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Most bloggers are hobbyists. But there’s a minority of professional bloggers who are making more money than ever, according to a new installment of Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere report.

Bloggers can collect ad revenues related to their blogs. But they are also making money by parlaying the popularity of their blogs into speaking engagements, traditional media assignments, and running conferences.

Technorati said some bloggers are even reporting profits that place them squarely in the middle class. Among those who make money from blogging, 54 percent are part-timers, 32 percent are self-employed, and 14 percent work for corporations.

Part-timers and full-time bloggers say the main ways they generate revenue are through display and search ads, as well as through affiliate marketing links where they get a cut from a sale after a referral. About 15 percent say they are paid to gives speeches. Among the segment of full-time and part-time professional bloggers, about 17 percent get their main income from blogging.

For full-time bloggers, the average revenue in a year is $122,222. For part-timers, annual income is $14,777. The average for the full and part-timers combined is $42,548. About 89 percent believe that the ads on their sites must align with their own values. Most use self-serve ad platforms. But an increasing number are using ad networks or blog ad networks too.

About 51 percent of corporate bloggers said they received a salary for blogging. Bloggers who invest in their blog businesses face relatively low costs, but they’re not insubstantial. Site development for self-employed bloggers costs about $1,060 per year. Personal salary averages $5,992. Staff are paid $2,268, marketing and ad costs are $620, and hosting fees are $579. Hence, the overall costs per year, on average, are $10,519.

About 70 percent of bloggers talk about brands. Some 38 percent do brand or product reviews.

Windows users have been waiting for Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system for a long time. Anybody who bought Windows Vista computers in the past three years has been itching to upgrade to something better. And Windows XP users who refused to use Vista have also been Waiting for Godot.

Well, Godot is finally here. I installed Windows 7 Ultimate ($219 version) on an Acer laptop that was new when Windows Vista came out. (See the Windows 7 versions here). I didn’t really feel like running this experiment on my newest machine. I’ll tell you what to expect from the upgrade process and my initial impressions. One of the good things about Windows 7 is that it can run on the same hardware that Vista ran on when it came out. In that respect, I didn’t have to buy a new machine to use Windows 7. Overall, the upgrade experience worked fine and it’s worth it to get a faster and cleaner operating system.

I was itching to get started when I got the disk from Microsoft. The first screen that comes up gives you two options: Check compatibility, or Install. I chose to install. The blue screen flashed messages saying “setup is copying temporary files” and then “setup is starting.” It asked me if I wanted to upgrade my old machine to Windows 7 and preserve all of my programs and files. Or it offered a custom upgrade option, where I could also wipe the disk clean and start afresh.

I chose the option to upgrade. Then the machine captured a snapshot of the system, in case I needed to roll back the install to its preinstalled state. It told me I didn’t have enough disk space on the laptop. So I had to clean off a bunch of files and make enough room for the 8-gigabyte Windows 7 Ultimate software. (You also need a gigahertz processor and a gigabyte of main memory as a minimum to run Windows 7).

Then it ran the compatibility check. It told me that I had to install the Windows Vista Service Pack 1. I thought that was a cheap shot. I knew I should have done this a long time ago. But I didn’t. So I had to exit the installation and beg the Vista machine to download SP1. It actually refused to do so at first. The sizable download stalled midway through and I had to start over several times. If I haven’t mentioned it yet, the Windows Update utility is stupid. It took me three tries to complete the full installation of SP1.

Once that was finally done, I proceeded with the installation. The installer told me that three programs on my machine had compatibility issues, including Acer’s laptop management software, Adobe Acrobat Reader 7, and a CD/DVD movie maker program. I didn’t really care about those ones so I went right ahead. Then it told me that, while it could get by with 8 gigabytes on my hard drive, it really recommended 16 gigabytes.

