Obama on Climate Bill Opposition: “Are there going to be nay-sayers? Absolutely. Are there going to be short-term instances where you can get political gain by scaring the bejesus out of people and telling them that their electricity rates are going to go up a thousand percent and this is going to be a tax of $3,000 — even though the studies that they cite the authors of say that these guys are just lying about these costs? Yes.” — Climate Progress

Woe is Musk: As part of Daimler’s investment deal with Tesla Motors, Elon Musk says he had to commit to staying on as Tesla’s CEO at least until the Model S launches in 2011 — a requirement he calls “flattering, but at the same time it’s golden handcuffs.” — Reuters via AutoblogGreen

June Auto Sales Silver Lining: June sales figures released today show Ford had the smallest decline of any of the six largest automakers since last summer. Volkswagen clean diesel cars had their best month ever. — New York Times, Associated Press

Detroit Electric’s Route to China: Recently-revived electric car company Detroit Electric’s CEO, Albert Lam, says in a Q&A that a new partnership with Dongfeng Motor “a direct line of communication to Chinese policy makers who will define the strategic direction for the new electric car industry.” — NYT’s Green Inc.

Still Worth It?: A watered-down climate bill is better than nothing. After all, “the first item on the wish list of every venture capitalist working in clean tech is a simple price on carbon. Lay that down…and money will start spilling into energy innovation.” — TNR’s The Vine

Editor’s note: With this post we welcome Nancy Nally to the WebWorkerDaily team. Nancy is the owner of Balalaberry Media and is the editor of its online scrapbook industry trade journal Scrapbook Update, which she founded in 2004, along with working on other writing projects. She shares her home in Palm Coast, Fla., with her geek husband and young geek daughter, who has autism.

I may not be able to make a phone call on my iPhone from 30,000 feet (yet), but I’ve still found that when I’m out of my office and have to fly, having an iPhone in my pocket is a powerful sanity-saving tool. Here are the apps that help keep my air travel running smoothly.

Plan.Pack.Go: Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush

Flying means packing. Even if you have a standard “kit” you travel with, it’s still easy in the rush to get out the door to forget your toothbrush, or charging cable. The list templates in this app let you create and save your standard list, edit it if needed for a specific trip, and then check off items as you pack them. Unlike many packing apps, this one includes list items for standard pre-travel tasks, like charging batteries. A sideways shake switches between your unpacked and packed list items, and the categories are well-organized. I’ve tried several packing apps, and this is by far the most slick in design. Designed by Tangent software, and available from the App Store for $1.99.

TSAwait: Don’t Get Caught In a Surprise Security Line

If you fly out of different airports frequently, it can be hard to know how much time you need to allow for security lines. This app puts the average security wait times 24/7 for U.S. airports at your fingertips. Updates are drawn from TSA databases regularly, and airports can be located by state/city search or by airport code. I’ve found it useful in planning airport arrivals, since lately it seems I never fly out of the same place twice. TSAWait is designed by Tactical Logic, and priced at 99 cents.

FAAwait: See Trouble Coming Before It Finds You

This handy little sister app of TSAwait lets you monitor weather and FAA delays in the U.S. to provide early warning of potential flight delays. FAAwait accesses the FAA air traffic control status to display a list and map of U.S. airports that are experiencing ground stops or delays, and lists the length and reason for them. There is also an NWS weather map that displays all current weather watches or warnings in the continental U.S. For traveling control freaks like myself who want to anticipate possible delays in their connecting city or with incoming equipment, this app gives a great summary of the current status of air traffic and weather nationwide. Also by Tactical Logic, and priced at 99 cents.

Flight Update: Walk Right Past Those Crowds By the Monitors

This flight status app supports over 1,400 airlines worldwide, and packs a lot of info into one status screen for quick reference on-the-run. Enter your itinerary and see status data such as times, gate and terminal, baggage claim, delays and aircraft type. For U.S.-based flights, tracking is also available. If your flight is canceled or delayed, the “find” feature can help you find an alternative (and show you the status of those flights, too). Now I can walk past an airport status monitor without even the urge to pause or look up at it. Flight Update is by Silverware Software, and priced at $4.99. Flight Update Pro, which offers compatibility with Tripit, is $8.99.

