congress to eliminate some of the energy bill’s subsidies and tax breaks — even those for clean energy. When interviewed by Grist last October, he said he was opposed to subsidies for wind and solar technologies.

The Arizona senator is a strong advocate of nuclear energy, however, and has hinged his support for the Lieberman-Warner climate bill in part on a provision granting nuclear operators more perks. In fact, McCain has made nuclear energy a central component of his climate agenda, arguing that the U.S. — which currently has 104 reactors in operation — should ramp up the construction of new reactors.

He mentioned the progress made by France and Belgium, which derive over half their electricity from nuclear energy, in reducing their emissions. Under a cap-and-trade system, he said, the costs of building new plants would be much lower. Further research and technological innovation would help overcome nuclear energy’s main drawback — the storage and disposal of waste.

We won’t know for sure what a renewable energy infrastructure could look like under a McCain administration until early June, when he will deliver a speech dedicated solely to his energy policy. At that time, he will lay out some more specifics on his government’s approach to fossil fuels, nuclear energy and renewables. Given his strong backing for the nuclear sector, however, it’s likely that we would see a lot more nuclear reactors popping up around the country under his presidency. His stated opposition to subsidies and tax breaks casts some doubt on the continuation of government tax credits, which could crimp growth prospects for the renewable sector.

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