Energy monitoring, 3-D simulations, government dollars are the future of cleantech, says Intel CMO
Intel’s chief sales and marketing officer Sean Maloney delivered the keynote at the annual Cleantech Forum today, underscoring the importance of three themes: the government’s commitment of billions of dollars to cleantech industries over the next year; the utility of even conventional 3-D simulation software in the development of greener buildings, products and vehicles; and the mainstream adoption of residential and commercial energy monitoring systems used to cut costs during the economic downturn.
At the … Continue Reading
Roundup: Yahoo and Microsoft, Eminem sues Universal, and more
YAYED: Yet Another Yahoo Executive Departs — This time it’s Marco Boerries, the executive vice president in the company’s Connected Device Division, ahead of a pending reorganization under new chief executive Carol Bartz.
Eminem aims lawsuit at Universal Music Group — The successful rapper says the record label owes him $1.6 million in unpaid royalties from digital sales. Hypebot has more.
Ballmer: “I don’t want to wind up being known as the Jerry Yang of … Continue Reading
DEMO: Social data sharing will change lives and business
Large web companies like Google, MySpace and Facebook are rolling out ways for other web sites to access their user data, and the full force of these moves hasn’t hit home yet for the corporate world, let alone for us as individuals.
At DEMO next week in Palm Springs, Calif. we’ll be examining the significance of the latest efforts by these players. Some of the features these companies will show off at DEMO have not … Continue Reading
Wily investors send out notes from Apple's shareholder meeting
Apple had its annual shareholder meeting on lockdown today. If you wanted to be in the room, you couldn’t have a laptop or mobile phone. Fortunately, a wily rogue investors apparently smuggled in some devices and were sending updates, which Apple 2.0′s Philip Elmer-DeWitt kindly rebroadcasted for all to see. So what went down at the meeting, which Steve Jobs did not attend?
Here’s my attempt to try and make sense of the rather cryptic … Continue Reading
Boxee fanatics, chill out. The service works with the Apple TV 2.3.1 update
Apple sent out an update to the Apple TV last night, updating the box’s software to 2.3.1. No one really seems to be clear about what this update actually did (a network test, better iPhone remote performance?), but everyone is freaking out because as usual, the new software axed Boxee support. But really, it didn’t.
Boxee sent out an email today notifying users that Boxee will work just fine with 2.3.1. You simply need to … Continue Reading
Another Google service bites the dust: Shared Stuff
Back in September 2007, Google launched Shared Stuff, one of its first products explicitly meant to be social. Shared Stuff was its answer to services by competitors such as Yahoo’s Delicious and, to some extent, sharing on Facebook. The service had potential because it had Google’s weight behind it, and it was clear the company wanted to move into the social sphere.
But shortly after its launch, a funny thing happened: Like so many of … Continue Reading
Ginx groups help you follow communities on Twitter
Micromessaging service Twitter still doesn’t make sense to most people I know. When they start following other Twitter users, they just see a mishmash of unorganized thoughts from those people pouring in — and who wants to read nonsense? A new startup called Ginx took another step towards solving that problem last night. It now lets you organize like-minded Twitter users into groups, allowing you to filter streams of tweets loosely based on topics that … Continue Reading
InComm reports strong growth in game currency cards
Game currency cards — gift cards players can use to pay for subscriptions or virtual goods in online games — are getting traction. Coming on the heels of a similar report from GMG Entertainment, InComm said today that its game currency card business grew 200 percent in 2008.
The Atlanta-based company has been making gift cards for 16 years, starting with long-distance cards. They use an activation code at the cash register to prevent easy … Continue Reading
Calling all game startups: Stand up and get noticed at GamesBeat 09
If you’re a gaming startup, VentureBeat wants to hear from you. As part of our GamesBeat 09 conference coming up on March 24, we’re throwing a competition to find the most promising startup. The competition is dubbed Who’s Got Game?, and the winner will be announced at the conference.
The only criteria for entering: Your company should be interesting, fresh and in the startup phase.
Be sure to fill out the contest entry form now, … Continue Reading
Ethanol's a bust, so move to chemicals, says Genomatica
Genomatica, a bioengineering startup that says its scientific approach can rapidly find alternatives to fossil fuel-based chemicals, has some advice for the beleaguered ethanol industry: Don’t make ethanol.
