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Google and other tech companies won a big battle in Washington today. In an Election Day meeting, the FCC approved the unlicensed use of “white spaces” spectrum newly freed up as a result of TV broadcasters going from analog to digital broadcasts. Google has long been leading the lobbying effort to turn this spectrum into a sort of WiFi 2.0. Telecom companies and sports leagues opposed opening up the spectrum, claiming that it would interfere with wireless headsets and other devices that use nearby licensed airwaves.

Google argued that the interference argument was bunk, and the FCC agreed. Although the FCC is requiring more testing before “white spaces” devices will be approved.

This is a big win not just for Google, but for the entire tech industry. Just as WiFi changed the way we connect to the Internet in our homes and offices, the “white spaces” spectrum could be used for longer-range wireless broadband connections. The wireless carriers are right to feel threatened.

As far as Google is concerned, it wants as many wireless networks as possible to connect to the Internet. The “white spaces” is part of a bigger thrust. For instance, consider a recent Google patent to tie disparate wireless networks together through a marketplace that would let people switch networks on the fly as they moved around based on price and quality of coverage. As we noted in a post about that patent:

The patent is part of Google’s broader agenda to get as many people online as possible with as many devices as possible. Hence the gPhone, its pressure on the FCC, and Larry Page’s bristling in support of open white spaces. The opening of white spaces in particular could lead to more connection points for mobile devices, ones that form an attractive alternative to those provided by wireless carriers. And Android-powered phones could be among the first to take advantage of a flexible connections system.

The FCC just gave Google the go-ahead to start its end-run around the carriers. But it also just approved Verizon’s acquisition of AllTell, so it is spreading its love around.

Update: In a blog post today, Google co-founder Larry Page writes:

I’ve always thought that there are a lot of really incredible things that engineers and entrepreneurs can do with this spectrum. We will soon have “Wi-Fi on steroids,” since these spectrum signals have much longer range than today’s Wi-Fi technology and broadband access can be spread using fewer base stations resulting in better coverage at lower cost. And it is wonderful that the FCC has adopted the same successful unlicensed model used for Wi-Fi, which has resulted in a projected 1 billion Wi-Fi chips being produced this year. Now that the FCC has set the rules, I’m sure that we’ll see similar growth in products to take advantage of this spectrum.

As an engineer, I was also really gratified to see that the FCC decided to put science over politics. For years the broadcasting lobby and others have tried to spread fear and confusion about this technology, rather than allow the FCC’s engineers to simply do their work.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Since most of you don’t have an Android G1 phone, we are featuring some video reviews from the AppVee crew to show you what you are missing (or not, depending on your point of view). You can watch the first ten video reviews in an earlier post. Below are five more, two of which are on my top ten (ShopSavvy and iSkoot for Skype).

One of the most potentially useful set of apps on Android turn the phone into a barcode scanner and let you compare prices on the go. In fact, there are two apps that do this, ShopSavvy and CompareEverywhere. They are currently the No. 2 and No. 4 apps on the Android Market, respectively. Both look through the phone’s camera lens to scan a product’s barcode and look it up in a database to retrieve price comparisons from both the Web and local stores.

I tried both with half a dozen packaged foods in my pantry (a can of tomato sauce, a jar of salsa, chicken stock, Nutella, some English muffins, a jar of baby food). This is far from a scientific sample, but CompareEverywhere did a much better job identifying the products. It identified 4 out of 6, whereas Shop Savvy was only able to identify two. CompareEverywhere, however, sometimes got stuck and was not able to capture the barcode, especially for products where the label was not completely flat. I found ShopSavvy to sometimes be to quick on the trigger tryin to capture the barcode beoire it was really in focus.

Both services obviously need to improve their underlying product databases, but they are still worth downloading and will no doubt improve over time. Here are AppVee’s reviews of each:

CompareEverywhere

ShopSavvy

iSkoot for Skype is a mobile Skype client that turns your Android into a Skype phone. It lets you make Internet phone calls over Skype and IM your Skype contacts. Skype calls go over the data network (WiFi or 3G, whichever is available). It is a must-download for anyone who uses Skype frequently.

iSkoot For Skype

Bluebrush is a drawing app that lets you make doodles on your Android. The screen is too small to make anything other than squiggles, in my experience, but the app includes a fun social component that lets you draw with others using the Bluebrush on their Android phones.

