Tesla begins assembling beta models for Model S electric cars

Electric car manufacturer Tesla Motors has begun assembling beta models of its second electric car, the lower-priced Model S sedan (pictured right), the company said.

“We have started assembling the Beta vehicles,” Tesla Motors’ Model S Program Director Jerome Guillen said. ”While most Betas are intended for testing to prepare for production, a few are earmarked for visits to North American Tesla stores later this year.”

The Model S sedan (shown in an image above) … Continue Reading

General Motors invests $7.5M in rooftop-solar company Sunlogics

Car manufacturer General Motors has made a $7.5 million strategic investment in solar-panel provider Sunlogics, which will install solar panels on several GM facilities.

Sunlogics specializes in developing and installing rooftop solar panels that generate small amounts of electricity — enough to charge an electric car, for example. That’s useful to electric car manufacturing companies because it helps emphasize the clean-energy benefits of driving an electric car or hybrid electric car, like GM’s Chevy Volt.… Continue Reading

Learning from LulzSec: For hackers, automated attacks reign

If you have a website serving a small community, you’re safe from cyberattacks, right?

Wrong. We are all at risk, according to the fittingly titled study, WAAR, or the Web Application Attack Report from data security company Imperva.

The first half of 2011 was big for web-based attacks. Breaches such as the Sony Playstation Network, which shut the network down for nearly a month this spring, made headlines for weeks. But Imperva believes focusing on … Continue Reading

Trash-to-fuel company Enerkem raises another $30M

Enerkem, a company that specializes in converting unusable waste into ethanol and other chemicals, announced today that it has raised $30 million in an extension of its most recent funding round.

Enerkem converts household garbage and leftover debris from demolition and utility poles into chemicals that appear in household objects. That includes ethanol and acetates. The company raised $60 million last month.

“Enerkem’s one of the strictly fuel-focused companies getting funding because they are flexible … Continue Reading

Android gets the OS headlines, but the iPhone is the most popular smartphone

Google’s Android OS is (not surprisingly) still on top when it comes to smartphone market share in the U.S., according to a new Nielson report.

The report says Android now has 39 percent of the smartphone-OS market, with Apple’s iOS at 28 percent and RIM’s BlackBerry at 20 percent. Windows Mobile/Windows Phone 7 holds 9 percent, while webOS and Symbian both have 2 percent.

While Android dominates the number of units sold in the U.S., … Continue Reading

BBC launches iPad-only global iPlayer service in 11 countries

BBC Worldwide launched an iPad app today for its iPlayer streaming media service in 11 Western European countries, with Canada, Australia and the U.S. to follow later this year.

The global iPlayer service, which will offer BBC shows like Doctor Who and Top Gear on demand, is intended as a one-year pilot aimed at generating new income for the BBC , which first announced its intentions for a paid, iPad-only global iPlayer in December 2010.… Continue Reading

Chartbeat maker launches new traffic analytics for news sites

I already spend a good chunk of my time obsessively checking traffic analytics for VentureBeat through Chartbeat. It gives us a breakdown of where our readers are coming from and what stories are popular. Luckily there’s a least upper limit to my neuroticism, because Chartbeat only tracks the top stories on VentureBeat.

Not any more. The developers behind Chartbeat announced today that it is launching Newsbeat, a more in-depth traffic analytics tool geared toward news … Continue Reading

Twitter is pushing ads to the top of the stream

Twitter has announced a new plan to get more eyeballs for its Promoted Tweets ad products. Now, the ads will appear “at or near the top” of the user’s timeline, not just in search results.

For in-stream promoted tweets, only users who follow the account that sends the promoted tweet will see the ad, and the ads can be hidden from the stream on a one-by-one basis. While there won’t be a setting to disable … Continue Reading

Google’s speed obsession continues with limited trials of Page Speed Service

Google is rolling out its new Page Speed Service, a way for webmasters to make their sites faster.

The product, which rewrites pages so they’re optimized for performance, is currently being given to a limited number of site owners free of charge. When Page Speed Service launches publicly, it will be competitively priced, according to Google. However, details about pricing aren’t currently available.

“Now you don’t have to worry about concatenating CSS, compressing images, caching, … Continue Reading

Sony loses money due to quake and PlayStation Network outage

Sony reported a $199 million loss in the first fiscal quarter ended June 30 because of problems including the Japan earthquake and the hacking of the PlayStation Network.

Like Nintendo last night, Sony also cut its profit forecast. Sony said it lost 15.5 billion yen ($199 million), compared with a profit of 25.7 billion a year earlier. The announcement shows how quickly things can change for dominant companies in industries with rapid changes and unforeseeable … Continue Reading

Should Apple buy Barnes & Noble? (Poll)

Apple may be interested in purchasing the book giant Barnes & Noble, a flimsy source tells the mobile site Boy Genius Report.

The news itself seems ridiculous and is most likely false, but it’s an interesting thought experiment. Let’s take a look at the wisdom and stupidity of Apple purchasing B&N, and feel free to weigh in with your own thoughts in our poll below.

Apple has $76.2 billion in cash, the company reported last … Continue Reading

LightSquared pays Sprint $9B to build its new 4G LTE network

Wireless carrier Sprint announced today it has struck a 15-year agreement with upcoming 4G wireless provider LightSquared, which could allow Sprint to move on from WiMax 4G to more-promsing 4G LTE technology.

The news is good for Sprint, which reported an $847 million second quarter loss. The LightSquared deal would give Sprint $9 billion in cash and credits over 11 years to build a 4G LTE network that LightSquared can sell wholesale and Sprint can … Continue Reading

Logitech CEO steps down after weak Q1, Google TV-powered Revue now $99

Logitech CEO Gerald Quindlen announced that he’s stepping down from his role at the company this morning, following a sluggish first quarter earnings report.

Slow sales of Logitech’s Google TV Revue set-top box, which Quindlen was a major supporter of last year, were likely one reason for his move. The company announced this morning that it will be cutting the Revue’s price from $249 to $99 to spur sales.

The Revue price drop has been … Continue Reading

Urban Airship, SimpleGeo partner for simpler, sexier mobile location data

There’s got to be a better way to use location data for mobile technologies, and Urban Airship and SimpleGeo say they’re rolling it out this fall.

The two back-end-tech companies are partnering to bring better location and proximity data and services to mobile apps. This isn’t the kind of tech end users will be downloading themselves; rather, these will be tools developers use to add new features to their apps and to send the right … Continue Reading

Big Fish launches game for the Amazon Kindle

Big Fish Games is launching a game for the Amazon Kindle electronic book reader today as part of a diversification into new markets.

The Kindle has primarily been an eBook reader to date, so this move shows that just about any electronic gadget — even those that weren’t meant to host games — can become game-playing devices over time. It could also be a harbinger of more things to come, since Amazon is reportedly working … Continue Reading

Hearsay Social raises $18M so your employees won’t embarrass you on social media

Hearsay Social exists to keep corporations and their employees out of trouble on the internet and turn social media into a source of brand engagement, not embarrassment.

Hearsay Social is the brainchild of Clara Shih, known for her New York Times bestselling book about using Facebook as a marketing platform, The Facebook Era. The company has created tools to let corporations monitor what their employees do on Facebook and Twitter and then train those … Continue Reading

Nintendo slashes price of its 3DS handheld to $169.99

Nintendo announced today that it has cut the price of its struggling 3DS handheld game player from $249.99 to $169.99.

The price cut is effective Aug. 12 and will likely make the 3DS far more competitive in the market against rival devices such as the Apple iPod Touch and the upcoming Sony PlayStation Vita. But it’s unclear whether the lower price will be enough to get consumers interested in the 3DS, which delivers stereoscopic 3D … Continue Reading

Steve Perlman’s white paper explains “impossible” wireless tech

People have called Steve Perlman’s new wireless technology impossible.

Today, he’s releasing a white paper that aims to show how it can really work.

Perlman’s “distributed input distributed output” technology, or DIDO, allows each wireless user on a network to use the full data capacity of shared spectrum simultaneously with a bunch of other users. It does so by eliminating interference between users sharing the same spectrum. That’s a phenomenal invention that appears to violate … Continue Reading