GE throws its weight behind electric car adoption with Better Place partnership

GE will team up with electric vehicle (EV) services startup Better Place to roll out a host of financing and technology initiatives aimed at encouraging widespread adoption of electric vehicles, the two companies announced today.

The key components of the deal: GE’s car-charging station, the WattStation (pictured below), will be made compatible with Better Place’s global network of charging stations and services. GE will also lend its financial heft to help finance the purchase of … Continue Reading

RightScale grabs another $25M for web-based cloud management

Cloud management software provider RightScale has raised another $25 million in its third round of funding.

Cloud storage and computing has become increasingly popular because it provides businesses with a low-impact, pay-as-you-go model that offers a lot of computing power and storage without high maintenance and installation costs. This third round of funding is just another example of how much interest there is in cloud processing, said RightScale chief executive Michael Crandell.

“The funding is … Continue Reading

Zynga CTO: We turn on 1,000 new servers a week for FarmVille and other games

Each day, Facebook game developer and FarmVille creator Zynga delivers about a petabyte of data — that’s 1 million gigabytes, or more than six Libraries of Congress — for its array of social games, chief technology officer Cadir Lee said at the Oracle OpenWorld  2010 conference in San Francisco today.

The social-gaming juggernaut, responsible for some of the most popular social games on Facebook like FarmVille and Mafia Wars, is responsible for handling a deluge … Continue Reading

Femtocell maker Ubiquisys lands $5M to improve cellular reception

Ubiquisys, a company known for its femtocell devices which extend 3G cellular networks using existing Internet connections, announced today that it has raised another $5 million in funding.

The devices reduce cellular connectivity headaches for customers in areas with low reception, and also offer carriers a way to offload data from their networks. Ubiquisys primarily licenses its Femto-Engine software to cellular operators and device manufacturers to bring out femtocell devices of their own. One key … Continue Reading

Apple expected to build 3M Verizon-ready CDMA iPhones in December

A week can’t go by without another Verizon-iPhone rumor, fueled by dissatisfaction with Apple’s exclusive deal with AT&T and that carrier’s strained network in media-saturated big cities like New York and San Francisco. Now there’s word that Apple is gearing up to build its first 3 million CDMA iPhones, which would work on Verizon’s network, this December, according to Jeffrey Fidacaro with Susquehanna Financial Group.

Fidacaro sent out a note to investors yesterday based on … Continue Reading

Super angel Dave McClure admits he was at secret dinner, denies collusion

Dave McClure, a “super angel” and founder of the seed stage startup fund 500 Startups, has writtten a profanity-ladened post in which he admits he was at a secret dinner that Techcrunch editor Mike Arrington barged in on. But McClure denied Arrington’s allegations that there was any collusion among the angels to hold startup valuations down.

“Unfortunately I probably have more balls than sense, but it drives me f****** [we cleaned up his language a … Continue Reading

On the GreenBeat: GE partners with Better Place, smart grid market poised to hit $9.6 billion by 2015

GE and electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure startup Better Place announced a partnership this morning. The collaboration will build compatibility between the products of the two companies, finance battery purchases abroad and push for greater EV adoption. The companies will help finance the purchase of 10,000 EV batteries in Israel and Denmark and will make GE’s WattStation charging stations (pictured) compatible with Better Place’s network of EV infrastructure. [Update: Check out our in-depth look at … Continue Reading

RockYou spreads "Deal of the Day" to other Facebook game makers

RockYou, the maker of social games and ad services for social media, said today it is working with other game developers to integrate its successful social marketing program within their Facebook games.

The Redwood City, Calif.-based company has been integrating the Deal of the Day into its own games such as Zoo World since March. In the deal, users encounter a screen in the midst of a game where they have to decide whether to … Continue Reading

Salesforce: Yes, Chatter really does improve productivity

Salesforce.com is upgrading Chatter, the Facebook-style social network for businesses that it made fully available in June.

Vice President of Product Marketing Sean Whiteley said Chatter has already become Salesforce’s “most successful product release ever.” More than 20,000 companies are using it. And some of them are buying Chatter on its own, rather than as a free add-on for Salesforce’s sales and customer service tools — for example, Whiteley said Reed Exhibitions has 1,000 Chatter-only … Continue Reading

Huddler wants to turn your online forum into a moneymaker

Online forums and communities present a largely untapped opportunity for making money — at least according to Dan Gill, cofounder and chief executive of Huddler.

The San Francisco startup is officially launching today. It’s one of those weird launches where the company has actually been working with customers for more than a year, and is only now getting around to telling the media that it exists. Gill said he wanted to make sure the technology … Continue Reading

Otoy scores important deals for its server gaming technology

Otoy, the maker of a server-based gaming technology which allows play over the Internet, is announcing today that it has broadened its reach to more platforms and has signed up a new virtual-world customer, the maker of Blue Mars.

Jules Urbach (pictured), chief executive of Los Angeles-based Otoy, said today that his company is now allied with both Nvidia and Intel in addition to its previous alliance with Advanced Micro Devices. The alliances will help … Continue Reading

TechCrunch editor walks into meeting of "super angels" engaged in alleged collusion

Mike Arrington, editor of TechCrunch, sure knows how to ruin a party. He evidently walked in on a meeting of prominent Silicon Valley investors and discovered they were allegedly colluding to keep a lid on startup valuations, cartel style.

In a blog post, Arrington said that he was tipped off about a secret meeting of “super angels,” or well-heeled investors who are competing with the best venture capitalists to find early stage investments in hot … Continue Reading

OtherInbox raises another $1.5M to sort your email

OtherInbox, an Austin startup trying to defeat email overload, has raised $1.5 million in new funding from investors Dave McClure (who recently unveiled his 500 Startups venture fund), Naval Ravikant, law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, and others.

The company was founded by Joshua Baer, who’s also one of the managing directors at Austin startup incubator Capital Factory. It tries to make your Yahoo or Gmail inbox more manageable by prioritizing messages and by … Continue Reading

Mark Zuckerberg navigates the tightrope between gamers and non-gamers (video)

Facebook had a very Solomon-like dilemma with its social network. Should it cater to gamers, who account for a huge portion of the traffic and revenue for the company’s social network? Or should it protect non-gamers from being spammed by all of the game communications on its network?

Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook, explained tonight in an event for game developers at the company’s headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., that the company tried to … Continue Reading

Developers question Facebook execs on game platform changes (video)

There’s a lot at stake in the changes that Facebook made to its platform tonight, which will affect how users experience games on the world’s biggest social network.

Developers have lost millions of users since Facebook cut back on viral communications on the network in the name of reducing spam. Today, Facebook sought to appease developers by enhancing its platform to be more game friendly. The top Facebook brass talked to a group of game … Continue Reading

Nexant raises $43M for cleantech consulting

Nexant, a clean-energy consulting firm, has closed a $43 million round of funding, the company announced today. The round was led by Oak Investment Partners and Intel Capital with participation from TeleSoft and Beacon. The San Francisco-based startup raised the first $32 million of the round in July.

Nexant plans to use this latest funding for product growth and expansion. Founded in 2000, the company has completed projects for clients like electric utilities and grid … Continue Reading