Renewable Funding let's you easily finance your solar panel investment
Renewable Funding, a company that makes it easier for homeowners to finance solar or other renewable funding projects with friendly terms, has raised $12.2 million in a first round of funding.
The Oakland, Calif., based company’s model is noteworthy because it lets you attach your financing to your property tax bill.
So if you sell your house after investing in an expensive solar paneled roof, the financing stays on your home’s property tax bill, even … Continue Reading
What rehab taught me about making bad investments
(Editor’s note: Jeff Bussgang is a General Partner at Flybridge Capital Partners. This column originally appeared on his blog Seeing Both Sides.)
For as long as I can remember, I have been an enthusiastic participant in sports. To be clear, I’m not a great athlete (in fact, I’m the only one of the five Flybridge General Partners that wasn’t a varsity athlete in college). I’m just good enough to participate passionately and aggressively like the … Continue Reading
Offerpal hits more than 160 million consumers with special offers
Offerpal has quietly built a special offer empire. On its two-year anniversary, the company is announcing that it has issued more than 730 billion virtual points to 160 million consumers.
Offerpal helps publishers on Facebook, game platforms, and virtual worlds monetize their apps. Rather than selling to consumers, it gives them an alternative payment system via special offers, which are targeted ads such as surveys or credit card deals. To gain virtual points that they … Continue Reading
AdMob: Dumbphones still draw 60 percent of mobile ads
The latest monthly report from mobile ad network AdMob, which claims to be the world’s largest, contains a sharp reminder for smartphone fans: Non-smartphones, which the mobile industry calls “feature phones,” still distribute 60 percent of the ads in AdMob’s network of more than 15,000 mobile Web sites and applications. Here’s the current Top 10 list by number of handsets.
Apple iPhone
Apple iPod Touch
HTC Dream
Samsung R450
Palm Pre
Motorola RAZR V3
RIM
Data integration company SnapLogic raises another $2.3M
SnapLogic, a startup that helps companies pull in business data, has raised $2.3 million in its first round of institutional funding. It also announced that Gaurav Dhillon, the San Mateo company’s co-founder and chairman, is SnapLogic’s new chief executive.
The company charges subscription fees for its DataFlow technology, and says it can access data from “almost any [software-as-a-service], cloud, or Web computing application,” including sales tools like Salesforce.com and SugarCRM, as well as microblogging service … Continue Reading
Nokia to invade U.S. market — will launch new phone with AT&T
AT&T, the major U.S. phone operator, will launch a Nokia Symbian phone with a Qualcomm chip in the U.S. market, an industry source close to Nokia has told VentureBeat. It’s just the latest in a wide front of attack the giant Finnish company is making on the U.S market.
For years now, the world’s largest phone maker, Nokia, has been in cold decline in the U.S. market. Right now, it seems left with a few … Continue Reading
Zong announces expansion of its mobile payments business
Zong is expanding its mobile payment service in hopes of reaching a larger mass market of people who could find it convenient paying for items in games or other applications with their mobile phones instead of credit cards.
Today, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company is announcing Zong+, a new service that will exist alongside Zong’s original service, which uses cell phone carriers to fulfill mobile payments. By contrast, Zong+ does not use the carriers to … Continue Reading
Nintendo cuts forecasts, plans to introduce new version of DSi handheld
Nintendo cut its annual profit forecast by 23 percent after sales of its Wii console started to lose momentum in the most recent six-month period. But to keep handheld sales strong, Nintendo plans on introducing a new version of its Nintendo DSi handheld in Japan soon.
The Kyoto, Japan-based company still has enviable results in the video game industry, which has been weak for the past six months. But the new forecast will likely be … Continue Reading
Yahoo Music veterans return with a music service for video production
Dave Goldberg and Bob Roback ran Yahoo’s music group for much of this decade. Now, reports MediaMemo blogger Peter Kafka, the two have launched a music service for video production professionals. It’s called Dashbox.
Dashbox sells a subscription service that allows customers — presumed to be video production professionals or hardcore amateurs — access to a library of usable music.
Kafka’s take:
Goldberg (left, in photo) is one of many former digital music executives I’ve … Continue Reading
Q&A with Cisco's Laura Ipsen: Telepresence reduces carbon at Copenhagen
Laura Ipsen is senior vice president and general manager in charge of the Smart Grid for Cisco, and she’ll be speaking at our GreenBeat conference next month, where we’ll be discussing the most disruptive technologies bringing change to the old carbon-based grid system. Below is a Q&A I just had with her over the phone.
