onsdag 30. september 2009

Verizon kunngjør Nokia 2705 Shade flip telefon

Tenk på hva du vil, men vi stort troende i "Keeping it Real" 'round disse delene. Mens vi besvimelse når en ny smart telefon treff scenen, blir det store flertallet fortsatt fast i flip telefonen sonen - og vet du hva? Det er ingenting galt med det. Have no fear, vende fans, er Verizon her [...]

GetJar launches easy-branding mobile app installer

For a brand manager, fussing over the features of a bunch of mobile apps is a distraction from the much larger mission of getting consumers to install the brand on their phones.
Building a custom app to stand out in Apple’s 85,000-app store, or the growing app collections for every other phone, is too hard. And what about all the other not-a-huge-hit phones? Are you going to support them, too?  GetJar, the cross-platform mobile app library that’s been around since 2005, has a solution. They’ve developed an App Download Page that the company describes as “a new service for mobile developers and content owners seeking to provide a simple experience for their users to download the right mobile app for their phone, independent of device platform, model or carrier.”
Let me simplify that: GetJar can park a logo on the home screen of just about any phone made.
The trick is that GetJar’s apps, like Yahoo’s OneSearch tool for my BlackBerry, pop open the customer’s browser. Installing a working web link with a logo is easy. As a brand manager, you throw it back on the tech guys to figure out how to make the Web destination for your brand logo something interesting that leads the user to bond with the brand.
Facebook has a GetJar-powered App Download Page that puts Facebook on phones that aren’t the high-powered smartphones Americans love. It works on the Nokia 5300, as shown at right.
Photobucket has announced in that they’re going to use GetJar this fall, too.
This is boring stuff for techies — oooh, a link to HTML, zzzz — but I’m pretty stoked about the idea that VentureBeat fans can just put a VentureBeat logo on their non-Apple phone screen and not need to know how it works, not need to install complicated software with bugs, and would probably be delighted that, duh, it’s just a link to our website. We — I mean the VentureBeat reporting staff — haven’t pressed for a mobile branding presence, because we’re afraid of the business development meetings. We’re hoping it’ll just show up.

The question for both brand managers and software developers is, does a browser-based app now do everything you need? At VentureBeat’s MobileBeat 2009 conference in July, GetJar CEO Ilja Laurs very much disagreed with Google Engineering VP Vic Gundotra, although the two didn’t argue in person. Apps will be as big as the Internet, Laurs told attendees. No, everything will be delivered through a browser, Gundotra told attendees.
The App Download Page gives the impression the browser is coming up from behind. As a complement to, rather than a replacement for, the company’s extensive application catalog, the new Web-based tool lets GetJar have it both ways.

BumpTop legger multitouch-grensesnitt for Windows 7 maskiner (få gratis koder)

Windows 7 vil komme med en kul multitouch brukergrensesnitt, slik at du berører skjermen på datamaskinen og utføre handlinger med enkle bevegelser. Men det ser ut som BumpTop skal gjøre at multitouch-funksjonalitet virkelig nyttig. Vi har nevnt før hvordan BumpTop bringer en 3-D visningen til din Windows-skrivebordet, som gjør det enklere å håndtere en stor haug av filer og andre oppgaver i innboksen. Nå kan du bruke BumpTop som en multitouch brukergrensesnitt. Denne videoen viser hvordan du kan beskjære bilder, bare ved å trykke på dem, strekke dem ut og kutte av de delene du ikke vil ha med enkle hånd bevegelser. Du kan gjøre tenker som panorere og zoome ved å bruke to fingre, akkurat som du kan gjøre med iPhone. Du kan spre seg noe ut eller knip å gjøre det krympe. Hvis du dobbeltklikker trykker på noe som for eksempel et bilde, vil den zoome inn på objektet. Du kan skifte fokus til en av sideveggene i BumpTop 3D-grensesnitt. Du kan trekke ned med to fingre på bakveggen å fokusere på det. Du kan også rotere å gå til den andre siden veggene. Den komplette pakke med multitouch bevegelser er inkludert i betalt versjon, BumpTop Pro. Den 1.2 versjonen av BumpTop skal gjøre Windows 7 maskiner skiller seg ut fra de kjedelige Windows Vista forgjengere, og som kan være bra for den forventede gjenopplivingen av PC etterspørselen kommer denne høsten. BumpTop sier at den nye bevegelser for Windows 7 har patent pending. Noen av bevegelser er illustrert i tegningen. Det ser ut som vi ikke så langt fra brukergrensesnittet som Tom Cruise brukte i filmen Minority Report. Windows 7 kommer i salg den 22 oktober. Selskapet har delt 200 gratis-koder for tilgang til sin premie BumpTop Pro versjon. Klikk her.

Study: Venture likviditet fremdeles en vedlikeholdslading

Det har vært et grovt tre måneder etter oppstart håper å få kjøpt. Vel, det har blitt mer som et grovt år, men det er nye data fra Dow Jones VentureSource fokus på den tredje kvartal 2009. Overall, venture-støttet likviditet (kombinasjonen av fusjoner, oppkjøp og børsnotering) lagt opp til $ 2.7 milliarder, ned 49 prosent fra samme periode i fjor, sier VentureSource. Det er enda et fall fra 3 milliarder dollar i venture likviditet opptjent i 2. kvartal. Ting var enda verre for M & As, som falt 56 prosent til $ 2.25 billion betalt i 71 avtaler - om antallet ville vært høyere hvis VentureSource hadde regnet Amazon's $ 807 million kjøp av Zappos, som ikke har lukket ennå. I stedet bør det legger et stort løft til neste kvartalet tall. Ervervet bedrifter også gjøres mindre penger (median oppkjøp prisen falt 52 prosent til 22 millioner dollar), og hadde ventet lenger å selge (median alder økte 23 prosent til 6,13 år). På den annen side, IPOs faktisk opp fra i fjor, med en samlet total på USD 451.25 millioner, den høyeste siden 2007. Det er mindre spennende enn det høres ut, siden de aller fleste at pengene kom fra batteriet selskapets A123 spektakulære IPO, og det var bare to IPOs i alt. Så det er vanskelig å se økningen som tegn på noen store trend, bortsett fra det faktum at store børsnoteringer er fortsatt mulig. Men hei, etter yearlong perioden (som endte i Q2) ingen IPOs, that's something. [Foto: flickr/andrewk100]

Ny Gresso Grand Monaco LE linje med luksus telefoner avslørte

Viet til å skape unike og dyre mobiltelefoner, Gresso, en av de aktive luksuriøse mobiltelefoner selskapene har nettopp annonsert en oppgradering til deres nyeste produktserie kalt Grand Monaco LE ...

O2 glipper en annonse av HTC HD2 - det er nå uoffisielt offisielle

HTC HD2 bare ikke kan stoppe kikket ut fra alle mulige hjørner. Denne gangen om HD2 er offisielt avslørt i et O2 retail katalog i en annonse, som er varmet til rette for en forventet britisk utgivelse 12. oktober ...

The Million Dollar anmeldelse: Going vindu-shopping

Dette nettstedet er vanligvis alt om funksjoner og ytelse, men ikke i dag. Det er vår dag-off, så vi besluttet å shoppe. Vel, vindu-shopping å være mer deprimerende presise. Og den eneste posene ...

Google Local Search for Mobil - nå med mindre skrive

Google annonserte et forbedret grensesnitt for sin Local Search nettsted for mobiltelefoner i dag som skal bidra til å redusere tidsbruk futzing rundt med telefonens tastatur. Begge endringene er i hovedsak tilpasninger, men de er kule eksempler kobler vanlige web og mobil opplevelser, og hvordan å utforme en lett-å-bruke mobil opplevelse. Den første endringen integrerer Local Search for mobile med skrivebordet webgrensesnittet til Google Maps - merkede elementer fra Maps viser nå opp som en kategori i Local Search. Så hvis du planlegger en tur, enten et sett med oppgaver i hjemmet, eller en ferie, kan du finne og star alle stedene du ønsker å besøke i Maps. Så mens du er ute-og-om, kan du klikke på "stjerne" område på lokale søk og hente opp en liste over alle stedene. Videre forstand, har Google gjort det mulig å søke etter, sier nærliggende kinesiske restauranter uten å skrive noe. Du kan bla gjennom ulike Local Search kategorier, velg deretter "restauranter" og "kinesisk." Det er knapt et revelatory opplevelse, men det er hyggelig å se en annen vei Google har lært at å skrive inn tekst i et søk bar (selv om det fortsatt er et alternativ i Lcoal Search) er ikke nødvendigvis den beste søkegrensesnittet når du er på telefonen. (Derfor er det lagt stemme søket til sin iPhone-program.)

Nvidia's iRay viser naturtro grafikk, strømmet fra skyen

Nvidia viste ut en måte for grafikk aficionados å tappe ressursene i cloud computing å gjengi svært realistisk grafikk bilder. Berlin, Tyskland-baserte mentale bilder delingen av Nvidia viste av sin iRay teknologi, som kan trykke på en klynge av grafikk-fokusert servere i et datasenter å gjengi en livaktig 3D-bildet på en skjerm som er langt unna. Teknologien kan hastigheten den kreative prosessen for produktdesignere, ingeniører og kunstnere ved presist simulere deres 3-D kreasjoner. Det er en sky-rendering tjeneste som ikke er i motsetning til rivalen AMD Fusion Render Cloud annonsert av Advanced Micro Devices i januar. Med det kan profesjonelle grafikere få tilgang til dataressurser som kan gjøre 3-D bilder på minutter istedenfor timer uten at kvaliteten og mengden detaljer i et bilde, sier Jon Peddie, grafikk analytiker i Jon Peddie Research. Jen-Hsun Huang, toppsjef i grafikk chip maker Nvidia viste av teknologi, på selskapets GPU Technology Conference i San Jose, California, i dag. Michael Caplan, en grafikk forsker, viste en nøyaktig modellert 3-D bilde av et rom (ovenfor) som lignet et kontor plass i den virkelige verden. Han viste hvordan han kunne forandre sollyset nivå og ved hjelp av iRay teknologi, umiddelbart gjøre endringene i scenen. Huang sa at forbrukere til slutt vil ha tilgang til denne typen teknologi. Den iRay teknologien kan dermed redusere kostnadene ved å lage foto-som 3-D bilder. Mentale bilder ble grunnlagt i 1986 og ble kjøpt opp av Nvidia.

