Here’s the latest action:
Dexter, the first robot that “walks like we do” — Entrepreneur Trevor Blackwell started a robot company in Mountain View, Calif. called Anybots a few years ago (we wrote about it). He built a robot called Dexter, and had real trouble getting him to walk. It’s tougher than you may think. Well, now Dexter has finally taken its first steps. Click on image and play video. Paul Graham’s account of the challenge is worth reading. Maybe Silicon Valley will compete with the Japanese after all (Honda’s robot, Asimo, has long lorded it over Dexter).
Technorati buys PersonalBee? — We’re hearing these rumors too. Valleywag has more. Technorati, a blog search engine, appears to be drifting, and its strategy here is unclear. But Personal Bee is a way to let people create personal news pages (see our original story on the site here). Reported purchase price: Six figures.
MySpace News, here it comes — Wired has the scoop about MySpace’s pending news site, which takes aim at Digg and other sites. However, it ditches the Digg concept of having a (cliquish) group of people submitting stories. Instead, it automatically collects news items from various news sites and blogs. MySpace users then discuss and rate the stories; the stories then change position on the page accordingly. This will be out in the second quarter.
Why you need lawyers, even early at a start-up — A tale of caution by Dave Winer, who sold his company to Verisign, only to get sued by someone because he hadn’t had the proper legal help, costing Winer $40,000 to defend himself.
Applied Materials builds biggest solar power installation — Google previously held the crown for biggest solar power installation on an existing corporate facility. Now Sunnyvale’s Applied Materials, just down the road, is building a 1.9 megawatt power system.
Green tech buzz continued — Notable story in the NYT about the Silicon Valley ecosytem evolving around green technologies. The “dot-watt” boom. Note also the story in the Mercury News, about how Foster City, Calif. start-up SolarCity is using the Web to round up neighbors interested in installing solar panels. If enough people sign up in a given area, the people get good discounts.
Microsoft confirms it will acquire Tellme — This is a big win for Benchmark Capital, which had the biggest stake in Tellme. Reports say Tellme was valued at about $800 million. Keliner Perkins had the second largest ownership, we’re told. Purchase announcement here.
Was Topix.net smart to pay $1M for Topix.com domain name? — Decide for yourself.
More advertising networks, anyone? — We don’t have enough.
Does all that gym peddling create usable energy? — No. It’s been bandied about by crackpots over the years: Generate electricity by tapping into all that energy people expend in the gym — on bikes, treadmills, weight-lifting. San Ramon, Calif. company 24 Hour Fitness invested $15,000 to test this. Turns out, if all 13 machines in one Hong Kong gym were in use ten hours a day every day, it would take 82 years to generate enough electricity worth the $15,000 investment. (Story here).
Tags: co:Anybots, co:MySpace, co:PersonalBee, co:Technorati, co:Tellme, co:Topix.com, co:Topix.net, MySpace-News3 Comments
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Ian Fernandes said:
I’ve read of physicists who get regular letters from crackpots who think they’ve overturned general relativity (and mathematicians getting regular letters from crackpots claiming to have proved the riemann hypothesis). The general rule of thumb is if you don’t have a degree in physics and are unknown to the physics community, you are almost certainly a crackpot. I propose a similar rule of thumb vis a vis energy entreprenuers - if your claim to fame is starting a dot com, chances are you’re a crackpot when it comes to energy ventures.
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Mark Wendman said:
Ian, I doubt your rule of thumb applies too broadly to cleantech, since the knowledge barrier to making a useful advance in cleantech is nowhere near as large as becoming an expert in General Relativity. Besides which, the best of software engineers are very intelligent, and often form teams of folks with prior relevant skills.
Yet there are exceptions as in more advanced areas of applied genetic engineering, or esoteric tandem semiconductor bandgap engineering, among other areas used for some cleantech innovations, where deep prior expertise is pretty much required.
Not every useful innovation is as hard as bleeding edge theoretical physics. Even advanced semiconductor process development is easier, despite how some make it out to be otherwise.
I’d know this first hand, as several semiconductor wafer fab factories I have been in, experts on notable occasions failed mostly out of intellectual laziness, with often large effects hurting the bottom line.
I had gained the 1st 20% yield increase on an early commercial 32bit microprocessor in a well known Fortune 100 firm, from work against management’s recommendations, and caught the source and fix to a -20% line yield crash at another large company’s microprocessor plant in the late 80’s. Then tripled the yield of a 3 year old part in the same factory (on a dare from some disbelievers of what I had done just previously). All in my spare time, outside of my mere sustaining engineering. All in volume manufacturing, with many millions of $ on the line.
