Imagine what it would be like if gas were $7 a gallon, or three and a half times the price at the beginning of last year. According to CIBC World Markets analyst Jeff Rubin, unless something gives, that’s what we can expect two pay — in less than two years time. Earth2Tech has the full story.

At first we were scratching our heads over the idea that the Dash Express, an Internet-connected navigation device, has a Twitter app — given how stupid texting while driving is. Surely tweeting while driving would fall under that category? However, the Twitter app for the Dash merely sends out a tweet telling your followers where you are and provides a link on a map. There are almost 30 other Dash apps that the company talked about today, including useful ones that provide route-specific coffee shops or local crime data.

A smarter network doesn’t necessarily mean a safer network, or so goes the thinking when it comes to the new intelligent power grid. It is seen as an increased security risk. It has been rumored that Chinese paramilitary hackers have taken tried to take down parts of the U.S. power grid and caused blackouts. Former CIA director-turn-venture-capitalist James Woolsey asked a panel of energy experts at the Google/Brookings plug-in electric vehicle conference in Washington this month what is being done to address this threat. We wanted to know too so we asked some smart grid startups. The threat is real, they say, and the solution is IP.  Continue reading at Earth2Tech and watch the video. 

It’s awesome when technology invades real life to make it better, like the way email makes letter-writing and photo-sharing easier. Louis Vuitton has manged to do that with a walking tour MP3 download that travelers to Hong Kong, Beijing or Shanghai can purchase for $17. Before gasping at the price, realize that New York tourists pay from $12 to $50 for the pleasures of a tour. The MP3 tours don’t require you to show up on time, and your guides are sexy-sounding Chinese actresses, rather than a bored NYU student. It’s pricey, but well done.

Updated: Hulu says that they are doing server maintenance. The timing of it is seriously stupid - 9 am PST or 12 PM EST - not exactly off hours for web users. Some one should be spanked for the unfortunate timing of this “maintenance.”

When it comes to Hulu, I was the first to eat humble pie, lauding them for their quality and their easy-to-use interface. I appreciated the quality of content they sent our way, which made my recovery easier. Thanks to their professional library they have been making a lot of money and could do about $25 million in revenues. Glad to see that others, including YouTube haters, are finally catching on to their changing fortunes.

So when Liz pointed me a link to her latest story, I was doubly disappointed. (NewTeeVee has screenshots.) Essentially, Hulu has stopped embedded videos from playing on other web sites, though they continue to play back on official Hulu partner sites like AOL, and Fancast still appears to work.

Is this an outage or is this a sign that Hulu has started to behave like an incumbent with a backward-looking mindset? I hope this is a mistake and not a sign that the Hollywood cabal is behaving like one. I want Hulu to be around - it is my DVR in the cloud and I love it.

If you do any work with video on a Mac, you probably already have some basic software for video editing and production. Out in the open source arena, though, there are many free utilities, adjunct applications, and just plain novelties that any videographer can benefit from using. OStatic has a round-up of six good options.

The Earth2Tech Team grabbed some camera time with Google.org’s director for climate change and energy initiatives, Dan Reicher, at Google’s conference in Washington DC on plug-in vehicles. Reicher told them that Google will make investments in green cars this summer through it’s plug-in hybrid program, RechargeIT. That’s a big step beyond the four plug-in hybrids that currently constitute Google’s entire RechargeIT program. . . . For the full video check out Earth2Tech.

Now that was fast! T-Mobile which had sued Starbucks last week over the coffee chain partnering with AT&T and offering free WiFi has settled with the Seattle-based coffee giant. The terms of the settled were not revealed, though I think the iPhone 3G launch might have made AT&T push some buttons and get this whole thing resolved. We are hardly surprised by this out of court settlement: 53% (62 out of 111 votes) of the respondents to our poll basically picked “out of court settlement” as a likely outcome.