5 O’Clock Roundup: Kleiner expands $100M iFund, Intel kills Classmate, AOL prepares for fire sale

Kleiner Perkins to add money to its iFund for apps — Matt Murphy, who manages the $100 million fund, told Bloomberg reporter Connie Guglielmo, “It’s pretty clear we’ll go beyond” the $100M mark. There are 85,000-plus applications in Apple’s store created by companies of all sizes. App development projects range in size from solo students to BMW.
Be warned: Murphy isn’t poking through the App Store for people to fund. “I’m looking to find companies that are going to go public and be the next eBay, Facebook, Amazon, Google of this new mobile world,” he told Bloomberg. “That’s not the way it’s going to happen.”
Microsoft off the hook from $388 million in patent infringement damages — Judge William Smith of the US District Court for the District of Rhode Island tossed out a jury’s award of a third of a billion dollars to software maker Uniloc. Ars Technica explains how the whole thing started:
Uniloc makes antipiracy tools that require user registration to prevent the same copy of software from being installed on more than one computer. Uniloc claimed that Australian Ric Richardson, who received the patent over 11 years ago, showed his program to Microsoft in 1993 under a pledge that the company would not duplicate it, but that Microsoft did. Microsoft argued that it used a different method for registering software because it found Richardson’s software to be useless and that Uniloc’s patent (No. 5,490,216) was obvious.
AOL’s valuation down to $4.2 billion ahead of sale — JP Morgan analyst Imran Khan estimated that four billion will be the street value of CEO Tim Armstrong’s version of AOL, soon to be spun off from Time Warner. AllThingsD writer Peter Kafka collected $4 billion-ish valuations from other analysts, too. Remember January 2000, when the combined market value of AOL-Time Warner was $280 billion? I had to go back and check it in print to believe it.

Intel’s Classmate low-cost, third-world computer has been cancelled — DigiTimes has the rumor direct from their reliably gossipy network of Taiwanese component makers whose orders have been canceled. Quanta Computer and Elitegroup Computer Systems are, allegedly, not too upset because margins were too small and orders too few.iPhone developers call app users, try to upsell them — Sorry, it’s not Matt Murphy from Kleiner on the line. Some iPhone users who downloaded the free version mogoRoad’s real-time traffic monitoring tool for their iPhones were surprised to get phone calls from mogoRoad.

Augmented reality kunne hjelpe med å bestille din Ferrari hjul

En tysk forsker fra RTT wowed publikum på Nvidia's GPU Technology konferanse ved oppsetning en visuell illusjon. I en vise om "augmented reality" forskerne viste hvordan de kunne peke et videokamera på en bil rattet og så viser at hjulet i en video. I videoen, kan hjulet være forsterket med datagrafikk. Du kan, for eksempel, viser i videoen hvordan ulike typer bil hjul vil se ut på din Ferrari. Eksperimentet er aktivert ved hjelp av kraftige grafikk chips som kan behandle dataene på bilder i sanntid. Bildet ovenfor viser den reelle dekk blir filmet, mens bildet nedenfor viser hva som dukker opp på videoskjermen med utvidet grafikk. Og bildet er under et bilde av en nøyaktig gjengis Ferrari sportsbil. Du vil se denne type simulering av virkelige biler tilgjengelig i Ferrari forhandlernett i fremtiden. En slik simulator er allerede tilgjengelig for kjøpere ved en bilforhandler i Tyskland. Nvidia demoed teknologien på sitt GPU Technology-konferansen i dag i San Jose, California

Real-time search engine OneRiot turns ads on when Twitter won’t

Someone on the real-time web has a business model. And it’s not Twitter.
Real-time search engine OneRiot is launching RiotWise on Monday, a service that will pair its results with sponsored links to relevant content. The layout of the ads resemble the text links that appear in Google’s search results. However, there are a few key differences. These are content ads, i.e. ones that link to related stories and media, not e-commerce ads that hawk goods or services.
OneRiot chief executive Kimbal Musk said the company has to take a different approach in building an ad system for the real-time web than Google’s AdSense because users searching for the latest news aren’t necessarily looking to buy goods. OneRiot is a search engine that uses Twitter and Digg to find the most relevant content that’s been published in the last few hours to a day on any given topic.
Plus bidding on keywords might be logistically difficult for advertisers who can’t predict whether there will be an immediate surge of interest in a topic like ‘tsunami.’
Instead, publishers will pay to have their content featured alongside search results in categories like ‘technology’ or ‘health’. OneRiot will take its search technology, pore through the publisher’s stream of content and highlight stories that relate to a user’s searches. Content providers are likely to pay per clickthrough, Musk said.
“We believe this is going to be the business model for the real-time web,” Musk said. “We view ourselves as the company that’s building the foundation and infrastructure for real-time search and monetization through real-time ads.”
The Boulder, Colorado-based company is turning on revenue at a time when Twitter, a hub for real-time content sharing, has hesitated to use advertising. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said the company won’t put advertising on the site this year at the 140:Twitter Conference in Los Angeles last week.
Musk said commerce-oriented ads may come in time, as businesses become more sophisticated in offering deals to users that are timed with spikes in interest (like 20 percent off golf clubs if a user searches for Tiger Woods after he wins a tournament).
OneRiot will also share revenue from RiotWise with the 40 partners that bake its search results into their products. After launching an application programming interface earlier this year that lets developers pull in OneRiot’s search results into other destinations, the company has gone from handling 4 million searches per month in June to 30 million this month.
OneRiot raised $7 million last month from Appian Ventures, Commonwealth Capital Ventures, and Spark Capital.

Twitter lar brukere opprette, dele lister over folk å følge

Twitter bare absorbert en annen nyttig funksjon er generert fra fellesskapet sine - det er å la brukerne kapellanen og dele lister over Twitter-kontoer til følge. Listene vil bli koblet fra en brukers profil og de vil være offentlig tilgjengelig som standard. Folk kan abonnere på lister som de endres og utvikles. Twitter gjør begrenset testing på funksjon for nå, vil utvide den til hele området senere. En fordel med den nye funksjonen er at det vil være mye lettere å finne og følge interessante kontoer. Ulempen? Hvordan å faktisk ta hensyn til alle disse kontoene uten å få hjernen din stekt av tusenvis av tweets. Twitter nye tillegg kan gjøre noen selvstendige prosjekter bygget rundt området foreldet. (Sorry guys!) TweepML lansert en tjeneste som dette for tre uker siden og Lunch.com, gjennomgangen området, rullet ut sin egen Twitter-listen fungerer i dag faktisk.

Nvidia’s graphics chips to be used in national lab’s supercomputer

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory said today it will use Nvidia’s next-generation graphics chips in a supercomputer that is 10 times more powerful than the lab’s fastest current machine.
Jeff Nichols, associate lab director, said that Oak Ridge will use the Nvidia chip, code-namemd Fermi, which is evidently shipping in a  matter of months. The announcement is a validation of an important part of Nvidia’s strategy. Jen-Hsun Huang, chief executive of Nvidia, said the company is designing its graphics chips to handle non-graphics functions. This is because the parallel computing processors on the graphics chips can be efficiently used to handle other work normally performed by microprocessors at slow processsing speeds.
Huang calls this GPU computing, after graphics processing unit. For the past two years, Nvidia has been investing heavily in this technology and the Fermi graphics chip will be the newest version. Oak Ridge will use the supercomputer to pursue research in energy issues and climate change.
This development is sure to make microprocessor vendors, Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, a little uncomfortable. Normally, supercomputers rely upon thousands of microprocessors. Now, with this hybrid graphics/microprocessor supercomputer, there could be one graphics chip for every microprocessor. The supercomputing is going to have huge performance at something like 20 petaflops. A petaflop is a thousand trillion operations per second.
Nvidia is hoping that wide adoption of its CUDA non-graphics programming environment and its GPU computing platform will help spread its graphics chips far and wide. Supercomputers are one application, but there are a bunch of others in the works as well. That’s why Nvidia is holding its GPU Technology conference in San Jose, Calif., this week for 1,500 researchers.

Yess rakes i $ 5M for online sosialt spill basert på det virkelige livet

Yess gjør en web og iPhone-basert spill som gjør at du tjener poeng ved å oppnå ting i det virkelige liv - som går til gym, lære å lage mat mer oppskrifter, osv. - og deretter dele denne informasjonen med dine venner og andre til å holde motivasjonen kjører høy. I dag kunngjorde Palo Alto selskapet at det reist 5 millioner dollar i en ny runde med finansiering, ifølge en filing til SEC. Mens Yess ikke listen investorene som deltar i den siste runden av finansieringen, gjorde det tidligere raise $ 4,5 millioner fra Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Selskapet ble grunnlagt av Blizzard Entertainment veteraner slapp sin iPhone-program i slutten av juli.

Timberlake, Biel fremdeles sammen, sier kilder

Til tross for rapporter om at Justin Timberlake og Jessica Biel toårige forholdet er over, kilder fortalt folk at paret ikke har brutt opp.

Skuespiller Dennis Hopper sykehus

Skuespiller Dennis Hopper ble tatt med til en New York-området sykehus onsdag morgen for en ukjent sykdom, ifølge en publicist.

LG lanserer ny "Pop" mainstream berøringsskjerm telefonen

Koreansk elektronikk giganten, LG, mener det er en hel del av mobile forbrukere som har blitt utelatt i kulden, dvs. den ordinære offentlige, når det kommer til berøringsskjermen telefoner . Med andre ord vil ikke alle fullverdige (les: "komplekse") smarttelefon, men de fleste gjør begjær etter en berøringsskjerm. I lys av denne [...]

Få dem mens de er varme: HTC Touch utgivelser Pro2 og Diamond2 hotfixes

CellPhoneForums.net medlem Cathy var snill nok til å legge inn informasjon om to nye HTC hurtigreparasjoner, ett for Touch Pro2 og den andre for Diamond2. Den første hurtigreparasjon (tilgjengelig her) gir en oppdatering for HTC Touch Pro2 er anrops-ID display: "Denne oppdatering for HTC Touch Pro2 kan du, dine venner og kjære blir [...]

Sprint ønsker å miste sin Touch Pro 2 ned til $ 199?

(Disse karene er glade for at de kunne snart kunne kjøpe Sprint Touch Pro 2 uten om konkursrisiko.) Good news, everyone! Ifølge noen dude på internett som hørte det fra en annen fyr - og en haug med folk som allerede har klart å få avtalen - Sprint Touch Pro 2 [...]

Spencer "såvidt sex" med Heidi

Det er mange ting de fleste helst ikke vil dvele ved når de vurderer fakta bak ekteskapet mellom Heidi Montag og Spencer Pratt, kanskje den mest hånte sammenkobling i reality-TV.

Sikkerhet: Obama Administrasjon nå ute for å eliminere tekstmeldinger under kjøring

Ser ut som Obama Administration, som egentlig burde være fokusert på å få amerikanere som meg rimelig helsevesenet (med mindre leger aksepterer nå World of Warcraft Gold som betaling, lol!), Har satt sine øyne på eliminerer svøpe distrahert kjøring en gang for alle. Case in point: Transport Sec. Ray LaHood holder et toppmøte denne uken som har det endelige målet med "å finne måter å eliminere tekstmeldinger mens du kjører."

