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Retailers are still in the dark ages when it comes to changing prices on items on store shelves. San Jose, Calif.-based Altierre allows them to join the 21st century by enabling retailers to change store-aisle prices on the fly.

The company sells product shelves lined with RFID (radio frequency identification) tags with liquid crystal displays. Store owners can use it to make pricing changes in just one store, regionally, or across a whole chain. The company said that of all the possible RFID applications, retailers considered this to be their No. 1 problem.

These so-called Class 4 RFID tags replace the 40,000 to 60,000 paper price tags in a typical store, which take considerable time to update or change. The retail industry spends an estimated $40 billion a year changing prices manually, according to Altierre. The tags are two-way tags with both active and passive communication.

This bright idea has enabled the company to raise a third funding round of $22 million. The Galleon Group led the round and returning investors included ATA Ventures, the D. E. Shaw group, Dupont Capital Management and Labrador Ventures. To date, the company has raised $52 million since the company was founded in 2003.

The company is co-developing its system with several of the nation’s top-10 grocery chains. The promise is big savings for retailers. With Altierre’s system in place, an executive at a retailer’s headquarters can change the price of any product in some or all stores via computer commands, which are transmitted to the tags through wireless radio signals. It gives retailers much more flexibility to change prices based on store traffic and season. The tags also let retailers instantly launch promotions such as “buy one, get one free.”

Companies such as NCR and others have tried similar approaches in the past but the concept never got off the ground. Some companies, such as Wal-Mart, are in the midst of rolling out RFID tags to keep track of goods in the supply chain and in distribution warehouses. But they haven’t used them much on store shelves.

Altierre has a test center where it has its chips and software in place. The company says it is getting good feedback so far. RFID has raised considerable privacy concerns, but mainly out of a fear that retailers will eventually use it to tag individual retail items, which could be tracked wirelessly. Altierre, however, is putting the tags in shelves, not on store items. Hence, tracking an item isn’t possible after a consumer buys it.

But shelf-tagging can raise concerns. Back in 2003, anti-RFID activist Catherine Albrecht raised alarm bells when she learned companies were testing shelf-tagging along with video surveillance technology. (Go to Spychips and search on “store shelves.”) Wal-Mart tested a kind of shelf-tagging in 2003 but ended the experiment because of privacy concerns. IBM has also talked about the concept for a number of years, which raises the question: If the idea has been around for a long time, why hasn’t anyone done much with it so far?

The company is run by Sunit Saxena, chairman and CEO. He said the company is now moving toward production but can’t talk about customers because of non-disclosure agreements.

RFID has been slow in rolling out in the retail supply chain because the system requires an investment in new technologies, such as the wireless tracking systems. But the benefits of RFID are that it can be much more useful than barcodes. If Altierre can piggyback on the RFID warehouse infrastructure and get its tags into store shelves and its readers into the hands of store employees, that is half the battle. Altierre might also be the application that gets RFID into the stores, Saxena says, and then the infrastructure “could be the gift that keeps on giving for the retailers.”

After that, the company says that it will be able to save retailers a lot of money and effort. But it has to steer clear of any privacy concerns as it does so.

Saxena says the company will disclose later the exact architecture of its technology and how much it costs. He says it will be priced so that retailers can get a return-on-investment in a year or so; meanwhile, the tags last five years.

With a fresh $32 million funding going to nanotechnoloy firm NanoGram, mainly for development of next-generation solar cells, it’s a good time to point out some up-and-coming technologies that work on very small scales to make photovoltaic cells more efficient.

NanoGram has already had several commercial successes, including inventions in both electronics and medicine. However, the company has of late turned its sights on boosting the efficiency of solar cells.

The company is working on ultra-thin crystalline silicon which it says will reduce the cost of silicon-based solar cells to below $1 per watt hour, a price point that is generally considered a breakthrough.

Its latest funding is notable because Nanogram had so far only taken $27 million in funding since its inception in 1996, growing to over $20 million in annual revenue. It plans to use the additional $32 million (investor details at bottom) in part toward a pilot plant for solar modules.

SunFlake A/S, a European company, makes the same claim of being able to manufacture a low-cost cell with about 30 percent efficiency, roughly double the efficiency of the average solar cell available today.

Headed by noted scientist Martin Aagesen, the company plans to make use of a type of nanowire discovered by Aagesen that he calls “nanoflakes.” Blessed with a perfect crystalline structure, nanoflakes are capable of absorbing nearly all light directed at them, according to the company.

By growing its nanowires into a low-grade silicon substrate, SunFlake will reduce the need for large amounts of high-quality polysilicon when making cells. However, it has yet to announce plans to commercially manufacture cells.

Another methods on the horizon is the use of metal oxide nanoparticals in cells. Dr. Jin Zhang of the University of California, Santa Cruz, plans to use a combination of nanoparticles and quantum dots (using nano-crystals, as SunFlake does) to make a highly efficient solar cell.

(Nanotechnology, by the way, refers the field of science that works at the atomic and molecular scale, roughly between 1 to 100 nanometers. Elements and compounds take on different characteristics when they are so tiny, and studying them is leading to new users and inventions, as we’re seeing here.)

A team led by Zhang and including other researchers from China and Mexico recently tested a prototype cell using a nanocomposite material of their own devising. The cell performed even better than the researchers expected.

“We’re manipulating the energy levels of the nanocomposite material so the electrons can work more efficiently for electricity generation,” Zhang told ScienceDaily. His research is currently supported by various governmental groups from the three countries involved.

One note when considering these up-and-coming technologies: It will probably be about five years before they hit the market in force. However, as new technologies become more common, existing cost balances between different solar technologies, like polysilicon and CIGS cells, will likely be upset.