Bluebrush

For people who want to make their own shortcuts to their favorite apps, Any Cut goes beyond the customization options that come with the phone itself.

Any Cut

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Columbus Day gets no respect. Be honest, how many of you are actually celebrating it? That’s what I thought.

Even Google doesn’t care (or maybe Columbus Day just isn’t PC enough). The logo on Google’s homepage today is celebrating Paddington Bear’s 50th birthday instead of a drawing of the Niña, Pinta, and Santa Maria.

We’ve been getting some concerned e-mail asking us if we know what’s up:

Isn’t Columbus Day more important than a bear?

Does Google even like America?

Yeah, Google. Do you even like America? Everyone knows that Paddington is a Commie-terrorist bear.

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Google has presented a new option to show different ads in response to searches made from iPhones. The change, expected to be implemented shortly, means advertisers will be able to create an iPhone ad group as part of their regular search campaign, according to agency executives briefed about the modification.

It looks like Google will be adding to its election maps this voting season by offering a Google mapplet that will offer polling location information before the big day in November. (In case you are not sure where to go to vote).

The site is not yet complete, but it will provide users with “voting location, registration information, and more.” What that more is has yet to be determined since, as the site points out, “all voting location information will be available by mid-October. Until then, please check with your state or local election officials to verify your voting location.”

If you input your address into the service, it won’t return any of the promised information. Instead, it provides you with the number of days left to register to vote and helps you acquire an absentee ballot if you need one.

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As the Web becomes more sophisticated and audio and video becomes a more important part of our online lives, we need something that will help us sift through the junk and find what we’re looking for in all that content. To address that, Google announced Wednesday that it has launched audio indexing in Google Labs.

Dubbed GAudi, the new service is designed to work with YouTube, and will catalog all the words uttered during an audio or video clip. Once collected, the transcript will be added to a searchable database that can be accessed in much the same way you search for text-based websites.

But before you start wondering if Google has indexed your latest vlog, don’t get too excited. According to the company, GAudi is only in beta at this point and during that time, it will only index audio and video from political sources.

Aside from being able to search for terms mentioned in the video, you can click on a group of play buttons to bring you to the exact point in the video where the keyword is mentioned. In other words, if you’re searching for discussions the candidates have had about health, simply input that into the search field, and the best video result will be shown in the right pane. You can either choose to watch the entire video or click on the links below to be brought to the exact moment during the video that health was said by the political figure.

Google didn’t give any word about what would happen to GAudi after it’s done indexing political speeches, but the service has some promise and is definitely worth checking out.

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YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley wrote a post this morning about the future of online video and YouTube specifically. Hurley notes that 13 hours worth of videos are uploaded every minute to YouTube (a figure we’ve reported before). And he predicts more of the same: more videos will be uploaded to the Web, more video creators will be uploading those videos, and more viewers will be watching them on all sorts of screens from the living room to their mobile devices. In other words, more of the same means more exponential growth of videos on the Web.

Hurley’s vision of the future, though, pretty much describes the world as it is today. You can watch YouTube on your TiVo, iPhone, or PC. But if you read between the lines, he does hint that mobile might be the next really big step for YouTube:

Our goal is to allow every person on the planet to participate by making the upload process as simple as placing a phone call. This new video content will be available on any screen - in your your living room, or on your device in your pocket. YouTube and other sites will bring together all the diverse media which matters to you, from videos of family and friends to news, music, sports, cooking and much, much more.

The mobile opportunity for YouTube is bigger than just making all the video in the world available in your pocket. Mobile phones are also the new video cameras. Once it becomes truly easy to upload video from your phone to YouTube, it could truly become the repository of every captured moment in people’s lives.

For all his visions of the future, however, Hurley still has to figure out how make money from all of those videos.

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First mentioned a few months ago as a way for Google to increase its video revenue and start its push for more professional content, Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy promised 50 mini-webisodes specifically designed for Google’s Content Network and AdSense distribution. And now, the video series has launched on its own site, sethcomedy.com.

The premise is simple: MacFarlane will create 50 shows for Google and illustrate pre-roll ads in his signature style. So far, there are two videos available on the site, which are also available on the “BK Channel” page on YouTube. The advertisements included in the shows are exclusively from Burger King (thus the BK Channel syndication) and there’s no word if that will change in subsequent episodes.

