A vulnerability in home security cameras from one manufacturer has resulted in video feeds from users’ homes – including some from children’s bedrooms – being made available online, password-free. Read more…

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An upcoming version of Mozilla’s Firefox will adds some new features, including a new tab page that shows a grid of a user’s most visited web sites and a home tab that adds new feature buttons. Read more…

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Amidst the grid-climbing robots, smart thermostats, and electric cars at the smart grid conference DistribuTECH in San Antonio, Texas this week, battery makers were touting their low-cost batteries as energy storage for the grid, for buildings, and some day, homes. It’s not so unfeasible that in the future many homes could have their very own battery, likely to be combined with a rooftop solar panel.

In Panasonic’s booth — the company bought controlling interest in Sanyo back in 2009  — a battery box was featured. The box strings together hundreds of small format lithium-ion laptop batteries in much the way Tesla for its electric car battery. (Note: Tesla also uses Panasonic laptop batteries.) A couple of battery stacks would be enough for a single family home, combined with an inverter already retailing in Germany (one of the largest rooftop solar markets) for less than $ 5,000. A few years ago there were reports this battery could store a week’s worth of electricity.

A startup from Costa Rica, Heart Transverter, was showing off a box that can combine inverters and batteries and connect with distributed power generation like a fuel cell or solar system. The idea is to put one of these in your basement or backyard and you’re set to plug in all your off grid power needs. An on-looker in front of Heart’s booth called the transverter the most sophisticated inverter and energy storage system out there.

Panasonic might have a residential home battery product for market, but it’s is mostly targeting larger commercial building operators and utilities (see the photo the left), and the battery maker is already supplying batteries for some utility pilot programs in the U.S. Lithium-ion batteries are starting to be more regularly explored by utilities and power producers and both AES and China State Grid have built massive battery farms using batteries from A123 Systems and BYD, respectively.

Then there’s home energy storage potential of electric cars. EVs could be used as grid regulation through a two-way connection with the utility known as V2G, and older EV batteries could also find a second home as a battery after it’s no longer useful for the car (see Nissan’s project with its LEAF).

While the batteries I’ve mentioned so far are pretty expensive right now, and will likely be sold in the developed world, the developing world is more rapidly adopting much smaller (and less advanced and expensive) batteries connected with tiny solar panels. Fenix International makes a lead acid battery box with connectors for charging cell phones and distributed clean power.

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PayPal has said 2012 will be a learning year as it rolls out its in-store payment system. But that doesn’t mean it will all be small pilot programs this year. A company spokesman told Bloomberg that it expects to be in more than 2,000 Home Depot stores by March.

PayPal said on its quarterly earnings conference call earlier this week that it is expanding its Home Depot trial this week to 51 stores, mostly in the Bay Area. But now, it’s saying that it will extend service to all Home Depot stores, which numbers more than 2,200 in the U.S.

PayPal doesn’t expect its in-store system to affect revenue this year, but next year is when it plans to really scale up. John Donahoe, eBay’s CEO, who is interim PayPal president since Scott Thompson left for Yahoo, said on the earnings call that he’s looking to set the stage for a big worldwide rollout next year that covers every vertical.

PayPal has made some key moves in establishing partnerships with point of sale software and hardware companies such as Ingenico and AJB Software Designs, which allows it to scale up quickly by having the system ready to go when retailers sign on. It’s also been talking to VeriFone, which appears to be close to announcing an agreement soon.

If it can line up a lot of retailers, PayPal has a chance at changing the way people pay, shifting many purchases away from credit and cash. And it’s an alternative to the NFC-based mobile payments systems from Google Wallet and Isis. PayPal is increasingly becoming the engine of growth for eBay, increasing revenues by 28 percent last quarter. PayPal expects mobile payments volume will grow to $ 7 billion in total this year and that doesn’t factor in PayPal’s in-store initiatives. If PayPal can get the in-store system right, that could make PayPal the dominant business for eBay.

