Panasonic: Open-source smartphones are the future
“The global market for smartphones based on open source platforms including Android will reach 100 million units in three years.” That’s the claim made by Panasonic’s director of mobile terminal business, Keisuke Ishii, at a press conference on Thursday.
A hundred million units is a lot. It’s comparable to today’s entire smartphone market. But Panasonic is, at least publicly, placing its bet on Android and other open-source platforms to replace today’s “feature phones” — industry … Continue Reading
DEMO coming to Washington and New York
As part of our effort to find the most exciting companies and products to launch at the DEMOfall conference in September, Chris Shipley and I are going to be making several trips around the country meeting with local entrepreneurs and other interested professionals.
Next week, I’ll be in Washington and available to meet with companies on Thursday, May 28 and Friday, May 29 from our local office in DC. If you’d like to meet with … Continue Reading
Facebook simplifies currency ahead of wider roll-out
Credits, Facebook’s nascent virtual currency of sorts, is getting a simple change tonight. The company is marking down items in its gift store from 100 credits to 10 credits, and reducing users’ corresponding number of credits.
Facebook users who are worried about losing the last zero off their credit supplies can take comfort in the fact that they can still buy the same number of gifts as they had before. So if you had 200 … Continue Reading
TimesReader 2.0's big goof: No Technology section
The New York Times’ latest attempt to deliver itself to your desktop in a functional, utilitarian format — and lock you in as a paying subscriber — is TimesReader 2.0, a tastefully minimalist application.
TimesReader refreshes its pages’ headlines and stories every five minutes. You can bump that up to one minute, or drop it back to an hourly update.
For now, the Business Day section is free, but you’ll need a subscription to see … Continue Reading
Chrome 2 browser runs Web 2.0 30 percent faster
I spend most of my workday typing and clicking into a browser window. I hate it. When I see the catchphrases “cloud” or “hosted” or “as a service,” my brain rewrites it as too damn slow.
Google’s Chrome browser soothes my pain a bit. The latest update has been renamed from Chrome to Chrome 2. It’s not a major overhaul of the thing, but it does boost Javascript processing by 30 percent. Adrian Kingsley-Hughes … Continue Reading
Roundup: Apple Tablet coming? Facebook book definitely is, and more
Here’s the latest action
Apple Tablet looking even more real — More here and here.
Tokyo park keeps teen vandals out using high-pitched noisemaker — Wow. And is this a civil rights issue?
“The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal” — The title says it all. Facebook’s early days were mild compared to, say, the average fraternity — c’mon it was mostly dudes working on computers. But … Continue Reading
Kozio raises round for hardware and software diagnostics
Kozio said today that it has closed its first round of funding for its business of making diagnostics for both hardware and software.
The Longmont, Colo.-based company did not disclosed the amount of the funding led by Boulder, Colo.-based Boulder Angels.
Kozio will use the money for startup expenses and to expand its marketing and engineering. The company has more than 50 customers for its software that is embedded in chip hardware for the purpose … Continue Reading
Far-reaching Climate Bill wins first of many battles
Today, the American Clean Energy and Security Act — the most expansive legislation aimed at curbing global warming ever introduced in Congress — won approval from the House Energy and Commerce Committee 33-to-25, with Democrats and Republicans splitting along party lines. The win closely follows president Barack Obama’s call for a 30 percent reduction in vehicle emissions by 2016.
Despite the momentum, the bill still has a long road ahead of it. It still has … Continue Reading
IBM says now is the time to invest in innovation in Vietnam
IBM is announcing today that it’s stepping up its investment in Vietnam as part of a bid to improve the country’s innovation and grab a foothold in an emerging territory for technology consumption.
That’s a big step for a country that a generation ago was shattered by war and that developed slowly under communist rule for many years. The U.S. lifted a trade embargo during the Clinton administration, and Intel decided to invest $1 billion … Continue Reading
San Francisco launches EcoMap, busts high-emission zip codes
The city of San Francisco has launched a revolutionary online mapping project, called the Urban EcoMap, that tracks the amount of greenhouse gas emissions produced by its various neighborhoods — and beyond that, what has produced them: transportation, energy use or waste. Basically, it’s borrowing the concept of environmental contests run on college campuses to encourage students to be more eco-friendly — only on a metropolitan scale.