The Cavalcade videos can be embedded anywhere on the Web and when a user clicks on the video, the advertiser will pay a fee that’s shared by MacFarlane, Google, the production company, and the site or blog hosting the video. In essence, Google is trying to encourage the proliferation of the videos by bringing all parties in on the advertising revenue.

And perhaps that’s the most interesting part of the deal. Will this work? The only way for Google to see MacFarlane’s Cavalcade return a positive ROI is if enough people watch the videos and advertisers are willing to promote their products within the shows. So far, it has the advertiser in place, but whether or not anyone wants to watch these videos is still in doubt. Creating an incentive for publishers to embed the video is a smart move, but we can’t forget that this is a calculated risk that could force Google back to the drawing board.

Subsequent episodes should be made available over the next few weeks.

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The dust hasn’t even settled on Chrome’s release and already Mozilla is feeling the pressure. The company today released a series of benchmarks showing Firefox 3.1 will be faster than anything Google can muster with Chrome.

Chrome is running V8, an open source Javascript engine, which Google claims, is faster than anything currently offered on the Web. And based on our tests of Chrome, we tend to agree.

But in the upcoming release of Firefox 3.1, which should be available by the end of the year, Mozilla will employ TraceMonkey, a new engine that according to one of its coders, Brendan Eich, will easily eclipse even the fastest instance of Chrome.

To prove it, Mozilla tested Firefox running on TraceMonkey and compared it to Google’s Chrome beta using its own benchmarking solution called SunSpider. According to the company, Chrome was 28 percent slower on Windows XP and 16 percent slower on Windows Vista.

Mozilla is quick to point out that TraceMonkey has only been in development for a few months and will only get better before it’s rolled out later this year, but the company has a vested interest in seeing Firefox come out on top in its benchmark testing, so all figures should probably be questioned, to say the least. And the same goes for Google’s five benchmarks.

For now, Chrome is the fastest browser in the market and anyone using both Firefox and Chrome will find that out quickly. But once Firefox 3.1 hits the Web, we’ll find out if Chrome has what it takes to stay on top after TraceMonkey becomes Mozilla’s engine of choice.

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The idea behind Glassdoor is simple: You tell me your salary, and I’ll tell you mine. The stealth startup, which raised $3 million from Benchmark Capital last March, just went live. The site collects company reviews and real salaries from employees of large companies and displays them anonymously for all members to see. (The startup plans to make money from ads targeted at job seekers, premium services, and aggregated compensation data it wants to sell to HR professionals).

The idea is to collect as much detailed salary information and feedback for every job title at a company so that job seekers can know how to evaluate an offer, and current employees can see how they are doing relative to their peers. “When the annual compensation review comes,” says CEO Robert Hohman, “you need to know what your market value is.” Or you can just live vicariously through others.

So how much does a Google software engineer really make? The average, based on ten submissions, is $97,840. And the range is between $80,000 and $150,000, with annual cash bonuses coming in anywhere from $20,000 to $45,000. Adding salary and bonus together, the Google engineers that have entered information on Glassdoor average $112,573 in take-home pay. (And then there are stock options on top of that). Yahoo and Microsoft engineers get about the same salaries, but smaller bonuses, leaving their take-home pay at an average of $105,642 and $105,375, respectively. Apple software engineers make only about $89,000, on average, but they get to create some of the most loved products on Earth.

As a teaser, anyone can see the full details for four companies (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Cisco), but beyond that it is a give-to-get model. You need to post your own review to see the other reviews. Same with salaries. (Using a variety of techniques it won’t discuss, the company does its best to sniff out false posts). And each company and CEO gets a rating. Here’s a chart comparing Jerry Yang’s and Steve Ballmer’s approval ratings from their own employees over time (Yang’s is currently 59 percent, Ballmer’s is 69 percent):

Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s approval rating, incidentally, is 89 percent. While the overall satisfaction rating for Google as a company to work at is 4.2 out of 5. Microsoft’s satisfaction rating is exactly the same, whereas Yahoo’s is not surprisingly lower at 3.8. These ratings are by no means scientific. They are based on 124 responses for Microsoft, 50 for Yahoo, and 37 for Google, all collected during the company’s private beta. The more honest responses the site collects from any given company, the more accurate the results will be.

