Friday, September 30, 2011

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Nike VC Arm To Invest In Green Startups Top
Nike-logoSports brand and sneaker maker Nike is going to start investing in green startups, through its new VC arm called the Sustainable Business & Innovation Lab. This group will seek out companies focused on sustainable products, sustainable manufacturing and sustainable marketplaces. The fund is designed to support Nike's goals involving the integration of corporate responsibility into its business and its evolution to a "closed-loop" business model.
 
Backed With $1.3 Million, Pantheon Launches Drupal-Based Web Development Platform Top
PantheonSan Francisco-based Pantheon opened its doors to the public today after a year building its Web development platform for Drupal sites.  (Drupal is an open-source content management system).  Pantheon is a combination of a Web development tool in the cloud and a Web hosting and management service.  Companies can develop, test, host, and manage their websites on Pantheon  It is all based in the cloud, and the service is free for developers.  Once you make a site go live, it costs $100  a month. The company raised a $1.3 million seed round a year ago from First Round Capital, Baseline, Floodgate, Founder Collective, and Heroku founders James Lindenbaum, Adam Wiggins, and Orion Henry.  You can think of Pantheon as a Heroku for Drupal sites in that it puts the web development environment in the cloud.  Founder and CEo Zack Rosen has  simpler description of what Pantheon offers.  " You can get an enterprise-complete website for your organization with the level of polish of a consumer-grade site."
 
Despite Solyndra, U.S. Solar Up 69% Top
solar-panelsIn 2010, the U.S. installed 887 megawatts (MW) of grid-connected photovoltaic (PV), up 104% from the 435 MW installed in 2009, according to a new recent report by the Solar Energy Industries Association and GTM Research. However, the U.S. market's share of global installations fell to 5.1%, down from 6.0% in 2009. In the end of 2011, that's expected to change, thanks to slowdowns in major European markets like Italy and Germany. And in a few years time, the report says, the U.S. market may be the largest in the world.
 
In Australia, Samsung Offers Apple A Deal Over Galaxy Tab 10.1 Ban Top
hand_shakeLast we heard of settlement talks between Apple and Samsung was in June, and you can tell from recent events that those talks probably didn't end well. Today in Australia, however, Samsung's lawyers have reportedly extended an olive branch, hoping to end delays of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 launch in the Aussie market. If Apple accepts the terms of the agreement, we could see the GalTab 10.1 on Australian shelves by next week, said Samsung attorney David Catterns.
 
Ex-Googlers Debut Zillabyte To Let Business Users Easily Analyze Big Data Top
zillaEx-Googler Jake Quist is debuting a new stealthy startup, called Zillabyte, that aims to disrupt the data analysis space. Quist explains that while he and his co-founder were engineers at Google, they were able to access a number of internal, extremely in-depth data analysis tools. But aside from being powerful, these tools were convenient for Quist and other Googlers to use and made it easy to analyze data and make better decisions. As Quist tells me, When we left Google, we realized that data analysis outside the Googleplex kind of sucks. Big time. The tools available are so niche that only big enterprise can purchase them. The alternatives suck too.
 
Samsung Announces The Dual-Core Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus Top
samsung-galaxy-tab-7-plusDespite the fact that Apple has found a way to block sales of the latest two Galaxy Tabs, Samsung is going to try try again. The company officially announced the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus this morning, a 7-inch, HSPA+, dual-core slate. With the 7.0 Plus, Samsung has basically covered every size tablet there is: two 10.1-inch models, an 8.9-incher, a 7.7-inch tab, now a straight up 7-incher, along with the 5.3-inch smartphone/tablet hybrid Galaxy Note.
 
Canonical Releases Windows Version of Ubuntu One Top
ubuntu-oneCanonical, the commercial backer behind the Ubuntu Linux distribution, have been hosting a file synchronization service called Ubuntu One for a couple years now. A free account gets you 5GB of storage, and the client side controls have been baked into the last couple of releases of the Ubuntu distribution. It works pretty much like Dropbox or similar services, but has been -- until today -- Linux-only. In an announcement late last night, Canonical has revealed that there is now a Windows client for Ubuntu One, allowing you to access all your files from either Linux or Windows computers.
 
Report: HP Still Looking To Offload Palm, Amazon Named As Top Contender Top
webos-fireThe Kindle Fire announcement set the interwebs ablaze as Amazon burst into the tablet scene. But the retailer-turned-CE player might be looking to go a different way in the future. Amazon has been named as Palm's current top suitor among "a handful of contenders" as HP looks to rid itself from the TouchPad/webOS disaster. It's unclear from VentureBeat's leaks why Amazon is interested in Palm. Ditching Android for webOS after building an ecosystem around Android seems foolish and shortsighted. This move, if it's really happening, could be more about hardware development and patents than reviving a dead operating system. Sorry, fanboys.
 
Timelines.com Sues Facebook, Says Its New Timeline Feature Could "Eliminate" Them Top
timelinesTimelines Inc., a small venture capital-backed Chicago company that operates the Timelines.com website, has launched a trademark-infringement suit against Facebook on Thursday, claiming that the latter's recently announced Timeline feature could "quite possibly eliminate" its entire business. Timelines.com is a website that basically allows people to record and share personal or historic events, and contribute descriptions, links, photos and videos related to those events, people, companies, bands and whatnot (i.e. Cuban Missile Crisis, Al Capone and Pink Floyd).
 
Video Calling Service Tango Launches On PC Top
Tango logoAs promised earlier this summer, mobile video calling app Tango has finally made it to the PC. Today, a year after its launch on iOS and Android, Tango is now available for Windows desktop computers (XP, Vista and Windows 7). The company says a Mac version will be available later this year.
 