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Home Depot’s history of acquisitions has run toward building products companies and home services, not Silicon Valley start-ups. But the home improvement retailer is showing that it is trying to be more innovative and forward-thinking with the purchase of online home services marketplace Redbeacon.

It’s unclear how Home Depot wants to use Redbeacon, which allows users to get bids on home projects by contractors using Redbeacon’s marketplace. The start-up, which first launched in 2008 and won a number of start-up competitions, said today that it would remain open for business for its users. It was generally well regarded for its ability to bring together consumers who needed services from contractors. Redbeacon uses algorithms that even look at Facebook connections to find the right contractors for a job.

Home Depot didn’t disclose the purchase price but said that the Redbeacon leadership team would remain in place in San Mateo, CA. The company was founded by former Google workers Ethan Anderson, Aaron Lee and Yaron Binur. It has raised $ 7.4 million from Mayfield Fund and Venrock.

Redbeacon co-founders Aaron Lee, Ethan Anderson and Yaron Binur

The deal though shows that big retailers are increasingly looking toward Silicon Valley for ideas and inspiration about how to grow their business. By buying Redbeacon, Home Depot can get some lessons on how to tap users through online and mobile channels. And it helps them become more of a resource for people looking to remodel and improve their homes. Home Depot is not simply about being a physical store to sell goods and services but being a brand that people turn to for all their needs, including labor.

Home Depot has also been working closely on PayPal’s first trial of its in-store payment system. PayPal just said today that it expects to roll that out to all of Home Depot’s more than 2,200 stores by March. That’s another example of Home Depot getting with the times. Increasingly, retailers have to think about how to handle the changing needs of consumers, who are buying online and through mobile devices. Partnering with PayPal gives Home Depot a chance to be first with a new form of payment, but it also means it will likely get first crack at many of the other services PayPal plans to roll out, such location-based offers, in-aisle purchases, scanning products for inventory checks and other in-store services.

Big retailers are being forced to look this way. Walmart bought Kosmix and established Walmart Labs to help it evolve as mobile and social change the way people shop. Walmart Labs has turned around and started acquiring start-ups to help it get up to speed. The Gap has done a bunch of deals with mobile and social start-ups to try and get ahead of new buying patterns. Rival Lowe’s equipped its workers with iPhones last year, in response to Home Depot’s deployment of Motorola devices to help answer consumer questions.

As Venky Harinarayan, SVP Wal-Mart Global eCommerce and Head of WalmartLabs told me the RoadMap conference last year that retailers are still trying to understand the implications of social and mobile on commerce. But it’s clear companies need to move forward and embrace the changes in commerce. And that means increasingly partnering with technology companies and sometimes buying them up.

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Phone company Verizon quietly launched its smart home products nationwide about three months ago, which enables customers to lock and unlock doors and windows, watch home video cameras remotely, and manage thermostats and lighting. This is the service that Verizon launched in trials in New Jersey about a year ago.

Verizon discovered a few things about the service in the months that it’s been widely available, as well as via the months that it’s been available in a pilot service. First off, Verizon’s Director of product development, Home Monitoring and Control, Ann Shaub, said that Verizon’s stand alone energy products haven’t been as attractive as the whole smart home package that includes cameras, door sensors, and door locks.

That’s not so surprising as security and media management are clearly a lot more attractive to customers across the board compared to products used for reducing home energy consumption. Verizon also says that it doesn’t make claims about saving energy for its home energy products, so it’s not actively marketing them as energy efficiency tools.

Verizon is currently working with Ingersoll Rand for its security products, and Aeon Labs for its thermostats and energy reader, which attaches to a circuit breaker and appliance switches. Shaub also told me that Verizon is actively looking to add more smart home tools over the coming months.

One interesting aspect is that Verizon says it’s seen 95 percent of its smart home customers install their own devices. That could be a good sign for Nest, the smart learning thermostat startup, which is selling thermostats straight to consumers.

