The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) recently announced that Plug-In 2011 – an international conference of expert insights on technical advances, market research and policy initiatives shaping the future of plug-in hybrid and electric transportation – will be held in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina, July 18-21, 2011.

The Raleigh Convention Center will be the first venue for the Plug-In Conference that will be held outside of California. The shift in location was envisioned as a way to offer wider access to potential attendees. Next year’s conference will be co-organized by EPRI, Progress Energy and Duke Energy. 

“We decided to offer a bit of geographical balance to our conference schedule as a way of exposing more people to the significant progress made toward integrating plug-in hybrid and other electric vehicles into the transportation system,” said Mark Duvall, director of Electric Transportation at EPRI. “The Research Triangle area is an appropriate location that is well-known as an incubator of entrepreneurship, innovation and thought-leadership.”

The Plug-In Conference was launched in San Jose in 2008, moved to Long Beach (Southern California) in 2009 and returned to San Jose this year. It attracts automotive manufacturers, component suppliers, electric utilities, government agencies, the environmental community and academia to exchange ideas and gather information needed to make key decisions related to plug-in hybrid and electric transportation.

Plug-In 2010 includes high-level plenary sessions and 21 breakout sessions and mini-panels focused on driving, connecting and launching technologies required to fully commercialize and integrate electric drive into the marketplace.

The exposition floor, which includes vehicles, electric infrastructure and batteries, and related components, features more than 40 exhibitors. July 27 is Public Night, an open forum where visitors can see the exposition floor and participate in a panel discussion. For more information about Plug-In 2010, organized by EPRI and the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, visit www.plugin2010.com.

(and don’t go squatting plugin2011.com just because this group hasn’t gotten the wherewithal to buy it yet!)

It’s easy to fall in love with Evernote, the cloud-based note organizer. There is a desktop application as well as a slew of mobile apps for entering and quickly finding notes one has made. Use-cases include corralling perpetual shopping lists for certain stores (ie. Home Depot, Grocer, Office Depot, Costco…), lists for CDs to hear, movies to see, shows to watch, wines you loved, as well as a perfect clipper/organizer for recipes.

The list of use-cases goes on. That’s why some Evernote fans in the area are organizing a meetup on Wednesday, June 23 at the Tribeca Tavern where even more use-cases can be bounced around. More information is online as well as on Twitter (#CaryEvernoteMeetup hashtag). Please signup today so that the group can get an organizer party pack from Evernote.

The HTC EVO went on sale this morning. The phone, only available on Sprint, is the latest Android phone that trumps the iPhone (for now at least). Along with having a replaceable battery, a free range of apps, a decent carrier network, the possibility of Flash support soon, freedom from iTunes, multitasking, a kickstand, “unlimited” data, desktop widgets, miniSD memory expansion, the ability to mount as a drive, video chat, tethering, and multi-notifications, this phone runs on the 4G data network. The network is reported to be 8X-10X faster than 3G. Some tech reporters, in fact, are saying that now is the time for people to consider dropping their land data lines and going to a tethered 4G phone instead.

4G service is only available in 33 cities. New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Washington, Miami, Denver, and Pittsburgh are among the cities that don’t have coverage, but Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill do! The full list of included cities is after the break:

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Blogs have been on fire this week about the lost and found prototype for the next generation iPhone. Gizmodo posted the background story about the N.C. State grad who apparently lost the top-secret device in a bar on his birthday, and how they obtained it. How embarrassing. What will be interesting to see is if this disappointing, clunky, industrial design is, in fact, the final form factor. (BTW, just how many Gray Powells are running around this town? I think this is the 4th one I’ve encountered.)

WRAL has just released version 2.0 of their free substitute browser on the iPhone. The new version allows readers to forward stories to Facebook, Twitter, email, and SMS. It also features a tiny current weather in the upper right, so there is no need for one on the lower menu bar any more. The update also allows one to skip to the next story while viewing an individual article.

A long-awaited feature is the ability to lock/unlock rotation. It is hidden in More | Settings. I’m not sure if this is new in 2.0, per se. While it is nice to have the ability to change rotation, it still is not what I suggested. I’d like to see WRAL’s app behave like Safari where it rotates for three orientations, but does not the phone’s top side is down. Safari’s configuration is the best when lying in best, to be honest.

Finally a word of warning; this app is very crashy (even more than normal iPhone apps!). The majority of the time that I skip to the next story the app crashes. Several times it crashed when jumping in and out of news sections. Unless you are incredibly excited about the sharing features, I’d wait until 2.1.

Symantec, the geniuses behind the Norton suite of computer security applications, name Raleigh as one of the Top 10 Riskiest Online Cities. Those name riskier for cybercrime are Seattle, Boston, Washington, and San Francisco. They cite the number of Wi-Fi hotspots and hi-tech offerings as key factors in these cities’ vulnerabilities.

In other news…sluts are more likely to get an STD.

Time Warner Cable announced today that it will officially launch 4G wireless service in Raleigh, Charlotte, and Greensboro on December 1. This will be called “Road Runner Mobile”, and prices start at $35 per month (for TWC Triple Pay Customers on Price Lock Guarantee).

Download speeds will be up to 6 Mbps. Unlike Verizon’s Mifi dongle, this service will be received via two types of USB dongles: Motorola USBw100 USB card (WiMax-only) and the Franklin Wireless CMU-300 USB card (dual 3G/WiMax). More options are said to be available after the service’s launch.

Note (10/15): Also being launched on December 1 is Time Warner’s CradlePoint device, which will also deliver Road Runner Mobile. The device is a portable wireless router that connects up to the internet wirelessly, much like Verizon’s Mifi.

The introduction of fob-based internet connectivity makes things interesting, especially for people who live alone. With this kind of device and a Wifi-capable “phone” device, one could use Skype for their telephony over wifi and avoid having to exhaust all of their patience with a terrible cellular phone carrier (I’m talking right at YOU, AT&T!)