You might use Flipboard, Zite, Feedly, or one of the other news apps on an iPad or your mobile device. This space just keeps getting hotter and hotter, probably due in no small part to Flipboard’s $50 million in funding they collected in the last month.

I keep playing with all of them, Flipboard is my favorite for reading news that my friends bring me on Twitter or Facebook, Feedly is my favorite for following RSS feeds, but Skygrid has earned a favorite spot on my iPad for finding me news about things I’m interested in, but less knowledgeable or connected on. Today that got even better as Skygrid rolls out a new iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch app that is easier to use, more powerful, but does an even better job at helping you find the latest news.

Why is Skygrid so good? Because for years now CEO Kevin Pomplun and his team have been building algorithms to outrun Google News and Yahoo on finding the latest news. He’s been on my show three times now, which he’s earned by having the best news back-end in the business. I’ve found that I use it in conjunction with Flipboard, what do you think? Has it earned a spot on your iPad?

Anyway, here’s an exclusive first look at SkyGrid’s new app and discussion with Kevin about how the news world is heating up.

You might know PARC. This is the lab that Steve Jobs walked into and was inspired to make the Mac what it is today. Inside this lab lots of things in the industry were developed:

1. Laser printers and page description language.
2. Tablet PCs (the first prototype is sitting in a display there).
3. Ethernet (first piece of ethernet is still in the wall here, and is seen in one of the interviews below).
4. Object oriented programming.
5. The modern personal computer with graphical user interface.
6. Very-large-scale-integration for semiconductors.

Among other things, which are detailed on Wikipedia.

So, when PARC says “come on over for a tour” you drop everything and go.

While there I met with several people to get a taste of what they are working on now. Visiting here is like visiting Jerusalem (home of the first church). It’s where everything seemed to start and is still filled with brilliant people. For instance, in part IV of my tour you’ll meet Richard Chow. Some of his achievements include architecting Yahoo!’s click-fraud protection system and delivering the Security and DRM components for Motorola’s first Java-based phone platform.

PART ONE: Future of Networking. See the first Ethernet cable in the wall, and learn about Content Centric Networking. Here, Teresa Lunt, Vice President and Director of the Computing Science Laboratory research organization, and Nacho Solis, researcher, tell me how networks are changing.

Anyway, let’s get started.

PART TWO: How Ethnographic research leads to new business ideas. Here we meet Victoria Bellotti who manages PARC’s Socio-Technical and Interaction Research team at PARC where she also developed PARC’s Opportunity Discovery research targeting methods and program. Victoria studies people to understand their practices, problems, and requirements for future technology, and also designs and analyzes human-centered systems — focusing on user experience.

PART THREE: Ubiquitous Computing research (and some historic networking equipment). Kurt Partridge is a researcher in PARC’s ubiquitous computing area. His research interests include context awareness, activity modeling, location modeling, wearable computing, and using users’ natural behaviors to simplify human-computer interaction. He received a Ph. D. in Computer Science from the University of Washington in 2005. Here we talk about what happens when computers are everywhere, which enables the Internet of Things.

PART FOUR: Keeping our Cloud Computing Safe. Richard Chow is interested in systems security, fraud detection, and privacy. Some of his achievements include architecting Yahoo!’s click-fraud protection system and delivering the Security and DRM components for Motorola’s first Java-based phone platform.

Here Richard talks to me about what he’s working on and how he’s developing new techniques to keep our data private and secure. Interesting conversation!

Anyway, hope you enjoyed this little tour around PARC.

By the way, recently Malcolm Gladwell wrote about PARC’s role in computing’s development. He got several things wrong, PARC’s managers say, and they wrote a rebuttal on their blog about how the lab innovates and why it plays a key role in Silicon Valley even today.

If you read other tech blogs this morning you might get an idea that the next multi-billion-dollar war is over Google vs. Amazon.

Now that’s an interesting battle, but I believe it’s small potatoes compared to the real war that Marc Benioff started more than a decade ago: over how we all work.

See, Salesforce was the first to see weakness in Microsoft’s “install software everywhere” model and exploited that weakness to build a great San Francisco company.

But what did Salesforce do? It showed a raft of companies how to compete with Microsoft. Now it’s a full-blown movement that insiders are paying big attention to. Box.net has five million customers and is doubling every 14 months. Yammer won Techcrunch 50 and has hundreds of workers who are toiling to take enterprises away from Microsoft Sharepoint. Jive, SocialCast, SocialText, et al are on fire, too.

Come deeper into Silicon Valley and you’ll find one company that’s hiring all sorts of ex-Microsofties (I met one of Microsoft’s smartest strategists working there) among others and who today announced a new cloud app store for businesses: VMware. Don’t miss this company and what it’s doing.