I proceeded anyway. Then began the long wait. The installer was kind enough to show me a progress bar on just how far into the installation I was at any given moment. It took its time copy Windows files, filter settings and other info. Then it expanded the Windows 7 files from the DVD to the hard drive. It installed the features, transferred all my old files and programs and settings to the new machine. I noticed that Windows 7 Ultimate has 2,224 files, because that’s what it showed me as I saw the number tick by from 1 up to 2,224. Then it transferred all of my data from Vista into the Windows 7 software. It took a couple of hours, though I didn’t time it precisely. It ended by asking for a registration code for the software and asked me if I wanted to activate the software. It also asked me for my home Wi-Fi password so that it could automatically detect my home network.

I rebooted the machine and it loaded pretty quickly. After all that was done, I finally got a good look at Windows 7 Ultimate. It kept the same whale fluke picture I had as my desktop image on my old machine. I fired up Internet Explorer and it upgraded immediately to IE version 8. I also ran the Firefox browser and it worked fine. Windows 7 even remembered what Firefox web pages I had open and restored all of them as the software ran.

One of the cool things, which really didn’t work well with Vista, is the icon bar at the bottom of the page. It’s now useful. If you hover over the Firefox icon, for instance, it will show you thumbnail pictures of all of the web pages you have open. It’s easy to select one, so switching from one web page to another is a breeze. With Vista, early on, these little icons were one of the big reasons for crashes. Microsoft lists a lot of improvements here.

Now others have taken a longer look at this than I have. David Pogue of the New York Times said he connected dozens of devices to Windows 7 machines and they worked for the most part. He praised Microsoft for creating a stable and secure operating system. The complaints he pointed to one that was caused by Microsoft’s antitrust troubles: Some free programs are no longer bundled with the operating system and users have to download them separately. It also doesn’t raise alarms about potential security breaches as much as Vista did.

There is one huge hassle for those waiting to upgrade from Windows XP. They have to back up their data and then do a clean install, meaning they load Windows 7 onto the machine and then they have to manually restore it. That’s where various utilities and external hard disks available from third parties will help. Those who upgrade Mac computers won’t have that kind of problem with Apple’s Snow Leopard operating system.

Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal also praised how Windows 7 leaves Vista in the dust as early as January. And he has heaped more praise on it. It’s worth noting that those who upgrade an old machine won’t have the benefit of one of Windows 7’s best features: support for multitouch controls on a touchscreen interface. For those who prefer the ease of use, multitouch is a very cool feature. The new version of Bumptop, a 3-D user interface that sits on top of Windows 7, is also going to have support for Windows 7. The touchscreen feature is something the Mac doesn’t have yet.

For those who are wed to Windows, Microsoft’s new operating system is a must have. It takes time to get it up and running, but the benefits are worth it. The question is whether you’re better off switching to a Mac or moving up to Windows 7. For sure, if you can, it’s a better idea to buy a new Windows 7 machine than to upgrade an old one. But as long as you don’t might waiting, Windows 7 will do.

Is this good enough to fend off Apple? Is it good enough to revive the tech economy? We’ll have to wait and see.

Screen Grabs chronicles the uses (and misuses) of real-world gadgets in today’s movies and TV. Send in your sightings (with screen grab!) to screengrabs at engadget dt com.

No this isn’t the first Nokia-wielding fictional character or celeb that we’ve seen in this space, but the N96 recently spotted in the hands of our favorite psychopath has us wondering: would Dexter Morgan try N-Gage? And wouldn’t he prefer something with a QWERTY keyboard? Come to think of it, we always thought of him as a BlackBerry guy. Then again, times are tough, and as a new father he has to make… sacrifices.

Update: We originally identified this one as the N81. Thanks to all you raving Nokia fanatics who pointed out the error.

Gallery: Screen Grabs: Nokia N96 preserves the evidence on Dexter

Filed under: Cellphones

Screen Grabs: Nokia N96 preserves the evidence on Dexter originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Screen Grabs chronicles the uses (and misuses) of real-world gadgets in today’s movies and TV. Send in your sightings (with screen grab!) to screengrabs at engadget dt com.

No this isn’t the first Nokia-wielding fictional character or celeb that we’ve seen in this space, but the N96 recently spotted in the hands of our favorite psychopath has us wondering: would Dexter Morgan try N-Gage? And wouldn’t he prefer something with a QWERTY keyboard? Come to think of it, we always thought of him as a smartphone guy. Then again, times are tough, and as a new father he has to make… sacrifices.