Beyond the ratings and salary information, what is really revealing are some of the in-depth reviews. Even at Google, it’s not all happy faces. “The free food is starting to wear off,” says Hohman. One review is titled: “Awesome culture, bad management.” Another one: “Fun at first, frustrating in the long run.” And the most devastating: “Google:An Elitist’s Playground.” Here’s an excerpt:

If you enjoy your individuality and time alone, Google is not the place for you (keep in mind I’m not an engineer). Google pushes a highly “googley” atmosphere, which is something akin to what the Brady Bunch would be like if they lived in communist Russia. . . . People are encouraged to have googley attitudes, wear plastic smiles, and not to question the infallible nature of the executive management group. . . . If you like feeling awkward during forced group activity, Google is your haven. It isn’t exactly “forced” (no guns), but if you don’t participate you become labeled as “ungoogley.” Once deemed “ungoogley”, you’re practically viewed as a rotten apple that threatens to spoil the bunch.

Advice to Senior Management:
“Stop acting as those you’re King Midas…just because you struck it rich with AdWords does not mean whatever you create will be tech gold. For a company that prides itself on innovation, I can’t think of any product Google has released since AdWords that has been truly innovative…unless you are calling Google’s mergers and acquisitions innovative (just because Google owns YouTube does not mean you can take credit for the innovation).

Someone is obviously bitter, but it doesn’t make what this person says any less true. (Assuming it truly is a Google employee—there is no way to know for sure). Most of the reviews for Google are positive. Reading through all of them gives a nice cross section of attitudes at the company. Who knew that the heated toilet seats at Google were such a big draw? Or that Netflix has a don’t ask, don’t tell vacation policy? (You take one whenever you can).

If Glassdoor can get people to fess up about their salaries and the inner workings of their companies, the Internet’s culture of transparency will claim another stronghold.

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A class at MIT built some mobile apps for Google’s Android operating system and presented them today. CrunchGear’s own superblogger Doug Aamoth reports on the seven apps—loco, Flare, GeoLife, Re:public, Locale, Kei, and snap—that he saw. Below is a slightly edited version of the original post:

loco

Loco is a mobile social network built on top an Android phone’s contact manager, so anyone in your contacts is already your friend, so to speak. You’ll be able to view and track where your friends are located using Google Maps and real-time geolocation.

So, in essence, you can check out the scene at a few places before you commit to going all the way across town. I’m done with “scenes” since I’m now married, but this would have been cool for College Doug. He was a pretty awesome dude.

Flare

Flare is a geolocation tracking system aimed at small business owners who want to keep tabs on their employees. The demonstration given was that of a pizza delivery boy who has five pizzas to deliver. If a couple of customers call up to ask why they haven’t gotten their pizza yet, the delivery guy’s manager can use any web-based system to check out the location of his driver.

What’s more, he can give an ID number and PIN code to the customers, which the customers can then use to track the pizza guy themselves. Thankfully, that PIN code can be set to expire after a certain amount of time and/or each customer’s specific tracking privileges can be cut off by the manager or the driver himself.

GeoLife

GeoLife is basically your to-do list on top of Google Maps. When you get within a certain range of something you need to pick up, it alerts you.

It also works as a traditional to-do list for things that aren’t location-based. The team that put this together is also working on a route-creation system wherein you could pick a few important items from your list and then have a route plotted out for you to follow that day.

RE:Public

I thought that RE:Public was a brilliantly funny idea. It’s basically a location-based social networking service for finding new friends once you get tired of your old ones. You connect locally based on a radius that you feed into the program and meet people based on dovetailing interests.

The real brilliance lies in the fact that you can rate and tag each friend and the system automatically updates each friend’s score based on how much time you spend near each other. So after a while, you can see who your “top friends” are.

Tags that are given to people on the network can be voted up and down by other users, so if one person tags me as “jerk”, all my real friends can vote that tag far enough down that it eventually disappears. That, or I’ll find out that my friends actually think I’m a jerk and I can start finding new friends. It’s the circle of life!

Locale (winner of the Android Project - top 50)

Locale actually just finished in the top 50 applications for Google’s Android Project competition, so congratulations to the team. Nice work, indeed.

Locale is a dynamic settings manager. You set up different settings for your phone based on time and location. So when you’re at home, you can automatically have all your calls forwarded to your home phone line. When you’re at work, you can have your phone set to silent mode and have your phone’s background screen set to a constantly updating work chart. That kind of stuff.

There’s already an API available for other develop