GigaOm is right. VMware is the new Silicon Valley company to watch.

But don’t look at these companies one-by-one. It’s clear there’s a new movement and it’s radically changing how we work. Add in Google’s Docs and Spreadsheets, Sococo’s new virtual office, Twilio’s new phone APIs, amongst many other examples and you see this is the real San Francisco multi-billion-dollar war that hasn’t gotten good coverage in the tech press.

Why isn’t the tech press covering this San Francisco tech story?

Oh, sure, it’s Enterprise. Mike Arrington told me once he gets bored with enterprise companies. It’s not as sexy as anything Apple or Google are doing. Partly because VMware’s PR team isn’t interested in waking up the bears (Microsoft and other enterprise-focused companies) by shooting off Jason Calacanis style missives or playing PR games the way Facebook got caught doing last week. Nah, they are understated. They underpromise and don’t try to hype things up too much. That doesn’t fit how the current tech press can get onto the cover of Techmeme or Hacker News.

But don’t miss this battle. It’s way bigger than the battle over tablets or consumer app stores and will shift billions in revenue from Redmond to San Francisco.

Here I visit VMware to find out why they are buying startups like Sliderocket and Mozy, plus I get a look at their new single-sign-on cloud service management tool, Horizon, in a talk with Noah Wasmer, director of product management, advanced development. That announcement is covered more over on Building43.

To see just how work is changing thanks to technology you have to look no further than these two companies:

1. Sococo gives you a virtual office, where you have an office space on screen. You have to get a demo of this. Video.
2. Gigwalk lets you work (or hire people to do tasks) on your smart phone. I’m using this to hire people to take pictures of vacation homes in Los Angeles, so I don’t waste money on a badly-located home. Video.

These both are a good example of why I like video. It’s hard to explain these concepts in text, but in video you’ll get a much better idea of how work is changing. Enjoy!

Gigwalk:

Sococo:

I’ve been slowing down my blogging lately. This has happened for a few reasons:

1. I was speaking at the Next Web a week ago in Amsterdam and wifi there was crappy.
2. Right before that I took a few days off to be in Yosemite with my family.
3. After I got back from Amsterdam I overscheduled myself, which means I got a ton of interviews done but had no time to upload those videos or process them or blog about them.

Anyway, this weekend I caught up and uploaded 24 videos. Which pissed some people off over on Facebook as I flooded their streams.

But, one advantage of doing and posting so many videos all at once is you start seeing patterns. So, here’s what I’m learning.

1. The iPad is encouraging some interesting new businesses to form, like Pose, which is a cash register and inventory-management company for retail stores. Video.
2. Health tracking and apps that help you keep your health up continue to pop up. Fooducate is a good example, it shows you whether the food you are picking in grocery stores is healthy or not. Video.
3. iPhone app store is too hard to use, so we’ve seen a ton of companies come out with ways to improve that. The latest I’ve seen is Zwapp, which shares apps with each other in a neat social way. Video.
4. Photo/camera apps continue to be hot. Especially true since Instagram took off and Color got $41 million. Here Pixamid has an easier-to-use and understand social camera than Color. Video. And Photogram has a new competitor for Instagram that lets you upload groups of photos to Facebook or Twitter. Video.
5. Enterprise collaboration service space continues to be hot. You know, the space occupied by Jive, Yammer, Salesforce Chatter, SocialCast, SocialText, etc. Here Moxie hooked up with design firm IDEO to make the best designed and easiest to use collaboration service. Video.
6. Traveling brings about new business opportunities, especially as regular travelers realize they are being slammed with high roaming fees. Here two startups really help out. Onavo compresses your iPhone’s data, which saves about half on data roaming charges. Video. And MaxRoam gives you a SIM for unlocked phones that saves you a ton on voice calls. Video. Plus, a third company, Abukai, helps you do your expense reports when you travel by scanning the receipts with your mobile phone’s camera. Video.
7. The Web isn’t forgotten. Scrible helps you research things on the web and save and share them. Useful. Video. Silk is building a new kind of database which will be used first by the Next Web to build a startup database. Video. Shufflr.tv helps you find more and better video online. Video. Webdoc helps you build a new kind of rich, expressive, site. Think a modern Blogger or Tumblr. Video.
8. But the most interesting set of companies is being built around smartphones and here, for the first time, Apple’s iOS doesn’t have the coolest apps. For instance, Innobell lets you add social apps to a phone call. Only on Android today. Video. TekTrak gives you really great security. But mostly on Android today. Video. And WalkBase lets you track your phone’s movement through wifi and assisted GPS patterns in the room. Again, only on Android because Apple and Microsoft don’t let WalkBase talk to the radios the way Android does. Video.

