VentureBeat

EBay revenue rises, but stock price sinks — Despite a 22 percent increase in second-quarter profit, eBay is failing to convince investors that it knows what it’s doing. EBay’s earnings were buoyed by its online payments and advertising divisions, but its auction business is faltering as the company battles sellers, buyers, brand names and just about everyone else around. New CEO John Donahoe is working toward a solution, according to the NYT, but if it fails, there’s going to be an awfully large hole for next-gen auction startups like Wigix to fill.

National Public Radio opens its API — The government-supported radio station NPR, one of the nation’s best-known media institutions, has opened an API to let web publishers use its content. However, as Mashable notes, there are some very vague restrictions in the API’s terms, and some of the most popular shows are excluded.

“Spoken Web” a big opportunity in India — A voice-enabled parallel to the Internet presents a giant opportunity in the developing world, which has more access to mobile devices than computers, according to an interview with the director of IBM’s India Research Laboratory in ZDNet Asia. Check out the full text for more of his thoughts on mobile.

FundingSleuth opens to help keep track of companies — Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital has created FundingSleuth, a tool to track the public filings of your favorite companies and competitors. More info at Redeye VC.

Commercial algae plant slated for construction in Hawaii — Algae-to-biodiesel startup HR Biopetroleum has signed a MOU to build a commercial-scale algae plant producing biodiesel with the help of emissions from a nearby power plant. Earth2Tech has more details. Separately, oil giant Shell — which also has a joint venture with HR Biopetroleum — has upped its stake in Iogen, a cellulosic ethanol company based in Ottawa.

Green building tech seeks new US home — Investors looking for green building investments might be interested in RoofKrete, a United Kingdom startup that Grist has dug up. The company makes a semi-flexible ferrocement that’s long-lasting and insulates well.

Multicore chip startups to watch — GigaOm has a list of five of the most important startups helping to make multi-core computer processors mainstream.

Range Fuels, the Broomfield Colo., company racing to build the first commercial plant for producing a more efficient form of ethanol, got closer to that goal after being awarded a $76 million grant by the U.S. Department of Energy.

This is significant because cellulosic ethanol, made from crop waste, switchgrass, woodchips, and other bio refuse, is much more efficient and cleaner than regular corn ethanol, and could help the nation in its quest for alternative energy sources (click on image above for more info about cellulosic ethanol).

The grant was part of $385 million awarded by the DOE for biorefinery projects over the next four years. Details of the DOE’s grants are here, and it includes six companies, including Range, and a description of what they do.

Range’s chief executive Mitch Mandich told VentureBeat Wednesday morning that he still thinks Range will be first to build a commercial plant to make cellulosic ethanol. That’s because he’s using a “thermal conversion” method, which he says is more efficient than the “enzyme” methods being used by his competitors, such as Iogen and Broin.

Enzymes are tricker and more expensive to make, he said, and those other companies are giving a range of about 2009 or 2010 before they become available. Range hasn’t given a firm date, but plans to beat those timeline comfortably, he said. He was previously backed with $3.3 million from Silicon Valley’s Khosla Ventures

Range’s plant will be located in Soperton, Georgia, and will use pine tree waste and other material.

Other companies receiving grants were BlueFire Ethanol, Alico and Abengoa Bioenergy Biomass.

Iogen, of Ottawa, is also venture-backed, having received about $67 million from Goldman Sachs, Royal Dutch Shell and the Canadian government. It is building an 18 million gallon per year plant in Shelley, Idaho. The definition of a commercial facility is one that produces 10 million gallons per year.