VentureBeat

Forget cellulosic ethanol: If you’ve been following the biofuel sector lately, you probably already know that algae is the hot new game in town. New Zealand-based Aquaflow Bionomic may be getting close to achieving its goal of becoming the world’s first company to viably produce large amounts of biofuel from wild algae.

Barrie Leay, Aquaflow’s chairman, said his company had successfully achieved “commercial-scale continuous harvesting of tons of wild algae” in a recent interview with Ethanol Producer Magazine. He outlined what he believed will become the new energy model -– “distributed” production –- which would do away with the inefficiencies he believes are inherent in the central plant model used by both the oil industry and ethanol producers.

In practice, this means Aquaflow would seek to spread its algae-to-biofuel production process over many harvest areas -– typically 1,000 acre oxidation ponds located around the U.S. The company’s existing facilities are churning out several tons of algae a day, a number it aims to rapidly scale up over the coming months as it invests in larger biorefineries.

Aquaflow’s two-step process consists of first optimizing the ponds’ productive capacity and then harvesting the algae, producing an extract ready to be converted into a usable biofuel. By taking up all the available nutrients in the ponds, the algae help clean the water, making it available for irrigation, various treatment processes and industrial washing and cooling. Aquaflow is also developing a bio-remediation process that could eventually be used to make the water drinkable.

Leay revealed little in terms of the conversion processes and their costs, likely for competitive reasons. However, there is some reason for concern as the company attempts to scale up production. Another algal biofuel maker that aimed for rapid growth, GreenFuels, ran into major problems last year when it tried to scale up, resulting in the company laying off half its workforce. Other companies have faced similar setbacks. Algae are notoriously difficult to grow in the wild because they need just the right amount of light and temperature; getting them to grow quickly requires a large amount of carbon dioxide and nutrients, and they are prone to succumbing to invasive species, or dying off en masse as a result of overcrowding.

Aquaflow disclosed earlier this year that it was seeking $5 million to continue improving the refining process; its technology has garnered interest from investors in the U.K., U.S., Australia and Asia. It is currently in talks with Boeing to develop an algae-based jet fuel. Its next step is to begin commercial-scale production, which Leay expects to do within the next few months.

Other companies working on producing algal biofuels include Solazyme, which recently some venture funding and debt (coverage here and here ), LiveFuels and Aurora Biofuels. Unlike Aquaflow, most of these companies are choosing to engineer their own proprietary algae strains, in an attempt to avoid many of the problems laid out above.

Lost in a world of tag clouds and numerical rankings, Guitarati set out to create a new way to help people find the music they want — with colors. Yes, you read that right.

On its main page, Guitarati lays out a series of colorful dots. Clicking on one of these takes you to a selection of music based around that color. This color/music link-up is set by what other users set as the color they feel best represents the feeling of the song while listening to it.

Drilling down into a color, it’s easy to shift between lighter and darker shades to further alter the types of music being played. Those interested in a less visceral experience can also use a drop down to select specific genres.

In terms of making the site profitable, the thought process is less outside-the-box — it charges users money. Still, it’s a somewhat unique combination of flat-fee downloading (usually 99 cents) and cheap streaming fees. A user pays 1 cent for every full length song they stream, but these cents are deducted from the purchase price of the song if they choose to buy it. Songs are all in DRM-free MP3 format with 192 Kbps encoding. Samples of all songs can be listened to for free.

Artists and labels get paid for both downloads and streaming. They can dictate the price of their music and get back 75 percent of the earnings. There are no registration fees for those who want to spread their music via Guitarati.

[Above: The colored dot collage from which you pick a mood of music you'd like to hear.]

Now for a few problems. First and foremost, there are a very limited number of songs at the moment. While I have no problem with all the artists being independent, there simply aren’t enough of them. For example, there are no “black” songs, no “gray” songs. Keep in mind that the service just launched today in beta and they will add more over time — but that seems contingent on artists’ interest in the service itself.

The hardest sell to both artists and customers may be the idea itself. To many, this will simply sound too new-age to be a viable web app. The idea of “mood music” has likely been around as long as music itself, and breaking songs up this way seems logical — it’s the color/mood correlation that makes things a bit muddied. Darker and lighter shades of a color makes sense to me, but I’m not sure what constitutes an “orange” song versus a “purple” one.

Still, it is quite an interesting idea and it certainly sets itself apart from the ever-expanding online music world. A concept like this might be appealing to larger services looking at new ways to recommend music to people.

Guitarati tells us that it is self-funded at the moment.