Update: We originally identified this one as the N81. Thanks to all you raving Nokia fanatics who pointed out the error.

Gallery: Screen Grabs: Nokia N81 preserves the evidence on Dexter

Filed under: Cellphones

Screen Grabs: Nokia N96 preserves the evidence on Dexter originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

ARM is announcing today its newest microprocessor that will be the brains of smart phones and other gadgets that need fast performance and long battery life.

ARM design microprocessors that are licensed by chip makers, who customize them and put them into their gadgets where low power consumption is important. The company’s designs are used in most cell phones and have been used in 15 billion devices in the past few decades.

ARM hopes to ship another 15 billion in four years, and the new chip will be important in that quest. The new Cortex-A5 microprocessor will have better performance than ARM’s fastest ARM11 microprocessors, but it will consume less battery power than its high-volume ARM9 chips. Chip makers who license the ARM design will be able to create processors with lower costs, longer battery life, and better performance. 

The Cortex-A5, which will ship as a design to licensees in the fourth quarter. The device will compete with Intel’s Atom chips, but ARM is confident its new designs will much more power efficient than Intel’s. Previously code-named Sparrow, the Cortex-A5 will fit as the lowest cost and most energy efficient processor in ARM’s line-up of 25 processors, which are used by more than 600 customers.

The Cortex-A5 is fast enough to run a laptop or notebook, said Travis Lanier, a marketing manager at ARM. The device could be used in cell phones, but all sorts of gadgets. Lanier said that they could be used in a variety of appliances, like web-connected refrigerators that can tell you what you need to buy, or smart power meters or digital picture frames.

The Cortex-A5 chips can operate at gigahertz speeds and consume as little as 80 milliwatts of power. That’s more powerful than an Intel Atom in performance, with better power efficiency. The first products based on the designs are expected to appear in 2011. ARM says it has multiple partners for the designs.

The Nintendo Wii started a motion-sensing revolution in video games. Canesta, a startup that is taking motion-sensing a step further with full three-dimensional body movement sensing, is cashing in on the trend. Today, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based chip maker is announcing it has raised $16 million in a new round of funding.

The money comes from some prominent new backers, including Quanta Computer, the world’s largest maker of laptops. Quanta says it plans to use Canesta’s products in 3-D gesture-control systems that will revolutionize the way we interact with computers. With webcam-like cameras, Canesta-based products will let you control a computer without touching it; you simply wave your hands in front of it and it detects your motion. Hence, with PCs, TVs, and games, these 3-D gesture control systems let you get rid of a controller or remote control.

Canesta’s chips let cameras “see” moving objects. The webcam-like camera detects your movements and then calculates exactly where you are. The system then translates your motion into commands for your electronic devices.

In an interview, Canesta chief executive Jim Spare said the endorsement from Quanta and other investors will hopefully inspire big companies to move forward with adopting the technology in a variety of markets. Spare said the new money will help the company move into full-scale production of its chips, which could be used in systems in the fall of 2010.

Spare envisions systems that are not incredibly expensive or complex. The image sensors in the camera, made of ordinary CMOS (complimentary metal oxide semiconductor) chips, can detect objects based on light reflections. A light-emitting diode (LED) flashes and the infrared light bounces off the objects and then returns within fractions of a second to the sensor, which measures the travel time for the returning light to gauge distance. The infrared is invisible to the human eye. It works in ordinary light and the user can still operate the controls from across a room.

Microsoft plans to introduce this kind of technology with Project Natal, a new motion-sensing system for the Xbox 360, which is expected to debut in the fall of 2010. But Microsoft is evidently relying on technology from 3DV Systems, which it bought earlier this year, and PrimeSense. Spare says 3DV relies on gallium arsenide chips that are more expensive to make.

Hitachi has showed how it could use Canesta-based systems to replace remote controls for TV sets with touchless human gestures. And Spare says the chips could also be used for new kinds of gesture controls in smart phones.

