Today at 5 PM, Youtube will be showcasing its first live stream as it broadcasts a YouTube Live celebration. The feed comes from San Francisco and will be streamed in its entirety.

Performers scheduled to appear include Katy Perry, Joe Satriani, will.i.am and the guys from Mythbusters.

Youtube has yet to issue any formal announcements regarding a livestreaming service like those available via services such as Ustream and Stickam. Expect an announcement of the sort sometime after the celebration.

Chris Di Cesare of YouTube says the event may be the first of a series of annual live-streamed concerts that celebrate the year in viral videos. Sort of like an Oscars celebration, or the season finale of "America’s Funniest Home Videos." Watch a preview video for the event below:

Palo Alto’s Better Place company has vowed to bring a $1 billion electric vehicle grid to the Bay Area, California. The company has already set up similar grids in Australia, Denmark and Israel.

The plan has just been endorsed by the San Jose, Oakland and San Francisco mayors. They’ve also agreed to offer incentives to companies that install plug-in stations. The plan will result in 250,000 charging ports, 200 battery-swap stations and a driver service center. Everything should be up and running by 2012. Network planning and permitting will begin in earnest next year and infrastructure deployment will kickoff in 2010.

Here is how it is planned to work: You will receive a discounted price on an electric vehicle when you subscribe to drive a certain number of miles. Better Place will own the batteries. You’ll be, in a sense, renting. This will be America’s first infrastructure of the sort.

Watch the inspirational video below from Better Place to get excited about shedding your old-fangled gas guzzler:

Another try at a city-wide free wireless connectivity for San Francisco with Sonic.Net which is trying to bring an ad-supported MuniFi model. Customers can get a Meraki wireless mesh router "at a subsidized cost," and then share "up to 500kbps" of their DSL line.

If it works, it may just spread!

The plan to WiFI the whole of San Francisco will have to wait a while. Google and Earthlink were to partner up on this endeavor, but Earthlink’s Rolla Huff made unwelcome comments about city officials.

If EarthLink had responded to supervisors’ requests for contract alterations made in July, including increasing required data speeds and privacy controls, a contract could have been approved and sent on to the full board for a vote Wednesday, an aide to SF Supervisor Aaron Peskin said. Now, a vote will not be possible until September at the earliest.

City residents will just have to connect like the rest of us until the big boys iron out their differences.