Nokia readies mobile payment service Nokia Money

Nokia said today that it’s going to be entering the mobile payments market next year with a product called Nokia Money, powered by mobile payments startup Obopay. With it, users will be able to send money to other people using their mobile phone numbers, as well as pay merchants and bills.

The mobile device manufacturer isn’t revealing too many details yet about how the service will take on competitors like PayPal Mobile. It sounds like … Continue Reading

The coolest and scariest things coming in the chip industry's future

At the Hot Chips chip design conference at Stanford University this week, chip researchers spelled out some of the toughest computing problems of the future and the solutions to deal with them. Hearing these pioneers and visionaries talk was both inspiring and disturbing. They talked alternately about running into technological brick walls, and about ways to get around them. But they warned that the ever-increasing cost of making the newest chips will have an impact … Continue Reading

Top British investor takes stake in U.S. wind power

Terra Firma, the private equity firm chaired by well-known British investor Guy Hands, has acquired EverPower Wind Holdings for an estimated $350 million — indicating significant European interest in U.S. wind developments. German and Spanish companies — significantly Fotowatio — have staked out U.S. solar opportunities with less emphasis on wind.

Headquartered in Manhattan, EverPower has wind farms in the works in Oregon, Ohio, Pennsylvania (including one that’s already operational there) and New York state. … Continue Reading

Amazon's Virtual Private Cloud eases growing pains of fast-growing companies

Small companies that are growing fast often can’t expand their computing infrastructure to keep up. Amazon is announcing a test version today of its Amazon Virtual Private Cloud service to let those companies tap into a much bigger computing infrastructure.

Startups and big companies alike can tap into Amazon’s web services infrastructure, dubbed the “cloud,” which consists of racks and racks of servers. The good thing is that companies pay only for the resources they … Continue Reading

Approva scores $14M for continuous controls monitoring tools

While consumer-product Web 2.0 sites flail and fail, many boring back-end business IT companies are doing just fine despite tough times. Reston, Va.-based Approva has closed another round of funding from its existing investors, which include several firms with Valley offices: New Enterprise Associates, Sierra Ventures and Gold Hill Capital. This time, Approva secured $14 million. I think this is its fourth round, but I’m waiting to hear back on that.

Approva makes continuous controls … Continue Reading

Twitter co-founder Stone doesn't care about "Teens don't Tweet" talk

We’re back at it again.

After Morgan Stanley let a 15-year-old write a research report this summer on how teens consume media that said young people don’t use the microblogging network, a “Teens don’t tweet” refrain spread throughout the blogosphere. A few reports, including this one from Nielsen, supported the idea earlier this month.

Now The New York Times has started exploring the issue. The Times reports:

As the Web grows up, so do its … Continue Reading

Kutano pops Twitter into its commenting system

Kutano, a commenting system that travels where you go on the web, is integrating Twitter so when visitors reach a page they can see what others have said about it on the microblogging network.

Kutano is a bookmark plug-in that works by tracking shared links on Twitter and repackaging them into a sidebar that goes with you as you browse the Web. So if people tweet about a piece of content but don’t incorporate a … Continue Reading

CrimeReports: Tells me 10 people got mugged a block from my office

CrimeReports.com is your site if you want to know what police are doing in your neighborhood.

It’s incredibly useful: Want to know who got assaulted close to your home or office, and whether there were any car thefts, and when exactly all of that took place? CrimeReports has it. It overlays all of the police reports in your area on a local map, so you can see each crime — from robberies to sexual assaults … Continue Reading

Four rules for running with the big dogs

I’ve just met four great startups in the last three days.

All four were trying to resegment an “Existing Market” – one where competitors have a profitable business selling to customers who can name the market and can tell you about the features that matter to them. Resegmentation means these startups are trying to lure some of the current or potential customers away from incumbents by either offering a lower cost product or by offering … Continue Reading

Utilities call for wireless spectrum for the Smart Grid

Spearheaded by American Electric Power, the massive utility covering the Midwest, Appalachia and parts of Texas, appealed to the Federal Communications Commission yesterday for the government to dedicate licensed radio spectrum to Smart Grid operations, reports Earth2Tech. To do so, the commission would have to ban other types of users from using selected airwaves.