Hands-on med BlackBerry TiVo app

TiVo endelig fikk med programmet, og ga ut sin første BlackBerry app. denne morgenen. Den gode nyheten er at det synes å fungere som annonsert, men la oss bare si at det er et ganske grunnleggende app og er bare laget for å planlegge innspillinger. Du kan ikke fjernstyre TiVo eller streame innhold fra det, men [...]

Hollywood omfavner Roman Polanski

Når filmskaperen Roman Polanski ble arrestert lørdag i Sveits, var han på vei til å godta en pris for Lifetime Achievement ved Zürich filmfestival.

En post-Holocaust fortelling om frihet utsatt

Ved slutten av andre verdenskrig i april 1945, med om lag to tredeler av europeiske jøder utryddet, jødiske overlevende trådte ut av mørket på jakt etter et sted å ringe hjem.

Var Jon Gosselin prøver å få sparken?

Ikke lenge etter at Jon og Kate Gosselin anmelde deres skilsmisse på treffet TLC show "Jon & Kate Plus 8," spekulasjoner begynte: gjorde Jon ønsker å søke andre muligheter?

Singer-skuespiller Tyrese oppfinner superhelt

Tyrese Gibson er langt fra første sangeren å gjøre overgangen fra musikk til film. Men er "Transformers" stjerne flammende en helt ny løype med sin nyeste crossover venture.

LG GD510 Pop er et innovativt og kompakt berøringsskjerm bar

LG forsøker å bygge videre på suksessen fra LG KP500 Cookie og har annonsert at LG GD510 Pop å gjøre akkurat det. De annonserer det som den mest kompakte 3-tommers berøringsskjerm bar noensinne - og husk ...

Facebook lets everyone crowdsource translations

When Facebook began expanding internationally, instead of paying professionals to translate its site into other languages, it turned to its users. They quickly made it available in 65 languages.
The Tower of Babel
Now Facebook’s turning around and offering that technology to other sites. Called Translations for Facebook Connect, it’s available to any of the 15,000 partners who use the company’s Connect service. (Launched last year, Connect lets people use their Facebook ID to log-in to other online destinations.)
It works for Web sites, apps and widgets. Publishers and developers insert a few lines of JavaScript into their source code, pick which languages they want and then turn to Facebook users to translate content.
Sharing its translations strategy is not a completely altruistic move: by dangling the carrot of free translations in exchange for using Facebook Connect, the startup can expand its reach and deter companies from using other competing ID systems.
It also can start collecting more substantial amounts of data on how people translate language, which it could then feed into translation algorithms later. In contrast, Google has relied on programs, rather than humans, for translation efforts. Then again, it has a extraordinarily rich data set to extrapolate rules from with book search and pretty much every translated site on the web. Facebook just has its own interface to pull translation data from, but it could have much more with all the mundane and colloquial conversations happening every day on the site.
From Dave Ellis, a Facebook engineer and computational linguistics expert:

Social natural language processing is (in a sense) in its infancy. We hope to capture aspects of its evolution, just as the field comes to better describe and understand ongoing changes in human languages. We expect more fine-grained analyses to follow, using our framework to compare and contrast a variety of languages (from Bantu to Balinese) and phenomena (inside jokes, cross-linguistic usage of l33t and txt msg terms).

CMEA pulls plug on $500M late-stage cleantech fund

CMEA Capital has decided against raising a new $500 million fund to back late and growth-stage cleantech companies, Dow Jones VentureWire reported earlier today. The news is interesting for two reasons: 1) It suggests a shift in strategy for CMEA, one of the largest investors in the green space, according to yesterday’s Greentech Media report on the sector; and 2) It may be further proof of cleantech’s rebound from the downturn — venture firms like CMEA no longer need to keep late-stage companies on life support due to a frozen exit market (A123Systems’ IPO broke the ice in a big way).
CMEA, which has had several big victories with A123Systems’ recent blockbuster exit and the impressive growth of solar firm Solyndra and biofuel maker Codexis, reviewed late-stage opportunities in the cleantech scene over the last six months, managing general partner Jim Watson tells VentureBeat. (A123 was actually the only late-stage investment the firm made out of its last fund — demonstrating almost prescient judgment.)
“We just didn’t see that much that was quality or at the right price,” he said. “There’s a lot of money on the later-stage side, so there is more competition for deals — a lot of them didn’t make sense economically.” Still, the firm will continue to keep an eye on this segment of the market if any ripe options arise. Watson said the landscape may change in the next year as companies run out of money from their previous rounds and government grants and loans — pricing on deals will probably improve. And of course CMEA will continue to fund its existing portfolio companies in this category.
The role of state and federal governments is particularly interesting in this context. For the time being, stimulus-package subsidies, tax breaks and grants have somewhat negated the need for late-stage cleantech funding. After all, the Department of Energy and other agencies have emphasized that preference is given to companies already generating revenue or with capital-intensive construction projects underway (it just handed CMEA’s Solyndra $535 million in loans, for example). Even so, VCs will probably need to jump back in as soon as the government shuts off the tap.
In the meantime, Watson said the firm will divert much of its energy to the early-stage startup market. “We decided to stick with what we do best: the transformational science,” he said. “These companies can create some real intellectual property around their breakthroughs.”
CMEA appears to be well-positioned to take on the higher risk associated with these early, more disruptive investments. This is a good sign for the cleantech sector in general, implying that liquidity has returned, soothing skittish VCs that spent the first half of the year shying away from even mildly risky deals.
“Higher reward comes with higher risk,” Watson said.
VentureBeat is hosting GreenBeat, the seminal executive conference on the Smart Grid, on Nov. 18-19, featuring keynotes from Nobel Prize winner Al Gore and Kleiner Perkins’ John Doerr. Get your early-bird tickets for $495 before Sept. 30 at GreenBeat2009.com.

Tapes: MJ, Janet skulle forestille pappas død

Michael Jackson var en av de mest berømte menneskene i verden. Likevel for alle sine globale beryktet hyllet mannen selv var i mystikk.

Kan du ferdig med disse linjene fra "Oz'?

The" Wizard of Oz "går høyoppløselige 70 år etter at den nå klassiske filmen første hit kinoer under depresjonen. Publikum fremdeles nyte rømmer inn i verden av Dorothy og hennes venner. Ta denne testen for å finne ut hvor godt du kjenner dialogen.

tirsdag 29. september 2009

OnLive raises big round from AT&T and others for on-demand gaming

OnLive is announcing today it has raised a third round of funding from AT&T Media Holdings, Lauder Partners and its existing partners as it moves toward the launch of its video games on demand service, which will let you play high-end games with no special hardware.
The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company declined to say how much it raised. But Steve Perlman, chief executive and founder of OnLive, said in an interview that the round was large and oversubscribed. Rumors surfaced earlier this year that the company was seeking a $750 million valuation, and one venture capital source said that the final valuation was likely above $500 million. If the numbers are accurate, it would easily be the biggest game-related funding of the year.
“It was a very big up round” in terms of valuation of the company and this was the biggest round we’ve had to date,” Perlman said. “But we’re limited on what we can disclose. The valuation was quite high for a pre-revenue company. It is probably among the highest for a pre-revenue company getting funding this year. But the scope of the opportunity is high.”
Other investors in the round include prior investors Warner Bros., AutoDesk, and Maverick Capital. The deal shows that OnLive has huge financial support, and it suggests that AT&T could be a backer of the OnLive on-demand service. Perlman declined to say if AT&T would be a partner in launching OnLive, but he said his company is working with investors who are “relevant partners.” The service, first described in March, will let gamers play server-based games. Those are high-end PC games that look visually outstanding, even though they are hosted on data center servers rather than on the players’ own computers. The service can cut retailers, and their profit margins, out of the picture. Coincidentally, the Game Crazy retail chain announced today that it will close 200 under-performing stores.
OnLive is in the midst of setting up a national network of servers that can handle the games. While the company leases those servers, the business is still capital intensive, Perlman said, which is why it needed the new round of funding.
Once gamers subscriber to this service, they can instantly play high-end PC games without waiting to download them to PCs. On top of that, they can play the high-end games even if they don’t have expensive computers. The service will work on just about any PC or Mac, or even on a TV set with small adapter box, dubbed a MicroConsole, from OnLive. You don’t need a game console or a high-end gaming computer to play. Among the new things you can do with this service is watch other gamers as they play live games. You can also capture video of your games and post them on your page as “brag clips.” Those videos capture your exploits of your best games, as illustrated in this screen shot.
As such, OnLive has the potential to turn the video game business, which is heavily dependent on selling $60 games at retail, on its head. Nine game publishers have agreed to make their games available on OnLive. OnLive’s services will include allowing gamers to watch others playing games live and instantly joining friends in matches.
“Over the last decade, we’ve seen an enormous upheaval in the media business as the written word, photos, music, and video have been steadily moving away from physical media to online delivery,” Perlman (right) said in a blog post this evening. “One major category that still remains largely based on physical discs is fast-response interactive media — in particular, video games. And, of course, OnLive’s goal is to enable that last remaining transition.”
The plan is so audacious that it has attracted lots of skeptics. In the venture community, a number of game-focused VCs decided to pass on the deal because the valuation was so high. But it looks like Perlman got the valuation that he believed OnLive deserved.
A lot of other rivals have surfaced. To Perlman, that validates the basic idea that games, much like other apps in the software-as-a-service vein, will move to servers. Rivals include Otoy, Gaikai, Israel’s Playcast, and even a new project being sponsored by Intel, which recently invested a small amount of money in Toronto’s TransGaming, which is working on a GameTree.tv on-demand games service.
But Perlman’s company has the biggest backers and momentum behind it in this sector. Rich Hilleman, chief creative officer at Electronic Arts, recently said after a speech in August that he was a big believer in OnLive and that it could change the business of video games.
Perlman said he hoped the backing from AT&T and Lauder would answer the skeptics. Perlman started OnLive in 2002 as a research project inside his research incubator, Rearden. Perlman’s previous companies include Mova, Moxi, Ice Blink Studios and WebTV. He also funded Android, which Google bought and used to launch its Android mobile operating system.
OnLive recently started doing beta tests of its service, which will roll out formally during the winter, Perlman said. That suggests the launch might happen in 2010 instead of 2009, but Perlman said the launch depends on how well the beta testing goes. Last week, he demonstrated the game at the MIT Emerging Technology conference.
“This closing marks a major milestone for OnLive,” said Kevin Tsujihara, president of Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group.
Perlman said the company is filing for more patent protection and that proceeds from the funding will be used to bolster those efforts, as well as for the launch costs. OnLive already has more than 100 patents and patent applications pending. The company has more than 100 employees.

