Om kicked off the morning with a nice surprise in the form of a video clip message from Nick Carr. Here’s some notes:

The fundamental unit of computing is shifting from individual computers to the data center or the grid of computers. This means different things for businesses and suppliers. The functioning of a reliable data center is crucial to a competitive edge. Prowess in building the infrastructure and running data centers will be crucial to success.

With electric current there wasn’t an ethical dimension — computing is very different of course, because it involves information. Personal and business information has an ethical component. We are in the beginning of making ethical decisions about this infrastructure — this is not just about technology; this is about the implications of supplying information over this new grid.

And here’s our Qik live-stream (not as high quality as the Mogulus feed, but just so you can have it now). If the embed isn’t showing up, just click through.

Qualcomm has spent 8.3 million pounds ($16.2 million) buying 40 MHz of L-band spectrum in the U.K., which the company could use for its MediaFLO mobile television or other two-way wireless data services. However, the wireless chipmaker’s overseas shopping spree might end at the borders of continental Europe.

That’s because the EU is encouraging its member countries to adopt the DVB-H standard. Lucky for Qualcomm, those cheeky Brits decided to keep the auction open to a variety of mobile standards. That gives Qualcomm a chance to keep selling pricey intellectual property licenses for its proprietary MediaFLO technology. With all the vendors choosing the open LTE standard, it has to find some way to goose those royalties.

The folks behind the web show “Big Shot Live” have hit upon a formula that’s bringing them huge traffic. In fact, it’s worked so well that they’re now planning to spin off “Big Shot Live” as a separate company — and raise some $5 million to $10 million for it. NewTeeVee has the full story.

This winter holiday season, visitors to Best Buy will be able to purchase televisions and DVD players with the ability to transmit wireless video in high definition. But before getting too excited about dumping your cords, you should know that there are currently four different ways one can watch wireless HD, and it’s unlikely all of them will be built into consumer devices.

That’s right, the variety of wireless HD technologies are sowing the seeds of a new standards war. And standards wars stink. Whether between Blu-Ray and HD DVD or the varying shades of Ultra-Wideband technologies, when the fight centers on technologies, consumers lose. This year, SiBeam, a company participating in the WirelessHD standard operating in the 60 GHz band, plans to have products on shelves, as does a UWB vendor. Products based on the third standard, known as WHDI, are expected to be on shelves this winter as well.

Device makers have yet to choose a standard, so it’s hard to say which technologies — and related startups — will win out. It’s theoretically possible that multiple technologies could win, but in the cutthroat world of consumer electronics, spending an extra $20 to $50 for a second or third chipset in every video creation and playback device is hard to justify.

So which standard will prevail? Tandhoni Rao, founder and VP of strategy at Radiospire, a startup using the spectrum allotted for Ultra-Wideband to deliver wireless HD without compression, says that when it comes to conflicting standards, his company is thinking ahead. It’s working with UWB spectrum because it’s a known quantity, and because it was easier to develop chipsets that work in the spectrum between 3.1 GHz and 10.6 GHz for UWB rather than at the 60 GHz range. However, he says the AirHook standard proposed by Radiospire for HD video delivered over UWB would mesh well with 60GHz.

In areas outside of the U.S., the UWB spectrum isn’t always available, making Radiospire’s solution less ideal for a global market. The WirelessHD standard for 60 GHz is available in most countries for delivering HD video without compression, giving that technology an edge. However, WirelessHD at 60 GHz competes against Wi-Fi, which is one of the most ubiquitous standards out there. With Wi-Fi, the biggest challenge will be figuring out a way to deliver HD video without compression.

The outlier will be the WHDI standard offered by Amimon. It uses unlicensed spectrum in the 5 GHz band to deliver uncompressed HD video over a WiFi-like signal around the home, and should have a product out through Belkin in September.

So before you give the gift of a wireless HD-enabled product, remember all the battles that have yet to be won.

We taped the 35th episode of The GigaOM Show this past week. I interviewed Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun Microsystems where we discussed different topics including the importance of fundamental research, how Sun is changing and why he bought MySQL.