Verizon wouldn’t give me any information about the numbers it’s getting for its smart home tools at this point, Shaub would only say that the division is here to stay and that it’s seeing significant growth.

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Looking at someone else’s home videos is usually notoriously boring. As much as you might adore Aunt Susie, watching the iPhone video of her trip to Yosemite is probably not high on your list of fun things to do.

A big reason for that is editing — or, really, a lack thereof. Video can be a great way to convey things, but even the most exciting event can be boring if the video has not been edited properly. Even though devices that shoot high-definition video are cheaper and more ubiquitous than ever, amateur videos themselves have not gotten any better to watch.

That’s where a new iPhone app called Magisto comes in. Magisto, which debuted its web app in September 2011 and just launched its first iPhone app this week, turns any plain video into a fully edited movie in a matter of minutes. Essentially, it does for movies what Instagram does for photos: It makes even the most mundane media appear more compelling.

Screenshot of Magisto for iPhone

The greatest thing about Magisto is how dead simple it is to use. You log in with either your Facebook credentials or email address, upload one or several short videos from your iPhone (Magisto prefers to start with videos that are at least 45 seconds long,) select some music (you can upload your own song or choose from Magisto’s library, which is sorted into categories such as “Hip Hop,” “Birthday,” “Travel” and “Christmas”) and then that’s it — you wait for the app to do its magic.

The final product is edited to contain your videos’ most “interesting” bits, with music and a few visual effects thrown in to keep viewers entertained. I’ve submitted several videos that are a minute or so long, and Magisto typically took about 10 minutes to turn each one around. You can also use Magisto on your regular computer through its website.

Now, Magisto is not for everyone or everything. Since users have very little control over the final product — how long the edited video will be, and what parts it will definitely contain, are completely up to the app — Magisto is only realistic for casual videos of things like vacations and birthday parties. And people who already know their way around iMovie or Final Cut Pro may find Magisto to be frustratingly short on features. But for most consumers who just want to make fun, short videos their friends might want to actually watch, it’s perfect. And the fact that it’s available now on the iPhone is pretty major, since people are increasingly doing everything from their mobile devices.

Magisto is run by an Israel-based startup called SightEra, which raised $ 5.5 million in Series B funding round this past fall led by Li Ka-shing’s Horizons Ventures.

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It’s been about three months or so since Dish first announced its subscription streaming offering from subsidiary Blockbuster. But in that time, it’s been quietly ramping up the amount of content that its subscribers can access through the service, boosting the number of choices from just 4,000 streaming titles at launch to more than 25,000 now.

Monday afternoon at the Consumer Electronics Show, Dish announced that the Blockbuster service, which had previously been called Blockbuster Movie Pass had massively expanded the number of titles available. Along with the new name, Blockbuster @Home, Dish announced that it hopes to increase its appeal with families through the expansion of new childrens programming. Dish has added more than 3,000 kids titles, including shows like Veggie Tales, Inspector Gadget, Heathcliff and Strawberry Shortcake.

Viewers can now tune into 25,000 titles from their web browsers. Not all of that content can be viewed on the TV, however; only 10,000 of those titles will be viewable on the big screen. Even so, the addition of new content will help Blockbuster @Home to compete with other streaming subscription services, like Netflix or Hulu Plus.

We lamented the lack of programming at launch, but the aggressive growth of Blockbuster’s library means it could become a real contender as time goes on. The only thing holding it back now is that the service is only available to Dish satellite TV subscribers.

Blockbuster @Home is $ 10 per month and, in addition to the streaming titles, offers up more than 100,000 DVDs which can be ordered by mail and exchanged in Blockbuster retail locations. Subscribers can also access more than 3,000 video games by mail through the service. And viewers can tune in not just through their web browsers or TVs, but through Dish’s Remote Access iPad app.

At the show, Dish also introduced its new Hopper and Joey whole-home DVR products. For more information on those, check out this earlier story.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Andrew Levine.