Quanta’s investment could take the technology in a brand new direction. Spare notes how computers started with the mouse and keyboard. The iPhone brought us into the modern age of multitouch touchscreens. And now the “touchless” 3-D gesture control systems will take PCs to a whole new level of simplicity and immersiveness. Cherng Chao, senior vice president at Quanta, echoes those comments.

“A natural interface on a PC is as important a breakthrough as was the mouse,” Chao said.

The company has won more than 40 patents since it was founded in 1999. With the new funding, Canesta has raised more than $74 million from Venrock, Carlyle Group, and Honda. Besides Quanta, another new investor is SMSC, a networking and sensor chip maker.

Pssst. Want to get around the Internet censors in your country? Use Hotspot Shield. That’s the name of the free, ad-based web-surfing tool that covers your tracks so that no one can cut off your access to sites.

The Hotspot Shield is a creation of AnchorFree, a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based startup. The “virtual private network” tool is already used by millions of users in places such as China and Iran, where it’s illegal to get to uncensored sites such as Twitter or YouTube. The tool is supported by seven languages, and it is issuing a version for the Macintosh today.

AnchorFree has 7.5 million monthly users, up more than 500 percent this year. They use it mostly because their web browsing can’t be tracked. The users log into the Hotspot Shield site, which takes the user’s Internet Protocol address and tosses it out. Then it assigns a temporary IP address that stays with the user during browsing.

Normally, Chinese censors can block users from getting to sites by stopping the users via their Internet service providers. The ISPs are told to block certain IP addresses. But they can’t easily block the Hotspot Shield IP addresses, which are generated on the fly. They can try to block access to Hotspot Shield itself, but it isn’t easy, says David Gorodyansky, founder and chief executive of AnchorFree.

It effectively turns an “http:” web address into a secure “https:” address. This is an expensive way to get around censors, since AnchorFree has set up a lot of server computing power to encrypt its communications and serve its users. Others charge for such VPN service, but ad-supported AnchorFree can provide the service for free. The VPN is in use in 190 countries and can be used on Windows and Mac desktops, laptops, and iPhones. Users view more than a billion pages per month.

The service is pretty easy to install. You activate the VPN just be clicking on an icon on the desktop. A splash page tells you that a secure connection has been made to the Hotspot Shield site. You can then browse the web. The AnchorFree search bar appears at the top of the page. Ads are shown to the users, but no user data is collected.

AnchorFree has a growing audience in countries like the United Arab Emirates, Thailand, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and China. About 4 million users each month access Google via Hotspot Shield. This activity generates more than 22 million page views a month. About 800,000 users access YouTube via Hotspot Shield, generating over 10 million page views per month.

Of course, there are some problems here. Advertisers won’t be able to get much good data on the people viewing their ads in this kind of scheme. Also, people who are evading the law — organized criminals or drug dealers — and don’t want to be tracked can also use this kind of communication system.

Jeff Immelt, the chief executive officer of General Electric, showed off what he called the “stethoscope of the 21st century” at the Web 2.0 Summit today.

He held up a white gadget with a flip-out screen and a control mechanism that looks lot like the old iPod navigation wheel. Immelt said the device could do ultrasound scans on the fly and wirelessly communicate the data as necessary. Doctors can use the devices to immediately see, for instance, if an unborn baby is in a dangerous breach position.

Dubbed Vscan, the device is an example of electronic gadgets that can improve preventative care, cut healthcare costs and otherwise help people understand their healthcare situation without using expensive hospital equipment.

Afterward, at a press gathering, Immelt said the Vscan technology does nothing but ultrasound. You could use it to do live liver scans or get quick looks at other body parts. He noted that the ultrasound data is very dense and may or may not be easy to use with Wi-Fi, but he said it would be “very digitally capable.” This is one of those “decision support” tools that will help doctors decide how to treat patients. It fits with GE’s own mandate to be a broad diagnostics company in healthcare systems.

Immelt said he didn’t know what price the new device would debut at. He said that it will hit the market sometime in 2010.

