WIll Obama's energy speech at Solyndra give it a pre-IPO lift?

President Barack Obama, in Northern California this week to campaign for Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), made a stop Wednesday at cylindrical solar module maker Solyndra, to promote the climate and energy legislation that made its debut in the Senate several weeks ago, and to throw his weight behind the company, which has encountered hurdles on its way to an IPO.

“The foundation of economic growth will always be companies — like Solyndra,” he said in … Continue Reading

TRA raises $18.2M for TV ad measurement and media planning

TRA, a software company that makes it easy to measure the impact of TV ads, has raised $18.2 million in a third round of funding.

About $10 million of the amount came from Intel Capital, which led the round. TRA provides a business intelligence platform. It matches data on the TV viewing habits of 1.5 million households with data on the purchase habits of 54 million homes. It thus comes up with a purchase tracking … Continue Reading

Zuckerberg says the public misunderstands his and Facebook's motivations

In the midst of the privacy uproar over the past month, Facebook’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said the public and media have misconstrued his and the company’s mission in a number of ways. He spoke today at the company’s Palo Alto headquarters where he launched a set of consolidated privacy controls and gave users the ability to turn off third-party applications entirely.

Here’s his take (feel free to judge for yourself):

1) “There is this … Continue Reading

British scientist embeds wireless chip in his hand; uses it to infect computer hardware

If you don’t mind injecting a chip into your body, you can now be a host for a computer virus that can infect hardware around you with a computer virus.

A British scientist says he made himself into the first human computer virus, according to the BBC.

Mark Gasson of the University of Reading in England said he inserted a miniscule radio frequency identification (RFID) chip into his hand. Normally, such chips are used to … Continue Reading

Apple passes Microsoft's market value — for real!

It’s time to load up Google Finance on your screen and leave it running. Shares of Apple on the Nasdaq stock exchange are, just this second, valued at $226.92 billion and climbing. Microsoft, long the most-valued tech company and second only to ExxonMobil on Wall Street, is valued at $226.46 billion and dropping.

Apple has been climbing since February, and Microsoft has been falling since mid-April. It’s likely the two will trade places a few … Continue Reading

Eve Online launches social network inside sci-fi game universe

CCP Games is announcing today that it has created a social networking platform for its Eve Online sci-fi game universe. The platform will let friends talk and share with each other even when they’re not inside the virtual world.

The Eve Gate platform is a web front-end for the game, which has more than 350,000 paying subscribers. Reykjavik, Iceland-based CCP is also launching an expansion section for its massively multiplayer online game. The expansion, dubbed … Continue Reading

Facebook's Zuckerberg promises no more big privacy changes

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg responded today to criticism Facebook has faced recently over privacy issues. Zuckerberg announced a new set of privacy controls. We’ve already outlined the changes in a separate post, but beyond the new options, it’s worth highlighting a broader statement that Zuckerberg made in the announcement:

Finally and perhaps most importantly, I am pleased to say that with these changes the overhaul of Facebook’s privacy model is complete. If you find … Continue Reading

Metaio's augmented reality app locates nearest bus station

Germany-based Metaio, which specializes in augmented-reality technology, has announced a new cooperation with Portland’s transit agency TriMet. TriMet has adopted Metaio’s augmented-reality browser, Junaio, which San Francisco’s BART system already started using last March.

Augmented reality, or AR, works by superimposing virtual data on views of the real world using, for example, a camera-equipped smartphone.

The Junaio browser lets passengers locate nearby stations and bus stops, see the distance to them, and access real-time, live … Continue Reading

Facebook consolidates privacy controls, reduces publicly available information

Facebook released a new, simpler set of privacy controls today and curbed the amount of publicly available information about users. It’s part of the company’s response to increasing criticism from privacy groups and the media over a series of decisions during the past six months that have made user data progressively more public.

Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said engineers and designers had been holed up inside company conference rooms building the controls over the past … Continue Reading

Clickable lets small businesses go beyond Google's search ads

For many small businesses, Google’s AdWords product may be their only online marketing channel. Today at TechCrunch Disrupt, New York City startup Clickable introduced its Master Campaign tool, which the company claims is the first product to allow for campaign management across Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and Microsoft’s Bing.

