Oorja nabs $500K for methanol fuel cells

Oorja, maker of methanol fuel cells used to charge batteries for forklifts, pallet loaders and other industrial vehicles, has landed $500,000 in convertible promissory notes, according to a filing with the SEC. Methanol is an alcohol-based fuel that produces zero greenhouse gas emissions. Based in Fremont, Calif. the company markets primarily to large retailers and manufacturers, aviation companies, and distributors, like truckers.
According to the company, many companies in these sectors have taken note of … Continue Reading

Juvaris gets infusion for infectious disease vaccines

Juvaris BioTherapeutics, a Burlingame, Calif.-based developer of vaccines to treat infectious diseases, announced that it raised financing toward its targeted $25 million second round of funding from SV Life Sciences and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The company wouldn’t put a finer point on the amount, mostly because it is open to further investments in the round.

The money will give Juvaris a two-year runway to improve the immune responses caused by its vaccines. Right … Continue Reading

With EPIX MegaPlex, movie studios will offer 3,000 movies on demand

EPIX, a brand new movie channel currently in private beta, is about to begin rollout with Verizon’s broadband TV network in a big challenge to established paid movie channels such as HBO.

On top of that, the company is announcing today that its three member studios — MGM, Lionsgate, and Viacom’s Paramount Pictures — plan to offer EPIX MegaPlex, a video-on-demand service that will let consumers choose from more than 3,000 movies — including recently … Continue Reading

Adobe to help Flash developers distribute their apps

With today’s launch of Flash Platform Services for Distribution (yes, it’s a mouthful), Adobe hopes to become a one-stop shop for web developers. Not only will developers use Adobe technology to build their web applications, they’ll use Adobe services to distribute, promote, monitor, and make money from those apps too.

Adobe’s Flash Platform is already one of the most popular formats for delivering web content — Adrian Ludwig, group manager for the Flash Platform, says … Continue Reading

Omniture and comScore team up to improve web data

Updated

Omniture and comScore just announced that they’re working together on a new product that combines the two companies’ online data and analytics services. They haven’t provided me with any details yet, but the team-up of these two big names could make a real splash.

The product ties together the data that the respective companies are best known for, they say — comScore’s numbers about the audience size for each website, and Omniture’s data about … Continue Reading

The new healthcare: Smart band aids, digital pills, wrist bands

The following story, by Dr. Eric Topol of the non-profit West Wireless Health Institute, is part of a series of posts about cutting-edge areas of innovation. The series is sponsored by Microsoft. Microsoft authors will participate, as will VentureBeat writers and outside experts.

In the past decade, we’ve experienced the digitization of our music and our books; the next logical step is to take our health care digital. My friend Don Jones, who leads Qualcomm’s … Continue Reading

Week in review: HP's DreamScreen computer, Facebook's cashflow, and more

Here’s our rundown of the last week in tech and business news. First up, the five most popular stories VentureBeat published in the last seven days. There was lots of coverage of the TechCrunch50 startup conference, but ultimately HP’s new tablet computer drew the most readers:

The long-awaited DreamScreen tablet computer comes from HP, not Apple — “Hewlett Packard has beaten Apple to the punch in coming up with a beautiful tablet-like computer. The company’s … Continue Reading

Entrepreneur Corner Roundup: Learning from losses and why you shouldn’t trust a VC under 40

Here’s the latest from VentureBeat’s Entrepreneur Corner:

Win when you lose – 10 guidelines for loss analysis – Learning from your losses can yield great dividends, but it’s not easy. Serial entrepreneur Scott Olson offers 10 ways to help you determine what went wrong – and how to avoid it in the future.

You’re a little company, now act like one – Too many start-ups like to project an image of being a fully-fledged business … Continue Reading

New Halo game has a secret game within the game

I’m in the midst of playing Halo 3: ODST right now, but I thought I’d take a break to write about a game within the game.

This title is Microsoft’s big video game for the fall season on the Xbox 360. The company’s spun-out Bungie Studios video game studio put together the game in just 14 months, thanks to the cancellation of the Halo movie and film director Peter Jackson’s aborted Halo games.

But apparently … Continue Reading

How accurate are BAM Investor's stock predictions? Check Twitter

BAM Investor, a company that provides stock market predictions to hedge funds, boasts that it has an “uncanny” record of predicting crucial market shifts. Of course, unless you’re one of the institutional investors buying predictions from BAM, it’s hard to know whether to take those claims seriously. But now the company is making its predictions public — on microblogging service Twitter.

