VentureBeat

Report: YouTube still trying to figure out how to make money — Lots of people have been wondering if the online video site has somehow figured out how to make big money from its huge amounts of web traffic. The answer, according to a Wall Street Journal article (sub required) is, as we’ve been hearing: Nothing mind-blowing is happening yet. Two sources say YouTube will make around $200 million this year, which is short of Google’s hopes. Watch the video to learn more about future monetization plans. However, the article includes some other interesting information about monetization plans. Like the fact that the company is looking to introduce user-hated pre-roll and post-roll ads that run before and after videos.

Mass. governor signs onto ambitious clean energy bill — Among other things, homeowners and business will be able to rent solar panels from utility companies to avoid paying high purchase costs, as well as sell excess energy from the panels and wind turbines.

Vivaty’s virtual world launches in public beta — The company lets social network and instant mssage users go into three dimensional virtual rooms and chat, and do things like choose the room’s decor — decor that can include their photos and other info from social networks. Google also launched a for-now-less-complete 3D chat service today, called Lively, that aims to do much of the same. Maybe, as Allen Stern at Centernetworks says, Vivaty can out-innovate Google on the 3D IM chat room market.

Ocean fertilizer startup Planktos is back, “with science” — The company wanted to fertilize every ocean with iron to produce phytoplankton blooms and thereby reduce carbon emissions. We’ve previously mentioned its re-opening; Earth2Tech has more details but wasn’t impressed with many aspects of the company’s return, including its new name, Planktos Science.

mio knight rider gps from knight rider online on Vimeo.
The Knight Rider GPS system, by Mio, now has the voice of the robot car, KITT, inside — At some point when Knight Rider was a popular television show, somebody must have predicted that one day everyone would have a car that could give them directions, just like KITT. The show’s still-active fan site, Knight Rider Online, was suitably given the KITT-voice scoop. See video for more.

Rosetta Stone sues smaller competitor for infringing on its search results– The smaller competitor, Rocket Dog Languages, allegedly bought Google search ads that negatively described the company. The Wall Street Journal has more (sub required).

Make’n Movies launches movie script idea review site — Submit up 300-500 words, post it on the site’s database, and see what other people think.

Xiaonei, the Facebook clone of China, launches its own developer platform — Built from scratch, not using the OpenSocial platform standard nor Facebook’s licensable platform, the Xiaonei “Open Platform” will compete against the planned platform of rival Chinese network 51.com. Silicon Valley venture firm DCM is creating a fund to support third-party developers on the platform, similar to the fund created by Accel, the Founders Fund and Facebook itself for Facebook’s platform.

MyYahoo launches developer platform — Everyone likes to launch developer platforms these days, including Yahoo, which now has one for its start page web service, MyYahoo. ReadWriteWeb has a good review of it, here.

Aircell, aviation broadband technology company, closes third phase of $265 million financing — The company promises to offer mobile internet and phone access on planes, as you can tell from this picture on its web site.

Shareholders approve $18.9 billion Activision-Vivendi Games merger — The combined entity is now the world’s largest gaming company. Gamespot has more.

MIT researchers announce nanoscale lithographic technology, to create more advanced chips — The results promise improvements in a wide ranges of chips from those used in computer memory systems, to integrated circuits, to solar cells and other devices. The report is here.

A new study published in the journal Science has poured cold water on a proposed scheme to alter the planet’s climate by injecting sulfate particles into the stratosphere. The unorthodox strategy, boosted by several prominent scientists, including Nobel laureate Paul J. Crutzen, was meant to simulate the effects of a volcanic eruption: Sulfur particles released from aircraft or large balloons high in the stratosphere — like the soot and sulfur dioxide ejected by volcanoes — would scatter incoming sunlight, reducing its absorption by the planet and producing a global cooling effect.

Opponents of the scheme warned that the problems it created would far outweigh any perceived benefits: They cited records of past eruptions to show that it could result in a series of crippling large-scale droughts. The Science study, led by two researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, CO, determined that pumping sulfur particles into the atmosphere would further weaken the Earth’s fragile ozone layer by sparking a number of destructive chemical reactions. The consequence, they concluded, would be to set back the ozone layer’s slow recovery by 2 decades.