Even the critical major (10x) yield increase on the 1st MOS DRAM memory, was not done by the PhD founding team, but by a BSc engineer, in the early days of MOS ICs. He did the critical successful process experiment when well known management forbade all process experiments from being run, so as to make shipments [from feeble low yields]. (this was not me in the least - just an example). That DRAM is what made possible the Xerox ALTO graphical personal computer.
Intellectual laziness in complicated technical endeavors is found not so rarely. All the right credentials and yet important details missed. Yet hard work by anyone, with deep thought can can pay off in significant contributions. If you don’t read enough, nor often enough, and are not a careful observer, nor thoughtful in your work, nor persistent, you may as well ship your job overseas, no matter what your career status or discipline. Credentials never shield one from cold harsh reality of challenging problems in development nor manufacturing yield improvement.
I’d suggest you might take a gander at some words of R&D wisdom from someone who has seen it all - Paolo Gargini of Intel. Innovation is hardly predictable, nor manageable well in rigid conventional ways. It is largely an unpredictable art to surmount unusual barriers with needed true innovation.
http://mark-nano.blogspot.com/2005/10/wisdom-of-paolo-gargini-process.html
In most any areas of tech, useful innovation candidates are often readily deduced from substantial reading. One can make decent commercially important traction in new innovations just by reasonable intellect, supplemented by applicable reading, practical experimental skills and careful observation, with some common sense thrown in for good measure.
I do not suggest a few token articles will be meaningful, but a deep literature search gathered and reviewed can make a difference.
While I am a physicist / semiconductor process engineer, I’ll confess to this sort of success as I came up with the key parts to a useful significantly cost reducing, silicon solar cell innovation (co-invented), just by 3 weeks of reviewing several hundred research papers after the 2005 Memorial Day weekend.
The resulting innovation has rare low capital costs for a volume manufacturing plant, stable decent efficiency cells, and 5-10x reduction of single crystal silicon used for comparable output in electricity. Nothing to sneeze at, and yet I am no photovoltaics expert in the least.
The devices are prototyped and showing excellent results by the development team lead by Tom Rust of Oakland.
It was not rocket science, albeit often folks make stuff out to be more important than it is (to “enhance” valuations or one’s own self importance). Merely hard work and useful insight from enough preparation.
Yes there are herculean challenges (say 35% efficiency triple tandem solar cell engineering, or getting much above 20% efficiency for cost effective single junction silicon cells etc…. etc.). Yet I can see numerous useful innovations of significance, that do not need much more than than thoughtful hard work to get a useful competitive advantage with durable commercial value.
Just drill deeply, so to speak. As to lack of relevant skills in prior work - I have seen thoughtful hard working folks from outside disciplines make useful advances and garner success. Your college major or prior career need not preclude hard work resulting in something significant, even if others tell you differently. I even remember that a key optomechanical designer of the most popular Atomic Force Microscope was trained in the social sciences.
There will always be efforts funded that come to naught with oversold ideas, and incomplete innovation. C’est la vie. Best of luck to all.
Nanosolar is lead and apparently founded by a software entrepreneur and staffed by an excellent technical team in photovoltaics. The firm is making what seems to be excellent headway, if their statements are correct. (I have no inside info, the proof of their pudding will be found later in the success or failure of the actual manufacturing rampup. I think they have a very good chance to succeed.)
By the same token, many firms claim advances that are not as material as they make them out to be, and this does come from folks with all sorts of career background.
Success largely comes down to a practical intellectual honesty, knowledge of commercial devices/processes and hard substantive work. Glowing academic peer review alone is no guarantee of commercial success, nor is it a prerequisite. Be forthright in what you don’t know and find the people to find the answers or go roll up your sleeves and just do it.
Software folks can make useful advances if they form the right team and work hard enough. There are many doing so today in cleantech from what I seem to observe. And to good effect, both in firms and investors. And in novel cleantech innovations it seems, not just Solar.
Silicon Valley is a fascinating place to be, and the people are what makes the place as amazing as it is.
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Smiley said:
What do you guys think about my new social networking site I’m working on? http://www.mycutegalaxy.com I need funding right now…Do you think i can get the funding from venture capital or individuals?