The Smart Grid is the more efficient electrical grid that the nation is moving toward, one that relies on more … Continue Reading
Google confirms music search, includes Pandora, imeem, and Rhapsody
Google just officially announced the music search service that was first reported last week, where it’s teaming up with a number of music services to help you find the songs you’re looking for straight from Google search.
Basically, when you enter any music-related queries into Google, it will now show you results from Lala and MySpace (in the latter case using technology from iLike, which MySpace recently acquired). You can enter the name of an … Continue Reading
Facebook's big changes to the platform — key takeaways
Facebook did go through with the big top-down overhaul we reported on earlier. This could have significant implications for the way top-performing games attract new users through the system. (If you want the full live-blogged version, it’s here.)
Facebook is releasing an open graph API that can turn regular pages into Facebook Fan Pages. They can appear in a user’s profile and publish into their stream.
Notifications are going away.
Requests (for example, to join
5 O'Clock Roundup: Yahoo's communication engine, Motorola's idea factory, and more
Motorola turned to employees for new phone ideas — “Why should we trust you?” one employee blurted to co-CEO Sanjay Jha a few minutes into his first meeting with employees to gather new ideas for the company’s mobile phone handsets. Motorola corporate culture had stalled, and Jha wanted to jump-start it. He pressed forward, bringing employees not experienced at product design or product management into the brainstorming process for this year’s lineup of handsets.
Moto’s … Continue Reading
Online game publisher I Got Game to launch first of many Facebook games
I Got Game has built an audience of 15 million users with 14 massively multiplayer games launched since 2005. Now it’s trying its hand at social games.
IGG is launching Fish Isle for Facebook this weekend in a foray into the popular social game market. It will be a test as to whether the company can break into the market that is dominated so far by U.S. social game companies Zynga, Playdom and Playfish.
IGG … Continue Reading
Spy shot of Digg's new voting feature for upcoming items
TechCrunch posted this blurry screenshot that shows a Digg homepage with what seems to be a voting feature added onto the items in the Upcoming section. Digg execs won’t tell TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington what it is, which means Arrington will take an extra 45 minutes to find out once the happy hour starts in Digg’s engineering department. It looks like digg/bury controls to me.
Big changes: Facebook does a top-down overhaul of all communication channels
I’m here at Facebook’s Developer Garage in Palo Alto, where the company is unveiling a roadmap for the platform and potentially some significant changes that could alter the way apps are spread through the social network. I’m live-blogging as we go, so all of this is paraphrased. You can watch a live-stream I’ve embedded below.
As we reported earlier, Facebook is removing notifications and moving requests to the inbox. It’s also pushing developers to get … Continue Reading
Emboldened by momentum, solar industry asserts rights
Solar Power International, the major industry event of the year, is taking place in Anaheim this week and has drawn record attendance — about 25,000 solar entrepreneurs, investors and executives have gathered to showcase new technology, make deals and chart out the future of what may be the fastest growing renewable energy sector in the U.S., if not the world.
Despite the slugging economy, 2009 has been a great launchpad year for many solar companies. … Continue Reading
OEN's Venture Northwest 2009 conference tomorrow
Editor’s note: This post sponsored by Venture Northwest.
The Northwest’s hottest emerging businesses are on the rise at OEN’s Venture Northwest 2009. Even better, now there are two ways to hear about new investment opportunities: in person and via live online broadcast. OEN’s Venture Northwest is an annual conference that draws institutional investors and investment bankers from across the Western U.S. who are interested in emerging Northwest businesses and the region’s growth segments.
OEN Venture … Continue Reading
Twitter-client Brizzly adds Facebook updates
Brizzly, the still-in-beta Twitter client from the team behind Google Reader, now pulls in updates from Facebook. It’s a nice, natural addition to the web-based client, which is a bit more consumer-friendly than Tweetdeck or Hootsuite.
Brizzly shows a stream of Facebook status updates and displays photos in-line, so you don’t have to click through to see pictures of friends. You can also comment and “like” other people’s updates just like you can on Facebook’s … Continue Reading
MySpace and Facebook are officially talking. But it probably doesn't look like this.
So MySpace and Facebook are officially talking about sharing music content through a Facebook Connect integration, according to a story published in The Telegraph this week. The two companies’ paths are diverging — MySpace has reoriented itself around a content strategy, relinquishing its broader ambitions, while Mark Zuckerberg has said that he has always seen Facebook as a technology company first and foremost.
MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta told the Telegraph:
“Facebook is about core … Continue Reading
