Boston Power juices up with $55M for lithium-ion batteries

Boston Power, maker of eco-friendly, long-lasting lithium-ion batteries, just landed $55 million in fourth-round funding to grow its manufacturing, sales and marketing operations. Its flagship product, the Sonata Lithium-ion battery, is slated to launch in the next several months as the primary power source for Hewlett-Packard notebook computers. The model is also currently being adapted for use in other electronic devices and electric vehicles, the company says.

According to CNET, Sonata batteries can be charged … Continue Reading

Reader poll: Will Obama be good for the tech industry?

The inauguration is just around the corner and the Obama administration is taking shape. With many key nominations for cabinet posts already made, the question is whether this administration is going to be good for the technology industry. Obama still hasn’t named his choice for chief technology officer, but rumors suggest he has narrowed his list of candidates. Please vote and share your opinion in the comment section below.

http://www.buzzdash.com/bb.swf?BB_id=144300
… Continue Reading

Application builder Coghead in acquisition talks

Coghead, a startup that allows users to create web applications using simple forms, is trying to sell itself to an unidentified buyer, according to VentureWire. The Redwood City, Calif. company is looking to be acquired after failing to raise a third round of venture backing; it last raised $8 million from American Capital Strategies, SAP Ventures and El Dorado Ventures in 2007.

(via Private Equity Hub)… Continue Reading

VentureBeat at Sundance with Matt Marshall and Shira Lazar: the widget

[Update from Matt: We just finished our last task here at Sundance, about 24 hours after we started our first task. And we actually won the competition! Many thanks to those of you who tuned in to watch us. It was a highly rewarding experience (although frequently embarrassing; making rooster crows in the morning topped it off) and a great insight into how this festival works and the gusto with which people attend … Continue Reading

Matt and Shira, doing 24-hour video competition at Sundance

Folks, it’s light posting here usually on Saturdays, so why not join us today on our mission to win the “24 Hours @ Sundance” competition here in Park City, Utah.

I’ll be dashing around the film festival grounds here at Sundance. I’m teamed with the fearless Shira Lazar. We’ve got to fulfill a series of tasks, some likely ridiculous, others scandalous, and perhaps more mundane — we just don’t know. We have to video the … Continue Reading

Google, Yahoo get even more socialized

The convergence of tech giants and social networking features continue. Just as rumors are swirling that MySpace is developing its own webmail service, both Google and Yahoo have rolled out new additions to their social networks or social network-like services.

The Google news is probably more interesting. It’s now possible to add contact info to Google Profiles, and to allow your contacts or contact groups to see that information in your profile. The new feature … Continue Reading

Roundup: The Jobs saga continues, Circuit City razed, Hulu apologizes and more

Here’s the latest action:

The Steve Jobs saga continues — Talk about the Apple chief executive and his health issues remain everywhere you look. Newsweek columnist Dan Lyons says the media’s coverage of Apple “bites.” As you might expect after their heated exchange the other day, Lyons focuses on CNBC’s Jim Goldman. Meanwhile, the blog which Goldman criticized for its reporting on Jobs’ failing health initially, Gizmodo, featured a profanity-laced post from its editorial director, … Continue Reading

Heyzap creates widgets to put casual games on any web site

Casual games are multiplying like weeds. But Heyzap can embed them on any web site via a widget (a light web application).

With a few clicks, you can embed the code in your site and “gameify” it. Games are sticky. They’re engaging and often a lot more fun than most business-oriented web sites. Heyzap’s widgets are fairly democratic — big brands can use them, but so can your average user who wants, say, a favorite … Continue Reading

Facebook may love US Airways hero Sullenberger even more than Twitter does

The successful crash-landing of crippled U.S. Airways flight 1549 yesterday by Captain C.B. “Sully” Sullenberger is one of the most uplifting stories of the new year — and social media sites have been part of the story. A Twitter user may have gotten the best picture immediately following the incident, and Twitter users haven’t stopped talking about it since. But more than a dozen Facebook groups and fan pages have also sprung up to adulate … Continue Reading

Fuego Nation launches its private beta for rich media social network

Fuego Nation is launching a private beta of a new kind of social network today.