These findings will no doubt help bolster the arguments of those who have argued against the use of human technologies to tinker with the Earth’s climate — a set of proposals collectively known as “geo-engineering.” Detractors criticize the schemes as being too short-sighted and largely untested. Furthermore, they insist, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to verify their success; this, in addition to their unknown risks and potential downsides, should preclude any further consideration of their use

Those that do support further research object to the involvement of profit-seeking companies or outside backing — arguing that future trials should be devoid of any commercial motivation.

Proponents of geo-engineering, both academics and scientists who’ve made the leap to the private sector, counter that corporations have long been valuable allies in advancing research, particularly in medicine and engineering, and that to deny them a seat at the table — and a potential financial incentive — would be self-defeating.

One of the few schemes to have gained some traction over the past year is iron fertilization — currently championed by San Francisco, Calif., based Climos, which recently raised $3.5 million from Elon Musk and Braemar Energy Ventures, and previously by the now-defunct Foster City, Calif., startup Planktos. Climos’ funding will fuel an initial demonstration cruise that will be led by a team of independent oceanographers.

The objective of this cruise is to show that fertilizing iron-limited areas of the oceans can result in a drawdown of atmospheric carbon dioxide — and its eventual sequestration in the ocean’s depths. The strategy is relatively straightforward: Adding iron sulfate to carefully selected regions will lead to massive phytoplankton blooms, which, through photosynthesis, will take up large amounts of carbon dioxide.

Climos’ hope — and the missing piece, from a scientific standpoint — is that once the phytoplankton die, they will sink to the bottom of the ocean, carrying the excess carbon dioxide with them. If that effect were to be demonstrated empirically, Climos could begin selling carbon credits and finance other cruises.

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Here’s the latest action:

News Corp makes $5 billion takeover bid for Dow Jones — If the bid is accepted, the owner of Fox News would own the old, gray business media icon, the Wall Street Journal. What next?

PropertyShark takes property snooping a step further — If you thought Zillow, the housing site that slapped a value on your house, was controversial, take a look at PropertyShark. The four-year old New York company outdoes Zillow on the snoopy factor, displaying owners’ names as well as things like title history, building permits and code violations pertaining to any property (See Mercury News story). It has launched in California, New York and 14 other states.

Google chooses to fight Viacom — Here’s the story about Google’s response to Viacom’s lawsuit for copyright infringement. The Google lawyer says the companies are not engaged in settlement talks, so looks like this is going all the way.

Google’s chief culture officer — See interview with Google’s culture czar and how she looks for “Google-y” people, or those who don’t worry about their titles but focus on getting stuff done.

Companies to use plankton to help global warming — At least two ventures are seeking to grow floating fields of plankton to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and carry it to the depths of the ocean. The New York Times has the story. Foster City, Calif.’s Planktos is already working on a project in the Galápagos and the South Pacific. Planktos says corporations seeking to offset their carbon emissions under new treaties and regulations make need its services. It thinks it can make a profit if it gets $5 a ton for capturing carbon dioxide. There’s also San Francisco’s Climos, which we contacted several weeks ago, but which has remained secretive. Dan Whaley, founder of GetThere, is involved, as is a group of respected scientists on its advisory board.

Supreme Court issues ruling that reforms patents — Most experts say this was much needed. It rules that lower-court rulings have given patent holders more power than the patent law intended. Some patent awards are for innovations that are too obvious, and may stifle innovation.

Google making comeback in China? — After ceding ground to Chinese search engine Baidu over the past couple of years, Google is gaining market share, says Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt.

Meanwhile, Myspace China encourages tattlers: Members of MySpace’s new Chinese version are being told to report any “misconduct” by other users, including actions such as “endangering national security, leaking state secrets, subverting the government, undermining national unity, spreading rumors or disturbing the social order.”

EBuddy launches mobile application – Ebuddy, like Meebo, is a company that aggregates IM accounts, so that you can use any of them — AIM, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, etc — from any Web site. Now it has taken its service mobile. Meanwhile, Meebo has decided not to do it, the company’s chief executive Seth Sternberg told us last week. GigaOm has a piece on Ebuddy’s latest momentum. We’re wondering where these stand-alone IM companies will head, now that IM aggregation is becoming easier to do and that we’re hearing of several other companies about to unveil products in this area. We’ll get back to this story shortly.

