For all its convenience, wireless in the home always seems to have trade-offs – mysterious signal losses, degradation in quality and less-than-easy set-up.

This can apply to both Wi-Fi internet connections and other applications, such as wireless speakers and headphones.

Avnera, a fab-less chip company based in Oregon, has unveiled a technology today that concentrates on conquering one problem area – wireless audio.

It claims six innovations: forward error correction so the receiver can repair lost data, a dispersion technology that spreads out errors in time, a small spectrum footprint that allows it to choose from 40 possible channels, dynamic frequency selection which changes to the optimum channel, two separate antennae and dynamic power control to increase power if the receiver is far away.

Avnera has packed all of its features onto a single chip rather than using several, enabling 30 per cent lower system costs. Its wireless systems are also plug and play.

Wireless headphones from Acoustic Research at $199 performed well in a demonstration. The sound was crystal clear until cutting out sharply from about 50 feet away, although an amplifier unit would have extended the range. A second product already available is the RocketFish Wireless Rear Speaker Kit at $99.

Avnera’s management team has previous experience with Bluetooth and sound software companies. Their solution is a proprietary one but “there’s lots of examples where in certain markets it hasn’t made sense to use a standards-based technology,” says Mats Myrberg, head of product development.

Avnera has been developing its AudioMagic and VoiceMagic chips since 2004 with this one market in mind.

Wireless products have the highest return rate of any items in the stores of electronics retailer Best Buy. It is therefore an endorsement of Avnera that Best Buy is its first customer and is also an investor among regular VCs such as Bessemer, Redpoint and Intel Capital.

There’s a lot of thinking outside the box going on in Silicon Valley on breaking out of its cubicle culture.

Intel, the epitome of corporate cubism, is reviewing its regimented floorplans and introducing more common spaces and a dash of colour.

"The whole nature of sitting down and hashing out ideas and collaborating is a bit stymied by the construct of the cubicles," Paul Otellini, chief executive, told us in August.

This month, Intel introduced Zero Email Friday, an attempt to break up the practice of engineers two cubicles apart sending an email to one another rather than getting up and having a conversation.

Google’s Lego play areas, oddly placed sculptures, kitchen garden and ideas boards suggest a cubicle cataclysm in Mountain View, but the G men and women would never get any work done if it were not for regular grey dividers giving them some private space.

That has not stopped the company organising a “cube decorating contest” on the theme of games, in order to carry on the creativity.

The winners were the Google Analytics team with a Jumanji theme, including a motion sensor that triggered a tiger’s roar when people walked by.

Credit also to Google developers for harking back to eight-bit games and Super Mario with their entry – working at the Googleplex is looking more like a fun factory for code plumbers every day.

Just when you thought the Web might be escaping the bounds of the browser with desktop widgets and other ex-browser applications, things start moving in the opposite direction.

At the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco today, Mike Volpi, chief executive of Joost, spoke about how the peer-to-peer video service was putting a lot of work into a version of Joost that would work inside a browser.

At the moment, Joost is a standalone application that users need to download and install - a fairly simple process, but one that is obviously being viewed as a barrier to adoption. Providing versions of the software for the different operating systems available can also be costly and time-consuming.

Earlier this week, Napster announced the 4.0 version of its music-download service would be based inside a browser, negating the need to download its separate application.

New plug-in technologies such as BitTorrent’s DNA, Microsoft’s Silverlight and the latest version of Adobe’s Flash are making the browser more versatile in coping with complex applications.

Even virtual worlds, which often need large stand-alone programs to be fully realised, are becoming more browser friendly.

At last week’s Virtual Worlds Conference in San Jose, MovableLife came up with a browser-based viewer for Second Life and there was a big debate over the benefits of 2D browser-based worlds compared to their 3D standalone counterparts.

For outsiders, coming to address the Silicon Valley crowd at an interent conference is a bit like running the gauntlet. The Valley is deep in one of its self-regarding frenzies of internet creativity, and woe betide anyone who doesn’t "get it."

Rupert Murdoch and Steve Ballmer have each managed to carry it off at this week’s Web 2.0 Summit - up to a point. The Valley has been calling for Murdoch’s MySpace to emulate Facebook and open up so that other developers create their own applications for the social network, and last night Murdoch was on hand as MySpace’s Chris DeWolfe announced just that. (We first reported DeWolfe’s decision to go this way back in June.)