Twingly Channels let you track memes around any topic

Swedish start-up Twingly is launching channels tomorrow that find the most socially relevant news around any topic.
Twingly’s channels are a more sophisticated kind of real-time search or meme tracker that will pull up recently published items on a topic and filter them by how much they’ve been commented on or shared. It pulls links and comments from Twitter, and the company plans to add data from social bookmarking services Digg and Delicious later. (The first 300 readers can check out Twingly channels here with the invite code ‘VENTUREBEAT’ starting at 1 a.m. PST tonight).
“We wanted to use collective intelligence to create a high quality filter for the audience,” said CEO Martin Kallstrom.
Twingly CEO Martin Kallstrom
It’s a little different from other real-time search startups because you can interact with the results by leaving comments. As in FriendFeed, Twingly users can “like” a link and boost it higher in the rankings.
The company says its channels can be used by companies that want to track how people are talking about their brands or competitors. It can also be a space where a company can interact with its customers or fans. It could be a pretty neat way of tracking news too.
Twingly, which is based just south of Stockholm, has been around for three years and built its business model off serving Europe’s larger newspapers with Twingly Blogstream, a product that shows how the blogosphere is interacting with news coverage. They charge anywhere from $7 to 20,000 a year for the service. The company says it’s approaching breakeven point.
It also launched a microblog search earlier this year, which we said could become overwhelmed by the sheer amount of tweets. So this new release is clearly an improvement over that.
Below’s an example of a Twingly channel around the hot Swedish music startup Spotify.

Cooliris loses its chief revenue officer to AOL

Cooliris, the startup that developed a 3-D wall for users to explore images and other online media, lost one of its most notable hires today, when chief revenue officer Shashi Seth joined AOL.
Seth came to Cooliris in June 2008 from Google, where he was in charge of monetizing YouTube. At the time, Seth told GigaOm that the search engine had gotten “a little big.” Now he’s part of a wave of ex-Googlers jumping aboard at AOL. As senior vice president of advertising products, Seth will report to former Google executive Jeff Levick, who reports to AOL’s new chief executive, Tim Armstrong, who used to run North American sales at Google.
I interviewed Seth a few months ago about Cooliris’ business side, and he said its different ad programs were performing well. Now Cooliris points to its own recent executive hires as evidence that it won’t falter after Seth’s departure:
Over the past year, Cooliris has put in place a highly experienced executive team coming from both successful startups and major corporations that will help Cooliris grow rapidly in the future.  Marc Shedroff, who joined Cooliris last spring from YouTube where he was heading media relationships, is responsible for all business development at Cooliris. Alok Bhanot joined in April from eBay/PayPal where he was the VP of risk and currently runs all engineering and platform architecture.  Michele Turner recently joined from Adobe, where she was VP of product and marketing for the Flash Platform, to take on the same responsibility for Cooliris.  We have the foundation laid to support future advertising growth through our Cooliris Publisher Program, a fully staffed sales team including a new team in Europe, a solid pipeline, and good processes in place.
Cooliris has raised $18 million in funding, mainly from famed venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

MySpace utnevner Alex Maghen til CTO

MySpace forfremmet Alex Maghen å bli sin chief technology officer i dag. Han erstatter Aber Whitcomb som forlater. Maghen var chief technology officer for MySpace Music, det sosiale nettverkets siste bastion for dominans mot konkurrenter som Facebook. Før det var Maghen den teknisk sjef for MTV Networks. Han vil rapportere til Chief Operating Officer Mike Jones.

What does ACS do, the 100-word version

When Xerox announced its $6.4 billion acquisition of ACS yesterday, Web 2.0 types like us out here in San Francisco had only one question: What’s ACS?
Rebecca Scholl from Affiliated Computer Services, a 74,000-employee firm based in Dallas, Texas, sent us the tidy list below, just right for cutting and pasting into a blog post. It explains why ACS is worth exactly 6.4 Twitters.
The video clip tipped us off: ACS runs New York’s E-ZPass customer service. Do they run ours out here, too? A few minutes of reporting confimed that yes, ACS runs the San Francisco Bay Area FasTrak system, under a contract with the Bay Area Toll Authority through May 2013. Whenever you swoop through a toll booth without having to stop,
Rebecca’s full reply:
“ACS touches millions of lives every day. As a business partner to the world’s most complex corporations and governments, ACS focuses on serving their business operations so they can serve their clients.
ACS does it by…
…Providing services to more than 1,700 federal, state, county and local governments, making ACS the largest provider of managed services to government entities in the United States
…Processing about $3 billion electronic toll collections every year
…Handling more than one million phone calls daily in our 140 customer care centers
…Supporting more than 36 million Medicaid recipients in 14 states
…Processing 16 million parking tickets annually, contributing to our role as the largest provider of business process services in the government sector
…Managing more than 12.5 million federally-guaranteed student loans worth $170 billion, while disbursing more than $4.6 billion in new student loans every year
…Processing about 1 million credit card applications annually
…Providing human resource services to more than 4.4 million employees and retirees
…Annually processing over half of the nation’s child support payments worth $14 billion
…As a FORTUNE 500 company with approximately 74,000 people, the ACS presence is wide, supporting client operations in more than 100 countries. But its contribution to ACS client business success runs deep – by simplifying their business processes and improving their information technology capabilities.
ACS is known by its clients for being responsive to their business needs, flexible to their changing priorities, reliable for delivering results, and acting with integrity at all times.
ACS is “Expertise in Action.”
You can learn even MORE about ACS at http://www.acs-inc.com.
Thanks for asking!”
The video below shows that when I eventually become a delinquent dad, ACS will process my ex-wife’s child care funds so she can just swipe a card at the cash register. I’m serious! It’s in the video.

Benchmark hires MySQL’s Marten Mickos as Entrepreneur-in-Residence

Benchmark Capital, one of Silicon Valley’s leading venture capital firms, has hired former MySQL founder Marten Mickos as an Entrepreneur in Residence.
Mickos built MySQL, the popular open source database company, into a significant international company before selling it to Sun Microsystems last year for $1 billion.
Benchmark was one of the leading investors in MySQL, and netted a nice return from the sale (only $40 million was invested in MySQL beginning in 2001). So it’s no surprise that Kevin Harvey, the Benchmark partner responsible for that deal, is supporting the hire of Mickos to go build another company.
Mickos left Sun earlier this year, saying he was disenchanted with the big company’s bureaucratic culture.
With his investment in MySQL, Harvey solidified himself as the venture industry’s leading investor in open source. He also previously backed Zimbra and RedHat, two big wins — and so this is a way for Harvey to try to keep backing leading entrepreneurs in the area. Notably, though, open source companies have fallen out of favor somewhat lately.
Entrepreneurs in Residence typically spend time working at a venture capital firm, helping advice a firm’s existing portfolio companies, but they are also expected to eventually find an idea of their own to launch. While the arrangement doesn’t commit Mickos to accepting an investment from Benchmark when he finds that idea, he’s expected to at least let Benchmark have serious first consideration.
Benchmark has hired string of high-profile entrepreneurs over the years. They include Bret Taylor and Jim Norris, who Benchmark lured from Google to incubate FriendFeed, a social networking site recently acquired by Facebook. Other recent notable EIRs include Nirav Tolia, who recently launched Fanbase, Mike Cassidy, who launched Ruba, and Dave Goldberg. The firm accelerated its binge last year with several more hires.

Recurrent, ProLogis team up for 4.8 MW of rooftop solar in Spain

Recurrent Energy, a rooftop solar power developer in the U.S., has branched globally, teaming with major warehouse builder ProLogis to turn thousands of square feet of roof in Madrid and Barcelona into a distributed 4.8 megawatt powerplant — large enough to electrify close to 4,000 homes — by the middle of 2010.
The most interesting part of the story may very well be the choice of Spain for the deal. Recurrent Energy is based in San Francisco and ProLogis is headquartered in Denver — and this is the first time the former has developed projects overseas. With Germany ans Spain leading the charge on photovoltaic energy in Europe, it’s not too surprising, but the dynamics are interesting.
According to Recurrent CEO Arno Harris, his company wasn’t sure it would continue to benefit from federal incentives for solar in 2009. This provided the impetus to diversify and look for partnerships internationally. On top of that, Spain’s generous feed-in tariff offerings — requiring utilities to pay solar developers a certain amount for every kilowatt-hour delivered — eased the economics of large-scale development, which was very attractive to the two companies.
While Harris says the tariff arrangement has been a very successful policy for both Spain and Germany, both countries have come close to oversaturating their solar markets, and have reeled back subsidies in the last several months. This didn’t impact Recurrent’s deal with ProLogis, but may have some determining influence over future similar deals abroad. Harris says his company is in talks with several other large contractors and construction companies to install large rooftop solar arrays. He says they prefer to work with companies like ProLogis that own many buildings with large flat roofs (in this case, eight of them) so that separate deals don’t have to be made for each building.
Also by choosing to install large arrays on rooftops instead of swaths of land, like many other photovoltaic developers, Recurrent says it is avoiding permitting and land management hurdles that could potentially stall projects for years. The deal with ProLogis allows Recurrent to lease the rooftop space so that it can independently finance and retain ownership of its solar systems. The power generated by the photovoltaic panels will be channeled into the electrical grid and delivered via local utilities (the ones ponying up the feed-in tariff fees, which Recurrent qualified for in July).
This model is very similar to that of companies like SolarCity and SunRun, both of which build and own rooftop solar installations, opting to sell the power to consumers and utilities.
ProLogis will be providing the solar company some construction help — as will local Spanish contractors, engineering firms and consultants — but not much else. The project is expected to start next month.
Backed by Hudson Clean Energy Partners, among others, Recurrent Energy made headlines back in May when it was tapped by the City of San Francisco to build a 25,000-panel, 5-megawatt array in the Sunset Reservoir, slated to power municipal buildings.

Zipcar finally puts iPhone app in drive

Zipcar — the car rental service with a Web 2.0 twist — has launched its hotly-anticipated iPhone application. It had stalled for a while in the Apple App Store’s approval process, but today Zipcar users have the power to not only find nearby available vehicles and make reservations from their phones — they can even unlock their rental car’s doors from their handhelds. Pretty impressive.

To understand why a mobile tool is so key, you need to be familiar with the Zipcar model. Operating like many city car-share programs, the company allows its members to use vehicles parked in various central locations on an hourly basis. You can reserve these cars online, and, without ever speaking to someone at Zipcar or visiting a rental office, you can go straight to the vehicle you chose, unlock it by tapping your RFID-enabled membership card to a windshield sensor, and start driving.
Now, with the new iPhone app, you can complete this entire process while on the go. Most of the cities with Zipcars keep them in disparate, high-traffic areas, guaranteeing that you are never too far away from a designated lot. Let’s say you are running late to a meeting — you could theoretically search for the Zipcars closest to your office using GPS technology, reserve one of them, and zoom to your meeting, even if you happened to forget your Zipcar membership card. Heck, you even if you couldn’t find your car in the lot — the app has a built-in feature that remotely honks the horn for you!
Granted, a lot of this functionality already existed on Zipcar’s mobile-accessible web site (the reservation-making, not the door unlocking or the horn honking), but the official app has made going through the motions simpler and swankier. That said, the Boston Globe’s review of the app says some of its top selling points aren’t all their cracked up to be. For example, the horn wouldn’t honk and the doors wouldn’t unlock until the regular RFID membership card had been swiped — defeating the purpose. The point is that you shouldn’t need your card anymore. Hopefully these bugs will be fixed in future iterations.
Considering that Zipcar may be eyeing an IPO in 2010 (at least according to a slip by CEO Scott Griffith back in June), it would behoove the Boston-based company to polish up its offerings, especially one that appeals to so many of its devotees.
The Zipcar app is available now in the Apple App Store for free for existing Zipcar members. It’s unknown whether the company is working on the same for the Blackberry or any other smart phones.
The company, operational in 25 cities, including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, London, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto, Vancouver and Washington D.C., has close to 6,000 cars and more than 250,000 members in its system. It is backed by Benchmark Capital, Greylock Partners, Boston Community Capital and Globespan Capital Partners.

