Facebook bans offer providers Gambit and Tatto Media due to questionable ads
Facebook has banned offer providers Gambit and Tatto Media from providing offers in games and apps on the social network.
The development is one of the results of the recent scandal around the quality of offers in social games and apps. Some of the offers have been tainted as scams because they don’t tell consumers about hidden obligations or fees. Earlier today, Offerpal said that it was issuing a set of standards for its advertisers … Continue Reading
Battery company R2EV and Fuel 2.0: Changing the electric vehicle paradigm?
If you’ve followed coverage on R2EV, you already know that some are skeptical about the company’s battery, designed to be swapped out in a network of “Greenbox” facilities nation wide.
Perceived problems with interoperability, improper installation or short circuiting and decreasing life cycle of a fleet of batteries have all been cited as reasons to stick with a more conventional battery pack. Talking to chief executive Alex Livingston, though, one gets the impression he’s already … Continue Reading
GreenBeat: Live-blogging Nobel Prize winner Al Gore
Straight from VentureBeat’s GreenBeat 2009 event, we bring you former vice president and Nobel Prize winner Al Gore. I’ll be live-blogging this session — so it won’t be perfect or word-for-word, but it will be fast! We’ll pull out the gems as soon as we can.
Laura Ipsen, Cisco Systems’ smart grid guru is introducing Al Gore right now, highlighting his many achievements and awards. He’s been a mentor for Cisco in linking climate change … Continue Reading
eBay completes sale of Skype at $2.75 billion valuation
eBay said it has completed the sale of a 70-percent stake in Skype communications service for an amount that values the company at $2.75 billion.
The buyer is an investor consortium led by Silver Lake Partners, the private equity buyout firm. It includes participation from Joltid, the company founded by Skype’s founders. Other members include Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and venture firm Andreessen Horowitz.
eBay is getting $1.9 billion in cash and a note … Continue Reading
Seesmic jumps on Twitter's new location feature with map previews
Seesmic, the Twitter client that was the first to incorporate lists, has now jumped on the social network’s new location-tagged tweets. You can roll over tweets that have a special marker to show a map of where they are, without ever leaving the client.
Twitter finally rolled out its location application programming interface earlier today. It lets you pair a tweet with data about where you are. It could be extremely valuable for real-time data … Continue Reading
Fluidigm raises another $7.5M for stem-cell analysis chips
Fluidigm, which makes chips that for genetics lab, has raised $7.5 million in new equity, according to VentureWire. That’s part of a new $18.5 million round that the South San Francisco, Calif. company is raising. The funding comes from existing backers Alloy Ventures, EDB Investments, EuclidSR partners, Fidelity Contrafund, Interwest Partners, Lehman Brothers Venture Capital Group, Smallcap World Fund, and Versant Ventures, as well as an undisclosed new investor.
Fluidigm tried to have an IPO … Continue Reading
Politics and policy needed for the smart grid. Soon.
At GreenBeat 2009′s Politics and Policy session, the prevalent theme was the need for a simple, efficient legislation and regulation package for the U.S. power system.
Robert Gee of Gee Strategies went so far as to say, “Before anything is passed into law we need to get it past a panel of sixth graders, see if they can understand it. That is how simple we need to be going here.”
Unfortunately, Rick Counihan of Enernoc … Continue Reading
GreenBeat: Cisco has a blank check for Smart Grid, but what will it do with it?
Cisco Systems put no limit on its budget for Smart Grid development, the company’s grid guru Laura Ipsen told the audience at GreenBeat 2009 — albeit quoting her boss John Chambers.
The question now is what Cisco (a GreenBeat 2009 sponsor) will use that money for — currently, it looks like the company is racing to get in on every nook and cranny of the Smart Grid business, from hardware to IP networks to cybersecurity … Continue Reading
Business intelligence company Manthan Systems raises second round
Manthan Systems, which provides business intelligence and analytics software to retailers, has a raised a second funding round of “up to” $15 million. The round was led by Fidelity International, with participation from existing investors IDG Ventures India and DFJ ePlanet Ventures. The company is based in Bangalore, India.… Continue Reading
MyFit raises $1M to help parents with college applications
MyFit, a new services that helps parents figure out how to get their children into the college of their choice, has raised $1 million in a first round of funding, led by New Enterprise Associates. The Mountain View, Calif. company says it looks at data about graduates from more than 3,500 higher learning institutions, and uses that information to tell users where they should focus their academic and extracurricular energy to get into a specific … Continue Reading
Offerpal Media sets standards to lock out scam offers
[Updated with interview]
Burned by a scandal in its offer business over inappropriate promos, Offerpal Media is moving to set standards that forbid offers that are misleading, deceptive or otherwise objectionable.