Developers will get the chance later this year to try out their applications in a new "sandbox" - a controlled environment were a small percentage of users will be able to play with them, before MySpace decides if it is appropriate to unleash them on users at large. Also, developers won’t be able to make money from the "widgets" that carry their services on MySpace (a continuation of the policy that has made MySpace enemies in the past) - though they will be able to put adverts on the "control page" that users visit is they click through a widget.

Depending on how you look at it, MySpace’s approach is either measured or half-hearted. The muted response from the crowd last night suggested the latter, but the feedback today has been more positive. I spoke, for instance, to Max Mancini, eBay’s platform strategist, who thought it was a fair way for MySpace to "test their way in." Expect other social networks to follow fast.

Meanwhile, Ballmer seemed to have the Valley crowd uncharacteristically eating out of his hand with a barnstorming performance today that brought back memories of his most famous stage appearance. There is little love lost for Microsoft in these parts, but Ballmer raised the biggest applause of the day with a blustering promise that one day Microsoft’s puny search engine would get strong enough to stick it to Google (a sign, perhaps, of how Google’s days as darling of the Valley are starting to pass.)

Microsoft’s clearest gesture towards Web 2.0 today: a beta launch of Popfly, a tool for non-techies to create mash-ups of Web applications that use Silverlight, Microsoft’s answer to Adobe’s Flash. The rich media presentation technology has already won some very favourable reviews this year, and the Popfly demonstration today went down well. Who knows: maybe there’s a place for Microsoft in Valley hearts after all?

The 3,000 or so people who packed into the ballroom of the Palace Hotel in San Francisco this afternoon to hear Mark Zuckerberg at the start of the Web 2.0 Summit (see note below) were treated to a vintage performance from the Facebook founder. And I chose that word carefully: he may be just 23, but Zuckerberg has already mastered the art, vital for the CEO of any company that has whipped up such a firestorm of interest, of saying precisely nothing.

The nothings about which Zuckerberg’s silence spoke volumes included whether he is going to sell an investment stake to Microsoft and whether he is going to build an advertising system to rival Google’s AdWords/ AdSense. The one telling moment came at the end, when Zuck was asked whether it wasn’t time for Facebook to hire a little "adult supervision" in the shape of a more experienced CEO. The young internet tycoon visibly bristled. It was as though someone had asked the young Bill Gates (and fellow Harvard drop-out) the same question in the early days of Microsoft. Clearly, unless things start to go badly wrong, Zuckerberg is going to see this through to the end.

Meanwhile, it was left to an older hand, Mike Moritz of Sequoia Capital (that’s his picture above,) to try to pour a little cold water on all the internet euphoria that was bubbling up in the room. Some choice quotes from the venture capitalist who was an early investor in Yahoo and Google:

About a possible cyclical slow-down in internet advertising: "This year clearly there is a softening in consumer spending and the Web companies are not immune from that. They are of a size that they aren’t immune from general industry trends."

About the risk that another internet bubble is being inflated: "Undoubtedly there’ll be carnage… But there will also be a handful of companies that emerge to become very significant companies."

And, most chilling of all for the Web 2.0 acolytes packing the hall, a reminder that Chinese internet companies like Baidu and TenCent are growing like weeds: "Are the US companies any longer as relevant as they used to be?"

When he took over from Terry Semel, Jerry Yang promised a top-to-bottom review of Yahoo’s operations, with "no sacred cows."

So what has this produced? Not a lot, to judge from Yang’s blog post on the matter today. Despite the talk of more focus, breadth still counts: Yahoo’s main mission is still to be the "starting point for the most consumers" on the internet.

At least Yang had some good numbers to show today from his first few weeks at the top. Now, if he can just string together a few more quarters like this one, investors will surely forgive him all that empty rhetoric.

With Silicon Valley’s most important internet conference of the year about to start, expect the love-in with Facebook to reach a new level of intensity. Since May, when it opened its APIs to let other developers build their services on top of its social network, the murmur of approval for Facebook in the Valley has grown steadily to a deafening din. In the latest confirmation of his new standing, founder Mark Zuckerberg will get the prime slot when the Web 2.0 Summit starts in San Francisco on Wednesday afternoon.