Scarlett Johansson aldri trodde hun skulle gifte seg

Det var nok av folk overrasket Scarlett Johansson er eksterne canadiske bryllup til Ryan Reynolds i september i fjor - og du kan telle Scarlett blant dem.

Travolta advokat vitner i Bahamas prøve

John Travolta advokat vitnet tirsdag at Paramedic som kjørte Travolta sønn til sykehus den dagen han døde senere ville ha penger for et dokument sjåføren antydet kunne være skadelig for skuespilleren.

Historier fra settet av 'Chinatown'

Hvis du tror du var forvirret og utfordret av den berømte labyrintiske handlingen i "Chinatown", tenk hvordan manusforfatter følte.

Samsung W880 AMOLED 12M forhåndsvisning: Første titt

Samsung W880 høyner innsatsen med verdens første 12 megapikslers kamera med 3x optisk zoom. Med en maskinvarefeil programhjul og en ekte zoom-hendelen det føles som et ekte kamera og du kan finne ...

Federated Media finner sin nye leder - CondeNet grunnlegger Deanna Brown

Fire måneder etter Federated Media grunnlegger og konsernsjef John Battelle sier selskapet var på utkikk etter en ny leder, Sausalito, Calif, oppstart (som selger reklame for mer enn 100 online publikasjoner, inkludert VentureBeat) lanserer elektroniske medier veteran Deanna Brown som sin President og Chief Operating Officer. Brown ble nylig president i medieselskapet Scripps Networks. Hun grunnla også CondeNet, online delingen av utgiver CondeNast, samt Kraftig Media and Gaming Industry News. Da Battelle annonsert søket, han sa at han ville ha noen til å håndtere Federated dag til dag drift mens han fokusert på langsiktighet og jobbe med store kunder. Så selv om Battelle holder konsernsjefen posisjon, høres det ut som han skal tråkke tilbake litt. Jeg har spurt Federated etter oppdateringer på hvordan deres virksomhet gjør, men har ikke hørt ennå. Selskapet permitterte syv ansatte i begynnelsen av 2009, men sa også et nytt fokus på "conversational markedsføring" (i motsetning til vanlig vis reklame) vil føre til fortsatt vekst.

Ribbit injects voice into Google Wave release

Ribbit, one of the earliest web-based telephone services (acquired last year by British telecom giant BT), plans to ride Google Wave’s coattails — announcing the integration of several gadgets allowing voice calls, phone conferencing, text messaging and voicemail transcription into the search engine’s new, much-hyped communication platform.
These services, available in the limited beta release going live tomorrow, are meant to introduce voice as a major pillar of net communications, along with email, social networks and instant messaging. Google’s Wave ties all of these modes (and groups of people) together into a single interface. Ribbit has capitalized on this format, letting you easily select which members of your Wave you want to include on a call. In a document that opens up on the right-hand side of the screen, you can add Ribbit’s conference call gadget: A list of everyone invited to the call with icons allowing you to call them with one click and showing their connection status. You can also add text above and below this gadget providing context for the call. Everyone invited to this particular call can view the edits in real time. Once this is set up, the call leader can click one button to call all participants at once. The gadget shows everyone’s phones ringing and then picking up as it happens. These calls can be routed to land lines, mobile phones, your browser, or even other VoIP services like Skype.

For the time being, conference invitees need to provide their own phone numbers, though the company says it is working to integrate people’s contacts and address books to supply these numbers automatically. It is also developing call recording and playback capabilities — even to the extent that it will indicate who on a call said what.
Similar Ribbit gadgets allow users to send text messages to phone numbers directly from their Waves. They can also receive text messages from phones, which will be included in their regular Wave stream along with messages, emails, photo galleries and any other data being sent between the groups of people included on their Waves. Voicemails left via Ribbit can be transcribed and included in Waves as well. As Ribbit’s development team points out, this feature could prove especially helpful for customer service organizations taking voicemails and email messages from clients looking for help. With all of these textual messages recorded in the Wave, anyone from within the customer service department could easily address complaints or questions.
Ribbit hopes to use several of Wave’s built-in features to enhance these offerings even more. For example, it says that the Wave includes little programs called “robots” that could theoretically pick words like “urgent” or “emergency” out of transcribed voicemails or calls — they could then send relevant users text messages or emails to alert them to critical information.
With both the Wave’s and Ribbit’s APIs flexible and open for developers, expect to see a lot more accessory applications like these coming out of the woodwork. And while other VoIP companies may pitch similar capabilities, Ribbit seems to be the early frontrunner — operating with Google’s blessing (it was hand-selected by the search giant for the preliminary beta release) and the backing of BT.
Here’s a demo of Ribbit’s gadgets included on the Google Wave site:

You can view the video demos for other Google Wave extensions here.

Yahoo’s new “You” ad: If you don’t cry a little, you have no soul

Ogilvy & Mather’s first TV ad out of the gate for Yahoo’s $100 million marketing campaign to turn the friggin’ company around, as Carol Bartz says, pushes all the right buttons for people who feel the Internet hasn’t lived up to its promise to makeover our lives yet.
Peter Kafka at AllThingsD says he wishes the ad would demonstrate some of Yahoo’s products. I think Kafka is afraid to embrace the joy of life. If I want product specs, I’ll hit Tom’s Hardware.
The spot is officially titled Anthem, but it skips that and opens instantly with the word “You” in voiceover. Smart. Then, instead of trying to demo Flickr’s iPhone app, it gives us shot after shot of You Could Be This Cool. One fabulous, fabulous dress after another. A dog with super face-slurping skills. People in other countries who are having way more fun than us. But wait, we can play soccer with them, how cool is that! There’s your product demo, Pete.
Yahoo, in these scenes, is the life you wish you had. When the voiceover lady promises we can “flirt,” the video cuts to a boy and a girl so totally NOT flirting. Until they both burst out in grins. It’s way more play than I ever get online, but see? Yahoo offers me hope.
I’ve been put off for years by Yahoo’s Web design, color schemes and those damned exclamation points all over the place. This is a new Yahoo, as surprisingly pretty as Bing. But Bing is a pretty place on the Internet. Yahoo is only a pretty place on TV. Yahoo’s websites are still too cluttered, jumbled and garish for my blue-state tastes. It’s hard for me to stay on them longer than a minute. Yahoo’s TV persona makes me want to go live there. In real life, I’ve tried to give Yahoo a chance, but always find myself waiting a polite few seconds before I reach for the Back button.
The full video clip is below.

Google Wave opens up tomorrow, but maybe not for you

Google is letting a few more people play with its new communication and collaboration tool, Wave, starting tomorrow. Specifically, 100,000 developers, Google Apps users, and other sign-ups at the Wave website will be getting access to a preview version.
That’s a lot of people, but many more are being left out — Engineering Manager Lars Rasmussen tells CNET Google received more than 1 million requests to participate. That’s confirmation that, despite the occasional fuzziness of the Wave concept (because it’s a combination of so many different concepts, such as email, word processing, news feeds, and photo galleries), there’s tons of interest in the product.
Here’s the state of Wave, according to Google:
Some of you have asked what we mean by preview. This just means that Google Wave isn’t quite ready for prime time. Not yet, anyway. Since first unveiling the project back in May, we’ve focused almost exclusively on scalability, stability, speed and usability. Yet, you will still experience the occasional downtime, a crash every now and then, part of the system being a bit sluggish and some of the user interface being, well, quirky.
There are also still key features of Google Wave that we have yet to fully implement. For example, you can’t yet remove a participant from a wave or define groups of users, draft mode is still missing and you can’t configure the permissions of users on a wave. We’ll be rolling out these and other features as soon as they are ready — over the next few months.
As part of opening up, Google has also highlighted some of the cool extensions companies have built on top of Wave, even in its early stage, which give some sense of how broadly Wave might be used:

A way to play Sudoku with your friends from Labpixies
A telephone conferencing service from Ribbit
Video chat from 6rounds
An itinerary collaboration tool from Lonely Planet
A weather forecast widget from AccuWeather
Collaborative map editing from Google Maps.

Overdose drept DJ AM, offisielle sier

Adam «DJ AM» Goldstein død i forrige måned var en ulykke forårsaket av "akutt forgiftning" fra en kombinasjon av kokain og reseptbelagte medisiner, sa New York medisinsk sensor tirsdag.

TLC dråper Jon og holder Kate

I siste vri på den pågående "Jon & Kate Plus 8" saga, TLC kunngjorde tirsdag at showet vil bli videreført minus Jon Gosselin. Jon vil fortsatt vises, men på et mindre regelmessig, "nettverket sa.

Want a career in video games? They’ve got lots of schools for that

People used to joke about how they majored in video games in college. But it’s not a joke anymore. As the jobs dwindle in categories such as chip design, video game jobs have been multiplying. And now there are 254 colleges and other institutions of higher learning that teach video game courses across the nation.
There are now 37 states (plus D.C.) with collleges and universities offering courses and degees in computer and video game design, programming and art. The programs range from certificate programs in 3D Animation & Interactive Media at Boston University to master’s degrees in Computer Graphics and Game Technology (University of Pennsylvania).
It’s a sign of how important video games have become as part of the economy and culture of the United States. The spread of gaming reflects shifting demographics as young people embrace games and ditch the media of their parents, who watched a lot more TV and read newspapers and magazines.
California has more institutions teaching video games than any other state at 46, followed by New York with 21, Texas with 20, Florida with 19, and Illinois with 16. It’s not all about kids stuff. The training covers the use of games as a medium for education, professional training, and electronic learning. Making video games is a multidisciplinary trade that involves creating stories, characters, animations, sounds, music, and programming. Those are skills that you can’t pick up easily outside of a dedicated academic program.
There’s no question that games are popular, with hardware and software console game sales hitting $21 billion in the U.S. alone last year. About 68 percent of American households now play video games, according to the Entertainment Software Association, the game trade group that released the data on colleges.
The question is whether or not there are enough jobs to support all of the students getting out of those schools, particularly in a recession that is hurting sales and forcing the closure of a number of game studios. in 2006, there were more than 80,000 people directly and indirectly employed in the video game business in 31 states, according to a study (paid for by the ESA) by Economists Inc. Total compensation generated was $2.2 billion in 2006.
Luckily, even as console games shrink this year, there are vibrant parts of the industry in social games, online games, and casual fare on mobile phones and the web. As games become a big part of the economy, it will be interesting if they can gain respectability in political circles, where issues around sex and violence are often the topic of discussion.
So is majoring in video games a wise course of action? If you look around and see how plain vanilla software programming jobs are moving overseas to low-cost areas, and how electrical engineering jobs are also drying up in areas such as computer hardware and chip design, it makes sense to think about games as a career. Since games require a deep understanding of a culture, they’re not as easy to outsource as other jobs (though it does happen).
One of the coolest developments in recent years was the rise of the iPhone and the ability for novice game makers to come up with hits on that device and others. Since console games cost tens of millions of dollars to make, small independent game developers often have no chance at making such games. But they can and are making a lot of titles that gain success through various kinds of digital distribution.
The biggest strike against the industry was the black eye it got for overworking people and failing to pay overtime for “crunch time” when everyone works long hours to get a game out. The industry had to start working that out a few years ago so that it complied with state overtime laws.