The company has bred a new microorganism capable of going through the same distiller’s process that makes ethanol, but instead producing methyl ethyl ketone, a common industrial solvent also known as butanone or MEK. Chief executive Chris Gann says existing ethanol plants can use the microorganism without … Continue Reading
Appirio raises $10M to bring business into the cloud
Appirio, a startup that integrates online business applications and platforms, has raised $10 million in a third round of funding.
The San Mateo, Calif. company developed three of the seven bestselling applications in Salesforce.com‘s AppExchange, including the No. 1 app, which synchronizes users’ calendars in Salesforce and Google Apps. It also developed an application that integrates Facebook with Salesforce, allowing companies to recruit and market on the social network. And oh yeah, it provides various … Continue Reading
Aster Data raises $5M more for data warehousing
Data warehousing startup Aster Data Systems has added another $5 million to its second round of financing, bringing its total capital to $27 million.
The Redwood City, Calif. company stores data for business analysis purposes for some big-name customers, including MySpace. Its nCluster system has the advantage of running on cheap servers, using the MapReduce programming framework popularized by Google to allow for more detailed queries. On top of that, it doesn’t have any downtime.… Continue Reading
Ocarina Networks lands $20M for content compression
Ocarina Networks, maker of software that compresses content to reduce online storage demands, announced today that it has brought in $20 million in a second round of funding to beef up its sales force, refine its technology and forge more partnerships with storage providers like Hewlett-Packard and BlueArc.
The San Jose, Calif. company claims its technology can compress data by up to 90 percent. Essentially, it can shrink 10 terabytes of data to between 1 … Continue Reading
The official Tumblr app tumbles onto the iPhone
Blogging tool Tumblr has risen in popularity among the blogging platforms because of its simplicity. With a few clicks you can easily post various types of media without having to worry about code or formatting. In many ways, simplicity is also the key to the iPhone and Apple’s way of doing things, so it makes sense that Tumblr would make an iPhone app — and now it has (or at least has bought one — … Continue Reading
Principle Energy lands $10M for biofuel in sub-Saharan Africa
Principle Energy Limited (PEL), a developer of biofuel projects in sub-Saharan Africa, just nabbed $10 million from cleantech fund Craton Equity Partners to build a sustainable sugarcane ethanol operation in Mozambique. The plant could produce up to 60 million gallons of ethanol per year with little to no carbon footprint, the company claims. Most of this fuel will be shipped to Europe and the U.S. to meet growing demand.
The price of the Dombe Project … Continue Reading
id Software launches free Quake Live browser-based shooting game
With today’s launch of browser-based game Quake Live, you could say that id Software has come full circle. You can play the game for free, as long as you view the ads that come with it — a business model that takes us back to 1993, when the company released the original Doom.
Back then, you could play the first eight levels of the game for free and then pay to unlock more. The strategy … Continue Reading
Netflix streams already rushing past DVDs in 2009?
The business of renting DVDs through the mail has proven to be hugely popular for Netflix. The service came out of nowhere to pillage revenue from movie rental behemoth Blockbuster, and now Netflix is thriving as Blockbuster struggles to hold on. But Netflix’s business model is shifting, too, toward streaming movies over the internet. And it may be happening faster than anyone predicted.
So far this year, movie streams from Netflix are outpacing DVD shipments … Continue Reading
Sony's PlayStation Network passes 20 million registered users
Sony just announced that its PlayStation Network has now surpassed 20 million registered users.
The PSN is the online gaming network for Sony’s PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable game devices, where players can socialize or play online games for free. By contrast, Microsoft charges $50 a year for game play on its Xbox Live online game network, which, at last count, had 17 million active players.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that Sony has more players … Continue Reading
More record companies take aim at music search engine SeeqPod
EMI and Capitol Records have jumped on the bandwagon, filing suit against music search engine SeeqPod for copyright infringement in New York. They’re following in the footsteps of Warner Music Group, which took action against the site in California in January 2008. There has yet to be a settlement in that case. But EMI and Capitol have upped the ante, targeting individual employees and investors, in addition to the company itself, for monetary damages.
Instead … Continue Reading
Game industry association recovers from shooting itself in the foot
There has been a lot of angst about the state of the $22 billion video game industry’s trade association and its major trade show in the past few years. It’s been strange and confusing to watch what is still a healthy industry torpedo its major exhibition, E3.
But the annual report of the Entertainment Software Association sheds light on the situation. GameSpot reported that the ESA saw revenues of $28.2 million in the year ended … Continue Reading