How fitting, then, that Rupert Murdoch will be on hand to remind the Valley of the attractions of his own social networking site. In a carefully choreographed appearance that avoids making Murdoch play second fiddle to Zuckerberg, the News Corp founder will get to address the Web 2.0 crowd over dinner later in the day. He will be accompanied by MySpace head Chris DeWolfe, who began a charm offensive from his Los Angeles base this summer to win back support in the Valley.

It seems amazing that an internet service that has been this successful should have been forced into such a defensive position. To hear some in the Valley talk about it, MySpace is fast becoming the Yahoo to Facebook’s Google. The disdain in which it is held is reminiscent of the Valley’s former contempt for AOL, another wildly popular service that was once deemed to have completely missed the technology boat.

In case it is needed, DeWolfe has a reminder up his sleeve of the sort of power that MySpace wields. On Wednesday, he will announce a partnership with Skype to let MySpace users embed the internet voice service into their profile pages. Skype will get the chance to reach MySpace’s 110m users. In return, MySpace will share in any revenue that Skype makes from selling its "premium" services on the social network.

This is a clear demonstration of the strategy that has led many in the Web 2.0 world to turn their noses up at MySpace. Neither side will say whether there is any exclusivity to the deal, but it clearly favours one communication service in return for a cut of the action. MySpace says it won’t block its users from continuing to add "widgets" to their pages to link to other rival services, but it obviously hopes that the deeper integration with Skype will make this the voice service of choice on its network (couldn’t eBay have tried something like this rather than buying Skype outright?)

Linking two networks as broad as MySpace and Skype sounds like it could have strong attractions - particularly since the two say there is very little overlap at the moment between their users bases. That should give the Valley’s MySpace naysayers something to think about.

Where’s the love gone? Facebook seems to be adding more enemies than friends these days.

First, the blogmeister Dave Winer writes a post called Why Facebook Sucks, criticising it as an address book that he can’t export to other formats.

Then Robert Scoble, the biggest Facebook friend collector, agrees the social networking site sucks “because it isn’t scalable and falls apart at 5,000 contacts. It pisses me off more and more every day because of that scaling wall. Damn I wish I hadn’t locked my Rolodex in this trunk.”

Of course, few people have 5,000 friends on Facebook and many may be irritated by inaccurate descriptions of it as a glorified address book.

In which case, they may like to make enemies of Messrs Winer and Scoble through Enemybook “an anti-social utility that disconnects you to the so-called friends around you.”

Adding this Facebook application, or a similar one offered by Snubster.com, can quickly dissociate you from erstwhile friends and put the mark of Cain on others.

And if you’re feeling particularly misanthropic, Techcrunch points out that Hatebook.org is a German-built doppelganger to Facebook.

Upload blackmail material, publish lies and take over the world, the service promises. There’s even an Ask Dr Evil section that puts a new spin on hate mail.  

Wallstreet.com has failed to fetch the vast sum its owners were hoping for in a .com name auction, leaving porn.com, which sold for $9.5m earlier this year, as the most expensive domain name ever.

Bloomberg reports that wallstreet.com’s owners halted the auction after bidders were only willing to pay $3m for the privilege of owning the domain. Further confirmation, if it was ever needed, of what really drives the internet.

Shawn Fanning’s follow-up to Napster seems to be in trouble.

Snocap, a company he co-founded in 2002, has cut its workforce from 57 to 26 and put itself up for sale.

“We think it’s probably best for us to be part of a larger entity,” Rusty Rueff, chief executive, told CNET.

The San Francisco company handles digital rights management for online music stores and artists’ sites. It enabled a legal version of the file-sharing peer-to-peer technologies that Napster under Fanning exploited. It says laying off staff will make it more attractive to potential buyers.

Snocap does not appear to have gained much traction as online music stores and P2P as a method of distribution have struggled – one of its customers – Mashboxx.com – even failed to launch.

Fanning is only listed as a member of the board at Snocap. For the past 18 months, he has been working on his third start-up, Rupture, a service adding social networking to online gaming.