DEMO: Basically one big tech party (photo gallery)

The big draws at DEMOfall 09, the emerging technology conference co-produced by VentureBeat, were of course the 70 companies launching or previewing new products. But now that we’ve pointed out the best of the bunch, it’s important to note that DEMO isn’t just about the presentations. It’s also about hallway conversations, swapped business cards, and oh yeah, dancing.

So after covering 56 launching companies and 14 Alpha Pitches, here are some pictures of the rest… Continue Reading

VentureBeat's policy on embargoes: We'll take 'em

In the news business, there’s something called an embargo. That’s when a company, usually through a public relations person, gets an agreement from a writer not to publish a story until a certain time. The writer is then allowed access to people and information to craft the story prior to the time the embargo lifts. A writer might spend all day Monday writing a story that’s embargoed until Tuesday morning, when more people will read … Continue Reading

Navy taps Solazyme to make jet fuel out of algae

The Pentagon announced today that it has chosen San Francisco-based biofuel company Solazyme to supply the Navy with jet fuel made entirely of algae derivatives. This isn’t the first time it has worked with the military, having already had its research and development funded by the Navy in exchange for 20,000 gallons of fuel for its ships.

The oils produced by Solazyme’s algae act as a full replacement for petroleum-based fuel, not simply an additive. … Continue Reading

Chevron chips in $25M for biofuel company LS9

LS9, perhaps the company to watch synthesizing biofuels and chemicals from organic feedstocks like switchgrass, has brought in $25 million in a new round of capital from Chevron Technology Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Flagship Ventures.

This is the second big win, the South San Francisco company has had recently. In May, it also landed a deal with corporate giant Procter & Gamble to make consumer chemicals from renewable and sustainable sources. Right … Continue Reading

SabSe continues VoIP roll-up with Mobivox buy

SabSe Technologies, the voice-over-internet-protocol service provider that bought competitor Jaxtr three months ago, has acquired voice-activation calling service company Mobivox — continuing a trend of consolidation that has changed the VoIP landscape over the last year. The Mountain View, Calif., company says its new buy will allow it to quickly deploy voice-activation and voice-to-text features to its current users worldwide. Mobivox also allows users to access contacts, initiate conferences and transfer calls all via voice.… Continue Reading

Routesy, a public transit iPhone app, makes comeback

Things seem to have turned around for Routesy, a public transit iPhone application that disappeared from Apple’s App Store a few months ago. After returning to the App Store in August, it’s now featured in the DataSF App Showcase, a site that highlights web and mobile apps doing cool things with San Francisco data.

This was one of the first apps that I downloaded for my iPhone, and I used it constantly to find out … Continue Reading

MMS vs 12seconds — videomail wars begin

AT&T supposedly turned on MMS service for iPhones today, enabling video message transmissions. If you’ve got an iPhone with an unlimited data plan, though, there are already apps that remove the need for MMS. 12seconds’ 12mail is my favorite because of its Twitter-like hook: Instead of 140 characters, you get 12 seconds of video limit.

Why 12 seconds? Co-founder Sol Lipman says they started with 10 seconds, but it was always a couple of seconds … Continue Reading

Is Facebook speeding up while Twitter slows?

On the heels of Twitter’s latest fundraising round valuing it at a reported $1 billion, data suggests the site’s growth may be slowing. Twitter.com’s marketshare of visits peaked in June then declined into this month, according to analytics service HitWise.

The deceleration would also come as Facebook’s user growth speeds up — the rival saw 300 million users this month, accumulating 50 million users in two months’ time. After copying Twitter features like the site’s … Continue Reading

AT&T turns on iPhone multimedia messaging: Should I be excited or scared?

AT&T activated multimedia messaging (MMS) for iPhone owners in the United States today, as planned. This should silence some complaints about how the carrier is lagging behind iPhone carriers elsewhere, but could also lead to howls of frustration if it puts an even greater strain on AT&T’s much-criticized network.

If you want to turn on MMS, which allows you to send photos, videos, and audios through your text messaging application, see the instructions here. I’ve … Continue Reading

Best of DEMO — VentureBeat's picks for the 10 best companies

VentureBeat’s staff has chosen our top 10 picks of DEMOfall 09, the emerging technology conference that we co-produced.