What iPhone apps do you find invaluable when you are on the road?

After reading an informative post about the history of real-time search by guest author Mary Hodder on TechCrunch today, I was reminded to check on her social video search startup, Dabble. Founded in 2005, Dabble had undertaken the challenge of organizing the universe of web video with metadata and community-created playlists.

It appears that the site hasn’t been up in months — at least nine months, in fact, because I remember specifically talking to Hodder about it being down in October. None of the search and share functionality is available, with the whole of the site replaced by a note with the headline “Dabble is having a make-over.” The Internet Archive isn’t much help in pinpointing the date the note was put up; it hasn’t posted a fresh save of the site since February of 2008.

In October, Hodder told me that the site had to be taken offline due to problems with her hosting company and a lack of funding. Today via email Hodder said she’s still working on the technology behind the scenes, but without funding the site won’t be back up anytime soon.

Hollywood is full of stories about legendary comebacks — Robert Downey Jr. surviving drugs, John Travolta surviving Look Who’s Talking II — so who’s to say that a web series about the industry shouldn’t get a second chance? That’s what Showbizzle has its eye on. The indie web series produced by Charles Rosin (a producer on the original Beverly Hills 90210) relaunched a few weeks ago after falling flat last fall.

How flat did it fall? Steve Bryant, in our initial NewTeeVee Station review on Sept. 26, 2008, gave it two stars, writing that “the site is confusing, the mission statement unclear, and the promise — personal webcam-ish confessions and storytelling that’s ‘different from virtually everything else that you can currently find in the world wide web’ — laughable.” Composed then of individual two-minute monologues relayed to an unseen and unheard aspiring screenwriter named Janey, Showbizzle was more like watching scenes from an acting class than a narrative. And the site was focused on getting people to sign up for a poorly constructed and irrelevant social network, in theory hoping to connect aspiring whatevers in their quest for Hollywood fame and fortune. “Everything was rushed, and we made some tactical errors, we made some technical errors, and by the time we started up we were already in the hole,” Rosin said via phone. “But we were able to evaluate what went wrong, and what we could do better.”

Today, though, the Showbizzle site has a clean look that showcases the series properly, and perhaps thanks to the advice Rosen received from a Silicon Valley consultant — “you either have to be a web series or a social network, not both” — that element of the site has been dramatically toned down, instead focusing on the actual content.

And that content has been dramatically changed. The individual two-minute monologues, originally planned for daily release, have been compiled into weekly 10-minute episodes that are focused on characters with a clear connection to Janey (a connection spelled out in the cards introducing each character). Oh, and Janey actually has a voice now, courtesy of the show’s primary writer and director Lindsey Rosen (Charles’ daughter), which addresses Steve’s complaint from the original review that “there’s no dialogue, which contributes to an overall feeling of falseness. As if the people talking were being interviewed on a late-night promo for a self-help book.” The monologues are now interspersed with comments from Janey — mostly “hmm?” and “really?”, but enough to indicate a human presence on the other side of the camera.

So, how does Showbizzle 2.0 work? As a fan of micro-length episodes, I do miss the old format a little, and while the addition of Janey’s comments is an interesting approach, it’s not well-mixed into the rest of the audio, definitely revealing its roots as additional dialogue recording. But the fact that each character now belongs to a larger narrative, however slight, is a major bonus and ties the series together in a new way. It also emphasizes to audiences that, in Lindsey’s words, “This is a show; this isn’t real; it is scripted,” which hadn’t been clear before.

Also, an interesting bit of recycling: To accommodate the new format, the Rosens had to eliminate several of the filmed monologues from the series. But rather than leave these in the cutting-room bin in Final Cut Pro, they’ve created a new section of the site called Digital Showcase, which serves as a “hey, check out this actor” spotlight, making sure that the performer’s time wasn’t wasted.

It’s a use-all-the-parts-of-the-buffalo approach, one to honestly admire. Because here’s the thing: The Rosens listened to their audiences and their critics, reapproached their concept, and did their best to fix it. So much web video right now is being made by people who don’t really know what they’re doing. It’s rare when someone admits it, and tries to do better.