The product will let businesses create ads and target users across multiple platforms with a simple interface. According to company CEO David Kidder, people don’t have the … Continue Reading

Jack Dorsey uses Square to get hefty donations from Calacanis and a Googler (Video)

Today at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York, Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey demonstrated Square, his latest startup whose service allows users to accept credit-card payments on iPhone and Android devices.

The demo didn’t show us anything that we haven’t seen before from Square, but Dorsey showed how Square could be specifically useful for charitable organizations. He managed to goad TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington into donating $100 to Charity Water — a nonprofit dedicated to bringing … Continue Reading

Wired's iPad app debuts: Five bucks, 527 megabytes, a Mars fly-by

Wired magazine’s iPad app isn’t just the magazine shoved into an e-reader. It has an interactive touchscreen-controlled fly-by of the planet Mars with text pop-outs that tell the story of every craft that’s landed somewhere on the Martian globe. It has videos. It has rich-media ads that aren’t corny. It eats half a gigabyte of memory.

Developers take note: Wired has been working on the app for a year. They authored it for Adobe’s Flash. … Continue Reading

Facebook acquires DEMO startup ShareGrove

Facebook has acquired ShareGrove, a small startup focused on creating private spaces for close friends and family to share content.

The San Mateo, Calif.-based company, which debuted at the DEMO conference last fall, offered a private real-time space where a small group of friends or colleagues could interact. It used Facebook Connect to build an area that was like a hybrid between email, a Facebook wall, and group chat. In some ways, it resembled FriendFeed, … Continue Reading

Zynga lands Yahoo distribution deal for its games

In a prudent move to diversify its Facebook-centric audience, social game maker Zynga this morning announced a distribution deal with Yahoo that will allow game players to play games and update statuses from Yahoo’s homepage, Yahoo Games, Yahoo Messenger, and America’s most popular email service, Yahoo Mail.

To be nitpicky, Yahoo published the announcement, after Zynga CEO Mark Pincus denied it was in the works last week. There’s been no formal announcement on Zynga’s website … Continue Reading

Augmented reality gaming specialist Ogmento raises $3.5M

Ogmento, a New York, N.Y.-based gaming company in the augmented reality scene (a technology that allows users to see virtual data superimposed on views of the real world) has raised $3.5 million dollars in a first round of institutional funding.

The company plans to use the money to build up its bi-coastal team, build its technology, and release a couple of games this year on iPhone and Android phones as well as computers and game … Continue Reading

Gaga and Bieber's managers: MySpace is dead, we make music videos for YouTube

In one of the more intriguing panels to come out of the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, this morning Troy Carter (Lady Gaga’s manager, and Founder & CEO of Coalition Media Group) and Scooter Braun (Justin Bieber’s manager, and Founder & Chair of SB Projects) discussed how the Web was impacting the music industry.

Specifically, they focused on the importance of YouTube, Twitter, and the management of an artist’s online identity.

Carter went as far to say … Continue Reading

Apple, HP and Dell probe suicides at Chinese contract manufacturer Foxconn

Apple, HP and Dell have issued statements that they’re evaluating why there have been multiple suicides at the Chinese manufacturing plant of their production partner Foxconn Technology Group.

Steve Dowling, spokesman for Apple, told Bloomberg that “we’re in direct contact with Foxconn senior management and we believe they are taking this matter very seriously.”

He added, “A team from Apple is independently evaluating the steps they are taking to address these tragic events and we … Continue Reading

Insomniac Games explains why it is expanding beyond Sony exclusive games

All-star developer Insomniac Games has a long history of making outstanding video games as exclusive titles for Sony’s PlayStation consoles. But the company announced that its next title will actually be published by Electronic Arts, not Sony, on multiple platforms. That’s a big blow to Sony, which has considered Insomniac games such as Resistance Fall of Man and Ratchet & Clank to be critical to attracting players to the PlayStation 3. Sony still owns the … Continue Reading

BillShrink takes its money-saving approach into TV

BillShrink, a startup that aims to help users cut through the clutter of complicated bills and payments, is moving into a new market today. It’s launching a service to help users choose the best cable or satellite television plan.

As with BillShrink’s other services, which cover things like cell phones, credit cards, and savings accounts, this often provides users with information that they could already find by visiting a company website. What the Redwood City, … Continue Reading