BAM Investor says it will use its Twitter account to tweet all of its … Continue Reading

5 O'Clock Roundup: Palm kills Windows, Yahoo readies ads, last word on the puppet that totally scooped everyone on the TechCrunch50 story

Palm kills its Windows Mobile phones — Palm phones will run the company’s own webOS operating system. “The dusty WinMo platform is direly in need of a makeover,” Colin Gibbs writes on GigaOM. Yet Palm’s promising new Pre has failed to make the leap from cocktail party buzz to high-volume sales. Gibbs’ forecast: Verizon may come to the Pre’s rescue by shipping the phone next year. But don’t count on it. By then the Pre … Continue Reading

Former Adobe CEO, Chizen, joins Voyager Capital

Voyager Capital has brought Bruce Chizen, former chief executive officer of Adobe Systems, on board as a venture partner. A long-time member of the Menlo Park, Calif. firm’s advisory board, he will be focusing his efforts on digital media and software opportunities.

Chizen is a prestigious figure in Silicon Valley, having turned Adobe from just another software company into the choice for default design and drafting software it is today. During his tenure, he tripled … Continue Reading

Cisco recruits Smart Grid players into interoperable consortium

A day after IBM announced its new SAFE software package providing a standard infrastructure platform for utilities and Smart Grid startups, Cisco Systems has announced its own consortium of companies adopting common IP-based communications standards. In doing so, the company hopes to network Smart Grid stakeholders into a completely interoperable ecosystem for sending and receiving energy consumption data.

Cisco has recruited a number of impressive names for this consortium including major meter makers Itron and … Continue Reading

Top 5 green cars to watch — straight from the International Motor Show

The International Motor Show — the largest exhibition of automotive technology in the world — just took place in Frankfurt, Germany, last week, drawing out a staggering number of cars and range of concepts. Unsurprisingly, eco-friendly cars took center stage, with most major car makers showing off exactly how green they can be. Despite the media buzz and surrounding hype, many of these vehicles are only concepts for now. But, to give you a sense … Continue Reading

DEMOfall09: The launching companies

The DEMOfall 09 conference for companies launching new products and technologies is less than a week away, and it just released the full list of presenting companies.

Right now, all we have is the company list. For more information about what these companies do and what they’re launching, you’ll have to wait until Tuesday morning, when the launch presentations begin in San Diego — that’s when we’ll publish a full list of company descriptions, as … Continue Reading

Hands-on with the Sony PSPgo handheld game player (video)

Sony is chasing the Apple iPhone and its AppStore with the new PSPgo handheld game player. But by coming out with a device built for games you’ll want to play for 10 hours or more it should keep the allegiance of hardcore gamers. Sony showed off the PSPgo and many of the games that go with it last night at the Harlot bar in San Francisco, and they look marvelous. (Check out the video shot … Continue Reading

Mint's Aaron Patzer on the future of Mint and Quicken Online

Mint.com chief executive Aaron Patzer was a big winner this week. Intuit (maker of the popular accounting software Quicken) acquired his personal finance startup for $170 million. And he’s also taking over as Intuit’s general manager of personal finance. Plus, Intuit’s Quicken Online service will become “powered by Mint,” meaning it will become a version of Mint with Quicken branding.

After the news came out, I had a chance to interview Patzer and his new … Continue Reading

TechCrunch50 conference founders reunite for 2010, blame it all on the puppets

The popular TechCrunch50 conference has gone from off to back on again for next year.

On Tuesday night, high-rolling Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis told several attendees, plus a reporter on Twitter, plus a video-blogging puppet, that this year’s third annual TechCrunch50 conference, at which several dozen tech startup companies debuted their products onstage Monday and Tuesday, would be the last.

Calacanis and TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington had clearly lost their tempers with each other on … Continue Reading

Electric car maker Fisker nails down plans for 2011 profitability

Fisker Automotive, prime Tesla Motors competitor and maker of the luxury plug-in hybrid vehicle known as the Karma, has announced plans to sell 15,000 cars and apply for government funds in order to hit profitability by 2011. The Southern California company plans to launch production later this year.

In order to turn a profit in such a short time frame, Fisker says it will need to be selling at least 15,000 cars — each with … Continue Reading

Google says "You lie!" to Apple on Google Voice rejection

The word’s finally out.

Google said Apple did reject its Google Voice application for the iPhone because it “duplicated the core dialer functionality”, according to parts of an unredacted letter released by the Federal Communications Commission today.

That’s funny, because Apple just said last month that it “continues to study” the application and hadn’t rejected it. (The parts the FCC released today were originally blacked out in that same announcement last month.)

Furthermore, it seems … Continue Reading