With this episode, we are going on a brief hiatus. While The GigaOM team - Liz, Katie & Chris - along with Joyce Kim had been doing a great job in keeping the show going, [thanks guys] to ask them to continue was above and beyond their call of duty. Being the show host, I felt I needed to return to the show to keep its fidelity but even taping a single episode proved to be quite taxing.

My doctors have urged me to now not to pursue activities that can raise stress and my blood pressure, and taping a show every week falls in that category. So for now we are taking a little break and will return sometime later this summer with a new look, once the doctors give me the thumbs up. Meanwhile, enjoy the episode and check out archives of the previous episodes.

Screens, from your massive HDTV to your iPhone, are increasingly filling our lives with an omnipresent glow. And VCs are increasingly funding the companies behind the technology that promises to not only help screens get better and brighter but more energy efficient. LED maker Luminus says it has raised a whopping $72 million for its PhlatLight LED products, which are primarily used for flat-panel displays, while Dutch display maker Liquavista said it’s raised $12.6 million in a Series B round. Earth2Tech has the full story.

Peer-to-peer TV start-up Joost will make live-streaming video available to all its users tomorrow; it has also scored a deal with its investor CBS to live stream March Madness. A new client should be ready for download by about noon ET on Wednesday, reports NewTeeVee.

Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire joined me (subbing for Om) and co-host Joyce Kim on the GigaOM Show this week. Hear him talk about Brightcove’s traffic spikes from TMZ, politics, and National Geographic; Yahoo’s Maven Networks acquisition; his company’s decision to drop its own ad sales team; and learning from experience to grow through partners. Download a high-quality version here.

Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems and cleantech VC firm Khosla Ventures, is on a mission to foster clean energy technologies. He’s always fun to talk to, but in this week’s episode he gave Joyce and I the inside track on green transportation, biofuels, hybrids and getting the U.S. off its oil addiction. Download the episode here.

Get to know the new CEO of Mozilla, John Lilly, on this week’s GigaOM Show, where I subbed in for Om again. Joyce Kim and I had a nice chat with Lilly — he shares details on the recent executive changeover, the impending release of Firefox 3 (which Lilly claims never crashes on his machine), the formation of a new Mozilla subsidiary for email products, Mozilla’s desire to refrain from going public, and the effect of the potential Microsoft purchase of Yahoo on Firefox. Watch the embed above, or download a high-definition QuickTime version here.

Heather Harde, CEO of TechCrunch, stopped by the “The GigaOM Show” this week to chat with co-host Joyce Kim and myself about The Crunchies, working for a blog, and her thoughts on the mergers and acquisitions market.

You can download the episode in Quicktime, Windows Media and Xvid formats.

After finally admitting that the company did a poor job with the Apple TV, Steve Jobs in his Macworld keynote today unveiled a totally new interface with loads of functionality that should be enough for any Apple zealot to jump for joy. But how much faith do people really have in Apple to make its new offering a success when the product was relegated to the shadows and generally ignored over the past year? Read more over at NewTeeVee.

No, that’s not “The View” you’re watching! It’s “the GigaOM Show,” this week with two female hosts, a female guest, and some touchy-feely subject matter. Given Om’s recent heart attack and the loop it threw us for, the team went with a health theme and brought in Heidi Roizen, a technology VC who recently switched things up to fund and write a CD aimed at inspiring people to lose weight. She tells us about “Skinny Songs” and her newfound interest in health-oriented technology companies. We also read some viewer/reader comments from the outpouring of support Om received in the last two weeks.

Just before the holidays we took a trip down to Sand Hill Road, where we filmed this interview on cleantech investing with Draper Fisher Jurvetson’s partners Steve Jurvetson and Raj Atluru. With 11 deals and over $40 million dollars, DFJ was one of the leaders of funding the industry in 2007. We shot the video in the lobby of DFJ; they thankfully cut my bad joke about ultimate frisbie. Thanks to Steve and Raj, who gave us a lot of insights on energy efficiency, waste-to-energy, thin-film solar, synthetic genomics, and the rest of their portfolio — they also made up for my newbie video skills! Check it out, and for coverage of everything cleantech read GigaOM’s Earth2Tech: