On the GreenBeat: Bloom to produce one fuel-cell box a day, Solar spats arise over subsidies
Here are the cleantech stories we’re following on the GreenBeat today:
Fuel cell startup Bloom Energy plans to ramp up production to turn out one Bloom Box per day in the next few months, Reuters reports. The company’s boxes convert natural gas into power for office buildings. Last month, Adobe installed 12 Bloom Boxes on its corporate campus.
Direct-sale solar companies like Akeena and REC Solar are sparring with solar leasing firms like SolarCity… Continue Reading
Return of the deals? Seagate buyout talks heat up
Private equity firms TPG Capital and KKR are reportedly in talks to acquire hard-drive manufacturer Seagate, adding further credibility to rumors that cropped up yesterday that Seagate will be going private for the second time in a decade, according to a report by Bloomberg News.
The private firms will offer Seagate $16 per share, a 26 percent premium over yesterday’s closing price and a 4 percent premium over its current share price, according to the … Continue Reading
Video game investors seek to fund games via film financing methods
Two companies hope to bankroll new video games with a financing method that has been used to underwrite billions of dollars for film productions.
Risa Cohen Productions in Lyon, France, and European Film Bonds in Copenhagen, Denmark have formed a joint venture to finance video game and digital media productions through a technique known as completion bonds. In this process, a game developer signs a development agreement to make a game for a publisher, agreeing … Continue Reading
Analysts: Global tablet sales to reach 19.5M units in 2010
Sales of media tablets worldwide are expected to reach 19.5 million units in 2010 and will explode 181 percent to 54.8 million units in 2011, according to analysts at the research firm Gartner.
The firm considers media tablets to be touchscreen slate devices that run lightweight operating systems like Apple’s iPhone operating system (iOS), Google’s Android, HP’s WebOS, and Nokia’s Meego. They include devices like the Apple iPad and Samsung Galaxy Tab.
Gartner likely chose … Continue Reading
Who can help you get your app discovered? 3 more experts at DiscoveryBeat 2010
We’re excited that DiscoveryBeat 2010 is coming up on Monday. And it’s about time we posted our final speakers.
DiscoveryBeat 2010 is an event focused on the secret recipes for application discovery and monetization. Our newest speakers represent vital parts of the ecosystem, from investors to app creators and experts who cover the space. Due to its success in 2009, the conference has expanded to a full-day event and will be held on October 18… Continue Reading
Gamers spent $2.6B to $2.9B in first half on digital online goods
While sales of video games in physical stores is declining, the amount spent online on digital goods for games is skyrocketing.
Market researcher NPD said today that gamers spent $2.6 billion to $2.9 billion on digital online goods, such as downloadable games on the consoles and social network games on the PC. The new data should ease fears that the video-game business is declining as a whole, while supporting the notion that games are becoming … Continue Reading
New York Times updates iPad app with full content, free until 2011
The New York Times is set to update its Editor’s Choice iPad app — which only offers a select amount of content — with a new version tomorrow that offers much more content from its website, media-and-technology news site PaidContent reports.
The update iPad app will offer content like breaking news, video and other multimedia, as well as deeper access to the New York Time’s archive. Full access to the app will be free for … Continue Reading
Palm lands former Nokia Meego chief Ari Jaaksi, plus Samsung, HP talent
For once Palm is gaining talent since its acquisition by Hewlett-Packard, instead of losing it.
Ari Jaaksi, former head of Nokia’s next-generation Meego platform, is headed to the company, AllThingsD reports. He’ll be joined by new hires from Samsung and within HP.
We have confirmed with Palm that Jaaksi has joined up as senior vice president of WebOS, the company’s mobile operating system. He’s relocating to the Bay Area, starting at the company in November, … Continue Reading
Want to be a better entrepreneur? Put on a suit
One of the joys of the startup world is the freedom from the trappings of the corporate grind. But Amit Chatterjee, CEO and founder of Hara, a provider of environmental and energy management solutions, says there’s actually a benefit to working in a larger company in this entrepreneur thought leader lecture given at Stanford University. Putting in time at a big company – or more than one – gives you valuable experience in strategic and … Continue Reading
Angry Birds set to flutter onto Android phones
Angry Birds broke all of the records on the Apple App Store in the past 10 months, selling more than 7 million copies. Soon, it will be available on phones running Google Android software.
Rovio, the Helsinki-based developer of Angry Birds, is launching the Android version of the game on GetJar, the indie mobile app store.