Appsfire To Amazon: Your Kindle Fire Logo Looks Mighty Familiar Top
fireHey Amazon, Appsfire wants to have a chat about your logo for the Kindle Fire, that interesting, affordable tablet you announced a few days ago. They're upset because it looks a lot like theirs. Writes Appsfire co-founder Ouriel Ohayon: (after the jump)
 
Sharp Showcases 4K LCD TV (3,840×2,160 Resolution), To Sell It 2012 Top
sharp tvFull HD resolution (1,920×1,080 pixels) isn't enough for Sharp. The company has developed [JP] a TV that's capable of producing images with 3,840×2,160 resolution and is ready to show the device to the public during the CEATEC 2011 exhibition that takes place next week near Tokyo. The 60-inch 4K TV has been developed in cooperation with the I3 (I-cubed) Research Center in Kawasaki. I am assuming Sharp will share more detailed specs when they bring the prototype to CEATEC (so far, only the size and resolution have been revealed).
 
Disney Mobile Japan Announces Two (Cute) Android Phones Top
Picture 6Disney, which has been doing business as an MVNO in Japan (Disney Mobile) since 2008, took the wraps off two new Android phones [JP] yesterday. The DM010SH will be rolled out in Japan in October, followed by the DM011SH in December (prices tbd). Technically, the DM010SH is based on the Sharp's AQUOS 009SH [JP] and features Android 2.3, a 4-inch LCD with QHD resolution, an 8MP CMOS camera, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, a microSDHC slot, a digital TV tuner, an e-wallet function, infrared communication, etc.
 
You Know What's Cool? Not Myspace Top
Screen Shot 2011-09-30 at 1.09.54 AMMyspace savior Specific Media laid off 8% of its staff yesterday, about 50 people. Those laid off were mostly Myspace employees, according to one source, presumably eagerly awaiting their severance package; "The people that [sic] got let go were celebrating because Specific Media doesn't have a clue what to do." In the past three months Specific Media had gone from the excitement of new acquisition smell to post partum depression it seems like, recently scaling back this summer's grand Myspace relaunch plans because of unfavorable progress.
 
Orange To Bring Sharp 3D Android Phone To Asia And Europe Top
110929Is this finally the beginning of Japanese Android phones being made available outside their home market? Japan's biggest mobile carrier NTT Docomo yesterday announced it has inked a deal with French telco Orange to bring a Sharp Android handset to Asia and Europe. The handset in question is a pretty nice one, the AQUOS PHONE SH80F (pictured), that Sharp introduced (together with Docomo) in Japan back in May.
 
Daily Crunch: Time Spent Top
1435Here are some of yesterday’s stories on TechCrunch Gadgets: A Cheerful Memento Mori Clock For Your Home Or Office Lego Tries Augmented Reality With "Life Of George" Game Sony To Stop Comping 3D Glasses For Theaters – Because Movie Tickets Aren't Expensive Enough Already Sync By 50 Headphones Leak Early, Appear To Be Appropriately Street Huzzah! A Wooden Frame For Settlers Of Catan
 
GetComparisons: A Tale Of The Tape For Anything Top
Screen Shot 2011-09-29 at 10.36.41 PMNexus S or iPhone? Kindle Fire or iPad? Samsung TV or LG TV? When people try to make such decisions, they usually look for as much data as possible so they can compare choices. For many gadgets, that's relatively easy because you can compare similar specs such as CPU speed, RAM, screen size, etc. But what about for everything else? That's what the startup GetComparisons is going after. They aim to be the "Epinions for comparisons," founder Akshay Arabolu says. The service is all about gathering user-written product reviews and formatting them in such a way that it's easy to compare things. While a service like gdgt does a great job of this for gadgets, Arabolu found a pain point in trying to figure out if he should use WordPress or Tumblr for blogging. So that's the service he set out to build.
 
Former Googler Builds Site That Shows You What Top Tech Companies Pay Top
Screen Shot 2011-09-29 at 7.32.44 PMLast night at an informal gathering of tech people, someone likened Silicon Valley to a "Las Vegas for people who want to make crazy shit" equating VCs and angel investors to gamblers of sorts. Well if investors are gamblers, and startups are hands of cards, what does that make engineers? I don't know (in the Vegas analogy I'm Hunter S. Thomson), but it sure seems like they get paid a lot.
 
Nice Work If You Can Get It: Apotheker Leaves HP With $10 Million Severance Top
1000-dollar-bill-22Massive severance packages are nothing new, but sometimes you just feel the need to call attention to them. Ousted HP CEO Leo Apotheker is leaving the company with a $7.2 million severance payment, plus a $2.4 million bonus and $3.7m in stock (more if you count the other 440,000 vested shares). I understand that this high pay is part of our business culture, but really, now. Is it possible that HP was in a death spiral and only Apotheker's sound judgment caused them to get away with a mere 45% drop in value? It seems unlikely that they'd kick him to the curb after less than a year if that were the case.
 
Why No Kindle Touch Or Fire For EU, UK? Top
KW-slate-02-lg._V166950133_Jeff Bezos recently said that these days, "if you are just building a device you are unlikely to succeed." He certainly seems to be backing that statement up, with the launch of the Kindle Fire producing more optimism than the last ten non-iPad tablet launches combined. It seems that people do indeed like the idea of a purpose-built device that does a few things well, walled garden or not. But Bezos glossed over the other side of the "make your own ecosystem" coin: providing and administrating that ecosystem not only requires immense resources, but can occasionally cause major roadblocks. In this case it appears that the Kindle Fire and Touch will be unavailable UK or EU, for reasons and duration not specified. It wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that they're more than just devices, would it?
 

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