Arkadium acquires Gamelab.com game development firm

Arkadium, a maker of advergame portals for well-known brands, said today it is moving further into game development with the acquisition of New York-based Gamelab.com.
The acquisition should help Arkadium make more and better casual online game sites. Arkadium currently creates platforms for casual online games where the game and portal are ads for a certain brand. It has a network of 5 million casual game fans who play web games that advertise brands such as ABC , AARP, or ESPN. On the AARP’s web site, for instance, Arkadium created the Driver Safety web game for senior citizens.
Founded by well-known game designer Eric Zimmerman, Gamelab.com focuses on creating independent games and training video game designers. Zimmerman confirmed that Gamelab had closed its doors earlier this year, so it’s not clear exactly what Arkadium has bought.
 
As part of the announcement, Gamelab.com will introduce a series of free game design work shops for New York area game developers. The acquisition is aimed at bringing focus to the games being developed in New York, said Kenny Rosenblatt, chief executive of Arkadium.
Gamelab.com gave rise to a number of big titles such as Diner Dasy and Subway Scramble. Zimmerman will teach “The Game Development Design Series” workshops starting early next year. Arkadium was founded in 2001 and has 85 employees. It is based in New York and has an office in the Ukraine.
 
In the summer, Arkadium acquired Advergame.com and relaunched another gaming portal, GreatDayGames.com. The efforts are part of a plan to step up the number of ways that marketers can reach gamers. It is also adding social features to its ntework of sponsored game portals.
The company’s main rival in advergames is Blockdot, which differs in that it focuses on creating online games based on specific brands rather than offering entire portals for Web sites. Other rivals are Real Networks and Bunchball. The company is privately funded and is part of the Zelnick Media portfolio.

VholdR launches wearable HD camcorders for your head

Just in case you need it while you’re rockclimbing, VholdR has a new high-definition camcorder that you can attach to your head.
Really. The Vholdr ContourHD1080p is the world’s first wearable camcorder that you can use to shoot and share 1080p video, meaning it looks gorgeous on a big flat-panel TV. The camcorder is aimed at outdoor enthusiasts, particularly those who might be too busy with their hands — like holding onto rocks for dear life — to hold onto a camera. This could be really cool for folks like race drivers, mountain climbers, skiers — but not swimmers.
The camera shoots in four HD settings: 1080p, 960p, and two at 720p. It can shoot at 30 frames per second or 60. And you can adjust metering, contrast, exposure, and microphone sensitivity. The camera can share your video to VholdR.com. It costs $329.99 for the HD 1080p version and $279 for the HD version. They ship in mid-October.
Marc Barros, chief executive for VholdR, said the camcorder was inspired by professional users who want to capture world-class video wherever they go. VholdR has a line of other camcorders and roughly 70 percent of the users share their videos on its web site.
The software includes Easy Edit, which lets you clip out the best parts of a video and then share them on the site. The camera can record 3.5 hours of 1080p video internally. You can record up to eight hours on a removeable 16GB MicroSD memory card (not included). You can mount the camcorder on your goggles, helmet, handlebars, vehicle or pretty much anywhere else. The camera weighs just 4.3 ounces and its rugged anodized aluminum body is built to withstand the elements.
Vholdr was founded in 2003 and it has 15 employees. It has raised angel investment to date. Competitors include GoPro Camera, VIO, and Oregon Scientific. Marc Barros and Jason Green founded it after they created a simple helmet camera. They found regular camcorders didn’t hold up while skiing. They entered a business plan competition while undergraduates at the University of Washington and won third place. So they set out to create the venture.
To date, VholdR has sold several thousand cameras in more than 45 countries. The company is profitable.[EMBED1]

Pre-sale surge for Adam Lambert's debut-CD

Sesong åtte «American Idol" runner-up Adam Lambert er no også-løp.

Filmskapere etterspørsel Polanski's release

Woody Allen, Pedro Almodovar og Martin Scorsese har "krevd umiddelbar løslatelse" av andre filmskaperen Roman Polanski, som ble arrestert i Sveits på en amerikansk arrestordre knyttet til et 1977 barn sex kostnader.

Brain scans gauge horror flick Fear Factor

Editor's note: For mer om neurocinema stille inn på The Screening Room's Halloween spesielt på følgende tider: 28 Wednesday oktober: 0930, 1730, 31 lørdag oktober: 0930, 1800, 2130, 1 søndag november : 0630, 1830, mandag 2. november: 0400 (alle tider GMT)

Make-your-own-book startup FastPencil adds color to the mix

FastPencil, a startup that shepherds authors through the book-publishing process, launched a product today that will make it dead simple to create books in full color.
The company, which had focused on publishing books like family heirlooms or more text-heavy novels, added a new user interface that’s more intuitive for editing visuals in a book. In FastPencil, authors upload and edit their works entirely on the web.
“It’s like PowerPoint for the page,” said CEO Steve Wilson. “You can customize every single page so it’s perfect for a group cookbook where you have a format with a color picture for every recipe.”
Wilson said the new tools would be ideal for groups of people that wanted to create comic books, coffee table books or coloring books. The company is also retooling its marketplace, so it’s easier to find works in a specific subject. Once FastPencil authors publish, they can choose to sell copies of their books through Amazon or other retailers.
FastPencil’s not necessarily meant to be the startup that brings out the next blockbuster novel. It instead is looking to democratize book publishing and make it as simple as possible for families or experts in specific fields to create works. The Campbell, California-based company works with print-on-demand publishers so run rates don’t have to be in the thousands like they do in the traditional publishing industry. They’ve brought down costs significantly: a 50-page, letter-sized full color book can cost an author about $12. Hardcover will cost about $5 more.
The company raised $845,000 last December from angel investors and is in the process or pulling together what is planned to be a final round.
“We’re expecting this to be our last,” Wilson said. “We think that profitability will come next year.”

NeoEdge raises $4M for in-game video ads from game-focused VC firm

In-game ad company NeoEdge has raised $4 million in a new round of funding for its business. The company has both an ad network and a platform for placing video ads in casual downloadable games on the PC. And with this new funding, it plans to offer its own exclusive games for the first time — acquiring rights to games and publish them under the NeoEdge brand.
The first institutional round of funding shows that, even though the recession has hurt ad spending, NeoEdge has been able to grow its business enough to justify the new investment, said Dan Servos, president and chief executive of the Mountain View, Calif.-based company.
The money came from an interesting source. Vanedge Capital co-led the round with Jefferson Partners. Vanedge is a new venture firm with offices in Palo Alto, Calif., and Vancouver, Canada. It was started earlier this year by Paul Lee and Glen Entis, two former development executives at Electronic Arts. They are focusing on investing money in video game and digital media companies. Servos said NeoEdge chose Vanedge and Jefferson because of the deep relationships that they brought to the table.
While rivals such as Wild Tangent can do ads at the beginning or end of a game, NeoEdge focuses on putting 15-second to 30-second video ads into the middle of a game (see this demo), such as when a gamer completes a level. These video ads can run across a full screen. Servos said the company has gained good traction during the past 18 months. Its ads run in 470 games from more than 50 game publishers, such as Big Fish Games and Yahoo Games. The advertisers include a variety of Fortune 500 companies such as NBC Universal.
The recession has hurt CPM rates (cost per mil, a measure of how much an advertiser pays per 1,000 views). Advertisers who once paid $20 CPMs now pay $15 CPMs. But Servos said that NeoEdge has been able to grow because it has added sales people in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto and Chicago. Those people have relationships with ad agencies and major brands that sponsor a lot of web advertising.
As a result, revenue has been growing since January, and Servos said that his company can get as much as $30 CPM for targeted ads. Servos said the company’s own studies have shown that brand awareness can go up 30 percent to 50 percent as a result of running campaigns in the company’s ad platform. The games of the past 30 days include Aloha Solitaire, Luxor2, 7 Wonders (above), Bouncing Balls, and Monopoly.
Alex Terry left his post as chief executive of NeoEdge in May, after the board decided to make some changes. Nolan
Bushnell, the founder of Atari, has also left his post as chairman of NeoEdge in the wake of this funding. The new
chairman will be Paul Lee, while Entis will join the board too. Byron Lee of Jefferson Partners is also joining the board. After Terry left, Servos became CEO. He previously headed business development for NeoEdge
Servos said he is bullish about ad revenues in the fourth quarter. The company has a backlog of campaigns that are scheduled to begin in the fourth quarter and continue in 2010. The company has 24 employees.

