Roundup: EBay looks shaky, NPR’s API, the Spoken Web, and more

July 17, 2008 | Chris Morrison | Comments | |

EBay revenue rises, but stock price sinks — Despite a 22 percent increase in second-quarter profit, eBay is failing to convince investors that it knows what it’s doing. EBay’s earnings were buoyed by its online payments and advertising divisions, but its auction business is faltering as the company battles sellers, buyers, brand names and just about everyone else around. New CEO John Donahoe is working toward a solution, according to the NYT, but if it fails, there’s going to be an awfully large hole for next-gen auction startups like Wigix to fill.

National Public Radio opens its API — The government-supported radio station NPR, one of the nation’s best-known media institutions, has opened an API to let web publishers use its content. However, as Mashable notes, there are some very vague restrictions in the API’s terms, and some of the most popular shows are excluded.

“Spoken Web” a big opportunity in India — A voice-enabled parallel to the Internet presents a giant opportunity in the developing world, which has more access to mobile devices than computers, according to an interview with the director of IBM’s India Research Laboratory in ZDNet Asia. Check out the full text for more of his thoughts on mobile.

FundingSleuth opens to help keep track of companies — Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital has created FundingSleuth, a tool to track the public filings of your favorite companies and competitors. More info at Redeye VC.

Commercial algae plant slated for construction in Hawaii — Algae-to-biodiesel startup HR Biopetroleum has signed a MOU to build a commercial-scale algae plant producing biodiesel with the help of emissions from a nearby power plant. Earth2Tech has more details. Separately, oil giant Shell — which also has a joint venture with HR Biopetroleum — has upped its stake in Iogen, a cellulosic ethanol company based in Ottawa.

Green building tech seeks new US home — Investors looking for green building investments might be interested in RoofKrete, a United Kingdom startup that Grist has dug up. The company makes a semi-flexible ferrocement that’s long-lasting and insulates well.

Multicore chip startups to watch — GigaOm has a list of five of the most important startups helping to make multi-core computer processors mainstream.

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About the Author, Chris Morrison

Chris Morrison writes about cleantech and environmental issues for VentureBeat, with occasional forays into gaming and semantic technology. He got his start writing about tech for Business 2.0 magazine, but quickly realized new media was the ticket when that institution closed its doors in 2007. Chris has also covered public equities and regulatory issues. He originally hails from southern Virginia, graduated from Evergreen State College in Washington, and now lives in San Francisco.

  • mbb52
    One good thing about this ride is that all the rug-heads can watch their bank-accounts go down. an the only other thing the US needs is cooking oil & that does not come from dinosaur. Come On Back America!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  • Love the idea of "spoken web"... we currently are testing a "spoken search" feature on our BlackBerry - quite cool!
  • Love the concept of 'spoken search' esp. for mobile - I have iphone and still don't want to type in the small thing....
  • Meghan
    I came across this new auction site (www.yasfa.com) recently and was intrigued by the concept, a combination of online auction, social networking and charity. Looks like they built the site around ad revenue, since they don’t collect fees for themselves. They do collect referral fees to give back to their members.
  • Nice post Chris! I did want to clarify some things about the NPR API.

    The NPR API does include just about everything that we currently have the rights to distribute. There are some shows like "Fresh Air", "Car Talk", "Diane Rehm", etc. where NPR is involved in production or distribution but doesn't own the content rights. Other popular shows like "This American Life" and "Marketplace" aren't NPR shows at all, but are produced by other public radio companies like PRI and APM. Daniel Jacobson discusses the NPR API and rights on his blog post. Clearly, he wants to add more content to the API: http://www.npr.org/blogs/inside/2008/07/api_rig...

    Otherwise, you'll find just about everything else there, including full text and audio.

    I'm not a lawyer and not familiar with the full TOS. But as a non-profit, non-commercial source of news and information, NPR.org is very careful about the separation between its content and any sponsorship that appears on the website. To fulfill the public's trust, we're very careful to keep this distinction.

    Javaun Moradi, NPR