In order for major smart metering initiatives (and there are a lot of them in the works) to be effective, utilities … Continue Reading

Spray-on solar ink is coming soon — to paint on roofs and generate energy

[Update: We've clarified this story to make clear that Innovalight is not involved with this project]

Technology to turn light-absorbing materials into nano-size particles to make so-called solar ink that can be sprayed on to roofs to generate energy, is apparently only three to five years from becoming a reality.

At least, that’s according to Brian Korgel, an entrepreneur and chemical engineer at the University of Texas at Austin. Korgel tells LiveScience that … Continue Reading

Salesforce's reseller program brings the middleman back into cloud computing

As the hype builds around cloud computing, questions are growing about how resellers of software — the so-called middlemen — will make money.

By delivering software in the Internet cloud (meaning over thousands and thousands of computer servers), companies like Google can more easily sell their software directly to customers. But Salesforce.com says it’s now bringing resellers back into the game.

The San Francisco company is launching a program for so-called value-added resellers (VARs) to … Continue Reading

Video ad network Tremor snaps up funds from SAP

Tremor Media, the large online video advertising network, announced that it brought in an undisclosed amount from SAP Ventures, SAP’s investment arm, among others, in a strategic round of funding. According to the regulatory filing with the SEC, Tremor recently increased the round by $2 million. It plans to use the money to continue building out its offerings.

The New York company is known for its Acudeo video monetization system. It says the alliance with … Continue Reading

Financial planning site Green Sherpa launches, tries to nip at Mint's heels

Green Sherpa, a personal finance site, launched its paid service publicly today to help consumers manage their cash flow and spending habits.

Like competitor Mint, the Santa Barbara-based company syncs data from different bank accounts to give users a picture of their spending and saving habits. However, to distinguish itself, it puts more focus on letting you share your data with a family member or financial planner. For example, that might help in case you’re … Continue Reading

Roundup: New Sony e-reader, more Web 2.0 widgets, Chinese Social Networks 101

Here’s the latest action:

Sony launches a $400 electronic book, newspaper and magazine reader — The aluminum-bodied Reader Daily Edition, priced at $399, has a 7″ touchscreen and connects to Sony’s e-bookstore through AT&T’s 3G network, or through a local Wi-Fi router. There’ll be no monthly charges for the wireless service. The display can be viewed either vertically or horizontally. Its black-and-white display has 16 levels of grayscale color designed to look more like paper … Continue Reading

Opera Mini is most downloaded app ever, but for how long?

Opera’s browser for mobile handsets gets little recognition in America, but it’s been downloaded from GetJar’s application catalog 25 million times. The current version of the app has been grabbed over 7 million times. (The top countries for Opera Mini usage are, in order, Russia, Indonesia, India, China, Ukraine, and South Africa.)

That makes Opera far and away the most downloaded app at GetJar, which most Americans also probably wouldn’t recognize as the world’s largest … Continue Reading

Yfrog partners with Bit.ly to pump up Twitter photo, video-sharing

To capture more of the growing photo- and video-sharing space on Twitter, ImageShack’s media hosting service Yfrog is partnering with the leading URL shortener Bit.ly this month.

In the next few weeks, Bit.ly will launch a media-sharing service powered by Yfrog while the image-sharing service will make Bit.ly shortened links available through its site.

The two companies are trying to make use of their strengths: Bit.ly dominates the URL shortener market, making up nearly 80 … Continue Reading

TextPlus' group texting — why isn't it more popular?

When Gogii, a startup backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers’ iFund for iPhone apps, launched its textPlus app for the iPhone in June, I was sure it was a no-brainer hit. I said so in a post. TextPlus serves as a downloadable alternative to the built-in Messages application on the iPhone, which sends and receives messages via SMS protocol.

TextPlus looks nearly identical to the Messages client, except it can handle a multi-person text … Continue Reading

GestureTek's video game wall shows where gesture-based games can go

If you want to see what video games might look like in the future, check out these pictures of the Child’s Play activity center in Las Vegas. The games blend a real environment with game images projected onto a wall. Kids can interact with the GestureTek WallFX interactive display system by using gestures.

The environment is courtesy of GestureTek, a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company that makes control systems that use cameras or other sensors to detect … Continue Reading