Twitter co-founder Stone on tweet location: "Everyone should do this!"

Twitter is about to let you signal the exact location of where you’re tweeting from, inserting your latitude and longitude coordinates to tweets you select to carry such information.

Co-founder Biz Stone, in an interview with VentureBeat today, said that he welcomed other players, such as Facebook, Google and others, to do the same: “Everyone should do this!” He said it adds a valuable layer of context that makes messages more useful and interesting.

“We … Continue Reading

MySpace taps Martha Stewart, Yahoo vet to run ad sales

Wenda Harris Millard, who led ad sales for Martha Stewart, Yahoo, and Ziff Davis, has taken over ad sales at MySpace, according to a blog post by CEO Owen Van Natta. Technically, Millard isn’t becoming a MySpace employee, but she effectively replaces Jeff Berman, whose resignation was announced in the same post. Millard’s company, Media Link, will oversee day-to-day ad sales operations.

Millard is the latest in a series of successful execs Van Natta has … Continue Reading

Steve Jobs sought no-poaching deal with Palm

Apple’s autocratic CEO suggested a possibly illegal deal with the head of Palm two years ago, according to a report by Bloomberg, under which Palm and Apple would stop poaching each other’s employees. The two companies, five miles apart in Silicon Valley, have a history of sniping star staffers from one another.

Jobs allegedly made the proposal in August 2007, shortly after the first iPhones went on sale, to Palm’s CEO at the time, Ed … Continue Reading

Finally, a way to download and backup all that Facebook data

So you’re a loyal Facebook user. You’ve uploaded hundreds of photos, countless status updates, and you’ve friend-ed everyone from pre-school to your current job.

That’s up to five years of your life digitally preserved on the site, so what do you do if your account gets hacked, your computer gets stolen with all your photos on it or you one day want to deactivate?

That’s where SocialSafe comes in. It’s a $2.99 Adobe Air application … Continue Reading

HelioFocus harnesses the power of wind and sun for electricity

HelioFocus is taking solar thermal energy one step further — by adding wind. The system, described in a profile on Greentech Media, is a six-story high dish (not unlike the mirrored dishes used in other solar thermal arrays, only massive), that beams highly-concentrated sunlight into a receiver. That receiver, in turn, heats a batch of air to nearly 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, then shoots it through a gas turbine (the basis of jet engines).

At least, … Continue Reading

Plextronics snaps up $14M for organic lighting, solar cells

Plextronics, a unique company developing organic solar cells and light emitting-diode displays — including television screens so flexible you can bend them — announced today that it’s brought in $14 million in second-round funding. The Pittsburgh company says it will use the money to continue research and spearhead manufacturing operations that will hopefully reach commercial scale.

Organic light emitting-diodes (OLED) include an extremely thin layer of organic compounds that are literally printed onto their surfaces. … Continue Reading

Amazon's Kindle greens reading, new report says

Using e-readers can shrink your carbon footprint, according to a new study out of the Cleantech Group that focuses primarily on the Amazon Kindle. Globally, use of e-readers bought between 2009 and 2012 could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 10.9 million tons over the four years, it says.

Because e-readers are relatively new, with a little over 1 million in the field, it’s impossible to determine their long-term environmental impact. But early analysis indicates that … Continue Reading

EnerNOC nabs $5.5M more from public sale

Leading demand response firm EnerNOC says it has brought in $5.5 million more, extending the $78.1 million sale of common stock initiated early this month. To do so, the Boston-based company sold 213,889 new shares, according to VentureWire. The money is to be used for general working capital and to fuel EnerNOC’s acquisition strategy.

The company, which reported a strong second quarter, brings in revenue through deals with utilities. It signs contracts with both energy … Continue Reading

British utilities lobby against consumer energy monitors — will the same happen in the U.S.?