The action is the first move the company has made since it brought in a new chief executive, George Garrick, a couple of weeks ago. The CEO transition happened in the midst of a debate over scam offers that were allegedly duping users into … Continue Reading
GreenBeat: Steve Westly spreads the Smart Grid gospel, says innovation should fly fast and loose
Steve Westly, former California state controller and now founder of the venture firm Westly Group, says he got interested in the Smart Grid and cleantech in order to save the world and make massive amounts of money in the process.
During a talk designed to counter Vinod Khosla’s Smart Grid skepticism in the session previous at GreenBeat 2009, he recalled putting solar panels up on president Jimmy Carter’s White House, and his heartbreak when president … Continue Reading
GreenBeat: Khosla warns against Smart Grid hype, pushes storage
“I’m not skeptical that the Smart Grid should exist,” famed Silicon Valley investor Vinod Khosla said, kicking off his conversation with VentureBeat editor Matt Marshall at VentureBeat’s GreenBeat 09 event today. “I wouldn’t be here if I was.” Khosla has been unofficially dubbed a Smart Grid skeptic because his venture firm, Khosla Ventures, has yet to make a significant investment in the space. He says he has been avidly scouting for a Smart Grid startup … Continue Reading
Twitter finally enables geotagged tweets with new location API
Twitter finally rolled out its new application programming interface for tagging tweets with your location.
It won’t appear on Twitter.com, but it will be enabled for location-based services like Birdfeed, Seesmic Web, Foursquare, Gowalla, Twidroid and Twittelator Pro. Tweetie already switched on some geotagging functionality earlier this year, so you can see nearby tweets.
This is probably the most significant update Twitter has released in the last half-year and it’s hard to say what outside … Continue Reading
Foursquare makes global push: 50 new cities
Popular location-sharing game Foursquare has just gone global with the announcement of 50 new cities worldwide, doubling the service’s previous coverage. The company says it chose the cities based on feedback from users requesting the service.
The new cities take the service across six continents, but it’s not so long since it was a strictly a tech-insider phenomenon in the US. As cofounder Dennis Crowley (pictured below) told me last week “The goal is to … Continue Reading
Textbook rental site Chegg.com raises another $57m
Popular textbook rental site Chegg.com continues to raise tremendous amounts of money — today it announced a $57 million fourth round, as well as $55 million in credit and debt.
The Santa Clara, Calif. company says it will use the extra $112 million (!) to meet the demands of its rapid growth. Chegg applies a Netflix-like model (where you check out the books you need at the beginning of the semester then send it back … Continue Reading
GreenBeat: Locust, CPower tie for grand prize in Innovation Competition
The winners of the inaugural GreenBeat Innovation Competition — a survey of the most promising technologies and companies working toward a cleaner, more efficient grid — were just announced following four-minute presentations from the top eleven finalists (“eleven is the new ten”). Locust Storage, while launched its innovative storage system today, and demand response provider CPower declared victory, winning a slot at the DEMO Spring conference in 2010.
The winner were selected by a panel … Continue Reading
New targeting on Pages gives Facebook leg up over Twitter for marketers
Facebook unveiled what could become a pretty powerful marketing tool for large multinationals and brands last night. You can now target specific locations and languages when you send out updates on a Facebook page. A brand like McDonald’s could use the new feature to send out coupons to Japanese followers, for example.
Why is this important? “Drip marketing”, or social media marketing — whatever term you want to use for it — has become increasingly … Continue Reading
GreenBeat: Where will the VC money flow on the Smart Grid?
Venture capitalists and investment bankers are fascinated by the potential of making money from Smart Grid investments and initial public offerings in the coming year, judging from the latest panel at VentureBeat’s GreenBeat 09 event today.
In spite of a difficult IPO market and the recession’s drag on the industry, Smart Grid companies are starting to get attention from both VCs and acquisitive technology giants, according to the speakers on the Follow the Money panel, … Continue Reading
GreenBeat: At the international level, Smart Grid is about engagement (and standards)
During GreenBeat 2009′s International breakout panel, examining Smart Grid development on the global level, the prevalent theme was consumer engagement: in a regulated environment, like the U.K., how do you engage the consumer? How do you get them to change their behavior?
According to Ray Bell of WiMax for Smart Grid company Grid Net, it’s really about service. Cleaner energy, he claims, will become a marketable service because, even though it costs more, people will … Continue Reading