These picks are separate from the official DEMOgod award winners announced by DEMO. With 56 DEMO presenters and 14 DEMO Alpha Pitch companies unveiling their plans at the conference in San Diego this week, there are lot to sift through, so here are the ones that stood out from the crowd. We’ve ranked them in order of … Continue Reading

IBM opens a Linux innovation center in Kazakhstan

IBM keeps pushing into emerging markets in an effort to encourage startups and technology adoption around the world. Today, it is announcing it has opened a Linux innovation center in Kazakhstan, the nation made famous by Sacha Baron Cohen’s comedy movie, Borat.

IBM is betting that places like Kazakhstan will eventually see growth as vendors spread their wares around the globe and local businesses move onto the Internet. Linux is a perfect fit as far … Continue Reading

Twitter confirms its latest round; no word on size

Twitter confirmed its latest round of funding, reportedly valuing it at $1 billion. The new investors are Insight Venture Partners and T. Rowe Price. Institutional Venture Partners, Spark Capital and Benchmark Capital raised their existing investments in the microblogging network.

The company didn’t release any info about how much it raised. It’s fairly standard for start-ups not to talk about their valuations, however many do make note of the round size. The company raised as … Continue Reading

Crowdsourcing company Fluther gets some big-name backers

Fluther, a startup that crowdsources answers for user questions, just raised $600,000 from some of Silicon Valley’s better-known investors.

They include Netscape founder Marc Andreessen of newly-formed venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, Ron Conway (who has invested in dozens of start-ups in Fluther’s space), Dave McClure and Naval Ravikant. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone is also an advisor.

Although there are already many crowdsourced question-and-answer sites, including Yahoo Answers, WikiAnswers and newer variants like Hunch and … Continue Reading

Trendsmap gives us a look at Twitter's location API possibilities

While Twitter gears up to release a way to let users share their exact coordinates every time they tweet, Australian developers have given us a hint of such a service’s possibilities with Trendsmap.

Developers at Melbourne, Australia-based Stateless Systems have taken latitudinal and longitudinal data from users’ profiles and compiled their tweets into word clouds that rest above a map. (Stateless says they’ll start incorporating the new geodata from Twitter’s upcoming application programming interface for … Continue Reading

Spigit lets companies find good ideas in Microsoft Sharepoint

A company called Spigit has built sites for more than 2 million businesses to collect ideas from employees and customers. Now it says it’s hoping to reach an even larger audience by folding its idea collection tools into Microsoft Sharepoint, the software giant’s popular technology for business collaboration.

Microsoft says Sharepoint passed $1 billion in sales last year, and it has called Sharepoint its fastest-growing product ever. Still, Sharepoint shortcomings, says Spigit founder and chief … Continue Reading

Gov. rolls out preliminary Smart Grid standards

The Department of Commerce rolled out a list of 77 initial standards (PDF) meant to make Smart Grid technologies more interoperable. One of the biggest challenges confronting the move toward a cleaner, more efficient electrical grid in the U.S. is that all of the devices, meters, wireless networks and software platforms created by an endless array of companies need to be able to communicate seamlessly with one another. This list is the first major attempt … Continue Reading

5 O'Clock Roundup: Gmail push for dummies, 3Com for smarties, Trollim for trolls

Bing’s share of searches jumped 18 percent in March — Hitwise puts Microsoft’s Bing at a distant, but narrowing third place among decision-and/or-search engines. Google slipped from 71 to 70 percent of all U.S.searches conducted in the four weeks ending Aug. 29, 2009. Yahoo! Search, Bing and Ask.com received 17 percent, 10 percent and 2 percent, respectively.

How much will Gmail’s push feature eat your iPhone’s battery? — ReadWriteWeb writer Frederic did the fact-hunting for … Continue Reading

DEMO: ShareGrove extends Facebook to conversations

Some criticize social networks like Twitter and Facebook for promoting superficiality over depth. When users post hundreds of miniature updates about their lives, what suffers are conversations, say the founders of ShareGrove, a San Mateo-based startup that presented at this week’s DEMOFall 09 conference.

While one of Facebook’s biggest aims is to strengthen the “weak ties” in a person’s social network, like distant acquaintances or friends from the past, most of a user’s online interactions … Continue Reading