Social gaming company Zynga has been one of the primary beneficiaries of Facebook’s rapid growth to a social network of more than 300 million people.

The San Francisco-based company has been able to surpass 50 million daily active users for its Facebook games, where you can share with your friends the fact that you’ve planted a crop of corn with hundreds of your virtual friends in games such as FarmVille and the even faster-growing Cafe World.

But that’s just the beginning, says Mark Pincus, chief executive of Zynga, speaking at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. The value of social networking won’t materialize solely in “social plumbing” platform companies such as Facebook. It will be more fully realized as a big app economy emerges, built around social app companies.

This “app economy” is brand new. The growth of social gaming has happened with lightning speed. Zynga launched the first social game on Facebook in July 2007. That was a social version of poker. Today, games such as FarmVille have 20 million daily active users. In the app economy, users takes apps such as FarmVille and sprinkle social bread crumbs with them, driving traffic in certain directions. They monetize by buying virtual goods by paying for them directly. FarmVille sells something like 800,000 virtual tractors a day.

Social apps sit atop host portals such as Facebook or MySpace, which in turn sit atop social plumbing technologies, Pincus said.

“Don’t believe this will end with Facebook,” Pincus said. “You will see many other forms of social plumbing emerge, and the category of social apps will be up for grabs in every traditional sector, from travel to search to gaming.”

Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker said today that the tech economy is in a state of recovery, based on the leading indicators that usually signal an end to recession. She was also bullish that a huge shift will come about as the mobile Internet, enabled by smartphones such as Apple’s iPhone, sweeps through the world in the coming years.

“The leading indicators have turned the corner, but the lagging indicators are still weak,” Meeker said in a lightning-fast presentation at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. [Her slides are at the bottom]

She noted that the S&P 500 is up 59 percent from a year ago and the Russian stock market is up 181 percent. Stock markets are typically a leading indicator of recovery from recession.  She noted that credit is loosening up, earnings estimates have started going up as a group, and information technology is the No. 1 capitalized group on Wall Street now (that means that tech stocks are valued the best as a sector).

Meeker said that Intel’s and Apple’s results are good proxies for the recovery. Intel had the best improvement from the second quarter to the third quarter in terms of revenue growth in 30 years. There are twice as many initial public offerings this year compared to last year. Deal volume is twice what it was last year and dollar volume of the IPOs has quadrupled. And there are dozens of companies now in the pipeline. Electronic commerce hit bottom in the first quarter and has been recovering ever since.

On the flip side, consumer confidence is rising but it is still below normal levels. Manufacturing is recovering, but factory usage is around 70 percent of full capacity. Foreclosures are still rising and unemployment remains high at 10 percent compared to 6 percent a year ago. Those are all lagging indicators. Once they’re back to normal, the recovery will be a confirmed fact.

Meeker said she was excited about the positive trends related to technology adoption. One of the fastest-growing sectors is the use of mobile data on devices such as the iPhone. Apple iPhone users account for 65 percent of data usage, but only 11 percent of the total mobile market share in the U.S.

“The iPhone is the fastest growing piece of hardware the world has ever seen,” Meeker said.

Japan is years ahead of the U.S. in mobile data and Meeker believes it will serve as a model for what will come. She said that the U.S. has a long way to go to catch up with the patterns of mobile Internet usage in Japan. By 2013, the number of heavy web mobile users will triple to a billion users.

The shift to the mobile web is no less than a new computing cycle, such as the shift from mainframes to minicomputers, from minicomputers to PCs, from PCs to the web and laptops. Each time one of those shifts happens, the number of users increases tenfold. Indicators of this growth: Global positioning system (GPS) chip shipments are up 57 percent this year, while Wi-Fi chip sales are up 42 percent. On the content side, Facebook has seen huge growth in usage, as have social networks on mobile phones.

All of these trends toward mobile Internet expansion will cause huge shifts in wealth creation, Meeker said. In each major computing shift, new winners emerge, and the incumbents fade away. Here are the slides.

MS Economy Internet Trends 102009 FINAL