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The 2012 Consumer Electronics Show hasn’t even officially kicked off and already the smart energy home has emerged as a key target for a variety of sectors including telcos, big box retailers, startups, chip companies — and now cable operators. On Monday cable firm Time Warner Cable says it has teamed up with startup iControl Networks to offer a smart home management system.

The new service from Time Warner Cable, called IntelligentHome, will provide customers with connected home management services, like security, with remote home video viewing and window and door sensors, as well as wireless management of home heating, cooling and lighting. The service is already available in upstate New York and Southern California. (I’ll add in details of pricing when they send it to me).

iControl has worked with cable companies before — it’s the company that’s behind Comcast’s similar smart home service that was launched last Summer. Comcast is also an investor in iControl. iControl provides the software layer while the cable companies provide the broadband connection, and third-party hardware providers make the dashboards and security gadgets. iControl has long had the strategy to white label its service and to avoid getting into the hardware market itself.

Cable operators, as well as telcos, are increasingly beginning to offer home management services as a way to try to avoid becoming a dumb pipe, and also as a way to reduce churn and add extra subscription revenues. Verizon launched a similar service about a year ago, which included home security control and monitoring, as well as energy reading devices, smart thermostats, and smart appliance control devices, among other applications. Verizon worked with Motorola’s 4Home (a startup which it acquired a couple years ago), as well as Ingersoll-Rand for the security applications.

At CES the big box retailers Lowe’s and Best Buy are also both looking to have a presence and push new smart home devices and services. Lowe’s is working with U.K. smart energy company AlertMe, while Best Buy is selling a variety of devices like the smart thermostat Nest.

Connected devices that control home energy consumption can make homes more energy efficient. The Nest smart thermostat can reduce home energy consumption by 20 to 30 percent.

iControl is backed by Comcast, Kleiner Perkins, Charles River Ventures, Intel Capital, Cisco, GE, and security firm ADT.

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Home video surveillance is rarely fun or easy to deal with. High-end systems typically require heavy integration, and even consumer do-it-yourself camera setups can be frustrating to get going. But the latest HD video camera from Dropcam and its associated cloud-based DVR service and mobile apps are easy to set up and a joy to use.

Dropcam has been in operation since 2009, but the latest version or its home surveillance cameras are a big step forward in both form and functionality. Let’s start with the Dropcam HD Wi-Fi Video Monitoring Camera itself, which records 720p video and provides two-way audio functionality. Oh, and it looks good, too. Just as important, set up is a breeze. Users need only plug the camera into their computer, select their local Wi-Fi network, and personalize the name of the video feed.

The new Dropcam product has a pretty powerful night-vision camera, which automatically switches on whenever a room becomes dark. It also has two-way audio, enabling users to hear what’s happening in a room and actually respond if they want to. There’s a digital zoom function that can be used to pinpoint certain parts of a room to focus on. And Users don’t need to hook the camera into a computer or network-attached to record: All the video is uploaded via Wi-Fi into the cloud. The cloud-based DVR records up to 30 days worth of video, which users can log in and watch at any time.

In fact, the real beauty of Dropcam is its cloud-based DVR and mobile applications, which give its users constant access to video footage of their homes from nearly any mobile device on the go. In addition to browser-based web viewing, Dropcam has released mobile apps for iPhone and iPad, as well as Android mobile phones and tablets. Through those apps, Dropcam users can watch live or recorded video, or receive push notifications when motion or audio is detected by the camera.

If there’s one downside to Dropcam, it’s that the camera might be too sensitive to motion — frequently I received notifications from my empty apartment only to watch those events and find a whole lot of nothing going on. The whole thing, especially when combined with a pretty powerful night vision camera, led to a Paranormal Activity-type feeling that my tiny little studio was haunted.

The Dropcam HD Wi-Fi Video Monitoring Camera costs $ 149 and is now available for pre-order from www.dropcam.com, with shipment beginning later this month. For users that wish to record video, plans with moment-by-moment HD video capture start at $ 9.95 per month.

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