Phenomenal growth of Zwinky and Gaia, virtual worlds for kids — Zwinky, part of the Fun Webs group at conglomerate IAC, is the latest virtual world to explode in popularity. It has 4.7 million worldwide unique visitors in March. Techcrunch has the latest on Zwinktopia - where users can use their avatars to roam around the world, chat and earn Zbucks, a virtual currency.

Targetspot to let advertisers create commercials for Internet radio — Advertisers can create ads for their tailored audience. It is financed by CBS radio. (Times has the story).

4Info creates SMS ad marketplace — Speaking of new advertising models, Palo Alto company, 4Info, has launched a test program for an SMS marketplace. Chief exec Zaw Thet tells us his is the only company offering a market place. Because of 4Info’s bulk SMS activities, it doesn’t have to pay carriers for the service, meaning it is free for a company like Evite to send out SMS alerts to users, containing ads. 4Info splits the revenue 50-50 with the publisher. Question is, are SMS ads going to be pretty enough?

The Army’s plasma shield — The Army hopes soon to deploy a machine that generates a protective screen of dazzling mid-air explosions – to stun and disorient an enemy. It uses a laser pulse that creates a ball of plasma, and a second pulse that generates a shockwave. It is being build by a company called Stellar Photonics, about which we know very little. Its apparently also working on a portable laser rifle weighing fifteen kilograms with a range of more than an mile. Anyone know more about this company? Send email or leave comment, please.

Jobs disses subscription/rental music model — “Never say never, but customers don’t seem to be interested in it,” Jobs told Reuters in an interview, with new authority in the wake of Apple’s stellar earnings report. “The subscription model has failed so far.” People want to own their music, he said.

Jason Calacanis’ real project, a search engine — Calacanis, a media entrepreneur who sold a group of weblogs to AOL for $25m, has a new search engine project, backed by Sequoia Capital. It’s a cross between Wikipedia and Google, says Valleywag, which carries the speculative piece. Sounds a lot like Wikia’s search project, which has gotten a lot of attention. So it would make sense, though VentureBeat hasn’t confirmed any of this.

Microsoft releases more info on Silverlight — Nik Cubrilovic has a good review of the announcement, explaining how Silverlight includes a mini-CLR (Common Language Runtime) for the .NET platform that can be accessed from within the browser. As with the usual .NET runtime, it can support a number of programming languages, including Python and Ruby. Says Cubrilovic: The most remarkable part of the CLR are its speed and its size. First of all, the full Silverlight download with CLR and everything else will weigh in at around 4MB - which with current broadband penetration is effortless….

Jeff Nolan leaves Teqlo, a mashup company –The Silicon Valley start-up Teqlo just wasn’t ready to go to market, and chief executive Jeff Nolan explains his departure today. In remarks to us, the former SAP executive noted that companies delivering APIs as part of their offering find it difficult to make money. How will they share revenue? Moreover, for any of these businesses to achieve scale, as a platform, a significant amount of capital, “upwards of $60 million,” will have to be invested. Moreover, what happens when Microsoft, Google and Yahoo enter the area (indeed, Yahoo already has Pipes, and Google has entered with My Maps)? Not to mention SAP, Oracle and IBM, all of which are heading there too.

Mohr Davidow Ventures hires software entrepreneur Bryan Stolle as partner — This is the latest in several hires recently by the Silicon Valley venture firm. Stolle is co-founder of Agile Software, a company backed by MDV.

See our latest news stories in VentureBeat’s News Wire — including the latest on mobile wireless network company Sonopia, and all the clean-tech deals lately, such as Vinod Khosla’s latest investment.

Venture capital performance turns positive — At least, according to the latest day released by Thomson Financial, for the period ending December last year. Overall, venture capitalists investing over the past five year years saw a 1 percent annual return each year — not very good, but positive for the first time since 2003. The only people losing money, according to the survey, are early/seed-stage investors who have been investing for the last five years. Everyone else is making dough. However, these numbers should be taken with skepticism. The data has long been criticized for being too rosy, i.e, not factoring in the results of firms doing so terribly that they’ve shut their doors. See table below for the performance of VCs over different time horizons.