Mobile phone health apps could improve care in developing countries

Healthcare in developing countries could get a shot in the arm from mobile health apps being developed by startups, according the executive director of the mHealth Alliance.
David Aylward, who is being named head of the alliance today, said in an interview that the personal healthcare monitoring apps being developed for the iPhone and other smart phones could ultimately prove useful in improving healthcare in developing nations.
“It’s going to take time to get the apps on phones like the iPhone in developing countries, but maybe not as long as you think,” he said. “Even in the poorest parts of the poorest countries, you can find mobile phones.”
Lots of companies are vying to get U.S. consumers for these services, but Aylward said that makers of apps often fail to consider overseas markets, where the competition might be slimmer.
One new company that just announced a mobile healthcare app is Ringful, which demonstrated its technology at the DEMOfall 09 conference last week. The idea is for caregivers to distribute information to patients via the phone and to collect healthcare data that can be analyzed by the caregivers.
The mHealth Alliance in Washington, D.C., is a partnership of the UN Foundation, the Vodafone Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. Its mission is to support and advance mobile health initiatives in the developing world. The alliance was announced in February at the GSM World Mobile Conference. The goal is to generate collaboration between nonprofit, government and private parties in the interests of global health. Right now, most of the projects funded are in pilot stage.
At the core of the alliance is the notion that most people in the developed and developing countries have cell phones now. If you can deliver healthcare through those phones, you can keep people out of hospitals and thereby reduce overall healthcare costs. Since 80 percent of healthcare costs are due to chronic illnesses that send people to the hospital, much of the effort in saving money is to keep people at home and to treat them there, as noted in our recent piece on healthcare and technology.
“The apps that are being developed for the first world are the kind we’re interested in for the developing world,” he said. “We have apps that are collecting data. What hasn’t happened so far is integrating the data with the healthcare system.”
Aylward said that one of his missions will be to introduce startups with interesting mobile healthcare solutions to big carriers that can help the technology spread widely. Since 2006, the UN Foundation and the Vodafone Foundation have made investments in technology to support global health goals. In that respect, Aylward said that the mHealth alliance is like an angel investor. It can foster startups and introduce them around and then get them moving toward full-scale deployment, Aylward said. Thanks to support from Qualcomm, Aylward said 21 mHealth projects will be highlighted at the upcoming CTIA Wireless IT and Entertainment conference in San Diego, Calif.
VC-backed companies could benefit from getting information from masses of people on mobile phones in developing countries. For instance, companies could collect data on how people respond to drug treatments. That data could be valuable to drug makers. Also, companies could use mobile phones to ensure that drugs that are reaching people in developing countries are authentic, not counterfeit, and have not been tampered with en route.
One of the success stories is EpiSurveyor, which made software for gathering healthcare data about spreading illnesses via mobile phones. It is being used by health ministries in 20 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. In the past, it took months to find out what kinds of diseases were spreading in local countries. Now it’s nearly instantaneous.
“It’s simple and straightforward but it radically changes the reporting of infectious diseases,” Ayalward said.

BillShrink’s new recommendation engine tells you where to stash your savings

BillShrink, a startup that advises its users on how to reduce their monthly bill payments, today launched a new savings tool that recommends the best savings and CD accounts for conserving cash. Calling itself a decision engine, the Menlo Park, Calif. company says it analyzes interest rates offered by more than 60 banks to help users choose the most lucrative combination of accounts.
BillShrink has evolved a lot since its launch last spring. It started out as a service to help users find the cheapest cell phone plans to fit their needs. Soon after that, it started telling people which credit cards to choose for the greatest savings as well. Earlier this year, it introduced a new tool to help users find the nearest gas station with the lowest prices. As you can imagine, all of these features proved to be very popular in the past year following the economic downturn. As consumers tightened their belts, they turned to web solutions for living within budget, and BillShrink picked up a lot of the business, particularly in June when its traffic shot up to 500,000 unique monthly visitors (according to Compete). Overall, it says it saved Americans more than $750 million in the last year.
Now that the economy has started to turn around, the company says it wants to help its users grow the money it has helped them save. The new savings account and CD recommendation tool is meant to do just that. To provide its customers with the best options, it takes into account their monthly saving goals (defined by the users), the fees attached to certain accounts, ATM locations, and liquid versus illiquid cash needs. With all of this data, it confidently tells its users where to put their money, the company says.
BillShrink is one of a flock of companies aimed at saving consumers money in their everyday lives. Mint, recently acquired by Intuit, did roughly the same, allowing people to set budget targets in different area of their lives and recommending deals and offers to save cash. Both Wesabe and Green Sherpa are incredibly similar, although the latter offers a paid subscription service to help its users monitor their general cash flow.
The company last raised funding in October 2008, bringing in $8 million from Trinity Ventures and Bessemer Venture Partners. It has now raised $10 million to date.

"High Fidelity" forfatter i ny bok

Det moderne og dysfunctional mann som strever med å finne sitt fotfeste i relasjoner, karriere og faktisk hele verden, har på mange måter vært levebrødet til bestselgende britiske forfatteren Nick Hornby karriere.

Frittalende Wendy Williams flytter til TV

Wendy Williams vet at hennes syndikert TV-show ofte gir fôr for vitser på E! 'S "Talk Soup". Hun er mer enn greit med det.

"Lucy in the Sky med Diamonds 'dør

The barndomsvenn av John Lennon sønn som inspirerte The Beatles' psykedeliske mesterverk" Lucy in the Sky med Diamonds "har dødd i alderen 46 fra den kroniske sykdommen lupus.

Vodafone UK spille fange opp, vil selge iPhone 3G / 3GS såvel

Etter gårsdagens pressemelding dialog mellom Orange og O2 i saken for O2 mister iPhone eksklusivitet i Storbritannia, er Vodafone også bli med på diskusjonen, bare ved å kunngjøre at de har ...

12MP Samsung W880 stormer Sør-Korea med 3x optisk zoom og 720p HD-video

Det er ikke hver dag vi skriver om CDMA telefoner, men monstrene som W880 er noe vi bare ikke kan gå glipp av. Samsung W880 er verdens første 12 megapiksler cameraphone med 3x optisk zoom, xenon-blits og HD video innspillingen ...

Judge dismisses suit against TV ad company Spot Runner

A U.S. district court dismissed the lawsuit accusing TV ad company Spot Runner of committing a “pump and dump” scheme.
WPP, one of the world’s largest advertising agencies, filed suit against Spot Runner’s executives in April, saying that the founders committed fraud by selling large quantities of the company’s shares without disclosing the sales to investors. The advertising giant alleged that Spot Runner’s founders aggressively promoted WPP’s $10 million investment in it to gain new investors. WPP was seeking at least $11.5 million in damages.
U.S. district judge Percy Anderson of the Central District of California dismissed the suit, saying that WPP misunderstood statements from Spot Runner’s general counsel Peter Huie. In May 2007, when Spot Runner was issuing new stock, WPP tried to ask Huie whether the company’s shareholders were selling their shares. Huie answered: “This offering does not involve the sale of any existing shares. It is an entirely new issuance by the Company,” which was literally true at the time. WPP went ahead and bought $1.7 million worth of shares based on his reply.
The judge said that while WPP may have misread the statement, it wasn’t enough to constitute fraud or active deception. WPP has until Oct. 12 to respond with an amended complaint.
The dismissal may not save Spot Runner from turbulence: the company has gone through three rounds of layoffs lately, letting go of more than 200 employees. It has raised a total of $111 million from WPP, UK media group Daily Mail, Grupo Televisa, hedge fund Legg Mason Capital Management, French luxury group Groupe Arnault/LVMH, Allen & Company, Battery Ventures, Capital Research and Management, CBS, Index Ventures, The Interpublic Group and Tudor Investment Corporation.
SPOT Decision

mandag 28. september 2009

Cyanogen vil fortsette, om enn litt handikappet av Google

Etter at Google slapp L-bombe på Cyanogen, han skal ha åpnet opp samtaler med guttene i Goo. Det høres ut som de har endelig nådd et kompromiss i deres lille uenighet. Er det en god ting? Kanskje, kanskje ikke.

Palm webOS oppdateringen slippes, fortsatt ingen iTunes støtte

Den nyeste versjonen av webOS ble lansert i dag, med noen mindre forbedringer til Bluetooth, e-post og kalender. De fortsatt ikke har arbeidet ut at pesky iTunes problem though. Såvidt oppdateringer gå, er ikke dette veldig spennende. Palm lagt til støtte til telefonen laster ned fra Amazon Music Store (du vant til å bruke WiFi), støttet opp bokmerkene dine i profilen din (så du vil ikke miste dem hvis noe galt skjer), lagt til et sted funksjon til kalenderen funksjon og lagt til muligheten for å søke til din e-post basert på mappen.

Sony embraces small publishers and unknown authors on Sony Reader eBook store

The shift toward digital books is helping small-fry authors and publishers to get in front of wider audiences than ever before. That trend is being reinforced today as Smashwords announces that it has a distribution agreement to get its books published on Sony’s new eBook portal.
Smashwords lets authors publish their books in online formats in a matter of days. Now those books can be downloaded to the Sony Reader, the company’s eBook reader gadget. Smashwords takes manuscripts from writers in Microsoft’s Word format and converts them into Adobe PDFs and eight other formats that can be read by eBook readers such as the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader. Now those eBooks can be uploaded into Sony’s portal, the eBook Store, where users can buy and download them.
“This is one more example of the democratization of book publishing,” said Mark Coker, founder of Los Gatos, Calif.-based Smashwords.
Now it’s much easier for authors to hit lots of readers. Self-published authors can now visit the Sony Publisher Portal and click on Smashwords to sign up for a free publishing account. Then they can format a book in Smashwords’ style andchoose their distribution preferences, and their book will be made available for immediate sale at Smashwords.com. The book can show up a few days later on Sony’s eBook Store.
Besides Smashwords, Sony is also getting new eBooks from Author Solutions. Smashwords first launched its eBook publishing and distribution platform 16 months ago. Now it has more than 3,000 books available. While that’s a small number, Coker said he is working to rapidly increase the book count. In January, Smashwords announced a distribution agreement with Lexcyle, to allow Smashwords books to be read by users of Stanza, an iPhone eBook-reading app with two million users. And Smashwords has an agreement with Barnes & Noble, which now distributes Smashwords books on BarnesandNoble.com, Fictionwise and on the iPhone eReader app.
Smashwords was founded in 2008. The company has 2.5 full-time employees and is self-funded.

Newest corporate laptops from Dell reflect “consumerization” trend

The newest enterprise-focused laptops and desktops from Dell have been designed with “consumerization” in mind. That means that Dell’s enterprise customers no longer want dull and boring computers. The new corporate computers are designed to be sleek, attractive and lightweight.
That’s a consistent theme in the computers Dell is launching today for business users. After all, says Todd Forsythe, vice president of life cycle management at Dell, business users are also consumers and they don’t want boring and bulky computers any more than anyone else does.
The company hopes that these new machines, upgradeable to Windows 7 operating system launching on Oct. 22, will inspire a resurgence in small business and corporate PC buying.
The cream of the crop is a 16-inch laptop, the Dell Latitude Z, billed as the thinnest and lightest corporate laptop ever built. It is just a half inch thick and weighs just 4.5 pounds. As such, it competes with Hewlett-Packard’s recently launched Envy laptop computers.
The chassis is made of magnesium alloy and it has a chrome metal hinge on either side. The hinges house the Ethernet jack on one side and the power plug on the other. There is a single vent with two fans that send air out through the side. One of the cool things about it is it can wake up instantly. When you open it, the computer activates your email, calendar, contacts, or the web. You can put a password to protect it, but you don’t have to boot Windows to view those items quickly. The battery life lasts four hours on a four-cell battery and eight hours on an eight-cell battery.
Another new 16-inch laptop is the Dell Latitude Z600 (right). This $1,999 computer can charge inductively as it sits upon a dock. That means you just place it on top of the dock and it fits into a power coil that does the charging. It comes with EdgeTouch, a touch-sensitive bezel that surrounds the screen. If you run your finger down the bezel, you can scroll down a web page. The machine comes with a two-megapixel camera with Face Aware software. That means it recognizes if someone is sitting in front of it. If someone new comes in, it will ask for a password again. The machine also has a fingerprint reader and a business card scanner.
The charging dock sells for $199. The laptop works with a wireless dock, which allows you to wireless connect the laptop to another monitor. The wireless dock, sold separately for $199, will be available in a few weeks.
Dell is launching its Precision T1500 (pictured, left), an entry-level workstation desktop at $949. It is built to run engineering applications such as AutoCAD. Dell is also launching an Optiplex 780 desktop computer (pictured, right) for the enterprise. The computer is aimed at bringing down the cost of maintaining computers in an enterprise.

