Smart meters could breathe life into flagging chip market
Even as the downturn dries up cleantech capital, smart-meter makers continue to do quite well. With the Obama administration placing emphasis — in the form of $4.5 billion — on smart-grid development, and major utilities like PG&E jumping on board, it looks like the smart-meter industry will hold strong through the next couple of years. This is especially good news for the makers of chips used in these meters.
New analysis out of Gartner, reported by… Continue Reading
Wireless media delivery co. Digital Fountain sells to Qualcomm
Digital Fountain, a company specializing in sending media over wireless networks — especially streaming video — just sold to San Deigo goliath Qualcomm. It’s unclear whether the flagging economy played a role, but the Fremont, Calif. company may have been running short on funds. It had raised a total of $45 million over several rounds of funding since its inception in 1999, most recently pulling in $5 million in a fifth pass in 2004. Past… Continue Reading
DEMO: Always Innovating’s Touch Book sounds amazing. Can it deliver?
I haven’t gotten a chance to try a Touch Book yet, but I want to. Who wouldn’t? The netbook produced by Always Innovating, making its debut at the DEMO conference today, claims to offer 10 to 15 hours of battery life, weighs under 2 pounds and, perhaps most importantly, starts at $299.
That’s cheaper than an Amazon Kindle. And this thing can do a whole lot more.
For $299 you get a tablet computer, a device with… Continue Reading
Roundup: Obama’s environmental policy, Sun’s big loss, and more
Here’s the latest (mostly depressing) action:
President Obama reverses Bush policy on environment — Obama endorsed California’s strict limits on greenhouse gas emissions, and vowed that the federal government will follow suit. Auto manufacturers’ responses were “similar in their ambiguity and political correctness,” according to The New York Times.
Sun posts a $209M loss — At fault are falling demands for servers and storage, as well as a big restructuring charge.
AdMob offering Android-specific ads — The move mirrors AdMob’s similar… Continue Reading
Roundup: Yahoo, Apple pre-earnings reports, Akamai’s new ads, and more
Here’s the latest action:
Earnings: Yahoo may shortly be cutting employee compensation – This may be instead of or in addition to planned job cuts.
Earnings: Apple lowballs projections, as usual — Fortune’s Apple 2.0 blog has a closer look at this historical trend.
Akamai launches ad targeting service — The content delivery network company has bought ad-targeting company Acerno for $95 million, as part of this new focus.
Research in Motion joins Blackberry cross-device application testing service — The service, DeviceAnywhere,… Continue Reading
Samplify Systems — a rare semiconductor startup
Venture capitalists and entrepreneurs alike have been bemoaning the fact that nobody starts semiconductor companies anymore. It seems that it’s just too costly and too risky for entrepreneurs to challenge old world chip companies who have locked up the market.
But the folks who started Samplify Systems didn’t listen. The Santa Clara, Calif. company is coming out of stealth today with a plan to create a smarter generation of chips that convert analog data to digital… Continue Reading
Roundup: Texas Instruments lowers overall cell phone forecast, but women drive smart phone sales
Texas Instruments says cell phone sales weakening: TI said that sales of chips for wireless handsets were “unseasonably weak,” causing the bellwether company for the cell phone economy to lower its second-quarter earnings outlook. The Dallas-based chip maker said that it expects revenue to be $3.17 billion to $3.28 billion, compared with the previous estimate of $3.08 billion to $3.32 billion. It’s interesting that TI is seeing the slowdown in advance of one of the biggest… Continue Reading
Nvidia shoots for portable Internet handheld market with Tegra brand chips
Intel isn’t going to be alone as it tries to skewer Samsung and other chip makers in portable Internet devices. Nvidia is out to claim that market as well.
Today, Santa Clara, Calif.-based Nvidia is announcing its Tegra brand of chips for beefy Internet handhelds that can do serious graphics. This brand will include two different kinds of chips. The previously announced Nvidia APX 2500 is aimed at smartphones.
We noted that Samsung is stepping up the… Continue Reading
Big companies create a HomeGrid Forum for networking on home wiring
Major tech companies are expected to announced tomorrow that they have created a “HomeGrid Forum” in order to advance the cause of broadband networking over wiring in the home, VentureBeat has learned.
Members of the group include Infineon Technologies, Intel, Panasonic, Texas Instruments, Aware (DSL chip maker), Gigle (a home-networking chip maker), Pulse~Link (a home-networking chip maker) and DS2, a powerline networking start-up in Spain.
The forum’s goal is to promote a next-generation standard for transporting data… Continue Reading
Roundup: Google moves ‘Sky’ into the browser, Harvard grad server gets hacked and more
Here’s the latest action:
Google moves ‘Sky’ into the browser — Google has a layer for Google Earth that is known as ‘Sky.’ Now the company has created a version for web browsers as well according to the Google Lat Long Blog. This browser-based ‘Sky’ features three separate optical sky surveys (microwave, ultraviolet and x-ray), has galleries of images from things such as the Hubble Space Telescope, and offers a search engine that lets you find thousands… Continue Reading