Thin-film solar maker Ascentool looks to raise $20M

Reacting to the growing popularity of thin-film solar equipment, Milpitas, Calif.-based Ascentool has set out to raise a new round of funding targeted at $20 million, reports Dow Jones VentureWire. The company will use the money to expand its toehold in Shanghai, where it hopes to start manufacturing equipment that will be used to make thin-film solar modules.

So far, the company is fairly stealthy. It previously raised under $5 million from its founders and … Continue Reading

Web 2.0: Liveblogging Intel's CEO

Paul Otellini is onstage at 8:30 am at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco today, in a conversation with host John Battelle.

The conversation is too fast for me to type along with, so I’m going to paraphrase him.

On the stimulus package: He’s not happy with where a lot of the money went. Swimming pools in Biloxi, etc. By contrast, he says, China’s government rolled out a stimulus package that he thinks was … Continue Reading

DailyMotion — the European YouTube — grabs $25M

DailyMotion, the online video company in Europe that resembles YouTube, announced that it brought in a $25 million round of capital led by French Sovereign Fund, a firm nearly half-owned by the French government, and designed to take minority stakes in promising French companies.

Based in Paris, the company has also been backed by Advent Venture Partners, AGF Private Equity, Atlas Venture and Partech International. Drawing about 60 million unique monthly visitors from around the … Continue Reading

Vertos raises $15.5M to decompress spines

Vertos Medical, maker of a non-invasive device for decompressing lumbar spine discs, has brought in $15.5 million in a fourth round of funding from Onset Ventures, CHL Medical Partners, Foundation Medical Partners, Aweida Venture Partners and DFJ Mercury. Based in Aliso Viejo, Calif., the company has now raised $32.5 million to date.… Continue Reading

D.light: Bringing light to the developing world

At first glance, the Kiran solar-powered lamp made by D.light is just plain cute — it would look right at home in an Apple store. But the real news is that it could save people in the developing world a substantial amount of money, and spare the atmosphere millions of tons of carbon dioxide by replacing kerosene lamps in countries where they are still the primary source of light.

The Kiran (the Sanskrit word for … Continue Reading

Technorati: Full-time bloggers are making more money than ever

Most bloggers are hobbyists. But there’s a minority of professional bloggers who are making more money than ever, according to a new installment of Technorati‘s State of the Blogosphere report.

Bloggers can collect ad revenues related to their blogs. But they are also making money by parlaying the popularity of their blogs into speaking engagements, traditional media assignments, and running conferences.

Technorati said some bloggers are even reporting profits that place them squarely in the … Continue Reading

Trion World Network plays executive musical chairs

Trion World Network, a high-flying online gamer publisher that has raised more than $100 million, is in the midst of executive changes.

Trion is making a series of massively multiplayer online games with a new kind of server technology. The Redwood City, Calif.-based company has hired two game veterans and lost two executives as well. The comings and goings are significant, since Trion is being closely watched as one of the biggest bets on new … Continue Reading

Organic Motion captures $7.4 M for motion-sensing tech

Organic Motion is announcing today it has raised $7.4 million in a second round of funding for its motion-capture technology.

The New York-based company makes a studio with a bunch of sensors that can capture the movements of a person without using a traditional motion-capture suit. The studio can track a body in motion in a highly accurate fashion and in real time, and it can be used to create an exact digital clone of … Continue Reading

With the long wait for Windows 7 over, a new kind of waiting begins

Windows users have been waiting for Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system for a long time. Anybody who bought Windows Vista computers in the past three years has been itching to upgrade to something better. And Windows XP users who refused to use Vista have also been Waiting for Godot.

Well, Godot is finally here. I installed Windows 7 Ultimate ($219 version) on an Acer laptop that was new when Windows Vista came out. (See the … Continue Reading

Facebook shows off new homepage for touchscreen phones

Facebook is testing a new mobile homepage designed for touchscreen phones. You can try it here at http://touch.facebook.com. After launching apps for both the iPhone and Google’s Android platform, Facebook still has to work with a number of other systems, including the Palm OS. Clearly, apps have a better overall experience. But this is a welcome upgrade from Facebook’s standard mobile homepage.… Continue Reading

The New York Times gets local with its Bay Area blog

The New York Times unveiled the online side of its local news initiative today with a new blog called The Bay Area.

The Times actually began its Bay Area-aimed publishing effort last Friday, with extra pages in the print edition highlighting local news. If you’re like me, however, you don’t get much news from print papers anymore, so the blog (which is supposed to “complement,” not replicate, the print edition) is our first real peek … Continue Reading

More details: Facebook, Lala turn music tracks into virtual gifts

Perhaps there’s hope for record labels yet. While album sales tumble,  virtual goods are on track to become a $1 billion industry.

Then what better way to solve the ailing music industry’s problems than by turning songs into virtual goods?

Well, there’s one initial problem, virtual goods in games can only be consumed in one place — inside the gaming environment. By contrast, songs can be copied at virtually zero cost and be consumed anywhere.… Continue Reading

5 O'Clock Roundup: Status update fever, Ning's gift currency, Google music service

Google to launch music service – It will be something like Google Finance for music, but with the addition of downloads. Reporter Brad Stone gathered an exceptionally insidery report for the New York Times:

“For example, if you search for Green Day’s song “21 Guns,” a Google page devoted to the song will offer lyrics, photos, tour dates and opportunities to sample the music from streaming services like Lala and iLike, a division of MySpace.… Continue Reading

Web 2.0: MySpace launches music video hub, artists dashboard

MySpace, battling to maintain relevance as it loses market share to Facebook, is refocusing on the area that brought the company early success by launching a music video hub and rich analytics for artists.

The social network unveiled an artists dashboard that gives musicians better analytics to manage their relationship with fans at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco today. Not only that, the company is building a hub for music videos incorporating content … Continue Reading

Web 2.0: Google to roll out social search, with results from friends

The big elephant in the worlds of social and real-time search certainly made itself heard today.

Google’s rolling out a social search product in Labs within the next few weeks that will show you results connected to your social circle. At the bottom of the page, you’ll see results, blog posts, photos or reviews created by friends. For example, a “New Zealand” search page will turn up travel reviews written or photos taken by friends … Continue Reading

Facebook dives deeper into virtual goods with music, sports

Facebook’s making a deeper foray into the world of virtual goods by adding songs and sports merchandise to its gift store. The company’s partnering with Lala.com to offer tracks for about 10 cents each. They’re free of digital rights management (DRM) and you can download them. Users have to pay for them with Facebook’s virtual currency called Credits, which can be purchased online with a credit card.

Facebook’s also launching a partnership with the NBA … Continue Reading

Bing, you're not alone: Google adds tweets to search too

Bing got much of the glory this morning at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, when it announced that it was incorporating Twitter’s public stream into its results. But a few hours later, Google crept in with its own announcement.

Google, it turns out, is also pulling Twitter’s public data into its search engine. The company declined to release financial terms of the deal. Google had no prototypes to demo, but here’s what Marissa … Continue Reading

Deep data dive: Swine flu prompts big sales of hand sanitizers

The big hit for the holidays is going to be, uh, hand sanitizers. Panjiva did a deep dive on its global shipping data and found that the swine flu’s spread has prompted a big rise in hand sanitizer shipments, which more than doubled in the third quarter compared to a year ago.

The data shows there were 128 waterborne hand sanitizer shipments to the U.S., compared to 56 shipments in the third quarter of 2008. … Continue Reading