Announced by mayor Gavin Newsom on Earth Day … Continue Reading
Demand response co. EnerNoc lands $100M contract
EnerNoc (ENOC.O), one of the growing number of companies focused on demand response — the management and redistribution of power based on real-time changes in demand — has landed a contract with PJM Interconnection, an electricity transmission company in the mid-Atlantic region, to manage 1,000 megawatts worth upwards of $100 million.
The year-long contact, 2012 to 2013, will give EnerNoc an unprecedented boost, providing roughly the same sum that came from all of its contracts … Continue Reading
Business Insider raises millions from investor/tipsters
updated
It’s an open secret that Business Insider, the blog network founded by disgraced-stock-analyst-turned-ace-reporter Henry Blodget as Silicon Alley Insider, has raised a round of funding from a number of high profile backers, including Allen & Company LLC, Marc Andreessen, Jim Friedlich of Zelnick Media, and Matt Luckett of Balestra Capital and Kohlberg Ventures.
We’d been hearing the company was trying to raise a round for a while. PaidContent.org puts the amount at an “estimated” … Continue Reading
TransGaming launches its own game development studio
TransGaming has subsisted as a game porting company for years, converting PC games to run on Macs or Linux machines. Now it is announcing a new game studio that’s working on a game for the Nintendo Wii game console.
Toronto, Canada-based TransGaming is working with Foreign Media Games on a game for the Wii called Armin Van Buuren — In the Mix. It’s a music game based on a popular disc jockey personality. The company … Continue Reading
Manage multiple online lives with Netvibes' multiple home pages
Netvibes helps users organize their online activity by customizing a home page with RSS feeds, social networks, email, and more. The thing is, people use the web for different needs at different times — to use an obvious example, during the day I’m much more focused on keeping track of tech news and try not to get too distracted with online socializing, and at night it’s the opposite. That’s why the startup will be expanding … Continue Reading
SGN aims for cross-platform social gaming domination
Last year, SGN made a bet that social gaming would transcend any one platform, and it aggressively expanded from its core group of gaming applications on Facebook to building games for the iPhone. Even though many rivals have gotten bigger than SGN on Facebook, it has surpassed them on the iPhone while maintaining key games on Facebook. Now, it looks set to take advantage of its cross-platform reach.
The first of SGN’s bets paid off … Continue Reading
DOE earmarks $2B to charge up 35 battery makers
This week, the Department of Energy announced it would divide $2 billion in federal grants between 35 battery companies, including battery makers, component providers and electric vehicle firms. Applications for these economic stimulus grants, ranging in size from $100 to $150 million, come due Tuesday of next week.
Candidates for the money are required to prove they already have the funds to cover half of their project costs. Winners will be announced in July and … Continue Reading
Rumor: Next iPhone's best feature is a 50% faster CPU
Just as Google surprised surfers with a faster, yet more sophisticated set of search suggestion tools this week, Apple watcher John Gruber cut through the clutter of prognostication around the company’s presumed iPhone upgrades, to be announced at the company’s conference for software developers in early June.
On his Daring Fireball blog (the name is an inside joke), Gruber calls out the iPhone’s worst offense: Slowness when moving among applications, or when changing screens within … Continue Reading
OpenTable wins big with hearty IPO
Online restaurant reservation site OpenTable (trading as OPEN) has stunned the market with the best IPO performance of any company since 2007 (Orion Energy Systems), reaping a 59 percent gain with share prices closing at $31.89 on the Nasdaq — a staggering upsell from its anticipated $20.
The stock spiraled as high as $35.50, a 78 percent gain, as market analysts watched, both concerned that it was overstepping its bounds and positing that the small … Continue Reading
Valero inherits hefty stake in ethanol producer Qteros
Oil and gas company Valero Energy has acquired an undisclosed stake in Qteros, maker of microbial ethanol, along with other assets divvied up from bankrupt ethanol producer VeraSun Energy. It also assumed ownership of seven of the company’s plants — 780 megawatts in all — and rights to build another for $477 million.
Formerly called SunEthanol, Qteros specializes in converting biomass into cellulosic ethanol. It has received $2 million from the government for a pilot … Continue Reading
Data.gov: Another Obama site gets off to an underwhelming start
After checking out the Obama administration’s newly-launched Data.gov website, I’ve come away with an impression similar to my initial takes on the revamped WhiteHouse.gov site and Recovery.gov, the site for learning about how the government’s $787 billion stimulus package is spent — great idea, weak execution. But both WhiteHouse.gov and Recovery.gov improved substantially in the following months. I’m starting to think the administration should slap a beta testing label on its websites, making it clear … Continue Reading
