...anyone gets excited about a plan by Verizon Wireless to offer access to YouTube on a wireless device. For $15 a month, Verizon is offering a YouTube-like service as part of a service called VCast that will provide a limited number of YouTube videos that have been selected and approved by both companies.

Come on, it's a tough enough sell trying to get people to watch videos on teeny-tiny screens without neutering the world's most popular video sharing service...and asking people to fork out $15 for the privilege. The New York Times has a strange quote from YouTube co-founder Steve Chen, who contends "Everybody carries a phone with them, but they may not have a computer...[so people] can take the phone out of their pocket while waiting for the bus and watch a video."

In theory, that's a nice sentiment but in practice, that's easier said than done. In trying to sell YouTube-lite at a premium price, Verizon clearly wants to manage demand while still getting a sense of whether the service actually works and if there are any bleeding edge suckers out there will be guinea pigs.

Of course, wireless carriers are happy to explore all and any ways to increase average revenue per subscriber (ARPU), which is an acronym for trying to squeeze more money out of existing customers. If YouTube-lite can help boost ARPU, there's no harm in trying to sell it. That said, any consumer who jump at YouTube-lite isn't thinking straight.

Whatever happened to the paperless office? The PC and Internet was supposed to save millions of trees but office workers are using more paper than ever. A joint project between Xerox Research Center of Canada and Palo Alto Research Center, however, may have a solution with ink that "disappears" from paper after 16 hours. This means a lot of paper, including the 21% of documents that are printed and thrown into recycling bins on the same day were printed, can be used over and over. In theory, it's a fascinating technology given many people print documents because reading them on a computer screen is less than user-friendly. Currently in prototype, the process uses no toner and produces a low-resolution document on specially-coated paper. Who knows if this technology will ever appear at an office near given we've been hearing about this kind of thing for years. For example, whatever happened to plastic paper that Xerox worked on for years, and that E Ink is trying develop now?