Consumer-friendly devices used to monitor home energy consumption are only starting to gain traction. In the U.S., companies like Tendril (shown below), Greenbox and EnergyHub have pioneered systems that allow homeowners to easily view how much energy they are using and how much it is costing them. Even larger companies like Google, Microsoft, and Intel are developing energy management dashboards that will allow laymen users to view this data on their computers, phones and television … Continue Reading

Fortinet buys assets from Ethernet co. Woven

Network security company Fortinet has acquired fabric Ethernet provider Woven Systems to boost the efficiency and speed of its offerings, reports PE Hub. Santa Clara, Calif.-based Woven’s claim to fame is that it makes some of the smallest and densest 10-gigabit network switches in the world, competing with Force10 Networks and even Cisco Systems. This switching power will help Fortinet scale its own security provisions, the Sunnyvale, Calif., company says.

Woven Systems raised $35 million … Continue Reading

Entrepreneurs: Beware the curse of the new building

At some point in my career, I began to ponder how/why startups morph from agile, “can do” companies to ones that have lost their edge. I didn’t need to look much further than the “new building” debacle I had a hand in.

One of the things you do right in a startup, is you move from one cheap and cramped building to another as you grow, with desks, cubicles and engineers piled cheek to jowl.… Continue Reading

Open-source textbook co. Flat World goes back to school with 40,000 new customers

Flat World Knowledge, publisher of free, open-source online college textbooks, says it has expanded its customer-base exponentially in the last year from 1,000 students at 30 universities to 40,000 at 400 universities headed into this fall — its busiest time of year. VentureBeat last reported on the company in March when it raised $8 million in a first round of funding — since then it appears it has only gained momentum.

With several startups cropping … Continue Reading

What the heck? World of Warcraft: The Magazine

World of Warcraft, the billion-dollar online world with 11.5 million subscribers is about to get its own magazine.

World of Warcraft: The Magazine will be a subscription only magazine debuting in multiple languages — English, French, German and Spanish — in the U.S. and Europe. It will be published by Future, a British media chain, in cooperation with the game’s maker, Blizzard Entertainment.

The magazine will have no ads and will run about 148 pages. … Continue Reading

Adamas scores $40M, Navy funds to tackle the flu

Adamas Pharmaceuticals, one of Mohr Davidow Ventures‘ key life science investments, has raised $40 million in a fourth round of funding to develop antiviral treatments for the flu virus. Based in Emeryville, Calif., the company also just signed a research agreement with the U.S. Navy to accelerate drug development in this area.

The funding is significant not only due to its size in a lean time for life science companies, but also because the flu … Continue Reading

Roundup: Brocade conviction thrown out, Facebook / iTunes rumor, Tesla founder drops lawsuit

Here’s the latest action:

Brocade back-dating case will go back to court — The conviction of former Brocade Communications Systems CEO Gregory Reyes was overturned on Tuesday by a federal appeals court. Prosecutors had told the jury that Brocade’s finance department was unaware of the bookkeeping errors for Reyes’ shares. This turned out to be untrue. The New York Times has a lengthy recap of the case, the first major conviction of a corporate executive … Continue Reading

The YCombinator list: Bump, Mixpanel, JobPic take off with newest class

YCombinator, the Silicon Valley start-up incubator, launched its ninth class of companies today. Here is the initial list of companies. (Some are in stealth and we’ll report on them later in the year as they launch.):

FlightCaster: Predicts flight delays up to six hours before airline notifications (pictured right). The team of 11 uses algorithms incorporating weather reports, earlier flights and FAA notifications to predict when flights will arrive. The company plans to focus … Continue Reading

Syndiant, maker of pico-projector chips, raises $10.7M

Dallas-based Syndiant, which makes chips that will be used to put video projectors into mobile handsets, has secured a second round of funding totaling $10.7 million.

Syndiant is still ramping up to volume production, but has met the major milestones to which it committed in order to secure funding from the TETF. Its chips will enable light projectors to be built into cellphones, game consoles, cameras, laptops and other consumer electronics.

The Texas Emerging Technology … Continue Reading