Finally, returning to NanoGram’s funding, the company brought on new investors Global Cleantech Capital, Masdar Clean Tech Fund, Mitsui Ventures, Nagase & Company, Nanostart AG, TEL Venture Capital, and Yasuda Enterprise Development for the round. Existing investors ATA Ventures, Bay Partners, Harris & Harris, Institutional Venture Partners, Nth Power, Rockport Capital Partners, SBV Venture Partners, and Technology Partners also participated.

Here’s the latest action:
1) Warner CEO praises Apple, DRM-free music
2) VMWare is after your engineer blood
3) Berners-Lee warns of walled gardens
4) Microsoft completes $47M acquisition
5) Another VC speaks in favor of taxing himself
6) Joost rolls out new ads
7) Billeo raises $7M for easy payment

Warner Music CEO now supporting DRM-free music, iTunes – “We used to think our music was perfect just the way it was … of course, we were wrong,” said Warner Music CEO Edgar Bronfman at a recent conference. The media chief is now singing praises for iTunes and Apple, and the Warner online music store has also begun selling DRM-free tracks. These supportive comments and others from Bronfman, who just a few months ago was spouting rhetoric against online music sharing, may herald the way to a new era of cooperation between record labels and online retailers.

Silicon Valley engineering talent getting ever scarcer – VMWare is prepared to battle it out with Facebook and Google for the Valley’s top engineering talent, according to GigaOm. Combine the boom in the number of local startups with the growing companies’ endless thirst for talent, and you’ve got serious shortages — all the more reason to relax H1-B visa rules for skilled workers from other countries.

Microsoft closes $47M MusicWave acquisition – The Redmond giant paid $47 million for the French mobile music company. Not a bad deal, when compared to the $121 million that Openwave paid for the same company two years ago.

Yet another VC backs VC tax – First it was Fred Wilson. Now it’s another one, though with smaller name. William Stanhill of Trailhead Ventures testified in front of Congress that the carried-interest tax rate should go up, against the objections of his partners. The bill passed Congress, but will reportedly be be blocked in the Senate. Stanhill is unapologetic; of course, at the age of 71, he has every reason to be straightforward, and even calls himself a “depreciating asset.” Score one for the “nothing to lose” crowd. For more on why VentureBeat thinks the tax should pass, see this post.

Joost gets creative with the ads – A new “advertising widget” called Coke Bubbles has debuted on Joost, which has so far only run pre-roll ads on its videos. Advertising advocates are pushing for more creativity online, and that’s what Joost appears to be after. Whether the widget is particularly creative is another matter; it’s essentially a video sharing app with Coca-Cola branding. The reception in the blogosphere was lukewarm at best, with CNET’s Caroline McCarthy comparing it to “those Pop-Up Video shows that VH-1 did back in the ’90s, except not quite as customizable.” Ouch.

Berners-Lee speaks out against walled gardens in the mobile space – Mobile phones are in danger of being locked into walled gardens, says Tim Berners-Lee, one of the inventors of today’s Internet. “An open platform means using standards,” Berners-Lee said. “The mobile internet must use the same standards as the Internet.” More from the New York Times here.

Billeo raises $7 million for online payment – Billeo offers online bill payment software for use by consumers and small businesses. It assists by auto-filling forms for online shopping, offering single-password logins, saving receipts, and helping organize finances. The funding is the Santa Clara, Calif. company’s second, and was led by ATA Ventures. Altos Ventures, Claremont Creek and the Pacifica Fund also participated.

VMIX, a company that once sought to be YouTube, but which changed direction to provide software to large web properties to share video, has raised $16.5 million in funding.

VMIX joins a host of companies doing much the same thing, including Brightcove, Reality Digital, Vsocial and VideoEgg, to name a few. These all serve third-party sites with video technology.

The San Diego VMIX offers a video player and a content management system that includes social networking features. Visitors to a company site using VMIX can do things like upload their own videos, share videos with other users and vote top videos. The site owner can customize the VMIX player to match the site’s overall design, control the sorts of videos appearing on the site, and upload their own videos.

It isn’t as sexy as viral user-generated video sharing sites like YouTube. VMIX had original planned to be such a site (the destination site is still at VMIX.com). But providing quality software to media organizations has turned out to be a bigger business for VMIX: Client companies don’t want to put the time and money into building their own online video software.

VMIX says it has 190 web sites using its software, including movie studios like Universal, Paramount, Lyon’s Gate, Fox Searchlight (see screenshot, below) MGM as well as newspapers like the Chicago Tribune. Through its partners, VMIX reaches over 60 million unique monthly visitors.

VMIX has done little marketing, it says, relying instead on customers recommending the software to others. New investors include JK&B Capital and ATA Ventures. They join existing investors Mission Ventures and Enterprise Partners.

PixSense, a service that lets you automatically save and store your mobile phone photos — without the pain of syncing with a PC — has just raised $5.4 million in a first round of funding.

The company offers the free photo storage service from its Website. You sign up, giving PixSense your phone model, and it sends you an SMS, which you open and it triggers a download. That way you don’t have the hassle of saving stuff on your PC. See demo here.

However, there’s a cost, because you use your data plan minutes to use the service. The service is more likely to fly in Asia and Europe, where many young people carry phones but don’t have their own PC — and so they’d presumably be more willing to pay for the service. The company says it will announce deals with two carriers in Asia and Europe during the first quarter, whereby the carriers would use Pixsense’s compression technology to let customers store mobile media directly with the carriers.

PixSense is growing like a weed. We last mentioned Pixsense here, when it said planned to hire 150 by next year, up from 30 earlier this year.

Faraz Hoodbhoy, founder and chief executive, said most of his employees are in China, Japan and Pakistan.

ATA Ventures and Innovacom are the lead investors.