Peter Vesterbacka, who goes by the title Mighty Eagle at Rovio and runs the U.S. office, said in an … Continue Reading
Kabongo scores $1.1M to make reading fun for kids
Kabongo, a developer of online educational games, has raised $1.1 million of an expected $4 million in equity, according to a filing with the SEC. GoGo Kabongo, a digital game published by the company, helps kids learn to read by developing skills like comprehension, visualization and memory.
Kabongo originally launched its products in schools, but the games are now available online so students can access them from home. Founded in 2008 by a cognitive psychologist, … Continue Reading
Has the venture capital rebound lost its bounce?
Three months ago, things were looking up for startups seeking venture capital. Now it seems that optimism was misplaced, according to the latest Moneytree Report from Pricewaterhouse Coopers and the National Venture Capital Association.
Venture funding has followed an unsteady path to recovery since the economy collapsed at the end of 2008. Venture rounds plummeted at the beginning of 2009, and though they’ve been climbing since then, the climb hasn’t been consistent. Investments fell in … Continue Reading
OtherInbox escalates the battle against annoying newsletters
The last time I wrote about email startup OtherInbox, I was concerned that the service might feel a little redundant following the launch of Gmail’s Priority Inbox. Today, however, the Austin startup announced a new feature that could help it feel like an essential addition to the Priority Inbox, rather than a competitive product — which is what OtherInbox has been saying all along.
The new feature is called “unsubscribe”, and uh, you can probably … Continue Reading
Why GE's green road to Asia goes through Oz
GE announced a smart grid acquisition today, the purchase of Australia-based Opal Software. It’s a move that expands the company’s smart grid software portfolio but also gives GE a pathway into the lucrative Chinese market by having a presence in the Asia-Pacific region.
Opal’s operations in Canberra, Australia’s capital, give GE a platform from which to test products in a developed country with a supportive stance on clean energy while building ties within Asia.
“By … Continue Reading
SeatGeek gets $550K, Wall Street Journal deal to advance online ticket search
Online ticket-search firm SeatGeek has landed $550,000 in funding from a group of investors and signed a distribution deal with the Wall Street Journal, the company confirmed to VentureBeat today.
The news was first reported by TechCrunch.
SeatGeek uses algorithms to match the best deal with a customer’s specific needs for an event. Event-goers can then see thousands of potential pricing and seating options available for concerts and sporting events on the secondary market.
Under … Continue Reading
Seagate: We're private. We're public. We're private — again?
Seagate, a manufacturer of hard drives, announced today that it was approached by a company interested in taking the hard-drive producer private, according to a report by Reuters.
Seagate manufactures hard drives which write data on magnetic platters, a common and cheap storage device made popular by the PC. But with the advent of solid-state drives that store data on memory chips and lack moving parts, old “spin-up” drives like Seagate’s have lost momentum. Solid-state … Continue Reading
Placecast and O2 bring location-based ads to 1M UK residents
Location-based advertising doesn’t seem to have reached a mass audience yet, but things may be changing. San Francisco startup Placecast just announced a deal that should bring its location-based ads to 1 million new users.
Placecast is partnering with O2 (owned by Telefonica) to deliver ads on the mobile carrier’s O2 More service in the United Kingdom. Previously, O2 More delivered offers based on customers’ age, gender, and interests to more than 1 million subscribers. … Continue Reading
Video games continue a steep decline in September, but Halo: Reach blasts into orbit
The U.S. video game industry saw its sales fall 8 percent in September compared to a year ago, according to the latest sales report from market researcher NPD Group. Were it not for the launch of Microsoft’s Halo: Reach game, it would have been a truly dismal launch month for traditional console games.
In this month’s report, NPD changed the way that it releases data about the video game market, keeping some data to itself … Continue Reading
As orders rise, First Solar to double capacity with two new plants
Industry heavyweight First Solar announced plans today to build two new manufacturing plants, raising the company’s annual capacity by almost 500 megawatts and nearly doubling the company’s production capacity from 1.4 gigawatts this year to 2.7 gigawatts in 2012.
The expansion is in direct response to strong demand for its thin-film photovoltaic offerings, the company says. Last week, First Solar announced it had signed agreements with seven customers for a 380-megawatt increase in orders for … Continue Reading
Is Google scared of Facebook? Depends who you ask
Google executives took slightly contradictory stances this afternoon when asked about Facebook. Perhaps the message was: We’re looking at Facebook, but we’re not, you know, worried or anything.
It seems like a problem for Google is that so much of Facebook’s data is hidden from search engines. As Google’s Marissa Mayer (who previously led the company’s search experience but recently switched to the location team) said at the TechCrunch50 conference last month, “There is a … Continue Reading