Green investing bounces back from recession

Venture Capital investment in green technology companies has jumped to tie pre-recessionary levels, according to a new report out of Greentech Media. With $1.9 billion spread over 112 deals, this year’s third quarter trounced figures from earlier this year, signaling a stronger than anticipated comeback for the sector, which took a beating during the economic downturn last fall.
To put the recent numbers in context: the second quarter this year saw $1.2 billion distributed across 85 deals, which beat out the first quarters miserable $836 million and 59 deals. This trend of rapid improvement bodes well for cleantech companies in the remainder of the year. Add in battery maker A123Systems’ blockbuster IPO last week, and it’s possible the market’s momentum could lead it to record heights going into 2010. A123 hadn’t even hit profitability and it still closed the day with share prices 50 percent above predicted levels. If that’s not a sign of investor enthusiasm, then nothing is.
The Massachusetts-based battery company may have become the poster child for top-tier cleantech companies in the last several weeks, but solar still dominated third-quarter investing, according to the Greentech Media report. About $575 million (30 percent across 29 deals) of the capital handed out during the quarter went to solar companies. Biofuels came in second at $512 million via 17 deals. That said, investing in companies working toward a cleaner, more efficient Smart Grid have gained ground in just the last three months ($159.7 million over 14 deals this quarter, compared to $101.4 million over 11 deals last quarter) — supporting our claim that the Smart Grid is getting more attention than ever.

The report highlighted several massive deals that gave Q3 the oomph to dig the sector out of the recession once and for all. Among them was the $198 million raised by cylindrical solar panel maker Solyndra from Argonaut Private Equity; the $300 million raised by algae-based biofuel maker Synthetic Genomics from Exxon; the $82.5 million given to electric car darling Tesla Motors (supposedly unsolicited) by Fjord Capital and Daimler; and the recent $60 million given to green construction supplier Serious Materials by Mesirow Capital among others. All of these are very large sums for the green space considering the size of previous deals this year.
Not surprisingly the leading VC firms in cleantech included Khosla Ventures (a devotee of biofuel development), Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (led by green proponents John Doerr and Al Gore), CMEA Capital (backer of Solyndra and biofuel powerhouse Codexis) and Foundation Capital (the firm that rode demand response company EnerNOC’s shares all the way to a lucrative IPO — and may do the same with smart metering provider Silver Spring Networks). At least one of these firms has had a hand in every major green investing deal coming down the pike. Their support is enough to immediately anoint any company as “one to watch.” Take environmental footprint tracking software maker Hara, for example. Just $6 million from Kleiner Perkins kept it in the spotlight for weeks after its June launch, and almost every story about it since has mentioned the firm in the first or second paragraph.
Another fact worth mentioning from the report is that early-stage cleantech companies are having more success raising money. In both Q1 and Q2, VCs seemed to freeze up, choosing either not to sink money into the space (which is viewed as relatively risky), or to support only revenue-generating late-stage enterprises that had less of a chance of tanking. The fact that 35 of the deals made in Q3 involved early-stage startups is a positive sign for not only cleantech, but investors themselves, who seem to have enough liquidity now to stop playing it quite so safe.
VentureBeat is hosting GreenBeat, the seminal executive conference on the Smart Grid, on Nov. 18-19, featuring keynotes from Nobel Prize winner Al Gore and Kleiner Perkins’ John Doerr. Get your early-bird tickets for $495 before Sept. 30 at GreenBeat2009.com.

5 O’Clock Roundup: Xerox spends $6.4 billion on ACS, Warner makes up with YouTube, Google searches Google

ACS, newly acquired by Xerox for $6.4 billion, still unable to explain what the heck they do — Dean covered the story, but those of us left at the office admit we don’t know what exactly ACS does beyond “collecting tolls and installing computer systems in government agencies.” Wikipedia isn’t much help, either. Will someone at ACS please start over, from the beginning, and explain slowly what ACS provides to who?
Warner music videos may return to YouTube — The two companies are close to a licensing deal, sources have told the Wall Street Journal. Warner Music Group, the third-largest record label, yanked its content from YouTube nine months ago. Warner execs, the WSJ says, want more revenue from YouTube than the site’s advertising currently delivers.
[Photo: Warner Music]
Google adds way more statistics to tools for media companies – In Googlespeak, they’ve integrated Content ID with YouTube Insight. In English, it means all the statistics and data Google already shares with content uploaders is available to Content ID partners. So companies whose copyrighted materials end up in wedding videos can get demographic stats and more.
Speaking of Google, is Google just going to crawl itself now, or what? TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld reports on the gradually increasing number of Google search results that are Google-generated content. Last week’s launch of Google Places on Google Maps brought us potentially one step closer to Google Apocalypse.
AdAge challenges Meg Whitman’s “can-do Celebrity CEO” image – If she wants to play politics, Simon Dumenco’s slam is only a warmup for the hostility she’ll need to handle every day:
“Not that long ago, the media pretty much automatically thought of non-heir billionaires as hyper-capable — geniuses, even. If they banked a billion or more, the thinking went, they must have been doing something right — right? Now, of course, the media regards a lot of corporate billionaires and megamillionaires as automatically suspect.
“Contemplating Brand Meg (her campaign bumper sticker — MEG 2010: A NEW CALIFORNIA — encourages that first-name intimacy) requires a rewind to CEO Whitman and a simple question: Was she really such a great leader? Like, billionaire great?”
[Photo: Rick Wilking]

Spreadsheet of branded iPhone apps begs to be crowdsourced

Blogger Johnny Makkar has started this Google doc that lists only the branded iPhone apps in Apple’s store, and lays them out in a pretty tabular format. There’s potential for a great crowdsourced resource, if brand managers make sure their own entries here are up to date.
Makkar says he “will also be adding Android, Palm, BlackBerry soon.” Johnny, you’re an iPhone guy. Stick with what you love. This one spreadsheet is more than enough of a personal contribution to civilization.

Yes, you may tweet from the North Pole

Twitter’s uses get stranger and stranger as people outfit hardware to tweet on the social network.
There’s a device that that will tweet when bread is ready out of a baker’s oven and Kickbee’s a product that tweets whenever a baby kicks inside its pregnant mother. Now there’s a crew of explorers navigating through the quickly-opening Northwest Passage that have outfitted their ship to tweet its coordinates from far beyond where mobile carriers can reach.
The Northwest Passage is a sea route through the Arctic, north of Canada, that may become a major shortcut for shipping between Asia and North America as global warming thins the ice during summer months. A four-person crew on a 40-foot yacht (not a giant icebreaker) is traversing the region and is documenting the way climate change has irrevocably changed the region through tweets. They’ve rigged their ship with satellite technology from Blue Sky Network to tweet their coordinates or other observations at one-hour intervals.
OK, sure, we’ve all done the obligatory tweet from airplanes and places like the top of Half Dome. But on the sea, a solid Internet connection is hard to come by. If a research ship has collected a mass amount of data, they’ll upload it when they reach a port. In-flight wi-fi, which is finally beginning to take off with companies like Virgin America, also requires satellite telecommunications for trans-oceanic trips.
But for the most part, ships out in these distant regions can be a day or more away from contact with another vessel. (That’s why large naval ships seem inexplicably so vulnerable to bands of Somalian pirates or why it can takes days to track down planes at sea.) Blue Sky Network has a built a two-messaging system for planes and ships to communicate with the Iridium satellite system, a network of 66 satellites that provides coverage for the entire Earth. The 25-person company is privately held and based in La Jolla, California.
Perhaps if none of Twitter’s hypothetical business models pan out, they can at least become the new black box for airplanes.
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Plug and Play EXPO Høst 2009

Editor's note: Dette innlegget er sponset av Plug and Play. Gå ikke glipp av kommende Plug and Play EXPO Fall 2009, dette torsdag den 1 oktober 2009 i Sunnyvale, Calif Årets Expo vil inneholde hovedtaler Matt Murphy, partner hos Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers som klarer KPCB's iFund fokusert på iPhone-programmer for mobilt Internett. Murphy's foredrag signaler Plug and Play vektlegging på iPhone-programmer og nye mobile internett sektor. Plug and Play EXPO er den fremste Silicon Valley utstillingsvindu for innføring av "best of breed" emerging Consumer Internett, Digital Media, Software, Mobile, Spill, og Cleantech selskaper som lanserer sitt produkt-og tjenestetilbud, og ser for finansiering i inneværende år. Den ene dag Expo inkluderer heis presentasjon sesjoner, en demo gropen for one-on-one demonstrasjoner, og nettverk i et interaktivt miljø. Delta Expo for en eksklusiv titt på nye teknologier og samhandling med Silicon Valley innflytelsesrike spillere. Registrer deg i dag med vårt eksklusive koden venturebeat for 50% rabatt.

Denne høytiden kan være bra for eBook reader salg

Et økende antall mennesker sier de har planer om å kjøpe en eBook leser i løpet av høytiden, ifølge en undersøkelse fra forbrukerelektronikk for handel Retrevo. Interessen i kategorien er faktisk høyere enn MP3-spillere. Om 21 prosent av respondentene sa at de planla å kjøpe en eBook leser dette året. Det var flere menn (1 av 4) interessert enn kvinner (1 av 6). Den Gadgetology Studien fokuserte på eBok lesere spesielt. De to viktigste valgene er fortsatt Amazon Kindle og Sony Reader. I undersøkelsen, favoriserte potensielle kunder ved å tenne en to-til-en margin over Sony Reader. Aldersgruppen mest interessert i å kjøpe en eBook leser er 25 år til 35 år. Neste på listen var 35 år til 45 år. Velstående forbrukere utgjorde den største potensielle gruppen av forbrukere. Om 33 prosent av de potensielle kjøperne er i $ 100,000 til $ 200,000 årlig husholdningsinntekt brakett. Om lag 9 prosent av forbrukerne er villige til å vente på ryktet Eple eBook reader. (Apple har ikke bekreftet dette ryktet). Mens eBook readers slo ut MP3-spillere, vil de likevel ikke er like populær som HDTVs, digitale kameraer og bærbare datamaskiner. Den Retrevo rapporten ble gjennomført online og brukte et eksempel størrelse på 771.