That may not seem like a very downturn kind of thing to do, and Brogan Keane, founder and chief executive, acknowledges it’s going to be tough. But Keane also believes he has a different kind of social network. This one focuses on passions. It’s about the things in your life you care about most or find most inspirational. It’s about … Continue Reading

Ad network Federated Media cuts 7 to restructure

Federated Media, a web site that sells and runs ads on more than 150 blogs and websites (including VentureBeat), is restructuring to focus on “conversational marketing,” announced founder and chief executive John Battelle — and that means job cuts. Specifically, Marketing Manger Matthew DiPietro tells me that means seven of FM’s 90 employees are being laid off today, almost exclusively from the display advertising department.

Those cuts aren’t surprising given the broader economic environment, and … Continue Reading

GeoEye-1, the "Google satellite," will capture the Obama Inauguration from space

GeoEye-1, the powerful imagery satellite that is perhaps best known as the “Google satellite” (because Google has a deal to use its pictures for its Google Maps and Google Earth products), will be focusing its lens on the Inauguration of President Obama next week. The company notes that while there will be plenty of cameras covering the event on the ground, and some in the air, GeoEye-1 will be the only one offering a perspective … Continue Reading

Facebook shuffles Connect and Platform leadership

With the new year and amid growing adoption of Facebook’s Connect feature, which gives third-party websites access to Facebook’s user data, the company is making some changes to its Connect and Facebook Platform leadership, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg writes on the company’s developer’s blog today.

Mike Vernal (upper right) will be the new manager of Facebook’s Connect and Platform engineering teams. He replaces early Facebook employee Charlie Cheever, who after leading the teams for a … Continue Reading

Download Obama from YouTube

This seems like a golden age for watching politicians on YouTube. President-elect Barack Obama is delivering weekly addresses on the video site, and both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives just launched their own YouTube channels. This is all great news … unless, of course, you’re a YouTube competitor, or you don’t think the Google-owned site should control such a major communications channel between elected officials and voters. That’s why CNET’s Charles Cooper argued … Continue Reading

The quickening: Apple App Store hits a half billion downloads

When Apple launched its iTunes Store in April 2003, it took over two years to reach 500 million songs downloaded. The App Store — a sub-section of the iTunes Store — has reached that mark in under 200 days.

Yes, a half billion applications have been downloaded through the App Store since its launch on July 11 of last year. That’s staggering. But even more staggering is just how much the pace has quickened over … Continue Reading

Party ends at AMD with pay cuts and layoffs of 9 percent

Advanced Micro Devices said Friday it will cut nine percent of its staff — about 1,100 workers — and will reduce pay temporarily for its remaining workers as it tries to survive the tough market for PC chips.

Here are some photos from the good times last week at AMD’s party at the International Consumer Electronics Show last week in Las Vegas. It hasn’t exactly been a party at AMD, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based maker of … Continue Reading

Kogan delays Agora Android phone to better serve developers

How much do third-party developers matter to the mobile handset manufacturers building for Google’s Android operating system? Enough to indefinitely delay the Kogan Agora, a device that intended to be the second Android-powered phone in the world, after HTC’s G1.

Here’s more about the Arora problem, from Australia-based Kogan founder and chief executive Ruslan Kogan:

One of the potential issues is the screen size and resolution. It seems developers will be creating applications that are … Continue Reading

Obama's choice for the post of chief technology officer narrowing?

The tech industry has been closely watching the Obama administration’s search for a chief technology officer and it looks like the short list includes two tech veterans of Indian descent, according to BusinessWeek.

Padmasree Warrior, the CTO of networking giant Cisco, and Vivek Kundra, the CTO of the government of Washington, D.C., are the front runners. I interviewed Warrior when she was the chief technology officer at Motorola years ago. She has deep knowledge in … Continue Reading

Twitter app TweetDeck raising angel round

TweetDeck, an application for organizing messages (“tweets’) received via microblogging service Twitter, is raising an angel round of funding. The round will total less than $500,000 and is led by Betaworks, according to All Things Digital’s Peter Kafka. Not bad for a one-man operation.

The application was built by Iain Dodsworth using Adobe’s AIR platform, which is used for creating hybrid web-desktop applications. TweetDeck’s big goal is to help users sort through the many tweets … Continue Reading