Anyway, here’s all the videos embedded, so you can enjoy them. These are all on my YouTube Channel, if you like them please subscribe there.

Talking iPad apps and accessories with Sam Levin:

Android app WalkBase tracks wireless data to tell whether you’re in the same room:

VUFind lets people play and share around their visually-recognized interests:

A must-have when traveling: MaxRoam, saves money on roaming calls and data:

Mobilistar makes world clickable with mobile augmented reality:

Why you should jailbreak your iPhone:

Scrible helps you research the Web (cool tool!):

A new way to do expense reports with your mobile phone: Abukai:

Mobile wireless compression from Onavo saves TONS of money when overseas:

A “social camera” Pixamid:

A new dating service: Kismet:

Zwapp helps you find better apps for your iPhone:

Silk: a great new database powers new Next Web site:

Shufflr.tv helps you find better videos online:

Cool Ring prototype shows new way to use Tablets:

TekTrak makes your mobile phone more secure:

Must have mobile app at the grocery store: Fooducate helps you make healthy choices!

Webdoc brings you rich expression on the web:

Moxie competes in enterprises with Yammer and Salesforce Chatter with a better design:

Exclusive first look: Photogram, new kind of photosharing app for mobile:

Small-business cash register comes to iPad in Pose:

Loqly: ask questions about local businesses:

Add social apps to phone calls with Innobell:

This is reprinted, with permission, from Rackspace’s Building43.

Adobe helped spark the desktop publishing revolution in the mid 1980s with its PostScript page description language used in Apple LaserWriter printers. Today, publishing is vastly different than it was 25 years ago, as consumers are accessing content in more ways than ever, and Adobe’s Dreamweaver CS5 team is hard at work creating the tools that allow developers to work in this new environment.

Some of the coolest things about Dreamweaver 5.5 are…that we’ve just put support for HTML5 CSS3 right into the app. “You kind of have to be under a really big rock to have not noticed the change in devices people are using to access the Internet today,” explains Scott Fegette, Senior Product Manager at Adobe. “It’s not just desktop browsers on two platforms anymore. It’s a variety of devices from tablets to smart phones to connected set-top boxes on HDTVs, including the desktop browsers that we all became used to. So, this presents a number of issues for developers.”

A developer must be aware of several factors starting with how the user is going to interact with the app, whether it’s with a trackpad, a keyboard, joystick or trackball. The wide variations in screen sizes present additional challenges. Simple links on a desktop may not work so well on a phone. On an HDTV, you’re typically sitting away from the device, so you can’t fill a small space with a lot of text, and buttons on the screen have to be large enough for you to see and access. Much the opposite holds true for a tablet or phone.

Dreamweaver CS5.5 has added features that help developers deliver content to this wide array of devices. “CS5.5 is going to be a big step forward starting first with just existing content,” says Fegette. “Any publisher that really wants to become relevant immediately needs to start thinking about how they can make the interface to their site, their application, relevant on a number of different form factors. First up, CSS3 media query is a great way of managing this. We’ve got this feature in CS5.5 called Multiscreen Preview panel and media query management where you can very quickly set up a number of default resolutions for a phone, a tablet and just a desktop browser and then custom define them as well. It’s really mostly keyed around the dimensions of the screen right now, but the gist of it is, you can quickly target a CSS file to a specific resolution class—say max 400 pixels—and then go from 401 pixels to maybe 800 or 900 for a tablet and then anything above that deliver a specific style sheet just for the desktop. But the efficiency you get there is that you can really quickly build out these very targeted interfaces on top of the same HTML source, which lets you immediately repurpose your existing site.”

The latest version of Dreamweaver also makes it easier for developers to work with HTML5. “Some of the coolest things about Dreamweaver 5.5,” explains Fegette, “[are] quite frankly that we’ve just put support for HTML5 CSS3 right into the app in ways that just feel natural. We wanted to make sure that the HTML5 revolution wasn’t this big slap in the face to people, but it was something they could progress into really naturally and holistically. You’ll see things like CSS3 support in the CSS panel. You can do things like add border radius and opacity using RGBA colors to really take away some of the dependency of jumping back and forth to an image editor like Photoshop, baking these into an image and placing it into your file. Again, that’s another real power of HTML5 is that cuts down these round trips and these dependencies that a real standards-based developer would have.”

More change is sure to come, which makes familiarity with all of the hardware options even more important. “The modern content publisher really needs to understand these devices,” says Fegette, “what they’re capable of and how to become effective with them quickly, because it’s certainly not slowing down.”

More info:

Adobe Dreamweaver web site.
Adobe CS 5.5.